The Education of Sebastian & the Education of Caroline (50 page)

“Sebastian, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

My words seemed deeply inadequate.

He shrugged and looked away. “Old news, Caro, don’t worry about it.”

I struggled to think of something inconsequential to say.

“Do you like living in Geneva?”

Lame, but it was the first thought that came to mind
.

“It’s okay, but I miss the ocean.”

“Ah, no famous Swiss surfing beaches.”

He grinned, his equilibrium restored. “I haven’t found any yet.”

I smiled back.

“Are you done eating?” he said, impatiently. “Shall we go?”

“I just need to go back to my room and pick up a jacket and, I presume, my passport, but otherwise, yes, I’m good to go.”

He frowned. “You’re a journalist: you should always have your passport with you. Hell, that was in that fucking tedious lecture that Parsons gave the day before yesterday.”

“So you were listening,” I swatted back.

He shook his head and smiled.

“Yeah, yeah, just grab a sweater, too: it’s going to get cold.”

I nodded as I left him at the table, but I was puzzled. It was mid March: it wasn’t
that
cold. But when I saw him waiting for me at the front of the building, I understood why he’d told me to dress warm.

“Are you kidding me, Hunter? You expect me to get on that thing?”

Sebastian was standing next to a large, black Japanese motorcycle with French plates, his eyes dancing with amusement.

“Sure! It’ll be fun.”

I eyed the monster warily. It didn’t look like ‘fun’: it looked dangerous and cold.

“Do you know how to drive it?” I asked suspiciously.

“Caro, I rode it from Paris—I think I can manage 88 kilometers to Chamonix,” he said, grinning widely.

“I don’t know,” I muttered, shifting from foot to foot. “I’ve never been on the back of a motorcycle before.”

He looked surprised. “Really? Because we used to talk about riding from…”

He stopped abruptly.

Was it ever going to get easier to talk about the past?

“Oh, what the hell,” I said, shaking my head.

“Such faith in my abilities, Ms. Venzi.”

“If I get killed on this thing, I’m going to come back and haunt you!”

“Promise?”

“Oh, you’d better believe it, Hunter!”

He smirked, then passed me a heavy, leather jacket that was obviously one of his. It was old and battered and so enormous on me that my hands disappeared inside the long sleeves. It had that pleasant musty smell of old leather, and a faint trace of Sebastian’s own delicious scent.

He pulled up the zipper for me, and turned back the cuffs so I could free my hands.

“Suits you,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Then he handed me a shiny, black helmet that matched his own. He swung one long, denim-clad leg over the seat and held out his hand to help me mount the ghastly machine.

The seat tipped me slightly forward so my thighs automatically gripped his.

“Hold on tight,” he said, his voice muffled through the helmet.

I could tell from the tone that he was enjoying himself. I would really have liked to ignore the suggestion, but I was so terrified of falling off, that I wrapped my arms around his waist and hung on tightly. I could feel the hardness of his body beneath the leather and I knew for a certain fact, that agreeing to this trip had been a bad, bad idea.

The engine started with a gravelly roar that crescendoed as Sebastian revved the accelerator.

He started forward at a gentle pace, mostly for my benefit I had to assume, and soon we were traveling steadily through Geneva, before taking the lakeside road north-east to Lausanne.

The lake was a steely green-gray and flecked with white spume. It was serene and timeless and I felt my body start to relax. Irritating as it was to admit, I was beginning to enjoy myself.

Sebastian must have felt the change in my body because he accelerated smoothly, and bent forward slightly, weaving his way past the patchwork fields as we continued to circle the lake. I snuggled closer, grateful for the warmth of his body as the cool air flowed past us.

He slowed as we reached Montreux, giving me time to appreciate the chocolate-box prettiness of the old town with chalets and fairytale granite castle, and the contrasting modernity of the concrete and glass buildings, and hotels that looked like chateaux.

“Do you want to get a coffee?” he called over his shoulder.

I nodded enthusiastically, bumping my helmet awkwardly on the back of his, and gave him a thumbs up.

He drew up outside a small café that looked out onto the lake, then kicked down the stand and cut the engine. The sudden silence was very welcome and I gazed out across the water, feeling peaceful, at peace.

Sebastian pulled off his helmet and grinned at me.

“How was that?”

I struggled out of my own helmet and hoped my ‘hat hair’ wasn’t too scary.

“That was … surprisingly okay!”

He laughed at my bemused expression, then his eyes darkened in a way I remembered. It was a look of lust and need and deep, burning desire. Yes, I remembered.

I scrambled off the bike hastily and rubbed my hands trying to get some warmth back into my fingers.

“Are you cold?”

“A little: just my hands.”

Without saying a word, he took my hands in his and lifted them to his lips, heating them with his warm breath and rubbing them gently.

After a moment, I pulled free.

“That’s fine, thank you.”

He continued to stare at me, his expression serious. I looked away, confused and ill at ease.

“This café looks good,” I said, desperately.

I heard his soft sigh, but refused to look at him. Instead I strode into the café and found a table by the window.

Sebastian followed more slowly, sliding into the chair opposite me.

“Un espresso et un caffé americano, s’il vous plâit.”

“Do you speak French, as well?” I asked, curiously.

He shrugged. “Enough to get by. I never studied it.”

“And the Dari? The Arabic? How did that come about?”

“My first tour in Iraq. I was playing soccer with some of the local kids who used to hang around the Base. They taught me a few words and I just started picking up some phrases. My sergeant heard me talking to the kids and sent me on a couple of training courses. When we started pulling out of Iraq, they figured I should learn Pashto and Dari so I could be useful in Afghanistan. I found I could just
hear
it, all the different cadences.” He sneered. “Finally found something I was good at. Who knew.”

