Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (22 page)

“Oh. Of course. It’s the door at the left down the hall.”

“Okeydoke.”

His bathroom was very clean. Very white. She put her clothes all back together. Wondered if the washrags, folded like they do at hotels and in a little basket on the
vanity, could actually be used. Since she needed one, she risked it, used the hand soap in the pump to wash her hands, her face.

She opened one vanity drawer hoping to find a comb, and found an old-fashioned brush, with no handle. She wet her hair and braided it.

When she finally emerged, he was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed, and he rose as soon as he saw her, like she was a lady entering a ballroom, or something. They stood there looking at each other. He looked away first, to pick up a piece of carving.

“Do you have a couple of rubber bands?”

His forehead wrinkle came back, but he went to a drawer in the kitchen. “Small, medium, or document bands?”

“Do you have rubber bands organized by size in that drawer?”

“Yes. Engineer, remember?”

“More and more. Two small ones, please.”

He handed them over, and she wound them around the ends of her braids. She felt like something inside her chest was going to explode.
Say something
, she thought.
Say anything. Stop thinking
. She didn’t know if she was mentally yelling at Hefin, or herself. It had been like this after the last time they were together.

Inside each other, laughing with each other, perfection, then this extended crappiness.

“Do you have a corner store around here?”

He looked up, finally. “There’s a Giant Eagle two streets over.”

“Great.” She met his eyes, and saw a little hope there. Felt herself relax all over.
Good
. That’s what they truly needed, just a little hope shoved up under the good-byes. Sweetness.

“Wanna meet my sister?”

Hefin looked over at Destiny, the street lamps briefly illuminating her face each time they passed one.

He was a little worried about what he saw in her face. It was too dark to see the full effect of her expression, but her mouth was tight in such a way that the freckles around her lips had disappeared.

At the grocer’s, she had given him half a list to gather while she gathered the rest. At the checker’s stand, he maneuvered to pay for the bean curd and oranges, milk and a package of vegetarian “cheez,” along with the small pile of canned goods and pasta.

He had added a rather large package of chocolate biscuits and a box of tea. She didn’t protest, the payment or his contributions.

She’d been quiet, some part of her with her sister, already.

She had already been with her sister, directly before she came to him. She had to be exhausted.

She pulled into a parking lot behind a squat, brick fourplex apartment building. The kind that grew all over Lakefield and represented the architectural imagination of a shoebox outfitted as a shelter for a child’s dolls.

“We’re here.”

“Destiny …”

“I don’t think I want to talk.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed. She looked over at him, and she seemed impossibly young wearing braids and clean skin. “What?” she huffed out on a sigh.

“I’ve gathered you’re not interested in talking.” She hadn’t said a word since she told him what to buy at the grocer’s.

“It’s just … This is hard. She’s not herself. I don’t even know why I asked you to come because she’s probably going to be crabby, or sleeping, or some other kind of mess and it’s not fair to her to spring you on her. Or her on you. And it’s not like you’re my … Anything, really.”

“Ah.” As soon as he voiced that
ah
though, he knew it was the wrong thing,
again.

“Yes. ‘Ah.’ ” He flinched at the strong bite in her tone. “I’m just one fucked-up decision after another tonight. Telling Sarah to move in with me. Telling
Sam
about it, which means he’s going to take over and make it impossible and totally piss Sarah off. Hurting Betty’s feelings for no good reason. Then, of course, driving to your place in my fucking Master Fucking Symbol of unwieldy and impractical love and attachments to the past.” She looked back at him, and he didn’t let himself look away from what she might say, and anything could be possible.

She could throw him out, make him find his own way home and he would never see her again. She could voice the unspoken possibility between them, break them open, right there in her Master Fucking Symbol, and he would have no choice but to admit that it was true, all of it, everything he was feeling.

“I want you, Hefin.” Her words broke open as much as he thought they would. Which is to say, everything.

There were tears running down her face, which looked blotchy and garish in the sodium lights ringing the parking lot.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and hated himself. More than he ever had.

