I guess that’s pretty good symbolism, actually. Green means alive and red means dangerous. Red is jagged cliffs, warning lights, splattered blood. But green… green is trees and apples and clover.
“How do you say green in Latin?” I ask Finn absently.
“Viridem,” he answers.
And then something else occurs to me, something out of the blue.
“What does Quid Pro Quo mean?”
Finn stares at me. “It means something for something. Why?”
“No reason,” I answer, but my heart is pound, pound, pounding. Over and over. Because something for something. Did I give something to get something?
ThumpThump,ThumpThump.
I trudge up to my room and drop into bed without even showering.
I feel a thousand pounds of guilt on my chest because I only have one thought, one thought that makes my chest tighten and constrict and pound.
I love my mom,
I love my mom
I love my mom.
But thank God it wasn’t Finn.
Quid pro quo.
Chapter Eighteen
I wait at the hospital for Finn to get out of Group, for him to converse and compare with the other patients who have SAD. Because for whatever reason, his thoughts are muddled now, not mine.
It’s nothing I can explain,
It’s nothing I can understand.
Ever since I thought he died, ever since we buried my mom, Finn’s mind has deteriorated, and mine has strengthened.
I don’t know why.
I’m just thankful that he’s alive.
So while I wait for him, because I’d drive him here every day for the rest of my life in gratitude that he’s alive, I read my book, I listen to my music, I close my eyes.
It’s how I can ignore the shrill, multi-pitched yells that drift down the hallways. Because honestly, I don’t want to know what they’re yelling about.
I stay suspended in my pretend world for God knows how long, until I feel someone staring at me.
When I say feel, I literally feel it, just like someone is reaching out and touching my face with their fingers.
Glancing up, I suck my breath in when I find dark eyes connected to mine, eyes so dark they’re almost black, and the energy in them is enough to freeze me in place.
A boy is attached to the dark gaze.
A man.
He’s probably no more than twenty or twenty-one, but everything about him screams man. There’s no boy in him. That part of him is very clearly gone. I see it in his eyes, in the way he holds himself, in the perceptive way he takes in his surroundings, then stares at me with singular focus, like we’re somehow connected by a tether. He’s got a million contradictions in his eyes…aloofness, warmth, mystery, charm, and something else I can’t define.
He’s muscular, tall, and wearing a tattered black sweatshirt that says Irony is lost on you in orange letters. His dark jeans are belted with black leather, and a silver band encircles his middle finger.
Dark hair tumbles into his face and a hand with long fingers impatiently brushes it back, all the while his eyes are still connected with mine. His jaw is strong and masculine, with the barest hint of stubble.
His gaze is still connected to mine, like a livewire, or a lightning bolt. I can feel the charge of it racing along my skin, like a million tiny fingers, flushing my cheeks. My lungs flutter and I swallow hard.
And then, he smiles at me.
At me.
Because I don’t know him and he doesn’t know better.
“Cal? You ready?”
Finn’s voice breaks my concentration, and with it, the moment. I glance up at my brother, almost in confusion, to find that he’s waiting for me. The hour has already passed and I didn’t even realize it. I scramble to get up, feeling for all the world like I’m rattled, but don’t know why.
Although I do know.
As I walk away with Finn, I glance over my shoulder.
The sexy stranger with the dark, dark gaze is gone.
I fight the feeling, the very strange feeling, that I’ve seen him before. There’s no way that’s possible.
There’s no way I could forget someone like him.
But still.
There’s something
Something
Something.
* * *
A week later, I take my brother to Group again. When we’re inside, Finn turns to me before he slips into his room.
“There is a grief group. You should check it out.”
“Now you sound like dad,” I tell him impatiently. “I don’t need to talk to them. I have you. No one understands like you.”
He nods, because no one understands like him. And then he disappears into the place where he draws his strength, around people who suffer just like him.
I try not to feel inadequate that they can help him in ways that I can’t.
Instead, I curl up on my bench beneath the abstract bird. I pop earbuds in my ears and close my eyes. I forgot my book today, so disappearing into music will have to do.
I concentrate on feeling the music rather than hearing it. I feel the vibration, I feel the words. I feel the beat. I feel the voices. I feel the emotion.
Someone else’s emotion other than my own is always a good thing.
The minutes pass, one after the other.
And then after twenty of them, he approaches.
Him.
The sexy stranger with eyes as black as night.
I feel him approach while my eyes are still closed. Don’t ask me how I know it’s him, because I just know. Don’t ask me what he’s doing here again, because I don’t care about that.
All I care about is the fact that he is here.
My eyes pop open to find him watching me, his eyes still as intense now as they were the other day. Still as dark, still as bottomless.
His gaze finds mine, connects with it, and holds.
We’re connected.
With each step, he doesn’t look away.
He’s dressed in the same sweatshirt as the other day. Irony is lost on you. He’s wearing dark jeans, black boots and his middle finger is still encircled by a silver band. He’s a rocker. Or an artist. Or a writer. He’s something hopelessly in style, timelessly romantic.
He’s twenty feet away.
Fifteen.
Ten.
Five.
