CHAPTER 19
Wesley drove through the night until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer and had to stop. Thanks to two years at Yorke, he had friends everywhere between Maryland and Maine. He crashed at his old roommate’s house and had a quick breakfast with him before heading on to Connecticut. By late afternoon he arrived in Westport. For nearly a day now, he’d been running on pure adrenaline, on the need to see Nora face-to-face. As he drove, two words echoed in his mind like the most melodic refrain.
Many waters…many waters…many waters…
Now back in the city he used to call home, he slowed down and had to ask himself exactly what he would do, what he would say when he saw her. His whole body tingled with nervousness as he turned into Nora’s quiet suburb with all the New York City commuters who tolerated their semifamous erotica-writing neighbor with wary amusement. By the time he pulled in front of their house—her house, Wesley corrected, not their house anymore—he could hardly breathe. He didn’t see her car anywhere and his heart plummeted. All he wanted was to look in her face again, into her eyes.
He walked up to the front door and knocked. When he heard no answer he knocked louder. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he felt his car keys scraping his knuckles.
His keys…
Wesley pulled his keys out and looked at them. Surely Nora would have changed the locks after he moved out. Wouldn’t she?
He found the key that he used to call his house key and slipped it into the front-door lock. Pausing, he took a quick breath and turned the key.
The door opened like nothing, as though those thirteen months of hell without Nora had been a dream he’d had when he’d fallen asleep at the school library studying, and now that he’d woken up, he could go home again.
Stepping into the living room, Wesley inhaled stale air. The house smelled abandoned, as if no one had been in it for months. He saw no piles of mail by the door. Were things that serious with her and Griffin Fiske that she’d have her mail forwarded? Griffin Fiske—New York City trust fund baby playboy with a whole lot of bad behavior in his past…and yet Wesley would almost rather find out Nora and Griffin were together than Nora and Søren. Griffin he didn’t like, didn’t know and certainly didn’t trust. But Søren…Søren he hated.
As Wesley wandered the house, memories came back to him. Memories he thought he’d buried…but they rose up with each step, all too easily resurrected. He’d loved studying on the couch in the living room. Nora had to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen, her favorite destination. And she’d always touch him as she walked by. Maybe just a tap on the forehead, a tweak of his nose, a squeeze of his knee or his favorite—a kiss on his cheek. The bookshelves needed a good dusting. Big and brown and carved with weird symbols, the bookshelves had been an estate-sale find of Nora’s.
“I think these bookcases belonged to druids,” Nora had said, running her small hands over the carvings.
“I think the druids existed prior to, you know, bookcases,” Wesley reminded her.
Nora pretended not to hear him, her usual MO when he attempted to bring reason and rationality into her flights of fancy.
“Virgins have probably been ritually sacrificed on these bookshelves.”
“Wouldn’t that be kind of awkward?”
“We’ll figure it out. Here, hop on the top shelf, Purity Ring. I’ll get the butter knife.”
God, what a weird woman he’d lived with. Weird and hilarious and beautiful and amazing… He missed her so much his stomach hurt to even think her name.
They’d been so good together in this house. So happy. Looking back he still couldn’t quite believe that Nora had asked him to move in with her. What was it about him? For days after she’d suggested he live with her and work as her intern, all he could do was stumble through his days asking himself, “But why me?” He’d been a nervous wreck when he’d moved in over that bitterly cold New Year’s Day of his freshman year at Yorke. The reality started to set in as he unpacked his clothes and rearranged the furniture in the room Nora had given him.
He’d wanted to put some posters on the wall but couldn’t bring himself to hammer any nails without asking Nora for permission. That night he’d wandered the house just as he wandered it now. Nora wasn’t in her bedroom, the living room, the kitchen. Finally he’d found her standing on the back porch in her heavy coat and boots. He put on his coat and joined her out in the cold.
For a moment he’d merely watched her in silence as she stood with her eyes closed and her face turned to the bright white moon. Inhaling slowly through her nose, she held her breath before releasing the air out of her mouth in a cloud of steam.
“Aren’t you freezing?” Wesley asked.