She looked back out the front windshield. “Stupid. I’m stupid. You’re stupid.”

Finally something he could agree with.

He reached over and released her safety belt and grabbed her about the waist. Pulled her to him. And since he was stupid, and there was no helping it, he took hold of her face and kissed her. Even worse, he did it entirely for himself. He didn’t wait for her to breathe or sigh or soften, he moved his lips over hers, his tongue over her lips, his heart fumbling and fast and anxious, and when she tipped away enough to kiss over the corner of his mouth, he actually felt the burn of tears in his throat.

“Destiny,” he whispered.

“It’s okay,” she whispered back, and put her hand over his on her face, wove her fingers through his.

He closed his eyes tight and drew her bottom lip into his mouth, and the taste of her was already so familiar, he got hard with a force that nearly hurt. He worried that lip with his tongue, its softness like the softness between her legs, and the thought of that made him feel even more restless and unfastened. So he let her lip go and kissed her simply, and they both drifted into a new kiss, one serious and slow.

He kept kissing because he didn’t want anything that came after it, whatever it was. He wanted her face in his hands and that was all. He wanted her mouth against his, and the sound of their breath in his ears.

He wanted her, too. But not what would come after.

He didn’t want to feel the little pull, the anchor of what she needed. Particularly if what she needed was something he could give her. He didn’t want to feel, when he left, that he was forgetting something. Worse, he didn’t want to feel, when he left, that he was
leaving
.

Not like when he left Wales with Jessica, kissing his mum’s temple while she made excuses for his dad not coming out of his shop to say good-bye.

She eased back first. He looked down at their hands, which had woven together at some point during their kiss.

She bent her knees up so he was able to wrap his arms all the way around her. The weather had turned again, and a mist of rain was watering the limousine’s windows.

“So you know who’s really helpful?” Her voice was soft now, a little flat.

“I can’t imagine. So few people are really helpful.”

“Carrie.”

“Your new boss at the library? I’m not surprised, there. Carrie’s a good one.”

“She’s been sending me to all of these branches this week, so I can talk to different directors about their individual sites and what works and doesn’t work about them.

“A lot of them have the same kinds of problems, really common problems that have more to do with how the page was originally designed to require certain plug-in updates. But there isn’t anyone to do that, then everything just sort of goes kablooey until they can hire an ad hoc freelancer to fix it.”

“Lots of kablooey, got it.”

She looked up at him, and to his relief, she was finally smiling a little. “Is this boring?”

He squeezed her. It wasn’t, not at all. “Not at all.”

“So I was telling Carrie that it would be better, less expensive, if the library thought about putting the job out to bid to a single developer who all the sites could contact when these things happened, but who also could do constant maintenance to prevent the issues. Also, if the branch was ready to add new things, then those things
could be dealt with by the same developer that knew them.”

“Makes good sense.”

“Right. So I told her about my old company, because that’s what they did, basically. Or what I did for them.”

“And she told you, ‘why not you?’ ”

She grinned and pressed her face into his chest. It felt good, because the pressure of her head kept his heart from leaping right out of his chest. “Yeah, she did.”

“She is a good one.”

“She is. I mean, it’s not a sure thing. She has to go to the library development board and present the idea with the financial sheet I made up for her, then they’ll have to bid out the job. It would mean I’d make a bid as basically my own business.”

“Well done, Destiny.”

“I thought so. And thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not letting me totally lose it in the library and introducing me to Carrie so I could dig myself out of all of this.”

“Are you happy?”

“With the job? The chance to go for the bid on my own?”

“Yeah.”

She was quiet. “I think I am. I’m excited, and it’s so much of a relief after all the months of uncertainty that it’s a little hard to tell if it’s happy happiness or happy end-of-ramen-noodles. But I am good at this thing that I do. I know it’s not fancy, not like what my brothers and sister do, not like what you do, but I like solving people’s little problems.”

“I think it’s rather noble, actually.”

