LONG ROAD HOME.

LC JORDAN.

haddayagive, whaddayagive, gimme forty, forty dollar, now fifty..."

W The auctioneer's voice droned on, competing with the chorus of cicadas perched somewhere high in the maple trees on this September afternoon. There was a decent crowd milling about, numbered paddles in hand, rising and falling in some random dance set to the cadence of the bidding.

My parents were having a belated midlife crisis. At least that was my theory. In truth, they were tired of the Midwest winters and had decided to become nomads, buying a motor home and following the sun with the seasons. Most of the contents of my childhood home were being auctioned, but my parents were leasing the house and not selling. I suspected that was an insurance policy of sorts in case their new lifestyle didn't agree with them and the wanderl.u.s.t only lasted a year or so. As for the liquidation of the furniture, I would bet a year's salary that my mother agreed because it would be the only way to get my father to part with the living-room couch and chair and provide the possibility of getting new ones.

I had flown in for the weekend to be on hand for the auction and stick around until Monday when the new tenants would arrive. Friday night I saw my parents off, waving as they maneuvered their RV out of the drive and feeling very much left behind even though I had moved out years ago. It is a sobering thing to realize that you are old enough for your parents to be retired, much less to have them run away from home.

The fact that they had me later in life didn't help any with my complex about aging.

My one contribution to the whole affair was a '65 Ford Galaxy in good condition. It was my first car, a gift from my parents my junior year of high school. Most kids that age want something new and fast and foreign, but not me. I fell in love with the burgundy body, white top, and fender skirts. The same fuzzy white dice were still hanging from the rearview mirror.

So many bittersweet memories were tied up in that car. I lost my innocence right there on the front seat, but not exactly in the usual way that comes to mind. When I left for college, my father agreed to store it for me, and I'd kept it all these years as some sort of connection to a part of my life that I had carefully locked away otherwise.

Now, with everything else moving forward, I reasoned it was as good a time as any for me to stop looking back. I had told my father to consign it to the auction with a minimum price of seven thousand dollars. It was the last thing to be sold, and the crowd had gathered around it in the driveway, waiting for the bidding to start.

I leaned back against one of the rack wagons parked in the yard, a gla.s.s of iced tea in my hand. The chilly condensation dripped onto my jean-clad leg, soaking through the denim and leaving a dark spot.

Reaching down to try and brush it off, I heard a soft voice speak from directly in front of me.

"Cat?"

I froze. No one had called me that in years. The blood pounded in my ears from bending over and I slowly straightened. Everything in the background faded as I faced the woman standing two feet away. With the exception of a very few more pounds and a small scattering of early gray in her chestnut hair, she looked exactly the same as she did the last time I saw her. We were eighteen then and she had just bolted from both my arms and my car.

"Cat?" she repeated. I still hadn't spoken. I never expected to see her here, today, or ever, for that matter.

Not waiting any longer for me to confirm my ident.i.ty, she hesitantly continued. "I thought it was you." With a wave of her hand, she indicated the yard filled with people. "I saw a flyer and couldn't believe it."

Finally finding my voice, I spoke more harshly than I intended.

"Couldn't believe what, Ashley?"

Pausing a moment before answering, she replied, "I couldn't believe your parents were leaving. They've just always been here, you know? After I saw the advertis.e.m.e.nt last week I called your mom and she told me about their plans. And I couldn't believe you were selling the car." The last sentence trailed off as she looked away. "I knew you'd kept it. I've seen your dad driving it from time to time."

Everything was instantly just too close to the surface; the old pain, the disappointment in both Ash and myself, the effort spent trying to forget and remember. "I held on to it too long as it is," I answered flatly.

Taking a deep breath and meeting my eyes, Ashley spoke with determination. "We need to talk, Cat."

"Stop calling me that, and no, we don't," I shot back immediately.

"Stop calling you what?" Ashley asked, confused.

"Cat. n.o.body calls me that now. My name is Catherine." In truth, everything about me became longer as the years pa.s.sed; my name, my hair, my regrets.

A little glimpse of Ashley's rarely seen temper was beginning to show. "Fine. Catherine, we need to talk," she clipped out.

"We have nothing to talk about," I stubbornly replied.

Just then, the auctioneer announced that bidding on the Galaxy was about to start. Abruptly, Ashley turned her back on me and walked toward the driveway. My traitorous eyes watched her retreating form, and it was then that I spotted the paddle in her hand. Something in my stomach did a little flip, and I quickly sat my gla.s.s down on the wagon and made my way toward the crowd.

