All we have, p.34
All We Have, page 34
“Dan!” I gasped. “Put me down.”
“Put you down?” He stopped spinning then and held me still, my face level with his suddenly, so that my breath caught in my throat at how close he was. His dancing eyes were only centimeters from my own. I dropped my gaze then, but only got distracted by his lips, which were curved in a smile so wide it threatened to split his face. “But we’re not finished celebrating yet!” And with that his grin faded, his eyes became serious. His head dipped towards mine, but I turned my head to the side so that kiss he had intended for my lips connected with my cheek. Slowly, he lowered me down to the ground. I wriggled in his embrace, but still he didn’t release me. His hand under my chin forced my eyes back to meet his gaze. He looked confused.
“What’s wrong? I thought you’d be as happy as I am. It worked! You managed to put that re-write idea away for good, I reckon. You were amazing in there!”
“You might be right,” I said slowly, “but right now I’d appreciate your letting go of me and filling me in on exactly what’s going on.”
“What’s going on?” He sounded puzzled. “But you know what’s going on. “You just put a stop to any plans for a re-write. Tamara is safe, we can relax.”
“Hopefully we’ve put a stop to the re-write,” I cautioned him, managing to escape from his hold and put a bit of distance between us. “But we can’t count on that just yet.”
Dan snorted. “You heard Bill in there.” He nodded in the general direction of the house. “It sounded to me like he’s happily given up the whole idea.”
I had to admit it did seem likely the re-write wouldn’t happen now, but things had gone wrong too often before for me to entirely relax just yet. And besides, I wanted to know how it was that Bill had happened to show up at such an opportune moment. “And what did you have to do him showing up out of the blue like this?” I said.
“Me?” Dan grinned. “I just had a word with a good friend of mine, that’s all.”
“What friend? And what word, exactly?”
“Remember Jack Harrison?”
“The guy who owns the garage?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy. I had a word with him, talked him into coming back through the curtain with me and having a word with Matt Harkness.”
“Matt Harkness, the guy who owns the garage here in town? The Matt Harkness that Bill said called him about Meg?” I was confused. “How did you get Matt to do that?”
“I didn’t. Jack did,” Dan explained. “I got Jack to pose as an old friend of Meg’s, in town to visit her. Bill based Jack on Matt, so Jack knows exactly how Matt’s mind works. He got talking with him over the open bonnet of a 1968 Ford Impala. Told him how much Meg wished Bill would come and see her, how the only reason she’d taken the house at all was because she hoped it might be her only chance to see him again.” Dan shrugged. “Matt and Jack are romantics from way back. It wasn’t hard to get Matt to call Bill and spin him some story about Meg not seeming entirely herself, that he thought Bill might need to come down and check on her.”
“And of course Bill, who obviously has never gotten over Meg, came straight down.” I have to admit I was impressed, though I wasn’t going to tell Dan that and watch his already swollen ego grow even more enormous.
“Yup,” Dan was grinning inanely again. “Applause is fine any time you like.”
“Huh, well, let’s just hold the congratulations until we know your little plan has worked, shall we?” I said sourly, feeling mean as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Dan’s smile faded.
“What’s wrong with you?” He said as I turned and started walking away up the road. “I thought you’d be happy to see all this mess finally sorted out.” I was suddenly feeling rotten again as I remembered that, even if Dan had managed to solve all Tamara’s problems, we still had some significant ones of our own to deal with. The paramount one being the fact that Dan and I were from different worlds.
“Paige?” He was following me, his longer stride meaning he easily kept pace with me, even though I was walking as fast as I could without breaking into a run. “Paige, what the heck is going on with you?” The frustration in his voice made me feel even worse. “Look, excuse me for thinking you’d be happy to have all this sorted out.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “I know Tamara’s my friend, that you haven’t known her all that long. But I thought you cared at least at little bit about saving her sanity. So maybe you’d like to explain to me why you’re behaving like a spoiled brat?” The bitter edge to his voice hurt. But maybe this way was easier in the long run. I knew he couldn’t see yet what I could. That it was easier to put a stop to us, if there was any us, now. Before things went any further, before the pain of knowing we would never be together got even worse. Because right now I was too busy holding back tears at the throbbing ache in my throat caused by trying not to scream at him that we had no hope, no future together.
I kept walking, mainly because I didn’t trust myself to speak without falling apart. But Dan wasn’t letting me get away with that. “Dammit, Paige, stop and talk to me.” He grabbed my arm, and I stopped, spinning on my heel.
“Why? What do you want to hear from me? What exactly would be the point of us talking?” I was shouting at him now, blinking furiously as I felt the tears pressing against the back of my eyes.
“Oh, forgive me, I thought that’s what people in our position do, that’s all,” he snapped, sarcasm dripping from every word. “People who care about each other, that is. People who l...like each other,” he stumbled over the words. “They talk. But hey, maybe I misunderstood the situation,” he shrugged, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. But the anger in his voice told a different story, and I couldn’t let that pass. Even though I thought it would be easier for both of us if I did.
