A Lover's Secret (5 page)

She had to get out there. Out of the church and away from
the toasts and the couples with their faces pressed against one another, their
bodies swaying on the dance floor. All the…togetherness. She pushed her way out
the front door. Just for a moment. Just so she could breathe.

She would walk, just around the block. The wind picked up
and the spring air bit into her skin. She felt her nipples hard against her
bra, against her dress, and she rubbed at her bare arms. Why couldn’t people
just leave her alone? That’s all she wanted, really. A car roared by and a man
hung his head out the passenger window and shouted something. Something
unintelligible. She must have looked ridiculous, walking along on the side of
the road in high heels and the tightest mint green satin.

She could feel the wind blowing the dress against her. She
looked down and regarded the silhouette of her own body. The way her breasts
pushed against the fabric. The soft barely-there, feminine mound of her
stomach. She drew her gauzy scarf around her shoulders and continued to walk,
faster now.

Her feet were beginning to pound. The left pad of her foot
was almost numb, and she thought about taking off her shoes. Of swinging them
in her hands. Of feeling the earth on her feet as she strode along the
sidewalk. The tiny rocks digging into the fleshy part of her foot. The sole,
her heels. Tiny twinges of pain.

What was wrong with her? Was it seeing him again, after so
long? After so many years of remembering that kiss. Even now, imagining it, a
wave of warmth coursed through her. All she had to do to make that feeling go
away was to remember his arrogance.
“You’ll call. You’ll change your mind.”
He was so sure of himself. Like every woman he met was a sure thing. But there
was nothing
sure
about her. Jake Lassiter had never met a woman like
her, Jess thought with a laugh. That was a certainty. No one so confused, so
inexperienced, so utterly lame at the game of life.

A burst of wind sent a shiver down her back. She thought
about going back to the church. She knew she really should. The bride and groom
hadn’t even left yet. She hadn’t thrown the birdseed. But, here, in front of
her, was that coffee shop. The one she had loved escaping into with her father
as a child. It was always just the two of them. They would read the newspaper
together on Sundays, after church. Or they would just sit and talk. His
favorite thing to discuss, always, had been the variety of amazing things she
would accomplish with her life. The diseases she would find a cure for. The
honors she would accumulate. The good she would do with her logical yet
nurturing brain. One time, her father had even asked her to autograph his
napkin, because, he said, it would be worth so much once she had won her Nobel
Prize.

The last thing she ever wanted to do was to disappoint him.
Now, since she’d come home, her father could hardly bring himself to look at
her. He could hardly be in the same room with her. She shivered again and found
herself pulling open the glass door.

The café smelled exactly the way she remembered it. Like
amaretto and waffle cones, melding with the bitter scent of Dark Roast
Espresso, so strong it seemed to throb. The place was empty, and a slow beat
churned from the speakers behind the counter.

A tall Jamaican man at the cash register gathered his long
black dreadlocks in his hand, moving them behind his shoulders, and then he
smiled. “Am I missing the party?” he asked.

“Pardon?”

“You aren’t dressed for a solo coffee run.”

“Oh. Yes. I’m just taking a little break from a wedding.”

“Ah. That explains it. So what will you have, pretty lady?”

Jess blushed. “Coffee. Black.” She looked at his deep ebony
skin, and she worried that perhaps he would think she was addressing him, so
she said, quickly, “I mean, with no sugar or creamer, please.”

He laughed, low, and his eyes flashed. “I have a nip of
something back here if you want it.”

A nip of something? What did he say? Was her nip showing?
“Pardon?” she said again, wishing that being alone with a man didn’t always
make her so ridiculously nervous.

“A jigger of something harder. Some Irish cream or some
Butterscotch Schnapps, maybe? No extra charge, as long as it’s our little
secret, and as long as I get to sit and drink it with you.”

“No, no thanks. A little coffee is fine. Black. I mean no
cream or sugar.”

