Stirred Up (16 page)

“It was all pretty civilized, actually. He
came back from his run and apologized, and I told him I was sorry
for climbing on top of him in the middle of the night.”

She sighed. She’d been relieved at how great
he’d been at the time, but she could admit now that she’d also felt
oddly let down. Which made no sense when she was the one who’d put
the brakes on. “I think we’re on the same page about just being
friends.”

“Are you sure about that? I mean, the guy is
obviously hot for you.”

“We’re both hot for each other, we’re just
not going to do anything about it. He seemed fine with it.”

“I see,” Beth replied, her doubt obvious.
“Are you going to keep hanging outside of work?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, if he still wants to.”
Her stomach clenched at the thought that maybe he’d change his mind
and decide it wasn’t worth the trouble. “Except for last night, it
hasn’t been a problem. He’s been a good friend to me, and I don’t
want to lose that.”

“Well, I’m impressed with how he handled
himself. There are plenty of guys who would be huge dicks in the
same situation.”

“I know. He’s a good guy. Most of the time,”
she amended, since the one time she’d really needed him to be a
good guy, he’d let her down. “But enough about me. How are things
with Jeff? Will he be coming to Thanksgiving?”

“That’s partly why I’ve been trying to get a
hold of you,” Beth said, hesitating. “I’m spending Thanksgiving
with Jeff’s family in Indiana this year.”

“Wow, that’s great,” Cheryl forced out,
trying not to let on how thrown she was.

She’d been spending Thanksgiving with Beth’s
family since she’d moved in with them ten years ago, and she’d
always assumed the holiday would always be like that. But she and
Beth had their own lives now, and it would be selfish to wish
otherwise.

“You don’t mind?” Beth asked. “I was so
nervous about telling you. My parents aren’t too pleased, but they
told me to tell you they’re depending on you to come and quote,
‘brighten things up.’”

Harvey and Sandy Levine had taken her in when
she’d been desperate and scared and they’d never let her down.
Still, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the trip to Ohio if
Beth wasn’t going to be there. It just wouldn’t be the same.

“You and Jeff must be getting pretty
serious.”

“Maybe, I don’t know,” Beth said, sounding
flustered. “But his parents invited me and it would mean a lot to
him if I went.”

“I’m sure it’ll be great. You’ll learn a lot
meeting his family.”

“Maybe, but that’s not necessarily a good
thing.”

“Are you still coming here for Christmas?”
Cheryl asked.

“Of course I am! I told Jeff months ago that
I was visiting you for the holiday. Obviously my parents won’t
care. They’ll be off on a cruise with all the other middle-class
Jews of the nation.”

“I’ve already booked our spa day for the
twenty-fourth. We’re set for massages, mani-pedis, the works. Let’s
just hope I pass the Praxis exam, or I’m not going to be very good
company.”

“When are you taking it?”

“December sixteenth.”

“Plenty of time to study between now and
then. You’ll do fine.”

They talked for a few minutes more before
Cheryl told her she needed to get cracking on her work for the
coming week’s classes.

“Promise you’ll call if anything out of the
ordinary happens?” Beth asked.

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Fine. But swear it anyway.”

“Yes, I swear,” Cheryl said, laughing. “Now
go get that sex book I told you about.”

“Sara seems to be doing better,” Jason
said.

Friday’s third period class had just let out,
and Sara had smiled at them and left the room with a friend.

“I know. I’m really impressed her parents did
such a good job. Having Tim move in with his older cousin was a
great solution.”

“You must be relieved,” he said.

Cheryl nodded, suddenly unable to speak. She
was thrilled with how things had worked out for Sara, she just
wished the girl’s situation wasn’t such a painful reminder of how
lousy her own mother had been.

“You okay?” Jason asked, putting his hand on
her shoulder.

She tried to ignore how good it felt to be
touched by him, how comforting and yet ultra-aware it made her.

“I’m fine,” she said, smiling at him. “It’s
exactly what I was hoping for.”

