The Space Between Us (12 page)

Meredith got out first, as put together and beautiful as always. She waved, her smile familiar but not exactly setting me at ease. “Tesla! Hi!”

Charlie didn’t look anything like I thought he would.

He was gorgeous, of course. I shouldn’t have expected anything less, for a woman who looked like Meredith. I’d expected athletic, bronzed, blond and blue-eyed, the Ken to her Barbie. Charlie was something else altogether.

He stood about five-ten, still a good five inches taller than me and a few more than his wife. His dark hair had glints of silver at the temples and was brushed off his forehead, trimmed neatly around his ears and the nape of his neck. He had dark eyes with a few lines at the corners. Smile lines, too. He wore a teal shirt beneath his dark suit jacket, his tie a swirl of colors. He’d dressed up…for me?

“Tesla?” He moved forward, a hand out to take mine. The other closed over it, both his hands wrapping mine with warmth. “Meredith’s told me so much about you. Nice to meet you.”

For one long minute we stayed like that, the possibilities of what might lie ahead somehow palpable between us. Like something solid I could touch, if only I could make myself remove my hand from Charlie’s. He was grinning, I saw that much, before I realized I was also smiling like a fool.

He didn’t drop my hand, but released it gently, and I’m not going to lie, it sort of felt like it floated back to my side rather than fell. Every part of me felt a little bit like I was floating just then. Silly and giddy. It didn’t occur to me to mention that while his wife might’ve told him a lot about me, she’d barely said anything about him.

“Let’s go inside,” Meredith suggested.

Both of us followed her without a pause, and I don’t know about Charlie, but I was glad to be led so that I didn’t have to think about where to put my feet. She kept up the familiar rattle-tatta-tat of her constant conversation all the way, stepping aside without missing a beat to let Charlie open the door for her—and for me. He ushered us in, one hand alighting briefly on the small of my back, there and gone so fast I might’ve imagined it if everything about this night wasn’t already permanently engraving itself in my brain.

Charlie pulled my chair out for me.

Now, I was no stranger to good manners. My parents, despite their fairly free and easy ways, had been sticklers for “please and thank you.” But pulling out chairs went beyond their casual attitude. I froze for a second while Meredith settled into hers, and Charlie gave me a curious glance.

“Thanks,” I said.

He smiled. “Sure.”

“I’m starving.” Meredith grabbed up the menu. “What do you want, honey? What are you hungry for?”

“I don’t—” I began.

Then stuttered to a stop as Charlie said “I think I—”

It was Meredith who bridged the moment with laughter, making this okay. I liked the way Charlie ducked his head shyly, and covered his eyes with his hand for just a moment before he looked at me. He gestured for me to go first. A gentleman.

“I’ve never been here before. What’s good?” I studied the menu to hide the rising flush in my cheeks.

“I like the T-bone steak,” Charlie said. “Oh…unless you’re a vegetarian, Tesla.”

It charmed me suddenly that he seemed as nervous as I felt. “God, no.”

“Oh, our Tesla likes meat.” Meredith gave me a slow wink that made my cheeks heat further. “Don’t you?”

By then the waiter had come to see what we wanted to drink. Meredith urged Charlie to pick a wine, and they both argued amiably over which bottle to buy, while I sat and watched them be in love. Envy had no taste this time; envy was just a breath threatening to push me over.

“Tesla?” Charlie said at last, while the waiter looked on with barely concealed disdain. “What would you like?”

I knew nothing of wine, but they were both gazing at me expectantly. “Whatever you guys like, I guess.”

“Charlie,” Meredith said with the slightest edge to her tone, “order the merlot.”

He looked at her. “Sure. Okay. We’ll take the merlot.”

It was the only edge during the dinner. The rest of the time, the three of us laughed and carried on like the best of friends. Charlie had a terrific sense of humor and was what my mother had always called “wicked smaht” in that slight Boston accent that she hadn’t passed along to my brother or me. And he was sweet, too, making sure our glasses were filled and that we lacked for nothing.

“Tell Charlie about your summers,” Meredith urged as the waiter put our desserts in front of us.

“Oh. My summers.” I paused, fork hovering over the piece of chocolate cake. “What do you want me to tell him?”

