My Very Best Friend, Page 3

  Then I saw my mother’s face, as she is today, her straight, brown bobbed hair, her exquisite clothing and high heels, her lips, painted with red lipstick. I heard her voice in my head.

  I groaned.

  “Charlotte, must you wear a clip on top of your head to keep your hair back? Why don’t you let me take you to a beauty parlor? It’s been what, two years, since you’ve had it cut? Do you want to resemble a human shepherd? Is that tape on your glasses? They tilt. I feel like I have to tilt my head to see you. Oh God. Don’t tell me you’re wearing all brown again. Brown is the color of blah. Boring. And is that . . . you are still wearing the brown monstrosities on your feet, aren’t you? A feminist can be stylish.”

  Finally she told me that I was “wasting your life living alone on an island buying sweaters for your cats and you need to get laid. A feminist can get laid. She can fall in love. You have to say hello to a man without aggression before either of those things can happen. Say hello. Attempt to be polite.”

  My eyes misted. Sometimes I missed my mother.

  If she were with me, she would cry or, more likely, throw broken pieces of brick at one of the cars, stuck in her garden like a curse.

  The silver cat meowed again and I meowed back. I lifted her under one arm, put my shoulders back, told myself to buck up, and walked down the crooked brick pathway. I was glad I wore my sturdy brown shoes with the thick heels. I fiddled with my glasses, on the taped part, and gingerly opened the door to our cottage.

  I almost dropped the cat. She struggled and screeched.

  The stench hit like an invisible wall, thrown at me by a giant, stinky hand. I could not be seeing what I was seeing. I was having an illusion. Or delusion. I had drunk too much on the plane. Surely I was having a Scotch Whiskey–I Hate Flying breakdown.

  Our pretty Scottish cottage, the cottage my father had grown up in, that his grandfather had built, all under the proud Clan Mackintosh name, smelled like a dead corpse, which would be Mr. Greer. It also smelled like animal defecation. Dust. Years of decay, as if a graveyard had moved in, followed by a gang of pigs, and farts. A mouse sprinted on by.

  Not only did the house smell like rotting dung, it was jammed. Jammed with junk.

  I sat in that loaded emotional mess for a minute, then pulled on my underwear, as it had crept up over my right bottom cheek. I tried to open the windows. Two wouldn’t open, as they were broken, but I managed to open the rest of them on the ground floor before the stench killed me, then I turned and surveyed the damage.

  The couch was clearly a mice home. I heard them scurrying, having a busy day. Two cushioned lounge chairs had dark brown spots in the middle. I didn’t want to know what the spots were from. There were two broken wood chairs, three kennels for dogs, but no dogs, fortunately. Inside the kennels were torn blankets and Styrofoam.

  An algae-filled aquarium, half filled with water, held three dead fish, floating. There were broken lamps and three ice chests, empty beer cans inside. Boxes of junk, including old clothes that smelled like hell had rotted. There was another couch, gray this time, and spotted like chicken pox. Two beds had old mattresses I did not wish to touch. They looked diseased, same with the blankets and bedspreads on them.

  I glanced down at what looked like years of porn magazines. “How does a woman walk with boobs like that, Silver Cat? It’s as if she’s got watermelons with nipples attached to her chest.”

  I turned a page, disgustingly fascinated. The magazines appeared to be the only thing that didn’t have dust on them. “For the love of biology and physics!” I said. “That is perverted!” I shut the cover. I had never seen a porn magazine. That would be my last one. Another mouse sprinted on by.

  “Silver Cat, do not look at this or it will rot your mind.”

  Everything would have to be hauled out, along with all bugs, and all crawly creatures, including mice and rats.

  I watched Silver Cat watching me. “You did a poor job of killing the mice and rats. Step it up next time. You’re a disgrace.” She meowed. I meowed back.

  A wave of exhaustion hit on top of the head-banging airplane hangover I was already dealing with. I’d been up for way too long.

  I would drive back into the village, find a place to stay, and get a huge bin out to the house so I could empty out all the junk. I’d also see whether I could hire some people to help me.