“I do care about you,” I threw the words at him like I hated him, my voice quaking, braking under the strain even as I tried to hold myself together. “But you must have realized we don’t have, we can’t be....” I couldn’t finish. As I held his gaze I saw the confusion in his eyes turn to understanding mingled with pain as he realized what it was I was trying so hard to say without having to spell it out.
At any other time I’d have been thrilled to know Dan cared enough to feel that bad about losing me. But right then, it only hurt even more to know he finally understood, that he knew as well as I did that we were just not going to work out. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand there and watch all my dreams of us being together crumble around me. Instead, I took the coward’s way out. I ran, feet pounding against the pavement, my heart thumping away in my chest as the tears finally broke through the gaping holes in the dam of control I’d erected to hold them back.
I didn’t have a plan. When I found myself in front of the schoolhouse, I automatically tried the door. Dan must have left it unlocked, so that the door opened when I turned the handle. Without stopping to think about what I was doing, I headed straight for the map room. I didn’t expect to see the curtain, having only just watched Dan carefully close it behind him, so I got a shock to find not only was the curtain wide open again, but a familiar face was peering through from the other side.
“Tamara!” I gasped. She grinned at me.
“Hullo there. Thought I’d stick my head in and see how you were getting on.” She snickered at her own bad pun.
For my part, I was taken aback not only to see Tamara, but to find her feeling so jolly. Considering last time we met, we’d had words, and she’d looked at me like she could quite cheerfully have driven a stake through my heart. “Ummm, hi,” I managed to stammer, before Dan arrived hard on my heels.
“Paige you can’t just run away from this...” he began then, spotting Tamara’s interested face, he stopped.
“Dan,” she nodded. “Please, don’t stop on my account. What exactly are you running away from?” She inquired of me. She was so uncharacteristically cheerful it was unnerving.
“I....I don’t think that’s really any of your business,” I replied curtly. “This was a private conversation.”
“Well ex-cuse me!” She retorted, still grinning as she looked from my red face to Dan’s. “But I think you’ll find I was here first, and you two came bursting in on me, so that makes it my business. “
“Look, Tamara, I know you mean well, but this isn’t something that concerns you at all,” Dan said, looking darkly at me. “This is something Paige and I need to sort out ourselves, thanks all the same.”
“Oh really?” Tamara, who was now in the process of climbing all the way through the curtain, didn’t sound like someone who was planning to start minding her own business. “And here I was thinking you’d just managed to save me from a complete re-write, and that you might appreciate a little reciprocal help with your issues.”
Dan’s head snapped around to face Tamara like she’d pulled it on a string. “Who told you that?”
“Calm down! It was Mrs Hadlow,” Tamara replied, “remember, George’s housekeeper? She’s in my book group. We got chatting at a meeting the other night, and it seems she was very impressed with your plan to rescue Paige, although she was a bit more doubtful about your plan to get Matt to put a stop to the re-write.” Tamara laughed. “I must admit, when I first heard that bit I was a bit worried myself, until I got myself round to Matt’s in a bit of a state and he told me to relax, that it had worked like a charm.” Her eyes narrowed then. She wasn’t as relaxed as she was trying to make out. “It did work like a charm, didn’t it?”
“So far so good,” Dan confirmed. “Bill’s arrived home, all in a state about Meg. And he’s definite that he doesn’t want Meg re-writing Tamara anymore.”
“So that’s great. That means we’re out of the woods then?” Tamara looked pretty pleased with that idea.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Dan retorted, glaring at me.
“What?” Tamara looked from Dan to me and back again, her expression perplexed. “What’s going on?” She looked at me as she said this, her tone accusatory.
“I don’t want to talk about it, if it’s all the same to you,” I said, keeping my voice flat, ironing out all emotion, even though all I wanted to do was shout at the pair of them. And then maybe find a quiet corner where I could let myself cry without an audience.
“It’s not, actually,” Tamara said evenly. “We’ve been through enough together that I consider you a friend, even if you don’t feel the same way about me. If something’s wrong, I’d like to know what it is. You never know, I might be able to help.”
“It’s not really something anyone can help with,” I said, taken aback by her concern for me. I looked at her, willing her to somehow understand, without me spelling it out, what I was getting at. “I wish it was, but there’s nothing anyone can do on this one, I’m afraid.”
“Well, maybe, but if you won’t tell us the problem, we’ll never know, will we?” Tamara reasoned.
She had a point. And to be fair, none of this was her fault, or Dan’s for that matter. It was just the way things were. Maybe Dan really hadn’t thought far enough ahead to see all the problems that us being together would create. I sighed. “You really want to know?”
“For Pete’s sake, Paige,” Dan sounded utterly fed up. “When did you turn into such a drama queen? Just spill it, will you?” My hurt at being on the receiving end of his anger must have shown on my face, because his voice softened as he looked at me. “Sorry, I don’t mean that. But you know I care about you.” He glanced at Tamara then, but she was studiously avoiding looking at him. Even though she knew she and Dan could never have a future together, it had to hurt hearing him talk about his feelings for me. I figured he’d stop there, having seen her reaction but I had that wrong. “Look, Paige, I think you know I want us to be together.” Dan’s voice was low and serious, and when he reached to take my hand I let him. “What can I say? Yes, we’re from different worlds but we work together. You felt that, I know you did.” His eyes narrowed. “At least I thought you did. Are you trying to say I’ve read you all wrong?” I could hardly bear to listen to him, his voice was so painfully raw with the feelings he was trying to hold in check. There was no doubting the sincerity of his words. His eyes were blazing with the same emotion that I could hear in his voice. He was making things worse, not better, with all his damned intensity. Why did he have to care so much? Why did I? I could feel the sobs rising in my throat, but I pushed them down. I’d to give him an answer to the question I saw in his face, and I’d to do it before the tears came.
