The Map to You Read online

  “It’s good. It’s exceptional,” he amends.

  My shoulders shift back. When I started drawing at the age of ten, I never considered whether my creations would be good or not. I wanted to draw; I needed to draw. It was a bonus that others enjoyed my work as much as I did. I got better with practice, and wherever life took me, I made sure I had my paper and pencils with me.

  “John.” Her voice is a lash against the sunny day. “The show.”

  He glances at the woman and holds up his index finger. Looking at me, he asks, “Can you finish it in five minutes?”

  “Can you?” the girl repeats hopefully, shaking off her mom’s grip and skipping over to her dad. Her eyes are wide as they stare at the portrait.

  I nod, my heart racing inside my chest. “You bet.” I spin on my heel, find the nearest picnic table, and get to work.

  The girl sits opposite me, unusually still as she watches me draw her. John and his wife stand off to the side, speaking in low voices. His silver wedding band winks at me as he runs his fingers through his hair. The sun is higher in the sky, and sweat trickles down the center of my spine. My shoulders hunch as I hear the words “con artist” and “rip off” leave the woman’s mouth. Someone needs to hit her with a glitter train, put a little joy in her demeanor. I am not a con artist—well, not when it comes to this. My drawings are the most real thing about me.

  “Who taught you how to do that?” the girl’s tiny voice questions.

  I answer without looking up. “I taught myself.”

  “Really? How did you get so good?”

  “Practice.” I wink at her and she grins, revealing a missing lower front tooth. “Lots and lots of practice.”

  Finishing up the outline, I go about shading and adding final touches. With a flourish, I present the image to her. “For you.”

  She squeals and claps her hands. “It’s beautiful. Daddy, Mommy, look!”

  They turn, their conversion abruptly cut off. The woman incinerates me with her eyes, but the man is smiling at his daughter.

  I turn to the girl in her blue top and red skirt. “I’ll give it to your parents to keep safe for you, all right?”

  She nods and clambers down from the picnic table, racing for her parents. “Come see, come on,” she urges, holding both their hands as she pulls them over.

  As she studies the drawing, the woman’s expression microscopically softens, but she doesn’t say anything. She takes the drawing and her daughter’s hand.

  “Twenty dollars, you said?” the man asks.

  I swipe a hand across my damp forehead, pushing bangs from my eyes. “You got it.”

  He moves to block the woman’s view of us, and after a brief pause, hands me a fifty-dollar bill. “Thank you.”

  My mouth waters at the sight of fifty dollars. Fifty dollars is a lot to someone who doesn’t have much. Lifting my eyes, I tell him softly, “I don’t have change.” I really don’t.

  A small smile claims his mouth, and I think, That little girl is lucky to have him for a dad. “I didn’t expect change.”

  I quickly pocket it, holding his gaze. I kick at the ground and blink my eyes against feelings I’d rather not have. “Thanks back. Enjoy the picture, and the circus.”

  He nods, and taking his daughter’s free hand, the family of three walks in the direction of the biggest tent. I slide my fingers in the front pocket of my pants and feel the crisp bill, unable to hide a smile. If I can find a couple more people as generous as that man, I’ll be doing pretty good.

  The fried bread and sugar scent of the funnel cake stand taunts me as I walk. With the addition of the fifty dollars, I have two hundred dollars to my name, and I can’t afford to waste any on treats—but like that matters. I make a beeline for the stand, breathing in the tantalizing goodness that needs to get in my mouth.

  I’ve never claimed to be all that responsible.

  At the window, I order a funnel cake with powdered sugar, and a soda. I can already feel the caffeine and sugar zipping through me, making all the bad in my life go away. Junk food is magical that way.

  Each hand occupied, I use my mouth to reach my first bite of funnel cake. It’s perfectly chewy, warm and texturized, and tastes like the sugar heavens personally blessed it.

