Catherine McKenzie - Hidden

A second burst of thunder clapped us to attention, and we sprinted to the shelter, abandoning our clubs. We reached it as the rain began to fall, fast and loud, thrumming against the sloped metal roof, running off in a curtain.

We stood there listening to it, our breaths escaping rapidly.

“I guess there’s going to be flowers this spring,” Tish said.

“Too bad we’re going to miss it.”

“It is.” She watched the rain. “I did lie to you before.”

“I knew it.”

“Not about my golf handicap.”

“What then?”

“About why I didn’t tell you I was coming.”

“Lori Chan wasn’t sick?”

“No, she was. She is.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because I wasn’t sure I was going to. Not till the last minute.”

“Why?”

“You know, if we were in a movie, this is when we’d have our first kiss. In the unexpected rain.”

She blushed and looked at her muddied golf shoes.

“You’re right,” I said as my heart sped up. “Tish…”

She raised her head. We were inches apart. I could smell her sunscreen and feel the warmth of her body as the air cooled around us. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted. It took an act of will not to pull her to me, put my mouth on hers, and finally taste this person I knew so well in some ways, and so little in others.

She started to raise her hands, then lowered them. “I didn’t tell you I was coming because of the possibility of this.”

I took her hands in mine. It felt like touching a lightning rod right after it’s been struck.

“You don’t have to worry.”

“I don’t?”

“No.”

She dropped her arms to her sides. I let her hands slide away.

“So I’ve been imagining it?” she asked. “There’s nothing happening between us?”

“You haven’t been imagining it.”

“Then I’m worried.”

“Why?”

“Because we shouldn’t. Because I should say no. But I don’t think I can. Not if…”

“No, Tish. It’s okay. I mean it.”

“How? How is it okay?”

I looked at her and I thought about how hard it was to say things, even though it was easy to think them, to feel them.

“Because I’m not going to ask you for anything. I’m going to keep myself from saying and doing what I want to say and do. I’m going to make that effort. So you don’t have to worry. You really don’t.”

She let out a long slow breath that sounded like relief.

“Is that what you want?” I asked.

“It’s what I’ve decided too. Not because…”

“No.”

Her wide eyes met mine, all at once happy and sad, mirroring the feeling in my heart.

“Did I make a mistake, coming here?” she asked.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’ll always remember this.”

She smiled as the rain stopped, the water still dripping from the roof.

“Me too,” she said. “Always.”

We sat at different tables at dinner that night. We could easily have fudged with the dinner assignments, but we didn’t. Instead, I sat with seven people I didn’t know from her office, and she sat with seven people she didn’t know from mine. I made polite conversation with the twenty-something sitting next to me. I think she might’ve been flirting with me—or maybe she was someone who always repeatedly touched the leg of the person she was speaking with—but I was too distracted to decide. My mouth answered her questions when necessary, while my brain was still half on the golf course, in the rain shelter, and what had almost happened. I couldn’t decide if the twist in my gut was guilt or regret or a combination of both.

My eyes darted across the room to the back of Tish’s head, the white of her neck below where she’d bunched her hair into a knot, the side of her face when she faced the man sitting to the left of her, the right.

I ended up behind her in the food line again, but this time it was no accident.

“How’s your table?” she asked.

“Deadly. Yours?”

“A notch below a Safety Minute.” Her hand hovered over the chafing dishes. “What do you reckon? Pasta or fish?”

The fish looked dried out, even though it was drowning in a thick white sauce. “I’m thinking pasta.”

She nodded and helped herself to a small serving of shaped pasta in an orangey sauce. It looked like something from a can.

I guess the consultants hadn’t specified that team building worked better surrounded by creature comforts you couldn’t regularly afford.

“The sun and the moon and the stars,” she said.

“I…what?”

She nodded at the shape of the pasta on her plate.

“Seth would love it,” I said.

“Zoey used to make galaxies with hers. Did you know there’s a conjunction tonight?”

“What’s that?”