The auctioneer began his chant, starting the bidding at seven thousand. Several numbered paddles went up, but I was only interested in one in particular. When the bid increased to eight thousand, the paddles decreased by a third. At nine, only half were left and as I scanned the group I saw Ashley holding hers up, staring straight at me.

It was already a warm day, but I swear my body temperature rose ten degrees with the look she gave me. Waving my arm wildly. I shouted, ''Ten thousand!"

The auctioneer stopped his chant and patiently explained, "You don't have a number; you aren't registered. You can't bid."

It took a second for that to sink in, then I shouted, "It's my car!

Like h.e.l.l I can't!"

His round face becoming red, the auctioneer peered down at me from below the rim of his straw cowboy hat. "The car is consigned bidding already started. The minimum selling price has been met."

Pointing with his gavel to the small trailer hitched to his pickup truck, he yelled back. "If you want to bid, get a number."

At this point the crowd was far more interested in the crazy woman who was shouting than in bidding. All of them except Ashley, that is. In the brief silence that followed, she held up her paddle and sweetly said, ' Ten thousand."

That d.a.m.ned chant resumed and I made a mad dash for the trailer.

In the s.p.a.ce of time it took me to produce my driver's license for identification and wait for the infuriating man's wife to register me, I heard him shout, "Sold to the lady for twelve thousand!"

As I exited the trailer, the crowd was slowly dispersing. I could see Ashley standing by my Galaxy, waiting. I stopped a few feet away and asked, "Why?"

"You tell me," she retorted. "Why keep this car all these years if it meant nothing?"

Ignoring her question, I countered, "I can refuse to let you have it."

"I can call my lawyer," she said, not backing down an inch.

Suddenly too tired to fight, I brushed past Ashley and leaned in the driver's side open window. Reaching in, I grabbed the black-and-white fuzzy dice from the rearview mirror.

''Take it," I said as I walked toward the house and closed the front door.

I sat on one of the stools at the bar in the kitchen until the evening sun slanted low in the west windows above the sink, bathing the room in a pale coral glow. The auction company had left after distributing all the sold items and collecting the fees. The two rack wagons, the crowd, and my Galaxy were gone. The only evidence left of the entire afternoon's events was the trampled gra.s.s in the yard and the license plates that Ashley had evidently removed from the car and laid on the front porch step. They were on the counter now, and I traced my finger along the raised letters and numbers. One last time I let the memory replay of the final drive Ashley and I had taken over ten years ago.

It was our senior year of high school and our volleyball team had finally won the state championship. Everything had been golden that year; perfect grades, perfect win record, perfect friendship. Graduation night we flipped our ta.s.sels and posed with our diplomas for what seemed like a hundred photographs for our families. Deciding to skip the usual parties, Ashley and I took the Galaxy out on Highway 45 and just drove, singing loudly and off key with every song that came on the radio. We were still a little wound up from the euphoria of pa.s.sing that first major milestone in life, but we were also starving, so we decided to head back to Ashley's house and raid the kitchen.

I pulled into her folks' driveway and cut the engine. We sat there a few minutes, talking about what we were going to do that summer and what college would be like. Somewhere between listening to Ashley's laughter and watching the happiness radiate from her face, I thought to myself how beautiful she was. She was the embodiment of strength and innocence and she made me feel so alive. There was no way I could help falling in love with her, right then, right there.

Dimly I realized she had stopped talking and was just quietly sitting there, looking at me. My hand reached out of its own volition and brushed back a strand of dark hair that had escaped her tie. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for me to lean over and kiss her.

To say I was unprepared for the jolt of electricity that touching her lips with mine caused would be a vast understatement. I pulled back suddenly, afraid of what I would see in Ashley's eyes. They were closed, and when she slowly opened them, a myriad of emotions swirled around in their dark blue depths. Desire, love, and panic were there, and not necessarily in that order.

Without a word or a glance back, she opened the car door and hurried inside her house, leaving me at once both lost and found and forever changed.

I didn't see Ashley again all summer. It felt like I'd lost my best friend, and I guess I had. Anyway, it hurt like h.e.l.l. In the fall I left for a West Coast college on a volleyball scholarship. As far as I knew, Ashley had gone to her school of choice as well.

That winter when I came home over break, there was a card waiting for me. Inside was a note with Ashley's new dorm address and phone number, written in her distinctive script. Over the next four years my mother became a messenger service, dutifully forwarding two cards a year from Ashley; one for Christmas and one for my birthday. In each card was a request to meet but I never replied, not being able to bear hearing some placating speech about how she liked me a lot, just ''not that way." To her credit, Ashley never asked for my address, and after eight cards, she stopped trying.

