Lisa Jackson - Most Likely To Die

The grown-up Wyatt still had that same smile, the same dark hair and eyes. But he was more muscular now; she had been able to see the masculine changes in his body even beneath the sleeves of his suit coat.

She hated that she still, even now, days later, found herself fantasizing about his biceps, pecs, and abs-about seeing him shirtless, or in nothing at all.

Let’s face it, she told herself as she stepped from the steamy shower in the gym’s locker room and reached for a towel, you’re hopelessly overdue for some physical…release. And not the kind you get in a spinning class.

It had been months since she and Isaac broke up; there had been no one since him. A few dates here and there, nobody she wanted to see more than once.

But it wasn’t just about Lindsay needing some kind of physical release.

It was about her needing Wyatt himself.

Why? Because he had been her first? Did you always long to repeat that experience, right down to the man with whom you had shared it?

Or was it something more?

Who are you kidding? she asked herself, wrapping the towel around her waist and padding back into the main locker room. Of course it was something more.

And it wasn’t just physical.

But none of that mattered-or was supposed to, anyway. As relationships went, she and Wyatt Goddard barely shared a past, and certainly not a future.

“Hey, Lindsay, how’ve you been?”

She looked up to see Amy, a casual friend from spinning class.

“Great,” she lied, “how about you?”

As she made small talk with Amy and got into her clothes, she couldn’t help but compare this slightly stilted conversation to the effortless one she’d had with Aurora last night.

They had picked up right where they’d left off, finding so many things to talk about that she was reluctant when the evening came to an end and she had to say good-bye.

The last thing she’d told Aurora, before she sent her off on the subway, was that she would plan on going to the reunion in July.

“Oh, Lindsay, really? That would be great. Everyone would absolutely love to see you.”

“I’d absolutely love to see them, too.”

She and Aurora had shared a big hug, one that left Lindsay overcome with unexpected emotion. She found herself with tears in her eyes and, embarrassed, hurried away quickly. She didn’t want Aurora to go home and tell everyone that she was a sentimental wreck.

That, however, was exactly what she was. Last night, and today.

But today wasn’t about her old girlfriends or stepping into a familiar, nostalgic past.

It was about stepping into a role she had both willingly and reluctantly abandoned-and a decision she had both regretted and celebrated.

No wonder she was tense.

“Did you hear that we’re supposed to get a big storm later?” Amy asked conversationally as, fully dressed, they both slung their duffel bags over their shoulders and headed for the door. “I’m so bummed. I was supposed to go boating on the Hudson this afternoon with this guy I’ve been seeing.”

“Well, hopefully it won’t happen and you’ll have smooth sailing.”

“I doubt it. It’s supposed to be really bad, wind, rain, maybe even hail.”

Lindsay found that hard to believe as she stepped out into the surprisingly hot May sunshine and walked the three blocks back to her apartment.

The first thing she did was book her plane reservations back to Portland for the reunion, and a room at the new Marriott not far from the school. She arranged to be there a week early, thinking she might be able to help the committee with some last-minute details. Event planning, after all, was what she did.

At least, that was her official excuse for arranging to spend so much time in her hometown. Really, she was anxious to indulge this wave of nostalgia.

All right, that was set.

Now what? She had a few hours still to kill before Wyatt’s car arrived.

It was too early to start getting ready yet, so she wandered around the apartment, watering plants, throwing away newspapers and junk mail, emptying the dishwasher.

She realized she was famished. She opened the fridge and reached past the carton of eggs for a container of yogurt.

Then it occurred to her that she could actually cook something. That would occupy her for a while.

In class this week, they had progressed from chopping and dicing to making simple omelets.

Lindsay didn’t have on hand many ingredients they had used, but she did have onions and tomatoes.

She washed and placed them on the counter, pulled out a cutting board, and hunted through her drawer for a suitable knife.

If you’re going to take this cooking stuff seriously, you’re really going to need to be better equipped, she told herself, at last locating a knife that looked closest to the one she’d used in class.

She began dicing the onion, trying to remember to use the technique she’d learned, but it wasn’t easy with this knife. The blade was much duller.

Not entirely dull, though. She found that out the hard way when it sliced into her forefinger.

“Ow!” She grabbed a dish towel and wrapped it to stanch the blood that poured from the painful wound, but it took a while. Every time she lifted the towel to check her finger, she saw that it was still bleeding profusely.

Finally, the flow subsided, and she winced as she cleaned the cut in the bathroom. She wondered if she might need stitches…but it was a Saturday. She’d have to go to the emergency room, and that, she knew from the notorious experiences of others, could take hours.

Which would mean postponing today’s meeting.

No. No way.

Better to let the wound heal and hope for the best.

Her finger bandaged, she returned to the kitchen, where she tossed partially chopped onion into the garbage and put away the eggs, tomatoes, and butter.

Then she opened a container of yogurt, flopped on the couch, and turned on the television.

It was tuned to the twenty-four-hour local news channel-pretty much the only thing she ever watched when she did bother to turn on the TV at night.

Whoa, Amy was right. Severe thunderstorms were expected late in the day.

Lindsay hoped it wasn’t an omen that this afternoon wouldn’t be smooth sailing for her meeting with Wyatt and Leo.

Come on…Do you really expect it to go off without a hitch?

There were too many emotions involved all around. Leo might be her own flesh and blood, but he was a stranger.

Wyatt might as well be a stranger, too.

She sighed, spooned some yogurt into her mouth glumly, and stared at the television. Above the news anchor’s left shoulder, an ominous graphic showed the black outline of a human figure and a train, with a red splotch between the two.

“A tragic accident last night-”

She’d had more than her fill of bloody injuries for one morning. She reached for the remote, deciding to find something a little more uplifting to watch before she got ready to go to Wyatt’s.

Maybe there was an old sitcom or a cooking show or something. Anything to take her mind off the day ahead.

“-beneath the streets of Manhattan as an unidentified woman was struck and killed by a-”

Lindsay aimed the remote and curtailed the anchor’s grim report, then channel-surfed until she came across a Steve Martin movie that was a few years old. She’d seen it and knew it had a happy ending.

Good. At least something would today.

She surveyed the array of items spread before her on the hotel desk.

A wallet filled with old pictures, some of family, but others of her friends. A small bottle of Aurora’s favorite perfume. A date book filled with notes pertaining to the upcoming reunion. Vanilla-flavored lip balm-not lipstick-the kind she had used back in high school. A brush that held strands of curly black hair.