“Jupiter and Venus are at their closest point. They’ll be lined up in the sky in a row with the moon. It’s rare and pretty cool.”

“How did I not know you liked astronomy?”

She shrugged. “There’re lots of things we don’t know about each other, right?” She paused. “Zoey and I usually watch that kind of stuff together.”

“Will you watch tonight?”

“I might do.”

I waited for her to invite me to come along, to go with her and lie out in the grass somewhere and watch the heavens. But I also didn’t want her to ask. On some level, I didn’t want to have to face the choice I knew I shouldn’t be making.

“Well, I should be getting back,” she said.

“Right, me too. How about a drink after dinner?”

She bit the edge of her thumb. “How about…breakfast tomorrow? Yes?”

“Yes. Sure. That sounds good.”

“Have a good night, Jeff.”

“You too.”

She started to leave, then turned back quickly, her plate tottering on one hand. She leaned in close to my ear for the briefest moment, her breath a tickle.

“This is hard,” she said, her lips touching my skin. Then she walked to her table without looking back.

I would have stood there, frozen, if it wasn’t for the person behind me in line knocking into me, propelling me out of whatever dream world those five seconds had sucked me into. As it was, I don’t really remember going to my table, starting to eat, knocking back half my glass of wine in two gulps. I came to when my maybe-flirtatious dinner companion took up where she’d left off, touching my arm, saying my name once, twice, to get my attention.

“Pardon?”

“Did you look in your prize pack?” she said, swinging the small party-favor bag.

“No need. We…I helped put them together. No surprises there.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You’re no fun.”

I agreed and took another swig of wine, trying to decide if I could take one of the bottles and leave without it being remarked on.

It was only later, in my room, after too many glasses of wine and too many speeches, that I found that my prize pack did contain a surprise, after all. When I upended it onto the bed, looking for the souvenir wine bottle opener we’d included to keep the party going, Zoey’s book slid out. It fell open to the inscription page, the page where Tish had written the same thing over and over. Only, somehow, she’d managed to inscribe this copy to me personally and sign it. And though the three extra words—To, Jeff, Tish—weren’t much, I held them against my chest and thought: Always.

I awaken at noon feeling disoriented, like I don’t know where I’ve been or even where I am.

Then, I do know.

I’m in our bed.

The book, the texts, all of it, are real.

Jeff and I? Maybe not so much.

I lie there pondering this, staring at the ceiling, until I feel like I’m going crazy. Not bothering to change out of my pajamas, I go downstairs in search of Beth.

She’s in the kitchen, but not alone. Tim’s here, and they’re talking like conspiratorial buddies, though they’ve never been. Beth’s always disliked him, from the first, though she’d never tell me why.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, and in their guilty looks I know.

“Did you have a good rest, honey?” Beth replies.

“I’m kind of hoping I’m still sleeping, to be honest.”

She shakes her head and walks to the counter where the coffee machine sits, gurgling slightly, the pot full of the blackest coffee.

“Don’t believe it, Claire,” Tim says. “Don’t you believe it for a second.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know that Jeff would never—”

“What? Betray me? How could you possibly know that?”

“He’s my brother. I know him in my bones.”

“Like he knew you? Like he knew me?”

“Yes. Exactly like that.”

“So if Jeff were here, and I were dead, and he found…He found out about us, he wouldn’t have been surprised? Devastated?”

“Devastated, yes. Surprised, no.”

“If you’re saying what I think you are, then fuck you. And get out of my house.”

Beth puts her hand on my arm, pressing a warm mug into my hands. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s right.”

“Well, then, fuck you too.”

My knees feel weak. I sway away from Beth. She steadies me, and in an instant, Tim’s there to help her. They hold me up and sit me down, and neither of them looks like they’re going anywhere.

“That’s not what I meant,” Tim says. “I only meant,” he glances at Beth, wishing, maybe, that she wasn’t here, then continues, “I meant that he wouldn’t have been surprised I acted that way.”