Rebound (22 page)

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?”

“In the back.” Liz
pulled the cabin door shut and gulped the last of her drink before
setting the glass on the porch. “What about your luggage?”

Susan was already
around the back of the house. It took a few beats for her to
realize what she was looking at, but when she did, she squealed in
delight, crammed herself behind the wheel and cranked the engine,
eliciting the full throttled roar of twin cams. Susan sped out from
behind the house, digging up her parents’ lawn as she rocketed the
1968 Barracuda Fastback out to where Liz stood, and skidded to a
stop, making even more grass fly.

Susan gunned the
motor and took in the interior of the car while Liz trooped over
and swung her ass into the passenger side.

“Where the hell did
you get this beauty?”

“An artist friend of
mine. It’s one of six different muscle cars he’s bought from
proceeds I garnered him selling his egregiously overpriced oil
paintings.”

“
What’s he
paint?” Susan gunned the engine again and honked the horn. It
was
Call to
Post
, the theme to horse
racing.

“He’s really good at
painting naked men, but what sells most are his paintings of street
gutters.”

Susan turned and
stared at Liz. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I wish I was, but
they sell like hotcakes.”

Susan gripped the
steering wheel and gunned the motor one more time. “Fasten your
seat belt.”

Liz already had
shades on, her hair protected by a
Thelma and Louise
style scarf, and her seat belt securely fastened. And
a flask of--no doubt--more martinis.

“Jesus, you really
are a lush!”

“Oh please, I know
how you drive. I’m going to need some liquid
pain-killer-slash-nerve-pills. Besides, if I were a man you’d be
calling me a freaking boy scout for being so well prepared, not a
lush.”

“Fine,” Susan said as
she took off down the dirt road that led to an even bigger dirt
road, and to a single lane pot-holed thoroughfare, and then to a
two lane interstate. “You’re an alcoholic boy scout. Do they have a
badge for that?”

“Well, there should
be!” Liz leaned back into the centrifugal force the speeding
Barracuda was creating as it roared down the road. And the car
stopped, sending both Susan and Liz hard into their seat belts.

“The gala,” Susan
said breathlessly. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

Liz cackled as she
kicked her heels off and snuggled back into the fine leather
upholstery of the bucket seat. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.
I already sent Lance out for a gown--something simple and elegant,
more virgin than vamp.” She turned and her red, red lips grinned
solicitously at Susan. “After all, you already tried the vamp
routine on him.”

Susan shook her head.
“You sent Lance?”

Liz’s dazzling red
lips turned into a hard line. “He has dual degrees in art history
and fashion design. He reads W, Cosmo and Vogue...and he’s gay, for
God’s sake. He’s more a woman than either of us!”