Nowhere Girl (23 page)

I glared at her. “Yes,” I said, my voice a warning, “I bet Colette is very pretty.” Grabbing the vase from Odion, I filled it with water.

In the other room, I heard Chandler ask Brady, “And why exactly do you work at a prison?”

“I can't believe he asked him that,” I whispered.

And Gabby, who had taken the salmon out to check it, laughed.

“You know Chandler. Very nervous for his little Cady.” Odion smiled. His dark eyes had laughter in them, and it made me feel calmer somehow.

“Nervous? Why?” I set the vase on the counter, and he stuck the lilies in.

“No reason. But we see how you look at him.”

“Told you.” Gabby bumped her shoulder against mine. “I'm not the only one who's noticed.”

I put my hands on my hips. “You two are hallucinating.”

Odion picked up the vase and held it at arm's length, admiring his arrangement. “No,” he said. “We are not.”

“Odion?” I drew his name out. “Tell me.”

He gave me his beautiful white smile and reached down to kiss my forehead. “You need warmth, Cady; that's what I tell Chandler. I say, ‘Honey, Cady needs some sunshine after this man who plays with brains all day.' We not so love him, you know, he okay, but this man”—he turned to the living room—“I think he gets Cady. I watch the two of you. You have something. I not know what, but something.”

“I've been telling her that for months,” Gabby said, and then she slipped into the living room with the rest of the boys.

I felt myself flush. “I don't know,” I said.

“We never know,” Odion said solemnly. “We just wish. That's all. We wish and we wish.” And then he was out the kitchen before I could say another word.

We ate dinner in front of the TV, watching a Yankees doubleheader. I noticed David was wearing clean clothes, a sign that I took to mean he was getting over Emma. Or maybe it was that Merry Maids had left his sweats in the washer, so he had to wear something else. Now he was dressed in jeans and a plain green T-shirt. Untucked, it hid the fleshy part of his middle.

“I can't believe how well the Yanks are playing,” he said.

“I smell victory,” Chandler said. We were all amazed that they'd won any games since A-Rod had been suspended the entire previous season and Derek Jeter had retired. But they were off to a hell of a start, and I had secret plans to get us all tickets to the World Series if they made it this year. Beside him, Odion read a magazine. Odion didn't give a shit about baseball. And Gabby was busy texting Duncan, asking if he'd get there in time to play Cranium. “Maybe the Mets will experience a miracle, and it'll be a Subway Series.” Brady rested his hand next to mine, so we were barely touching. He leaned across me for the bottle of B&B, and I could smell his cologne, earthy and subtle. I'd been trying to get Greg to wear cologne since we'd moved in together the year before we got married. One year before Christmas, he said he'd try it. He picked out Clive Christian No. 1. The bottle was the size of my thumb and cost $2,350. Brady leaned forward in his chair to fill my glass.

A commercial for Coke came on, and David muted it. “How's that sweet daughter of yours?” he asked Chandler. “You need to bring her by one afternoon. I can't remember the last time I saw her.”

Chandler grinned, like he always did when he talked about Madelyn. “She dropped the f-bomb in preschool yesterday,” he said.

“Yes, we almost piss ourselves,” Odion said, happy to be talking about Mads instead of the game, “when this teacher, she called to tell us.”

“Yeah,” Chandler said. “Margaret Donnell is as scary now as she was in high school.” Margaret Donnell had been their class president, a blond, perky girl with a competitive edge and a controlling streak that bordered on Nazi-esque. That she'd wound up as a preschool teacher seemed almost dictatorial. “She said Mads was trying to get her sweatshirt off when she blurted out, ‘I can't get this fucking thing over my head.'”

“Oh my God, that's hysterical.” I had to put my beer down to keep from spitting it out. “Did she get in trouble?”

“Well, seeing as she learned it from us…” Chandler said.

“Us?” Odion raised his eyebrows.

“Okay,” Chandler conceded. “It might have been me. But anyway, we gave her a stern talking-to about how we don't use bad words in public. Then we high-fived each other, because her context was perfect.”

“You know,” Brady said, his voice serious, “there's a correlation between when kids start using curse words and how likely they are to get in trouble with the law.”

