Punk and Zen (37 page)

“I’m glad,” I answered honestly, unthinkingly, and we
held each other even tighter, still and silent in the dim light.

“I won’t hurt her,” I said finally into that heavy
quiet. It was confusing because I ached with missing Fran, and ABC at
the same time the fit of Samantha’s body to mine made me feel, well, whole, as
if I’d been missing the last piece to my puzzle, and it didn’t make any sense
at all. But I knew that it didn’t matter. I’d made a promise, even if I hadn’t
made it aloud. I’d made it, sealed it—in blood.

“I understand that,” Samantha answered. “I don’t want
to—I won’t either.”

She kissed my neck and I shuddered slightly—not
because of the sensuality of it, because it wasn’t that, not really, but
because this
could not
happen.

“I love her, too,” she whispered.

I curved my head away from those baby-soft lips I’d
dreamed about, but pulled her closer to me anyway. My hands pressed against her
shoulder blades and I rubbed small circles into her back as her fingertips drew
stripes against my spine.

“Nina…” Samantha sighed, “what…what are we…”

“…going to do?” I finished for her.

God, nothing mattered. Time, distance, even the person
whom I’d heard on the phone, what we’d done, become—it made no difference. We
felt the same—to each other, about each other. What an impossible
situation—because if Candace had been honest all those months ago, there’s good
money in betting that everything would have turned out differently. As much as
I hate to admit it, I knew that, with a gut-twisting, bitter-tasting certainty.
What made it bitter was that I would never, ever in any universe have wanted to
miss the opportunity to love and to know Francesca—and I didn’t want to give
that up.

It wasn’t fucking funny, though I laughed lightly,
sadly, and rocked her the slightest bit in my arms before I let her go.
“Nothing,” I said finally, looking into her diamond eyes, “we’re going to do
nothing.”

I shifted on the bed. “Come here,” I patted the pillow
next to me, “let’s get some sleep. I’m too tired to deal with this right now.”

She stretched her legs along the mattress and leaned
on an elbow, a small smile playing about the corner of her mouth.

I kicked off my boots and lay on the bed over the
blankets, and Samantha shifted.

“Are you sure this is okay?” she asked, uncertain. “I
could—”

“What, sleep on the floor?” I asked with a smile. “I
won’t let you do that—that’s not necessary. Besides…” I stretched my hands out
over my head before tucking them under my head. Fuck it. I was too tired to
even undress or change. I shifted and closed my eyes. “It’s just sleep. We have
the rest of our lives to work this out.”

Samantha chuckled under her breath as she eased her
length along the mattress. “Yeah, we do, don’t we?”

“We do,” I answered as firmly as I could. I lay there
on my back with my eyes closed for a while, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t
ignore the burning presence next to me, inches away. I finally opened my eyes
only to find Samantha staring at me.

Smiling, I turned on my side to face her. I stretched
careful fingers to her face, gently drawing the curve of her cheek, and she
returned the favor, sketching the line of my face with her thumb.

“Hey,” she said softly, “do you remember that swim
meet at Brooklyn College?”

“Of course I do. You kissed me.”

Samantha laughed, a soft sound I almost couldn’t hear.
“Actually, I think you kissed me—that was the best kiss I ever had.”

“Nah…can’t be,” I countered. It had been only one
kiss—and one of those chastely romantic ones, to boot. Okay, so I’d never had
one like that since, either, but still…

Her fingers stroked my cheek. “Yeah, it was,” she
affirmed. “You know, I’d been going to ask you out that night.”

“I kinda figured that out later,” I admitted. I ran my
fingers down her neck and along her shoulder. “You should have, you know.” I
smiled at her.

“Nah, I couldn’t,” Sam smiled back, her hands trailing
along my arm, “you had a very possessive girlfriend.”

I laughed softly myself. “Kerry wasn’t really my
girlfriend. She was my friend and she was just—”

“Experimenting?” Samantha supplied, quirking her
eyebrow at me.

