A Different Blue

Chapter Twenty-Six





I awoke to pounding on my door the next morning. I had tossed and turned all night, restless with lust and love, weary with doubt, wondering if I should have taken what Wilson was clearly offering.

“Blue! Blue! Open up! I need to talk to you!”

“Holy crap!” I moaned, sliding out of bed and pulling on a bra, a pair of jeans, and a T-shirt as Wilson continued to pound.

I opened the door, letting him in, but I immediately retreated to the bathroom. He followed me, and I quickly shut the door in his face. I used the toilet, brushed my teeth and hair, and scrubbed my face free of all the makeup I'd gone to bed in. Wilson was still waiting outside the bathroom door when I opened it. He took in my freshly scrubbed face, his eyes lingering on my mouth. Without a word, he slid his arms around me and buried his face in my hair. I gasped, caught completely off-guard. He just held me tighter.

“I think it's time to end this,” he whispered against my hair.

I tried to pull away from him, rejecting him before he rejected me. It was easier that way. But he tightened his arms and soothed me with shhhing sounds.

“Shh, Blue. Just listen.”

I held myself very stiff, trying not to be distracted by his scent, by the way his arms felt around me, by his lips in my hair, by my desire to keep him there.

“End what?” I finally responded.

“This not knowing business.”

“What don't you know, Wilson?”

“I know a lot more than I used to, Blue. What number are we on now? I've lost count. What were some of them? I know you're brilliant. You're beautiful. You're incredibly brave. You have a wicked sense of humor. You carve unbelievable works of art . . . not totem poles.” I relaxed against him, smiling into his chest. “You have lousy taste in mates . . . although since I count myself among them, I might have to amend that one.”

“Tiffa says you have terrible taste in women, so maybe we're even,” I interrupted.

“I don't have terrible taste in women. I'm mad about you, aren't I?”

“Are you?”

“Yes, Blue. I am. I am completely gone on you.”

The feeling that surged in me was tempered by confusion and doubt.

“What about Pamela?”

“She kisses like an old woman,” he said softly.

I laughed, my heart immediately lighter.

“I told her last night that I was in love with you. Funny thing is, I think she already knew.”

I curled my hands into his shirt and took a deep breath, waiting for the axe to fall, because I could feel he had a lot more to say. He paused, maybe wondering if I would declare my feelings, too. When I remained silent, he sighed and spoke again.

“But this is where the not knowing part comes in. I have no real idea how you feel about me. One minute, I'm sure you feel the same. The next you're telling me it's just a silly game. One minute, I'm telling you I'm lost without you. The next you're telling me to sod off.”

“So that's what you don't know? You don't know how I feel about you?” I almost laughed, it was so obvious. “I'm not the one who's been dating someone else, Wilson. I'm not the one convinced it's inappropriate to be with me. I'm not the one who has been fighting this every step of the way.”

“That's still not an answer, Blue. How do you feel about me?” His voice was insistent, and his hands were on my shoulders now, pushing me away so that he could see my face. I couldn't answer. Not because I didn't know but because I did.

“Can I show you something?” I said suddenly. Wilson dropped his hands in frustration and turned away, running a hand through his hair.

“Please. It might help me to explain. I'm not as good with words as you are, Wilson.”

I leaned forward and grabbed his hand, pulling him behind me as I walked through the house. He followed, but I could see that I'd hurt him by not answering his question. I tugged him through the door in my kitchen that led to the basement, and I clattered down the stairs, not releasing his hand until we reached my workbench.

I pointed at my latest work-in-progress. “This was that huge lump of wood you helped me drag in a while ago. You asked me if I was going to make a life size replica of Tyrannosaurus Rex, remember?”

“This is it?” Wilson stared in disbelief at the carving that was still big, as far as carvings went – but when we'd lugged it in, it had been too big to get it on the work bench, and we'd had to use a dolly to even get it into the house. It had to have weighed 250 pounds. Since that day, I had carved away enough mass to actually hoist it onto the table myself. I pointed at the large sections of wood that I had cut away, creating a climbing, circular structure, almost like a circular staircase built for fairies in a wooded glen. It was going to be my first carving for Mr. Chen. “Do you see how the carving is created by removing wood? How I almost remove more than I keep.”

Wilson nodded, watching my fingertips skim along the valleys and shadows I'd created.

