Four nights later . . .
“. . . and then, if you can believe, they raised my flood insurance rates!”
“WHAT?” Gabe shouted.
“FLOOD INSURANCE!” Dion Gomez from the music store bellowed at him. Beaming.
Gabe just nodded sympathetically. He’d missed the entire first part of that sentence and had only caught a word here and there of the entire conversation, but he’d had about five shouted, tipsy conversations since he’d arrived at the Misty Cat for the Chamber of Commerce mixer an hour and a half ago, and his mood was rapidly abrading. Blue Room’s greatest hits were for some reason being played on an endless loop, and sometimes Gabe was in the mood for Jasper Townes’s uber-soulful rasp punctuated by the otherworldly howls. Other times he yearned for the days of LPs so he could take and smash it over one knee. Or hurl it like a discus.
He was three beers in because he couldn’t bring himself to drink the wine, and he’d started to feel them, which made him feel his age. And he was missing another softball game for this. Right about now he would love to take a hard swing at something, hear that SMACKing sound, and watch it soar to unfettered freedom.
No sign of Eden.
See, if she was here, no amount of shouted conversations or howling Jasper Townes would have made a difference.
She wasn’t here. And yet, after that soccer game moment, he’d been so sure they were reaching a sort of tipping point. After all, tonight was their cut-to-the-chase-aversary.
Greta from the New Age Store maneuvered through the crowd, then stopped and stared at him wide-eyed.
“What?” he said, this time a little churlishly.
“Gabe, your aura is really . . . well, you ought to have brought a fire extinguisher with you this evening, that’s all I can say, because that thing is . . .” Greta fanned herself with a hand and rolled her eyes in an ay-yi-yi fashion.
He scowled at her.
Greta just batted her eyes knowingly, smirked, amused, and took herself off to unnerve somebody else sufficiently enough to persuade them to buy a tarot reading in the back of her store.
Gabe took another few ill-advised steps toward the bar. Glenn was doing a booming business. He really liked all of Eden’s relatives, the ones he’d met anyway. He saw Glenn when he had lunch at the Misty Cat or drank after a game, at shows, at Annelise’s soccer games . . . if only Eden was as ubiquitous in his life as her dad was.
And there was still no sign of her.
Had she chickened out?
He was beginning to feel like he’d rearranged his schedule on a hope. Like a lovesick teenager. Not like a man who was patiently following a plan through to its conclusion.
What on earth was he doing? What were they doing? He’d been playing the long game, but the long game had begun to feel like a rubber band drawn way, way, way back, and everyone knew that hurt like a bitch when it finally snapped. Was her very elusiveness the attraction? Yet how was it that she didn’t feel elusive—she always seemed to reverberate through him even when she was nowhere near. But every little hit he took of her made him yearn for the next. He wanted her with a ferocity that made the sheets of his bed feel woven of burrs and thistles. That’s how much he tossed and turned at night lately. And he knew she wanted him, too. He’d never experienced anything like their chemistry. But, you know, life. It was what it was. Just because it felt meant to be didn’t mean it would, in fact, be. It seemed, however, inconceivable.
And then after all of that, when he turned around, there she was.
She was wearing a black dress. He’d never seen her in a dress. It hugged her slim curves and her knees were exposed, and a sweep of pale collarbone glowed and her hair was up and her neck was long and slim and pale.
It was hardly the uniform of a siren.
But he knew it was, so to speak, an anniversary present for him.
But all he could think of was pressing his lips to that place just above her heartbeat. Trailing his mouth down, down, down, closing his mouth on her nipple, hearing her gasp. Pressing her body against his.
He couldn’t say a damn thing. He stared, silent and hungry, mute with gratitude and relief, irritable that he should feel all of these things that made him feel as though he had no control at all. Understanding that things might be beyond one’s control didn’t stop him from wanting it.
She looked up at him, and he could have sworn it was like looking in a mirror. Her expression, that was.
And she made a beeline for him. Or, rather, she wove through the crowd, ninjalike in her black dress, and arrived before him, almost momentously.
She deserved a compliment, something gracious, eloquent, subtle.
She deserved to be maneuvered out into the moonlight and kissed like she was precious, made of blown glass.
She deserved a question, crafted in sweetness and subtlety, that would bookend the first part of this courtship.
What emerged from his mouth was: “What’s the best sex you ever had?”
What happened was her jaw dropped.
