At Last (22 page)

She’d been standing on a small cliff overlooking a gorge, trying to imagine herself jumping into it to her death. But the gorge was no more than ten feet deep, maybe fifteen, so it would be her luck she’d just get a broken leg. She’d have to watch out for wolves and mountain lions...probably a herd of ravenous killer chipmunks.

As if she were having a drug induced hallucination, she could see the view from the Virgin Drop. Not just in her mind’s eye, but as if she were there. She could even feel the tropical breeze. She could also feel Kevin walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

Just as the warmth of his body enveloped her, the vivid daydream evaporated, leaving her standing alone, overlooking a bramble infested gorge.

She started back to the cabin, missed her turn, yet managed to correct her course before doing a
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
thing. She was seriously tired by the time she reached the cabin, and from the position of the sun she could tell it was only a little after noon. It was going to be another long day and night without TV. She never realized how much she really did watch TV, even if she didn’t watch a lot of it. Not until its absence left her bored and stir crazy. There weren’t even any good books or magazines, just
Field and Stream, Good Housekeeping
and the complete works of Agatha Christie.

Susan pushed open the large wooden door and trudged into the cabin, pulling the door shut behind her to ward off the stealthy chipmunks, and turned around to head for the kitchen. Instead she let out a scream and practically jumped right out of her skin.

There on the Naugahyde sofa in the front room sat Liz, a lit cigarette in one hand, a chilled martini in the other. The smoke from her cigarette swirled around her head like a venomous snake. The sight of her was frightening--she looked like the devil.

Susan swallowed her pounding heart and took a deep breath, hand over her chest, just about to lay into Liz for scaring the shit out of her, when Liz beat her to it.

“I’ve been looking for you for a whole week! Do you know I had to call your goddamn mother to find you?”

Susan felt very guilty. She wouldn’t wish a phone call to her mother on even her worst enemy. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry!” Liz sat up and snuffed her cigarette out in a small ceramic bowl Susan’s mother always set out mints in. She stood up and walked over to Susan; at the halfway point Susan started to back up. Liz looked dangerous. More so than usual. It wasn’t long before Liz had her pinned against the front door. “I had to promise her I’d have you married by the end of the year.”

Susan laughed hard, right in Liz’s face. “You didn’t!”

Liz shot Susan a scalding look.

“Oh God, you did.”

“Yeah, and if I fail, Mama Rhodes is going to start working for me in the gallery, to take up the time she would otherwise be spending with her grandchildren.”

Susan lost her smile as a chill ran up her back. “She’s going to move to Chicago?”

“Honey, she was googling real estate brokers as I spoke to her. And you know your father does whatever she wants.”

Susan gulped.

Liz shook her head and knocked back the last of her martini. “I can’t have your mother working for me. I’ll be drinking during working hours.”

“You already do.”

“Yeah, but I’ll be doing it to ease the pain instead of just for fun.”

Susan leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Liz’s. “I’m not getting married, not anytime soon.”

Liz smiled and gave a smoky little laugh. “Then I guess you’re going to have to make an honest woman out of me in Vermont or California, ’cause I’m not spending my days with that woman.”

Both women started laughing.

“A week?” Susan said, squinting at her best friend. “I’ve been gone for two.”

“I know. I was giving you a week to clear your head. I just didn’t know it’d take so long to track your ass down. I certainly didn’t think I’d have to talk to your mother, or drive to the butt-crack of Ohio.”

“My folks have had this place for years, ever since I was a kid.” Susan took a deep breath, looked around the cabin and sighed. “I can’t stand this place. Why did I think I’d figure things out here?”

“You mistook rustic nostalgia for a meditative trip to the day spa. Women have been making that mistake for centuries. Everything a girl needs is right in the city. No reason to wander aimlessly in the freaking woods.”

Susan shrugged. “Maybe I would’ve found the answer getting a facial at Macy’s.”

“Of course not, but you wouldn’t be stuck out here with no television, and no men.”

“It’s the men that are giving me the problems, remember?”

“Man, actually. Just one. And the next time you decide to stand him up for dinner, tell him you’re canceling, and where you’re going, because that man has called me every day, twice a day, since you went missing.”

“So Kevin’s worried?”

Liz’s eyes screamed
duh
!

“I didn’t mean to stand him up. I was meaning to win him back. You know, seduce him, make him fall back in love with me.”

“Back in love with you? When did he fall out of love with you?”

Susan’s eyes started to burn as she took a rasping breath, her voice coming out more of a sob than anything else. “He said he was over me, that he’d moved on.”

“Yeah, you said that last time. You know he was just lying to you.”

“Lying?”

Liz groaned. “He was trying to save face, or maybe he was trying to convince himself. Whatever it was, he was lying. That man is still crazy about you.”

Susan shook her head. “But you didn’t see the way he was looking at me when he said that. He was so serious.” Susan sucked in a big breath and her next words shook as they fell from her lips. “I’ve never seen him like that before. He wasn’t lying, he’s really over me.” She could feel the tears pooling in her eyes, threatening to spill down her face.

Liz smiled empathetically, then made a show of setting her half full martini glass down on a stand by the door before turning back to Susan. She slapped her in the face, one searing, flashing move, the cracking noise sharp and ruthless. A stinging exploded across Susan’s cheek.

“Snap out of it!” Liz threw up her hands and started to laugh. “Oh, geez, I’m sorry,” she wheezed between laughs. “I’ve just always wanted to go all
Moonstruck
on someone.”

“You slapped me.” Susan stood there, hand over her cheek, stunned. “You really just slapped me.”

“It was for your own good. All that moaning and whining, I’m shocked I didn’t slap you before this.”

