“I’m starving.” Mark speaks, and it snaps me back to present, the memory of Simon replaced by an old guy who could use a good round with some ear clippers. “May I take you to lunch?”
May I. How pleasant on the ears, a simple rule that Bethany never could master. With her, it was always ‘can’. Can I… I’d corrected her a hundred times, but she still learned by example. And Simon was a terrible example.
“Helena?” Mark is standing now, looking at me with an expectant air. Now that he’s here, we should knock out some work. There is still an outline to do, rewrites to complete, plus the awkward act of depositing him into his truck and nudging him in the general direction of the New London airport.
My stomach picks that unfortunate moment to growl. I look down at it and weigh the idea in my head. “Okay,” I concede. “But just a quick lunch.”
He’s barely had this truck, yet it already smells of male. It’s been so long since I’ve been so close to a man, so long since I spent this much time with anyone, other than Kate. And Kate knows my limits, she doesn’t press my buttons, and she understands her place. This man is different. He will be a bulldozer, one who slowly grinds over my carcass and then backs up to complete the job.
“What do you feel like eating?” Mark shifts the truck into drive, the lurch of the cab causing me to grab at the door, the other hand tightening on my seatbelt. He doesn’t look over, his eyes on the road, his voice calm.
“Thai.” It’s an easy answer, a food I have been craving for years. In the Life After, I eat at home, an easy way to avoid an Approach: the sympathetic and slow shuffle of a stranger, their hands reaching forward for a handshake or hug, an overwhelming need to say something to the widow of Simon Parks. You’d think that, four years later, locals would have forgotten, but they haven’t. That’s the problem with a small town and a beloved teacher. Anything tragic sticks in their history books. I need an action and reach forward, opening the glove box, finding and pulling out a vehicle rental contract.
“Mark Fortune.” I read, settling back in the bench seat, and tucking one foot under my thigh. “Sounds like a porn star.”
“Helena Ross sounds like a librarian.”
“Ehh…” my voice drifts off, my life comprised of little more than books and regret. “That shoe kinda fits.” I read further. “So, Mr. Fortune, you’re from Memphis.” I eye the top of the contract, one dated yesterday. He stayed the night. In this little town just off the Sound, where no one but soldiers and college students live, the wee bit of locals a hodgepodge of whaling descendants and nosy families.
“Yep. Born and bred.” He stops at the exit of my neighborhood. “Right or left?”
“Left. What’s Memphis like?”
“It’s nice. I have a ranch on the outskirts. My daughter goes to Ole Miss, so it’s close.”
His daughter. I shift in the seat, remembering that painful fact. “She’s a freshman?”
“Yep.” He turns to me, the corner of his mouth lifting ruefully. “The house is a little empty with her gone.”
My bad luck continues. A year earlier, and his callused life would have been busy with teenager drama and prom fittings. He certainly wouldn’t be sticking around, sucking up my days with dining and conversation and other time-wasting events. He reaches forward and flips on the radio, a country song softly rolling out from the speakers. I return to the contract.
“This thing is eighty bucks a day?” A bump in the road jostles the contract and I look up. “Turn left. You should have gotten insurance.”
“Insurance is a rip-off.” He seems unworried, steering the wheel with only one hand, his eye contact with me unnecessary given our high rate of speed.
I distract myself with the page, my stomach twisting when I get to the extension of the rental. “This contract is for a month.” I shove the pages in his direction.
“I figured I’d stick around.” There is a spot of traffic ahead and he lifts his foot off the gas, his calmness growing more frustrating by the second.
“I don’t want you to stick around.” I mean it, but the words come out flat, as if I’m having second thoughts. I’m not. I want my empty house back. I want my rules and full control over every aspect of my environment. I want something that, two weeks ago, my prognosis stole from me. Once Mark starts writing, I’ll be at the mercy of his pen. Can I tell him my story? Can I give him my heart and trust him with it?
We come to a red light and he turns his eyes from the road to mine. “I won’t get in your way. Just give me a little bit of time each day, and we can knock this out. Two hours a day, whenever you want. In a month, this could be on its way to the publisher.”
An entire book, written in just a month. He could do that? It sounds like heaven, to have everything off my chest in that length of time. It also sounds like hell, to go through all of that pain, that quickly, with a stranger.
I look away from his eyes and pull on the top of the seatbelt, my chest suddenly tight. “I don’t really work well with others. Literally and figuratively speaking. Plus…” I hesitate, unsure whether to mention the elephant sitting between us. “You and I don’t have a history of getting along.”
“You’re referring to the emails.” He tosses out our history as if it’s minor, a cutesy squabble between friends.
“Yes.”
“I thought we got over that.”
Did he? He thought that all of these years, all of these hateful words… had they not meant anything to him? Maybe the issue is that he knew. He knew, for all these years, that he wasn’t Marka Vantly, that it wasn’t a gorgeously annoying supermodel who was showing me up on bestseller lists, and outselling my print runs. He knew, and probably guffawed his way to the bank, and found me and all of my snide remarks amusing. My face flares with embarrassment, and I’ve never felt so stupid. “Stop the truck.”
“What?” He glances over, his foot not moving from the gas pedal, the truck still humming along at a pace that will surely kill me. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want to ride with you.” And I don’t want to write with him either. How could I? Everything I knew about him is false. “You’re a liar.”
“A liar?” He finally slows, pulling the truck to the side of the road, the vehicle bumping over a curb and coming to a stop on the shoulder, so close to the guardrail it almost kisses it. I reach down, fumble for the handle, and crack the door open, the guardrail in the way, preventing it from opening. I feel claustrophobia swell and think of the safe room, the locked steel, being trapped. “Helena.”
I turn to him. “I’m stuck. Pull up and give me more room.”
“We’re on the side of a highway. I’m not letting you walk down it in this traffic.”
I close my eyes, slow my breathing, and try to think of a giant meadow, of wind, of open space. “Then pull forward. Start driving. NOW.”
I don’t open my eyes but I feel the truck lurch forward, the ease of the seatbelt as it loosens, and I relax, reaching forward and hitting the window control, welcoming the burst of fresh air.
“How am I a liar?”
He’s either an idiot or obtuse, and I’d place a bet on either. “You’re a man.”
“Yes.” He turns his head, one hand loose atop the steering wheel, and I glance nervously down the road. “And that bothers you?”
I shift in my seat, trying to formulate an explanation that I haven’t yet worked through myself. In some ways, I’m happy—overwhelmingly so—that he looks the way he does. I’d been intimidated by Marka’s perfection, her pouty lips and sex appeal. When you combined that with her writing, her sales, her following… it had been unfair, had pissed me off, put our relationship on uneven footing that had always left me the loser. Now, that intimidation factor was gone, the competition diluted, my vision of her gone.