The corner of his mouth tilts up as he passes, as he continues to watch me from the side. His shoulders sway, his hips are slim. Then he’s gone, walking away from me.
Five feet.
Ten.
Twenty.
Gone.
I feel a sense of loss because he didn’t stop. Because I wanted him to. Because there’s something about him that I want to know.
There’s something about him that I feel like I do know.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, listening once again to my music.
The dark haired stranger doesn’t come back.
* * *
The rain might make Oregon beautiful, but at times, it’s gray and dismal. The sound of it hitting the windows makes me sleepy, and I itch to wrap up in a sweater and curl up with a book by the window. At night, when it storms, I dream. I don’t know why. It might be the electricity of the lightning in the air, or the boom of the thunder, but it never fails to trigger my mind to create.
Tonight, after finally falling asleep, I dream of him.
The dark-eyed stranger.
He sits by the ocean, the breeze ruffling his hair. He lifts his hand to brush his hair out of his eyes, his silver ring glinting in the sun.
His eyes meet mine, and electricity stronger than a million lightning bolts connects us, holding us together.
His eyes crinkle a bit at the corners as he smiles at me.
His grin is for me, familiar and sexy. He reaches for me, his fingers knowing and familiar, and he knows just where to touch me, just where to set my skin on fire.
I wake
with a start, sitting straight up in bed, my sheets clutched to my chest.
The moonlight pouring onto my bed looks blue, and I glance at the clock.
Three a.m.
Just a dream.
I curl back up, thinking of the stranger, and then curse myself for my ridiculousness. He’s a stranger, for God’s sake. It’s stupid to be so fixated on him.
But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming about him again. He does different things in my dreams. He sails, he swims, he drinks coffee. His silver ring glints in the sun each time, his dark eyes pierce into my soul like he knows me. Like he knows all about me. I wake up breathless each time.
It’s a bit unnerving.
And a bit exciting.
After two such nights of fitful sleep, rain and strange dreams, Finn and I kneel in front of plastic storage boxes, sorting through stuff from my closet. Piles of folded clothes surround us, like mountains on the floor. Rain pelts the window, the morning sky dark and gray.
I hold up a white cardigan. “I don’t think I’ll need many sweaters in California, will I?”
Finn shakes his head. “Doubtful. But take a couple, just to be safe.”
I toss it into the Keep pile. As I do, I notice that Finn’s fingers are shaking.
“Why are your hands shaking?” I stare at him. He shrugs.
“I don’t know. Do you feel like we’ve been here before? In this same time and exact place? Is your heart ok? Have you had chest pains?”
I’m alarmed because what new craziness is this?
“My heart is fine,” I tell him firmly. “I’m fine, Finn.”
He eyes me doubtfully and then presses his ear to my chest and listens and my heart beats and beats and finally he’s satisfied. I’m so used to odd behavior from him, but this is very strange.
“Finn, are you ok?”
He nods. “Quite positive. It’s just déjà vu, I guess.”
I let it go, even though it makes me uneasy. If I don’t shield Finn from distress, he could have an episode. Obviously, I couldn’t shield him from losing mom, but I do my best to protect him from everything else. It’s a heavy thing to shoulder, but if Finn can carry his cross, I can certainly carry mine. I unfold another sweater, then toss it in the Goodwill pile.
“After mine, we’ll have to do yours,” I point out. He nods.
“Yeah. And then maybe we should do mom’s.”
I suck in a breath. While I would like nothing more, just in the name of moving forward, there’s no way.
“Dad would kill us,” I dismiss the idea.
“True,” Finn acknowledges, handing me a long sleeve t-shirt for the Keep pile. “But maybe he needs a nudge. It’s been two months. She doesn’t need her shoes by the backdoor anymore.”
He’s right. She doesn’t need them. Just like she doesn’t need her make-up laid out by her sink the way she left it, or her last book sitting face down to mark its page beside her reading chair. She’ll never finish that book. But to be fair to my dad, I don’t think I could throw her things out yet, either.
“Still,” I answer. “It’s his place to decide when it’s time. Not ours. We’re going away. He’s the one who will be here with the memories. Not us.”
“That’s why I’m worried,” Finn tells me. “He’s going to be here in this huge house alone. Well, not alone. Surrounded by dead bodies and mom’s memory. That’s even worse.”
Knowing how I hate to be alone, and how I especially hate to be alone in our big house, I shudder.
“Maybe that’s why he wants to rent out the Carriage House,” I offer. “So he’s not so alone up here.”
“Maybe.”
Finn reaches over and flips on some music, and I let the thumping bass fill the silence while we sort through my clothes. Usually, our silence is comfortable and we don’t need to fill it. But today, I feel unsettled. Tense. Anxious.
“Have you been writing lately?” I ask to make small-talk. He’s always scribbling in his journal. And even though I’m the one who’d gotten it for him for Christmas a couple of years ago, he won’t let me read it. Not since he showed it to me one time and I’d freaked out.
“Of course.”
Of course. It’s pretty much all he does. Poems, Latin, nonsense… you name it, he writes it.
“Can I read any of it yet?”
