Guardian Girl (The Chronicles of Staffordshire) (32 page)

“OH YEAH, BABY! HE’S ‘THE ONE’!”

The consummate gentleman became the consummate host, reaching for the wine on the coffee table. “Ladies, before we talk further… May I pour the wine? I found a delightful bottle of Sandeman '66 in your locker. This Porto seemed particularly appropriate for our time together.”

“Please, Rory,” Lenore agreed with a queenly wave of her hand.

The two women ogled the heaven-sent beefcake behind his back. Lena bit her knuckle in,
“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!”
amazement. Rory offered each woman a square of chocolate to attend the Port.

Upon returning to his seat, Rory suspected the purpose behind the women’s not-so-covert attempt to take his mind off his woe. “I take it by your attire, ladies, you wish to distract my attention from my heartache.”

“Oh, Rory… I am so sorry! That was
my
idea,” Lenore confessed. “Please be assured, there is no deeper intent behind…”

Rory waved his hand, closed his eyes, and let the bouquet of the wine waft toward his nostrils. “Don’t worry, Lenore. Please. This is perfect. You two are…” Rory drew a long breath and assessed his horny hostesses. “…Magnificent. Stunningly beautiful each. A mourning man could not hope for a more exquisite pair of ‘distractions’.”

The girls glanced at each other and beamed, tanned faces betraying the electrifying effect Rory had on their libidos.

“So, as we enjoy a glass of wine together, and I am blessed to enjoy the company of two
thoroughly
distracting women, I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the life of another exquisite woman.”

Lena began her delicate cross examination. “Well… While we were in there changing, Rory, Lenore told me just a little about your loss. I’m so sorry to hear about this. Please, tell us more. Who was she? What happened?”

Rory swirled the Port in his glass, enjoying the way the artificial light bounced and reflected throughout the liquid, inhaling it’s fruity notes. He sipped, savoring a legitimate vintage.

“Her name was Alicia. Alicia Drummond.”

Lenore gasped. “My God! Rory! I read about her death in the paper!”

Lena appeared confused, glancing back and forth. “Alicia who…?”

Lenore updated her current events challenged roommate. “Alicia Drummond, Lena! Her father owns Drummond Industries! She was killed in a plane crash two days ago! Somewhere in up-state New York, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, Lenore. Near Lake George. She was with her fiancé on the way to his cabin near Ticonderoga. He radioed that the plane had lost power and they were going down into a heavily forested area. They were… Oh God… They were…”

Rory wept. “Oh God, Lenore! She was so young! She was so young and so beautiful and so alive!”

Lenore wanted to leap across the coffee table and draw Rory’s head to her nearly naked chest. The man needed comfort and Lenore prepared to offer it the best way she knew how; giving him her body. Lena saw Lenore’s legs tense, caught the runway cat's eyes, and shook her head. She mouthed,
“Not yet…”
, urging her over-eager roommate to be still and listen. The archaeologist continued with her excavation, cautiously brushing away the accumulated dust from Rory’s interred memories.

“Rory… Please… If it would help, why don’t you tell us a little about her. What was Alicia like?”

The guest lifted his tear-soaked face and smiled. “Oh… You should have seen her, Lena! When we were in college, no other man could get close to her. She was so beautiful and so full of life! Alicia had freckles that just made you want to smile every time you looked at her and sandy blond hair that lightened in the summer sun. When she smiled I melted. When she held me…” Rory paused and took a sip of wine. “I didn't think I could ever again feel something like that…”

Rory stopped. He glanced up from his wine to seek Lenore’s eyes. Lena caught the look. Rory was falling hard for Lenore, eternally enslaved by the freaky super-attorney’s heart. It was in his body language, his ease with Lenore, the deferential, besotted way he gazed into her eyes.

Lena kept Rory talking. “So how did you two meet? How did you fall in love?”

A smile swept across Rory’s face, wiping away every hint of heartbreak. “Rugby! I played for the school Rugby team and she was a cheerleader for the football team. One day we were out on the practice field and I chased a loose ball. I didn't pay attention to where I was going and I ran over her! But Allie didn’t cry or get upset. She just laughed! She looked up at me, gave me her hand, brushed off her uniform, and smiled at me. Her laugh… Oh God... The joy her laugh brought me!

“That was it. From that moment on we were inseparable. By graduation… I seriously considered asking for her hand.” Rory looked up at his hostesses, darting his eyes back and forth, drawing them into his remembrances. “We
both
wanted to get married.”

Knowing more than he could say, regretting more than the girls could imagine, Rory edited the story down to a palatable, thoughtfully digestible synopsis. “Then it was all over. In a flash. Gone.”

Lenore glanced over at Lena and nodded, urging her to ask the next logical question. Lena sensed a twist in the play unfolding between the three fated friends. The next role was Lenore’s. Sizemore the broker. Lena the therapist. Lenore the savior.

With a nod back, Lena urged Lenore to take the next step. The lawyer who could bring witnesses to tears with her nagging, humiliating lines of questioning stumbled through her curiosity.

“Rory… I… I hope this does not hurt to talk about… If you would rather not…”

“No, Lenore, this is good. This is very, very good. I haven’t talked about Allie with anyone else. It feels good to… To share her memory.”

“Well… How did it end between you two? It sounds as if you two were made for each other, as if your love was real.”

Rory evaded the appetizer of the “how” and instead focused on the entre of the “what.” “You know, Lenore, I never once stopped loving Alicia. Her spirit was always so giving and so alive! She stood to inherit astonishing wealth and I think in her heart of hearts she planned to simply give every penny of it away. I think Alicia would have lived on the streets if she thought her wealth could change even one person’s life for the better.

