You're Still The One Page 10

  He chuckled, deep and sweet, but I didn’t stop to catch that inviting gaze again. I couldn’t.

  I might turn around and head for the bedroom.

  The red barn was decked out in white twinkly lights, hay bales, and a few chickens who wandered in and out. An amazingly good honky-tonk band belted out one country song after another on a stage. The barn was jammed with people in jeans, cowboy hats, and boots, and rows of tables holding traditional American barn-dance types of food—fried chicken, baked beans, chili, cornbread, corn, and salads. In typical American fashion, there was also Asian, Mexican, and Italian thrown in.

  Jace brought ribs in huge tin pans. “I’m the rib man,” he joked.

  “I’m the pie woman.” I’d baked three apple pies. Not because I’d been planning on going to the barn dance with Jace, oh no.

  Later I took tiny slices of different pies: apple, pecan, lemon meringue; then bites of pies called Coconut Devil, Explode Your Taste Buds Chocolate Pie, Bite Me (raspberry-rhubarb), and Sexy As Hell.

  Sexy as Hell was my favorite—it was a butterscotch pie.

  The pie competition was fierce here, I thought, then laughed.

  I met a lot of people. A number of them knew my dad. I was shocked to find that they liked him.

  I asked Pearl about this as we shared a slice of pie called Wake Up Your Romantic Life, a three-layer slice of chocolate heaven topped with chocolate chips and whipped cream.

  “ ‘Pearl,’ he told me once, ‘I hate myself for what I did to Allie and MaeLynn. I hate myself. Hate myself. Hate myself .’ He said it three times. I told him to stop making life gruesome for everyone else and get out there and be friendly and helpful to atone a little bit for his past.”

  “Did he do it?”

  “He sure did, sugar. That’s why these people liked him.”

  I watched a chicken strut by. Did I still hate my dad? If so, how long was I going to hate him for? How long was I going to let myself be angry at him and the past? The hate was hurting me, not him. How much more of my life was I going to allow him to negatively affect?

  “He said he bought the house and apple orchard to make amends to you, Allie.”

  “I think he bought it to make fun of me and how many apples I used to eat.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. “He called me apple-core face. One time he broke my mother’s purple-flowered china plates, which I used to cut apples on. I still have the pieces.”

  “I’m sorry, sweets, about the plates, but he did buy the apple orchard for you as a gift and as an apology.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not at all. He wanted you to have all the apples you could ever want. He told me that.”

  All the apples I could ever want. I could hardly wrap my mind around that one. My father had wanted to give me a gift.

  “He did love you, Allie, and your mom. He was simply too demented with alcohol to show it.”

  I sniffled and Pearl squeezed my hand. I saw Jace laughing with some other cowboys. One of the cowboys was the police chief, the other was a lieutenant with the fire department, the third owned property in Hawaii.

  Man, he was better-looking now than he was when we were younger.

  He was a whole heck of a lot of man. Real man.

  Not like my dad at all. No, Jace was polar opposite to my dad.

  He turned and saw me smiling at him and wandered over, setting his beer down on the way. He put a hand out to me and I grabbed it.

  “Now, there’s a tall glass of manhood for ya, honey,” Pearl drawled. “I’d drink that one up.”

  Jace swung me into his arms and out onto the dance floor.

  We danced most of the night: line dancing, the swing, square dancing, the two-step. I found my rhythm with him, my beat. The rhythm and beat I’d always had with him.

  The barn dance was, without a doubt, the most fun I’d had in years. Jace swung me around the floor, sat close to me on hay bales while we ate ribs and laughed with others, snuck in more than a few kisses, which tingled those nether regions, and held me close.

  When we arrived at his house, well, things got out of control.

  Jace kissed me straight out of my mind as we left that red barn, the white lights behind us twinkling through the night.

  He kissed me when he opened the driver’s side of his truck.

  He kissed me when I was sitting beside him in the truck, then pushed me back on the seat and kissed me until I could hardly breathe and I felt like we were teenagers again in Yellowstone.