Odion played with the clasp on a silver bracelet on his wrist. “This is true?” he asked.

I could see Brady trying hard not to smile. It amazed me how well I'd come to know him after only a few months. “Bullshit.” I balled up my napkin and threw it at him.

He held up his hands in a
you got me
gesture. “I had you going there for a minute.”

Odion let out a sigh of relief. “Mads is good girl,” he said.

“All right, in Mads's honor, fuck this,” David said. “Let's go play us a criminal game of Cranium.”

“I call Gabby until Duncan gets here,” I said, tugging on her sleeve.

We gathered around the wooden farm table and squished ourselves on one side so we could see the TV. Brady grabbed the bottle of B&B from the kitchen, wedged his chair next to mine, and knocked over the brandy when he reached for a game piece. It didn't break, but the top hadn't been on, and it spilled across the table.

“Fuck,” Chandler said.

“You see?” Odion pointed to him. “Madelyn learned it from him.”

Brady got up and grabbed a dish towel off the counter. “Jesus, I'm sorry.”

“No problem,” Gabby said, reaching for the mop behind the door and passing it to Brady. “I do it all the time.”

“I guess we need more B&B,” I said. I found my gray-and-black Puma sneakers under the table. “I'll be back in fifteen.”

Brady stopped mopping the floor. “I'm blocking you in,” he said. “Do you want me to drive?”

Chandler took the mop from him. “Fine,” he said. “I'll finish cleaning.”

Odion tapped the floor. “Sweetheart, it's mostly all gone now.”

“Yeah,” David said. “It's good enough.”

Brady and I headed for the door, and before it shut behind us, I heard Chandler say, “Do they both need to go to the store?” He sounded exasperated.

“Why not have a little company?” Odion asked back.

David, I was pretty sure, was clueless.

Brady opened the passenger door for me. His truck smelled like the flowers he'd brought and like him, leathery and earthy, and I felt dizzy and nervous as he went around to get in. “Wine Cask is closest,” he said.

We didn't speak on the way there. One Eskimo was on the radio.
Why, why, why did you need him? Where was I?
When I leaned over to turn it up, my arm brushed his, and I felt my face flush.

In less than five minutes, we were in the parking lot of the Wine Cask, and in that amount of time, I became convinced that Brady didn't give a shit about me, it was all in my mind, and that kiss was nothing more than a friend with a friend. He turned off the ignition but didn't move. Across the street, a pizza place's
OPEN
sign blinked in its window.

“Last week…” he started. He'd parked in front of the liquor store, and a red neon
BUDWEISER
sign was flashing on his face. “The kiss.” He almost sighed it out.

“I'm sorry about that.” I began to babble; it was something I sometimes did at readings when I didn't want to answer a question. “I don't know what I was thinking. I know what it seemed like, but I was giddy from our ride, and I apologize.”

I went for the door handle, but Brady touched my arm. “Hey,” he said. “Not so fast.”

I turned back, my heart doing flips in my chest, and leaned back in my seat. I could feel Brady watching me. I hated my profile; it showed the soft, fleshy part of my neck. He leaned toward me, and I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead, he put his finger under my chin and turned my face toward him. And then he drew away. When he did, I felt a wash of relief and horrible disappointment. But in that same second, he doubled back and kissed me. Gently at first, barely parting my lips. When I didn't pull away, I felt his tongue on mine, tasted the oaky flavor of wine. I leaned into him and felt the seat belt dig into my sternum, before the tightness of the nylon gave way to other sensations, his fingertips on my face, his wet lips, the stubble against my chin. I couldn't breathe. I didn't want to. And Brady seemed hungry. It seemed he was searching for something, his breath coming quickly, as though he were ravenous, starved, and I waited for that same desire to take me, to whisk me away. Here was a boy I had loved terribly, obsessively in high school. This was the boy I'd imagined kissing me, holding me, touching me since the minute he walked into Kingswood, and yet as we sat locked together in front of the Wine Cask, in a sexy tête-à-tête for anyone to see, I felt absolutely nothing, completely flatlined. It was like kissing my brother, as gross as that analogy was. Finally, I pulled away. I saw him swallow and catch his breath.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head like he was waking up. “I don't know what that was.”

