Kaleidoscope Read online

“But I got a kaleidoscope that I’ve been carryin’ with me everywhere I go for the last nine years that I was too blind to see until very recently that holdin’ that thing with me proves that shit irrevocably wrong.”

  At the mention of my gift to him, my pulse started beating so fast I could feel it in my fingertips.

  This was because that kaleidoscope was something it took a lot of courage to seek him out and give to him. It also was something that meant the world to me to give, most especially the message I gave with it. I still figured he’d kindly taken it from me because he was that kind of guy. I also figured he then gave it away because it wasn’t his type of thing.

  But knowing he took it everywhere threw me.

  It also delighted me.

  Beyond belief.

  Therefore, I whispered, “Everywhere?”

  “Been to some interesting places, Emme, baby, and that has always been with me.”

  My breath started escalating and I knew Jacob didn’t miss it when his eyes dropped briefly to my chest before cutting back up to mine.

  “Now,” he said gently, “unlike your very-soon-to-be ex, I’m not a dick. You gotta sort that and I gotta give you the space to do it. So tonight is not gonna end where I’d wanna lead it.”

  My breath quickened even more.

  He wasn’t done.

  “But one thing I did learn from Elsbeth that you’re gonna get the benefit of, honey, and that’s that a man looks after his girl. That means I’m payin’ for your insulation and I’m installin’ it. And that means you’re gonna let me.”

  “Your girl?” I asked, my voice coming out in a near on squeak.

  “Yeah,” he answered, his voice deep, low and firm.

  “This is, well… kinda weird.” Understatement! “And fast.” Extreme understatement!

  “Met you twelve years ago and we’re just gettin’ here. I don’t call that fast. I call that a waste of fuckin’ time I’m about to rectify.”

  Again, I was speechless.

  Jacob wasn’t.

  “So, summin’ up, you got until Sunday to get your head together about McFarland. On Sunday, you scrape him off. On Sunday night, the boys are gone, you learn the true meaning of me callin’ you ‘baby.’ ”

  I could no longer feel my pulse beating just in my fingertips. It was beating somewhere else, somewhere special, somewhere private, somewhere awesome.

  “Jacob—” I began again but his head cocked again.

  “You don’t want that?”

  I shut up.

  “You want that,” he murmured, his gaze on my mouth, the skin around his eyes again going soft but his mouth didn’t twitch because the look in those eyes was hot and intense and I could tell he wasn’t finding anything funny.

  The pulse radiated out from that awesome place and I felt my entire body get warm.

  His gaze lifted back to mine and he unfolded from the couch, putting his beer bottle on my coffee table. It was then my entire body got stiff as he moved toward me and leaned in. That was, my entire body but my neck, which bent back to hold his eyes.

  Then I held my breath as he slid the tips of his fingers along my forehead, sweeping aside my bangs, before they went back until his fingers were tangled in the strands and cupping the back of my head.

  That felt unbelievably nice.

  He dipped closer.

  I started breathing again only to hyperventilate.

  “He’s been jacked by a woman,” he said quietly, “a smart man learns. And, baby, you know I am not dumb. And what that man learns is not to waste time on bitches. But more, not to waste time when he finds one who he knows is worth it. Now, you got until Sunday. You with me?”

  He stopped speaking and I knew he wanted a response but I just didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t cope with this, this massive shift, this incredible gift, the offer of all his beauty.

  He got so much closer all I could see were his hazel eyes. And that close I noticed that, although his lashes were dark, short and spiky, there were a lot of them. So dense, they were fascinating, and I found myself wanting to take up the challenge of counting each and every one.

  “Emme,” he whispered.

  I blinked and focused.

  “You with me?” he repeated.

  “I think our conversation about insulation took a very weird turn,” I replied.

  His eyes lit with warmth and humor and I lost my fascination with his lashes because I’d seen that look in his eyes frequently when he was with me but I’d never seen it that close and it was so beautiful, I wanted to hold onto that moment for eternity.

  “Right,” he said. “You got until Sunday. You feel like pickin’ up the phone, I’m busy but I always got time for you. You need space from me ’til then, you got that too, baby. Yeah?”

  I decided my best bet was to nod.

  So I did that.

  “Okay,” he murmured. I felt his hand in my hair pull me forward and I felt my breath stick in my throat before I felt his lips touch my hair and there he kept murmuring to say, “Strawberries.”

  My hair did, indeed, smell like strawberries. That was what the shampoo smelled like that cost an arm and a leg and a vague promise to the devil I’d bear his children to populate the earth with devil’s spawn in order for my hair to get this soft, sleek and shiny.

  But Jacob murmuring that word against my hair, I decided to make that promise not at all vague. I’d produce demon spawn to hear him say it again and again.

  Alas, he did not say it again.

  But what he did was a whole lot better.

  His hand at my head pulled me slightly back, his fingers drifted through my hair to my temple then curled so the backs could glide lightly across my cheek and down, touching the side of my lip in a way that was a promise I felt sear through me from lips, through my heart, straight between my legs.

  Was this happening?