“Freezing my ass off. I’m coming in soon.” She opened her eyes and smiled at him.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I thought you might like to get settled in without me hovering over your shoulder.”
Wesley had to laugh at that.
“You remember I’m six feet tall, right? More like hovering at my knees, munchkin.”
Munchkin? He’d actually called the infamous Nora Sutherlin munchkin?
“I could do that if you want.” She flashed him a wicked grin.
Wesley pursed his lips at her.
“You’re terrible. You know that, right?”
“Actually, I’m pretty damn good at it. Just ask Søren.” She gave him a meaningful wink.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk about him.”
Nora blinked at him. Even illuminated only by moonlight, he could read every little expression on her face. Such a beautiful face…he wished then he knew how to draw or paint or anything so he could do some justice to that face, those big green-black eyes of hers.
“How come? You’ve never met Søren. He’s a very good person. Best man I’ve ever known.”
“You told me about him. Good men don’t hit women.”
“Good men only hit the women who want to be hit.”
“Women shouldn’t want to be hit.”
“Then it’s her problem, not his, right?” She batted her eyelashes up at him.
“Nora, you’re nuts. Come inside. My face is about to freeze off.”
“Can’t have that. Too handsome a face. Just a sec. I need one more.”
At that she paused and inhaled deeply through her nose again. She held the breath for a long time before releasing it almost reluctantly.
“Sorry,” she said. “I love that smell. A winter’s night… Does anything in the world smell better than a winter’s night?”
Wesley closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of winter—so crisp and clean and cold. In the distance someone’s fireplace burned and a trace of the heady wood smoke spiced the air. He could smell the memory of Christmas and the stark freshness of the New Year.
“It does smell amazing,” he’d agreed.
“This…” Nora inhaled again and her eyes narrowed. “This is what Søren’s skin smells like. Just like this. Even in summer this is what I breathe in when I’m near him. At night before I’d fall asleep, I would lay my face on his back between his shoulder blades and breathe in and in until I’d almost pass out. And he would laugh at me. Amazing, isn’t it? That someone’s natural smell could be like this?”
“If he bottled it and sold it, he’d make a fortune.” Wesley glanced at Nora’s small backyard. He wondered what she would say if she saw his backyard at home in Kentucky—all one thousand acres of it.
“God, I miss that smell. I love winter. It’s the only time I can smell him again without having to be around him.”
Wesley turned his eyes from the snow-shrouded lawn and back at Nora. A tear had formed in the corner of her eye and crystallized like a tiny diamond.
“You were crazy about this guy, weren’t you?” he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
Nora nodded. “Crazy would be a good word for it.”
“Why did you leave him?”
The sigh that was Nora’s first answer billowed out in front of her in a cloud of white.
“Winter,” she finally said, “can be so beautiful and so cruel. Cruel and cold. And if you live in the presence of winter you never have summer.” Nora stepped close to him and put her nose at his cheek. “You smell like summer. Like clean laundry hanging out in the sun. That’s an amazing smell too.”
Wesley blushed at her nearness. Her hair brushed his lips. He never dreamed someone smelling his skin could feel so intimate.
“We should go inside,” Wesley whispered. If he stayed out here with her another second, he’d warm them both up by kissing her. And that would be bad. “It’s too cold out here.”
Nora had reached up and laid her hands on his face, warming his skin with hers.
“It’s okay. It’ll be summer soon.”
Wesley walked in from the back porch and into the kitchen. He’d cooked a thousand meals for Nora in here. For food alone he could get her away from her computer during her writing binges. He walked up the stairs to the second floor and stood in the doorway to his old bedroom.
“Nora…” Wesley breathed as he stepped into his room. When he’d moved in, this had been a rather decadent-looking guest bedroom done up in, as Nora called it, “French bordello style.” He’d quickly made it his own in what he’d called “Not a French bordello anymore style.” And now it remained the same. He’d stripped the walls of his posters, taken his things out…but the same sheets covered the bed, the same pillows. The furniture still remained in the order he’d arranged it.
