Rosethorn (9 page)

“No.”

“You think all this,” Andrew waved his hand around contemptuously, “is exciting.”

“I think it’s different, that’s all. It’s interesting how they talk and what they talk about.”

“I can’t understand anything they’re saying.”

Sera did not want to admit that she didn’t understand either. “Don’t you wonder what you’ll be like 10, 20 years from now?  What you’ll be doing and where you’ll be?  I don’t want to be cleaning houses 10 years from now, and I know you don’t want to be mowing lawns. Shoot me if I’m still living in this god-awful town.”

“I know what I want for myself." Andrew’s voice was tinged with something sharp and feral and reminded her of the night on top the hill. “But is that,” he pointed to the dining room, “What you really want?  Besides, what’s wrong with living here?"

“Not exactly that. But they talk about books I’ve never heard of and they’ve been to places I’ve only read about."

Sera had overheard a couple talking about their villa in Montelpulciano and how they made wine with grapes harvested from their vineyard. She did not know that anybody could live a life that seemed right out of a book. The most exciting place she had ever been to was San Francisco.

“I think they’re all posers."

The door swung open and Stanley popped his head in. “We’re done. Can you two start clearing the table and washing the dishes?"

The guests had moved back on to the piano room. The table, which had been gleaming and immaculate a few hours ago, was littered with remnants of the feast, wrinkled silk napkins, and a bloody wine stain bloomed on the crisp white tablecloth. Sera started piling the dishes and taking them back to Andrew, who was scraping the food off them and placing them in the sink.

She noticed that one of the wine glasses was nearly full with wine. She held up the glass to the light, turned the rim to find a clean spot, and drank from it. Tasting bitterness, Sara spit it out. She heard laughter behind her and whipped around.

“Is the pinot noir not to your liking?" One of the guests, a man, was leaning against the doorway to the hall. He held a glass of wine in his hand and was looking at her, amused.

Sera turned red, her mouth open in surprise. “I was just cleaning, someone left it there—“

“Don’t worry. It’ll be a secret between the two of us." He began to advance towards her.

She reddened even more when she saw that he was the same man who earlier had said rather loudly, when she was serving hors d’oeuvres, “Who is that girl with the magnificent hair?"

Sera had looked behind her, trying to see the girl and became embarrassed when he laughed as he looked straight at her. She had stumbled and spilled some of the phyllo wraps and quickly tried to pick them up before Stanley noticed.

The man, who seemed to be the youngest of the guests, with shiny black hair and sharp teeth, had picked them up off the floor and ate them with a flash of sharp, white teeth. He gave her a conspiratorial wink as he swallowed.

And later, when she had set out more rosemary polenta at the dinner table, he had leaned over to her and whispered, “You’ll pose for me."

Sera had looked around. Everyone was busy talking and eating. No one had heard this strange command. She had shaken her head and backed away. There was something predatory about the way his eyes followed her in a room full of people.

He walked towards her now, sipping his glass as did so, and Sera could feel his intense scrutiny of her as she hurriedly tried to clear away the last of the dishes. “Why don’t you want to pose for me?"

Sera concentrated on stacking the dishes.

“Do you know who I am?"

Sera looked at him mutely and shook her head. He was now standing next to her. She could smell something exotic wafting from his clothes, could see the glitter of his dark eyes even when she was turned away.

No one had ever examined her as this man was now doing. She felt as if a bright, bright light was shining on her and he was searching for something in her features.

From the corner of her eyes, she saw him set his wine glass down and pluck a gardenia from a nearby bowl. He placed it in her hair.

“I’ve been watching you. You’re a natural.”

Sera felt like giggling. No one really talked like this did they?

He placed a hand on her chin and turned it so that she was looking straight at his dark eyes. “Amazing. Right at the cusp. You’ll be breathtaking someday, but you don’t know it, do you?  No one’s noticed yet except for me."

She was mesmerized, unable to turn away. He spoke as if he knew about her, knew her future. She had never been called breathtaking.

“But it’s all there, in your eyes, your lips-the woman you’ll become." He turned her face slightly, again examining her. She wanted to pull away. “I can capture you right at this moment before it’s gone.”

He drew in his breath. “You’ve never even been kissed have you?"

Sera’s mouth opened, alarmed that he could tell so much from her face. Was she so easily read? 

Sera could smell the wine on his breath. She felt repulsed but couldn’t move. Her body had betrayed her.

“Imagine that...” he murmured as he leaned closer.

“Sera."

They both turned towards the door to the kitchen where Andrew stood, a peculiar look on his face. “The dishes."

His voice sounded as if it had been wrung from him.

The man let go of her and grinned at Andrew, who was staring straight at him. Sera picked up the last stack of plates and walked them over to the door. Andrew did not look at her, his jaw tight, his face red. Sera pushed herself against him, trying to get him in the kitchen, but he was immoveable.

She heard the man laugh behind her and Andrew quickly move. She hurriedly set the dishes on the counter then forcefully took Andrew by the arm and dragged him away from the door with all her strength.

Inside the kitchen, Andrew glared at her. He was breathing hard, as if he had just run a mile. Sera couldn’t look at him. She started washing the dishes.

“Fucking dirty old man!" She heard him kick the door.

“Andrew." Sera reached out with a hand but he flung it away as if her touch was repulsive to him.

“And you just stood there. I kept waiting for you to stop him, slap him, anything, but you just stood there." Andrew was pacing back and forth, his fury white hot. “Tell me what would have happened if I wasn't there, Sera?”