She stared at him in pure astonishment.
And then she yanked her phone from her purse and stared at it.
“Something’s come up, Gabe. I gotta run.”
She spun around and made a break for it just as fast as she’d arrived.
The next day . . .
Gabe grasped the sides of his skull gingerly. His brain was pulsing in there like a subwoofer. How much did he actually drink last night? It was a bad sign that he couldn’t remember. Cheap wine plus good beer plus . . . did he actually stay and do a shot after Eden took off like a . . . shot?
It was the first time he’d ever gone to school with a hangover, and he felt like a real sleaze. Even though he could cope, hands down. It wasn’t going to happen again.
That’s what enigmatic women would do to you.
Mrs. Maker peered in. “Mr. Caldera, I’m about to go pick up lunch. What can I get for you?”
“Oh, anything, Donna,” he said. “As long as it’s tuna on rye.”
Tuna was his preferred hangover food. Which seemed counterintuitive. Maybe it was a sort of punishment for overindulging.
She beamed. “I know just the thing! Oh, here’s Ms. Harwood. Thank you for the flowers, Eden, dear. They’re so lovely. I think he may have a minute or two before his next meeting, so don’t keep him long. I’ll be right back.”
And there she was in his doorway. Wearing jeans and a slim-fitting pale green ribbed turtleneck.
“Eden,” he said. Stunned.
“Annelise forgot her lunch—again—so I brought it to her. And I thought I’d bring this in here.”
She came around to his side of the desk to slide something in front of him.
“Here’s the sign-up sheet for the dunking booth. Annelise thinks we’ll make the most money when you’re sitting up there, so we’re hoping you’ll take this shift.”
She leaned over to point at something, and when she did a long strand of hair she’d tucked behind her ear swung down and brushed against his jaw. It smelled like coconut and flowers. It was like a magic wand—it banished his hangover and filled his brain with what felt like helium and his blood with what felt like lava.
He was a man in quiet torment.
He stared down at it and said nothing.
For a long time.
Neither did she.
And then he finally looked up.
“Listen, Eden, I’m sorry about what I said last night. I was out of line.”
“Well, I did show you my clavicle. You were overcome. I get it. I didn’t run away because of that, Gabe. Sheesh. Sorry I did that.”
“Are you sure? Because it was practically like watching the roadrunner flee the coyote. Like a vrooming sound and cloud of dust.”
“You thought that question scared me?”
“Didn’t it?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. She tucked the hair back.
Damn.
“I thought about it all night, as a matter of fact,” she said.
He almost closed his eyes at the notion of her thinking about sex all night long.
He did and didn’t want to know the answer, he realized.
He wasn’t going to press the point.
“So why’d you split like that?” he asked.
“Mmm . . . well, Annelise texted that Danny—that’s my assistant and babysitter—had accidentally locked himself out of the house on the roof when he went up there to get Peace and Love down. Peace and Love can get his own sweet self down, but Danny is quite a Boy Scout and saw the need to do the rescue and . . .”
“Everything turn out okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got the ladder out, and Danny used it to get down and Peace and Love came down over the fence.”
“Oh good. Because I was on pins and needles there for a moment.” His voice had gotten softer. A little drowsier.
Somehow he—they—were closer now.
“Welcome to my life,” she murmured. “Thrills, chills, spills, never a dull mo—”
He stopped her sentence with his lips.
Why then? He didn’t know. It just seemed like the only reasonable thing to do. When you touch something hot, you jerk your hand away; when something you want overwhelmingly is right there, you take it.
His defenses were shattered by the hangover and the coconut hair.
After a millisecond of frozen astonishment, he could feel her go soft as smoke, yielding, which made him nearly savage with want in a very primal way.
But they ended that kiss.
Tacitly.
He sat back a little.
Closed his eyes. Sighed.
Opened them.
They remained motionless, their faces still a mere few inches apart. He could feel her breath, faster now, against his chin.
“God, Eden, it was . . . I’m sorry . . . your face was right there and . . . I couldn’t . . .”
What? Bear it any longer? Wait for one more millisecond?
He could see a faint old scar on her chin, probably from a childhood bout of chicken pox or some such. He was instantly ridiculously jealous of anyone who knew how it had gotten there. He wanted to know her life story. He wanted to protect her from future scars and heal all the old ones. It struck him distantly that these were somewhat feverish and irrational thoughts to be having three minutes before the class bell was due to ring, with the blinds slitted a little so that any determined person could peek in if they bent just so. Mrs. Maker couldn’t; sciatica was her besetting plague. Thank goodness for such mercies.