  At one of the homes I stayed at as a kid, the woman liked to bake. I was only there a few months, but her love for all things sweet apparently rubbed off on me. From cookies to cakes to pies—every day there was a new recipe being tried out. On one such occasion, she made homemade funnel cakes. I thought they were divine, but even they cannot compare to this. I still remember how her skin was naturally flushed and she had a grin that was quick to come. She was short and round and smelled like honey. Her name was Jackie and she gave the best hugs. It was one of my better stops.

  “How can you not have diabetes? I feel a diabetic coma coming on just from watching you.”

  I jump, causing my food to haphazardly teeter on the plastic plate. I whirl around to scowl at Blake. Damn if my eyes don’t rejoice at the sight of him. My pulse picks up and I convince myself it’s only because he surprised me. “You almost made me drop my funnel cake.”

  “Heaven forbid.” He eyes the food with disdain on his face. “Is sugar a part of every meal for you?”

  “It isn’t for you?” I move the Styrofoam cup of soda to the crook of my elbow and use my fingers to pull off a chunk of the chewy bread and gnaw on it, purposely talking before I have it fully swallowed. “What are you doing here? I thought we were meeting at the big tent in an hour.”

  He shrugs. “What can I say? I missed your company.”

  “I’m surprised you lasted this long.” I offer the funnel cake to him, and he immediately recoils. Good. I didn’t want to share with him anyway. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “A few things come to mind. Like, clogged arteries. Cavities. A heart attack.” Blake looks at my face, and smirks.

  “What?” I demand.

  “Nothing.”

  My eyes narrow. “What? What is it?”

  Although his expression is neutral and his lips are in a flat line, Blake’s dark eyes dance. “You would make a great circus clown.”

  “Why?”

  Blake moves toward me and I stiffen. His neck is directly before my eyes and I stare at the thrumming pulse, wondering what sorcery of his makes mine go so much faster from his mere proximity. A lock of ebony hair waves up from his neck, looking like black silk. I shift my eyes to his shoulder, and my stomach flips. My fingers want to caress the shape, feel its heat and strength.

  Why must he be attractive? I glower at him like it’s his fault. Well, it is his fault.

  Blake’s breath ruffles my hair, tickles the sensitive flesh of my earlobe, and I inhale shakily as the people around us turn into indistinct blurs.

  “You have powdered sugar all over your face.” He brushes his fingers across my cheek, and then over my mouth. Blake’s fingers and eyes linger on my lips before they both leave, taking my breath with them.

  My mouth hums with the memory of his touch, and my eyes go on a blinking spree. The air crackles with the promise of passion and regret. He puts enough space between us to be able to look down at me, and as his lightning eyes zap me in my core, yes, I consider kissing him. Heavily.

  Blake’s eyes darken, his hard mouth relaxes, and I feel myself sway toward him. I want to kiss him. Maybe it will be different with him. Maybe it won’t be awkward and clumsy and leave me with a profound sense of disappointment, like all the other guys I’ve kissed. Even kissing Jonesy felt wrong, and we had close to one year of practicing to get it right.

  “Wait.” As reality comes back with the reminder of Jonesy, I put out the hand holding the soda to keep him from getting any closer. “I don’t—I mean…we can’t kiss.”

  His eyebrows shoot up. “Were we going t
o kiss?”

  “Uh, um, maybe? I don’t know. Were we? I don’t like kissing guys,” I stutter, my face burning at the confession. I really wish I hadn’t just said that.

  He rears back, studying me as disbelief and doubt gather in his eyes. I count to seventeen before he speaks. “Does that mean you like kissing women?”

  “What?” I squawk, feeling my cheeks heat up. “No. I mean…I don’t think so. I’ve never tried it.” I chew on the straw as I wait for mortification to incinerate me whole. Why did I say that? That’s just asking for problems.

  His eyes take on a devilish cast and the corners of his mouth lift ever so slightly.

  I release the straw and glare. “Stop thinking whatever you’re thinking.”

  “Why? I particularly enjoy my present thoughts.” When I continue to glower, he lifts his hands. “Okay. Tell me why you don’t like kissing.”

