Читать книгу When Size Matters - Carly Laine - Страница 9

WHAT WAS IT about an honest-to-God rescue? I swear I would have swooned if I’d been the type. I saw myself—in the movie star’s sleek column of a dress—weaving my way across the crowded floor. In my head, no one leered. People smiled and moved aside.

It wasn’t just me. We all wanted that perfect someone to waltz—or, even better, tango!—in and deliver us from our dreary, boring, ordinary lives. Someone to save us from ourselves. We’ve watched Pretty Woman, seen the tender young thing being saved by a handsome, rich, charming, intelligent man—in a limo, no less—and we’ve said, “Right there! That’s exactly what we want.”

I don’t think we were brainwashed by the perfect Hollywood story, though. I think we inherited the want from the cave ladies, as with our good eye for color and great gathering skills. I figure the only cave women who survived long enough to produce offspring were the ones who got rescued on a regular basis, it being tricky to run from a saber-tooth while pregnant. We’ve got a genetically patterned appreciation of the whole rescue business.

If you thought about it, though, it wasn’t enough to be rescued. There was that part about the rescuer being handsome, rich, charming and intelligent. We wanted that, too, please. Liberation be damned, we’d like the whole hunky package.

Actually, that’s not quite right, not for all of us. Not for the Diamond Girls. Their definition of happiness had that overriding mathematical bias: perfect someone = rich guy. It seemed the rich part of the fantasy was an adequate substitution for the handsome, charming and intelligent parts. Or maybe more accurately: rich = handsome, charming and intelligent. Automatically.

Not me. I was looking for someone to capture my imagination, to ignite me, to complete me in every way. Mind. Body. Soul. For me perfect guy = soul mate. Tragically, the soul mate had proven to be a lot tougher to find than a diamond.

But now I’d been rescued. In real life. My heart lurched up in my throat and I could feel a silky dampness in my thong. Dylan! Do not think about the thong!

The guy met me halfway across the dance floor, having taken advantage of the momentary distraction of a passing hors d’oeuvre tray to deliver a good-old-boy whack to Groom Daddy’s back, bark a fond farewell and then half sprint away. It had worked. I could see Groom Daddy leaving the bar, storming up the hill toward the luncheon tent, hunting for less agile prey.

The guy walked me through the dancers to an empty corner at the dance floor’s edge.

“Thanks doesn’t quite cover it,” I purred as I tried to arrange myself back into bridesmaid propriety. I made a swipe at my forehead, repositioning wanton curls, brushing sweat salt from my hairline—probably Groom Daddy’s…Yuck—and wiping away any mascara tracks running up my forehead. All with—I hoped—one casually elegant stroke.

“Yeah, you looked like you could use a break out there,” he said, turning to face me, still grinning out of the corner of his mouth, a mouth just bold-ass begging for kisses. “You’re Dylan, right? I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Brad. Brad Davis.”

I’d like to say that I believed in love at first sight. It kind of went with the whole soul mate thing: when you meet him, you will know. I was sure that’s the way it would be. But if I’m truthful with myself, I don’t think I was thinking right then about love or sight or souls or anything else. I wasn’t thinking; I was on fire. Consumed. That was not an everyday occurrence for me. I was usually quite calm. Other girls could go on and on about a guy’s this or that—his lips or abs or some damn thing. Blah, blah. I never got it. To me, a mouth was a mouth, like a knee was a knee. I was an eye chick. I didn’t have a color preference as long as they were deep, soulful and carried thoughts without words. Eyes spoke to me.

But here was this crooked smile. Lips you could take a nap on, lips that could undo buttons…And then his name wormed its way into my thinking brain. “No!” It was a yelp.

“‘Scuse me?” he asked at the damsel’s ungrateful response.

“The Brad Davis? Brad Davis of Dallas?”

“Well, not the Brad Davis. There’s prob’ly more of us up there, if that makes you feel any better. But—” he flicked his hand in the direction of a group of my guy friends standing now at the bar, all sporting goofy smiles as they watched us “—we do seem to have some of the same friends.”

Damn. I’d been avoiding this guy forever. There I was thinking about hot lips and they belonged to Brad you-two-would-be-just-perfect-together Davis, the blind date I was never going to have. My guy friends were always trying to set me up with him. Poor old Dylan. And they knew I didn’t do blind dates anymore. I’d eventually figured it out that lonesome was loads better than loathsome.

“But,” they said, “you’d love Brad. Y’all would be great together.” I knew what they meant by that. They loved Brad. All of them. He was a man’s guy. All rough and tumble, dirty fingernails from fixing stuff and not very successful. Not the kind of guy who would threaten their egos, but good to hang out with, good to hunt with or bowl with or some damn thing. Perfect for good, old low-maintenance me. It made me mad that they’d think I’d want someone like that. He didn’t even live in Austin, but up in Dallas. On top of every other bad thing, he was G.U. Geographically undesirable. Hardly Mr. Perfect.