The second hand of the clock ticked forward.
“The stapler’s right there, too,” Eden whispered finally. “Are you going to kiss the stapler?”
She was a devil woman.
“I’ll kiss anything you want me to.” He made it sound like a blood vow.
Her pupils flared like black fireworks.
Above them, the skinny hand swept past another second.
She gasped when he slid his hand up through her hair and held her fast. This time he went in for a take-no-prisoners kiss, designed to melt bones, stop time, erase the memories of all kisses that had come before, what-the-fuck-did-they-have-to-lose kind of kiss. Molten, savage, skillful. They were on the clock.
He was a guy who knew how to make a point, and he never half-assed anything. Clearly, neither did she. Silk, heat, tongue, lips—the taste of her roared through his bloodstream, tightened all his muscles, sent red alerts to his groin. He curled one hand into the edge of his desk, a reflex against floating up to the ceiling, because suddenly whatever boundaries he’d once had melted away. And damn, she gave as good as she got. It was a hot, deep, dangerous tangle of tongues, the slide of lips. Nearly as carnal as fucking. Sweet. Jesus.
When she moaned softly, low in the back of her throat, guttural, helpless pleasure, he slipped his hand from her hair and sank backward into his chair.
One second before the bell rang.
Eden staggered back a few feet as if she’d just gone a few rounds on the roundabout out in the playground.
Classroom doors banged open. Rustling, the thunder of feet, shouts and laughter and the metal clang of lockers.
He closed his eyes briefly against the spin of the room.
He opened them again and turned his face up to hers.
If he’d had to assign a word to her expression, it would have been amazed. A little more nuanced than that, but still.
Her face was pink. Her eyes were hazy and hot.
He thought, I bet that’s what she looks like when she wakes up.
He thought right then he would literally die if he didn’t learn soon how she looked when she woke up.
There was a lot he could say right now: apologies and so forth. All of that would have been superfluous. She got the gist.
His fate was in her hands.
He didn’t regret it.
In fact, he was pretty sure he hadn’t so much taken a risk as issued a dare.
“Well, um, I’ve got to . . . I’ve got to get . . . get to . . .” Eden’s pitch, at least, was cheery. But her voice a husk. “See you tonight at the carnival, I suppose.”
She waved her arm vaguely at the hall outside his office.
“Of course.” His own voice had taken on a phone-sex timbre. He cleared his throat. It wouldn’t do for Mrs. Maker to think he was trying to seduce her when she delivered his lunch.
He would have stood up, like a gentleman, but he wasn’t eager to show off his erection to anyone else who might happen to walk in. “You know where to find me if you want me.”
He didn’t think he could make that any clearer.
She pressed her lips together. Then touched her fingers to them.
She turned and wobbled just a bit when she left, and he thought it was only right that a woman who had altered his own center of gravity to experience a little axis-tilt of her own.
It wasn’t easy to drive from the school parking lot back to Eden’s Garden while the dirtiest, hottest, sweetest kiss she’d ever participated in reverberated in her cells like a million dramatic little cymbal clashes, especially since she hadn’t scheduled “Get a grip” into her calendar that day. She didn’t even know how she’d draw that on her whiteboard.
Gabe Caldera should be a controlled substance. There was no way on earth anyone could kiss him and not want to do that again.
And again.
And again and again and again.
Such that logic and reason, when they finally ventured back into her awareness at around the third stop sign from home, felt like intrusions into reality, not a restoration of it.
But ultimately they infiltrated her giddiness (“Dear Diary—Gabe Caldera kissed me!”) and a rather aggressive, almost punitive, sobriety set in.
Making out with the principal in the middle of the day when Mrs. Maker could unexpectedly pop in to ask, “Was that tuna or turkey?” wasn’t something any responsible mother should be doing.
But where did she think this was headed all along?
She’d been following a fascinating bread-crumb trail of questions right into the gingerbread house of sex. That’s what she’d been doing.
Maybe Jan Pennington had seen something in her all along. Some feral quality she’d managed to keep metaphorically trapped like a spider under a coffee cup, something she’d once done at the Misty Cat Tavern when she worked there as a teenager and completely forgot about, until it made a break for it the minute an unsuspecting customer lifted it. Whereupon said customer released a scream so blood-curdling another diner fainted face-first into her scrambled eggs. Boy, was her mom pissed at her.