“Dan, I do feel the same way. Of course I do.” My voice was wobbling about all over the place now, the emotion in it replicating his own. I stopped to try and catch my breath, feeling like I’d been running a marathon. I saw his face relax slightly, the corners of his mouth turn up in a weak imitation of his wide smile.
“That’s fine then, isn’t it?” he said. But he was still looking confused, I guess because I wasn’t smiling too. “I still can’t see what the problem is. Why are you so upset?”
“I think I’ve worked it out.” Tamara spoke slowly and carefully, as though an idea was still resolving itself in her head. “You’re agreeing with me, aren’t you?” She was looking at me now, and she looked worried. “When I said you and Dan weren’t going to work?” I could only trust myself to nod. “But I didn’t mean it, not really,” she pleaded. “You guys will be great together. I’ve never seen Dan as happy as he’s been since he met you.” I could only guess how much it must have cost her to say those words.
“Tamara,” I began, then stopped. How could I explain this? I’d have to try, I realized. I owed both of them that much. I tried again. “Dan, I want to be with you. But it just can’t work. You only have to look at how much of a mess everything’s been since we met. I’ve been kidnapped by a mad Duke. Meg was terrified when I disappeared on her. If you hadn’t come up with that time machine idea to rescue me I don’t know what would have gone down. You can’t be doing that all the time.” Dan opened his mouth to protest, but I held up a hand to stop him. “You know it’s true. And you can’t live in my world either. How would I explain you to my parents? Meg’s never asked about your family or where you go to school, but if we’re together it’s only a matter of time before she does. What do we tell her then? What about when she wants to meet your mother? Your father?” I knew Dan was dying to deny all these problems even existed. But he couldn’t, could he? Because they did.
I stopped talking, and neither Dan nor Tamara leapt to fill the silence. Dan still had hold of my hands, and without a word he pulled me into his arms and held me close. We stood their together, for how long I don’t know, because all that was going through my head was how right it felt to be with him like this, and how awful it was going to be when the time came to say goodbye.
It could have been minutes or hours later when Tamara broke the silence. “I think there may be a way you two can be together, without all the problems that go with being from two different worlds.” Dan’s arms loosened and we both looked at Tamara.
“We’re listening,” Dan said quietly.
“What if you didn’t come from two different worlds?” Tamara said slowly.
“But...” I began, but Tamara held up a hand.
“Wait, let me finish. I think I may have an idea.” Tamara looked at me, and I saw her hesitate for a split second before continuing in a rush. “I’m sorry, Paige, it works for Dan, but maybe not so well for you. So do you want to hear it, or not?”
“Just get on with it, will you Tam?” Dan growled but Tamara, ignoring him completely, kept her gaze firmly fixed on my face. I didn’t seem to be able to speak at all, and Dan was getting a bit agitated.
“You could write yourself into his life.” It seemed so simple as soon as Tamara said it I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me before.
“You mean write all this down? Everything that’s happened? But I thought characters had to be fictional?”
Tamara shrugged. “They do. But if you are writing about Dan and me as part of the story, not to mention the Duke and Bertha and George, well, we are all fictional. You’d just have to tweak enough of the stuff about yourself and you’d be fictional too.”
“I could, couldn’t I?” I was starting to see what she meant.
“You could self-publish. That way no one would ever be likely to read it anyway,” Tamara joked, and her smile was infectious. I was starting to feel like maybe things could work out after all.
“You said this worked out better for me than for Paige,” Dan reminded Tamara curtly. “Don’t you think you’d better explain just how exactly this will work for her? Or rather how it won’t work?” He added bleakly.
The smile dropped from Tamara’s face. I looked from her to Dan in confusion. “Would one of you please explain what you mean? I’m pretty sure we just had the perfect solution, so why are you two still looking so down in the mouth?”
“The perfect solution for Dan, sure,” Tamara said quietly. “Once you’re a character, you can live in his world not problem. Or at least, the character based on you can.” I was starting to see where this was headed.
“You won’t be the one I’m with,” Dan added brutally, just in case I was still harboring any illusions about this so-called solution. “I’ll be with you, but it will be the character version of you. The real you, the one standing here with me,” he shrugged. “You’ll be....” he stopped.
“I’ll be home with my family, going to school, getting on with my life without you,” I blurted, suddenly seeing the whole picture for the first time.
Dan nodded. “I don’t think so, Tamara.” His tone was bleak. “There has to be another way.
The sympathy in Tamara’s face told me there wasn’t, even before she spoke. “I can’t see one, Dan, I’m sorry.”
Chapter twenty-six