“He’ll be fascinated,” Meredith said.

Charlie smiled. “Will I?”

“I spent most of my summers in a commune.” I poked the top of the cake with my fork but didn’t scrape off a bite. “My parents were both college professors at Franklin and Marshall College. They had this share in a place in upstate New York called The Compound. A real holdover from the sixties, though most of it was built in the seventies. It was really…umm…well…”

What could I say about The Compound? Just as the stories Meredith had asked me to tell didn’t sound crazy to me until I said them out loud to someone else, nothing about The Compound seemed interesting or exciting until I started telling stories. Which was why I usually said nothing to anyone who wouldn’t understand.

“Creative,” I managed to say. “My parents and their friends were creative.”

“They named you Tesla,” Charlie said. “I’d have guessed that.”

I laughed. “Yeah, after Nikola Tesla, not the heavy metal band.”

“What?” Meredith looked up from her crème brûlée. “I thought it was for the band.”

“Nope. Nikola Tesla, the father of commercial electricity.” I lifted my fork, heavy with the weight of chocolate and cream. “But I got off okay. I have a brother named Captain, and you’ll never guess who he was named for.”

“Captain America,” Charlie said.

“He wishes. No. Captain Ahab.” I snorted laughter, shaking my head. “He goes by Cap. And you can’t ask him about his name—he’ll deny it. He’ll answer to Captain, but he’ll never tell you about the Ahab bit. He thinks our parents were morons.”

“Wow. So this compound place. It was full of what, hippies?” Charlie poured more hot water from the small pot over the teabag in my mug. He and I were drinking tea; Meredith had coffee.

“Old hippies. The worst kind. Some of them who’d have been hippies if they’d been old enough in the sixties, but instead sort of had to live out their fantasies during summer break.” I paused. It had come out sounding more bitter than I’d intended. “They grew their own food. Lived communally, mutual finances, the works—at least during those three months.”

I didn’t mention the other communal living, the crèches where the babies and toddlers lived, cared for by whatever set of adults had drawn the duty for that day. The coed dorms for the teens, where we were encouraged to “explore” ourselves…and each other…in ways most parents were actively trying to restrict. Drugs and booze, nothing hard-core. Beer and weed, mostly. I didn’t mention the way the adults lived, either. Forming pairs and clusters regardless of the legality of marriages. They didn’t call it swinging. They called it “free living.”

“Sounds fascinating,” Charlie said.

“Told you!” Meredith waved her fork in the air.

When I was younger I thought it was amazing, like the summer camps a lot of my friends talked about, though my parents had always made it very clear we weren’t supposed to talk about the stuff that went on there. What we did on our summer vacations was filed under “stuff we only talk about at home.” And as a matter of fact, we didn’t really even talk about The Compound when we were at home.

Every fall, after three months of indulgence and orgies and who knew what else had gone on, my parents packed up me and Cap and took us back to our suburban development with the fenced-in yard of mostly green grass, the television, our socks and shoes. Hell, our clothes in general, which was always quite a shock after The Compound’s lax policy on clothing. We’d spend the winter doing the stuff every family seemed to, but come the end of school in the spring, I could see my parents getting edgy.

This wasn’t always a bad thing; anticipation of the summer ahead made my dad laugh more, leave off the lectures he was prone to give on behavior and grades and the expectations of society, and how we should (or shouldn’t) conform. With my mom it could go either way. She could either be slightly manic, packing up the house and singing while she worked, or she could snap and scream at the least provocation that she had “too much to do and not enough time to do it!” Later, I’d figure out it was because my mom didn’t love The Compound the way my dad did, and that she had very valid reasons. But back then all I knew was that our lives changed every summer in ways none of my friends’ ever did.

When I was still older I’d watch
The Howling
at a friend’s Halloween party. While everyone else was jumping and screaming at the scary bits, I was consumed by the atmosphere of the place in the mountains the lady reporter goes to—The Colony. Okay, so The Compound didn’t have shape-shifters, but it did have wolves in human clothes. Worse than the dude digging that bullet out of his brain or the lady reporter turning into that cute little kitty-wolf at the end.

