Kathleen Creighton - One More Knight

Forget it, she told herself. I said, forget it. And her heart beat faster.

Besides…well, of course, she had no purse. And therefore, no money.

Which, she told herself, was just as well.

July 3, 1977

Dear Diary,

I can’t believe what’s happened. My father is such a jerk. He never listens to me. He must really think he’s God. I mean, who does he think he is, telling me who I should go out with? It’s not his life!

Okay. Here’s what happened. I told him I was going to the Fourth of July picnic and fireworks with Richie, right? And he tells me I can’t go with Richie, because we’re going with the Stewarts, like we always do. So I tried to tell him I’m too old for that family stuff. I mean, I’m sixteen now, and this is like, a date. And he says, so what’s the matter with Colin? He’ll be your date.

Colin? Yuck! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Colin. He’s practically my best friend in the whole world. I tell him stuff I can’t even tell Kelly Grace. We’ve been best friends since we were babies-he’s like my brother! I can’t even imagine kissing Colin. The very idea makes me feel sort of sick.

The judge just doesn’t understand. And as usual he won’t even listen to me. He doesn’t care what I want. You know what? I think he has his heart set on Colin and me getting together so I can be a Stewart, which in this town is the equivalent of royalty. Is that the dumbest thing you ever heard, or what?

Thought for the Day: I don’t think it should matter if a person is new money or old money, or how blue their blood is, or their skin, for that matter. The only thing that should count is how they feel in their heart.

Troy was waiting for her when she came out of the rest room. He said, “Ready?” and when she nodded, held the door open for her without saying another word.

Outside, the air was muggy and warm. The sky flickered like a silent-movie screen, and off to the west, thunder grumbled. A breeze gusted fitfully, stirring the trees and lifting Charly’s hair from her shoulders.

“Thunderstorm,” she murmured, breathing in the smell of rain. Oh, Lord, she’d forgotten what it was like, rain in the summertime.

Troy came beside her, glanced at her and then at the sky. There was electricity in the air, all right, but it seemed to him more of it was coming from her than from up there. “Yeah,” he said, “looks like it’s comin’ our way. Got your umbrella?”

“You’re joking, right?” She gave that miserly snort of laughter. “Where I come from, nobody even knows what an umbrella is for.”

“I kind of thought you were from around here.”

“Yeah, well…” She slanted a look at him, then caught a quick breath, let it go in a hiccup of laughter and, as she moved on, murmured in a thick Alabama drawl, “That is somethin’ I try daily to foh-get.”

And not succeeding all that well, darlin’, Troy thought as he unlocked the passenger’s side of the Cherokee.

He opened the door and out of habit, held it for her, then went around to his side, pausing on the way to give Bubba’s ears a tug. The dog had his head hanging out the opening in the window as far as he could get it and was whining and looking as if the rest of him wanted to follow it pretty bad. But at least he wasn’t howling.

Troy bumped out of B.B.’s parking lot, across the highway and into the driveway of the Mourning Springs Motel, which still had its Vacancy sign on. Once he’d roused the night desk clerk, he had no trouble at all getting two rooms, except that the clerk seemed to be a little hard of hearing. He kept saying “Two rooms? Two?” as though he couldn’t quite believe it.

“Probably a first for this place,” Charly commented when he told her about it.

He handed her one of the keys. “They are adjoining-that okay with you?”

“That’s fine.” Her voice was low, expressionless.

“Why don’t you go on and make yourself at home?” he said as he started around to the back of the Cherokee. “I think maybe I better take ol’ Bubba for a walk first.”

The wind was picking up, and the thunder was a lot closer, doing some cracking and booming now instead of just mumbling and grumbling. He opened up the door and untied Bubba’s leash and got a good grip on it, Bubba being none too fond of thunderstorms. He looked over at Charly, who was still standing there turning her key over and over in her hands. “I think this storm’s about to cut loose. I’ll be right ba-” About which time Bubba lifted his leg and cut loose all over the Cherokee’s rear tire.

“Guess that takes care of that,” said Charly, deadpan.

Cussing and muttering, under his breath, Troy got his overnight bag out of the truck and locked it up, then hauled Bubba away from Charly’s legs and over to the door of number 10, which was the number on the key in his hand.