  Shrugging, I turn my head and watch as a clown rides by on a unicycle as she juggles three red balls. I stare in fascination before remembering that I’m in the middle of a conversation with Blake. “It’s just, um, it never goes well. Kissing never goes well,” I specify.

  He nods, looking serious. “Why doesn’t it go well?”

  “Well, sometimes it feels like they’re going to suck off my face, and sometimes there’s too much spit, or they have not so great breath, and then there’s the tongue.” I shudder. “I hate having tongues shoved into my mouth.”

  Blake’s lips purse and he cocks his dark head. “Who, or what, have you been kissing?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, obviously, I know what,” I add with an eye roll.

  Most recently, Jonesy Laxton. Whenever I try to remember what I found appealing about him, I come up blank. I like to think it couldn’t have only been the danger element. That quickly sizzled out and changed to recklessness and corruption. As soon as Paisley showed up, it was like an iceberg of accountability slammed into me, and suddenly, things that once didn’t matter, did.

  I make a square pattern in the grass with the toe of my boot, watching the motion. I don’t know why I admit it, and to him of all people, but I hear myself saying, “Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just a bad kisser.”

  It only takes him a second to reply, but it feels like ten thousand to my anxious ears. “Maybe you haven’t been kissing the right guys.”

  “Maybe.” I finish off the soda and throw it at a nearby wastebasket.

  I miss.

  Blake gets to the cup before me, tossing it over his shoulder and making it.

  “Lucky shot.”

  “Everything about me is lucky,” he informs me, looking wicked and delectable.

  His long legs bring him back to me. Blake puts his hands in his pockets and looks me over. A thick lock of hair drops to cover one eye, altering his features from edged intrigue to lethal beauty. Something dark and tumultuous studies me from the center of his eyes.

  I gesture to him. “I mean, look at you. You look like the kind of guy who would be able to kiss. But what if you can’t? What if you’re a really sucky kisser? What if you have garlic breath, and your mouth is full of spit, and you try to eat my face?”

  His eyes narrow. “Maybe you should let me kiss you and find out.”

  My body is all for it, practically pulling me toward him. Men have always been trouble for me, and I intuitively know it would be double that with this one.

  But what would one little kiss hurt?

  I stare into his dark eyes.

  Just one.

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on that,” I whisper, my eyes dropping to his mouth as I take a bite of funnel cake. If my mouth is full of something, chances are we won’t kiss. Even though I’m curious about the feel and taste of his lips, I’m not ready for that. The tingling of my lips calls me a liar.

  Blake’s eyes darken.

  “Someday,” I add after swallowing.

  A horn sounds, splitting my eardrums, and I drop the plate of funnel cake with a loudly executed curse. The moment is over; whatever spell had us trapped is gone. The noise level picks up, and swarms of little bodies, and more reluctantly following larger ones, head for the big tent. I look from the tent to the remnants of my funnel cake, wanting to watch the show and needing to rescue my food. I tilt my head and observe the abused funnel cake. It looks sad, neglected.

  It looks like it should be in my mouth.

  Maybe it’s still okay to eat. I move for it.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I was only going to throw it away,” I fib, gathering up the dirt and grass-covered fried bread. Dismay fills me at the waste of good food, the weight of it lowering my shoulders. I use my finger to flick off a small pile of dirt from the food.

  “Sure you were.” Blake tries to take it from me, and I resist, smashing it to my chest. I admit, I didn’t think that motion through. Giving me a look, he tugs at the plate. “Opal. Give it up. You can’t eat that. You’ll get worms or something.”

  I cast him a dubious look. “Worms?”

  “Or something,” he emphasizes.

  With a sigh, I let it go, allowing Blake to throw it away.

  “It could have been salvaged,” I grumble, brushing white dust from my chest and stomach before licking the last of powdered sugar from my fingers. Something crunches between my teeth, and it tastes like dirt.