And here he was, in all his glory. Manly Man himself.

“Oh, um, sorry. I, uh, just wasn’t expecting…Well, I mean I’d heard about Brad Davis and thought…” Get a grip! I grimaced at him and extended my hand, intending to introduce myself.

Instead, he took my hand in both of his and held it. His hands were strong and hard. Not gravelly like sandpaper, though. Smooth and tough. More like an old shoe. Ooh, romantic. At least his nails were clean. “You’re not exactly what I pictured, either. Lemme see. Shapeless clothes, thick glasses. Long stringy hair. Earnest and a little intense.”

I pulled my hand back with a jerk. “They said that?” “Nah.” He laughed as he lifted my hand again, pretending to study my palm. “They said I’d love you. A free spirit. Said you’d be purrrfect for me.”

“So why stringy hair and shapeless clothes?” I asked, but I knew. It was the usual response to my name. I’d been born in ’79, aka the reckless years of my mother’s life. Her decade of free love, peace and the noble, all-consuming quest for self. She’d named me in one of those classic flashes of seventies free thinking. An innocent act of whimsy and she’d guaranteed—for my entire life—that complete strangers would feel compelled to hunch up their shoulders, squint at me knowingly and exclaim, “Your folks were hippies, right?” I quit answering. The truth was I didn’t know. When I was little, I’d once asked my mother if we were hippies.

“Hippies?” she’d giggled, rolling her eyes. “Dylan! Nobody’s ever called themselves a hippie. They might say, ‘I’m into peace’ or ‘I seek enlightenment.’ But—” She stopped and balanced on one leg with her other foot pressed into the knee. She tilted her head to her shoulder, put on a dopey face and raised four fingers in twin peace signs. “Oh, wow,” she droned. “I’m a hippie.” Then she unwound, laughing her luscious laugh and dropped down so she’d be right at eye-level with me. “Dylan, love, ‘hippie’ is a word used by people on the outside.”

I didn’t ask again.

Over the years I’d tried out different responses to the hippie question, trying to discover the one that most effectively discouraged further inquiry. I’d abandoned the humiliated silence that I’d used in elementary school when the Jennifers and Ericas first heard my name and sang, “Sky-dle is a hippie. Sky-dle is a hippie.” Outsiders, I thought. By the time I was in college I was affecting a world-weary shrug and an ironic grin anytime anyone brought it up. But no response had been half as effective as my latest reply, which not only halts the line of questioning, but usually puts an abrupt end to all further conversation. “Oh, no!” I say, fixing them with my best wide-eyed gaze. “We’re from New Mexico.” The question marks form in a bubble above their heads as I make my escape.

Brad kept his head tilted down, peered at me from under his eyebrows and grinned. He looked quite guilty. And sooo fine.

“It’s my name, right?” I asked him.

He didn’t say anything. I could tell he wasn’t about to get tricked into saying something wrong. He was probably thinking this was a hot spot. Guys are never really sure where the land mines are so they try to be really careful to avoid setting one off accidentally. At least in the beginning, they try.

But I had no hot spots. Not anymore. Just lots of little frozen places. “Don’t worry about it. It’s my own fake ID, my camouflage. I love my name.” And just how dumb did that sound?

“Me, too,” he said with not a hint of irony. “Dylan’s great.”

Now what? I was stuck to the spot. Manly Man appeared to possess some kind of magnet, an intense gravitational pull. I couldn’t budge. It always took me a while to get a rhythm going when I was first talking to a guy, even one I wasn’t so sure I wanted to be talking to. Or maybe especially then. I just knew I was a whole lot easier with a breezy tempo. I made a stab at it. “I guess I should properly introduce myself. Glad to meet you, Brad Davis. Sky Dylan Stone,” I announced, turning my hand into his palm for a shot at a breezy handshake. “Sky with no cute little ‘e’ on the end.”

“Sky Dylan Stone.” He rolled it around on his tongue, tasting it and laughing at the same time. I watched his mouth as he said it. All other issues aside, it really was an incredible mouth. It was saying now, “Where’d it come from? Your name.”

I took my hand back and looked away from his lips, off to the side. So I could concentrate. “Who knows?” I shrugged. “My mom’s been typically vague on that point.” I laughed a little then, thinking about it, about her, seeing her again in my head.

“Oh, I don’t know, Dylan,” she’d said, laughing, when I’d asked about my name. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Which was her favorite explanation for the stuff she did back then, her only excuse for the reckless years.

