Seattle Girl (24 page)

“Don’t forget,” I whispered to myself as I increased my speed to catch up with him, “you can’t screw your boss. Don’t even think about it.” But I had stopped listening already. By the time the sun was fully overhead, I was lost to reason and good sense.

Just like every time before.

We put the skulls back in the boat house and joined the rest of the crew for breakfast and seminars. I pretended not to notice that Luke sat next to me the whole day, but you know how sparkly you feel when someone is paying special attention to you? Well, I was a sequin that day — totally alive and I felt undeniably beautiful.

During a bathroom break, I ran off to find a pay phone. I needed to talk to someone who could see the forest for the trees. So don’t ask me why I called Diane. Probably because even though I was telling myself I wanted to be discouraged from hooking up with Luke, I actually wanted to be encouraged.

I shut the glass door of the booth behind me and dialed her cell.

“Diane Wells,” she answered in her honeyed voice.

“Hey girl. It’s me. You can stop pretending you’re all professional now.”

She giggled. “I sound pretty impressive, don’t I?”

“Yup,” I agreed and she said, “So, wassup girlfriend?”

“OK, I need you to be the voice of reason,” I began.

She cut me off. “Let me get this straight. You want
me
to be the voice of reason?”

“Um, yeah. Think you can handle it?”

She cleared her throat and said in a deep voice, “Of course I can,” and then giggled. “No really, why’d you call?”

I sighed and lowered my voice to barely above a whisper, because I didn’t want anyone in the hall to overhear me. “I think my boss is sort of putting the moves on me.”

“Oh my god! No way!”

“Yes way. And the thing is, I’m sort of thinking of letting him.”

“Is he hot?” she asked in typical Diane fashion.

“Hello!
 
I believe the correct response is ‘Georgia, under no circumstances should you be even considering doing your boss.’”

She sounded slightly affronted. “I was getting to that. I just wanted to know if he was hot first.”

I laughed. “Yes. Now please begin the lecture.”

She whined. “Georgia, I’m no good at lectures. But, um, if you really want one, how about this: Don’t throw your whole career away over some hot guy. There are plenty of guys out there that you can screw and then when it’s over you’ll still have your job.” She paused. “How was that?”

“Really good.” I was sort of impressed that she had come through.

But then again, since I had already made my decision, all of her good advice was falling on not just dear ears...but a deaf heart, too.

At the end of the sessions that afternoon we had some free time and we all gathered for a hike. After an hour of uphill, the rest of the group surged forward while Luke and I fell behind. At a vista, Luke straddled a rock and patted the spot in front of him.

“Sit down so we can talk.”

Suddenly nervous, I tried to laugh away the butterflies in my stomach. “We’ve been talking all day,” I said as I stayed standing, hiding the sun from him, keeping my feet firmly attached to the ground. It was a dangerous thing we were doing. I couldn’t keep myself safe if I put myself on even ground with him.

Impatient with my decision, he reached out for my wrist and pulled me closer to him, forcing my feet to move.

“Yeah, we’ve talked about me. But now I want to know more about you.” He rubbed his thumb over the inside of my wrist. With just that simple touch he enveloped me in a rush of feeling. Blood reddened my cheeks, moved away from my stomach, pooled between my legs.

He was right. Mostly we had been talking about him and his ex-girlfriend. She had wanted to get married, he wasn’t ready, so she dumped him and by the time he realized he wanted her back at any cost, even the price of his freedom, she was already engaged to someone else. All of his attempts at wooing her back—roses, jewelry, begging—had come up blanks.

Not knowing what else to do, I gave in and sat down. But I didn’t want to seem too eager, too easy a conquest, so I pulled my arm from him, back to rest on my lap. I found myself unable to look at him, so I stared at my knees.

He pulled off his sunglasses and stared hard at me for a few moments before he reached over to pull off my sunglasses too.

“I just realized how beautiful you are.”

