A Lover's Secret (6 page)

“Well, if you’re looking for that dirt bag, Jake Lassiter,
he disappeared with the maid of honor. Apparently, that’s his flavor. Tall,
blonde, easy. They left ages ago.”

Jess nodded and forced the air into her lungs. Of course
they had. Jake wasn’t the shy, introverted scared-of-everything schoolboy anymore,
and he would probably say just about anything to sell books.

She felt small and alone, withered. She shook her head.
Hadn’t she seen this dozens of times during her Psych rotation? Women who
couldn’t get a handle on their emotions. They got mixed up with the wrong guy,
and it caused them worlds of pain. Endless, agonizing pain. Jess straightened
her spine and breathed deeply. How close she had been to making a colossal
mistake.

***

Mom and Dad agreed to drop off Jess and Grandma before
delivering the gifts to the bride and groom. Grandma had said she wasn’t
feeling well, and Jess volunteered to sit with her at home while everyone else
did whatever people do after weddings.

Jess felt sick and her mind was numb, but she knew that the
best way to get her mind off anything was to throw herself into something else.
Some task. Jess settled Grandma into her chair, covered her with a chenille
throw blanket and placed her basket of yarn in her lap.

“I’d like some peppermint tea, Grandma, and since I’m making
it anyway, could I make you some, too?”

“Well, that would be nice, dear, but only if you are making
it for yourself, as well.”

“Of course.” Jess’s hands shook as she removed two mugs from
the cupboard. She hated peppermint tea, but she wouldn’t need to actually drink
it. Sometimes you really had to trick people into letting you take care of
them.

She tried to focus on the teapot, on the faint ticking
sounds the water made against the walls inside. But her mind went back to that
hallway, so many years ago, the way Jake had pulled up ever so slightly on her
jeans. The way he had pushed against her. How he had brushed so gently against
her lips and then that molten-hot, open-mouth tongue-thrusting kiss. How many
times had she replayed it in her mind? And this, just a kiss. Imagine what it
would feel like to have his bare skin against hers. His warmth. To feel his
strong, powerful hands explore her tender flesh. She felt a throbbing at the
apex of her thighs and in her stomach. Her face flushed, and she focused once
again on the tiny pings inside the teapot.

She shook her head and imagined herself folding the memory
into a tight square. Creasing it first one way and then another, and then
tucking it into the small drawer in her mind where she kept the things that
she’d already handled and that she didn’t want to run across again. She
envisioned it as a file cabinet. Steely gray and impenetrable. She opened the
cabinet drawer and slipped the memory inside, just as the teapot shrieked. The
steam hissed and spit from the spout as she poured.

“Here you are, Grandma. Let it steep and cool, now, before
you sip.” She placed the mug on a crocheted coaster near Grandma’s chair and
settled herself on the sofa, breathing the aroma from her own mug and blowing
at the steam.

“So, where did you run off to today, dear?” Grandma’s voice
was shaky.

“Oh, nowhere Grandma. I just needed to get some air. I went
for a little walk. That’s all.”

“Well, I saw that Jake Lassiter throwing fruits at you.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I found it incredibly rude.”

“Yes. Me too.”

“And then I saw him chase after you.”

“Oh.”

“Did he say something to make you leave the wedding, dear?
Did he say something… unbefitting of a gentleman?”

Jess forced a laugh. “No, no, Grandma. Nothing like that.”

“Because I don’t trust him. There’s just something about him
I don’t trust, and when you’re as old as I am, you know enough to listen to
those feelings. He’s hiding something, and, I just…well, I just don’t like
him.”

“Well…”

“Though it looks like I’m the only one in town who doesn’t…”

Jess didn’t respond, and Grandma continued. “I couldn’t help
but notice that he’s really quite popular. Especially with the ladies.”

Jess swallowed and tried to take the conversation in a new
direction. “So… Grandma, did you eat at the wedding, or are you hungry?”

“You know I can’t eat any of that party food. It gives me
indigestion. And gas.”

“When was the last time you went in for a checkup, Grandma?

“Oh, it’s not a physical problem. There’s just a lot of
creamy stuff I can’t eat.”

“Well, I’m hungry, too,” Jess lied. “And since I’m making
dinner anyway, what sounds good to you?”

“Anything, dear. Anything at all. I just can’t eat tomatoes
or dairy or gluten or starch.”

“Okay then,” Jess said.

“And nothing with vegetables. They make me burp. But don’t
go to any trouble, dear. Something simple.”

