Shooting Starr

He glanced down at her, curious. “How can you tell?”

She lifted the hand she’d been trailing along the wall. “You have wallpaper,” she explained, smiling crookedly. “And hardwood floors.” There was a patch of color in each cheek.

“Huh,” said C.J. “I guess it is…nice, I mean. Not mine, though. I’m just renting the place-people that own it are getting up there, so they bought a place in town. He used to be a friend of my daddy’s, actually, and his wife’s Momma’s cousin, second or third once removed-something like that-so I get a pretty good deal. No sense in buying a house, not until I pass my bar exams and figure out where I want to hang out my shingle, right?” He realized he was babbling and made an effort to stop.

“Where do you want to hang out your shingle?” she asked in a breathless voice, half polite and half distracted. “Atlanta?”

He gave a dry huff of laughter. “Not if I can help it.” He guided her to the small maple table shoved under the window that overlooked the backyard and pulled out a chair. She lowered herself into it and he turned back to the stove. “No,” he said, squinting as he relit the burner he’d shut off to go and answer the knock on the door, “the way I see it, people who live in small towns need lawyers, too.”

“So, that’s what you want? To live in a small town?”

“Live, practice law, raise a family…I don’t expect I’ll get rich, that’s for sure,” he said, aiming an ironic smile at the slice of butter he’d just dropped, sizzling, into the frying pan. “I guess,” he said after a moment, “what I’m lookin’ to be is the lawyer equivalent of a small-town family doctor. Know what I mean?” He said it casually, but having laid out his future as a kind of offering to her, the way he felt was exposed. As if he was standing on the edge of a cliff with a cold wind blowing against his back.

He waited an interminable time for her to answer, and when she didn’t, briskly clapped his hands, rubbed them together and announced, with thumping heart, “There…that’s comin’ along good. Now, how ’bout some soup with that? What kind of soup goes good with grilled cheese?” He opened a cupboard door. “Let’s see…we got-”

“Tomato,” Caitlyn said. “Tomato soup goes with grilled cheese.”

“Tomato it is.” He plucked a can from the shelf, closed the door, opened a drawer and took out a can opener. Closed the drawer. Opened the can. Opened another cupboard and took out a pot. Closed the cupboard door.

And on and on, doing the normally routine things required to heat up a can of soup, something he’d done a few thousand times, probably, in his lifetime. Only, tonight he had to think about each step, recite them to himself as he checked them off, one by one. Why? Because it was impossible to concentrate, hard to even hear himself think above the voice inside his head screaming, For God’s sake, Caitlyn, why are you here?

More than once it was on the tip of his tongue to ask her. Each time, he bit the words back, thinking they’d sound too blunt…even rude. Or maybe he didn’t want to ask because he wasn’t in any hurry to hear the answer to that question. Because he was so certain it wouldn’t be the one he wanted.

What did he want? Not so very much, really, no more than any man wants. To have the woman he’s chanced to fall in love with by some miracle love him back. To lay out his dream for the future in front of her and find that by some miracle it’s her dream, too. Nothing special. Nothing out of the ordinary.

So why did it feel like he was hoping for the moon? His whole body prickled when he thought of the implications of her coming to his house, alone, in the evening like this. Prickled…why? With fear? Excitement? Uncertainty? Being a man, he feared feeling uncertain more than anything.

“My mother used to fix me this when I was a little girl,” Caitlyn said. She was hunched over her bowl, spooning soup, and her voice sounded husky. “When I’d walk home from school on cold winter days…and my nose would be so cold I couldn’t feel it…and she’d make grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s tomato soup. I had this special plate with a big matching cup, with the Campbell’s Kids on them. I remember that little burn you get in the back of your throat. Tomato soup. It always does this-makes my eyes water and my nose drip.”

She touched the back of her hand to her nose, then abruptly remembered the napkin she’d spread across her lap and snatched that up instead. She wiped her nose, then her eyes, then laid the napkin on the table and gazed at it helplessly. Her eyes were still streaming.