  “Some things can’t be salvaged,” he says all matter-of-factly as he faces me, sounding ridiculous. Something freezes him in place, and he stares. I realize it’s me—not trying to be seductive in any way, and yet, somehow pulling it off. His eyes drop to my mouth and his nostrils flare, turning him from brooding mayhem to consuming desire.

  I slowly pull my finger from my mouth, nervous under the intensity with which he watches me. A groan, faint and low, sounds from deep in his chest, and my skin prickles. Liquid heat swims through me and makes me ache for him. As our senses collide to examine something new, and discover something wanted, I come to the conclusion that it’s too late. I’m already gone.

  Doesn’t matter. I don’t accept it.

  The sensible thing for me to do is run—because that’s what sensible adults do in tough situations, and I am a sensible adult—so I do. I take off for the tent, not caring how infantile I look. If I don’t run away, I’ll let Blake kiss me, or worse, I’ll kiss him.

  I slam into a chest that feels more like a wall, and stumbling back, am halted by strong hands on my arms. I blink and look up, noting a man of huge proportions with a bald head. It’s the guy who interrupted my creating process—the one with the blond woman who ate shrimp and got sick.

  “We need you,” is all he says to me before dragging me behind the tent.

  4

  Blake

  I watch Opal disappear among the throng of children. Nothing snuffs out the spark faster than a runaway damsel. I scratch the side of my head, unable to remember the last time a woman has physically fled from my company. And then I ask myself what the hell I’m thinking, and feeling, and I tell myself to stop. Stop it all.

  I’m such an idiot.

  Because in spite of knowing better, in spite of knowing this can’t go anywhere, and that I have to be a fool to further get involved with Opal, I really, really want to be the guy to get her to enjoy kissing.

  Resigned to spend another hour at a circus that makes me want to jump out of my own skin, I aimlessly walk around the grounds for a good ten minutes before heading back to the main tent. Grimacing at the horde of people also heading that way, I slowly make my way toward the multi-colored mass of circus goers lined up outside the tent. The first hour here was spent on my back in the box of the truck, staring up at a sky in hopes of having some kind of life-changing epiphany. All I got was bird poop landing dangerously close to my face. Which fits.

  My grandpa John was the one who took me to the circus when I was
a kid. First and last time I ever went—until now. I wish I could have appreciated the time spent with him. I wish I could have looked at the experience from adult eyes instead of my kid ones. I was bored, unimpressed. A brat. But I was eleven; what did I know? I thought I had all the time in the world with him. I really only had four more years.

  I was angry when he left—at him, at myself, at life.

  I jerk my head against the memories, effectively pushing them aside. The line to the tent is steadily moving along, and soon I find myself at the doorway to hell in the form of bright colors, raucous laughter, and creepy-happy music.

  I must pause too long; an eager kid behind me pushes at my back, jostling me forward as he exclaims over a pair of white horses with tiny, shiny red hats on their heads. I slowly turn my head to the side and drop my gaze to him. I don’t have to do anything but look at him and the boy’s eyes go wide and he backs up into his mom. I just have that face—the kind of face that looks angry even when I’m not. Usually, I don’t mind. Sometimes, like now, I do.

  “He’s just excited,” the woman explains, her hands protectively moving to the boy’s shoulders.

  Lately I’ve been reevaluating my decision to get a degree in child psychology. How am I supposed to help kids when they’re all scared of me? I look at them and they practically pee themselves, like this kid. I’m reevaluating everything, including returning to college and going to Australia. But, I have a passport, and I bought a ticket. I’m due to leave in two weeks. It would be stupid to not go. I nod and face forward, my hands clenched at my sides. The stiffness in my hands grows to my arms, and my neck. And visiting my dad—that one I reevaluate from hour to hour.

  Pulling back my shoulders and working hard at keeping my expression blank from the turmoil of my mind, I enter the darkened arena. Bleachers, overfilled with chattering kids of all sizes and adults, frame the circular structure. In the middle is a cordoned ring with the man from the billboard standing at the center of it. An unnaturally wide grin lines his tan face, and he nods and waves as people pass.