  “You can shake and bake with the best, Emme,” he told me, his hand settling cupping my jaw, and at words that were so far out of the moment, I stared.

  Then, at the reminder of the dinner I served and that it might be good, but it was a far cry from gourmet and it was so Jacob to mention it, tease me about it, and it was also so Jacob to go out of his way to take us out of intense and put me at ease, that suddenly a feeling I didn’t quite get but I really liked stole through me and I felt my lips smile.

  “Gourmet all the way with me, honey. That’s why you got the buffalo-flavored Shake ’n Bake.”

  “I cook next time,” he declared, and Jacob was an excellent cook. Amazing. And he didn’t shy away from anything, even gourmet.

  And what he said meant he intended to cook for me.

  That stole through me too.

  “I expect Indian,” I told him and something about him shifted, relaxed, and I knew, in sharing I was going to be eating with him again, I’d also shared I was “with him.”

  My breath started coming faster again.

  “You got it,” he replied, leaned in, kissed my forehead, leaned back and caught my eyes. “Later, Emme.”

  “Drive safe, Jacob.”

  He grinned.

  My heart jumped.

  His hand slid away from my jaw and I watched him saunter out of my living room.

  Then I sat immobile and listened to the front door open and close.

  And last, I listened to the distant sounds of his truck growling out of my drive.

  Been to some interesting places, Emme, baby, and that has always been with me.

  I sat unmoving and remembered standing outside the door to the hotel room he was staying in since he left the apartment to Elsbeth. I stood there heartbroken for him, heartbroken for me, and I gave him that kaleidoscope. I remembered what I said. I remembered his eyes got warm and surprised and he took the box and opened it, pulling out the piece of beauty within and holding it like it was precious.

  I also remember he didn’t let me into his room.

  He just kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, “I
’ll always remember you, Emme,” before he pulled back, gave me a smile that got nowhere near his eyes and backed into the room, closing the door on me.

  Taking the kaleidoscope with him.

  At the time, I got it, why he had to close the door on me. At the time, I was distraught at what his breakup with Elsbeth meant to him.

  And to me.

  So I’d walked away and let him go.

  But at the time, I also was dealing with things, things I didn’t share with anybody, not Elsbeth, definitely not Jacob.

  I still had that secret.

  Words came to me. Words said in a man’s voice, a man no one knew was in my life. A man who was special to me in a way I knew no one would get. A man I shared with nobody.

  I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

  I closed my eyes and called that moment up in my mind.

  It was a month after I got out of the hospital. I’d visited him. He could not visit me. He’d been concerned. Eaten up with it, it was plain to see. But he could not come to see for himself I was all right.

  He had to wait for me.

  We were sitting in his kitchen, drinking coffee.

  I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

  It did. Being sick like that, it did.

  I didn’t get it then. I didn’t get it when he said that to me. I only got it when Jacob pointed it out.

  I opened my eyes and looked to Jacob’s beer bottle on my coffee table.

  You can shake and bake with the best, Emme.

  I knew right then that Jacob saying that meant that he intended to keep the goodness, the easiness, the familiarity of what we had safe.

  He just intended to add really great things.

  I hope this wakes you up, sweet Emme.

  I took a sip of the beer that I held until then forgotten in my hand.

  And when I was done, I whispered, “I think I just woke up, Harvey.”

  And when I did, pure joy flowed through me.

  So I smiled.

  Chapter Six

  Weird

  One hour, two minutes later…

  I lay on my back in my bed, staring unseeing at the ceiling and going over the last two days in my mind again and again.

  No way I could sleep.

  No way.

  So I rolled, turned on my light and saw the ring Dane had given me the night before on my nightstand.

  The box was open.

  I flipped it shut and put it in the nightstand drawer.

  Dane giving me that weirded me out, but it was the kind of gesture that you didn’t make an “euw” face and throw it across the room.

  So, after I’d tried to refuse it, gently saying it was too much, and he’d refused my refusal, adamantly and repeatedly, I’d given up, thanked him and kissed him.

  He’d done what he always did when I kissed him. He escalated things and made love to me.

  I’d had two lovers in my life, and to say Dane was better than the first one was a massive understatement.

  Still, I read enough, watched enough TV and movies, heard enough girlfriends talking about it, I knew I was missing something.

  Even from Dane.

  I knew this because I’d never had an orgasm with a partner. Not once.

  I faked it.

  It wasn’t a good thing to do but eventually things just kept going, it got tedious, and I had to do what I had to do to end it so I could get some sleep.

  Thinking on this brought me to the memory that Elsbeth had not shared often, but she had shared. And what she shared was that Jacob had no problems in that department. They’d started their relationship young and had been together for five years. Elsbeth and I were the same age and she’d been twenty when they started out. He’d been twenty-three. She had not been a virgin but she’d been an orgasm-during-sex virgin.

  According to Elsbeth, Jacob had taken that particular virginity and done it spectacularly then went on to give that to her frequently and unfailingly.

  Now I was thirty-four and had two lovers and no orgasms that had been given to me by anyone else but me.

  And I had sexual knowledge of the man who that night told me he was interested in me and intended to do something about it.

