Beneath the Surface (14 page)

Gracie C. McKeever

Apache slip-on mocs; tan, insulated, calf-high, waterproof steel-toed boots, and ankle-high dark-brown leather harness boots.

No matter what he said or did, she wouldn’t pause for niceties. No coffee or tea or soda, definitely no alcohol, and no nice-weather-we’re-having conversation. Just came in, showed him what she’d bought, she even waited in the foyer while he tried everything on to make sure it fit of course everything fit perfectly, and came back out into the living room to model for her.

Just pretty damn unsociable. Just pretty damn Tabitha Lyons…or pretty damn afraid of him.

EJ grinned when he remembered her stopping not four feet inside his foyer with the packages, handing them over to him and not making any attempt to come further into his loft no matter how much goading or cajoling he did.

He had to give her credit for her bravery and determination. He knew that coming over to his place and seeing him in person had been the last thing on her wish list, but rather than fob off her duty on an underling or delivery company, she’d braved it and come over herself. Because that’s the kind of person Tabitha was. If she said she was going to do something, she’d do it, no shirking or dereliction in her.

It was these very facets of her personality that made him admire her so much.

Sure, he loved the package they came in, but physical attraction was just the beginning.

He just couldn’t get Tabitha to believe it.

Shit, he wished he knew what was going on in that woman’s head!

For a brief second when she’d come over, he thought she’d been tempted to accept his offer of coffee, had noticed her curiosity—about what he’d do, how far he’d go—had seen that she’d been on the verge of accepting, but she’d fought off her natural inquisitiveness, her resolve to keep them on strictly business terms beating out her desire.

EJ stopped what he was doing, glanced at the monitor and reread the last couple of paragraphs he had written. Not too bad. He was surprised since he was so preoccupied with his plans for Tabitha, but then he’d always been able to find comfort and escape in his writing. Writing had always been his refuge, what he’d turned to time and again in the past.

In times of crisis, in times of celebration, he’d had his writing. When he had been lost, writing had helped him find himself. When he had been ill or in pain, writing had soothed him. When he had been down, writing had picked him up.

Just about the only thing his writing hadn’t been able to do was help him save Sinclair, which was so ironic since it had been writing and art that had initially brought them together in the first place in second grade.

EJ had started out admiring her work in art class. The finger painting she’d been creating was so intricate and colorful that it gave him the feeling, even as a seven-year-old, that he was in the presence of greatness.

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Beneath the Surface

He remembered she’d glared at him, mumbling about his rudeness in standing over her shoulder while she worked, and why wasn’t he at his own desk doing his own work.

“I finished it,” EJ’d said as he held up his painting for her approval.

Sinclair glanced at it, just barely putting up her nose. “It’s okay, I guess. What’s it supposed to be?”

EJ shrugged. “The teacher said paint what you feel, so I did.”

“You must feel goofy.” Sinclair put the back of a hand— the only part of her hands not paint-smeared—against her mouth and giggled.

EJ wasn’t one to be easily insulted and laughed with her, wanting to believe that she wasn’t laughing at him.

His strategy worked.

Sinclair wiped a hand on her smock and stuck it out. “I’m Sinclair Donatelli.”

“EJ Vega.” He put his hand in hers and shook, hoping he seemed as adult to her as she seemed to him with the formality.

“EJ? What does that stand for?”

EJ shuffled his feet, averting his gaze. He’d never liked his name, didn’t think it was anywhere near as cool as his older brother’s name, Nick.

“Tell me. I won’t laugh.”

He glanced at her gap-toothed grin and returned it. “Eric James.”

“Cool. I like it.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It’s a cool name and cool initials. What do I call you?”

He told her to call him EJ, that everyone did, and from that point on, they were fast friends.

When EJ wrote his first adventure romance, it was Sinclair who’d done the illustrations.

Mr. Donatelli, Sinclair’s father helped them mass-produce the finished product—

a fifty-page work with half-pictures and half-story—made a hundred copies and bound them for sale.