“It's not just about what's there but what isn't there. Do you understand?” I stumbled a little bit on my words, knowing what I was trying to say and not knowing if I was actually saying it.

“I think so. The space creates the silhouette, the dimension, the form . . . right?”

I smiled up at him, thrilled that he understood. He smiled back, so sweetly, so fondly, that for a minute I couldn't find my breath, and I scrambled to regain my train of thought.

“That's exactly right.” I nodded, my eyes re-focusing on the sculpture in front of me. “Jimmy taught me that when you carve, it's the negative space that creates line, perspective, and beauty. Negative space is where the wood is carved away, creating openings that in turn create shape.” I paused and took a deep breath, knowing this was something I had to say. If I loved Wilson – and I knew that I did – I would have to make him understand something about me that wasn't easy to grasp. It would make loving me hard. I had to warn him. I turned to face him and met his gaze, beseeching him without artifice or apology.

“Sometimes I feel like I have a huge, gaping hole from my chin to my waist, a wide open negative space that life has just carved away. But it's not beautiful, Wilson. Sometimes it feels empty and dark . . . and . . . and no amount of sanding or polish will make it into something it isn't. I'm afraid if I let you love me, your love will be swallowed up in that hole, and in turn YOU will be swallowed up by it.”

Wilson touched my cheek, intent on what I was saying, his brows lowered in concentration over a compassionate grey gaze.

“But that's not really up to you, Blue,” he said gently. “You can't control who loves you . . . you can't let someone love you anymore than you can make someone love you.” He cradled my face between his palms. I reached up and held onto his wrists, caught between the need to hang onto him and to push him away, if only to save myself from what he made me feel.

“So you're afraid to let me love you because you fear you have a hole that can't be filled . . . not by any amount of love. But my question to you is, once again, do you love me?”

I braced myself and nodded, closing my eyes against his gaze, unable to say what I needed to say with his eyes, so full of hope, trained on my face.

“I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you,” I confessed in a rush. “I can't imagine that what I'm feeling isn't love. But 'I love you' doesn't feel adequate to express it.” I plunged headlong into babbling. “I desperately want you to love me. I need you to love me – but I don't want to need it, and I'm afraid that I need it too much.”

Wilson's lips danced across mine, and he reassured me between kisses, professing his own need. His hands smoothed my hair, his lips traced my eyelids and the corners of my lips as he continued to whisper all the reasons, one after the other, why he loved me. When his words became poetry, How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways, I sighed and he captured the sound with a kiss. When tears swam in my eyes and trickled down my face, he followed them with his mouth and trapped them between our lips. When I whispered his name, he tasted its flavor and lapped it up until I was dizzy with his attentions and wrapped around him like a frightened child.

But I wasn't afraid. I was gloriously ebullient, weightless, and free. Light. And though we spent the day in my apartment in blissful bouts of kissing and touching, interspersed with hushed conversation and drowsy silence, entwined like sleepy snakes, by some unspoken understanding, we didn't make love. And it was all new to me, novel and decadent, kissing for the sake of kissing, not as a means to an end, but as an experience in itself.

I had never held someone or been held without sex being the intended outcome. I had never run my hands across a man's back or linked my hands through his as he kissed my mouth without my mind being consumed with what came next. With Wilson, it wasn't about what came next but what was happening now. Touching wasn't orchestrated or choreographed to fulfill the requirements of foreplay. It was an event all its own. And it was erotically chaste, tender, and telling.

It was the ultimate makeout session, the kind I imagined took place in homes of teenagers all across America. Where every touch was stolen, every kiss a conquest, every moment a race against curfew. It was the kind of kissing that felt forbidden because Mom and Dad were sitting upstairs and discovery was imminent, where clothing stayed put and passions raged and kissing took on an intensity all its own, simply because going further was not an option. By the time the late afternoon sun filled my sitting room, my lips felt bruised and beautiful, and my face was slightly raw from nuzzling and nudging, from burrowing my face into Wilson's neck and from being burrowed into in return. I was spent without compromise, sated without sacrifice, completely and totally head-over-heels in love. And it was delicious.





The shadows of a perfect Sunday evening filled my apartment before either of us made any attempt to speak of the future. We had raided my cupboards for sustenance and discovered what I already knew . . . there was little sustenance to be had in my kitchen. We ended up ordering Chinese and waited anxiously for its arrival, distracting our famished selves with cinnamon bears and confession.

