The Color of Heaven (12 page)

Then my telephone rang. It was the residence hal reception desk. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”

A gentleman? I frowned with confusion. It couldn’t be Peter. Unless he’d come to surprise me. But no, he would never do that. Was it my father? He

hadn’t mentioned he was coming by.

“I’l be right down.” I stood up and checked the mirror quickly to make sure my hair was tidy and neat, then dabbed my nose with powder and

smoothed out my skirt. I left my room and ventured downstairs.

o0o

There, on the far side of the receiving room, a young man in jeans and a black leather jacket stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out the

window. I didn’t recognize him, not at first, until he turned around and a quiver of excitement surged through my veins.

Matt
.

I sucked in a breath and laid a hand over my heart. It had been almost six years. There had been no word from him, and I had accepted quite some

time ago that I would probably never see him again. I’d even made a sincere effort to push every memory of him from my mind, for it was painful

sometimes to think about our close friendship.

But there he was, in the flesh, standing in my dormitory at Wel esley Col ege, his thick, black hair wild, unruly and wet, his eyes just as deep and blue as I remembered. There would be no pushing this image away. Not ever.

“Hey,” was al he said.

His gaze traveled slowly down the length of my body. He looked down at my black leather shoes for a long moment before he final y lifted his gaze.

Managing a few shaky breaths, I walked toward him. “My goodness,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be
you
. What are you doing here?”

Then suddenly I was
ecstatic
to see him. He looked so different. He seemed to have aged a lifetime. He wasn’t sixteen anymore. He was a man.

He shrugged, then smiled that mischievous, crooked smile, his eyes gleaming, and I knew he was ecstatic to see me, too, even though his posture

was relaxed. I could feel it somewhere in the mix of my out-of-control emotions and the clear, vivid memories of our childhood together.

My cheeks flushed with heat. I crossed the remaining distance in three long strides and final y stood before him. “Matt... The last I heard, you were in Chicago.”

He studied al the details of my face. “That’s right, and I’m stil there. I’m just visiting right now, staying with my brother in Boston.”

“Wel , that’s wonderful.” I wasn’t quite sure what else to say. My brain was turning to mush.

We stared at each other for a few seconds more, and despite feeling completely incoherent, I couldn’t believe how happy I was just to see him.

“You look great,” he said in a soft voice.

I couldn’t help myself. I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and pul ed him into my arms. He immediately buried his face in

my neck. The leather of his jacket creaked like an old ship under my hands. He smel ed of musk and rain.

“It’s so good to see you,” I whispered in his ear. “We’ve missed you.”

And there it was. The
we
. I wasn’t sure why I had said it. I hadn’t meant to inform him of anything. It just came out.

Slowly, he released his grip on my waist and looked me in the eye as he stepped back, nodding as if to say he understood, when I hadn’t meant for

him to understand anything.

“So you and Peter are stil close?”

“Yes.” I felt awkward al of a sudden. I wished I hadn’t said
we
, but it was such a habit. “I wasn’t sure if you even knew about us, that we’d been…” I paused. “We’ve been together for a while. You’ve been gone so long.”

Matt casual y slid his hands back into his pockets. “I know. I talk to my father every once in a while. He always tel s me what’s going on back home.”

I moved to the sofa and sat down. Matt took the chair across from me. He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees.

“How are things with your father?” I asked, because I remembered it was why he’d left Camden in the first place, even before finishing high school.

“Better now that we’re not living in the same house. Or the same town, for that matter.”

I nodded. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Matt leaned back in the chair and stretched out in a lazy sprawl. “I know I used to say I hated him, but…” He glanced around the room. “He just had it rough, that’s al , trying to raise al of us on his own. I can see that now. Though I don’t know if he’s any different than he used to be. He’s probably the same.”

“It couldn’t have been easy for him after your mother died,” I replied. “It couldn’t have been easy for any of you.”