So maybe this was who she was: tightly wound Eden unwound with a violent suddenness, usually with someone slightly scandalous, at least once a decade or so, the way a Corpse flower is said to bloom.
The last time she’d ended up with a pink plus sign on a stick.
And it felt like dangerous sacrilege that for the seconds she was kissing him . . . nothing else existed. There had been only her, only him, only need.
She had never felt that way before with any man.
And surely it was a perilous way for a mother of a ten-year-old to feel.
The carnival was clearly a roaring success, in part because it’s what happened in a town where the highlight of a given week was bingo at St. Ann’s, and in part because it was a chance for adults to mingle and have adult conversations with other adults while their kids ran happily amuck. There was a sort of tacit agreement that they had free rein to keep each other’s kids in line.
The grounds of the school field were studded with rented popcorn and cotton candy machines and carefully built game booths painted in blindingly cheerful primary colors, striped and polka-dotted and scrolled and labeled with suitably festive fonts, shiny, heavily glittered. Gabe paused to admire the “Fortunes Told Here!” sign and admired the “E” he’d painted.
Slightly distorted calliope music echoed from the loudspeakers, just to maximize that fever-dream effect.
Most of the games involved shooting or hurling things at other things—balloon, bottles, hoops, clown mouths—for the kinds of prizes one or two degrees superior to the ones usually found in Cracker Jacks. But the spirit of competition reigned in Hellcat Canyon. A prize was a prize.
Gabe’s buddy Bud Wallace strolled by. A fluffy pink unicorn tucked under his arm.
“That’s right, I shot that clown in the mouth with the water gun,” he said to Gabe, with great dignity, in passing. “I shot it real good.”
And all at once there was Eden, flanked by Annelise and her friend Emily, both of whom were rocking near horizontal ponytails.
He paused.
And as usual, it took a moment for the adults to say anything, such was the impact upon their hormones of each other’s presence.
“Hi, Mr. Caldera!” the girls said.
“Hi, girls. Having fun?”
They nodded so vigorously their ponytails whipped about.
Annelise plucked at her mom’s shirt. “Mom, can we do the ring toss and then get our faces painted?”
“Sure.” Eden handed over a wad of tickets, and they scampered off again.
“I hate to say it,” Eden said, “but I think Jan Pennington deserves some kind of crown. Maybe even a parade.”
“She’d have to organize her own parade. No one else could pull it off.”
Eden laughed. “I think you need to give yourself some credit, too. Everyone wants to help the school because you’ve made it such a great place.”
He gave an aw-shucks one-shouldered shrug, which made her smile.
“Yeah, so great that I’m staying late tonight doing the accounting so I can report to the board tomorrow.”
She smiled at that, almost sadly.
He took a little step closer. He couldn’t help it. Once he’d touched her, every moment not touching her seemed wasted.
She didn’t back away. She tilted her head up to look into his eyes.
And there were her lips . . . right there.
Speaking of ring toss, all he had to do was loop an arm around her and tug, and she’d be snug up against his body. Talk about winning the prize.
“Gabe . . . Okay . . . I have something to say.”
“Okay,” he said softly. The tone instantly made him a little wary.
“While that . . .” She lowered her voice, even though the sound around them was akin to gulls dive-bombing carrion at the beach, and yet somehow he heard her clearly. “. . . kiss was really . . . very nice . . .”
“Nice?”
He said that a little too loudly. Heads whipped around. Hands shot up and waved gaily when they heard his voice.
“Okay. While it was . . . mind-blowing . . .”
A smile started a slow migration across his lips.
“You’re the principal of my daughter’s school. It just seems too risky to . . .” She stopped. Flared her fingers.
“Embark on a passionate sexual affair . . . at the very least?”
Her blue eyes practically went black again with that pupil flare.
So, he assumed, did his.
A couple of people strolling by jerked their heads in their direction, as if they, too, recognized something about their stillness. Like two predators about to pounce and filet each other with their claws and teeth, or maybe leap to that other thing nature channels were so known for.
Fucking, in other words. That was the other thing nature channels were known for.
“Gabe, I mean . . . your standing in the community and mine, if someone finds out we’re—”
“You’re not Hester Prynne. I’m not Dimmesdale.”