  So even though it was late, I was me, he was Jacob and I was psycho.

  Not to mention, these thoughts were tamping down the joy I’d felt earlier, and I didn’t like that much.

  So I got out of bed, wandered through the dark to the kitchen and nabbed my phone.

  I called him wandering back to my room through the dark.

  “You okay?” he answered.

  “Just to say, if I wasn’t, although you have superhuman strength and an off-the-charts IQ, I’d still probably call 911.”

  “Babe,” he replied.

  I waited but he didn’t follow that up.

  So I asked, “Babe, what?”

  “Babe,” this time there was a smile in his voice, “get on with what you’re callin’ about.”

  “Right,” I muttered as I walked up the rounded staircase that was reason three I bought this house. Reason one being the view I saw from the circular drive. Reason two being the extraordinary wood starburst inlaid in the entryway floor.

  “Emme,” he called.

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I was thinking about my starburst.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Is this too late to call?”

  “No, but just to say, no time is a bad time to hear from you.”

  Good answer. So good, it made me feel mushy inside.

  Safe in that feeling, I admitted, “I can’t sleep.”

  “Emme—”

  There was concern in my name and a hint of Jacob being what Jacob had been recently. Determined to go full steam ahead, do most of the talking and the talking he did blowing my mind.

  So I interrupted him.

  “No, please, Jacob, hear me out.”

  He said nothing.

  I walked down the hall toward the light coming from my room trying to find the courage to say what I needed to say.

  Walking into my room and seeing the pretty I’d wrought with my own two hands, some YouTube videos and a lot of elbow grease, I found the courage.

  “This is weird,” I said softly, making my way to the bed. “I know things about you.”

  “Girl talk,” he murmured, and I knew he knew what I was saying.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, climbing into bed and sitting cross-legged on it.

  “Bad shit?” he asked and I felt my head jerk.

  “Bad shit?” I repeated.

  “She bitch about me?”

  She hadn’t. Ever. I didn’t even know if they ever fought.

  God, she was so stupid.

  “Was there bad shit?” I asked hesitantly.

  “I didn’t think so until she dumped me,” he replied and I felt my lips smile.

  “That came out of the blue for everybody, honey,” I told him. “Not just you.”

  “Right,” he replied, that word clearly a prompt to get on with it.

  So I did.

  “Just us having this conversation is weird, Jacob.”

  “Why?”

  “You were once my best friend’s boyfriend.”

  “So?” he asked.

  “So, this isn’t a thing girls do.”

  “You haven’t spoken to her in nine years, and, I’ll point out, Emme, it’s been fuckin’ nine years, which is a long time.”

  “You hooked up with her this summer.”

  “So?”

  I didn’t have an answer to that “so.”

  When I said nothing, he asked, “What’d she say?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Elsbeth. Girl talk. What’d she say?”

  I was not a psycho. I was an idiot.

  I couldn’t tell him that.

  Thus I should never have called him.

  I didn’t even know why I did, except he was Jacob and I’d always been able to talk to him about anything.
The problem with that was, back when, I’d never really had anything deep and personal to discuss.

  Now I did but that deep and personal involved him.

  I wasn’t an idiot. I was a psycho idiot.

  This called to mind the fact that I’d left all my girlfriends in Denver and had not replaced them in Gnaw Bone. It also called to mind the fact that all my somewhat friends in Gnaw Bone were guys who worked at a lumberyard. And this called to mind the fact that not one of them was a candidate for a conversation about a potential new boyfriend I was getting before getting rid of my old one who happened to be one of their brethren, and all the things I needed to discuss.

  Primarily, that I’d never had an orgasm during sex and I was worried that was on me, not my partners.

  And I didn’t want to disappoint Jacob. Because if I did, that would be an end to him and me. Not the new good stuff we might have. The old great stuff we just got back.

  I needed a girl posse.

  I didn’t share this with Jacob either.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s just that this is…” I paused then finished, “I don’t want to lose what we have.”

  He was losing patience at my evasiveness and I knew this with how he asked, “Emme. What. Did. She. Say?”

  “I—”

  “Okay, honey,” he cut off my protest knowing that was what it would be. “I know I dropped a bomb on you tonight, you didn’t hide it. You also didn’t try to escape it. And what we got started from me meetin’ you through her. Neither of us can escape that. But I think, you dig deep, back then you know what was growin’ between us. I don’t know if you felt it. I just know I didn’t. I also know Elsbeth did and put a stop to it. Now I see it, I feel it and I’m gonna explore it. So I dig that this is a shift and you need to talk shit out, this change, how we started. And I’ll give you that, late at night, first thing in the morning, anytime. But to talk it out, just sayin’, baby, you actually gotta talk.”

  “I know personal things about you,” I told him.

  “Like what? That I snore?” he asked, and my heart plummeted because Dane snored and I hated it.

  “Do you snore?” I asked.

  “Not that I know of,” he answered.

  “So why would you ask that?” I pushed.

  There was laughter in his voice when he replied, “Because you aren’t givin’ me shit, babe, so I’m tryin’ to pull it out. Have no clue what she said to you, so I’m guessin’.”