The Pact(71)

When he pulls out and gently lowers me to the ground, it feels like a dream and the storeroom is a cloud. I’m not really here, I’m somewhere else, but I’m with him.

My heart beats hard in my throat and I can’t feel my legs and I can’t open my eyes. The whole interior of my body throbs and pulses, sending waves of pleasure through every crevice until the waves get smaller and smaller and smaller. Eventually I remember how to breathe.

I am so, so deliriously happy. I’m high. I’m joy.

He is so fucking good.



***



“You know what’s weird?” Linden asks me as I drive us over the span of the Golden Gate Bridge, heading north toward Petaluma. Even though I love this bridge to death I’m also scared of it and I try and stick to the middle lane as much as possible. If I even glance toward the edge and the Bay, I get sick.

“What’s weird?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, placing his palm on my leg and stroking my bare thigh up and down until I have to shiver, “the fact that I’ve never met your father is kind of weird. You know, considering how long we’ve known each other.”

He’s right. Actually he only met my mom on the day I opened the store. Of course, my father was out of the picture at that point. It was just one of those things where they had a bunch of opportunities to meet – working at the Lion, my graduation dinner – but it just didn’t work out that way.

Now, that my dad is somehow back in the picture, I have to say I’m a bit nervous about it. It’s one of the reasons why I invited Linden along, so I would have some backup. The fact that my dad is back with my mother but hasn’t actually moved back in, is whole world of strange and I don’t know what the dynamics of their relationship will be. Linden makes a great buffer.

The other reason is equally as selfish: I want to show Linden off. I want my mom and dad to look at him and be impressed, because how could they not be? He’s handsome, he’s successful (at least I consider being a helicopter pilot a successful career, even if Linden’s own parents do not) and he’s charming.

I want their approval. I know I shouldn’t but considering I’ve stayed silent about Linden when talking to Nicola and Kayla, and Penny and James are still clueless, I want someone to tell me I’ve made a good choice. I want to know how the two of us and our quasi relationship look to other people.

“Bad timing, I guess,” I tell him. “Whenever they were around where you could actually meet them, you weren’t.”

“Guess you could say the same about us.”

I glance over my shades at him. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs and runs his hand through his thick hair. “Just that for so many years, when I was single you were with someone else and when you were single, I was with someone else.”

“There were a few years in there where both of us were single, you know,” I point out.

“I know. I remember them very well. It took a lot of restraint on my behalf not to tell you how I really felt.”

All this time, all this time. “Why didn’t you?”

He takes a moment and then says, “James. I guess it always came down to James. You know sometimes, if I wasn’t his best friend, I’d think the guy hates me.”

“Hates you?” I repeat.

“Yeah.” He looks over at me and his eyes are troubled. “Since the day we first met there’s always been this…I don’t know, resentment toward me. Maybe it’s all in my head. It probably is. But it’s just been years of little digs on how I get everything I want and I never have to work hard and how privileged I am.”

I think I know what Linden is talking about. “But you do work hard. You worked extremely hard to get to where you are now. Your parents didn’t help you out with that.”

He gives me a wry look. “No. But they did pay for my school and my flat. I would have worked hard if they didn’t but it would have been a lot harder to get to where I am now. I mean, I know I’m lucky in many respects, but I’m also not in others. But James doesn’t see it that way. He grew up with a messed up family but so did I. Just because my family had money, didn’t mean my life was any better. When you’re a child, you don’t care about that shit. You just want love.”

My heart is breaking a little bit for him. I know it’s been hard for Linden to have the family that he does. I also know that James’s family is a little bit worse. I still don’t know all the details but it was a poor, hard knock life in Oakland for that kid, with an abusive deadbeat dad and a struggling mother. And I know that James does sometimes talk about Linden being born with a silver spoon in his mouth.