Jess stood too quickly and her head spun. As she made her
way past Grandma’s recliner, the woman reached out and grabbed at her elbow.
“After dinner, maybe we can work a jigsaw puzzle together. Sometimes they take
weeks to complete, but we can at least get started.”

Jess nodded. This is what her life would be now. Overcooking
gluten-free noodles for Grandma. Sorting the tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and
surreptitiously lining them up so Grandma could discover them on her own. So
she could fit them together and reveal, over a great length of time, a
photograph of kittens or sailboats or a range of mountain peaks that someone
else had climbed.

***

Hours passed in this way, and now Jess lay in bed. She
peered over at Grandma, slumbering softly in the corner of the room. The
humidifier blasted warm moisture and released bubbles every twenty-five
seconds. Jess had been lying there for an hour timing them with her mind,
trying like hell to avoid thinking of anything else. Of her past, of her
dreadful future.

The floor joists above her popped and moaned. She thought
then how the house had been making these same restless sounds for longer than
she had been alive and would probably continue long after she was dead.

A petal fell from the vase on her desk, then, which had been
shoved against the wall when she had moved it back home. How she wished her dad
would just throw the old flowers away. No flowers were better than dying
flowers. She had always thought this. Her parents had always disagreed. The sweetness
they released now was spoiled. It was a scent of slow, inevitable death. Of
stagnation and decay. And the lilies that they always put in the basement,
these were the worst. Jess felt as though the smell might actually crush her.

Then a thought. She sat straight up. She could change
everything. Right now. With a simple phone call.

No. That’s what Jake expected her to do. She couldn’t give
him the satisfaction. Besides, he’d no doubt be busy with Kelly’s sister. That
tall blonde, the sight of who, in her tight, mint green dress, had made Jess
feel frumpy and small. She imagined Jake looming over the top of her now. What
was it that Monica had said? That Kelly’s sister was his “flavor.”

Jess plunked back against her mattress, and Grandma stirred.
She held her breath for a moment and stared off into the darkness. The only
light in the room was from the power button on Grandma’s humidifier,
illuminating everything with a bluish glow.

It was so still. So suffocating. Jess was seized by a sudden
but benign energy—an urge to leap out of the bed. To tear the old posters off
the walls and to shout at the top of her lungs. To cry and to scream and to rip
at her hair. To dump the vases of old rotting flowers onto the floor. To
destroy everyone’s arbitrary and nonsensical expectations of her. Of course,
she did none of these things, but she yearned for something to happen. Anything.

She sat again. If Jake was in bed with that woman, then he
wouldn’t answer his phone, and she could leave a message. A simple message. She
could tell him that she had read his little book and that she just wasn’t
interested. And that would close the “Jake Lassiter” chapter of her life. She
could fold his memory tight, once and for all, and she could place it in her
tidy mental filing cabinet and she could move on. This, she was sure, would
make the fantasies stop. She certainly hadn’t asked for these lusty images,
which kept bobbing through her awareness at odd and unwelcome times. And when
Jake called her back,
if
he called her back, she simply wouldn’t answer.
And that would be that. Jess would start taking control of things again.

She grabbed for her phone. Rushing, now, so she wouldn’t
change her mind. She leapt toward the corner of the room, as far as she could
get from her elderly roommate, and she sunk down low, buffeted by both walls,
until her knees were in line with her face, and she dialed the number. The
number she had inadvertently memorized while staring at the business card and
cooking dinner for she and Grandma hours before.

Her heart pounded. What was she doing? She should hang up.
But it was too late now. Her number would appear on his list of recent calls.
Two rings. Three. When would his voicemail pick up? Her head felt like it might
explode. The deep shaking had returned.

“Hello?” His voice was sleepy. “Jess?”

Jess

 “Did I… wake you?” Jess asked, whispering. She was huddled
in the corner, hugging her knees. Across the room, Grandma had rolled onto her
side and let escape a soft moan.

Jake’s tone was baritone and gravely. Sleepy. She imagined
what he must look like. Hair pushed down on one side. Face puffy and wrinkled
with sleep. “Yeah, yeah,” he answered, clearing his throat. “But no, it’s okay.
Just, hold on a sec. I’ve got to get my bearings. Or something.” She heard
rustling on the other end of the line and then his voice took on a softer tone.
“Jess, I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply, trying to
calm the wild beating of her heart. She wasn’t sure what to say next. “I guess
I didn’t think you’d answer,” she managed, finally.

“So you called to
not
talk to me?” he asked.

“I guess. Sort of,” she said. “I just… well… I thought you
went home with…someone. With a woman.”

“What?” His laugh was incredulous. “No. I didn’t. Why would
you get that idea?”

