Discreet by Nicole French

13

“Have fun!” Mama said the following Friday as she pressed a kiss to my cheek, laced already with the sweet tinge of gin. “And don’t drink and drive, y’hear? I’ll be sitting by the phone. No more than one more gin and tonic for me in case you need a way to get home.”

I pressed my lips together, holding back my comment. She knew I didn’t drink in the first place, so if she was giving me the “don’t drink and drive” spiel, it meant she’d already had at least two herself. I knew just as well as she did that there was no way Mama would keep herself to one gin and tonic. If she was staying home tonight, ten to one I would find her snoring in her bed when I got home, with an empty fifth on her bedside table.

“I’ll be fine, Mom.” I grabbed my keys off the counter. “Take it easy tonight. Don’t forget, we have the septic guy coming in the morning, so you need to be up early.”

“Now, who’s the mama here, Maggie Mae?” Mama twirled around, spinning her finger through the air as she did. “I’ll be just fine. You go have some fun for once. You and the boys have been working much too hard.”

I shrugged. At least she was staying home. She’d already gone out the last two nights, and I was somewhat sure she’d had company on one of them. Whoever it was, they were gone by the time I’d gotten back from my morning run, but their car was in the driveway when I’d left.

“I won’t be home too late, Mama,” I said with a kiss on her cheek. “Be good.”

“I’m the one who’ supposed to be saying that!” she called. I just laughed as I shut the screen door behind me.

On the way up the stairs, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was Calliope.

Please tell me you’re doing something fun tonight. You’re twenty-six, not eighty.

I smiled. My friend had been more insistent this week, sensing Will’s rejection cut me more than I would admit out loud. I punched back a reply.

I’ll have you know I’m on my way out to a show.

Her response was instantaneous.

Good. I hope you get laid. YOU NEED IT.

I rolled my eyes, but didn’t answer. Sure, it had been a long time. I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to open myself up to someone like that again. But it wasn’t for lack of wanting.

My phone buzzed again. Apparently she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“Christ, Cal,” I muttered, taking it out again. But the message wasn’t from her.

I miss you, Flower.

I stopped at the top of the stairs, stuck in place as I stared at the message, along with the three dots that said the person texting from the number, which I didn’t recognize, was still typing.

If you don’t find me, I’ll have to come find you, bella.

I pressed a hand to my chest as the air suddenly deflated from it. It was just like him to use pathetic pet names, pretending fluency in a foreign language. Theo was all about the act.

I sank to my bottom, suddenly finding it difficult to stay on my feet. The wood steps seemed to sway. No. This wasn’t him. Theo was in jail. I had been there, had stood in the courtroom while the bailiff had taken him into custody. While he had screamed at me that he would come after me, get me back, if it was the last thing he ever did.

My lawyer had told me not to worry about the threat. “They all say that,” she assured me. And I chose to believe her.

I stared at the text. Then slowly, I typed out a question.

Who is this?

The response was almost immediate.

I’m offended. Who do you think it is, Flower?

It sounded just like him. It was just like Theo to answer a question with a question. Insinuate that my doubt, confusion, anything was somehow my fault. Not his.

With shaky fingers, I typed the only response I could think of. The only one I wanted to know.

Where are you?

But there was no answer. I waited thirty seconds. A minute. Five. Still nothing.

“Everything all right?”

I jumped so high that my phone fell into the dust under the stairs, and our heads cracked together when Will and I both scrambled to get it.

“Jesus!” I screamed. “For fuck’s sake, Baker! Warn a girl, will you?”

Will chuckled, and for a second, a suppressed smile glimmered under his usually stolid mask.

It wasn’t like we hadn’t seen each other over the last several days. To my surprise, after our abrupt kiss in the moonlight, Will continued to show up wordlessly day after day, jogging down the stairs from his truck (instead of swimming) at 8 a.m., and meeting me even earlier on the others for a bike ride or a jog. But barely a word was said. Nothing about the kiss on the porch. Nothing about the heat that at least I continued to feel between us. He hadn’t touched me, nor I him, and any attempt I made at conversation was generally met with curt, one-word responses.

But he was always there. Just…there.

So maybe I shouldn’t have been startled when his voice broke through the pine trees. In fact, maybe I should have been mad, considering the icy treatment I’d gotten all week. But instead, as I clasped the phone to my thumping chest, I was so, so happy to see him.

“I’m just here to give you a ride,” he said, obviously confused by my adoring look. “Who was that?”

Gradually, I let my hands fall, the phone with them, and I tucked it into my purse. “Oh…no one. You scared me.”

Will looked like he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press me on it. His hair was down, and his beard had been growing out all week again, much to my (odd) disappointment, but his green eyes still glowed with mischief. Although he was grooming, clearly avoiding the psycho yeti look, there was still a solid two inches of beard hiding his face.

He wasn’t exactly dressed to impress—Will never was—but in the faded jeans and worn graphic t-shirt that molded against his lean swimmer’s body just so, he looked nicer than I’d ever seen him. Better than nice, really. The man made wearing denim an art form.