I’d never said anything like that to Matt before. It wasn’t something children said to each other.

“Do you have a job in Chicago?” I asked, sitting forward and resting my chin on a fist.

“Yeah, I’m working for a construction company right now.”

“Doing what?”

“Construction.” He grinned.

I smiled in return. “I see
you
haven’t changed.”

“Oh, I think I probably have.”

I was tempted to ask why, or in what way, but refrained because it seemed too personal a question after so many years apart.

“Tel me more about your job,” I enquired. “Do you drive a forklift? Fil out invoices? Pour cement?”

“I do a bit of everything, except the invoices. Most of the time, I’m swinging a hammer, or raising a wal .”

That, I could see.

“Do you enjoy it?” I asked.

“It’s a living.”

I sat back and said nothing for moment or two. “I always wondered what became of you after you left.”

He looked down at his index finger, which he was tapping on his knee. “Not much of anything, I suppose. Except that I did finish high school. That

was the deal with my aunt. She told me I had to finish, and if I failed just one test, she’d send me back home to Dad.”

I nodded. “So you passed everything, I presume.”

“With honors.”

“Real y.” I was so pleased to hear it.

The front door of the residence hal opened, and a group of five freshman girls came dashing inside to escape the wind and rain. Squealing and

laughing, they brushed the water from their coats.

“Hi, Cora,” one of them said, sneaking a curious glance at Matt.

They were wondering where he’d come from no doubt, for he was impossibly handsome in a James Dean sort of way. He looked nothing like the

young men who came around Wel esley with their short haircuts, crested blazers and neckties.

Yes, there was something dangerous about Matt. There always had been. He wasn’t the kind of boy a young girl’s mother would be pleased to

meet.

The freshmen girls climbed the stairs and entered a room upstairs. I wasn’t sorry to hear their squeals die away with the click of a door.

I met Matt’s deep blue eyes again.

“Have you made a lot of friends here?” he asked, looking around at the traditional decor – the Victorian furniture, the chintz curtains, the gilt-framed portraits on the papered wal s.

“A few, but I’m older than most of them in this dorm, so we don’t have much in common. I stay in a lot.”

“Because you have a boyfriend back home,” he added, but it seemed more of a question than a statement.

I sat back. “It’s not just that. I spend a lot of time studying. I might want to travel next year, to some of the countries I’ve been learning about.”

I didn’t know where that had come from. I had never before committed to any future plans beyond graduation, nor even hinted at such a thing. I

couldn’t imagine what Peter would say.

Matt sat forward slightly. “Yeah? What countries?”

I answered the question as if I’d already given it a great deal of thought. “I’d like to see Africa.”

“Africa.” He leaned back again and tapped that finger on his knee. “That would be great.” He paused. “So how is Peter? He must stil be working

with his father?”

“That’s right.”

“We always said that’s where he’d end up. Remember?”

I smiled, pleased by this acknowledgement – however smal it was – that we had been close at one time and understood each other’s minds.

Another group of girls pushed through the door and giggled into the reception room. When they noticed Matt, they went silent.

Unlike the others, they quickly disappeared up the stairs without a word.

“Busy spot,” he said.

“Want to go somewhere?” I immediately suggested. “We could get a drink or something. I just haven’t seen you in so long… I’d love to hear more

about Chicago.”

“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “Where do you want to go?”

“There are a few places in the vil age. Just let me get my coat. I’l be right back.”

I hurried up the stairs to my room, threw on some lipstick and brushed my hair, and realized with quite a bit of uneasiness that I couldn’t remember

the last time I’d felt so wound up.

I grabbed my handbag and coat, and trotted back down the stairs.

Matt was waiting by the front door, flipping his keys around his finger. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

He held the door open for me. Outside, the wind was gusting through the trees and the rain was coming down sideways.

I pul ed my coat over my head. “I’m glad you have a car.”