I put her away and looked back at him, smiling, plunging ahead with my breezy tone. “She said the Dylan part came from Bob Dylan. She and my dad really loved that old guy. Still do.” And God knows, it could have been worse. She liked Jimmi Hendrix and Janis Joplin a lot, too. Or, heaven forbid, Roy Orbison. I could just hear her. “Well, Orbison, darling, what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“It’s not so bad,” I continued, “I like Dylan’s songs okay—well, the words to his songs. I think his voice must be an acquired taste.” I saw my mom again, thirty-some years ago, in halter top and hip huggers, hair to her waist parted straight down the middle, acquiring a taste for Dylan with a bong and a beanbag chair. “Anyway,” I breezed on, “Nobody calls me Sky, except my grandma. Thank goodness. I’ve been Dylan since birth.” I stopped, suddenly aware of the important distinction between breezy and windy, not even sure which parts I’d said aloud. “It suits me just fine,” I mumbled, puttering down to a halt.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Kinda no-nonsense and poetic both.”

Ooh. I liked that. I stared at his mouth again.

“But Sky…” He let the thought trail. “Sky’s magic. Sky…just floats off your tongue.”

I shouldn’t have been looking at his mouth. I flushed red at the image. It’s okay to be a visual person if your visions don’t play out on your face for the whole damn world to witness. I pictured myself, legs dangling, head and arms thrown back, floating off his tongue. I blushed.

“So…no more images of shapeless clothes and stringy hair?” I croaked, probably sounding way too earnest and intense.

His look took in the straying curls and vacuum packaging. “No, no. Sorry about that. It’s just that I quit trusting my friends ever since they hooked me up with that Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleader who was uncomfortable with silence. Hell, my ears are still throbbin’. But now it’s your turn. You tell me. How’d ya have me pictured?”

Lord. That smile again. He could have been talking about worm farms for all I cared. I didn’t answer. I was thinking that this was what a heart-melting grin must look like. A true Texas-boy smile. Impossible not to get pulled in. That was the magnet. The beautiful teeth, those fantasy lips, the smile that tugged over too far to the right. It made you want to stick around, hang out. Maybe I could learn to like bowling.

“Dylan?” he coaxed, eyebrows up.

I forced myself to look up at his eyes, or at least his eye. I could never look at both of someone’s eyes at the same time without mine crossing. I just picked one and stared at it. Come to think of it, the saying is “look him in the eye” so maybe everyone does that. I like it when I find evidence that I’m not totally weird.

His eye was pirate black. I could hardly even see the pupil. I looked right at the bridge of his nose to see both of them at once. They were so, so dark, not dazzling like his mouth, but deep and unreadable. I wondered what our children would look like. Stop it, I ordered.

His question had hung in the air too long; I decided not to answer. I gazed back at him, smiling my version of Mona Lisa’s smile. Then I had this image of a baby smiling when you don’t know if it’s grinning or having gas and decided to just plain smile. I felt the heat in my body, wanted him to touch me again. The quiet hung between us but it didn’t worry me. It was a good thing. Unlike Chatty Cheerleader, Silence would be my friend.

He read the vibes, stepped closer and took my hand again, holding it to his chest, cupped loosely in his. “You wanna go somewhere?” he asked in a kind of croaky whisper. “Now?” If this had been a movie, he would have said, “Let’s get out of here.” He was good in this new role, husky voice and all. I knew he knew the effect he had, knew he did it on purpose. He was too close. I wanted to step back, get a little space, but he’d tightened his grip on my hand and I’d have had to yank it to get it loose. I willed myself still and tried to read the vibes, tried to get a sign from those night-black eyes.

And then, pop! The bubble burst. My mom always said I got too tangled up in my own antennae. I felt myself spiraling into rapid cool-down, getting uncomfortable, antsy. I looked around to see if I could see my date, see if maybe he’d like to take another stab at a rescue. He was gone.

I shook my head, telling Brad, no, sorry, no, I was busy. That’s what I said to guys who made me nervous. But this time it was true. Somewhere out there I had a date, a date anxious to relive my special moments of humiliation on the dance floor.

“Come on. Just coffee. I’d like to get on out of here. I’ve enjoyed about all I can stand of the funny looks.” He tilted his head at the people walking by, sneaking peeks. I’d been in my own world, thought we were alone. “How about it? We leave now, you’d have time for just a little coffee. Yes?” He stepped back, turned down the heat and cranked up the sunbeam. It looked like it came from inside, way deep down inside.

And I could feel the pull again, tugging. No way, Dylan. Magnet Man’s a player. A rough-edged, hard-handed player. A noncandidate. I looked away from him, still shaking my head a little, and tried to go through my usual list, those things that I absolutely required in potential candidates. The list I used to talk myself out of guys. Except I couldn’t focus. I just knew that he wasn’t shorter than me and that he wasn’t dumb—that was a guess. It was hard to tell with all those long drawn-out Texas vowels.

I couldn’t seem to help it, flopping around from flame to ice to fire again. My friends said I did it so I could stay safe, keep guys from getting too close. But it wasn’t that. It was just that I was looking for the right guy. A real guy. Someone I could count on.

It took such a leap of faith.

But here was this guy with the sunshine smile, a guy who made my heart flip and my toes curl. This time I needed to get brave enough to jump. Except my feet were nailed to the floor.