If You Could See What I See (21 page)

I didn’t know what else to say except, “I’m looking forward to dessert class.”

 

“You . . . you’re here.” I stood up, wobbly with surprise, and gaped at Blake. He was in faded denim jeans that fit him smooth and perfecto, and a dark blue shirt. He was tall and filled up my pink office like a friendly, thick chocolate bar.

As Lacey, Tory, and I were going over the incessant, exhaustive details for The Fashion Story, Abigail had knocked, opened the door, and introduced Blake with a flourish. “Meggie, Tory, Lacey, oh fabulous, you’re not fighting or decapitating mannequins or throwing arms. May I present Portland Police Chief Blake Crighton?”

“Hello, Meggie.” He smiled.

I felt my jaw drop, like I was trying to catch something with my mouth.

Tory said, “Holy moly.”

“I remember him from Wood Carving Night,” Tory said, standing. “He is desire on wheels, isn’t he?”

Lacey said, and I’m not sure she realized she’d spoken aloud, “Now, that’s a wowza man for you.”

A wowza man? I shushed them, blushed. Why must I blush around Blake?

“Hello, Lacey, Tory.” Blake extended his hand, smiling, shaking Lacey’s and Tory’s. “It’s a pleasure to see you both again.”

“This is a bad day,” Tory said. “I wish I had met you first. Do you like martinis? You are yada yada yada.”

“Thank you, and no, I’m not a martini sort of man.”

“Hello, Blake,” I managed to squeak out.

“Sorry to drop in on you without warning, Meggie, but I knew if I called you’d say no.”

I’d say yes to you, handsome
.

“I’ll say yes,” Tory said. “Let’s go.”

“No to what?” I said.

“An early dinner. You said you liked Italian, and I just heard about an excellent Italian restaurant.”

Lacey said, “I am so glad you’ve come to take Meggie to dinner. She needs to eat. I mean, she does eat. She eats some, but not much. She might eat you.”

I groaned.

“That’s not what I meant,” Lacey said, waving a hand in the air, her red curls on top of her head. “I’m pregnant. I can’t think anymore. My husband knocked me up for the fourth time. I think I told you about that when I saw you last. What? He thinks we don’t have enough kids as it is? Is he trying to make me insane? I already am, clearly.”

“You seem sane to me,” Blake said, looking like he was about to laugh.

“Thank you. I fake it a lot.” Lacey waved her hand in the air again. “Not in that way, I don’t. I mean, I do now and then. We all do, right? I’m tired, I need sleep. Okay, I’m going to stop talking. Meggie can go and eat you—”

I had never seen Lacey so flustered.

“Not that she’s going to eat
you,
” Lacey went stumbling on. “That’s presumptuous at this point. I mean, eat lasagna or spaghetti on you. Something like that. Bread.”

Blake turned me upside down, too. I had sympathy for her.

“Oh, Lord God Jesus Mary the Apostle Paul, shut my mouth.” Lacey groaned. “It’s the pregnancy hormones.”

“I would eat you for dessert,” Tory said, her eyes moving up and down Blake’s body. “You look like you’re full of nutritional value. My husband, Scotty, is full of crap. He has no nutritional value at all. He won’t even take my calls. Hey, chief, it’s not stalking to call him now and then if he doesn’t say, ‘Don’t call me anymore, Tory,’ is it?”

“No. He should tell you to stop calling. However, perhaps you shouldn’t call him repeatedly.”

“I call him now and then.” She coughed. “Every day. Not on the hour, though. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, once at night. Sometimes at teatime, to tell him what I think.”

I groaned. Tory doesn’t take teatime.

“What is your opinion, chief? Do you think I should move back into my home and cook dinner naked? I think that if I seduce him back into my bed I can fix things from there—”

“Okay, I think we’ve had enough conversation with Blake—” I interrupted.

“Why are you trying to embarrass Meggie?” Lacey turned to Tory.

It was hypocritical, we both knew it. But why point it out to a pregnant lady?

“I’m not trying to embarrass her. You’re the one who started talking about Meggie eating Blake.” Tory pushed her black hair back with her hand.

“You’re the one who said you would eat him for dessert. Can you pretend you have some manners when we have the police chief standing here?”

