3.

Elise

 

Though I’m glad to be out walking with Mark, as he’s managed to turn what started out as a craptastic day into something tolerable, I can’t shake this prickles on the back of my neck feeling. A being watched feeling.

By who? Who knows? Too many people have grown tired of my presence, despite my only arriving this morning, and would like nothing more than to lay claim to being the hero who ran the traitorbitchwhore out of town.

What I do know, I’m here for the week whether they want to run me out of town or not. And I’d like nothing more than to let Mark help me forget, even for a short while, that it’s because I have to bury my father. He’s the first man I’ve felt such a strong attraction to since my heart was broken by a Hollister man so many years ago. And not by the one who should have. That ship had sailed. The one part to the story the town actually got right. Although I was never the traitor, bitch or whore the town accused me of being. No one would listen to the truth, no one that is, except for Beau. Too bad we had so many strikes against us.

Too bad the same goes for me and Mark. Poor timing, poor location. We’re a Shakespearian tragedy waiting to happen. He’s a Montague and I’m a Capulet.

Maybe he’d be willing to visit me in Chicago. Long distances can work, right? Especially in the face of such an immediate connection. I feel it. He feels it. I see it in the way he looks at me. His eyes convey that same heart stuttering, knees buckling, hard to catch a breath sensation I’ve been plagued with since our first meeting. Though, it’s more than that. When we talk, when I held his hand for the first time, he brings with him a sense of history aside from the obvious physical attraction. One I really don’t understand, but if he were willing, I’d be willing to try too.

Scarily, it’s the same kind of connection I’d felt locking eyes with Lo seven years ago, only without the history. Apparently I’m a sucker for a bad joke. That’s when it happened, I connected with him the minute “A duck walked into a bar.” Thank goodness Mark’s a bartender and not a comedian, or I might never get myself to leave.

Sure I started dating again, I mean, once I actually began leaving my apartment. But most of those were first dates only. Not because any one of them came to the date with exaggerated quirks. Not a one still lived with his mother, only ate yellow food or owned an abundance of “kitties” he had to run home and tend to. Generally speaking, they were perfectly fine men, just… Sitting through dinner made me feel more like I’d been dining with a distant cousin than a potential mate. Mark’s the first man I’ve met in five years who I’ve felt like touching, and not in an innocent, ‘Welcome to Thanksgiving dinner, Cousin Jackie’ kind of way.

I actually never thought I’d entertain the idea of sex again, either. But honestly, if Mark asked me home with him right now, I don’t know that I’d turn him down. What does that say about me? Probably that I need to get laid.

As we walk back toward my dad’s house, Mark pulls a smooth, black rock from his pocket. He continues to hold my hand while flipping the rock up in the air and catching it in his other hand on a continuous loop. Or action. Whatever you want to call it, he does it.

“What’s with the rock?” I finally venture to ask, tearing my eyes away from the hypnotizing movements.

There’s something fun and almost naughty the way he leans into me. “It’s my sex rock.”

I totally stop walking. A sex rock? I’ve never heard of a sex rock. “What exactly is a sex rock?” I ask in a low voice, ready to be let in on his secret.

With his crooked smile growing, doubling in size, I wait.

The anticipation just about to kill me when he opens his sexy mouth to speak again. I know I’m about to be let in on something big.

“It’s just a fuckin’ rock,” he says, and he winks at me.

“Asshole!” I shout, drop his hand and stomp off, more upset with myself that I’d fall for something so obviously stupid. But I don’t get far as he snags the back of my shirt pulling me to a stop.

“Wait. Wait. I was just teasin’ you, darlin’.”

“What did you just call me?”

“Darlin’. Why?”

“Someone used to call me that a long time ago.”

“Well, you are quite the darlin’. But if you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.”

“It’s fine. You just caught me off guard.”

“You still mad at me?” He quivers his bottom lip, flutters his eyelashes.

“No. But my car’s just there.” I point to the street where I’d left my car parked while we went to lunch. I wish we hadn’t gotten here so soon. “I have to find a hotel before I do anything else. Had been hoping when I rolled into town that Hadley would let me stay with her. She wouldn’t even let me in the house, so I really have no choice now.”