  He kissed me on the drive back to our homes, my arms wrapped around him.

  In the middle of the street, where he could turn left to go to my house or right to go up the hill to his house, he stopped. Outside it was quiet, inky dark, the apple orchards dark shadows.

  Inside that truck, the windows were steaming up, my white lace shirt was off, and he’d unhooked my pretty yellow lacy bra. My hands were in his black hair, my chest arched against his, those talented hands of his doin’ their thing . . .

  “Allie,” he said, his own voice ragged. “Spend the night with me, please. Please, Allie.”

  I couldn’t even answer. His hands were making mush of my brain, and all I could do was feel and breathe hard, like a locomotive.

  “Please, honey, come home with me.”

  He kissed me again, long and seductive, holding me close. I ran my hands straight up his chest and he groaned, inhaling sharply. Jace was my best friend and the only man I have ever trusted in my life. “I can’t resist you for one more day, Jace. Let’s go.”

  He had that truck up the hill in record time and parked in front of his house.

  When he parked, he lifted me up and straddled me across his lap, one kiss following another, wild and fun, passionate.

  He pulled me out of the truck and scooped me up in his arms, my pretty yellow lacy bra and lace shirt now hanging off my fingers. He opened his front door, then kicked it shut while I kissed his neck and face, and we stumbled up the stairs and onto his bed.

  His bed was huge, the blue bedspread cushy, the moon shining through the windows. I let my hands, my mouth, and my whole body do what they had longed to do since the second I’d seen him at the hospital.

  I did not look away from him when our eyes met. I matched each kiss, each caress, each arch, each stroke.

  I welcomed him, welcomed us, welcomed the love I felt for him.

  I didn’t fight that love, and in the middle of it all, I cried, and he became teary eyed, and we wiped those tears away, then kissed again, rising and falling with the same passion we’d felt forever.

  I woke up in the middle of the night, the moon still glowing, with Jace wrapped around me, his arm over my waist, my fingers entwined with his. I felt his steady breathing behind me. For the first time in so long, I felt at peace, safe, happy. Grateful. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

  I did not allow myself to think about what I’d done.

  That would have ruined it all.

  I woke up again to Jace’s mouth on my neck when the sun began to rise and I turned to him, our passion burning us up in a whirlwind of incredible lust and love. I felt it in every touch, every kiss, every roll, and I heard it in his voice as he held me close, his voice gruff and raw. “Allie, I love you. I have never stopped loving you, babe.”

  It wasn’t hard to say. It slipped right out, as if I’d been saying it to him for years and years. “I love you, too, Jace. I love you so much.”

  I smiled at him, and we made love again.

  It was so fun.

  Chapter Twelve

  We fell into a happy rhythm and I ignored the screaming in my head.

  I ignored the voice that said I was being deceptive and dishonest, lying by omission.

  I ignored my dad’s voice, echoing back and forth, telling me I was trailer trash, Jace was too good for me, I wasn’t enough, I was stupid.

  I ignored the hurt I would cause Jace when he knew the truth, which was the worst thing of all.

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nbsp; I ignored it all. I was inexcusably selfish.

  He worked, I took care of the animals, and I actually grew to like my father’s home, now that almost everything of his was gone. My mother’s flowered quilt was on the couch, Pearl’s apple tree hung above the fireplace, and my vases were filled with flowers.

  I baked pies for hours.

  On a whim I took three to a nearby café and they ordered two dozen.

  I was contacted again by the high-end retail stores in Seattle, Boston, and Houston. I put them off, told them I would have an answer for them soon. I did not miss my couture clothes and impossibly high heels at all; jeans and boots were suiting me perfectly fine.

  Maybe I didn’t need to hide behind my clothes anymore. If so, why was that? What had changed? Was it simply my love for Jace? Was it me coming into myself? Was it my father’s death?

  I played with those questions for a long time.

  When he wasn’t working, Jace and I were together.

  We hiked, rode bikes, had picnics, and we lay on our backs at night on his deck, or in a field, and located the constellations.

