Change of Heart (Edilean 9)

“Women can’t tolerate my life. I’m gone most of the time. They want a depth of togetherness that I can’t manage.” He didn’t add that togetherness meant emotional as well as physical. “What about you? Weren’t you engaged once? What happened?”

Their hips were close together and moving to the music. Chelsea had her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed. He was so good with the rhythm that she wondered what he was like in bed. Maybe if she stayed around, she’d find out.

He pulled back, looking at her to answer his question.

“Boredom,” she said as he whirled her about the floor. “He worked for my dad and I liked the family approval, but he was so much a creature of routine that I wanted to murder him. He came home at the same time, ate the same things. Six months after I met him, I knew what he was going to say before he did.”

“Some women like that.” He spun her to arm’s length, then pulled her back to him.

“Where did you learn to dance?”

“From the relatives I gained by Mom’s marriage. So why didn’t you find something to occupy yourself?”

Chelsea shook her head. “You’re supposed to tell me he should have done exciting things to keep someone as fabulous as me around. Then you should hint that if you and I were together, you’d make every second an adventure.”

“If you were so bored with yourself that you were studying him, you weren’t exactly fabulous, were you?”

For a moment Chelsea was stunned, but then she laughed so loud several people turned to look at her. Still smiling, she put her head back on his shoulder, her lips against his neck. “Don’t you know that beautiful women don’t have to do anything? To be seen is enough.”

“Is that why you starve yourself? So nothing else is asked of you?”

“Of course. Only Eli ever expected me to be something more than a pretty girl.”

When the music stopped, he led her back to the booth, where they ordered some more drinks. Chelsea’d had a few shots of tequila, but Eli had only nursed a single beer. He knew he’d be the one driving home.

He was quite consciously trying to get her drunk. Maybe if she had alcohol in her system he could get her to tell him what was so deeply wrong in her life.

When he’d first seen her today, all he’d been able to think about was how she’d left him. He’d vividly remembered his pain over the years, his deep loneliness, the sense that his life wasn’t complete.

It was his stepfather Frank who’d understood the most. Since Eli’s mother had been nearly overwhelmed with babies, a new husband, and a home, Eli had worked hard to keep her from seeing the turmoil that was going on inside him.

But Frank had seen it—and he’d told Eli about his own childhood and how in an attempt to do his duty, he’d given up the solitude that he needed. Frank didn’t let that happen to Eli. Over the years, the two of them had often gone to Frank’s cabin in the mountains and spent days there. When his mother asked him what they did, Eli said, “We spend the time in silence.”

At that moment two toddlers were loudly crying because the three-foot-tall tower they’d built had collapsed. His mother had laughed in understanding.

It was only after Chelsea moved away that Eli realized how very important she had been to his life. The ache he felt at not having a person to share everything with had been like a wound—and he’d almost not recovered.

Frank had offered to find her. “No!” Eli had said. “If she wants me, she knows where I am.”

After Chelsea left, Frank had moved them from that area. Eli had decided that he wasn’t yet ready to leave home to go to college, so Frank sent him to an exclusive private school where he wasn’t labeled “the brain” or “the nerd.” After the Taggert family got him into a gym, he began to attain that elusive thing called popularity.

But Eli never found anyone who came close to filling the gap that Chelsea had left in him.

Of course he kept up with her, reading about her on the internet. And Frank made sure Eli had access to any information he needed.

In college there’d been a few girls, but not many. And as his studies neared completion, he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. Companies offered him money, cars, houses, vacations in exotic locales. He wasn’t tempted. But when the government offered what he and Chelsea used to have, the chance to help people, he said yes. Frank was so proud of him there were tears in his eyes.

Through everything, Eli never came close to telling anyone about Chelsea. But then Jeff, with his sarcasm and excellent brain, came into Eli’s life. Other than Chelsea, he’d never had a best friend. Jeff wasn

’t as adventurous as Chelsea, wasn’t willing to take on the world as she was, but at least he didn’t run away as so many people who’d worked for Eli did. Morons! he thought. Cowards to the core.

Jeff had nagged until Eli told him of Chelsea. He told of what they did as children and how they’d succeeded so spectacularly in getting Eli’s mother with a really good man.

But unfortunately, Eli had also told Jeff about how Chelsea had left him and how it had hurt something deep inside him. It was as though some fundamental part of him had been broken, and it had never come close to being repaired.

Eli had been glad that Jeff hadn’t spouted the currently popular phrase move on with your life.

Instead, Jeff had said, “I wonder why she did that?” After that, Jeff’s innate ability to turn anything to sarcasm had taken over—and that had been good for Eli. He had enough self-pity for both of them.