Had someone been staying in his room? Was that why Nora hadn’t bothered to revert it back to her taste? The bed definitely looked rumpled and recently slept in. A current of anger surged through him. He’d had the most beautiful, erotic, intimate moment of his life in that bed with Nora that night she couldn’t sleep, crawled into bed with him and touched him with her hand. He hated the thought of anyone but him or Nora on those sheets.
Backing out before the conflicting emotions of loneliness, anger and desire overwhelmed him, Wesley walked to Nora’s room. Maybe he could find some clue in there about where she’d gone and for how long.
Inside Nora’s bedroom, Wesley forced all memories back and out of the way. The last thing he needed was to recall the day he and Nora had nearly made love on her bed. He’d wanted to give her his virginity so much…and yet she hadn’t been able to take it. To this day he still didn’t understand why. But it was for the best now, he supposed. She hadn’t really wanted him. If she’d loved him, why had she sent him away?
Wesley stared at the bed and noticed something strange about the covers. Light streamed in through the window and revealed a thick layer of dust on the coverlet of her perfectly made bed.
And the truth shocked Wesley like snow falling in the middle of summer. The bitter, beautiful truth.
“Oh, my God…” Wesley breathed out loud, hope welling high and hard in his chest. His rumpled sheets. Nora’s dusty covers. “Nora’s been sleeping in my bed.”
“Actually, Wesley,” came a voice from behind him, a voice as cold and cruel as winter, “she’s been sleeping in mine.”
* * *
Michael woke up at midmorning to the sound of hooting. Actually, not quite hooting but his mind couldn’t think of a better word for it. This hooting seemed to originate from a Griffin and not an owl. And this Griffin apparently was perched on the roof above Michael’s room. Michael had crawled from Nora’s bed and back into his own at about five that morning. After their threesome last night, after Griffin had actually watched him having sex with Nora, Michael worried he wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye for a few days. But Griffin didn’t seem to be nearly so concerned with morning-after awkwardness. He also didn’t seem particularly concerned with gravity.
“Griffin?” Michael called up to the roof, where Griffin stood shirtless in the sunlight hooting and hollering in some sort of celebration. “What are you doing?”
“Six years, Mick!” Griffin called back. “Tell me I’m awesome.”
“You’re awesome,” Michael said without reservation. Awesome and amazing and smart and funny and sexy. But he kept all those adjectives on the inside. “What’s six years?”
Griffin strolled forward on the roof casually, as if gravity didn’t apply to him. Bending over, Griffin grasped the edge of the roof and lowered himself through the window and into Michael’s bedroom.
“Six years today, Mick.” Griffin grinned so broadly his smile eclipsed the sun. “Six years today I have been clean and sober. Not a drop of alcohol. No drugs. Nothing.”
Michael couldn’t help but smile just as broadly back. He threw his arms around Griffin in a spontaneous hug but as soon as he felt Griffin’s warm body against his, his heart raced and blood started going places he didn’t want blood going. Michael pulled back immediately and took two big steps back.
“That’s incredible. I’m so happy for you. You should celebrate,” Michael said quickly, trying to cover his nervousness.
“I am. Always do.”
“How?”
Griffin grinned. “New tattoo. I add on to my ink every year.”
“Awesome. So you’re going into town?” Michael hoped Griffin would invite them into the city with him. Six years clean and sober—Griffin shouldn’t celebrate that alone.
Griffin shook his head. “Nah. Spike—she does my ink—she’s coming here tonight. Tattoo party. And guess who else is invited?” Michael shook his head. “You are, Mick.”
“That’s fantastic. I can’t wait to watch.” Michael knew he was grinning like an idiot, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Watch?” Griffin stepped past him and into the doorway of Michael’s room. He leaned against the door frame and gave Michael a long, meaningful look. Michael couldn’t quite make out what the meaning of the look was, but he sort of wished Griffin would look at him like that forever. “You’re not just watching, Mick. You’re getting one too.”
Griffin winked at him and left the room, still hooting in unabashed joy, a sound that lifted Michael’s heart so high that he almost didn’t hear what Griffin had said.
Once alone, he remembered.
Michael raced to the hallway. “Wait! Griffin? I’m what?”