“Okay, if you’re sure,” he said, still
sounding a bit doubtful. “On a totally unrelated note, are you up
for climbing again tomorrow? We could either go to the gym, or do
something outside again.”

“That would be great,” she said, ignoring the
warning voice in her head. “I’d love to get outside.”

“Great. We can head back to Red Rock, but I
was thinking this time we could go bouldering.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Jason laughed, his eyes warming on hers until
she felt her skin flush. She swallowed and commanded herself not to
feel anything.

“It just means we’d climb around on rocks
without having to be hooked into a line,” Jason explained. “I think
you’ll like it. But I’ll bring equipment for belaying too, so we
can do whatever we feel like.”

“Sounds great,” she said, trying to scale
back the huge smile that was threatening to take over her face.

She made sure to be ready when Jason picked
her up the next morning. It was a typical mid-November day,
cloudless and in the mid-sixties, just right for playing outside.
They drove the now-familiar route to Red Rock Park, but this time
Jason took them to a new area.

“We lucked out last week, having the place
mostly to ourselves,” he said, nodding at the handful of cars
parked nearby. “But this place is big enough that it won’t
matter.”

They made their way to an unoccupied area and
climbed around at the base of one of the cliffs. The wind had
eroded the various areas of the park in totally different ways,
leaving some of the rock faces with horizontal striations, others
smooth and rounded. Between the differences wrought by the wind and
the variations in color from dun to deep red, each route they tried
required a different approach and technique.

Heading towards a different section of rock
they passed a group of several climbers mid-way up the face of a
sheer cliff wall. Cheryl stopped and watched, wondering what it
must feel like to be able to do something like that. Jason came up
beside her and followed her gaze.

“There’s nothing like it,” he said, sounding
wistful.

“You mean you’ve done that sort of thing
before?” she asked.

“Sure. I climbed this last fall with Evan.
It’s tough, but it looks worse from here. There are actually more
technically challenging routes in the park.”

“If you say so,” she said, but she wasn’t
looking up at the climbers anymore. Her gaze had strayed to Jason’s
body, taking in those long, rugged muscles, which she knew
firsthand were as hard as they looked.

Beneath his mellow exterior lay a man with a
serious will and determination, not to mention discipline and
confidence. And no wonder. If you could handle whatever came your
way, there was no need to be anxious or worried. Maybe if she kept
on climbing, she’d achieve his Zen-like demeanor.

Then again, he wasn’t so Zen-like last
Saturday night. Not until he’d gone for a twenty-minute run.

She put that thought out of her mind.

“If you keep climbing, you’ll be able to do
it, too,” Jason said.

She laughed, but Jason didn’t join in.

“You just have to believe in yourself,
Cheryl. The rest is just practice and guts. You have no problem
with either of those.”

Cheryl’s mouth fell open and she stared at
him, amazed that anyone would think that about her. But he was
already moving on, his gaze trained on their next challenge.

***

Jason sat across the table from Cheryl,
trying not to think about how incredible she looked, windblown and
glowing from their climb, or how her shirt clung to her breasts.
They were both hot from exertion, but she was radiant, lit up from
a sense of accomplishment.

“That was amazing,” she said between gulps of
water. “I always thought of myself as really wimpy, but it turns
out I’m totally not.”

“Cheryl, you’re about the least wimpy person
I know. Everything you do, you do head-on.”

“Huh.” She frowned down at her Cobb salad. “I
suppose that might be true. I guess I’ve just always hated how
scared I feel being on my own and everything. I probably
overcompensate for it by acting like nothing gets to me.”

“Whatever works, right?” he said.

She just looked at him then, her skin
flushing like she was thinking something she shouldn’t be. He’d
give a kidney to know what was going through her mind right now,
but maybe he was better off not knowing. It was hard enough keeping
his cool without reading her thoughts.

“So, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” he
asked.

Real smooth segue there.

“I’m not sure,” Cheryl said, grimacing. “Most
years I go back to Ohio and celebrate with my friend Beth, but this
year she’s spending Thanksgiving with her boyfriend’s family in
Indiana. Her parents still want me to come, but I think I’m going
to skip it.”

