Averil Dean - The Undoing

It almost decided him. The words crowded up to the base of his throat.

He couldn’t say it. He had to say it.

The decent thing would be to leave Jawbone Ridge. Just get in his truck and keep driving. In the summer, on his way back to town, spent and filthy from his job with the forestry service, he’d sit behind the wheel at the foot of the mountains and think, Turn around. Go the other way. But somehow he never could do it.

He should never have let it come to this. He should have stopped, could have stopped a hundred times. They could have gone on being family to each other, the way his mother always intended. He could have found someone else.

But those possibilities were behind them. This was where they were, and he wanted Celia with a single-mindedness that wiped away any mental image of his life but the one that included her. His desire had become laced with a possessive greed, so powerful that he’d lain awake night after night, twisted in the sheets, pulling at his dick like he could milk out some peace of mind, some resolution at the thought of Celia in the room next door, asleep in his best friend’s arms. He’d allowed the jealousy to grow, sick with shame at his own weakness. It was unfair to change the rules, he told himself. This was how they’d always played it. He understood that. He tried to accept his role in her life. In the beginning he’d even encouraged it.

“This is a small town,” he’d told her. “People think of us as siblings. They won’t tolerate it. Go and be with Eric. No one has to know about...this.”

“We won’t be able to hide it,” she had said.

But he had overridden her, patronized her. So sure always that he knew what was best for Celia.

Now he had to admit that she was right. He couldn’t hide it. Every time he glanced in her direction, it was like looking through a mask, a parody of brotherly affection. He had to keep his eyes on her face, forget the live feeling of her nipple in his palm, the texture of her skin, the damp heat of her mouth. He had to watch with gritted teeth as Eric teased her, kissed her publicly, while Rory could only wait and scheme and smile, smile, smile.

What Celia felt about it he never could guess. On the surface she seemed unchanged, but he gathered small evidences in the things she said, in an indecipherable expression or sidelong glance, in the way she clung to him and cried his name. (Had she held him that way the last time? Had she come as hard? Did she want him more or less than before?) He examined every word and gesture, aware with each passing day that the unfairness of the situation had begun to rankle: he was tired of being the odd man out. He wanted to know where he stood.

He wanted her to break a promise. It was selfish and unreasonable and unlikely. Celia didn’t break her promises.

He’d rehearsed this moment so many times in his head, piecing together what sounded like a convincing string of words until he said them aloud, alone in his room, the reproachful hotel groaning and snapping around him as if it knew he was scheming to steal its mistress away.

Fuck the Blackbird. Fuck Jawbone Ridge and brotherhood and promises. He had to put it out there. He needed her to himself.

The words that had long been boiling in his chest surged upward. As they spilled from his mouth, Eric walked through the door.

One Day Earlier

KATE OPENED THE top drawer of Julian’s dresser. It was half-full of socks and folded-up boxers. The next drawer had things in it, too, but probably there was room to combine them. Kate hadn’t been home in more than a week, and her clothing had begun to accumulate. She’d been using hangers, tossing laundry into her duffel. Waiting for Julian to offer some space for her to settle in. But he was absentminded that way.

She gathered up his clothes and began to shift them to the right-hand drawer.

He wouldn’t mind. They had been dating for months now; they were a couple. Everywhere Kate went, people asked, “Where’s Julian?” and their heads would swivel around, scanning the room. She’d roll her eyes and say that they were not joined at the hip, but secretly she’d feel a warm little glow at the association. Julian was somebody, not like most of the men from Telluride. He came from generations of money, but when she asked him where it all started, he was vague. Investments, he said, not looking at her, bored as if she’d blundered into some obvious question he’d answered a hundred times before.

That was the problem with Julian. It was so easy to irritate him and set his attention wandering.

It hadn’t always been this way. When they first met, it seemed that Julian wanted nothing more than to make her happy. She wanted the same, or thought she did. They treated each other cordially. Never argued or took a stand on principle, never made demands, as if they were both afraid one really ugly fight would tear the whole thing apart. They built a careful stockpile of goodwill, as if saving it up against some future calamity.

It used to be fun, being with Julian. Sophisticated fun. She was always aware of her age and his, like when they stood side by side in the bathroom mirror, or when he pulled out his wallet and paid the tab in cash, always in cash, his long fingers beautifully manicured with nails like polished rock. His age was one of the things that made him interesting. His age, and his name.

After all, this was Julian Moss, who’d brought home the bronze on what turned out to be a fractured tibia, only five-hundredths of a second out of the lead. Julian Moss, whose calf swelled so badly afterward that he wasn’t able to put on a boot and had to sit out the rest of the Games from the broadcast booth, the start of a new career.

Julian was wonderful. Everybody thought so. He’d put his fingers to his temple and lean in confidentially, as if the conversation you were having was the most important one he’d had in years. He gave you a full-on spotlight of attention, dark brows furrowed, his eyes moving slowly over your face as if memorizing it as part of some crucial inventory.

In return, he expected to be listened to. Early on he had told her, with that slow, half-pleading smile of his, “I like my own way, you know, Katie.”

Well, that was all right. She always tried to give in, agreeing automatically and without complaint. And for a while that seemed to work.

Sweet little Katie, he called her. That’s what she tried to be.

But lately he seemed to feel they had enough goodwill to last them. He began to spend it on cheap shots, unguarded glances, eye rolls that stopped just shy of full circle so that she could never be sure whether he meant them in anger or loving impatience. His lips had taken on a permanent sneer of amusement—or disdain, it was hard to tell. He said cryptic things that he refused to explain, as if it didn’t matter what Kate read into them, only what he meant to himself. His moves in the bedroom were less playful, and he seemed constantly distracted, like Kate was in the way. Yet he used to be a considerate lover. Even the first time, hushed and hurried in a frigid stairwell, he had taken the time to make her come. He was experienced, patient, dominant. He’d bought her lingerie and sex toys, said it was all a game he wanted to play with her, that some women took it too seriously but he was glad to see that Kate was not one of them.

Now nothing she did was right. Last night was awful. Awful! The things he wanted her to do...

Tears of self-pity sprang to her eyes. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand.

It could be nothing. Could even be the start of something good. Maybe this was a last line of defense in what Kate’s mother called “terminal bachelorhood.” Maybe Julian just needed a little push, something from Kate to let him know that she would agree to whatever he had in mind. She told him, offhandedly, in the course of conversation, that she loved to travel, though she was perfectly content here in Telluride. She thought marriage was great but was also up for cohabitation. She didn’t mind his age. She liked children, though she didn’t think her life would be incomplete without them. Loved sex but was happy to give an unrequited blow job. She laughed at his jokes; she sang his praises.