“Caitlyn?” C.J. said in a wondering tone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, gulping softly. “I’m so sorry. I know you have to be wondering why I’ve barged in on you like this. You’re just…too darn well brought up to ask-” A hiccup interrupted her, and she put her fingertips to her lips and muttered, “Damn.”

“Caitlyn-” He scraped back his chair and reached for her, but she had risen to her feet at the first sound and eluded him, pushing at him with a groping hand.

“No-don’t. I wanted to tell you…something. You asked me a question and I…didn’t answer. I don’t know why I didn’t-I wanted to tell you. I want you to know…I think you should know-”

“For God’s sake, Cait…” Quaking inside, he interrupted her hurried and gulping babble. “Tell me what? Whatever it is-”

“You asked me why I can’t stand needing help, and I…I think I said it was because I’m afraid of being weak… something like that? The truth is-” she took a breath and let it out, while her cheeks turned rosy pink “-I probably have some control issues.”

Control issues. He was thinking the phrase, like so many others commonly referred to as psychobabble, had become nothing but a cliched excuse…meaningless crap. And then she went on.

“Because of something that happened to me…a long time ago. I’ve never told anybody. I was raped by my prom date the night of my senior prom. I felt so helpless. He was much bigger than I was…so much stronger. He wouldn’t listen. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. But I made up my mind I wasn’t ever going to be that weak and powerless again. And I haven’t been. Until now. And that’s why…it’s hard.”

C.J. stood absolutely still while the last of her words went rumbling and echoing off into the distant reaches of his mind, like rocks falling into a canyon. He couldn’t seem to feel anything, not even his own body. And he didn’t notice the lengthening silence until he heard a tight and airless whisper.

“Say something, damn you.”

He couldn’t, not yet, but the thought of what the silence must feel like to her after such revelations tore at his heart. He took a step and folded her into his arms. The air and the tension seemed to flow out of her as she melted against him, and he cradled the back of her head in his hand and tucked it tenderly under his chin. Eyes closing, throat aching, he nestled his face in the sweet-smelling softness of her hair and held her like that, rocking slightly. After a while, when he felt her arms come around him, it seemed to him the most incredible miracle.

“You’re gonna have to forgive me,” he said in a voice like sandpaper, muffled in her hair. “Apparently you don’t know what it does to a man to hear something like that about the woman he-” He coughed and couldn’t finish it.

“I didn’t mean to shock you.” She stirred a little, restive against him.

He drew her back in and enfolded her more completely. “It was a bit of a shock,” he said, but didn’t tell her the worst shock, for him, had been discovering in himself the powerful desire to kill someone. He hadn’t known he was capable of such a thing. With the worrisome residuals of those primitive urges still percolating through him, he tilted Caitlyn’s head back and stared down into her face. For a long moment her silver-glazed eyes seemed to gaze back at him, in a way that made his heart leap. And then her eyelids slowly closed.

“You do know,” he said, husky and overfilled with emotions, “that I would never…that you don’t ever have to worry… I mean, I would never, ever force you or even ask you-” He stumbled to a halt. Her lips had curved unexpectedly into a smile.

“I do know that,” she said gently, and, standing on tiptoes, brushed his lips with hers. “C.J., you are the most honorable man I’ve ever met, besides my dad. You are, in fact, the very essence of Southern gentleman…hood. It’s just that-” He would have been happy to contribute his part to that enticing mouth play, but she paused, rocked back on her heels and let out an exasperated breath. “Dammit, C.J., sometimes a woman would like a little less Ashley Wilkes and a little more Rhett Butler.”

He frowned, his brain fuzzy with her nearness. “Rhett Butler? Oh, yeah-that’s Gone with the Wind, right?” Dizzy from the scent of her, he mumbled, “Sorry, never read the book, or saw the movie, either.”

Her hands lay on his chest, high up near the base of his throat, and her fingers were lightly stroking the place where his skin met the neck of his shirt. Her smile was slow, her voice a murmur. “There’s a scene-very famous- where Rhett scoops Scarlett-you do know who Scarlett O’Hara is?-anyway, he scoops her up in his arms and carries