“Okay, come to the bar when you’re checked in.”

Mark pulls me closer resting his hands on my upper arms, not a hug but it could be if he shifted those arms just a bit more. His eyes scan my face, watching my eyes anticipating his kiss then they drop to my lips which suddenly become so dry I have no choice but to lick them. Then his gaze drops lower to my chest raising and lowering with slow exaggerated movements mirroring that same anticipation he sees in my eyes. Finally. Finally he bends his head in a slow descent, and I just know I’m about to get my first kiss in five long years to actually mean something. Look at him, how could a kiss by this man not mean something wonderful?

But then he stops, lips hovering a good five inches from mine, he closes his eyes, swallows hard then shoves back away from me, dropping his hands from my arms and everything. What just happened?

I’m still standing in stunned silence when he clears his throat. “Right…” he starts. “Go find your hotel.”

“Finally realize who you’re with?” I whisper, angry now for having wanted it so badly and for allowing myself to want in the first place.

The tears forming in the corners of my eyes, they’re from dust. And if anyone asks me, that’s what I’ll tell them. Although nobody is going to ask me because the one person in this town who acted like he cared just shot me down.

“Elise,” he calls after me as I hurry away, but hell if I’m going to turn around. As much as I’d like him to, he doesn’t come after me either.

We both know I won’t be at the bar tonight or any other time. Get in, bury my father and get out. That’s the plan.

I climb inside my car and wrotely buckle my seatbelt. Instead of starting the engine, I lean my head on the steering wheel letting those “dust” tears unabashedly fall. I haven’t even cried this hard over my dead father yet, which makes me cry even harder.

Guilt’s a bitch.

The tears for Mark go on for exactly five more minutes. That’s as much as I’ll allow myself, and wipe my eyes—checking the level of splotches and puffiness in the rearview mirror—then turn the ignition and drive.

This town has exactly two motels. Not hotels. These are motels which haven’t been updated since probably the early nineteen sixties. I don’t need updated. I’m on a business trip not a vacation destination.

When I walk into the small lobby of the first motel I’m greeted with about five seconds of a welcoming smile before the old man behind the desk realizes who just walked into his place of business.

“Hey, Mr. Ritchie. How are you?”

“Elise,” he says my name as if choking on a sour lime.

Pretending to ignore his tone I continue on as if he’d welcomed me with a bear hug. “I need a room. Just a single will be fine.”

“We’re out.”

“Okay, I’ll take a double, then.”

“Sorry, we’re all full up.”

“But the sign out front says vacancy.”

“Don’t care what the sign says. We’re all full up.”

“I get it,” I say to him as I turn to leave.

But over my shoulder I hear him say, “Your poor father.” So Mr. Ritchie is team hate-me-for-my-dad.

Of the two motels in town I’d rather stay at the Twilight, but as that’s now out my only other choice is the Daniel Boone. I should at least be able to get a room though. They aren’t known for being picky about their clientele at the Daniel Boone. It’s the kind of place you go if you’re having an affair, shooting up or trying to get your date out of her prom dress.

Forget about being updated, I’m not sure this place has been cleaned since the early nineteen sixties. Located on the outskirts of town it has two stories, with rooms over the lobby in the front and then a row of single story rooms behind the lobby.

I walk past the crumbling stucco which used to be white, through the door with the frame eaten away by termites. I’m only hoping I don’t leave with bed bugs as a souvenir from my time here.

A little bell jingles over the door when I enter. And a big head of brown, curly hair and boobs about a cup smaller than mine but packed tight into a white blouse about a size smaller from them and only buttoned at the fourth button down, hot pink bra showing through along with the cleavage spilling out of it, moves from a back room to behind the desk. That’s when I know it doesn’t matter if the bed has bugs or not because there’s no way I’m getting a room here today.

She sees me before I can make an anonymous escape. “Oh how the mighty have fallen.” She sneers at me. Sneers.

