Lizzie
“Youokay?”
I glance across the car at David. The suspension on the Audi had handled the dirt road so smoothly that I’d been drifting along in my own thoughts for most of the ride. David is watching me with a curious eyebrow rising toward his hairline.
“Fine,” I nod, resettling myself in the passenger seat. The leather creaks a little. “Just thinking."
“About your mother’s drag queen evening?”
I shake my head and notice that my cheeks ache from an afternoon of laughter. It’s been good to feel connected to the people back home.
“I told you, there’s no way she’s going to agree to that theme.”
David sits up a little straighter behind the wheel, his skills as a negotiator now under threat.
“And I tell you she will. I have magic skills when it comes to getting what I want. Plus I have a whole bucket of good grace built with your mother that’s just about ready to be served up.”
I laugh and watch the dark trunks of trees pass by the window. My mother isn’t prejudiced but she is a social elite and likes her image of elegance. And he wants her male guests to slip into skimpy dresses and big wigs?
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I tell him.
“Then you’re going to have to come back to New York and experience it for yourself.”
I raise a finger in warning as he negotiates the sedan around one of the larger potholes in the road out to Caleb’s place.
“I told you, I’d think about it. But right now I need to focus on the here and now. Or I’m never going to have power in that kitchen.”
“But you do have heat, right?” David asks, as if the prospect of a cold night sleeping on my dining room floor has only just occurred to him.
I laugh.
“Yes, there’s heat. Don’t panic. There’s heat and there’s water. And there’s actually power in three of the rooms.”
The place was old. And with multiple wiring systems layered one on top of the other, decade after decade, I still had yet to work out how they all interlinked. Nor had Caleb. It made him curse every time he came to a new outlet that didn’t work.
“I suppose it’s a good thing you have a fully-powered honeymoon hideaway out in the woods then, huh?” David teases.
The trees had parted as we drove up, and I can’t deny the image of romantic isolation before us.
Caleb’s house has a tranquil charm to it. Half nestled in the trees, half prominent against its woodland backdrop. Like a giant of the forest, defiant against its setting but still very much at home within it.
A lot like its owner.
Which brings the ever-present Caleb to the forefront of my mind. Again.
Pulling the car up to one side of the ranch-style house, David cuts the engine and turns in his seat.
“You wanna talk about it?” he asks. I stare at him blankly. “You sighed pretty heavily there.”
“Did I?” I hadn’t noticed.
“You worried about this morning? Your Lover-Boy-Come-Landlord didn’t seem in the best of moods when he headed off. You worried?”
“Not in the way you mean," I say, staring up at the dark, lifeless windows of the house.
At least Caleb isn’t back yet, and I have a little time to rebuild my poker face.
I’m not worried that Caleb will be annoyed over our change of plans today. He’s a good man and hardly the sort to bear a petty grudge. But his irritation at David’s appearance had been hard to ignore. Coupled with our conversation that had been cut short because of it.