He laughed again, and she snapped her head down, so she
wouldn’t have to see the way his eyes danced at her. And there it was. Jake’s
book. Three stacks of the damn thing, including one copy on top with a worn
cover and weary, folded pages.

“That’s the restaurant copy,” the man said. “Feel free to
enjoy it while you’re here. Just don’t leave with it. If you want a copy of
your own, you just let me know.”

She nodded and slipped off her shoe to retrieve the twenty-dollar
bill she had hidden in there.

“Oh, no charge for pretty ladies,” he said, winking, and
then he thrust Jake’s book toward her. “I can tell you want to read it. Go on.”

She took it in one shaky hand and sat at the table farthest
from the counter. The pages of the book were worn and soft, like fabric. She
checked the copyright date. Brand new and well read. She flipped again to the
photograph on the back jacket. The chipped tooth. The familiar eyes. She could
hear his voice now. There was a quiet, dark quality to it. A resonance and a
rasp.
“You’ll call me. You’ll change your mind.”

She’d be damned if she was going to start at the beginning
with that cocky list of conquests, so she placed the book on its spine and let
it fall open.

 “You are meant to live an enraptured life,”
it
began.  

Enraptured, huh? What would that feel like? She skimmed down
a bit.

“Ride the wave of your life, like the crest of an orgasm.
Ride it to completion. It is there for you.”

What kind of trash was this? But as she read the words, she
felt a softness and a heat at the junction of her thighs. A flutter. What would
it be like? To be with him? To open up to him, to ride this enraptured life?
She read on.

“Your every day is to be enjoyed. To be savored, to be
captured and triumphed over. And, friends, it is possible that you have far
less time than you think. Too many people think they are safe, but no one is
safe. No one. So you must grab life. Today. Grab it by the balls…”

“Oh, please,” she said aloud. Embarrassed, she popped up her
head in time to see the man behind the counter grin. She flipped to another
section, closer to the beginning.

Here, she read a warning about the things in life that she
would someday see. Possibilities and inevitabilities and events and horrors
that she would surely be called to endure. As she read, she felt a sadness
rising from the pages. It was a forlornness, buried deep in the subtext, which,
she was sure, was evident to her only because her training as a physician
helped her to read between the lines. She had always been the best in her
class, in fact, at understanding people’s true motives, at uncovering or simply
noticing the truth that lay beneath.

Here, in Jake’s writing, there was a haunting; a deep, deep
pain. A regret. Something she couldn’t put her finger on precisely, but it was
undeniable. She felt the card he had given her, poking the tender flesh at her
waist. She flipped to his photo again, not meaning to, and his face peered up
at her. It was there. It was subtle but, for her, unmistakable. Pain. A
mystery. A secret.

Her breath quickened, and she flipped the pages again,
moving closer to the front now but careful to avoid the opening paragraphs.

A subheading caught her eye. “The Girl from the Hallway.”

Her heart stopped and she felt a rush of air all around her,
followed by a profound stillness. She swallowed, and then she began to read,
first in great gulps and then more slowly.

“My journey toward wanting to live in this way—only for
the day, only for the moment—began in what would become my biggest regret. I
was a shy child and, as a teenager, incredibly introverted. I was scared of
many, many things, people, and situations. For four years, I had a
head-over-heels crush on a girl in my class. She was the most gentle and intelligent
person I had ever encountered…so different from everyone else. She was mature
and nurturing, with a strong voice and kind eyes.

“I’m sure she’s curing cancer by now or tending to
refugees in some war-torn nation. She was kind to everyone…yet she didn’t know
I existed. Just before the end of our senior year, she asked a group of
classmates to study with her for the biology exam. We were to meet by her
locker, and, to my surprise and nervous delight, I was the only one who showed.
And so we sat there, and we looked over our nucleotides and our mitotic
processes, and I couldn’t bring myself to say a word. I think I babbled one or
two things, and I know that I kept staring at her, the way her eyelashes swept
downward as she blinked. The way she knew all the answers. The gentleness about
her.