Blake seemed perfectly calm, amused even. The man is so not thrown by anything. This is nothin’ for him.

“Blake, I don’t think I can go to dinner. . . .” I could see that he was disappointed, it was a flash, but I caught it.

“Yes you can!” both Lacey and Tory semi-shouted.

“Go!” Lacey said.

“Brush your hair, then go! Here, I’ll get you fixed.” Tory darted to her bag and grabbed a brush and two bulging handfuls of makeup.

“No, Tory, my hair is fine.”

“It is not. Look at it.” She stabbed her finger at my hair.
“Look at it!”
She was clearly appalled.

I ignored that one, but I felt so self-conscious, I wanted to cover my head with my hands. “Blake, I’m sorry, I’ll be working late—”

He rocked back on his heels, waiting this one out with a smile.

“No, you’re not,” Lacey said. “We’re done. Good-bye.”

“I will pull you out to his car by your messy hair if I have to,” Tory said, slamming the makeup down. “You are not saying no to this piece of meat. He’s better than my own husband, that piece of slimy meat. I would like to grill my husband on a barbeque—”

“He’s not a piece of meat,” Lacey said. “That’s rude.”

It was dinner or stand there and be humiliated. “I changed my mind. Let’s go to dinner.”

I grabbed my saggy brown purse from my desk, then his elbow, and turned him toward the door.

Lacey whispered, “Have a good time and call me no matter how late it is!”

Tory stood in front of me briefly, leaned in, and whispered, “Tell me your bra is not beige. If it is, call me from the restaurant and I’ll bring you a purple one.”

Abigail Chen clapped when I said good night. “Niiiiicce!” she said. “Nice!”

The production floor became treacherous territory because the employees stood and gawked, as if I’d grown three heads and a fluffy yellow tail. A bunch of them came up to meet Blake.

Shake his hand.

Chat.

Tell him how wonderful I was, as in, “Meggie is the best boss ever. You know her mom’s a sex therapist, right?”

And, “Meggie’s awesome. I’m glad you’re taking her out to dinner. Don’t piss her off, though. She’s inherited the same temper as her grandma. You know Mount Vesuvius? Or St. Helens? You remember that explosion? She’s like that.”

The Petrelli sisters said hello, then to each other, as if Blake and I weren’t standing there, “She needs a cruise . . . definitely . . . she and the chief . . . Alaska, I think . . . he looks outdoorsy . . . she’s still pale, maybe a place where they could get some sun? . . . We did like the Greek isles . . .”

Finally, finally, we were through the production floor.

I knew my hair was a mess. I didn’t have any makeup on. I was wearing jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. The T-shirt was a smidgen too tight from too many washings. I had on boots.

I exhaled too loudly when we finally escaped. “I need a beer,” I said.

“I’ll get you one.”

“Thank you.” He put his hand on my back and it tingled. I imagined a whole bunch of employees peering out the window at us. I heard a cheer going up. I didn’t look back.

So embarrassing.

 

Blake drove us to an Italian restaurant about thirty minutes away in the country. I could not help but think about sexual tension as we chatted.

Physical attraction is an electric mystery.

How do you describe it?

Why is it that a base, fiery attraction will zing between two people and not between two others? You can look at a man and think he’s good looking, kind, smart, and . . . nada. Nothing. But with some other man, it sizzles like steaks on a barbeque. He may not even be as good looking as the first one. What is that? Why? Is it hormonal? Chemical? Met in a past life? Star signs, as Tory would say?

Blake and I have that zingy attraction. It’s constantly there when I’m with him. I watch him, he watches me. I take great care not to touch him because I know it would only take one look from him and I’d be divesting myself of all of my clothes and straddling his hips. He feels it, I feel it, we don’t address it. We dance around it, we circle it, we stand back and observe it.

“So, Meggie, tell me some more about the documentary films you made before coming home. What were the topics?”

I told him, briefly, without letting my mind dwell on flicking wet sponges or tall buildings in Los Angeles, about the homeless kids here, the orphans in India, the kids’ hopes for an education in Watts, and a village in Alaska.

“Can I see them?”

“Sure.”
No.

“When?”

“Soon.”
Never.