“No.”
His answer is definite and firm.
“Ok.” I don’t argue with that tone of voice, because, honestly, I’m a bit nervous to see what’s in there anyway. But he does pause and turn to me.
“I don’t think I ever said thank you for not running to mom and dad. When you read it that one time, I mean. It’s just my outlet, Cal. It doesn’t mean anything.”
His blue eyes pierce me, straight into my soul. Because I know I probably should’ve gone to them. And I probably would’ve, if mom hadn’t died. But I didn’t, and everything has been fine since then.
Fine. If I think hard enough on that word, then it will be true.
“You’re welcome,” I say softly, trying not to think of the gibberish I’d read, the scary words, the scary thoughts, scribbled and crossed out, and scrawled again. Over and over. Out of all of it, though, one thing stood out as most troubling. One phrase. It wasn’t the odd sketches of people with their eyes and faces and mouths scratched out, it wasn’t the odd and dark poems, it was one phrase.
Put me out of my misery.
Scrawled over and over, filling up two complete pages. I’ve watched him like a hawk ever since. He smiles now, encouraging me to forget it, like it’s just his outlet. He’s fine now. He’s fine. If I had a journal, I’d scrawl that on the pages, over and over, to make it true.
“Hey, I’m going to go to Group again today. Do you want to come with? If not, I can go myself.”
This startles me. He normally only goes twice a week. Have I missed something? Is he worse? Is he slipping? I fight to keep my voice casual.
“Again? Why?”
He shrugs, like it’s no big deal, but his hands are still shaking.
“I dunno. I think it’s all the change. It makes me feel antsy.”
And shaky? I don’t ask that though. Instead, I just nod, like I’m not at all freaked out. “Of course I’ll go.”
Of course, because he needs me.
An hour later, we’ve walked down the hallways filled with our mother’s pictures, past her bedroom filled with her clothes, and are driving to town in the car she bought us. We both pointedly avoid looking at the place where she plunged over the side of the mountain. We don’t need to see it again.
Our mother is still all around us. Everywhere. Yet nowhere. Not really.
It’s enough to drive the sanest person mad. No wonder Finn wants extra therapy.
I leave him in front of his Group room, and watch him disappear inside.
I take my book to the café today for a cup of coffee. I’ve grown accustomed to the rain making me sleepy since I’ve lived in Astoria all my life. But I’ve also learned that caffeine is an effective Band-Aid.
I grab my cup and head to the back, slumping into a booth, prepared to bury my nose in my book.
I’m just opening the cover when I feel him.
I feel him.
Again.
Before I even look up, I know it’s him. I recognize the feel in the air, the very palpable energy. I felt the same thing in my dreams, this impossible pull. What the hell? Why do I keep bumping into him?
When I look up, I find that he’s seen me, too.
His eyes are frozen on me as he waits in line, so dark, so fathomless. This energy between us… I don’t know what it is. Attraction? Chemistry? All I know is, it steals my breath and speeds up my heart. The fact that he’s invading my dreams makes me crave this feeling even more. It brings me out of my reality and into something new and exciting, into something that has hope and life.
I watch as he pays for his coffee and sweet roll, and as his every step leads him to my back booth. There are ten oth
er tables, all vacant, but he chooses mine.
His black boots stop next to me, and I skim up his denim-clad legs, over his hips, up to his startlingly handsome face. He still hasn’t shaved, so his stubble is more pronounced today. It makes him seem even more mature, even more of a man. As if he needs the help.
I can’t help but notice the way his soft blue shirt hugs his solid chest, the way his waist narrows as it slips into his jeans, the way he seems lean and lithe and powerful. Gah. I yank my eyes up to meet his. I find amusement there.
“Is this seat taken?”
Sweet Lord. He’s got a British accent. There’s nothing sexier in the entire world, which makes that old tired pick-up line forgivable. I smile up at him, my heart racing.
“No.”
He doesn’t move. “Can I take it, then? I’ll share my breakfast with you.”
He slightly gestures with his gooey, pecan-crusted roll.
“Sure,” I answer casually, expertly hiding the fact that my heart is racing fast enough to explode. “But I’ll pass on the breakfast. I’m allergic to nuts.”
“More for me, then,” he grins, as he slides into the booth across from me, ever so casually, as though he sits with strange girls in hospitals all of the time. I can’t help but notice that his eyes are so dark they’re almost black.
“Come here often?” he quips, as he sprawls out in the booth. I have to chuckle, because now he’s just going down the list of cliché lines, and they all sound amazing coming from his British lips.
“Fairly,” I nod. “You?”
“They have the best coffee around,” he answers, if that even is an answer. “But let’s not tell anyone, or they’ll start naming the coffee things we can’t pronounce, and the lines will get unbearable.”
I shake my head, and I can’t help but smile. “Fine. It’ll be our secret.”
He stares at me, his dark eyes shining. “Good. I like secrets. Everyone’s got ‘em.”
I almost suck in my breath, because something is so overtly fascinating about him. The way he pronounces everything, and the way his dark eyes gleam, the way he seems so familiar because he’s been in the intimacy of my dreams.