Serious about her art and businesslike to the end, Sinclair set the price at a marketable buck a book—splitting the profits with EJ when
Lie Tei and Ming Toi
, an anime illustrated novelette, sold out the first day they offered it to their third-grade classmates. From there on, a lasting partnership was born.

From second grade to the end of junior high EJ and Sinclair were constant companions, so much so that everyone from EJ’s parents to Sinclair’s assumed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend, but the pair didn’t become romantically involved until 75

Gracie C. McKeever

much later in their relationship. Ironically it was when they both entered separate high schools, each finally giving into the logic that they had been made for each other.

Where Sinclair was a somber, moody loner, EJ was an easy-going optimistic people person. Their personalities and ideals complemented each other in every way, and they constantly played off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

EJ was just about the only one in the world who could pull Sinclair out of one of her blue funks and Sinclair was just about the only one in the world who could put him in one.

To everyone else, Sinclair was weird. She had even been tested for autism as a child and she’d confided that to EJ when they were ten, but to EJ Sinclair was just Sinclair, extremely talented, a little eccentric, and as deep as her heart was big.

So when Sinclair fell in with the post-punk, Goth crowd at her school—getting piercings in places that EJ wouldn’t have imagined getting pierced, wearing the black make-up and clothes, EJ hadn’t thought too much of it. He’d just attributed this new manifestation of his friend as Sinclair being Sinclair—adventurous, rebellious and ever changing.

Until he read one of her poems for her twelfth-grade creative writing class.

Sinclair’s writing, more than her art, had always been full of dark imagery, as if she had to balance out one with the other, but there was something intrinsically bothersome about this poem that struck an unconscious cord in EJ.

Still, back then low- and no-tolerance policies had not existed. School shootings and today’s level of student-on-student, student-on-teacher violence was unheard of when he and Sinclair had been in high school, so going to one of her teachers, or even the school principal, had not been a consideration. Not thinking the sentiments in her poem more serious than he could handle anyway, EJ confronted his girlfriend himself and asked her what the poem meant.

“It means what it means.”

He should have known better than to let the subject go with just Sinclair’s blunt response, had instinctively recognized something amiss in the text, especially the allusions to suicide and ambiguous sexual orientation, but he had no choice when she had gone into one of her moods directly after answering him, stomping off to her next class and not calling or speaking to him for a week after.

He never brought the poem, or its meaning, up again, and to this day regretted his laxity.

He should have seen the signs of her depression, her uncertainty; he shouldn’t have accepted that last poem at face value, as “Sinclair just being Sinclair.”

Damn, what he wouldn’t do to have that last day back, to be able to know what she had planned and be at her house before she could go through with taking all those pills and slitting her wrists, even in death, his friend had been thorough.

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Beneath the Surface

EJ couldn’t even take comfort in the fact that her own parents and few, closest friends hadn’t had any more of an inkling than him.
He
should have known because he’d loved her.

But evidently, that had not been enough—not his love for her, or her love for him—to keep Sinclair going.

EJ didn’t know why he now equated Sinclair’s personality with Tabitha’s. He just knew that instead of one face to haunt him when he laid down his head at night, he had two for entirely different reasons: Sinclair’s death mask when he’d found her in the bathtub at her house and Tabitha’s look of rapture when he’d made her come in his hand.

He squirmed in his chair now with unquenched hunger. Damn.

He didn’t think he had wanted a female who didn’t want him since sixth grade when he’d asked Carolyn Walker, an older woman at fourteen, to be his Valentine and she’d laughed at him before flatly turning him down.

Hmm. Scratch that.
Claimed
to not want him. Because EJ knew damn well Tabitha wanted him as much as he wanted her. He just had to make her admit it—to him would be good, but more to herself—before they could get over this intimacy hump to consummate what he knew was between them.