“Though we might need a rowboat if this keeps up.” He pointed toward a silver and black hardtop with shiny metal trim. “That’s my brother’s Buick

over there. Come on.”

He took me by the hand and we dashed across the courtyard, splashing through puddles. He unlocked my door and held it open while I climbed in,

then slammed it shut, ran around the front of the car and slid into the driver’s seat.

“Now
that’s
what I cal a downpour.” He flicked the water out of his hair.

I laughed and tried to wipe the wetness from my cheeks, but my fingers were wet, too, so I rubbed them on my knees.

“It is an absolutely
perfect
day,” I said, smiling. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

I reached into my handbag for my compact, and while I checked my makeup in the little round mirror, I was intensely aware of Matt’s eyes on me.

“You’re staring at me,” I said at last, as I snapped the compact shut.

“Yeah, I am.”

I met his gaze, but he didn’t look away. He continued to stare, and for a few brief, electrical y-charged seconds, I gave into that old familiar

connection that existed between us when we were children – when we would smile at each other as if we could read each other’s minds.

So much about him was the same: the expression in his eyes, the quiet intensity, the way he made me feel as if he were holding me in his arms,

though we weren’t touching.

But there had always been an inexplicable understanding between us, as if we were swimming together in the same pool of thoughts and desires

and ideas, just the two of us. Sometimes, as a child, I felt that he was my other half, even though we were two very different people. When I dreamed at night, he was always a part of those dreams.

He looked away and slipped the key into the ignition, and the connection between us snapped like a taut cord. In that moment I realized, with more

than a little regret, that while he was the same in many ways, there were changes in him as wel .

Where he had once been angry and wild as a youth, he seemed calmer now. There was something different in his eyes. A look of defeat, I

wondered?

Or was it peace? A sense of easiness with the world and his place in it?

I faced forward, contemplating the strange aching sensation in my chest.

I suppose we had lived apart for too long. There were things I didn’t know about him, when at one time I knew everything. The years felt like a deep

chasm between us.

He turned the key and started the car. The engine roared. The wipers batted noisily back and forth across the windshield as the rain rapped upon it.

“Where to?” he asked.

I pointed. “Just take us in that direction, then you can turn right onto Central Street.”

We drove across the campus, saying nothing while I looked out at the blustery weather outside. We drove past rol ing green hil s strewn with the first fal en leaves of the season, and past wooded groves of conifers and ancient oaks. The brick-and-stone university buildings – cloaked in green ivy

with leaves quivering in the storm – always reminded me of old English manor houses, straight from a fairy tale.

That moment felt like a fairy tale, I thought soberly. A stormy, tempestuous tale, ful of uncertainty and regret.

Or maybe it was more like a hal ucination, and in the morning I would wake and discover it was al nothing more than a dream.

“It’s a nice campus,” Matt said.

We stopped at an intersection. The rain pounded on the roof of the car, while the wipers squeaked intermittently across the glass.

“How long wil you be visiting your brother?” I asked.

My gaze was transfixed by Matt’s hands on the wheel. They were thick, strong, cal used hands – the hands of a builder – and yet I remembered so

clearly how they had once held a pen…

“Not very long,” he replied.

I turned toward him. “
How
long?”

“A week or so. Gordon bought a boat a couple of years ago, and he’s letting me take it out before he brings it in for the winter.”

“He has a boat? What kind?”

“A sloop. Thirty-six feet. It’s at Marblehead.”

I tipped my head back on the seat. “That sounds great. I haven’t been sailing since high school. Can you believe that?”

He looked at me with surprise. “Why not?”

“Dad got rid of the boat last year. He wants a new one. So you’re on vacation just for this week?” I asked.

“Yeah. My boss is real y good. He gives me time off whenever I need it. I don’t get paid for it though.”

“You can pul over right here.” I pointed toward an empty parking spot on the main street.

Soon we were out of the car and splashing through puddles again, ducking through the rain, hurrying into the pub.