He had just unlocked the door and pushed it open when a flash of lightning lit up the whole place like broad daylight. The thunder crack that followed a moment later propelled Bubba through the door like a rifle shot. With his mouth open and one hand on the light switch, Troy watched as his pup made straight for the bed and tried his best to crawl under it and, when that didn’t work, wallowed across the top of it and down into the space between the bed and the wall on the other side.

Still speechless, he turned to look at Charly. She’d unlocked her door and opened it partway, but hadn’t gone inside yet, and since she’d just been an eyewitness to his dog’s cowardice, he figured he’d see a big grin on her face at the very least, maybe even some laughter and cute remarks. But she was just standing there looking at him as if her mind was on something else.

He started to speak, but for some reason, didn’t. Lightning flickered briefly, giving her features the translucent look of marble. The wind whipped her hair, casting strands like shadows across her face.

“What is it?” he asked her. But something in him must have known. Deep in his belly, a pulse began to pound.

She shook her head, reaching up to pull the strands of hair away from her face. Her lips parted, but whatever she said got lost in the growl of thunder. He leaned closer.

But it wasn’t words he heard. It was something else, something he couldn’t even put a name to, something a lot more primitive than language and a whole lot easier to understand. He knew that words can lie and mislead and throw up all sorts of barriers; this was a direct link between his soul and hers, bypassing all those confusing things like logic, conscience, morality, ethics, rules, customs…all those things he’d had pounded into him by parents and Sunday-school teachers and drill instructors and that he believed in devoutly and under normal circumstances, tried his darnedest to live by. And it was as impossible to deny as a lightning bolt bent on connecting with the ground.

As he hovered there, his face close to hers, he heard the hiss of an indrawn breath-his own. He felt the first raindrops splatter on his scalp, his shoulders, his back, saw them glisten on her cheeks and forehead…and ignored them. As did she. Her eyes gazed into his as if she’d been hypnotized. Electricity ran through his veins.

And then, without his knowing quite how it had come to be there, his mouth was on her mouth, and her lips were melting into his like butter on a hot griddle.

He felt pressure building in his chest and throat and belly. Lightning flashed against his eyelids, and in the second of silence that followed he heard her whimper. He opened his mouth, and she did, too, just as the thunder crashed in on top of them. It drove them together, a collision of lips and teeth and tongues and bodies. His arms were wrapped around her, holding her closer, and closer yet, while her arms coiled around his neck, urging his head lower.

The sky opened up and let loose the rain; it pounded on his head and pummeled his shoulders like a demon taking out its pent-up fury. For all Troy knew or cared, it could have been the Johnstown Flood. He was caught up in a natural disaster of a different kind.

They broke apart, gasping and drenched, to stare at one another for an incredulous, immeasurable time. Then, as if the spell that enchanted them both had suddenly broken, they turned and plunged through the open door together. Troy kicked the door shut behind them and reached for her in the sudden darkness. But the space around him was empty-he could feel its emptiness with every revved-up nerve and sense in his body.

A light came on-the lamp above the bed. Charly was poised in a half crouch beside it, looking like a wild thing pinioned in a car’s headlights, eyes wide and luminous, dangerous and alluring as a bayou on a moonlit night.

Cocked and wary, breath coming shallow and quick, he held up a calming hand. “Look-” But she held up a hand, too, and stopped him right there.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, urgent growl. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re thinking of me. But I can’t do this. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” Troy drawled with a calm he was a long way from feeling, folding his arms across his hammering heart. Outside, the thunder cracked and grumbled, and the rain roared like a whole herd of demons, and it was nothing like what was going on inside him. “I understand.”

She shook her head with controlled fury, hugging herself as if to keep from coming apart. “No, you don’t. I want to-I do. Lord knows, I’m crazy, but…I do. All right, so I’m out of my mind. But I’m not stupid, okay? I’m not stupid. We can’t…do this.”

And all at once Troy was pretty sure he did understand. Taking the kind of heart-stopping, gut-tightening gamble he thought he’d left behind him for good, he reached into his jeans pocket, took out a small foil-wrapped package and tossed it onto the bed. “This what you’re worried about?”