This made her smile. Albeit somewhat tautly. They were straight up a couple of nerds to pull out that reference during a sexual negotiation. They were perfect for each other.
“Or if it doesn’t work out with us . . . it’s not like there’s another school in Hellcat Canyon . . .”
“Eden . . .” He struggled to keep his tone patient. “. . . we’ve both survived awkward situations. I’m a professional. You’re a professional. People might talk. But people will always talk about stuff. What else is there to do but talk and butt into everybody’s business in Hellcat Canyon?”
Never mind that all around them people were competing for stuffed animals and candy at various booths like it was the Hunger Games. There was plenty to do in Hellcat Canyon. There was bingo at St. Ann’s, and the annual landscaping contest between Heavenly Acres and Elysian Shores mobile home communities, and then there was always softball and open mic night at the Misty Cat. Hellcat Canyon was hopping.
“And there’s just . . . finding the time . . . with Annelise . . . my work . . . it’s just . . . it’ll be hard on you, and I don’t want you to resent me for dashing out at odd hours, or abandoning you thanks to work or Annelise’s needs. Gabe . . . I don’t think I can give you what you deserve.”
He drew in a breath. He was tense with frustration.
He knew what he wanted to give her.
The moon. His name. Everything he owned or ever would.
He was pretty sure those were the perfect things to say out loud if he wanted to hear an actual vrooming sound and see her disappear in a cloud of dust.
He could say: Anything precious to you, Eden, is precious to me, and that means Annelise, too. Who, frankly, he liked for her own goofy, lovely, unique self.
And Eden stood there, on the precipice of ending all of this between them. Her mouth was saying one thing but everything else—the slight cant of her body toward him, the pulse in her throat, the soft, unguarded want in her eyes—said something else altogether.
Underlying her words was a sort of coded desperation: save me from myself.
And then he got it: she was scared.
She wanted him, all right. But panic was a perfectly viable response when facing a gigantic unknown, even a sexy one. Ten years was a long time to be single. And in that time she’d become more accustomed to giving than taking. To living for her daughter and assuming that was what it meant to live for herself.
But she wasn’t going to admit that to herself or to him, because, like Annelise, she was proud, and she claimed to not be afraid of a damn thing.
He just didn’t know what the hell to say that wouldn’t make him feel like a creep trying to talk her into the sack.
He could have said, What about that roller coaster you rode thirteen times? Where’s that girl who isn’t afraid of a damn thing? But that wouldn’t have been fair. He could have said, Where there’s a will, there’s always a way. But she also knew that.
“I understand,” he said finally. And he did. He didn’t like it at all, but he understood. His heart was sinking through his body like an anchor flung from a ship, but he understood.
“Maybe when Annelise can drive.”
“Ha.” He managed a smile, for the benefit of the people strolling by, many of whom were women, many of whom whipped their heads around to get a better look at him, as if he was a magnificent tree planted there for tourists to admire.
“I’m sorry, Gabe. I’m really sorry. Please don’t hate me.”
“Eden,” he said this weakly, almost impatiently, “for fuck’s sake . . . that’s . . . an impossibility. You know that, right?”
That might be the first time he’d said the “F” word out loud on school grounds.
She didn’t say anything. It seemed ridiculous that the two people who were looking at each other right now could even be contemplating walking away from each other.
Thundering little feet came at them, and Annelise and Emily were pogoing with excitement.
“Mom, Principal Caldera, I won a whole elephant!” Annelise hoisted it aloft.
“A whole elephant! Not just the trunk where he keeps his stuff?”
“Ha ha ha ha! Mr. Caldera! You’re so funny! We’re going to go get our faces painted now, okay?”
“Sure! And if you lay off the popcorn and candy, I’ll take you for sundaes after.”
“Thanks! Love you!”
They ran off again, tagging Eden like little pinballs, and left him alone with her.
Gabe rifled through his years of experience for something useful here. Like he’d once said, everyone’s strengths could be weaponized and used against them . . . and like the broccoli, everyone would be a winner.
Or he’d just really piss her off.
It was a risk, but he didn’t have much to lose at this point.
So he said it.
“Ten years is kind of a long time,” he said sympathetically. “But I guess I didn’t take you for a chicken.”
And Gabe went off to do his time in the dunking booth. To literally drown his sorrows, and cool down the rest of his body, and he was glad none of the carnival games nearby featured actual darts, because he was pretty sure one would be twanging between his shoulder blades right now.