He’d asked the question because it seemed
like a safe topic of conversation, but when someone didn’t have
much in the way of family, that was probably a dumb assumption.

“So you don’t have any other plans?” he
asked, determined to get to the bottom of it. As much as the
holidays might drive him crazy, the idea of Cheryl not having a
place to go was unacceptable.

“We’ll see,” she said, shrugging a shoulder
like it was no big deal. “Some of the girls from the club are
getting together for a meal, so maybe I’ll do that.”

His expression must have changed at this,
since she smirked at him.

“Whatever you’re thinking, just wipe it right
out of your brain.”

“I wasn’t,” he protested, but it was
halfhearted at best. “What about Emily and Cutter? You seem close
with them.”

“Cutter and Emily are going to Boston.
Cutter’s never met any of her family, and they want to get that
over with before the wedding. Lisa doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving.
Apparently some Native Americans don’t feel real festive about the
beginning of the end.”

“When you put it like that, it sort of seems
like none of us should be celebrating. Maybe we should just boycott
it.”

“Hmm. What do you think your mom would say to
that?” she asked, one eyebrow shooting up in amusement.

He lost track of what she was saying for a
second. A raised eyebrow shouldn’t make him hard. No woman should
have that kind of power over him.

He shifted in his seat and found his way back
to their conversation.

“Probably that we could discuss it over
turkey.”

They chomped away at their meal for another
minute or two.

“You should come with me,” he said.

“Come with you where?”

“To my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. It’s
close by, the food is good, the company is mostly bearable, and I
would have a much better time with you there.”

“I don’t know. Won’t they think we’re, you
know…”

He laughed as she started to blush again.

“How is it that a woman who strips for a
living can blush as much as you do? Don’t answer that, it was a
rhetorical question.” He sat back and crossed his arms. “I’ll tell
them I’m bringing a colleague. As long as you keep your hands off
me, they won’t think anything.”

“Really?” she asked, looking doubtful.

“Well, no,” he admitted. “I can’t bring
someone like you home without them wondering, but they’ll just
assume I want to date you and that you’re not interested.” Too bad
for him that was actually the truth. He cleared his throat. “Just
think about it.” He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “But don’t
over-think it.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it a little bit,” she
said, a teasing glint in her eye as she reached over to grab one of
his corn chips.

***

Cheryl stood in front of her closet, staring
at her clothes and wishing she hadn’t agreed to spend Thanksgiving
with Jason’s family. She wasn’t good with families, especially
boyfriends’ families.

Of course Jason wasn’t her boyfriend, but the
same anxieties applied – what they’d think of her, whether she’d
feel inadequate and uncomfortable about how many things she had to
hide.

She sagged against the wall, unwelcome
memories of her one and only Thanksgiving with a boyfriend’s family
coming back to her. She was twenty and had only been in Las Vegas
about a year. When questioned by Tony’s parents, she’d told them
how she was currently working a couple of different waitressing
jobs to make ends meet. She hadn’t known better than to be honest.
She was just excited about being with her first serious boyfriend
and meeting his family.

“Any plans for college?” his mother had
asked.

“I’m not sure,” she’d said, digging into the
delicious stuffing. “If I can save up enough then maybe. But that’s
probably a ways off.”

“I see,” his mother replied, her tone
cool.

Cheryl looked around the table and saw the
glances exchanged between his parents and siblings, and worse, the
embarrassment and anger on Tony’s face. She barely spoke the rest
of the day, afraid of saying the wrong thing, and when his family
addressed her, it was stilted and without any of the warmth they’d
had upon first meeting her.

She and Tony left right after dessert and as
soon as they got in the car he laid into her, telling her how she’d
embarrassed herself and him.

“But I didn’t know,” she said, starting to
cry. “They asked me questions and I answered them.”

“Well, you didn’t have to answer them quite
so honestly,” he said through gritted teeth, his knuckles white on
the steering wheel.