“Brady,” I said. “Listen—”

He cut me off. “Cady, I don't want to fuck you up. Fuck up your life.” He was facing the front again, and the neon reddened his face, pulled back, and then reddened it again. He was beautiful, gorgeous as ever.

Why had I felt nothing? What was wrong with me?

“Cady.” Brady closed his eyes.

I thought maybe if I tried it again, maybe if we weren't in front of the Wine Cask, I would feel something.

He took a deep breath. “I'm sorry.” He opened his eyes. “I'm not going to do that again,” he said. “That was fucked.”

Because I did not say anything, because nothing this dramatic had happened in my life with a boy, ever, I sat there, dumbly holding my hands in my lap.

“We should get going,” I said as lightly as I could. “They're going to send a search party.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” I watched him reach for the door handle.

After we'd gotten the B&B, we rode back to Gabby's house in silence. I counted the streetlights to keep my mind busy. Thirteen. Fourteen, including the one that only flickered occasionally. When we pulled into Gabby's driveway, I noticed that, despite all my wishing, the clock had betrayed us. We'd been gone twenty-seven minutes for a trip to a liquor store a half mile away.

“We're not going to mention this,” Brady said. “Right?”

For some reason, this was insulting, as though he were ashamed or thought I was a blabbermouth. All the windows were lit up. Inside, I knew they were wondering where the hell we were.

“Under one condition,” I said. I felt Brady take a little energetic step back.

“There's a condition?” He cocked his head. “What?”

In the half light, I saw those fine cheekbones we used to speculate about. Gabby said he was Native American. I said he was perfect.

“Promise?” I asked.

“All right,” he said.

“I get to interview Larry again.”

Brady's jaw flexed. “No fucking way,” he finally said.

An orange tabby cat was sitting on the railing on the second-floor porch of the old Victorian where Gabby lived. I had a feeling that I'd never finish the book if I didn't get back in that room with Larry Cauchek, if I couldn't get a sense for the way a serial killer really thought.

“The whole police force knows my name. I am protected up and down. All I need is to get in there one or two more times and talk to a person who is shackled at the feet and arms.” Even though I'd felt flatlined during the kiss, I still wanted Brady Irons to have felt what I thought he was feeling during it, but now, with Gabby's house bright in the darkness, I wasn't so sure, and it made me feel a little pissed off. “You promised,” I said. “So deal?”

“All right,” he said. “Deal.”

They were all sitting around the table, still, with the Cranium game laid out before them, waiting. Duncan had arrived, but he wasn't sitting next to Gabby; David was sitting next to her, and Duncan was the odd man out.

Chandler watched me set down the B&B. “That took a while,” he said.

I tried to scrunch my face in annoyance. “You wouldn't believe the line in that store. Can anybody count change correctly?” I did my best indignant I-can't-believe-people-can-be-so-stupid spiel and hoped that that was good enough.

Chandler raised his eyebrows at us. “If you want to play, you're going to have to grab chairs from the kitchen,” he said.

“Fine,” I said. I got a chair and shimmied in next to Duncan.

In truth, I didn't think I could handle sitting with Brady again. Kissing him felt as though I'd been doing it all my life. But not in the sparks-and-fireworks way, in a different way I couldn't quite explain, as though we were family, kids playing pretend, trying to find some semblance of reality in the other's touch.

Gabby and David won Cranium. Duncan and I lost. And Brady, Odion, and Chandler came in second. I kept glancing at Brady during the game, and about seventeen times, I caught his eye, but he'd turn away, and so would I.

It was a quiet game. It was as if our awkwardness spread itself over the table, and I felt at once like I wanted to make everything right again and that I had no idea how. Finally, everyone left. Only Duncan remained, emptying wineglasses and scraping cake into the trash.

“Shoo,” Gabby told him, taking a pack of cigarettes out of the drawer next to her stove.

Duncan hunched his shoulders, deflated. He was wearing a nice linen shirt and pleated pants. “You want me to leave?” he asked sheepishly.