  I hoped to see Bridget. I knew something was wrong, I knew it. My stomach flipped, twisted, and turned. Maybe something had been wrong for a long time. Her letters were always sporadic. Our calls sporadic, also. One number would be good for a year, then gone, disconnected. My stomach clenched again.

  Yes, something was wrong.

  The question was, How long had it been wrong? And what had happened?

  Suddenly Silver Cat pounced.

  “Well done.” She tilted her head up as if she wanted me to take the dead mouse from her mouth. “No, thank you. Take it outside.” I pointed at the door. She trotted on out. Cats usually obey me.

  One less mouse to go.

  I started hauling the trash out, one bacterial ridden thing at a time.

  About an hour later, my glasses slipping off my sweating face, my butt in the air as I dragged out another box, I heard a truck rumbling down the road.

  The truck slowed in front of my house, then turned into the long driveway. I watched, with some trepidation, as it kept coming.

  I opened the door to my car, pulled the mace out of my purse, and stuck it into the waistband of my brown corduroy skirt. I was as prepared as I could be. I had also brought my pocketknife, ordered from Switzerland, and handcuffs, but they were in my suitcase.

  The man opened the door to his truck and stepped out.

  “Hello,” he called out.

  “Hello.” My glasses had fogged up, as I was not only sweaty but nervous because a strange man was in my driveway and we were in the middle of the country. My glasses had tilted too far to the left, so I could see out of only one lens, but I could tell the man was a giant. I would tell him my intentions from the start, I decided. Courage, Charlotte!

  “I have mace on my person. I also have a black belt in karate.” That was a lie. “Don’t take a step closer to crowd, cajole, or catapult me.” When I get nervous I sometimes speak in nonsensical alliterations. It’s irritating to me. “I will aim for your face with the mace and for your balls with a swift kick.”

  He had brown curls, I think. He had mile-long shoulders. He stood straight. I think I saw him smiling. Could be a premurder-ous expression.

  “Your grin is odd. Get back in your truck.” I took the mace out of my waistband. It had gotten stuck on a hole and I had to tug on it, three times, and mutter “Damn!” aloud before it came loose.

  I held it in front of me, arm outstretched. If only my vision wasn’t fuzzy and lopsided. Should I take off my glasses and give them a quick swipe to clean off the fog? Would that show weakness? I could feel my knees starting to shake, my heart pounding. Biologically normal, a physical reaction to stress.

  “I apologize, lass, for my odd grin,” he said, his voice deep, amused. So Scottish. Then I stopped myself. So Scottish? I was in Scotland. He would speak with a Scottish accent. “I’ll stop grinning straight away.”

  “I appreciate your acquiescence.” I waited. I blinked as stinging sweat ran into my eyes. “You are still grinning in an inexplicable manner. Please get back inside your truck and leave.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “But first I have a question for you.”

  “I am under no obligation to answer any of your questions, as you are trespassing on my property.” I wished I had my handcuffs. Next time I would have them out of my bag and in a pocket for pesky personal problems such as this.

  “You are surely not obligated at all,” he said. “I appeal to your sense of neighborliness.”

  “I am not neighborly. I prefer my own company. What is your question?”

  He grinned again, I think, and rocked back on his heels. He
was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue shirt, and work boots. He was a towering crane. Six five, I’d put him at. A hulking Scotsman.

  “My question,” he said, “is simple. Are you Charlotte Mackintosh?”

  I hesitated, lowering the mace ever so slightly. “Yes, I am. Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer for long seconds, then took a step forward.

  “Do not risk it,” I told him, my mace arm straight out once again. “Unless you want mace in your face and your balls squished to pancakes.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t want mace in my face and I certainly don’t want my balls squished to pancakes. That would be painful, especially for a Scotsman, we of the better endowed species.”

  “Yes, indeed.” I stopped. Yes indeed to his balls being better endowed? “Indeed not! How do you know my name?”

  “Do you not know mine?”