I huff out probably the most defeated breath since arriving back here. “Shayla,” I greet her, and huff one more breath for good measure or to remind myself I’m still alive.

“You were never good enough for him and because of it, he’s dead.” Of course she’d say that since she thought she’d almost had him before that fateful day in front of the Whippy Dip when I met Logan. She’d never almost had him. And he left me well before I ever left him. As for the dead part, what happened to Lo was tragic. But I didn’t put the shotgun to his head. I didn’t pull the trigger, though arguing that point now is meaningless. For the rest of her life I’ll be the whore who stole and then killed her boyfriend. “We ain’t got room.”

“Clearly.”

She seems upset that I refuse to engage her in confrontation. I know it sounds bad, but she wanted to be me. She wanted the kind of relationship I had with both Logan and Beau. She wanted prom queen and head cheerleader. She wanted nights in the family cabin off the river on route eight.

Maybe there’s a small chance that eventually she might have gotten it, all of it, if I hadn’t come to town. But I did come to town and now she works the reception desk at the Daniel Boone judging me on things she really has no clue about, based solely on rumors set in motion by an unstable man who was in a bad place in his life. Period.

“You need to walk your stuck-up, whoring ass back outta town.”

“I’m leaving as soon as I bury my dad.”

“Well…you best leave Beau alone. Caused him enough heartache.”

“Wait—Beau’s in town?”

Shayla shifts on her hip, folding her arms across her chest. The look is made to intimidate me, but I can see through it. She messed up. She messed up and she knows it and she’s pissed. The glare she shoots me is supposed to make me wish I was never born. Jokes on her, I beat her to that punch years ago. Hard to get the blame from an entire town for the death of their one in a million golden boy, Logan Hollister, and all the fallout afterward, and not think everyone’s life would’ve been easier if I’d just never existed.

With the way the town talks, one would think I assassinated the president, not that my ex-boyfriend committed suicide. Though, the ex part he liked to keep under wraps. Apparently “good girl” Elise fit better with the highly cultivated façade he wanted to continue to put out for the town, then the cadre of female companionship he chose to surround himself with once he decided to be done with me. All the lies and half-truths flying around, kept in circulation by Margo and Lenore. Lenore had no idea what her son put me through, what he took from me. Then because Beau had my back, I get the reputation.

I don’t know, maybe it is my fault. Maybe if I’d seen the signs sooner?

Unfortunately my name’s not George Bailey, and my angel Clarence hasn’t come around to set me straight yet. I thought maybe he had with Mark, but what an unfair expectation to put on a man I’d just met. And the way he pushed me away earlier, I was way off base. Or should I say, way off the ‘Mark’? It probably isn’t really him that gets to me anyway, more his jokes. I’m a sucker for a sense of humor in a good-looking guy. I love a man who doesn’t take himself too seriously. And it’s hard to take yourself too seriously when telling lame jokes. Come to think of it, about the time we hit senior year, Lo had stopped telling me jokes. As his girlfriend, shouldn’t I have caught on to that?

The silence hangs between us as Shayla comes to grips with the reality that her body language does nothing to me.

I guess she couldn’t take the standoff any longer as she purses her lips and says, “He’s been back a few years now. Don’t think I’m tellin’ you where to find him.”

“Have a nice life, Shayla.” I do my best to keep my head up as I walk out the door.

If Beau’s in town, then he knows about my dad, which means he knows I’m in town. I would’ve thought with our history, he’d have reached out to me, tried to get word to me through Hadley or Mr. Delavigne. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve lived away, not in a town like this. In a town like this, everybody goes to church or graduated with you, your brother or sister, or grandmother or aunt. If he still lives here, he’d know exactly where to go to best get a message to me. Since he hasn’t reached out to me, I can only assume he still doesn’t want to see me.

That hurts.

He and I, we were so close once. Hours spent on the phone. His visits home, or mine to Lexington. When everything began to spiral with Logan, he was my shoulder to cry on. My rock. Until he wasn’t.