Startled by his words, I looked up at him and then quickly down again to my knees. All day I had been telling myself that he had no special interest in me beyond some light flirting on a relaxing weekend away from the office.

I felt a surge of caution run through me. How far should I fall, I wondered? How much of me was left to give away this time? I was pretty sure that I wanted him, but was that enough?

I heard all of this run through my head and felt a rush of anger. Where had I learned caution? Which experiences had taught me fear?
 
When had I changed from a girl who would always leap to a woman who couldn’t stop thinking about what I would hit at the bottom?

Boldly, he wrapped one leg around me, urging my body closer. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he whispered as he leaned close and gave me the most glorious, gentle kiss, barely grazing my lips with his. He always seemed so controlled to me on the job, but his kiss, so unexpected, whirled through me like a hurricane.

He pulled back slightly, but I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Instead I let him envelop me in his passion, grinding us together. We explored each other, he pulled me out of myself with his tongue and his teeth.

He inched back, separating us slightly, and I moaned into the air, not wanting to come up for a breath. Not wanting there to be any break in what we had just found that would ruin the magic.

“God I want you,” he said against my hair, keeping one hand on the curve of my butt, then shifting slightly to brush the hair from my eyes. I don’t know when he undid the button and zipper on my jean shorts. Swiftly, he put his fingers down into my panties, down to where all of the blood in my body seemed to be pooling. Lord knows it had left my brain long ago.

As his right hand stroked me his left hand moved under my shirt, under my sports bra to cup my breasts. He ran a thumb over my nipple. It felt so good I cried out into his mouth, totally awash in sensation, and then my world exploded.

I felt him smile against my lips as I started to float back down to earth. But before I could think about what had just happened between us, he had me zipped up and buttoned and standing.

What had he done to me that I was no longer in charge of my own body?

Right then I heard voices through the trees. He must have stayed clear-headed enough to hear people approaching from further up the trail. How close had he let us come to being caught?
 

I didn’t think to wonder that until much later. I couldn’t think at all right then. I was left gasping for air—putting all of my focus into trying to act like nothing had changed. Like everything was perfectly normal.

The rest of the afternoon I tried to keep busy. I tried to keep my mind off of him. I tried to ignore the sinking feeling I had that I had just made a big mistake.

Even in my fog, I could feel that I was hurting too soon. Already I was waiting for him to come back to me. All of my power, all of my independence has vanished on that rock.

But deep in my heart I knew I had never really been independent at all.

* * *

That night all of the DJs played cards on the porch in front of Luke’s cabin in the moonlight. I knew that I should turn in, that I should leave, but he was exerting some kind of pull over me. I just couldn’t go. Finally, it was just the two of us at the table, sharing the sunset as we had the sunrise.

Luke stared at me. I trained my eyes on the lake, on the moon that was rising in the sky. He stood, walked to his door, and opened it. Almost too low to be heard over the sound of the waves lapping up onto the shore he said, “Please, Georgia. Come inside.”

He completely undid me.

I did the only thing I could, the only thing my body would let me do—my mind, my career, my future be damned. I pushed the chair back and let him pull me inside his cabin and close the door.

* * *

We made love again in the lake near the shore, as the night went completely black. Then again in his bed. Finally, between the moon’s fall and the sun’s rise, I crawled from his bed, back into my clothes and out the door to my own room.

Luke never asked me to leave. I don’t know if he would have but some part of me cried out for the chance to make my own choice. I wanted to leave on my terms, not his.

Later that night there was a fire. The camp director came to Luke’s room and asked him to help with the crew putting it out.

If I had still been in Luke’s bed, if there had been one single witness would there have been something more for us?
 
Because the truth is, I never again saw Luke look at me in the way that he did throughout that night. Later, sitting in the same room with him during a meeting, even I could practically swear that nothing had ever happened.

* * *

You’re probably not going to be real surprised at this point when I tell you that my contract didn’t get renewed. I had been doing exactly what I swore I wasn’t going to do: Focusing on finding love instead of the one thing that I was absolutely certain would be good for me.