“Something like that,” I agreed. “It wasn’t, it wasn’t
anything like…” Like you, I’d been about to say, but stopped myself—that was
way too dangerous territory to step into.

Samantha chuckled. “Yeah, me and Fran, we were kinda
like that, too.”

How had we gotten closer? There had been at least a
foot between us, and now I could see every detail of her lashes, the light
freckles that sprinkled across her nose. I breathed in her air, and the hand
that had been on her shoulder was now on her hip, while hers curved around to
my lower back.

She moved it to my head again, gently stroking the
long strands that ABC fell over my cheek behind my ear. “I think you
got further with her than I ever did.” She sighed, and the sound was wistful.

We were face-to-face now, staring directly into each
other’s eyes, and the dark fullness of hers threatened to pull me in.

“Kerry or Fran?” I asked quietly. There was no
mistaking the light press of her thigh against mine. We were simply falling
into each other.

“Both,” Samantha answered succinctly, her lips a
whisper away from mine.

Oh. I hadn’t known that, about her and Fran, I mean. I
tucked that into the back of my mind to think about later.

“Oh,” I whispered back. Wait a minute, did that mean…?

“You two never…?” I asked Samantha as I wrapped my
arms around her and let her throw her leg over me when I tucked my head under
hers.

“Didn’t you and Fran ever talk about this?” she
countered quietly.

I sighed. No. We never had. Maybe we should have.
“No…” I answered, uncertain how to explain.

“You don’t, um, talk much?” she inquired tentatively.

“You’re not answering my question, Sammy.” I grinned
at her sleepily. I knew what she was asking, but that really wasn’t any of her
business.

“Not…not like you two,” she said quietly, her eyes
throwing obsidian sparks at me in the half-light of my room. She waited a beat.
“You didn’t answer my question.”

Oh. Oh yeah. “We never talked about you,” I admitted
quietly. “After I found out about Candace, well, I figured, you know, you knew
how to find me. And I’ve never wanted Fran to think…” I hesitated.

Jesus Christ. An icy chill bolted through my stomach.
I disentangled myself from our embrace and sat up, running my hands through my
hair. Shit. I had a bad feeling about this.

Samantha sat up with me. “Think what?” she asked with
soft concern and laid a hand on my shoulder.

I took a deep breath and ordered my thoughts. “That I
was with her because of you,” I said breathlessly, shocked at the realization,
shocked even more that I’d said it aloud in front of the one person I probably
shouldn’t have. Too late to take it back, though.

That’s when the phone rang, the unexpected sound
startling me so much ABC that I jumped.

I reached behind me and grabbed it off my amplifier.
“Nina,” I answered.

“Hey, Nina!” Ronnie’s voice, sounding way too wide
awake, cut through the speaker. “You guys serious about touring?”

“Yeah, sure, we’re interested.” Even half asleep, I
knew it wouldn’t do us any good to appear overeager. “Who’s sponsoring it?”
Thank God my brain still worked without me. I didn’t remember consciously
thinking that.

“Uh, not sure,” Ronnie answered, “let me get back to
you on that.”

“Cool, no problem.”

“Cool. I’ll call you back. Later!” and he clicked off.

I stared at the phone a moment, then put it back in
its place so I could lie back down. “Sleep, Sammy,” I told her as our bodies
settled around one another, “I’m exhausted.”

“Okay, love, okay.” She kissed my forehead and lay
back down, while I closed my eyes surrounded by the sense of home.

I was comfortably numb, dreaming about the gig, and I
barely heard the insistent jangle of the phone break through the deep warmth of
sleep. My arms felt like lead as I automatically reached to answer.

“Nina,” I answered in a sleep-thick voice.

“Hey, baby, how was it?”

“Hey yourself!” I greeted, glad to hear her voice. I
got out of bed and tiptoed out of the room, closing the door behind me. I
didn’t want to keep Samantha up, and I really wanted to talk with Fran—I’d
missed her.

“So…how’d it go?” she asked, her voice warm across the
wires. “You knock ’em dead?”