“I was the one who took the caps off of all your dry erase markers.”

“Really? Were you the one who replaced them all the next day, too?”

“Yeah. I felt bad. I don't know what got into me. I kept trying to get your attention in the nastiest ways, like one of those weird little boys on the playground who throws rocks at the girls he likes.”

“So I can assume it was you who put a dirty picture on my overhead projector so that when I turned it on all the students got the full monty?”

“Guilty.”

“And the lock that suddenly appeared on my cello case?”

“Yep. That was me too. It was just a little one. And I put the key in your coat pocket.”

“Yes . . . that was a little strange. Too bad it took me two days of trying to saw off the blasted thing before I found it.”

“I wanted your attention, I guess.”

Wilson snorted and shook his head. “Are you kidding? You walked into my class in the tightest trousers I've ever seen, high-heeled biker boots, and wild, snogging hair. You had my attention right from the get go.”

I blushed, half-pleased, half-mortified. “Snogging hair?”

Wilson smirked like a man who knows he's pleased his woman. “Snogging is what we spent all day doing, luv. It means kissing . . . a lot. After that first week or so of school, I was convinced I'd chosen the wrong profession. I was utterly depressed, and it was all your fault. I was quite sure I would have to ask you to transfer out of my class because I knew I was in trouble. In fact, as long as we're confessing things . . . I went and asked the counselor to pull your records for me. It was after the day I talked to you after class, after the whole 'I don't know who I am bit.'”

“It wasn't a bit.” I said, stung.

“Yeah, luv. I know,” he said softly and dropped a long kiss on my frowning mouth. And then we became entangled in each other, forgetting the discussion altogether until the doorbell chimed and we jerked apart, laughing a little as we did.

“Food's here!” We both raced for the door.

It wasn't until we had dug into the cashew chicken and the sweet and sour pork that I circled back to his confession.

“So you pulled my records . . . and what did you find?”

Wilson swallowed and took a big slug of milk. “I didn't know what I was dealing with then. You were a hard case, Echohawk. Did you know there's a police record in your file?”

I froze, my spoon paused between mouth and bowl. “What?”

“When your father's body was found they re-opened your case – or what little anyone knew. There were some efforts to find out who your mother was, for obvious reasons. Your father was officially dead, and someone thought it important to make another attempt to locate your mother. There wasn't much in the file. I'm not sure why the school even had a copy except that you are a legal ward of the state, at least you were until you turned eighteen. There was an officer's name on the file. I made note of it, I don't know why. Maybe it was the odd name, Izzard. Does that ring any bells?”

I nodded, resuming my meal. “He was one of the officers who initially found me, so to speak, after my dad went missing.” We ate in silence. “They called me. The lab, in Reno? They called. The results are back.”

Wilson stared at me, his fork paused on the way to his mouth, prompting me to continue.

“They want me to come back. They said they have a match. They will show me everything. I've known for two weeks now. Part of me wants to get in the car right now and head to Reno. Part of me can't wait. But the other part, the part that belongs to Jimmy? That part doesn't want to know. He was all I had, and I don't want to let him go. I don't want to know something that will change the way I feel about him, that will change our history.”

I thought about how that small act of kindness to a hungry little girl had brought destiny to Jimmy Echohawk's doorstep and how he had paid for his compassion in a way only Karma can craft. One small act and he opened himself up to a mother's desperation and found himself in a position where he became responsible for a child who was even more alone in the world than he was.

“ And I worry that what I find out will be ugly and . . . scary. I'm really tired of ugly, as you are well aware. It's going to hurt. It's going to rip me open. And I'm tired of that, too. What kind of woman does what she did? What kind of mother? A big part of me doesn't want to know who she is or anything about her.”

We sat silently, my words surrounding us like graffiti on the walls, unavoidable and glaring, destroying the peace that had been between us. Wilson put down his fork and rested his chin on his steepled fist.

“Don't you think it's time to put an end to this?” Same words as before, entirely different context.

“An end to what?” I said my line.

“To this not knowing business,” he repeated quietly, holding my gaze.

I knew what he meant and didn't need to hear him say it.

“We'll take a couple of days off. I have some personal days left, and Beverly will understand.”

“And what do we do?”

“We find your mother. And we find Blue.”