  “If I knew yours I wouldn’t be threatening to mace you, now, would I—” And then I stopped. I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt, wiped my forehead with my arm so the sweat wouldn’t blind me, and put them back on. I peered up at him. He had laughing blue eyes. He was still smiling, but it wasn’t an odd smile at all.

  He was gorgeous. Huge. Confident.

  The years fell away. Twenty of them, to be precise.

  “Toran Ramsay,” I said, stunned. Then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be stunned. Toran lived a couple miles down the road, across the stream, and around a curve. I had told him I was coming. He had offered to come to the airport, but I had declined. Sometimes my lack of common sense processing is surprising.

  “Indeed, lass, it is.”

  He was one hunk of a man. McKenzie Rae Dean would be with a man like this in a millisecond. She would know what to do, what to say, how to act in bed. She would be saucy and sassy and sexy.

  I, however, am not McKenzie Rae Dean.

  “You’ve grown tall,” I managed to utter. I tucked the mace back in the band of my skirt. It fell to the ground. I picked it up. Put it back in. I pushed too hard. The mace fell through my skirt and onto the ground again. I picked it up and put it in the left pocket of my shirt.

  “You’ve grown too, Charlotte. In a pretty way.”

  “Thank you.” I heated right on up. “I see that you still have that annoying habit of creeping up on me.”

  “Creeping up on you? In my truck?” He chuckled, stepping closer and closer until we were only three feet apart.

  “Yes. You used to do that with Bridget and me. We would be walking or talking, and all of a sudden, like some monster from the loch, you’d spring. You and Pherson.”

  “I’ll blame Pherson.”

  “He’s not with you today, so I suppose you can’t.” Pherson Hameldon had been Toran’s best friend since we were very young children. Pherson had been in the military for ten years, now he works for an oil company, according to Bridget. He’s out on a rig in the ocean for weeks, or months, at a time. He returns home for weeks, then he’s back out. He dives to the depths of the ocean, fixes the pipes in a specialized dive suit, and up he comes. Incredibly dangerous work. “He would spring with you if he were here. You were both talented in your springing.”

  Springing? What was that? I didn’t know why I was being grumpy. Probably because Toran was utterly handsome and I am now a recluse and study obscure science facts with a multitude of cats. I didn’t know what to do or say.

  “We worked hard on our springing. We wanted to be the best,” Toran said, his mouth twitching into a smile. “Twenty years apart it’s been. A long time.”

  “Yes.” He was standing so close.

  “They’ve been good to you.”

  “Who has?” I could hardly think.

  “The years. You are lovely.”

  “You are lovely, too. Delicious.” I coughed. “I mean, you look cooked. No.” I coughed again. “You look healthy. Good.”

  “Thank you.”

  We stood staring at each other. He towered over me. Next to Bridget, he’d been my best friend. He’d been my first kiss, my first love at fifteen. We used to talk about science and farming, and we’d play chess together. My eyes teared up.

  “You have the brightest green eyes I’ve ever seen Charlotte. I have thought, over the years, that I remembered your eyes being brighter than they truly were, but I was right. Give me a hug, Charlotte Mackintosh. Can’t believe it’s you and I’m glad you’re here. Back in Scotland.”

  He was glad.

  Glad I was here.

  This time my vision blurred, but that was because of emotion.

  “I’m glad, too.” My voice cracked on the words as I was engulfed in his arms, his chest warm.

  “I like your American accent, Char, and your hair has gotten long. How was your trip?”

  I hardly heard what he said because I was, mortifyingly, breathless.

  Toran’s cheekbones were high, slashes on either side of his face. He still had a slight scar near his left temple from me. I had tackled him when I was ten when we were playing hide-and-seek and he’d hit a log. I had cried and cried when I saw the blood and he had comforted me.

  “Char?”

  And that mouth! Full lips still, white strong teeth. Last time I’d kissed him I was crying, our tears running into our kiss.

  “You okay, luv?”