“I don’t know about that but,” I answered excitedly,
“I just got called for a new gig. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.
Oh, and hey—Samantha showed up after the gig. Crazy, right? She’s sleeping. I
miss you—when are you coming back?”

“I, uh, I don’t know, but it seems like you’re in good
hands.”

“Fran—what are you talking about?”

She didn’t answer. “Where are you staying?” she asked
instead.

“My place,” I answered truthfully. Where was she going
with this?

“You took her home with you,” she commented mildly.
“She probably landed today and you took her home with you.”

Dammit. That’s not what it was. “Fran…it wasn’t…I
mean, she showed up right after the gig at CB’s. I couldn’t just, you know? I
mean, I wasn’t—”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

I had to get her to understand that nothing had
happened, nothing was going to happen—no matter what this thing was, it was her
and I, wasn’t it? “Fran, there’s nothing going on, you and I—”

“You need to figure this one out—I can’t help you,”
she interrupted again. She sounded remarkably even and calm, except for that
little shake at the back of her voice. She wasn’t doing this, she couldn’t be
doing this. I had to let her know something, anything, to make that sound in
her words stop.

Every thought, every feeling I’d had about Samantha
evaporated in the face of the pain I could hear in Fran’s voice. I wasn’t going
to lose her. I knew, or at least I thought I knew, that the part of me that
reacted to Samantha was just a hero-worshipping, infatuation-struck kid, but
what I felt for Fran was the result of something different, something with a
solid basis. And hey, if that sounds a little too much like the logic I used
with myself the first night Fran and I made love, well, I was upset. “God, you
know
I love you…” I told her, desperate to get through to her.

“You’ve never said that before.”

Ah, she was crying now, and I cursed myself miserably.
She was right, I hadn’t, because they were just words, and words could be so
empty, so meaningless. But I had shown how I felt, hadn’t I? Don’t actions
speak louder than words, and hadn’t I spoken those words in so many different
ways?

“Please believe me, Fran—I wouldn’t—I didn’t…I would
never do anything to hurt you,” I said finally.

“Ah, Nina, Razor Nina…I know where this is going to
go—the two of you?” she asked through her tears. “Come on…you have to know
what’s going to happen.” She took a shaky breath that cut right through me.
“I’m glad we had our time. I’m glad I’ve helped you find each other again.”

My heart pounded and I could hardly breathe. No. This
was
not
going to happen. “Kitt, baby, please, come home, just please,” I
begged, “this will all be fine, I swear.”

Too late, I remembered the adage the nuns had beaten
into our heads—it wasn’t enough to be good, you had to look good, too. I
shouldn’t have asked Samantha to come back with me. I hadn’t been thinking
about anything other than the gig, and I’d been so surprised. Maybe I could buy
Samantha a plane ticket back to England or to wherever it was she wanted to go.

“I’m stuck here,” she said, and for the first time, a
slight bitterness crept into her voice, “and by the time I get there—Nina, it’s
already too late.”

It was the finality in her voice that broke me. I
started to cry. “It’s not, it won’t be, I swear, baby, it’s not!” I sobbed. I’d
fix this, we could fix this—whatever it took, and I meant it: anything,
everything.

I could still hear her crying softly. “I’ll call you
when I get home. We’ll talk then.”

“Can’t I pick you up from the airport?” I had to see
her, to convince her.

“I need time—and you need to know once and for all,”
she told me firmly, evidently resolved despite her tears.

“Baby, you’re wrong. I know everything I need to
know,” I insisted, “and I know who I’m with.”

“The sad thing, Nina?” Fran said, “is that I know you
mean that, that you’d give up your chance to finally find out what everyone
else has known about the two of you forever—you match, Nina, you fit. God, the
look on your face when she was on the phone! Your heart was never mine, Nina.”

Maybe she was right, but I knew she couldn’t be—my
Fran, my Kitt, she was so deeply a part of me that it made words like “love”
and “close” sound so trite when I tried to describe even to myself what we had.
Didn’t she know? I had given her everything, absolutely everything I had in me
to give—what else was there? “I’d give you my blood, baby, I’d die for you—”