Everything Between Us (12 page)

“I really wanted to come to your show on Friday.” Now she sounds like she’s about to cry. Great.

“It’s okay,” I say hoarsely. “You can come to the next one.”

“Of course. Oh, and Nate called.” She sighs. “He mentioned that one of his friends was killed in action, Daniel. That’s all he said but … I’m worried about him.”

And the shit keeps coming. “Do you know when he’s calling again?” I haven’t talked to him in months.

“He never knows. He just calls when he can. Maybe you could email him? I think he’d like to hear from you.”

This is as close as my mom gets to telling me off. But her gentle reproach is enough. “I will.” I never really check email, but she’s given me the kick in the pants I need. “And tell Dad I’ll be there on Monday. You don’t have to worry. I’ll take care of him.”

“I know you will, Daniel. I’ll see you soon, and I love you.”

“Love you, Mom.” I hang up and set my phone on my supply table. Then I squat, sitting on my heels, unable to bear the weight of everything. My little brother’s in a warzone. My dad’s probably barely holding it together. My mom’s sick. And me … I’m fine. I have no right to complain about anything, and I need to get on with it.

I turn to my canvas, a two-by-two square painting of marbles, round pops of color and sheen. I had this thing with marbles in the fall. They just made me happy. There’s a jar in the corner of my studio that’s full of them, handmade marbles with quirky little flaws, tiny round treasures I hunted down on eBay and at a few antique shops locally. I went hyper-real with this particular piece, so it looks a bit like a photograph, a bunch of marbles sitting in an inch of water, a clear puddle that reflects their swirling colors. I pull it from my easel and lay it flat on the floor, then spend a good hour or two varnishing it. Varnishing requires concentration, because I have to work quickly and keep the strokes light so there are no brush marks. It keeps me from thinking too much about anything except the movement of my hands. It’s the biggest relief, and slowly the pressure in my head begins to ease.

Mid-afternoon, my stomach starts to growl, and I head down to the tiny kitchen to see if anyone’s left something I can steal. I’m pulling a bag of chips from the top of the fridge when Markus comes in. He’s wearing his heavy motorcycle boots and a leather jacket, and his helmet is dangling from his fist. “Dude. Those are my chips.”

I open the package and offer it to him. “Did you psychically sense my encroachment on your food supply?”

He rolls his eyes and rubs his hand over his short black hair, which matches the grime under his fingernails. “Unhappy coincidence, I guess. But now I know who’s been eating my fucking chips. You owe me, douchebag,” he says, good humor taking the edge off his words.

I cram a handful of chips in my mouth. “You got it. Next time I’m at the grocery store.”

He grunts. “I didn’t think anyone would be here today.”

“I didn’t get my paintings to Barb yesterday.”

“Uh-oh. She gets pissed when we miss her deadlines. She likes to know exactly what she’s getting so she can figure out her set-up way in advance. I turned my pieces in on Thursday.”

“I know. I was stuck yesterday, though. Couldn’t get here.”

He frowns. “Don’t you live two blocks away?”

“I wasn’t stuck in my apartment.”

“Ah.” He chuckles. “Who were you stuck in, then? Claudia told me Liza was out of town.”

The cougars keep tabs on each other, and Claudia Dexter is their pack leader. She was one of my first affairs and has been pretty cool about supporting several of the local artists. Markus is having his turn with her now. “She’s right. Liza’s at a spa. But she … um … she’s paying me to give art lessons to her daughter, and I got stranded there when the storm hit.”

Markus’s gaze sharpens with interest. “The recluse girl? Claudia said she’s psychotic or something. Like, really crazy. She told me Liza’s thinking about putting her in an institution.”

“That’s bullshit,” I growl.

Markus’s eyes are focused on my hands, and I glance down to see that I’m crushing his bag of chips to dust. I toss it onto the counter, my heart pounding in my ears. “She’s not crazy,” I say, forcing myself not to shout. “She’s just afraid of … going outside, I guess. She won’t talk about it, but she talks about lots of other things, and she’s the furthest thing from crazy I’ve met in a long time.”

Markus sets his helmet on the counter and gives me a speculative look. “Are you fucking her?” His hands go up when he sees my expression. “You leap to her defense like a fucking Doberman, and you spent the night at her place last night. Wait—is she hideous or something?”

