Ariana’s very first time in front of an audience had been in 4th grade as Alice in Alice in Wonderland. The teacher had made her practice diving through the tiny plywood entrance to the rabbit burrow time after time after time, until she could vanish like a startled snake down a hole. The collective gasp of the audience as she vanished had been almost as heady an experience as the applause for her afterwards. So she closed her eyes, remembered… and dove. Stray thorny twigs slashed at her face and hands and stomach as she shot through, and then she was up and running. There was a great tearing sound and a grunt of pain and determination, and Nathan was pounding along beside her.
There was a fountain ahead, stretching a hundred feet to either side, and beyond that, a set of stairs climbing the knoll in the center of the park. And on the top was the last pit stop, Tom, the other racers, and a battery of cameras. Barely conscious of the hysterically enraged yelling behind them – “NO! Not AGAIN! Not this time!” – Ariana charged the fountain. Nathan had said straight ahead, so straight ahead she would go. Side-by-side they vaulted the low concrete rim and landed in the calf-deep water, still charging ahead. Their boot soles didn’t slip on the wet concrete basin as they plunged through three curtains of spray like gargantuan lawn sprinklers, too focused to notice the cold drenches. They leapt out of the fountain and raced for the first step. Jeremy’s shout of pain as he tripped over the second spray fixture and fell in the fountain and dislocated a shoulder, and Garrett’s fiery cursing as he slipped and whacked his shin hard enough to bruise the bone as he slipped while trying to jump out of the water, went unheard as they jumped onto the first step. Together, pumping arms brushing each other, they ascended the steps like angels preparing for takeoff as the other racers shouted approval. Lungs heaving and legs burning, their feet hit the mat simultaneously and they flailed desperately to keep from running right through Tom, who jumped back to save himself from the headlong lunge.
Tom stared at Nathan, and said flatly, “You’re bleeding.”
Nathan glanced down to where Tom was staring, and clamped his right hand over the deep slash on the inside of his left elbow, where crimson fluid spurted out to a jackhammer heartbeat. “Doesn’t matter,” he gasped.
Tom’s smile ripped into television history as he yelled, “Ariana and Nathan, you are the winners of Celebrity Fantastic Race, are truly Team Number One for an incredible twelve of twelve times, and have won one million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for HIV/AIDS research!”
Nathan turned to her, and only the word ‘exultation’ could describe his face. He had grabbed her waist and lifted her high in the air, where she had waved her arms wildly and shouted in joy and relief.
Then she had looked down into Nathan’s intense grey eyes, and froze as she realized the man holding her effortlessly in the air wasn’t a fan, or a teammate, or a friend, but a handsome, intelligent, devoted man whom she had just realized was cradling her scarred and battered heart in his capable, loving hands.
His eyes held only the naked truth that he loved her too, with every heartbeat that went with every inch of the last 30,000 miles.
He set her down, slowly, their eyes locked on each other, and their lips met.
The intensity of his need for her beguiled her body, and spun her head around. Visceral desire, shiny bright and molten hot, blossomed deep in her belly, setting her legs a-tremble. Feelings she had once thought safely banished to deep dungeons in her memory were suddenly tearing manacles out of walls and hammering down doors in a desperate rush of wanton freedom. If they had been alone, the only question would have been, which was closer, the floor or the bed. Gasping, the kiss finally dissolved, and they stared at each other for a moment, two wounded souls who had just discovered that, together, they were more than whole.
All she had wanted to do, desperately, was kiss him again, to see if the sensual tsunami battering her spirit was a fluke or just a hint of wonders to come. From the startled wonder in his eyes, her question was his own, and he wanted the answer just as badly, but as they came together, and her eyes were closing, she had seen a single crimson drop poised on his lower lip, and tasted the salt on her own, where a single thorn had made a tiny, stinging cut. Her blood on his lip.
Without thought, a purely instinctive reaction, she had slapped him, hard, desperate to wipe the blood away.
Far away, Nathan was wrestling with his own feelings. He looked at the small piece of jewelry on the counter. He had been staring for several minutes. On the other side of the counter, the owner was all too aware of the magnitude of the sale, and wouldn’t have complained if Nathan stared at it until closing, as long as he bought it.
When Nathan considered how different the two of them were, not the least of which was their age gap, his brain told him sternly that any proposal was madness, and might indeed be scorned. His heart kept screaming that faint heart never won fair maid, and that they had been so fine together that everything else was just details to work out. He also knew that she must be wrestling with some feelings of her own, personal and practical. Given her near total silence and unresponsiveness to his e-mails, he strongly suspected that if he asked, the carefully rehearsed answer would be, “No.”
But should he ask, just in case? Should he ask, whether the ‘No’ was inevitable or not?
Then with a smile, he bought the ring.
Ariana was a superb actress. He knew that. He had also spent more than three weeks studying her face when she was confronted by people and situations. There had always been an infinitesimal flash of ‘true feeling’ expression, just before the actress mask had taken over to make her face, friendly, welcoming, stern, disapproving, or frustrated, or whatever else she had consciously chosen to be. But there was always that briefest of flickers of body language first. Someone who did not know Ariana as well as he did would probably miss it. That is what he would look for; her instant expression when they first saw each other again. That would tell him what to do.
CHAPTER 15 – Airing of Final Episode
It was Knoxville. It was Friday. Nathan had checked into the hotel next to the Palace Theater, put his bags in his room, and was out on the street, striding with urgent purpose with his eyes glued to the moving map on his smart phone. He had much to do today.
Nathan walked into the men’s store barely a heartbeat after the sign had been flipped from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open.’ A clerk bustled over. He was middle-aged, impeccably dressed, and was a visual cliché of the perfect ‘gentleman’s gentleman.’ “May I be of assistance, sir?”
Nathan’s eyes swept the discrete and elegant nametag. “Andre, I bring your establishment a challenge.”
“We have risen to many challenges, sir; what might this one be?”