But now there are more immediate concerns for me other than being ignored by Beau. Namely, I have no place to stay until the funeral.

The park across from City Hall used to bring me comfort when my mom hassled me, or Logan and I had a fight. So I head there. It only takes ten minutes to drive from the Daniel Boone, though it feels as if I’ve been transported back five years, the last time I came here with Beau. The last time I poured my heart out, and he pretended to understand. The last time Logan showed up and Beau stood behind me as I delivered him life changing news.

 

***

 

There’s a heavy pounding on my window and I become acutely aware of the hulking figure looming just outside my door. The second thing I notice which should have been the first thing I noticed is that it’s dark out now meaning I fell asleep. Without thinking I reach to the door lock. It’s locked. Then I make the mistake of looking up. Mark. Mark, the hulking figure, stands right outside my window asking me to roll it down. Then I make an even bigger mistake by doing what he asks and roll down my window.

He makes no attempt to talk but before I can register what he’s doing, his face is in my face and his lips are on mine. I tense my shoulders expecting with the way he came at me, a hard, passion-filled kiss. But that’s not what he gives me. He gives me soft, strong lips, pressing gently. He breathes in like he’s breathing me in, locking in a memory to call back up for later, maybe. I don’t want him to have to call up this kiss for later unless I’m with him and we’re reminiscing together. The thought of which scares me because we’ve known each other, what, a day? It just doesn’t make sense. Nothing about he and I makes sense. Like how it is that when I bring my hand up to cup his face, to bring us closer, to deepen the kiss, that he has the wherewithal to break the kiss?

Taking my hand in his, he brings it to his chest pressing both our hands above his heart. Only then does he speak. “I’ve been waitin’ a long time for that.”

“You have?”

“Elise, you know I have.”

“How?”

He doesn’t remove my hand from his or his heart, and doesn’t answer that question but does ask one of his own. “Why you sleepin’ in your car? Weren’t you supposed to check in at a motel?”

“No vacancy.”

“Dammit.” Mark leans his forehead against mine, closing his eyes he sighs as if making a decision, then he pulls back and gives my hand he’s holding a squeeze. “Come on. You’re stayin’ with me.”

“No Mark, you don’t need this kind of trouble knocking on your door. Despite how phenomenal that kiss, or that I’d cut off Shayla’s left nipple to experience you again, the fact is I’m not your problem.”

“Shayla’s left nipple?”

I shrug.

At first he smiles that not quite white, crooked smile at me. Then emo-boy’s mood shifts, and he pins me with his mesmerizing stare, so many things being said in his stare I can’t keep track of them all. It’s the kind of stare to make you squirm in your seat, or maybe that’s just me. I squirm.

“Darlin’. Now. Follow me.” A quick peck against the tip of my nose and he turns to walk back toward a massive Dodge Ram pickup truck. From the streetlamp illuminating the park he’s parked under, I can tell it’s black.

So this is where I make the biggest mistake so far and follow him. Two streets over from my dad’s—or I guess Hadley’s house now—I continue to follow him. And wouldn’t you know his place is located three houses down from Beau’s parents, George and Margo, and two houses down from Dave and Lenore, Logan’s. His house, the only tiny house on the block, sits between the two massive ones to the left and right, looking like a small child compared to the big, expensive parent houses. He’s kept it up nice from what I can see, but it still looks out of place.

How many times did I walk past this place going to see Logan or Beau? Mark pulls into the drive motioning for me to turn in behind him. I do it, but I don’t want to knowing what he’ll face tomorrow from his neighbors. They may not know my car anymore but I have no doubt on who will be the first to identify the Illinois license plate as being mine.

“Pop the boot,” he tells me in his Kentucky-ese for “open the trunk.”

Mark grabs my bags.

I slowly, hesitantly climb out. The strap of my small red travel bag he shrugs over his shoulder while my matching suitcase he just picks up to carry, not bothering to extend the handle and wheel it.

Little bungalows like his are rare in this neighborhood anymore. Although they used to be plentiful, peppering every street in town, now buyers would be hard pressed to find one outside River Street, which is basically the poorest section of the town proper. Where the new subdivisions started going in back in the eighties, homeowners abandon tiny with character for cookie cutter HOAs.