“You freaking slapped me!” Susan started stalking toward Liz. This time it was Liz’s turn to back up, to start to turn in her spike high heels and try to run. But Susan was in a pair of Trainers, and she bounded after Liz, jumping at her and taking her down onto the Naugahyde sofa like a scene from
Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.

“Susan!” Liz screamed as Susan tackled her and started tickling her on the sofa. Liz’s arms wrapped around her torso, trying to keep Susan’s hands from her sensitive ribs. Her stiletto clad feet convulsed and shook, trying to run, even though she was trapped under her friend’s weight.

Liz cried out in misery as she laughed through agonizing minutes of being tickle tortured. Liz wedged her leg up against Susan’s hip and with a grunt she sent Susan tumbling to the hardwood floor of the cabin.

Susan felt a crunch, somewhere in her lower back, and she let out a moan worthy of a B horror movie credit. “Ow! That hurt!”

Liz lay on the sofa, her hand on her stomach, breathing heavily. One of her shoes had fallen off, and she couldn’t stop laughing. “You should’ve seen your face when you were falling over--”

“You kicked me.”

“Did not! You were trying to tickle me to death.”

“You can’t be tickled to death.”

She lifted her head off the couch to give Susan a scalding glance. Her carefully coifed, perfectly smooth hair was standing up all over her head in jagged angles. “You know I’ve dreamed of being tickled to death.”

“You were nine!” Susan rolled onto her hands and knees and used the coffee table she just barely missed falling into to pull herself up. “And that was all because of that clown your mother got for your birthday party.”

“Childhood trauma is nothing to be taken lightly, or laughed at!”

Susan tilted her head and gave Liz a knowing look. “I seem to remember someone getting over her fear of clowns by screwing a young Barnum and Bailey red nose right under the big-top, during a goddamn show.”

Liz smiled with lascivious delight. “They were taking off for Colorado before dawn. And he wasn’t just a clown, he did rodeo too.”

“Yeah,” Susan scoffed as she pushed Liz up into a sitting position and plopped her ass down beside her. “Totally different vocations, being a circus clown and being a rodeo clown. A real renaissance man.”

“Shut up. You should talk. You’ve been with nothing but a bunch of stiffs for the last five years.”

“Stiffs?”

Liz counted them off on her fingers, starting with her thumb. “Lawyer, podiatrist, actuary, that tax accountant from the IRS--yuck!--another lawyer, and now good old Kevin, a freaking architect!”

“What’s wrong with architects?” Susan pouted and wrapped her arms about herself.

“Nothing, sweetie. It’s just, if you put all those guys you’ve dated together in a room, the paint would start peeling from the walls just from the boring factor alone.”

Susan had another of those sudden Kevin-induced hallucinations. This time it was how he looked right before he’d taken her in the kitchen of the hotel room in Cancun. His hair was mussed, his hazel eyes smoldered with heat and dark wanting. And the way he felt when he pulled her to him, picking her up and setting her on the counter as his lips feasted on hers.

“Kevin’s not boring.” Her voice was thick and rich-sounding as she said it, her breathing labored, as if she’d been running uphill. She could feel her pulse quicken, and her body started to tingle. She yearned for Kevin with every cell of her being.

Now only if she could get over being second best to him, second chair, second fiddle, cut rate, generic...

“I have to...” she said aloud.

“Have to what?” Liz asked.

Susan shook her head. “I’ve gotta get out of here before I go crazy.”

“And before good old, never dull Kevin packs up and gets on a plane to destination unknown land--”

“Kevin’s doing wh--”

“Because if you haven’t already made up your mind how you feel about him, if you’re wanting to just wait and see what comes to you out in the great outdoors--”

“Liz!”

“Then you’re going to lose him.” Liz stopped talking and stared right into Susan’s eyes, letting her words sink in. “He thinks you’re staying away because he’s there, and after the party tonight he’s hopping a red-eye to Vancouver.”

“What party?” Susan shook her head. “And why Vancouver?”

“He has a friend from college up in Vancouver. And the party tonight...well, it’s more of a gala...it’s for Costa Consortium for landing the opera house.”

“They already made their choice public?”

“You’ve been MIA for two weeks, they couldn’t just wait to announce until you poked your head out of the flora and fauna. And it’s a big deal for Kevin. He deserves a fancy shindig. He said he was sticking around for Francesca, for her to show off at the gala, and he was going to leave.” Liz scooped her fallen high heel shoe from the floor, gave the undamaged straps an appraising glance, then pulled it back onto her foot. She stood up, ran a hand through her hair, making it flat and smooth again with infuriatingly little effort, and straightened her leather skirt and silk blouse ensemble. “I thought you would like to know, just in case you wanted to say goodbye, or swoop down and bag him like the big game hunter I know you really are.”

Susan giggled. “Big game hunter?”

“Did you see how you just took me down? I thought you were gonna hog tie me then put me on a spit over an open fire.”

“You really have too much imagination. Where do you get this stuff?”

“Cartoon Network.” Liz barked a laugh as she threw her head back. “No sweetie, between the parties I’ve gone to, and the things I’ve seen in those people’s basements...”

“I don’t want to know, do I?”

“Your innocence shall remain intact.”

Suddenly Susan realized the most important part of Liz’s words. “He’s leaving tonight?”

“That is what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Susan shot out of her chair, grabbed her keys and ran out the door. She stopped as she looked around her and realized she hadn’t driven herself. She’d hired a car service to bring her out.

“Shit!”

Liz strolled through the door, her martini in her hand again as she dangled a set of car keys from her crimson manicured fingers. “Too bad I’ve been drinking, or I’d drive you back the two states to the party.”

Susan snagged the keys out of Liz’s hand. “I’ll drive. Where’s the car?”