Nothing bad had happened to me at The Compound. Nothing to scar me, nothing I’d need therapy for. It had happened around me, before and after me, but not
to
me.

I shrugged. “It was definitely not the sort of childhood you see in Disney movies.”

“Well, who the fuck has one of those?” Meredith shrugged and licked her fork. “I mean, even Bambi’s mom got shot by a hunter.”

“Shortly after my last summer there, The Compound was raided. Big drug bust. A couple people died.”

This stopped them both. I hadn’t meant to say it, especially not on this, our first date. But it had come out anyway, and I couldn’t be sure why.

“Mary Jane?” Meredith asked, perking up.

I shook my head. “Poppies.”

She looked confused, but Charlie let out a low chuckle. “Heroin?”

“Opium,” I said. “You can harvest it from the flowers and smoke it in that pure state without doing anything to it.”

Meredith shook her head. “Opium? Who smokes that?”

“Apparently,” I said drily, “wannabe hippies who want something a little stronger than marijuana.”

“Wow.” Charlie leaned forward a little. “How did that affect you?”

It was a kind question. But before I could tell him that I hadn’t been affected at all, that though I knew about the gardens with the flowers, I hadn’t even been at The Compound when the raid happened, Meredith interrupted.

“What’s it like?” she asked, leaning even closer than Charlie had. “Opium, I mean.”

I had to laugh. “Umm…I don’t know. I never smoked it.”

She looked disappointed. The conversation turned to other things, Meredith mostly leading it, but I caught Charlie gazing at me now and then. He didn’t glance away when I caught him. Neither did I.

By the end of the night, I’d figured out this was one of the nicest dates I’d ever had, no matter how unconventional. Maybe that was what I liked about it. The fact that there were two of them. With their attention on me.

Like Chase and Chance, Meredith and Charlie were a unit. Husband and wife, but more than that. Clearly friends. Comfortable enough with each other to know in advance where to laugh at the jokes, or to pass the cream and sugar without being asked. Yet also like those boys from my past, they were individuals, clearly told apart.

In the parking lot, I waited for them to ask me if I wanted to go home with them. I could see the question in Meredith’s eyes, though I didn’t know Charlie quite well enough to read his. I put a hand on the handle of my car door, pausing coyly, giving one or both of them the opportunity to make the offer.

I still wasn’t sure what I’d say.

“This was great, Tesla.” Charlie moved forward first.

I tipped my face, but instead of kissing my lips, his mouth brushed my cheek. His hand squeezed briefly on my hip, then withdrew. He took two steps back. I might’ve been embarrassed that I’d offered a lover’s kiss and been granted one from a friend, except that nothing about Charlie ever felt like it could make me embarrassed.

That was when I knew that when the time came, I was definitely going to say yes.

Chapter 16

A
t four in the morning it’s hard to be perky even if you’re a morning person, which I’ve never been. Some people I knew would just be rolling in to bed—my brother, for example, might even have still been out and about. I, on the other hand, had to get to the Mocha by five so I could open at six. There could be a riot if those doors didn’t open on time.

When I came upstairs, the dark form huddled at the kitchen table startled me into a terrified squeak. I stumbled back, barely keeping myself from tumbling down the stairs again by grabbing the edge of the door frame. For several agonizing seconds my heels hovered in empty space.
This is it,
I thought, strangely calm.
Look out below, I’m gonna eat it.

But then I managed to right myself, overcorrect and trip forward over my feet. I dropped my purse, spilling the mess inside all over the linoleum. I knocked into the round table hard enough to shift it.

“Nice,” said the voice I knew, even if darkness obscured the face it was coming out of.

“Dammit, Vic! You scared the shit out of me!” I put a hand on my heart, the other on the back of a chair. I really thought I just might faint before I forced myself to breathe. Shakily, I went to the sink to draw a glass of water.

I didn’t want to ask him why he was sitting there in the dark. Like a coward, I didn’t want to talk with him about it, and that wasn’t fair. Vic had done his share of being my shoulder. If he needed someone to listen to him, I of all people shouldn’t forsake him.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. He got up, went to the fridge, pulled out a beer. He didn’t crack the top. Just tapped it a few times before rolling it between his palms.