After college, I joined the AVP and began playing open beach volleyball tournaments. Once or twice, after I began to make a name for myself, I could have sworn I saw Ashley at some of the matches. During year two a rotator cuff injury simultaneously ended my playing career and began my coaching career. Over the next four years our university managed to make it to a Division I championship twice. The stats for my personal life were far less impressive; I never seemed able to sustain a relationship for more than a few months.

Ashley had fared well, or so my mother kept me informed.

Surprisingly, she had returned to our hometown high school and began teaching chemistry, no less. I knew she had never married, and I wondered why someone so wonderful stayed single.

The persistent honk of a car horn drew me from my musings. The image of what my father would have had to say to whoever the unlucky driver of that car was provided me with a much-needed moment of comic relief. Another long blast sounded and I slid from the bar stool and walked to the front door to investigate. The neighborhood had always been a quiet one, and I didn't blame my folks for leaving if every weekend had become this noisy.

Stepping out onto the porch, I waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the waning light. There in the driveway sat Ashley, parked in the Galaxy. Just to be sure, I blinked a couple of times. Before I could even form a thought, she hit the horn again.

"Get in!" she shouted loudly enough for the entire block to hear.

"Are you insane?" I answered back, glancing left and right, hoping none of my parents' neighbors were witnessing this exchange. After the free entertainment of the auction that afternoon, I was certain that at least Mrs. Perkins would be on the lookout for any further drama at 503 Mulberry Lane.

Another drawn-out honk shattered the otherwise still evening, and somewhere nearby a dog began to bark. Taking the porch steps two at a time, I quickly covered the distance to the driveway and stopped inches from the driver side door. When I opened my mouth to speak, Ashley cut me off. "Get in."

''There is no way I'm getting in that car with you," I said calmly. "I don't even know why you'd think: I would."

"Oh, I think you will," she answered just as calmly. "Either that, or I'm going to sit out here all night honking. You can either get in or call the police and have me arrested for disturbing the peace or trespa.s.sing or whatever," Ashley said with a hint of anger in her voice.

I just stood there staring at her, cursing whatever fate made her still so beautiful after all these years. Part of me wanted to climb in that car and roll back the odometer ten years and another part of me wanted to just finally move on, whatever that meant. If there was any shortcut I could take somewhere between the two destinations, I wished I knew which way to turn and find it. Sensing my indecision, Ashley got out of the car and leaned back on the door, folding her arms across her chest against the cool air of the evening.

"Listen, Cat," she began, then corrected herself, "Catherine, please.

Just come for a drive with me and I promise if afterward you still don't want to see me, I won't contact you again. Ever," she said quietly.

The finality of her tone made me realize that this was it. There would never be another chance to resolve this part of my life, for good or bad. Ashley was watching me, those blue eyes melting a path through my heart.

"I should have my head examined," I said with conviction as I walked back to the house to lock up. Returning to the car, I opened the pa.s.senger door and paused. "I don't suppose I could drive?" I ventured, trying to gain some control over this situation in which I felt very much out of control.

Breaking the tension, Ashley nearly snorted with laughter. "h.e.l.l no," she finally got out. "You never would let me drive this car. After all it's taken for me to get behind the wheel, do you honestly think I'm going to just hand over the keys?"

"Hope you're a better driver now than you were then," I commented dryly as I sat down on the wide bench seat.

"Funny, Cat...therine." Ashley grinned as she started the engine and backed out. "Nice to know your sense of humor hasn't changed."

I couldn't keep the small smile from my face. I had missed this. the teasing and verbal sparring. The ache in my chest made me admit just how much. We rode on in silence for several miles as Ashley took us out beyond the reach of the lights of town. I rolled the window down an inch or two, letting the crisp night air pa.s.s over me, trying to clear my thoughts. The hum of the tires on the pavement was calming and I turned a little in my seat, studying Ashley's profile.

Suddenly, I had to know. Right here, right now.

"Did you hate me?" I gave voice to the fear I'd kept inside for so long.

Ashley's head jerked in my direction and the Galaxy swerved a little. "No!" she shouted, the word filling the s.p.a.ce between us. "No,"

she repeated, softer this time. "I could never hate you, Cat. I..."

Frustrated, she took a deep breath. "Let me find a place to pull over, okay?"

