15. Chapter 15
Chapter 15
“ I can’t thank y’all enough for everything you’ve done for me and Dale,” Dottie sniffed as she wiped her eyes. She grabbed Cleo and pulled her in for a tight hug as the four of them stood by the rental car in front of Dottie’s house. Surprised into silence, Cleo awkwardly patted Dottie’s back while she held her. They’d come a long way from the antagonism of a couple days ago.
Dottie pushed Cleo away as quickly as she’d grabbed her, and moved to embrace Clark next. The look of discomfort on his face as she squeezed him more tightly than necessary made Cleo giggle, until she remembered last night and the confusion she felt over what had transpired.
Cleo had awoken that morning before Clark, noting that the Wall of Jericho was still firmly in place between them. She’d slipped downstairs and helped Dottie make breakfast. If Cleo looked weary from not sleeping well, Dottie was the opposite. She looked like she’d lost ten years overnight. Cleo forced herself to avoid thinking about reasons for that and continued stirring the eggs. She didn’t need to spend one second imagining Dottie and Dale’s love life.
“You look worn slap out,” Dottie had said. One side of Cleo’s mouth turned up. Dottie’s southern phrases were actually starting to grow on her. “Did you not sleep well?”
That question was asked with way too much enthusiasm and some wagging eyebrows, so Cleo chose to ignore it. She didn’t owe Dottie or anyone else an explanation. But Dottie wouldn’t let it go. “You and Superman seemed awfully cozy after your walk last night. You sure nothing happened?”
Cleo assumed the Superman reference was due to his name, since he was way too fair to be dark-haired Superman. Defensive and vindictive after what happened the night before, she replied, “I wouldn’t let that grump near me.” Dottie smirked knowingly and went back to her cooking.
When Clark came down the stairs a few seconds later, looking fresh-faced, Cleo scowled. How dare he get a good sleep when she’d tossed and turned all night, and it was completely his fault?
They had eaten breakfast, Dottie hardly taking a bite as she prattled on and on about her wedding plans. As they loaded their bags into the trunk of the car later, she said, “You two must make it to the weddin’. I’ll send you all the details as soon as I’ve got ‘em.” She waved her cell phone, indicating that she had Clark's contact info now and would be using it.
“Before we leave, we wondered if you would settle a score between us,” Clark said to Dottie.
“Well, sure honey. What can I do you for?” Dottie asked. Cleo wasn’t sure what Clark was getting at.
“Cleo and I have each purchased a book for the other, something we think the other will love, and we wondered if you would judge which of us picked the better book for that person.” Ah, Cleo had nearly forgotten about their bet. She hadn’t even cracked Hope Was Here since Clark gave it to her.
“Sure. What did you buy each other?” As Clark told Dottie the names of the books Cleo wondered what the likelihood was that Dottie had even heard of either one. She supposed they could give Dottie a quick summary if necessary, but it turned out it wasn’t.
“Well now, you both found some good ones. I’ve read ‘em both.” Cleo and Clark exchanged amused glances over Dottie’s head, “But Clarky, I think Cleo chose the better one for you. That Martian book is ‘bout as interesting as they get. And perfect for you.”
Cleo couldn’t believe her ears. She’d thought surely Dottie would choose his to win, but she’d underestimated her once again.
“What? Ha! I won! Thank you, Dottie!” She threw her arms around her once more before doing a little victory wiggle that made Clark’s eyes spark with mirth.
Once she’d finally finished celebrating, Cleo and Clark wished Dale and Dottie farewell and backed out of the gravel parkway to navigate the rutted lane out to the road. Cleo felt a pang of something like regret as the Black-Eyed Susan grew smaller in her rear view mirror. She was going to miss that place, and the kooky owner who Cleo had grown to care for over the last few days.
The car was eerily silent without Dottie’s mindless chatter filling it up. It was full, instead, of an intensity and awkwardness that Cleo didn’t know what to do with. Could Clark sense it, too? He had to have noticed; after all, he wasn’t talking either.
Ugh! That stupid wrestling match over a pillow last night, the physical contact, and that kiss that had made her want things she didn’t want to be wanting were messing with her head. She didn’t want to feel anything for any guy right now; she needed to focus on meeting her mom today and what on earth she was going to say to her.
But she couldn’t get out of her head how it felt to be pressed up against Clark, the way he smelled like pine and tasted like mint, how broad his chest was and how tightly he held her as he kissed her lips. It was intoxicating. Her heart was racing just remembering it. When had she started fanning herself? Get a grip, Cleo!
By the time she’d decided she was going to say something–anything–to fill the uncomfortable silence, Clark asked, “Are you going to go to the wedding?”
Cleo smiled, relieved to be on safer ground than what she probably would’ve come up with. “And be in Dottie’s black books forever if I don’t? I’m definitely going to try.”
“It sounds like they’re not going to wait very long.”
“I can’t blame them. They’ve already waited a long time for each other.”
Clark drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel. “Call me a sap, but I like happily ever afters.”
“Why does that not surprise me? It’s what you’ve made your living on, after all.”
Clark’s forehead bunched up before his face cleared and he met her eyes. “Right, my secret pen name where I write all the rom coms.”
“I bet you write tons of real-life people into your stories, don’t you?” His smile fell and he dropped her gaze. Why did he look guilty all of a sudden? She’d been joking, but maybe he had made a career writing stories about people he knew in real life. Was he the type that if you pissed him off, you became the villain in his next bestseller? The Taylor Swift of the book world? Would Cleo end up in one of his stories? She really needed to figure out his author name.
“What are you working on right now?”
“Uh, it’s a human-interest type story I guess,” Clark answered.
“About what?”
