The Space Between Us Read online

  “Creative,” I managed to say. “My parents and their friends were creative.”

  “They named you Tesla,” Charlie said. “I’d have guessed that.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, after Nikola Tesla, not the heavy metal band.”

  “What?” Meredith looked up from her crème brûlée. “I thought it was for the band.”

  “Nope. Nikola Tesla, the father of commercial electricity.” I lifted my fork, heavy with the weight of chocolate and cream. “But I got off okay. I have a brother named Captain, and you’ll never guess who he was named for.”

  “Captain America,” Charlie said.

  “He wishes. No. Captain Ahab.” I snorted laughter, shaking my head. “He goes by Cap. And you can’t ask him about his name—he’ll deny it. He’ll answer to Captain, but he’ll never tell you about the Ahab bit. He thinks our parents were morons.”

  “Wow. So this compound place. It was full of what, hippies?” Charlie poured more hot water from the small pot over the teabag in my mug. He and I were drinking tea; Meredith had coffee.

  “Old hippies. The worst kind. Some of them who’d have been hippies if they’d been old enough in the sixties, but instead sort of had to live out their fantasies during summer break.” I paused. It had come out sounding more bitter than I’d intended. “They grew their own food. Lived communally, mutual finances, the works—at least during those three months.”

  I didn’t mention the other communal living, the crèches where the babies and toddlers lived, cared for by whatever set of adults had drawn the duty for that day. The coed dorms for the teens, where we were encouraged to “explore” ourselves…and each other…in ways most parents were actively trying to restrict. Drugs and booze, nothing hard-core. Beer and weed, mostly. I didn’t mention the way the adults lived, either. Forming pairs and clusters regardless of the legality of marriages. They didn’t call it swinging. They called it “free living.”

  “Sounds fascinating,” Charlie said.

  “Told you!” Meredith waved her fork in the air.

  When I was younger I thought it was amazing, like the summer camps a lot of my friends talked about, though my parents had always made it very clear we weren’t supposed to talk about the stuff that went on there. What we did on our summer vacations was filed under “stuff we only talk about at home.” And as a matter of fact, we didn’t really even talk about The Compound when we were at home.

  Every fall, after three months of indulgence and orgies and who knew what else had gone on, my parents packed up me and Cap and took us back to our suburban development with the fenced-in yard of mostly green grass, the television, our socks and shoes. Hell, our clothes in general, which was always quite a shock after The Compound’s lax policy on clothing. We’d spend the winter doing the stuff every family seemed to, but come the end of school in the spring, I could see my parents getting edgy.

  This wasn’t always a bad thing; anticipation of the summer ahead made my dad laugh more, leave off the lectures he was prone to give on behavior and grades and the expectations of society, and how we should (or shouldn’t) conform. With my mom it could go either way. She could either be slightly manic, packing up the house and singing while she worked, or she could snap and scream at the least provocation that she had “too much to do and not enough time to do it!” Later, I’d figure out it was because my mom didn’t love The Compound the way my dad did, and that she had very valid reasons. But back then all I knew was that our lives changed every summer in ways none of my friends’ ever did.

  When I was still older I’d watch The Howling at a friend’s Halloween party. While everyone else was jumping and screaming at the scary bits, I was consumed by the atmosphere of the place in the mountains the lady reporter goes to—The Colony. Okay, so The Compound didn’t have shape-shifters, but it did have wolves in human clothes. Worse than the dude digging that bullet out of his brain or the lady reporter turning into that cute little kitty-wolf at the end.

  Nothing bad had happened to me at The Compound. Nothing to scar me, nothing I’d need therapy for. It had happened around me, before and after me, but not to me.

  I shrugged. “It was definitely not the sort of childhood you see in Disney movies.”

  “Well, who the fuck has one of those?” Meredith shrugged and licked her fork. “I mean, even Bambi’s mom got shot by a hunter.”

  “Shortly after my last summer there, The Compound was raided. Big drug bust. A couple people died.”

  This stopped them both. I hadn’t meant to say it, especially not on this, our first date. But it had come out anyway, and I couldn’t be sure why.

  “Mary Jane?” Meredith asked, perking up.

  I shook my head. “Poppies.”

  She looked confused, but Charlie let out a low chuckle. “Heroin?”

  “Opium,” I said. “You can harvest it from the flowers and smoke it in that pure state without doing anything to it.”

  Meredith shook her head. “Opium? Who smokes that?”

  “Apparently,” I said drily, “wannabe hippies who want something a little stronger than marijuana.”

  “Wow.” Charlie leaned forward a little. “How did that affect you?”

  It was a kind question. But before I could tell him that I hadn’t been affected at all, that though I knew about the gardens with the flowers, I hadn’t even been at The Compound when the raid happened, Meredith interrupted.

  “What’s it like?” she asked, leaning even closer than Charlie had. “Opium, I mean.”

  I had to laugh. “Umm…I don’t know. I never smoked it.”

  She looked disappointed. The conversation turned to other things, Meredith mostly leading it, but I caught Charlie gazing at me now and then. He didn’t glance away when I caught him. Neither did I.

  By the end of the night, I’d figured out this was one of the nicest dates I’d ever had, no matter how unconventional. Maybe that was what I liked about it. The fact that there were two of them. With their attention on me.

  Like Chase and Chance, Meredith and Charlie were a unit. Husband and wife, but more than that. Clearly friends. Comfortable enough with each other to know in advance where to laugh at the jokes, or to pass the cream and sugar without being asked. Yet also like those boys from my past, they were individuals, clearly told apart.

  In the parking lot, I waited for them to ask me if I wanted to go home with them. I could see the question in Meredith’s eyes, though I didn’t know Charlie quite well enough to read his. I put a hand on the handle of my car door, pausing coyly, giving one or both of them the opportunity to make the offer.

  I still wasn’t sure what I’d say.

  “This was great, Tesla.” Charlie moved forward first.

  I tipped my face, but instead of kissing my lips, his mouth brushed my cheek. His hand squeezed briefly on my hip, then withdrew. He took two steps back. I might’ve been embarrassed that I’d offered a lover’s kiss and been granted one from a friend, except that nothing about Charlie ever felt like it could make me embarrassed.

  That was when I knew that when the time came, I was definitely going to say yes.

  Chapter 16

  At four in the morning it’s hard to be perky even if you’re a morning person, which I’ve never been. Some people I knew would just be rolling in to bed—my brother, for example, might even have still been out and about. I, on the other hand, had to get to the Mocha by five so I could open at six. There could be a riot if those doors didn’t open on time.

  When I came upstairs, the dark form huddled at the kitchen table startled me into a terrified squeak. I stumbled back, barely keeping myself from tumbling down the stairs again by grabbing the edge of the door frame. For several agonizing seconds my heels hovered in empty space. This is it, I thought, strangely calm. Look out below, I’m gonna eat it.

  But then I managed to right myself, overcorrect and trip forward over my feet. I dropped my purse, spilling the mess inside all over the linoleum. I knocked into the round ta