Tumbleweeds by Leila Meacham Page A

despair.
    They stood before the door of the room he had reserved, she within the wide space of his shoulders, her head barely reaching the level of his tuxedo tie. He held the room key in his hand, a passport to a moment in their lives from which she knew there would be no going back to the way they were. She swallowed hard and turned to allay her anxiety by stroking his jaw. “Do you ever give anyone a chance to say no?” she said, smiling softly. “But no, I wouldn’t have said no. I’d have brought some things along, that’s all.”
    He looked distressed. “Oh, I didn’t think of that. I… brought along a new toothbrush and paste.”
    “I’m sure that’s all I’ll need.”
    He had arranged for the room beforehand and had even picked up the key so that she would not have to wait in the car under the harshlights of the motel entrance for him to collect it from the night clerk. There were flowers on the bedside table and a couple of his aunt’s throw pillows on the bed, the ones Cathy used to support textbooks when she studied at his house or when Trey laid his head in her lap. “Won’t your aunt miss those?” she asked.
    “I’ll think of something to tell her. I thought they’d make you feel… more at home.”
    “That was sweet of you, Trey.”
    “Catherine Ann, I—” He stepped close to her, and she could see the tension in his throat muscles as he tried to form his words.
    “What, Trey?”
    “I love you. I love you with all my heart. I’ve loved you since the first second I laid eyes on you running out of your grandmother’s house to see about your snow queen. I just need to show you how much I do.”
    “Well, then,” she said, slipping her arms up around his neck, “suppose you get started.”
    “I DON’T WANT TO LET you go,” Trey said, taking her face between his hands at Emma’s front door hours later. The passionate intensity of the last hours still showed in the deep flush of his face, the fever in his eyes.
    “I know,” Cathy said softly, “but I have to go in. I’m sure my grandmother is not asleep.”
    “You think she’ll kill me when she sees you? I did promise I’d bring you back more beautiful than before, but I meant—”
    “I know what you meant, and I
feel
more beautiful than before.”
    “You are, if that’s possible. You’re not sorry?”
    “No, Trey. I’m not sorry.”
    “Will you ever be?”
    “Not ever. Good night,
mon amour
.”
    She pulled his hands from her face after he kissed her, and they exchanged lingering looks of regret when she stepped inside beforehe could kiss her again under the porch light for anyone to see who might be up and about at three o’clock in the morning. A small decorative pane was set into the door. After she closed it, he pressed his open hand to the glass and she answered with her own splayed against it. After a while, they broke contact, but Cathy kept the porch light on until she heard his Mustang drive away.
    Rufus had come out to greet her in the living room, wagging his tail, his eyes large and questioning, asking, she was sure,
Did it go okay?
She laughed quietly and knelt down in a puff of chiffon to hug his neck. “Yes, yes, it went okay,” she said in a whisper bubbling out of her on a tide of happiness. The house was quiet. A light shone in the kitchen, and she went in to find a teapot, cup, saucer, and spoon in the sink, her grandmother’s clear message that she had waited up until she was forced to call it a night. Cathy was glad. Her hairdo was wrecked, her makeup gone. There would be enough to answer to in the morning, but for the rest of the night she wanted to be alone to cherish her memories.
    In her room, she undressed slowly, touching where Trey’s hands had been, feeling him still warm and alive inside her. She’d had a sense that tonight would happen sooner than later, but not after the prom and not in a motel room. That move had come as a complete surprise. Not even when he’d whispered huskily