“Sorry,” he said as he came closer. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He gestured toward the top of the hill. “I’m parked up there if you still want to ride together to the show.”

“I can drive,” I said, pointing to my newly repaired vehicle. It had been delivered today after the boys had gone, and to my surprise, was fully paid for. “Thank you for that, by the way. Please tell me how much the repairs were so I can reimburse you.”

Will glanced at the Passat and frowned. “There’s no need for that.”

“Um…of course there is. You’re not paying for a major car repair. It can’t have been cheap.”

“It was nothing,” Will argued, but when he looked at me, his sharp gaze softened. “Call it…a favor. For putting up with me…pine coning…all week.” He took a step closer and cocked his head. “Please.”

Obviously there was no way I was going to accept this from him, but his expression was so open and adorable, I couldn’t find it in me to say no.

“All right,” I said. “And you can drive if you want to. But, wait! You’re actually going out in public?”

I clapped a hand over my mouth. Immediately, two rows of lines appeared over Will’s brow, and I felt terrible. I sounded like Lucas, who hadn’t passed up excuses to goad Will about his monastic tendencies all week. It had gotten so bad that I had literally taken to sending them to different parts of the property altogether. More than once, Will had looked like he wanted to toss Lucas into the lake.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You haven’t mentioned it since last weekend, so I figured it was part of the pine cone situation.”

Will shrugged and rubbed the side of his face. The motion was so clearly self-conscious, it made me want to hug him. And not because I had been dying for that addictive scent of his all week. No, that wasn’t it at all.

“Well, I’m mentioning it now,” he said. “Unless you don’t want me to come.”

“No, no, no!” I surprised myself with how forcefully I objected.

Will looked up, his eyes hopeful. “Okay, then,” he said gruffly. “Let’s get going, then.”

* * *

We rodein silence for a while, like usual, but it was chilly and as if Will knew just how long it had taken for me to make my hair behave, he kept the windows rolled up. He pushed a cassette tape into the ancient tape deck; it was the kind with a wire coming out that you could connect to the audio players of other devices. I watched with amazement as he connected it to a decrepit iPod—the old kind with the circular control in the center. The kind that had absolutely no internet access. There was only music.

“That’s a pretty awesome setup, you have there, Hoss,” I teased. “Very 2001: A Space Odyssey of you.”

Will arched a brow. “Oh? Do you remember 1999, Lil? These things were classic.”

I blinked. “I remember some.”

His eyes twinkled, and that wide mouth twitched. It reminded me that I still hadn’t managed to make him laugh.

The sounds of The Head and The Heart floated through the speakers, haunting the air with poetry about “Rivers and Roads.”

I smiled. “These guys are some of my favorites.”

Will glanced at me. “Yeah? Mine too, actually.”

I watched the lake glimmering through the trees. “I love the way they mourn in their songs.”

It was a funny thing to say, of course. They weren’t mourning, although the singer, Charity Rose, had a voice that reminded me of keening women I’d read about in an Irish poetry class I’d taken in college. She cried the way I had so many times when I’d found Mama passed out on the couch. When I’d felt alone in the world because she was too busy battling her own demons to help me manage mine.

I said as much to Will—the part about the poetry, anyway. I kept the part about Mama to myself.

He nodded. “She reminds me of some Yeats poetry. This one in particular, ‘The Sorrow of Love.’”

“Oh, I love that poem!” I turned in my seat, excited. “It always reminded me of the lake. ‘The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves, the brilliant moon and all the milky sky’…”

“‘And all that famous harmony of leaves,’” Will continued, nodding his head. “‘Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.’”

I sighed. “So, so pretty.”

“I didn’t take you for a poetry person.”

I shrugged. “I went to college, took a few literature classes. But really, poetry, lyrics. They’re the same thing. It’s all music.”

“You’re a music lover, huh?”

I opened my mouth, surprised by the pang in my chest at the question. That it should even exist. That anyone should even wonder.

“I was,” I said, but didn’t elaborate.

I could feel, rather than see, Will pull into himself, almost as a reflection of my own withdrawal. The “man’s image” that Yeats spoke of in the poem seemed to apply directly to Will. Like he was that man from the Yeats poem, withdrawn behind the sounds and sights of the wilderness around him. Maybe that was the way he wanted it.

Except he couldn’t. Not completely. I didn’t know him well, but I knew that. Will exuded something magnetic, something bright that could never be hidden completely, no matter how plain or majestic his surroundings.

The volume of the song rose again, filling the car with tension and beauty. We listened quietly as the melancholic harmonies swirled around us. I closed my eyes. And for the first time in weeks, I felt that old yearning. The one that had made me take up my guitar at age seven. The one that had me singing ditties before I could even talk. An aching space inside me that yearned for the only thing that had ever filled it: music.

The song ended, and another came on, but the final melody of “Rivers and Roads” still haunted my mind like a ghost.

“God, I’d love her to sing my songs,” I murmured.