  “What?” My arms were still around his shoulders. He was a devilishly desirable Scotsman.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes. Fine.” I pulled myself away, cleared my throat. I automatically gripped the top button on my blouse. Luckily, still fastened! “I became inebriated on the plane and I haven’t slept in about two days so I’m not myself yet.” Argh. Why did I say that? He would think I was a drunk.

  “Jet lagged. Do you usually get drunk when you fly?”

  “I rarely fly, because I know any plane that I’m on will crash. When I do, yes, I drink for sound medicinal reasons.”

  “Sound medicinal reasons?”

  I squirmed. “Yes. When I fly my heart pounds erratically and I endure systemic anxiety and panic, which puts a strain on the health of my cardiovascular system.”

  “You do drink only Scottish Scotch, right?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t claim that. I drink from the tiny travel-sized bottles. It would be inappropriate, though tempting, to bring a full liter on board.”

  “Ah, that’s a crime. Never drink Scotch that’s not from Scotland.”

  He smiled. Goofily, my knees became weak. Ridiculous. I tried to straighten them. They wouldn’t straighten. My glasses fell off. He bent down and picked them up.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He studied the house. “I see that the house has not weathered well over the years.”

  “No, it’s an unmitigated wreck.” I was becoming a wreck around him.

  “I must apologize to you. I didn’t know your house had gone on so badly. I should have checked. I don’t drive by here on the way to town. I don’t drive this way at all. The last time I went by was probably about two years ago, and it in no way looked as it does today. We did have a wind storm, harsh and completely unprecedented, last year. May be why the roof has dipped. How is it inside?”

  “It looks like a tornado entered, whirled everything around, followed by a rainstorm of mice, topped off with a hundred smelly cavemen who drank beer and ate legs of lamb and left everything to percolate for twenty years. It’s rumored there was at least one chicken killed inside. It is fully crammed.”

  He chuckled. “You’re still funny.”

  “Funny?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not funny.”

  “Yes, you are. Can I see inside?”

  “Please. But endeavor not to inhale deeply. The stench may knock you over.”

  We stepped into the house together. He put his hands on his huggable hips and surveyed the damage. “Damn.”

  “Yes, damn. I can’t believe it.”

  “Oka
y.” We stepped outside as he indicated with his arm for me to go first. “You’ve had a long journey. Come down to my home, I have a spare room. You’ll stay with me. We’ll get this”—he nodded toward the house—“cleaned up starting tomorrow. I have to call the Stanleys. They can fix this.”

  “I could not possibly stay with you.” I could, I so could, I-bet-you-have-extra-powerful-balls-Scotsman, but I would be awkward and make a fool of myself, as I have not been around men much in years, certainly never a man like you.

  “Why not? I’m still friendly.”

  That smile of his sucked my breath away. I hummed to cover up my lack of voice. “I can’t impose.”

  “Ah, Char, never could you impose on me. I have been looking forward to your arrival for weeks. I assumed you would stay with me. Come, Charlotte, I’ll make you a cup of tea. Home we go.”

  The way he said “home we go” almost made me blubber about again. As if we were going to our home.

  “I might not be a pleasant or interesting guest. Since I left Scotland I have become introspective, a loner, reclusive, and I can be moody.” And I wear dull panties. But I can take them off.

  He laughed. “I have missed your humor.”

  “I am serious.”

  “I’m not worried, Charlotte. I am introspective, also. I respect the loner in you and your moods never bothered me. You were always interesting. Pleasant?” He peered into the sky. “Pleasant is dull. You were never dull.”

  I took a deep breath. “That’s kind of you to say. I think I’m quite dull. But thank you, Toran. I’ll accept your invitation for one night only.”

  “Here, fine lady.” He held his hand out to help me into my rental car.

  “I can do it myself. I am a feminist now. You should know that about me.”

  “I’m not surprised you are, and you told me endless times when we were kids that you could do things by yourself. Let me help you anyway. It’ll make me feel useful. Besides, Scotsmen like to feel manly. You already threatened to spray mace in my face and turn my balls into pancakes. Allow me to be chivalrous.”