Parker's Pond was just up the road and Ashley turned in, cutting the engine but leaving the dash lights on. For a moment, neither one of us seemed able to speak and only the crickets broke the silence. I was about to make some desperate comment on the weather when Ashley found her courage and continued.

"You turned my world upside down with that kiss, Cat."

I sank down in the seat, not sure where this was going.

"I was afraid," she went on. "Afraid of you, afraid of me, afraid of what I felt. I was angry with you for changing everything, and I was angry with myself for being such a coward. By the time I had sorted it out in my head, you were gone and wouldn't talk to me. I didn't know how to fix it at that point. I could never hate you, Cat. I love you.

Always have, always will. So I guess the real question is, do you hate me? I wouldn't blame you if you did," she said, sounding resigned to hear the worst from me.

Replaying her words in my mind, I felt a little light-headed. This was not what I had expected. Trying to process it was nearly impossible at the moment and I just sat there, not saying a word.

Mistaking my silence for an answer, Ashley reached for the ignition. "I understand, Cat. You don't have to say it."

"Wait," I said, covering her hand with mine. "Just give me a minute, okay? You always were so d.a.m.n impatient."

Turning her palm over and lacing her fingers with mine, Ashley slid from behind the steering wheel and faced me. With a look that sent every available ounce of blood in my body straight south, she lowered her voice and asked, "Why don't you shut up and kiss me?"

"What?" I almost shouted. My senses were on overload from her thumb stroking my wrist and the thought of tasting her lips again, even for a moment. I could smell her scent, sweeter than I remembered, and it was becoming difficult to breathe, let alone form sentences.

Gaining confidence, she moved a little closer until our bodies touched from thigh to shoulder. Leaning forward until I could feel the warmth of her breath against my cheek, she spoke in a tone of voice I had never heard until that night. "I said, why don't you shut up and kiss me? I can pretty much guarantee you'll get an entirely different response this time."

"It's not that simple!" I protested, not really able to come up with one good reason not to at the moment Looking me straight in the eyes, Ashley spoke with emotion. "Yes, it is that simple if you want it to be."

I wondered if it actually could be. It took me all of ten seconds to decide that it could, and was. Laying my palm against her cheek, I captured her lips in a kiss so full of desire that it took us both by surprise. Ashley recovered quickly, however, and returned the kiss with an equal amount of pa.s.sion. As she tilted her head a bit more, I felt her open to me and I took the invitation. My tongue traced her full lower lip, sucking it gently before gliding over the sensitive skin inside.

I felt Ashley shudder and surge against me, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s pressed against my arm. The immediate flood of wetness between my legs tore a groan from my throat as I gradually ended the kiss with one last stroke of my tongue and several nips along her jawline. Keeping my eyes closed, I rested my forehead against hers, trying to ignore the almost painful throbbing of my c.l.i.t.

Ashley was having a hard time getting her breathing under control, and when she finally did, she laughed nervously. "Wow,'"

"Wow?" I echoed, teasing. ''That's all you can say?"

"How about I'm sorry," she offered.

Frowning, I opened my eyes. "You're sorry? For what?" I started to pull back, but Ashley brought both hands around my neck, keeping me right there.

"I'm not sorry for this, Cat. I'm sorry for the past, for hurting you.

And I'm sorry I missed out on ten years of kissing you." She ended with a small smile, searching my face for some sign of hope.

I closed my eyes again, overcome. When I opened them, Ashley was still gazing at me intently, waiting. Not able to find adequate words, I tried instead to show her what was in my heart. Grasping her hips, I tugged her forward, guiding her over me as I leaned back across the seat.

My hands found their way under the hem of her Henley, slipping beneath the waistband of her khakis and coming to rest at the small of her back. This time when my mouth found hers, it was gentler but filled with meaning. It was a kiss of absolution and love, and I did my best to let it speak for me.

Ashley understood and threaded the fingers of one hand in my hair, pulling me even closer. The other hand trailed down the front of my shirt and came to rest low on my stomach. I felt the heat of her palm through the material, shivering when she began to tug it loose from my jeans. A firm thigh pressed between my legs, rocking hard against my crotch.

Groaning deep in my chest, I tore my lips away from hers as my hips lifted up off the seat. Insistent fingers freed the b.u.t.tons on my shirt, tracing random patterns on my skin until finally circling my left breast through the fabric of my bra. Ashley bent lower and I felt her moist breath on my nipple, causing it to harden even more. When she grazed the tip with her teeth, I almost threw us both off the seat.