I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(10)

She drew away, leaned backward against the bench, and laid the backs of her hands against her closed eyes. When she could speak, she meant to apologize, but what came out instead was, “What a way to begin,” a fact that would only mortify her later that evening and that she would chalk up to being shaken and confused. Joseph would always insist that she knew, somehow, on some gut level, and she would argue that, with all her vast inexperience, she was the last person to instinctively recognize love. Still, it was odd.

But there in the museum, Joseph didn’t point out the oddness or tell her not to think twice about falling into his arms like a sack of rocks. He handed her his handkerchief and said, “I think we should go see the Lincoln Memorial,” and maybe because she was too exhausted or too startled or maybe—as Joseph forever believed—it was because she acknowledged—without knowing why or how—the inevitability of them, she said, “Well, yes, all right. I haven’t seen it yet.”

In the cool, pale, columned space, with Lincoln watching over them, noble as God, but still touchingly human with his crooked tie and open coat, like a man resting for a moment on a park bench or in an armchair, she found her grief rearranging itself, moving to the edges of her mind enough for her to begin to speak, more calmly than she could have imagined possible even an hour ago. She talked about her father, his life and death, and Joseph listened.





Chapter Four

Clare




Almost before I knew it was Zach, I knew he was stressed. It was there in his bouncing half jog, the way he brandished a giant bouquet like a sword over his head; it flickered around him like an aura. And even though stressed was much too mild a word for what Zach was, for the state that could overtake him like a fever, it was the one we always used. As the child of a bipolar parent, even one as successfully medicated as my mother, I sometimes wondered whether Zach’s moodiness was something more than moodiness. The one time I’d tried to gently broach the subject, he’d snapped at me and then deflated to a blank sadness that lasted so long, I’d finally apologized—almost entirely sincerely—and taken back what I’d said—much less sincerely—and I never mentioned it again.

But the way he’d pull vivacity over the surface of his anxiety like a crazily colored tarp never quite stopped freaking me out. For instance, I knew that when he got near enough for me to see him in detail, his cheeks would be fuchsia, his eyes bright, his hands restless, his laugh full of blazing sunshine; he would possibly make an extravagant gesture, like dropping to one knee to present me with the flowers. He would almost definitely call me “gorgeous.” And I’d be torn, as always, between wanting to run far, far away and wanting to wrap him in my arms and keep him safe forever.

Zach didn’t drop to one knee. Instead, he caught me up in a hug that lifted me clean off the ground and spun me around, no easy feat, since at five foot nine, I’m a mere two inches shorter than he is. The spinning made me feel ridiculous, like an actress in a gum commercial, but, once I was back on the ground, to make up for not appreciating his romantic gesture, I nestled my face into his neck and kissed it.

“Hey, gorgeous,” he said, pulling back a couple of inches and grinning so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. With one finger, I touched the twitching spot.

“Hello, you,” I said.

He handed me the bouquet. “I realize giving you flowers right now is like bringing coals to Newcastle, but I wanted you to have your favorite.”

Favorite. Before I even glanced down into the heavy, brown paper, ribbon-tied cone, I knew what I would find, and sure enough, there they were: twenty-four waxy blooms, splayed open like hands, freckled, edged in white, and as pink as the flush flooding Zach’s neck. Stargazer lilies.

Months ago, Zach had asked me what my favorite flower was. The question had been part of one of Zach’s I-want-to-know-everything-about-you-Clare sprees and had come sandwiched between “What was your field hockey number in high school?” and “What is your earliest memory?” I’d answered those two honestly (eleven and my mother singing to me while bathing my fingers in ice water after I’d grabbed a bee when I was three years old), but I’d lied about the flower. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that: coolly slid an arbitrary untruth into one of Zach’s mini-interrogation sessions. The exact circumstances of this particular lie were blurry in my mind, but I clearly recalled the surge of satisfaction telling it brought. Still, if I’d foreseen how that one tiny lie would blossom into bouquet after bouquet of stargazer lilies, God help me, I never would have told it. Not only am I, heart and soul, a white tulip girl from way back, I actually detest stargazers, which look fake to me even when they’re real, and the fragrance of which makes me instantly, overwhelmingly queasy.

Now, even in the open air, their cleaning-fluid smell was making my nasal passages want to scream. But when I looked up to see the nervous, hopeful expression in Zach’s eyes, I not only smiled in thanks but, as punishment for lying to him in the first place, lifted the bouquet to my face and took a long, hard inhale. He smiled back, and for a second or two, relaxed, but then, as if they had a mind of their own, his fingers began to flutter like a keyboardist’s against his thighs, and he said, “Remind me never to ride in a car for two hours with my brother again, okay?”

“Let me guess. Late Coltrane. No, wait. Ornette Coleman.” Like his father before him, Ian listened almost exclusively to jazz, the more beboppy and experimental the better. Zach avowed that, also like his father, Ian only did it to demonstrate his esoteric taste, not because he actually liked the music. “No evidence of pleasure whatsoever. Zero. No head nodding or toe tapping. It’s like he’s listening to white noise.” Whatever the effect on Ian, the wild, asymmetrical dissonance never failed to run like a razor blade over Zach’s nerves.