But even though it wasn’t a completely unexpected development, I was still crushed. No, actually, that’s not quite true.

I was totally completely obliterated. Getting sacked at KSAN seemed like a sign from up above.

“Give it up, girl and let it go.” That’s what the gods were saying to me.

So pretty much right then and there I decided, screw my dreams. The whole thing is impossible. I give up.

And I was thinking that if I were meant to be on the radio the whole thing would have been easier for me.

One Christmas somebody got me these guided meditation tapes where the woman’s voice kept telling me to affirm that I was going to get what I wanted easily and effortlessly.

I will get everything I want easily and effortlessly.

What’s so damn hard about that?

I should have what I want already, I was thinking. Little golden balls of success should have already fallen into my lap. And since they hadn’t, I figured it was time to forget the whole thing. I’d given it enough energy. I’d had my day in the sun and all that I had to show for it was that I was totally burnt.

* * *

I pretty much spent the next month taking one continuous nap after another. That and drinking mocha’s.

It’s not easy to nap after drinking a mocha, if you’re wondering. What with the double caffeine shot from the coffee and the chocolate and then the sugar from the whipped cream, I hardly slept at all.

Mostly I lay under the covers and stared at the ceiling. And thought about what a miserable failure I was.

My mother couldn’t be right, could she? I couldn’t have actually wasted the years that I spent pursuing my passion?
 
I shouldn’t have gotten an accounting degree and married Mr. Right and had three kids in the suburbs, should I?

That was one of the main things that irked me. Under no circumstances did I want my mother to be right.

I sank further and further into the pit of despair that I was digging for myself. I ignored the phone, didn’t answer messages, didn’t check email. I just didn’t care.

I was going to drink mocha’s until I had a coffee/chocolate explosion out of my eyeballs. I could tell I was just on the borderline of that happening. I was sort of looking forward to it.

That was when Diane and Seth stepped in and saved the day.

* * *

My doorbell rang and I went to see who was interrupting my pity party.

Only one person on the invite, thanks.

Diane barged in without bothering with the pleasantries.

“What is your deal?” she demanded. “One minute you’re fine and normal and the next you’ve completely fallen off of the earth. I have been trying to get a hold of you for weeks!
 
You better have a good explanation,” she said as she stood with her arms crossed, waiting for me to say something.

The thing is, I really didn’t have much of an excuse. Like I said, I have a teensy-weensy knack for feeling sorry for myself on occasion.

I walked to the couch and slumped down in it.

“I dunno. I just don’t feel good.”

Seth closed the door and came in. The two of them sat down sandwiched around me on the couch. Since Diane had already tossed her dagger, and saw me deflate so quickly, she decided to move directly to the comforting stage instead.

They put their arms around me and I cried.

How I cried.

I cried like I couldn’t remember crying before.

I didn’t even know that I had to cry until the moment that my tears wouldn’t stop falling.

No one said anything, they just let me cry. Finally, when I started to fall back down to earth and regain my balance I noticed that snot was dripping all over us. I laughed shakily. “I need to blow my nose. Hold on.”

I got up and went to the bathroom to blow and then I came back and sat down.

“Thanks guys,” I said a little sheepishly as I handed them the box of tissues to wipe their arms off.

Seth wiped off his leather jacket and then threw the tissue onto the coffee table. “Georgia, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

All the crying had really cleared out my head. My sinuses too, actually. And I finally felt ready to talk.

“It’s going to sound funny, I guess, but when they fired me it just felt like all of the dreams that I’ve built my life on collapsed. And that I’ve been left with nothing to hold onto at all. I’ve been freaking out.”

“You lost your job?” they asked in unison.

I nodded pitifully.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I could tell Diane was sort of angry with me for not having filled them in on my troubles right away.

I sniffled. “At first, I thought I just needed a few days to get over it. But then, I just felt like more and more of a loser until I could hardly even get out of bed.”