The tension leaves my muscles like someone’s let the air out of my tires. “Nah, man. She’s beautiful.” Incredibly, painfully beautiful. I stayed awake for hours last night, staring at her face and trying to keep myself from kissing her again.

“Then it’s a fair question, bro.”

“Honestly … okay. I’ve got a weird situation on my hands.”

“You
are
fucking her.” His eyes light with possibilities. “Wait—mother and daughter. That’s … definitely weird. And awesome. Do they want you to do both of them at the same time? Because
that
—”

“You’re a fucking pervert.”

He laughs. “I know.”

“I’m not sleeping with Stella, but … she wants me to. She offered me cash,” I say, my voice straining at that last bit. When she’d first asked me to have sex with her, I was stunned, and I found myself stumbling over my words as logic and desire duked it out in my head. And then she offered me money, and I realized what she was really up to. She wasn’t asking for
me
, she was asking for my dick. For an experience. She wanted the same thing everyone else wants, and it destroyed me.

“I’m not seeing the problem,” Markus says. “Sounds like a good deal to me.”

“She’s a virgin.”

“She wants to
pay
you to pop her cherry?”

I swallow hard. “Yeah.”

“A beautiful, rich, college-age girl offers you cash to de-virginize her,” he says slowly. “She’s not asking for some kind of commitment?”

“Just sex,” I mumble, hearing her say it my head. “Once. A thousand bucks. A business transaction. I … I told her no.”  

“Are you
nuts
? Well, hell. If you don’t want to do it, I will. That’s pretty hot.”

The rage wells up in me like a flash flood. Heat bleeds across my skin as my brain feeds me devastating images of Stella’s long legs wrapped around Markus, of his hands on her body. My fists clench. From between my gritted teeth, I manage to get one word out. “
Don’t.
”

His eyes narrow. “The girl wants something and is willing to pay for it. You’re not going to give it to her. Why shouldn’t she get it somewhere else?” There’s a shrewd glint in his expression, and I want to punch it off his face.

“Because she asked
me
.”

“And you said no.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

He snorts. “You like her.”

I shoulder past him, because it’s that or go toe to toe with him, and I’m not a violent guy. Not usually, at least. Violence requires real passion, and
that
requires a kind of commitment and feeling I don’t offer. Except when it comes to Stella. Fuck. Me. I’m in so much trouble. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it,” I grind out, stomping toward the stairs.

“Good luck with all that,” Markus calls after me, laughing.

I make it to my studio without punching any walls, and I count it as a win. My muscles still cranked tight with black, bitter anger, I pull the second of my paintings from its easel and lay it on the floor. It’s another marble painting, but this one’s far more textured, the swirls of the marbles forming ridges that lead the eye in every direction. A luscious, luxurious kind of impasto, meant to lure fingers, meant to tempt. If I’m not careful the varnish will pool between those ridges and ruin everything. I glare at the painting, tempted to plant my foot right in the middle of it, wanting to fucking demolish it. As soon as I feel my boot rising from the floor, I stumble back and rake my hands through my hair. Not knowing what else to do, I head for the window and stare out at the street, trying desperately to unravel my tangled thoughts.

 A snowplow rumbles by, and suddenly, one of those thoughts hits me right in the nuts. Stella is alone. I might have stayed with her until the power was on, but I left her in that mansion with a fridge full of spoiled food, and most of the delivery places in town are probably shut down until tomorrow at least. She’s all by herself, and I stormed out without even checking when the housekeeper will come back. Stella might be scared. She might be
terrified
, and there’s nobody to help her. The memory of all those flashlights and candles piled on the counter comes back to me. She doesn’t think straight when she’s frightened like that. I pull out my phone and dial Liza’s home number.

No one picks up.

I grab my coat and head for the door, leaving my painting lying on the floor of my studio. I’ll deal with it later. I pass Markus on the stairs. He’s smart enough not to say anything to me, but the look in his eye is almost enough to set me off again.
If you don’t want to do it, I will,
it reminds me.

This shouldn’t be a big deal to me! If any other female offered me money for a single night of sex, I wouldn’t have much of an issue with it, especially if she was as attractive as Stella. Maybe that makes me a prostitute, but whatever. I do what I want, and I fuck who I want. Because I enjoy it. Because I’m good at it. Because it doesn’t touch me.