“When our study session was over, I knew that this was
it. She would go somewhere and she would do something amazing with her life,
and she would never think about me. And, right then, something came over me.
Before I knew it, I had her up against the lockers. It was the most awkward but
magical moment of my life. I kissed her. It was my first kiss, but believe me
when I tell you, I really let her have it.”
Jess laughed out loud. He
really had.
“I’m sure she must have thought I was a crazed animal. And then
it was over, and her blue eyes got very, very wide, and I ran. Literally. I ran
away like a scared dog. And I never spoke with her again. I even faked an
illness and had to make up the final exam outside of class so I wouldn’t have
to face her.

“And this…this is the thing I have never forgiven myself
for. Shortly afterward, something happened in my family and we cut all ties
with the town. So I couldn’t ask around. I knew none of her friends. But I
thought about her every day. I still do. And this was the thing I vowed never
to repeat. I vowed, then, never to let a moment pass me by. I vowed to seize
every moment. To never again experience that kind of regret. To never let
another person who was important to me slip out into the world.

“Now there are other reasons I will never try to find her.
But I warn you never to let there be a girl from the hallway. A girl who haunts
your dreams.”

Jess leaned back in her chair. Her heart thumped in her
chest, and then she leaned forward, her dark hair shrouding her face and the
book. She read the passage twice more.

She could feel her face flush. The man behind the counter
asked, “Doing okay, my lady?”

“Perfect.” She grinned. “Yes. Sure.”

She gulped. Now what should she do? Did she dare go back to
the wedding and tell Jake she’d read about herself in the book? Could she face
him now?

Maybe she could call him. No, she had left her phone back at
the church.

If she saw him, if he saw her… He would be expecting
something. Something he might write about someday. A chill went through her.

She could always pretend she didn’t know; that she’d never
read that part of the book. She could always let him go back to Malibu. To his
amazing life with that leggy blonde woman everyone was always talking about. To
his high-flying, paragliding ways.

And then she remembered his arrogance. The Jake Lassiter she
had liked was the guy from high school. The shy introverted one, not the one
who…what was it? Rode life on the crest of an orgasm.

Jess shook her head. He didn’t yet know she knew. He never
had to know that she knew. And what was this about having to cut all ties with
the town? About the other reasons he would never try to find her?

But could she really have been so powerful that she had
haunted someone’s dreams? Her hand flew to her mouth. Could she really have
upended someone’s life, without even knowing it? Could she have been the one
who spurred Jake Lassiter to live some great life? Could she have been the one
who inspired him to teach an entire generation of young people how to seize
their dreams?

This was getting ridiculous, all of the places her mind kept
going. Still, she felt an energy surge and pulse through her. She felt a
chattering, not from cold, but from a deep, deep tremble that was growing
inside her. It was as though something were shaking her from the inside. Her
breath snagged.
Had he ever thought about her while making love to another
woman? Had she ever been the object of his fantasies?

Jess stood and waved to the man behind the counter. She
placed the book on top of the stack and thanked him again for the coffee. Then
she tripped along back toward the church. The wind blew against her dress and
she held her scarf straight out behind her and lifted her face toward the sky.
A sense of adoration for nearly everything pushed along inside her. And then
there was the shaking, which just wouldn’t stop.

***

Before she knew it, she was back near the church. She didn’t
know what she would do when she saw him. She still hadn’t made up her mind
whether to tell him that she had read it. That she knew how he felt, but her
chest expanded and she pulled her shoulders back, filling her lungs with the
bright spring air.

Monica was in front of the church, loading gifts into the
back of Mom’s vintage Volvo.

“Where did you disappear to?” she asked.

“Oh, I had to slip out for a moment.”

“For a moment? A long moment. You missed
everything.”

Jess looked at the pavement and twisted her foot. “Has
everyone left?”

“Not everyone,” Monica’s eyes flashed. “Looking for anyone
in particular?”

“No.”