I was shocked by his dismissive tone.

“You were always good at lots of things, Sebastian. You picked up Italian really quickly.”

“That’s because I had an Italian girlfriend,” he said.

“Really? When was that?”

He rolled his eyes as if I was missing the obvious.

“Oh, right,” I muttered, embarrassed. “And you taught me to surf, don’t forget.”

He grinned, breaking the tension of his odd outburst.

“Yeah, that was fun. Did you ever keep it up?”

“I go quite often in the summer,” I said. “I bought a place in Long Beach and...”

I ground to a halt, worried by his stricken expression.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head, as if to cast off some grim thought, “It’s just … well, we used to talk about going to Long Beach and checking out the surf spots.”

“I didn’t have any other plan,” I said, quietly. “When I left you … when I left San Diego, I drove for eight days until I got to New York. That old Pinto I had, died crossing Verrazano Bridge. I got an apartment in Little Italy because I didn’t know anywhere else, and you mentioned it once. I lived there for eight years. You were right: I did like it.”

He closed his eyes and let his head drop into his hands. He looked so vulnerable. How such ordinary words can hurt us, I thought.

“God, Caro, when I think about how things could have been … it makes me a little crazy.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, softly. “But there’s no point thinking like that.”

The waitress returned with our coffees. I stared into the dark liquid, losing myself in the wisps of steam.

“I’m glad you went there; I’m glad you did the things we said we’d do.”

“Not all of them,” I amended.

“Fuck, if only…”

“Stop, Sebastian,” I said, forcefully. “No ‘what ifs’: what if we’d never gone to that Sicilian restaurant that night; what if Brenda hadn’t seen us; what if she hadn’t told your parents … there’s no point thinking like that. Like you said, it’ll just make us crazy.”

“I know you’re right, it’s just that…” He ran one hand over his hair in frustration.

“Hey, stop,” I said, grabbing his fingers. “It is what it is. We can’t change anything.”

He held on tightly, then rubbed his eyes with his free hand.

“Mind you,” I said, “if I ran into Brenda again, I might have to give her a quick slap.”

He smiled slightly.

“Yeah, I’d like to see that.” Then he frowned. “She felt really bad about what happened.”

I released his hand, and leaned back in my chair.

“You spoke to her about it—what she did?”

I was amazed. And annoyed. Maybe even hurt. Brenda the Slut was the fond remembrance I had of her. Yes, she’d certainly lit the fuse that had led to our explosive separation. I knew, deep down, that it would have happened anyway, but still. To hear that Sebastian had spoken with her, maybe even stayed in touch with her. Maybe even
slept
with her—I really wasn’t ready to hear
that
.

“Well, yeah. She kept bugging Ches until I agreed to see her. By then it was kind of obvious why she’d done it.”

“Obvious how?”

He sighed.

“She was pregnant—got knocked up by that bastard Jack Sullivan. You remember that older guy who used to hang out at the beach? Yeah, well, when she found out she was pregnant, she freaked out. Got this crazy idea in her head that if she could get back with me, she’d get me to sleep with her and pretend the baby was mine.”

He shook his head in disbelief at the fucked up behavior of a scared 18 year-old girl.

“She thought if she got you out of the way, we’d get back together. She had no idea what she’d done. Until after—and it was too late.”

“And did you? Sleep with her?”

“For fuck’s sake,” he said, his anger evident. “I told you. I didn’t even touch another woman for three years.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, continuing with the grim little story, “she had to face her parents eventually. Jack wouldn’t have anything to do with her, and she wouldn’t say who the father was. Everyone assumed it was me anyway.”

He rubbed his forehead tiredly. “But when Kimberley was born, she had all this dark brown hair and dark eyes; it was kind of obvious I wasn’t the father.”

“Kimberley?”

“She’s a great kid. I see them sometimes when I’m on the west coast. Brenda married a car salesman a couple of years back. He’s a pretty nice guy and good with Kimberley.”

I nodded slowly, finding I couldn’t dislike Brenda as much as I’d wanted to. Although I’d still have to slap her if I saw her again.

“Well, I’m glad it worked out for her—in the end.” I paused. “You didn’t tell me what happened to Donna and Johan. They were always kind to me.”

“Shirley’s stayed in touch with them. I saw them a few times after … Johan retired a couple of years back, and they moved to Phoenix. I heard he was pretty sick—leukemia, I think.”

“I’m sorry to hear that: they were a nice couple.”

Oh, poor Johan. Such a decent man. Poor Donna. Maybe I should write … no, they wouldn’t want to hear from me.

He nodded but didn’t reply.

“What about that funny little friend of yours—Fido? What was his real name … um … Alfred? Albert? Arnold! What happened to him?”

Sebastian didn’t smile, which was never a good sign.

“He enlisted just before me. He joined the Rakkasans, 187th Infantry. He died eight years ago in Iraq—IED. Poor bastard never stood a chance. He didn’t even make it to twenty.”

“Oh no, I’m so sorry!”

And I remembered that sweet kid who used to try and flirt with me: now dead. All those young men gone.

We finished our coffees in silence, each lost in the past.

Every time I thought we’d finished our stroll down memory lane, something else came along to hijack us, tugging us back to our turbulent history. It was like being on an emotional carnival ride—including the concomitant nausea, but seriously lacking the fun.

“Ready to head for Chamonix?” said Sebastian.