I pull out of the parking lot, chanting that to myself. Then I glance in my backseat and realize my toolbox isn’t there. I was so short-circuited this morning that I blew out of Stella’s without stopping to get my stuff. I never forget my supplies like that. What the hell is happening to me?

Stella
.  She’s different from anyone I’ve ever met, sees through my bullshit, peels my armor off and runs her fingers over the soft parts underneath—and she doesn’t even know she’s doing it. She’s burrowed inside me and set up shop. When I’m with her, I find myself being honest and real, even when I don’t mean to. The longer I’m around her, the more bare and raw I feel—and the more I like it. I needed to pull away from that, because it gives her so much power—the power to hurt me.

She doesn’t feel the same. Which is good, because I don’t want a relationship. I don’t do relationships. I should be able to give her what she wants, then. Sex with no strings attached. It shouldn’t be difficult, because the mere thought of being inside her leaves me hard and aching.

If I don’t do this, she’ll find it somewhere else, and the thought sends white-hot rage cascading through my body once again. The idea of some other guy being that close to her … no. He might hurt her. He might not be what she needs. Whatever happens, she’ll live with it for the rest of her life. She asked me because she trusted me, however shallow and physical that trust might be.

I pull into the grocery store parking lot and head into the shop, grabbing a basket and roaming the half-empty aisles. They haven’t re-stocked since before the storm, when people probably came through and cleaned the place out. I grab the last carton of milk, because I noticed she used canned milk for breakfast this morning. I hunt down some eggs, a loaf of bread, and more apples, because she ate nearly all of the slices I cut, so she must really like them. I grab cream for her coffee because I saw her wince as she sipped from her cup and look longingly toward the fridge. I snag a package of marshmallows because her eyes glinted with such eagerness while we roasted them over the fire, and it was one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen. I load up on crackers and cheese because it’s become a running joke between the two of us, and I think we ate them all yesterday.

I stand in front of the books and magazines in the store’s paltry entertainment section, wishing I knew what she really liked to read. She mentioned being bored by the stuff in her parents’ library, and I know she likes paper books and doesn’t want to read on her iPad. But I never got to ask her what she’d enjoy most, and I wish I had.

As I put my items on the conveyor belt, I recognize how pathetic I am. The more I let myself think about Stella, the more I want to get back to her. She doesn’t have to know I feel this way, though. I’m good at pretending, so maybe I can pull this off. I can be real without being real. I can be close to her without her knowing what it means. In the end, when I have to walk away, she won’t know what it does to me. And maybe if I do this, I’ll get over my stupid obsession with her, so that when we’re done, it won’t matter to me anyway. She’ll be like everyone else, and I’ll be eager to get out of there.

My plan in place, I load the groceries in my car and get on the road, heading north.

Chapter Ten: Stella

The water in the shower swirls with dark flecks as I scrub my hands. I wore two charcoal pencils to nubs, and my fingertips were black when I finally gave up. My eyes squeeze shut as I turn in to the spray. Daniel’s face is right there, perfect in my mind, the way he looked this morning as he slept beside me. But I can’t make him look that way on paper. I’ve been trying all day, and my pathetic efforts are smoldering ashes in the fire now. I collected them in one big stack and fed them to the flames one by one, my tears sizzling on the pages as the heat gobbled them up.

How did I manage to do everything so completely wrong?

I put my hand to my stomach, leaving gray smears across my wet skin. Daniel is gone, and the look on his face as he left told me how disgusting he really thinks I am. I haven’t been able to get that expression out of my head. The idea of sleeping with me was repulsive to him. I didn’t realize it at first. I thought he was testing me, but now I know he was trying to drive me away. I wish he’d just been up front about it, because I actually think that would have hurt less.

It’s not his fault, though. It’s mine. We would have parted as friends if I hadn’t made that stupid proposition. He would have come back on Monday, and we could have continued as we were. But I ruined everything, and I’m betting he’s gone for good—unless my mother invites him back to her bed, that is. Once she comes back, I think I might confine myself to my room, because if I have a chance run-in with him like that, I won’t be able to hold myself together.