It was what I’d always said. When I had first graduated with my music degree, my goal had been to sell my songs, not play them. I’d wanted to write and produce, and Calliope and my previous manager had assured me the best way to do that was to perform myself to make a case for my songs.

But I wasn’t a natural performer. The butterflies in my belly had told me that ever since the first time I had gotten onto a stage. More often than not, I would vomit before a performance, and it wouldn’t be until I was two or three songs into my set, fully immersed in my music, that I would be able to loosen up to sing my songs the way I meant them to be heard. Even then, it was never quite enough. I could play the guitar, of course, but my voice wasn’t as strong as the melodies I heard in my head.

Will glanced at me curiously. “You write songs?”

I straightened up. “Um, yeah. Well, I used to. Did. I—I don’t know.”

Will watched me for a second before turning his eyes back to the road. I didn’t say anything else, content to look out the window, and he didn’t press me. We listened to the next few songs on the album as he drove across the border.

“Okay, I gotta ask,” I said, turning to Will. “How can a guy like you afford a house like yours?”

Will spun the wheel with ease, turning the old truck along the twisting road. He gave me another one of his shy half smiles. “I used to work in…advertising, like I said. In New York and LA, mostly. I made enough that I could buy my place here and kind of disappear for a while. I wanted to keep things very simple, but…I couldn’t really help myself with the house.” His mouth twisted fondly, like he was remembering an errant child. “It’s my baby.”

“Why don’t you ever have anyone over? It seems to be such a waste, just you living there.”

Will sighed. “My life used to be very…complicated. I bought the house in a moment of weakness. I should get rid of it, but…I just haven’t been able to do it yet.” His mouth quirked at me. “Do you blame me?”

I grinned as one side of his mouth perked up a little wider. “Not at all. The house is amazing. Don’t ever sell it.”

“I’m glad I can impress you somehow, Lil.”

“I’m more impressed that you’re actually telling me something about yourself.”

He rolled his eyes, but the half smile reappeared. “I don’t know. You do something to me. You make me say things I shouldn’t. Do things I shouldn’t.”

He steered the car onto Trent Avenue, the long highway that ran alongside the mountain foothills from Washington to Idaho. Besides farms and a railroad track running parallel, there wasn’t much on it except for Curly’s, the log cabin-shaped bar that straddled the border almost perfectly. We found a parking spot in the big gravel lot that was crowded with several pickups, much like his. Will turned off the engine, but didn’t move, still holding both hands on the wheel and squeezing his eyes shut. I moved to get out, but before I could, Will grabbed my hand.

I jerked at the sudden contact—not because it felt bad, but because I wasn’t prepared for the spark that came out of it. The memory of our kiss came flooding back. My lips ached for his—the way he had devoured me. Will had kissed me like a starving man, and I had been just as hungry. I wanted more. Even with the cold shoulder, the weirdness, the distance that always returned, I wanted more. But did he?

Will shuddered too, but kept my fingers firmly in his grasp.

“Will?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Lil, I…” His face screwed up tightly, and his breathing was audible, almost forced. His thumbs brushed over my knuckles, but his fingers weaved through mine even tighter than before.

“Oh, wow.” I covered our intertwined fingers with my other hand, patting the top of his broad palm. His fear—or whatever he would call it—was palpable, shivering through his body like he was touching a live wire. “Will, you don’t have to go in. I can get a ride home from someone else, easy.”

“Someone else meaning Lucas?”

I shrugged. Several people in there would probably drive me home if I asked, but Lucas made the most sense, since he lived less than a quarter mile from my house.

Will scowled. He was jealous, and I would have been lying if I said a part of me didn’t like it. In the back of my mind, another voice said he didn’t have the right. He had kissed me and run off in the night like a bandit, like touching me physically hurt. Then he had returned, day after day, treating me like a stranger, like it hadn’t happened. And I, in my stubbornness, had returned the silence with my own. This wasn’t the start of a normal relationship. Whatever it was, it was dysfunctional.

But now here we were. Maybe I should continue to let him run, or even run myself. But instead, I felt inextricably drawn to this strange, curt, fearful man. His sadness seemed to understand my own. We were creatures alone by our own choices. A part of me wondered if we couldn’t be alone together.

Will stared at our hands for a moment, chewing on his lip.

“Will you do me a favor?” he asked.

I cocked my head. “What’s that?”

He exhaled. “If I need to leave quickly, can you be ready to go? No questions?”

“Sure. I wasn’t planning on staying that long anyway. If you get freaked out, we’ll jet, okay?”

Will nodded, still keeping his eyes fixed on our fingers, where his thumb continued to stroke over my hand. His touch was so unlike his personality. Light. Tender.

“I’ll be fine,” he said at last, more to himself than to me. When he looked up, his eyes were full of determination. “Just…don’t let go, okay?”

I nodded solemnly. His penetrating gaze didn’t waver. I wondered if he understood that every time he looked at me like this, he pinned me into place. That with every dark glance, every wide-eyed stare, Will was seeping into the depths of who I was. Places I wasn’t sure I could even reach on my own.

“Okay,” I promised. “I won’t let go.”