Clark cleared his throat and paused, drumming his thumbs again, though this time it seemed like it was a nervous drum, not a happy one.
“It’s, uh, kind of hard to detail, but it, uh, deals with privilege and loss and what motivates a person to make a drastic choice. It’s not very well fleshed out yet. I’m still in the research phase.”
“Huh. Sounds interesting. Anything I can do to help?” She was desperate to keep them talking about innocuous subjects.
“Actually, yeah. I could use a sounding board if you’d be interested. I’m always keen to have a new perspective.”
“Sure. What do you want to know?”
“So, my female main character has been dating a douche bag, for lack of a better word. He’s a jerk, but she’s wonderful, of course. I’m trying to figure out why great women date jerks. I mean, what about him would have even made her say yes in the first place?”
Cleo tilted her head. “Well, there’s the obvious answer that a lot of women–and men–get duped when they first meet a person. He might seem genuine and good, but turn out to be a total bad apple. Some people are really good at pretending.”
“Right, but in this case my main character could tell from the get-go that he wasn’t what she wanted.”
Cleo sucked her lip a little. “That’s kind of what happened to me.”
Clark coughed. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, I mean, I wasn’t bowled over with attraction to Jameson when I first met him. In fact, he was pretty annoying.”
Cleo told Clark about the pool incident and how she’d been completely disinterested in him from the start, and how he’d tried to make it up to her. She stared out at the trees whipping by as she recalled how after that, Jameson had seemed to pop up everywhere. His family were new money so he hadn’t always grown up in her world, but he quickly took to it. Jetting off to Ibiza or Belize on the weekends, their friends spent more time together out of the country than in it. She didn’t think anything more of their friendship than she had about any of her other acquaintances until a year ago when her father came home one day, excited about a business opportunity with the Kellerman Corporation.
Cleo didn’t know her father was in financial trouble, but when she mentioned that she’d gone to Cancun with Jameson Kellerman, the son of the wealthy business tycoon Henry Kellerman, it was the beginning of the end. Cleo’s father needed money and Jameson’s father needed Cleo’s father’s connections and name. Cleo’s father viewed a union between their families as the answer to his problems. He pushed Cleo and Jameson together every chance he got, much to Cleo’s dismay. She still thought of Jameson as the pest who’d dragged her into the pool, ruining her favorite outfit, and stealing all her clothes on the yacht.
“Jameson started trying to win me over then,”–probably a directive from his father–“because all of a sudden he turned on the charm. After the incident on the boat where he stole all my clothes, Jameson suddenly began acting more like a lover than a piggy-tail-pulling boy with a crush.” The first time he’d tried to kiss her, they’d been in a pool again, this time by choice and with bathing suits on. Cleo hadn’t hated the kiss, though the only chills she’d felt were from the sudden wind that kicked up. After locking lips for a minute, she excused herself to warm up in the hot tub.
Jameson asked her out, taking her to La Grenouille in the city and giving her a blue Tiffany box with a necklace, an initial C on it, for their first date. Every gesture he made was over the top and expensive, and not once did Cleo feel like any of it was genuine. But she liked being courted by someone with good taste, even if the conversation was dull and the kissing even duller.
She peered out the window now, counting the horses in the fields they passed. Looking back, Cleo couldn’t quite believe that she’d allowed her relationship with Jameson to get so far. When had she lost her backbone completely? Why hadn’t she stood up for herself? Just because she’d always gone along with what her father wished didn’t mean that she had to in the case of whom to marry. But all the other guys she’d known before Jameson backed off when they saw him declare his intentions, and Cleo allowed herself to get swept along.
Clark asked, “So, how did he propose?”
She rolled her eyes. “Only in the most cliche way: on a gondola ride in Venice.” She hadn’t even been thinking about Jameson as the gondolier steered them through the streets of the floating city. She was imagining herself living there as an artist, painting the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Basilica and selling them to tourists in the square. When she’d registered that her name was being spoken, she realized Jameson had said it several times already. Focusing on him at last, she’d nearly laughed as she saw him trying to keep his balance on one knee in the bottom of the boat, holding a ring box in one hand while using the other to steady himself. The boat tipped a bit, and for one horrifying second, Cleo worried he and the ring were going to pitch over into the murky water. Jameson caught himself and then proceeded to yell at the gondolier for not keeping the boat balanced.
Cleo’s mirth had quickly turned to mortification at the way her boyfriend treated the nice Italian. Her stomach turned sour at the realization that this was the person she was expected to spend her life with, and she wondered what would happen if she launched herself into the Adriatic Sea and swam to freedom instead.
“So you said yes?” Clark asked.
Cleo shook her head. “I told him I needed time to think.” Even though she knew this was what her father expected, or rather demanded from her to save the family business, she couldn’t bring herself to agree.
Her father called her that night; he must’ve known Jameson was proposing when he did. He reminded her what her duty was to the family, and that she’d always be taken care of. So she told Jameson the next day that she would marry him, and tried not to cringe when he put the ring on her finger and kissed her. It all felt so much like a business transaction that it was almost laughable that Jameson tried to make it romantic. “I eventually realized what an advantageous match it would be and said I’d marry him.”
Clark’s brow creased. “Sounds…not at all romantic.”
“Yeah, well, it’s much like marriages that have been transacted for thousands of years because of money or social status or political maneuvering. You think everyone marries for love these days, but I guarantee that marriages of convenience are still happening all the time. I just never thought I’d be one of them.”
“You’re not. You got out just in time.”
Cleo shook her shoulders like she was trying to shake off bad mojo. “Did that answer your question at all?”
Clark nodded. “It did, thank you.”
“Anything else I can help you with?”
“That’s all for now, I think.”
“Okay, enough with the serious stuff then. Let’s continue our game.”