The Ghostwriter(23)
He returns to the page, his thumb licked before he flips to the next.
The thought of him reading my work is unnerving. There is a reason that I don’t allow anyone to see works-in-progress before completion. I once walked in to see Simon hunched over my computer, the mouse moving, my manuscript scrolling by. I’d snapped. It’d been our first big fight, one where I screamed and he’d scorned and we’d finally agreed, four hours and a hundred tears later, to never ever, ever touch each other’s stuff. I wouldn’t mess with his World of Warcraft laptop, and he wouldn’t so much as enter my office without prior permission.
He lifts the pages, and I tense, watching his face closely. “This is good.”
It isn’t a gush, but I still feel a knot between my shoulders relax.
“You wrote enough for me to get the tone of it. And I feel like I have a good handle on the characters.” He stands, one hand supporting his lower back, and I wonder exactly how old he is. Fifty? Old enough that I feel confident that he will never attempt a pass at me. Not that that’s been a common problem during my life. Most men dislike me, a condition that Mark will eventually reach, assuming he hasn’t already hit that precipice.
“Why do you love me?” I whispered the question against Simon’s back, my hand running along the skin, from freckle to freckle, connecting the dots.
“I love everything about you.” His voice was barely audible over the television, and I wanted to mute the sound, and ask the question a hundred more times.
“Even my quirks?” I was hesitant to pose the question, a small part of me worried that, somehow, in our year together, he hadn’t noticed them. Maybe, once he did, he’d run.
At that, he turned, his big frame shifting in the bed, his profile illuminated for a brief moment by the television’s glare before he was facing me. “I love your quirks most of all. You’re the most unique woman I’ve ever met, Helena. It’s what first attracted me to you.”
“I thought it was my supermodel looks.”
“That too.” He leaned forward and I felt his arm slide around my waist, the sheet between us, almost a cocoon of embrace as he pulled me closer and pressed his lips to mine.
“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.”