Hey everyone, here's the last chapter. Thanks for sticking it out while I worked through this. I think….this might be my last literati attempt. I tried with another story, Open Road but it's not well received at all so I might forget it. But for everyone who ever reviewed, I love you from the bottom of my selfish little heart. This one's for you.
Luce
Disclaimer yada yada
Spring
She lays on the couch in the March cool house, frosted windowpanes, grey spring day hovering outside the windowpanes. His head is on her lap, and her fingertips slowly glide over the olive skin, his cheekbones, rigid and pronounced, his jaw, defiant.
"Tiger tiger burning bright," she whispers, gazing into the enormous, dark, burning eyes. Her cheeks, red-tinted, make her own blue ones so pale and brilliant.
"What immortal hand or eye," he whispers back, his fingers grazing the soft cashmere of her sweater, listening to her breathing. Everything is so close, so intimate, it almost makes something in his throat hurt.
She is his now, her in her red woolen coat with it's clean lines, her with her shining masses of neat brown hair, with her wide eyes and such questions as he cannot answer.
Her legs are crossed, her hand is softly, gently, and very absently caressing him. Her eyes are lost somewhere in the scenery out the window.
She belongs to him less now then when she belonged to another.
He senses this, and swears softly.
Her eyes immediately snap to attention.
"What is it?"
Shaking his head, he sits up, looking for his coat.
"Jess!"
But he is gone, the door shutting behind him like the discharge of a gun. She sinks back into the couch, her guilty, fabulous mouth trembling. She knows she is betraying him, because even as she is touching him, she is dreaming of some other place where he does not belong, a place she'll soon be a part of. As hard as she tries to find a niche for him in her world, he no more belongs now then he did before she became his.
Yale, cocktail parties, shining wooden floors, Ketel 1 martinis. She has signed away her life to her grandparents already. It's too late to save her from what she will inevitably become.
On the bridge, leaves fall softly into the water. It is cool. She wraps her coat around her, her aristocratic hands folding in her lap, her ankles crossed as they dangle over the water. She looks into the lake, at the reflected sky, at the rippling surface, at the movement in the murky interior under her feet.
He sits next to her, faintly smoky and cedar fresh, carefully placing a thin volume between them. They kiss now, because in it's presence, they are equals again and all is forgotten at the excitement of such wondrous, secret compatibility. How many people in this world read Margaret Duras?
"Rory."
She smiles at his gentle tone.
"It's ok."
He breathes a sigh of relief, the disaster staved off for one more day.
Suddenly he wants to kiss her very much, and he pulls her head towards him with his capable hand and there are four people kissing slowly, them and the cool reflection in the lake that wavers unsteadily. Her long, marble fingertips curl in the air and uncurl, forgotten, as she tilts her head slowly in a reverie below his, curtains of hair falling down her back, pale face arched upward, held in his hands. He likes how her mouth is so red, like a strange version of Snow White. She is cold, only her mouth is warm and his thin lips fit perfectly between hers; he presses small, light, hesitant kisses on her dazed mouth slowly, the tip of his tongue barely daring to part her lips, where it meets hers and retreats in quick, electric shock. She seems to awake, putting her cold fingertips on her mouth and hesitating, then quickly drawing away. Her pearly skin tints quickly.
She turns huge, terrible eyes on him and her red mouth screams guilt.
"I do love you, you know, and I will never tell you again but all the same you might remember it," she says suddenly, her voice queer and stiff.
And she stands up, shaky and brave, and he stands up quickly too, his face incredulous and silent. He knows he should say it, tell her, admit it, but all the same he is so angry, so angry with her because she will desert him someday and he knows it.
"Rory…"
"Don't say anything!" she cries out, in that same strange tone. "Don't ruin it! Don't be angry with me, please don't!"
He grabs her arm.
"I'm not. Stop it."
"You are, and you'll hate me when I go. Jess, you'll call and I'll ramble for an hour like an idiot about what an awesome discussion we had in class on John Updike this morning and you'll hate me for it. My grandmother will fix me up with sons of sons of tycoons and you'll hate me for it."
"For what, having a grandmother and reading Updike?"
When put in that context, it seems a little ridiculous to her too. But she sees the faraway light in his eyes and she knows he is lying.
"You hated me yesterday. When you left. Jess, you knew what I was thinking. You knew-"
"Because I hate you doesn't mean I don't love you," he interrupts, leaving a long silence between them. He stares at the lake, at the brilliant leaves.
"I've never had the energy to hate anyone. I despise plenty of people. Love…hate…the proverbial thin line…."
She looks down at her feet, and up to him again, unsure how to answer, how to handle this wonderful, amazing, terrifying thing that has just happened. How glorious to hear him say it, to hear him say it when he knew he could have nothing from her.
He shrugs, exhausted. He never meant to say anything, but now it's too late.
It's evening. They're in the diner, in a far corner booth, heads bent close together; they look as though they're plotting and conspiring. He whispers inaudible things to her, as she tilts her head and her long lashes lower, hooding her eyes, lips curved in a secret lover's smile. The lights are off, and outside the golden twinkling lights of the town send faint beams through the blind, creating slants of golden light on their darkened faces.
"I'll take you to New York," he tells her. "We'll hunt out one of those old Upper East side apartments, shabby pre-war with wooden floors and huge, drafty windows and old bookshelves piled and piled with books. We'll haunt Central Park and look for Franny and Zooey."
"And write a lot of bad poetry and you'll smoke up the curtains and we'll live on Chinese takeout," adds, grinning.
He shakes his head.
"Rory, Rory. Hey, maybe I'll open a diner and get Susanne Vega to write a song about it. It'll become one of those places where one night stands come to have breakfast and read their papers."
"I'll waitress and write for the New Yorker."
"Theres a dichotomy. Are you sure you don't want to try out Broadway? Everyone who comes to New York does. I think it's a rule."
"Don't be ridiculous. Can you see me dancing?"
"Mmm, you're right. It would be manslaughter. I remember when you came in the diner last fall with that huge white dress on and I thought maybe you'd gotten married…..then I heard the words fandance….."
"Will you forever mock me?!!"
She crosses her arms and retreats, and a brief interlude occurs where he persuades her to forgive him in a silent and very convincing manner. They separate rather rumpled and flushed. She giggles.
"Terrible boy."
He raises his eyebrows, shrugs, and eats a french fry in the dark.
It's morning. She rolls over, tangled in the sheets, somnolent and rosy in the rainy morning light. Her hand creeps over his sleeping body. She studies his face, a face that is not innocent even in it's sleep. It's restless, shadows of dreams moving under the surface and closed eyelids masking an infinite mystery. She knows no more about him then she did at the beginning of this.
There is faint stubble on his lean jaw and his hair is starting to curl a little at the neck. Her fingertips trace lightly the odd, twisted lips.
"Jess," she whispers. The words are so quiet, fervent, almost solemn. "Mine, you're mine and I love you I love you darling,"
A wan smile surfaces on her lips at the antiquated, strange words that flew out of her mouth so feverishly before she had even thought of them.
She sighed, and rolled over on the other side, hair splayed on the pillow like a sunflower.
His eyes still closed, a slow smile spread gently on his mouth but she did not see it.
She finished school and started packing for Europe. He disappeared one day.
He was gone, as she knew he would be. It had only been a matter of time.
He wrote her letters that he never mailed, letters that choked and rushed and revealed and bared everything. It didn't matter. He was sure she knew it all along. She still knows it.