  I read Jane Austen and crime thrillers beside him in bed while he read medical journals. We rafted down the Deschutes River one weekend, and drove to the beach and ran through the waves another weekend. We kissed under a waterfall, and it tasted as sweet as before.

  He took photos of us and of nature, a hobby he said he had stopped since we broke up. “No time, and no Allie to come with me when I took the photos.”

  I held his hand. He took a photo of our hands, entwined. Then he kissed each finger, up my arm, across my chest to my lips, and we were soon stripping quickly.

  We put together a puzzle of Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone.

  “I haven’t put together a puzzle since you and I broke up, Allie. Hurt too much.”

  “Me neither, Jace.”

  He leaned over to kiss me. I ended up naked on top of the puzzle on the table.

  We talked, the flow easy, of the most serious of subjects, and down to the tiniest and most inane detail, like what kind of salad dressing was our current favorite.

  We made hot, simmering love all the time, three times under the constellations, as if catching up on what we’d missed out on. We used birth control. I didn’t tell him the truth.

  It was one more thing that he needed to know, he had a right to know. I told myself I was selfish and unforgivably hurtful. If he knew the whole truth, he would not only be hurt by what happened, by my secrecy, he would not be rolling around under the covers with me.

  I would vow to tell him, and then I’d look at him, at his smile, those gentle eyes, his hardened face that softened up just for me. Soon I’d be in his arms, comfortable and thrilled at the same time, hoping to be naked, laughing and feeling like I was going to cry, all at once.

  How I loved Jace.

  And every day, when I wasn’t lit up by this golden light of love for him, when we weren’t together, I fell further and further into a swirling, sad, lonely pit.

  I reached for Jace one more time when the sky was still dark. He kissed me before he left for the hospital and drew his finger over my lips. “I love you, babe,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too, Jace.” I brushed my fingers through his black hair, cupped his face.

  When his truck was down the hill, I headed home and began packing.

  I left the note for him on his kitchen table. I told him I’d be back in a week. I left him an apple pie. I told him I loved him.

  He would say I was running away again, and he was right, but I had to do it anyhow.

  I had to come to peace with my dad before I could come to peace with Jace and me.

  I loaded a suitcase and my dad into the trunk. Yes, my dad, in his urn, was loaded up in my trunk. I didn’t miss the symbolism there.

  The first place I drove to was my dad’s trailer, about an hour away from Schollton. It was clearly abandoned and leaning to one side, the grass grown up around it, the stairs rotted. I opened the unlocked door and peeked inside. The smell almost knocked me over. The scent of cigarette smoke, unwashed people, and stale liquor came at me like a putrid wave. It was battered and broken inside. I held my breath as one appalling memory after another tunneled through me.

  I had lived here.

  I was from here.

  This had been mine and my mother’s life.

  I pictured my father’s looming presence. I saw where I’d slept, the window he had broken now taped over. I saw my mother cowering, beaten. I could smell my own fear, my pervasive loneliness.

  It made me sick. I had to lean over in the tall grass when I raced outside.

  I stumbled into the apple orchard, sucking in air, surprised it was still there. I hiked up and down every single row, one mind-blowing, soul-kicking memory chasing after another. My nerves rattled remembering how many hours I’d spent there, eating the apples, carving them, throwing them in fits of fury, hiding in the branches when I had to escape the harangues of my dad or I wanted to cry for my dead mother. I felt pity for the lost little girl I used to be.

  I dumped some of my dad’s ashes on the steps of that trailer, swaying with nausea.

  When I was done, I headed to the place where that terrible thing happened. I found the rock. I picked flowers. I left flowers on top of the rock, my tears rolling down onto the petals as I sat there.

  In the distance I saw our trailer, a metal coffin for a girl’s spirit.

  I would not ever return again; I knew that.

  I drove to Bigfork, Montana. I took two days to do it, stopping in Coeur d’Alene on the way. It gave me a lot of time to think. Most of the time I thought about how much I loved Jace. I pretended we could be together, daydreaming about it for hours. When the daydreams ended, I’d be back in abject hopelessness.