The phone rang and EJ jerked his head in its direction before rolling his chair to the end table by his easy chair to answer it. He knew it wasn’t Tabitha Lyons, but something made him hope that his previous persistence had paid off, and perhaps she had gotten over her fear.

He didn’t even glance at the caller ID. He wanted to be surprised, then berated himself when he picked up the receiver and heard who it was.

“Hey EJ.”

“Hey Jade.”

“I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Been busy.” He didn’t feel like confiding any more than that, and hated himself for his reticence. He’d never been at a loss for conversation with Jade. They had so much in common, a shared past in advertising. They could go on for an hour just talking about the job and all the characters they came across doing it. Relating a good pitch-meeting alone was enough to put each of them in stitches for a half-an-hour.

“So, uh, how’s the book coming along?”

“It’s coming.”

“Finished those edits?”

“Sent ‘em off to the editor today.”

“That’s, ah, good to hear.”

“Jade, why’d you call?”

“If this is a bad time, EJ, just say so.”

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Gracie C. McKeever

He’d hurt her, could hear the injury in her voice and immediately regretted being so blunt, although he’d never been one to hold his tongue, especially with Jade who’d never had a problem with his frankness. Jade had always given as good as she’d gotten, had never let a sullen mood or acerbic tongue get the best of her—not in business, or her personal life. She was a woman of his heart, her attitude about life so in synch with his own.

EJ sighed and closed his eyes, contrition pushing his tongue to make amends.

He shouldn’t let a deprived appetite get the best of him. He never had. Then he’d never been deprived or frustrated where his appetite was concerned, at least not for very long.

Angela would say it was about time he’d met his match.

“It’s a bad time, but not for the reasons you’re thinking.” Why was he rationalizing to her? They weren’t married. He owed her no explanations about how he spent his free time but none of those justifications kept him from clarifying further. “I’m working, and just having a hard time getting the words down the way I want them.”

“Maybe you’re trying too hard, baby.”

“Maybe.”

“You probably just need someone to come over and give you a nice massage, work all that mean and nasty tension and writer’s block right out of your body.”

“Probably.” Shit, he had no shame! At least his cock didn’t, and that particular part of his anatomy was now standing at attention, tenting the front of his sweatpants in anticipation and clearly expressing its excitement at the possibility of sinking into an eager wet pussy.

EJ cupped himself, unconsciously massaging the most tension-filled part of his body as if trying to strangle the little sucker into submission and forgetfulness.

Then again, why should he deny himself? He had no one to answer to. Especially not Tabitha Lyons, who didn’t want to give him the time of day, much less ease his tension, and could have cared less whether he was suffering or not…and he was suffering. Oh, hell was he, hadn’t known just how much until he’d heard Jade’s voice on the phone. Making everything right, soothing his wounded ego, offering the ultimate balm.

Jade was here, or she soon would be in a matter of minutes he was sure, just waiting for the green light from him.

Why shouldn’t he give it to her?

“Where are you?” he blurted out.

“The question is, where and when do you want me?”

“The answer is here and now.”

“Ooh, I love a man who knows his own mind.”

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Beneath the Surface

EJ wasn’t sure about knowing his own mind. Tabitha Lyons had him questioning every bold desire he’d harbored in the last two weeks. But he knew his cock and a multi-week dry spell was not only unprecedented—it was also totally unacceptable to the little guy, becoming more and more unacceptable to him. Time to show his friend he hadn’t totally forgotten about his needs.

He signed off with Jade, rolled back to his computer about to shut it down and prepare for Jade’s arrival when the phone rang again.

His heart started pounding right away, as if sensing Tabitha’s nearness, which was ridiculous, since he didn’t have any sort of bond with the woman, hadn’t had a chance to forge one the way he would have liked.

He rolled over and picked up the receiver, disappointed when he heard Jodie Klein’s voice on the phone, but immediately trying to cover his yearning with a bright and easy tone to match his publicist’s.

She was calling with good news, had managed to set up several interviews with several major glossy magazines and
The
New York Times.

“How’d you swing that one?”