“I always admired her for that. But I didn’t have that kind of character. I was so weak. I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. I knew that if I married her I was still too selfish and too wrapped up in my ambition to treat her with the love and care she deserved.”

The light around Lena faded, her presence disappearing into the background of the room as Rory drowned in his new love’s eyes.

“I’m so embarrassed, Lenore… I was such a selfish, childish boy with Allie. I knew that if I married Allie I would destroy her spirit. I knew that I would take all that joy and all that selflessness and I would crush her.”

Masking his broiling conflict with a sip of port, Rory flashed to Alicia’s uncontrolled hysteria, the way she raced through the mansion in terror, scrambling to clothe herself after a twisted, virginity-swapping, innocence-stealing visit to the estate. In her haste, she had left her yellow sweater in the hallway just outside the playroom.

“She… She left me.”

Rory broke down, placing his glass on the table. He buried his face into his hands. “I’m so sorry, Allie… I’m so sorry, baby…”

Lena mouthed to Lenore.
“Now, Freaky.”

Lenore stood, walked to Rory’s side, and knelt beside his chair. She pulled his head to her chest and ran her fingers through his hair, stroking and comforting.

Lena pursued the most important question of all, the one that would cement or crush Lenore’s hopes for “The One.”

“Rory… I don’t want to make this worse for you… But I have one more important question…”

Lenore draped her arm around Rory’s neck and rested her head against his shoulder, preparing to have her heart shattered.

“It’s okay, Lena. Please... Ask anything.”

“I need to know… Lenore needs to know… Do you still love Alicia?”

A smile instantly brightened Rory’s face. “God, Lena! I never
stopped
loving her! After we broke up I tried to convince myself that all I could ever do was 'like’ her. I think that was my way of letting myself off the hook for how badly I hurt her. But her smile… Her spirit… That smile has never left me. As I sit here and talk with you I realize that I never stopped loving her, not once, not even now.”

Rory caressed Lenore’s face and delivered words she longed to hear. “I can’t imagine how a person can just turn off genuine love, no matter the circumstance. I know sometimes good people part for good reasons, but… For me… Once loved, always loved.”

Glowing at Rory’s words, Lenore’s apprehension crumbled. Her fear of abandoning Lena lifted.

“I think it’s possible to have a heart big enough to love more than one person. There are many people I love deeply and… I think I would even give my life for if necessary. But… I think it’s impossible to love more than one person at a time… ‘More than life itself’… If that makes any sense.

“When I think about Alicia, I can’t throw away how I feel about her. Every time I think about her, I miss her so much. But I also know…” Rory glanced at the top of Lenore’s head. “…I think I was fated to love another woman… 'Till death do us part’.”

Rory looked back to Lena, pleading for reassurance that his strange, contorted understanding of love was not abnormal or sick. “Does any of that make sense? Does any of that make me sound… Messed up?”

Weeping against Rory’s shoulder, all Lenore could muster was a nod. Rory misunderstood.

“Lenore! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt you! I’m so sorry!”

Lenore took her free hand and pressed her fingertips to Rory’s lips. “Rory, if you
did not
confess that you still loved Alicia I would think you were some kind of a heartless monster. It says so much about you that you are able to confess your love for Alicia and fondly share her memory with us.” Lenore invoked her caress of Rory’s face at the party, stroking his cheek with her fingertips. “I am not crying because you hurt me, my love. You did not hurt me.
You freed me!
”

Across the room, Lena hid her sadness behind the class clown’s smile, relieved and distraught, knowing that with his confession of love for another woman, Rory freed Lenore to leave her beautiful Wild Child a step behind.

Hetero Lena wanted a man and got Lenore instead.

Lesbo Lenore got Lena
and
the man Lena always wanted.

No way to throw the fucking GPA this time.

“Rory, dear, what I think Lenore is trying to say in her freaky supermodel way is…
she’s in love with you
.”

Rory stared at Lenore, waking to his inevitable union with the sexy señorita, perplexed at the breakneck pace of love’s blossom. “But… How? How can Lenore love me that much? She doesn’t even know me!”

Lenore clung more tightly to Rory, pressing her face into his shoulder and crying. Rory clutched her head and stroked her hair.

Lena inhaled deeply, preparing to clue in the billionaire to the weird, wacky world of Lenore Consuela Maria De La Fuente. “Oh brother, Rory. You have
no
idea the can of worms you opened by coming here. Lenore, are you ready for ‘The One' to hear ‘The catch’?”

Lenore nodded, crying freely, fearing Rory’s reaction to the news of her long-time relationship with…

“If there is one thing I know about my roomie, Rory, it’s that once she thinks she’s had a premonition she latches onto it without thinking twice. Once, not long after we first met, she told me a totally insane story about two college roommates and how their lives would stay all wrapped up together until Prince Charming came and whisked one of them away.”

Dumbfounded, Rory glanced at Lenore, her face shielded in his arms, and then back to Lena. He mouthed the question, incredulous.

“Me?”

Lena nodded and confirmed. “Yes, dearie. You. But there’s something you need to know before Lenore lets her heart run away with her sexy Spanish head. I need to tell you something that might scare you off. And I'm really sorry to lay this on you! You didn’t come here tonight to hear about our problems. You came here tonight to have us take a little off your shoulders…”

Rory lifted his hand. “Lena! Wait! You
have
helped me! You both helped me talk about something I haven’t been able to talk about for
years
! I withheld that peace from myself for too long. So, please… Don’t make apologies! I haven’t felt this open and free to talk about what’s on my heart in many, many years! I don’t know why it happened this way or what you two have done to me to make me feel so at ease, but… It’s...” He scanned the women, the copy-master at a loss for a way to explain a surreal, all-consuming sense of peace in the presence of sexy strangers. “…It’s really magical in this place! So, please Lena… Just tell me what’s on
your
heart.”