“Someone told me.”

“Who? Who said that?”

“Monica.”

“Oh, Monica.” Jake grunted. “I know she’s your sister, Jess,
but I’m not sure she’s always your friend.”

“Yeah, I know.” Jess’s brows pulled in, and she frowned.

“The truth is, the bride’s sister spent a good part of the
reception chugging Tuaca in the church bathroom, I guess, and she was pretty
destroyed. She was falling all over herself, so, after looking for you and
realizing you had left, I drove her home, in her car. Then I walked back to my
hotel. Alone.” He paused then. “After seeing you…and getting shot down like I
did… I needed to clear my head. I needed to walk.”

Jess chewed at her lip. She was silent, listening on some
level to his words but mostly riding the soft waves of his voice. They were
quiet and kind, like the shy and introverted man in her fantasies. Not the one
who globetrotted or parasailed or whatever he said he did. She could imagine
him now, sleepy-eyed and adorable, holding the phone close to his face and
smiling into it. She clutched her knees tighter and tried to control the
trembling that was rising once more, deep in the core of her.

“Jess? Are you still there?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m still here.”

“So… Would you come over?”

“Like in the morning?”
Oh, Christ.
She wagged her
head. She’d been trying to sound nonchalant. Not eager. But,
in the morning?
Could she have sounded more desperate?

“No.” Jake’s tone was curt, abrupt. “Would you come over
right now?”

Jess’s stomach dropped and her throat felt like it was
closing up. She stuttered. “I…I think you have the wrong idea, Jake.” She
wasn’t one of the ultra-beautiful girls from either coast, who would do his
bidding in the middle of the night.

“No, Jess.” He laughed. “I think
you
have the wrong
idea. I just…I can’t stand to hear your voice, after all these years, and not see
you—and not be able to look into your eyes.”

“But I don’t… My intention was not to…”

“Seriously, Jess, I just want to see you. To reconnect. I
won’t…I won’t even touch you. You have my word. No kiss-stealing or pushing you
up against anything.”

As he said the words, she could feel him, once again; the
pressure of his body against hers. Her heart pounded in her face.

“I just want to see you. Please?”

She pulled in a deep breath and slowly exhaled.

There was a series of soft clicks and rustles on his end of
the line. She swallowed and opened her mouth. Then closed it again. After a
time, he said, “So, did you read the book?”

“A little bit.” She straightened her spine and pulled her
neck upward in an attempt to keep the shakiness out of her voice.

“The part about you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. So you get it. Now come over. We’ll talk about it. I
just want to talk to you. I’m dying to talk to you. Finally. After all these
years. Please, Jess.”

Jess tilted her head from side to side and stared out into
the room where Grandma lay perfectly still. This is what struck her now: the
motionlessness of the room. The dank smell of overripe flowers. The moisture
and the heaviness and the stillness.

“Jess.” His tone was sharp now, cracking. “There literally
isn’t a moment to waste. My flight was supposed to leave tonight. Well, I guess
it
did
leave tonight…without me.”

“Oh?” It was more an exhalation than a response.

“Because I was hoping you’d call, Jess.”

She bit her bottom lip and swallowed.

“Listen, Jess, I’m sending you a car. The driver will be
discreet. All you have to do is… be outside, in front of your house, in seven
minutes.”

Seven minutes. She listened to her breath flow in and out, and
then her reply came out in a rush, before she had made the conscious decision
to form the words. “Okay, okay, yes. Okay.”

He was silent a moment, then: “And, Jess? Do me a favor.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t change your clothes. Don’t change anything about
yourself. Come exactly as you are, right this very minute. I want you just as
you are.”

Her stomach lurched, and there was a soft click on his end
of the line.

She stood, then, knowing that if she didn’t leave the
basement right this very moment, that she might somehow change her mind, and so
she swept toward the stairs. The white oriental lily on her desk quaked as she
rushed passed. Two of its petals drifted down and landed with a soft
phwip
on the shiny oak surface of her desk. The petals were wilted, withered around
the edge and dusted with pollen, the finest dust, like powdered mica, aglow in
the blue light.

Jess raised her face to look at the old woman, then, where
she lay, breathing softly, covers tucked beneath her chin. She was taken,
suddenly, by her grandmother’s peacefulness; overwhelmed with love for this
little wrinkled person in her oversized pajamas, cuddled into her covers just
so.

Jess took a sharp breath, and she kissed the tips of her
fingers and held them up, extending them out toward Grandma. Then she turned,
and she launched herself up the basement stairs, three at a time, hurling
herself toward something. Something new.