Sera shook her head.

“Would you have let him kiss you, put his hands all over you?”

“He just wanted me to pose for him. That’s all.”

“No!" He exploded. "No way are you going to pose for him!"

“You can’t tell me what to do!  I’ll pose for him if I want to!" Sera yelled back, who up until then had no intention of doing so.

“He wants you to pose for him alright.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that he just wants to get you into-" 

“Into what, Andrew?”

“Nothing. It’s a line, Sera. He was feeding you lines and you were eating it up. ‘Ooooh, you’re
breathtaking.'" He mocked, "'Ooooh, your eyes, your lips.’ It’s a bunch of crap." Andrew yanked the gardenia from her hair and threw it on the floor.

“Oh, right. You’re right. How stupid of me to think that someone would find me pretty. He had to have been giving me a line because I’m so damn ugly, why would anyone want to paint a picture of me?"

Sera slammed a chafing dish down, then strode to the sink, and started to rinse the dishes with a vengeance.

“Don’t try and turn this around on me, Sera. That’s not what I said. And whether he was feeding you lines or not, it still doesn’t change the fact that you were about to let him kiss you!" Andrew’s face
was two inches from hers, red with unabated anger.

She stopped washing the dishes and turned to him.

“Nothing would have happened. Believe me. He’s not the one I want to kiss."

They looked at each other without moving, without saying anything.  Then Andrew took the plate from her hand and swiftly placed it in the sink, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her to him.

He bent his head.

“Sera?" Miss Haviland called out from the dining room.

They quickly jumped apart as Miss Haviland walked in.

“Your grandmother’s here to pick you up, dear."

Their eyes met, crestfallen.

“Okay." She sighed, defeated, still looking at him. “See you later."

He said nothing as she turned to go.

*****

That night, as she had every night for two weeks, Sera paced her room, unable to calm herself down. Her heart beat too fast, her face was too hot. She was in a raging fever. She put her pillow over her face and screamed as loud as she could into its muffled softness. She wrote in her journal all her pent up frustration but sickened of writing the same thing over and over again.

So completely absorbed was she in her agony that Sera did not at first hear the little taps. When she did hear it, she wondered if it was raining, until she realized that the sounds were from tiny pebbles being thrown at her window. She rushed to her window, pushed the curtain aside and looked out.

Andrew was standing on the driveway to her house, looking up at her. His bike lay at his feet, his upturned face lit by the moon.

Sera quickly climbed onto her desk and slid open her window. She wondered if he could see her face, if he had somehow known that what she had wanted most of all was to see him.

He disappeared under the carport and re-appeared at the edge of her patio gate. He pulled himself up and sat on top of the tall fence, then clambered on top of the carport.

Sera’s heart quickened, wondering if his footsteps only sounded loud to her. She looked over at her closed door, hoping that her grandmother wouldn’t wake up, wouldn’t hear.

Andrew had made his way to the roof of the storage adjoining the first floor of townhouse. He was as near as he could possibly be - there was nowhere to step onto so that he could edge his way to her open window.

“Take off the screen,” he whispered loudly.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just take it off."

Sera carefully unlatched the dusty screen and propped it next to her desk. Then holding onto her window frame, she leaned out and strained towards Andrew.

“You’re too far away,” She whispered, frustrated.

“Move back,” he commanded.

Sera went back into her room. With his heels still on the edge of the storage roof, Andrew stretched his long body to catch a hold of the window ledge, his face stubborn with concentration.

Frightened, Sera leaned out again, “No, don’t, you’ll fall!  We’ve waited two weeks, we can wait one more night."

With his fingers grasping the ledge, Andrew swung so that he was dangling from her window. The ground seemed a long way down.

Sera put her hands on her mouth to muffle her small shriek. She scrabbled off her desk and watched as Andrew pulled himself up, grimacing as he did so. He drew up his body, grunting a little, then awkwardly, noisily pulled in his long legs.

“Shhh!" Sera held her finger to her lips. He was too large, too noisy in her silent house. He dwarfed everything in her room.

As he got off her desk, his foot caught the lamp cord, and the lamp fell sideways, making a loud noise. Sera rushed to the lamp before it could fall off the desk, but Andrew had caught her in his arms and his lips were on hers, softly, insistently parting her. His mouth was moist and warm and he smelled of the night air.

She was aflame, she was melting, she dissolved.  Her senses were enslaved by this one long, deep, and burning kiss.

When he drew his lips away, hers followed.

“I’ve waited longer than two weeks to kiss you and, no, I couldn’t wait another night,” he murmured before finding her again in the dark.

Still kissing, unable to stop, they fell onto her bed.

Could it be that this world of moist heat, tangled lips and tongues and mingled breaths, of being so
close to someone that you could hear his heart beat had existed all along and she had never known it?  Was it hours or just moments that they kissed, she couldn’t know. She never wanted it to end.

She could feel his chest through the thin fabric of her shirt, the roughness of his jeans on her bare legs. She never wanted to move from bearing the weight of his body on hers.

He raised his head.

“What is it
?” she whispered, still ravenous.

He was looking at her, his hands on either side of her face, searching her eyes and lips, her hair fanned out on her pillow, over the edge of the bed. The moon shone full through her window, its light making his eyes mysterious and intimate. Far from satisfaction, her ache for him only grew sharper.

He buried his face in her hair, groaning softly.

“Why’d you stop?”

“I have to stop now, because I don’t think I’ll be able to stop if we keep going.”

“Is that a riddle?"