He has a porch when no other house on the block has a porch. Somehow it makes me respect Mark even more for choosing the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of houses.

“What’s earnin’ me that smile?”

“I like your house.”

“Yeah?”

He grabs my hand right as I answer him. “Yeah.”

Outside has nothing on the inside. Most guys his age would gut the inside of an old house like this. New. New. New. Dark woods. Granite countertops. Stainless steel appliances. But not Mark. The first thing I see are the built-ins. That is, great built-in shelves filled with books and knick-knacks. The carved arches. The refinished hardwood floors. He hasn’t gutted, he’s restored.

“I take it back, I’m in love with your house.” I fawn.

And I think I hear him say, “Well that’s a start.” But my heart is still beating so wildly loud in my chest that I probably didn’t hear him correctly.

When he drops my bags next to the sofa it just makes it real that I’m in Mark’s house. That I’m staying in Mark’s house. I could picture myself spending a lot of time here, despite being in the land of Hollister.

Two steps, his hand falls gently on my hip while the other tilts my chin using his thumb and forefinger until I’m looking in his eyes. I guess he’s decided against denying me more kisses. I guess this when he leans his face close to mine. Then we’re touching mouth to mouth, harder than before but not more urgent. No, he kisses me as if we have all the time in the world. That there isn’t a town full of people wanting to run me out or that in a couple of days they’ll get just that. And right now, wearing his lips, it’s hard to imagine how fast that day will get here.

“I’m gonna be good,” he tells me with his lips still pressed against mine. “Don’t wanna confuse you.”

“Think I’m okay with confusion.” I offer back through my dizzy, fallen under his spell, lust pants when his mouth slides from my lips slowly up my jaw.

Apparently I’ve given the wrong response here as he stops the kissing all together to hold me away from him.

“Not now. Not with this,” he says firmly.

I wish my body would listen. Undaunted by rejection, his voice, his touch, the memory of that kiss shoots chills over my now much fevered skin.

I know he feels it. I know he feels it when his eyes drop from my face to my arms. Neither his voice nor his look dampen my libido. They just up my embarrassment.

“You don’t want me,” I say really to myself. I mean, I just threw myself at this man. “I’m so sorry.”

Though I can’t look at him. I just can’t, and stoop to pick up my bag, ready to change into my pajamas and sleep the rest of this humiliating night away.

Luck’s never on my side. But luck’s really not on my side as I try to pull away to make my grand escape, he grips my shirt with both hands keeping me rooted to the spot.

“Look at me.” Not a soft request, he’s outright ordered me.

But I can’t. I’m humiliated. The man is practically a stranger. A stranger. Yet I threw myself at him again, like some attention-starved hussy.

“Elise. Please look at me.”

What could I do? He said please. So I look. And wait. He keeps me waiting for a beat contemplating something. With his eyes so intense on me I’m kind of freaking out on the inside.

“I want you.” He finally lets me off the hook. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. But I can’t let myself have you ‘til you know everything. And it ain’t time for you know everything. Couple more days.”

“I’ll be gone in a couple of days.” I remind him.

“Not if this thing growin’ between us is meant to be. And I think it’s meant to be. Only reason you found yourself in my bar of all places.”

“I don’t believe in fate, Mark.”

“Not talkin’ fate. I’m talkin’ somethin’ which started brewin’ between us years ago. You don’t remember now, but you will. We got sidetracked back then by Logan Hollister. Not gonna happen again. No more sidetracking. So we gotta wait.”

He had no right to bring Logan into this and frankly, that ticks me off. Yet I don’t get to argue this point. Not when he kisses my forehead, shoving toward the bathroom, which I can clearly make as the bathroom because the door is open. With a pat on my behind he tells me, “Now go change for bed.”

“Drop the blankets on the couch.” I need him to hear my anger. “And just so you know, I will be gone in a couple of days.”

I stomp away.

He laughs.

Jerk.