  I stopped by my mother’s grave and left a huge bouquet of pink tulips, her favorite. I sat there in that cemetery and cried, then I started talking to her, remembering all the good times, and those cherished memories finally started to squish out the despairing ones.

  We had been happy in Bigfork. So happy.

  I drove to our old house and climbed out of the car.

  “Allie! Is that you?”

  I turned. It was Mrs. Ashley, the woman who had begged my dad to let me stay with them.

  “Mrs. Ashley!” I ran to her with open arms. She met me halfway.

  “I would recognize your mother anywhere. Sweetheart, you are her mirror image, with all that gorgeous hair and the golden eyes.”

  I had dinner with her and Mr. Ashley. It was such a pleasure, a relief, a gift, to be able to talk to someone about my mother. She brought out three huge boxes right away. Inside were all of my mother’s things that I’d so wanted to keep—her perfume bottles, her tablecloth with the yellow tulips, the tiny mirror with the ornate gold frame, her picture of an apple orchard bathed in sunlight, my pictures with the pink ballerinas. I pulled out two Jane Austen books and clutched them to me.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ashley,” I said.

  “Oh, dear. You are so welcome. I loved your mother. She was a good, strong woman. She would be so proud of you. She loved you very much. I wanted to mail these to you sooner but I didn’t have your address. Your mother changed her last name when she arrived, didn’t she?”

  I nodded. “She had been trying to hide.”

  I left none of my dad’s ashes in Montana.

  From Bigfork I went to Yellowstone. I had pretended I was someone I wasn’t when I was with Jace. I pretended that my dad’s voice, telling me I was ugly, too thin, bony like a skeleton—a weird, dumb kid with a huge mouth, who was addicted to apples—was not ricocheting around in my head.

  I’d been in college for three years and Yellowstone’s incomparable beauty called to me for the summer. I had checked out a book on Yellowstone as a high schooler, and because I loved being outside, loved the serenity that nature brought to me, Yellowstone seemed like the ultimate heaven of natural wonders.

>   Jace told me he loved me about three weeks after we’d met by a waterfall that flowed into a stream. I cried. No one had said I love you to me since my mother died. Every time he told me he loved me, I became teary, and he wiped away my tears. We talked about almost everything. We talked about his childhood, which had been rocky, too. His mother had had four husbands. His father had taken off when Jace was a baby. His mother lived in Florida. He did not see her much. He wanted a family of his own, completely unlike the one he had grown up in.

  I almost shared the truth about mine, but I couldn’t. I was trying to pretend I wasn’t trailer trash, and it had been engrained in me not to talk about being poor.

  I was vague, said my mother was dead, my dad wasn’t that nice.

  We started making love about a month after we met. Our passion was this uncontrollable . . . force. We used birth control.

  But one time we didn’t.

  I thought it was an okay time in my cycle.

  It was not an okay time.

  We both cried when we parted, Jace for medical school and me to finish my senior year of college. He was so masculine, so manly, even then, and there he stood, tears rolling out.

  We would write, we would call, we would stay together. He would be eight states away.

  I love you, Allie. I will always love you.

  I love you, Jace. I love you with all my heart. I miss you already.

  We’ll be together soon, at Thanksgiving.

  I stayed three nights in Yellowstone. I visited all the places Jace and I visited.

  The journey had, finally, brought clarity from a morass of colliding emotions. I had been dishonest with Jace years ago. I had denied him the truth of his own life, which was unbelievably wrong of me.

  I dumped none of my father’s ashes in Yellowstone, either.

  I drove back toward my dad’s house early the next morning.

  When I finally arrived in Schollton, I dumped some of my dad’s ashes in the curve of the road near the steel goat, where he’d flipped his truck upside down. I thanked Pearl for taking care of my animals, then asked her if I could dump some of his ashes in her flower bed, because she said my dad had worked with her in her garden.