Hadley & Grace(56)
Hadley is almost to the door when Grace says, “I’m glad I met you.”
Hadley turns.
“Regardless of how this turns out, I just wanted you to know that. That . . . this is going to sound really stupid . . . but the last two days, well, they’ve been kind of fun.”
Hadley smirks, tilts her head, then straightens it and says, “Was that painful?”
“Excruciating.”
Hadley gives a full-wattage smile, then continues out the door, and for a long time, Grace stares at the spot where she was, knowing how dangerous it is to start liking someone.
She firmly resolves to stop. Miles is her family and her single concern. Hadley, Mattie, and Skipper—they are just people, a random crossing that someday she will look back on with fondness but that tomorrow she needs to leave behind.
She rubs her knuckles against her chest again, rubbing again at the lightness that is terrifying.
40
HADLEY
The highway winds down from the Sierras, bits of daylight peeking through the treetops. On either side of the road, giant pines soar toward the sky, an imposing, glorious landscape that makes Hadley feel small and her problems very far away. She allows herself to get lost in it—no outside world, no worries, no regrets—only the extreme beauty and the sheer awesomeness of it all.
But the moment they hit the highway, a strip of asphalt stretched to the horizon between crust-colored landscapes, her recollection of yesterday and everything that has happened over the past three days slams into her, and her emotions rise—disbelief followed by astonishment:
I am a fugitive from the law. A criminal?
I slept with Mark! An FBI agent I only just met?
She knows she should focus on the first, but her brain keeps getting stuck on the second, Mark’s laughter followed by his touch filling her mind and making it impossible to think about anything else.
Her whole life, she has never been a spontaneous person, always worrying so much about doing what’s right that the chance to do anything remarkable inevitably passes her by. But yesterday . . . yesterday, it was like all that hesitation and second-guessing miraculously fell away, and for the first time, she was entirely unconcerned about messing up or doing something she might regret—bold and fearless in a way she’s never been.
She thinks about how badly Mark wanted to be good, the way he stepped back as she hopped toward him, his bound hands in front of him, and the look of fear on his face, like she was someone to be scared of, the devil out to steal his soul. And maybe she was.
She laughs, and Grace looks over, then rolls her eyes and turns up the radio, as if trying to drown her out.
Hadley turns away and stares at the beige landscape through the window as she replays those remarkable minutes in her mind—twenty? Thirty? Maybe less? So little, and yet transformative. Like she is changing. Or has changed. She glances at Grace and wonders if it’s possible that some of her amazing courage has rubbed off on her.
So much laughter as they went about it—the fiasco with their clothes, then figuring out how to make it work with his hands tied and the ACE bandage between them. Never has she had so much fun having sex. Usually, it’s such a serious affair, or she’s taken it that way. But it doesn’t have to be serious. It can be fun. And funny.
But also something else. She tilts her head to think about it, define what she’s feeling. Easy, she thinks, feeling like she’s stumbled upon a great secret. Sex with the right person is easy, like finding the perfect match in a ten-thousand-piece puzzle. Snap. Look at that: we work. So easy.
Mattie did a report once on seahorses—stunning little creatures that mate for life. They choose a partner to tether their tail to, then float endlessly through the ocean together. But before they make that very important decision, they court, dancing around each other for days to be sure they are compatible, their systems in sync—their rhythms, pulses, and cycles.
That’s how it was with her and Mark, like they were seahorses perfectly in sync. She smiles as she thinks how in sync they were.
“Are you kidding me?” Grace says, and Hadley realizes she has giggled again.
She tries to stop thinking about it, knowing this is no time for such happiness. But she simply can’t help it. No matter how hard she tries, each time she pushes the thoughts away, Mark marches right back in, smiling and laughing and doing things to her—naughty, horrible, wonderful things—without asking her permission at all.
She is stunned to be feeling this way, like a teenage girl with a runaway crush. But that is exactly how she feels—giddy and breathless . . . perhaps even a little in love.
Could that be? Love? After so little time with someone?
She can’t remember the last time she felt this way. Has she ever felt this way? Maybe. Middle school? A crush on the lead singer in a boy band. But not like this, where it is real. Mark is real.
The station switches to a song about doing it better in the next thirty years, and she nods along with the lyrics.
Peanut butter and jelly. Ham and swiss. Fried chicken and waffles. For fifteen years, she has struggled, not understanding what she was doing wrong, all of it so hard. Then, wham, like a shade snapping open, everything suddenly so clear. Chemistry, the simple unique magnetism of two particular organisms toward each other. Yesterday, she and Mark were frothing and fizzing and bubbling all over the place, laughing and having fun and holding each other like it was the most natural thing in the world.