“Yeah?”

He held her tighter. For a moment, remembered the high of hours spent with edits on drafts back from engineers. Perfecting and thinking. Making. He wondered if he would have something like that again.

“I haven’t done what I do for some time,” he said. Surprised he said it.

“I guess I was thinking more of your carving.” She unfolded herself and slid off his lap. “You know how amazing it is, right?”

He thought about the first month of the project. Every time he removed a panel,
he was overcome with the sense he was vandalizing something and would be discovered and punished. Bidding for the work had been something of a lark, in a way, and at least half of the carving samples he’d submitted for the job were those he’d completed years ago and had his father send from home.

It had felt good. All of it. Amazing, even, once they had gotten going on the restoration. He’d had days deep into carving, methodical and creative, and there had even been a few moments where he had thought that he wasn’t sure that his dad could have done better. He’d never made something that would outlive him, and when he took down a panel, he got a thrill looking for a signature of the carver. The last thing he did before putting up one of his own carvings was make his own mark.

He wondered if this was the important thing he would take with him from Ohio, back home to Wales, rough hands that had made marks for an unimaginable generation to find. He all at once felt another little anchor drop, thinking of all he would leave behind here. Jessica. His carvings. The hopeful and untried portion of his youth.

He looked into Destiny’s gray eyes.

That too.

Much heavier anchor.

“I’m stupid,” he said and kissed her.

“So, so stupid,” she said against his mouth.

He kissed down to her neck, found the places there he hadn’t explored yet. Moved his hands over her, thought about how she was put together, how her legs bent in his lap, her arms around his shoulders. How they fit together.

“I don’t think you’re one fucked-up decision after another.”

“No?”

“No. I do think this limousine is a Master Fucking Symbol, as you said, but not in the way you think.”

She put her forehead against his. “Tell me.”

“Well. What does a limousine represent?”

She shook her head against his.

“Weddings. Fancy-dress parties. Specials dates and dances. And an elaborate way to start an anticipated trip.”

“Funerals,” she whispered.

He squeezed her. “Yes, that too. A car the whole family can be inside together.
Behind the hearse. To say
good-bye
and
I love you
one last time. Do you see?”

“Not really.”

“You drive around, well. A symbol of love, to be a bit dramatic. People smile when they see a limousine. They wonder who’s in it. They wish they’d had a chance to ride in one, or if they have, they remember the time precisely—pulling up to the church to get married. Watching the taillights on a hearse. A limousine is, more than anything else, going places. Not always places you expect.”

Destiny reached up and pushed the tears away with the heels of her hands. “The thing is”—her voice was thick, and he swallowed in sympathy—“Dad used to say that, or something like it.”

“Is that right?”

“He used to have some running tally of how many brides he’d seen on their wedding days. How many champagne engagements he’d witnessed, and he’d do everything, everything in his power to help the asker hear a
yes
. He’d drive the limo anywhere they’d want to pop the question—even if it meant parking on a bridge, driving to the middle of a snowy field. His favorite was when this guy had planned it where he gave some big speech and knocked on Dad’s privacy window, which then Dad dramatically rolled down and handed the man a bouquet and a diamond ring to present to his girlfriend. He talked about that one forever.

“Every spring, for prom at the local high school, he passed around a sign-up list to all the seniors in the neighborhood. They would all sign up for their time slot, and Dad would drive each couple to the prom, for free. I used to think all those high-school couples were the most glamorous people I’d ever seen.”

She huffed in a shuddering breath. Smiled at him, somehow, through all the tears and downward pull of her eyes. “When he took me and my date to prom, he took the longest way, even though I had been in that limo more than anybody else but him. And when we pulled up, he came around and opened the door, and he had a corsage for me. He had worked it so my date got me a wrist corsage, and he got me a pin-on kind. Then he told me he wished my mom could have been there to see me, to help me get ready, but he hoped the corsage would do, and that in his prayers he would tell Mom all about how pretty I looked, and how grown-up.”