“I’d like to see them. Are you making another film now?”

“Not an indie film. I’m filming people at our company for our website.”

He wanted me to tell him about that, so I did, then I switched the subject. “Tell me what you did today.”

“I thought we were talking about your films.”

“We were. We’re done.” I could feel that black rat nibbling inside me again. I shivered.

“I’d like to hear more about them. Why you went into filmmaking, what you loved about it, what interested you, how you picked your topics . . .”

“My granddad, The Irishman, was dying.” I told him the story. “I loved cameras. I saw life, and people, in a new way when I held one in my hand.”

“And that was it?”

“Yes.” I squirmed. “But that’s about all I want to say about filmmaking.” I rubbed my throat. It felt like it was filling with black feathers.

“Didn’t end well?”

I laughed. It was bitter. I felt drowned by black and red. “Let’s say it’s not my career anymore.”

We sat quietly, then he reached out his hand, picked up mine, and kissed it.
He kissed my hand.
No one had ever done that. I swear that kiss ran all the way up my arm to my heart. “If you ever want to talk about it, I want to hear about it.”

“I won’t want to talk about it.” My tone was prickly, tight, hard.

“Okay.” He nodded at me. “Maybe another time.”

“No. Not another time.”

I knew he wasn’t happy about my response, yet again, but why lie? I did not want to talk about my film career.

We drove in silence for a while. I could tell he was comfortable with the silence, comfortable waiting for me to talk. The best way to get more information out of someone is to simply be quiet. I knew it. I would not play into it. Plus, I was trying to right my world and get rid of the biting black rat.

I did not let go of his hand, because it was warm and strong.

 

The Italian restaurant was candlelit, private, and fancy. I loved it. I ordered dessert first.

Blake grinned. He ordered us beer.

“I do this all the time. If I die before the meal ends, I want to make sure I’ve had dessert.”

“I get it, Meggie. Eat away.”

He had his salad. I had chocolate mousse, then my salad. He ordered a calzone, I ordered lasagna. The hot bread arrived in a basket. I actually felt myself unwinding, the tight, tight tension in my shoulders giving way.

“So, give me your life story, Blake.”

“I was born in Texas.” He set his beer down. “My father died when I was eight.”

That was
terrible
. “How crushing. I am so sorry.” I actually felt my eyes well up.

He shrugged. “Don’t be. He used to beat my mother.”

My eyes cleared pretty quick.

“Almost every night he hit her. By the time he died, she’d had a multitude of broken bones and bruises, and I’d had a broken arm, a broken leg, I was missing two back teeth, and my jaw had to be operated on from his abuse. I tried to protect my mother, he punched me. That was our routine. I can’t tell you how many times I was thrown into walls.”

“I . . .” I struggled to speak. “I . . . I can’t even imagine . . . Oh, Blake—”

He shrugged again. “He was killed when he was going eighty in his sports car awaiting trial for breaking my jaw. He was drunk, hit a curve wrong and went over a cliff.”

“That sounds like a good thing.”

“It was.” His shoulders hunched in. It was almost imperceptible, but I caught it. “My mother didn’t leave him because he threatened to hunt her down and kill her, me, and her mother and sister. I heard him say that to her many times. He had guns. He was violent. He was obsessive and possessive. He would not let my mother go. He wouldn’t even let her get a job. She was terrified. I remember holding her when she could not stop shaking.

“He was an abysmal excuse for a man, a father, and a husband. I remember looking at him one night, blood flowing out of my nose, thinking that I would never, ever be like him, and I’m not. A year after he died I picked up a paper route. The next year I had my own lawn-mowing business. When I was fourteen, after school and sports, I worked at a restaurant at night and on weekends. My mother worked at the restaurant, too, at night, after a full day as a secretary.

“Our lives were infinitely better after he died. We had dinner in peace. We didn’t dread hearing his key in the lock. We had money, not a lot, but we had it and could control it. My mother didn’t cry herself to sleep on the couch, bleeding. I wasn’t scared all the time. I didn’t have any more broken bones and I didn’t have to watch him slug my mother.”

“Blake.” I didn’t know what else to say. I reached, automatically, for his hand. He held on. “How did she meet your stepfather?”