Melt Like Butter

by Daisy May

  “You can tell me.” After all, there was no way I’d ever go out with him again.

  “I cheated on him.” He shrugged and took another bite. “I didn’t mean to, but he was working such long hours, and all those dating sites are only a mouse click away, you know?”

  “Sure.” I most certainly didn’t know. “So he found out three days ago and you already moved out?”

  “No, we’re still living together.”

  I spit out my sip of wine.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It’s hard to find a place in this town. Not exactly a big housing market. I’m working on finding my own place, but in the meantime, we have two bedrooms.”

  “And you’re sleeping in separate ones?” I asked dubiously.

  “Of course! What do you take me for?” His eyes were wide and insincere.

  “O…kay…” I finished my glass, then poured and drained another. “I’m a little tired. Do you want to get the bill?”

  “Of course.” He waved at Andrew, who ignored him.

  After a few minutes of waiting, I couldn’t stand another moment of awkward silence. I took my pocket to the till and paid the waiter there myself. Sparing myself another second of Dan’s company was worth the cost of the meal.

  When I’d paid, Dan walked me outside. “This was fun,” he said, casually sliding a hand into the crook of my elbow. “Would you like to come over for a nightcap?”

  I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so shocked that Dan actually thought this night had gone well. Did he lack self-awareness to the extent that he couldn’t guess this was the worst date I’d been on in my life?

  If things had been different, I might’ve been tempted. He wasn’t bad-looking, which was as much as I would’ve said for Tyler at the start, and agreeing to his offer would’ve qualified as adding some excitement to my life.

  But he didn’t interest me like that. Not just because he looked different from his pictures, or because he’d taken me to the restaurant his ex worked at, or because he was still living with said ex. He held no fascination for me. I had zero curiosity about the inner workings of his mind.

  I’d spent the entire night thinking about one person, and it wasn’t Dan or Andrew.

  “I think I’m just going to go home and sleep,” I said, politely extricating my arm from Dan’s grasp.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “How… boring.”

  “I guess I’m boring.”

  There was one person who’d liked me that way. Would I ever find another?

  TWENTY-THREE – TYLER

  On the first day, Laney was too weak to have much of a conversation. In her state, it was overwhelming enough to know I was there. We managed to agree that I could stay in her apartment, and she even told me I could use her credit card for groceries.

  I briefly considered buying a flight to Mexico with the card, but decided against it. If I waited a little longer, I should be able to get more money out of her.

  That first night, alone in her apartment, I snooped around her things. She still had CD and DVD collections – probably because she was old, I assumed – and I was oddly pleased to find her tastes had some overlap with mine. She was even into classical music.

  Other than music, my biological mother seemed to have no use for nice things. If I’d been a thief, there was nothing I would’ve stolen. Whatever money she made or otherwise acquired was clearly going somewhere else. Like her drug habit.

  “Ah-ha,” I said to myself as I peeked into the cabinet above her bathroom sink. Her drugs, clearly prescribed with names that weren’t hers, were right there. Such an unexciting place to hide them.

  I opened a bottle and rolled a small white pill in my palm, remembering what the doctor had said about addicts. I could flush these pills down the toilet right now and get them out of Laney’s reach. Or… I could find a way to sell them. Either way, they’d be out of her hands. Selling them would just mean I’d recover some of the money that should’ve gone to me, anyway. It was win-win.

  Laney was either too broke or too much of a technophobe to have a laptop, so I got on my phone. I’d bought weed via Craigslist a few times in the past. I’d never been enough of a smoker to have a regular dealer, and I knew that was where these kinds of transactions took place.

  Now I was on the other end. I did some research to figure out how I should price my wares, and then I created an ad, keeping my language as vague as possible while still making it clear what I was offering. I hit “post” and flipped on the TV, hoping I’d get some responses ASAP. I could use some cash flow.

  *

  Over the next couple of days, I made myself at home in Laney’s apartment. She’d come so close to death that she was going to be weak for a while. Dr. Baylor wanted to keep her on an IV drip, and I suspected he also wanted to make sure she didn’t have a chance to get near any opioids.

  I went in to see her every day, although I didn’t stay for long. Hospitals made me uncomfortable in general – I didn’t like to think about illness and death, much less see them. With her in particular, it was like looking into a funhouse mirror. I could end up like her, if my life went the wrong way.

  I tried to convince myself not to go, to wait until she got out. I still couldn’t stand hospitals – the smell of disinfectant and the presence of illness and death. Somehow, though, I couldn’t stay away. Although she was frail, she was conscious.

  “Tell me how you ended up finding me now,” she said during the visit. Her voice was still weak, but like the rest of her, it was getting stronger every day. “Your timing was spot-on.”

  “I know,” I said, sitting next to her bed. “I’d always thought about finding you – just a half-formed thought at the back of my mind. I finally decided to go through with it, and it wasn’t exactly easy. I stuck with it this time. It was urgent.”

  “That’s what I’m asking. Why?” She turned onto her side to face me. Her eyes, so much like mine, drilled into my own.

  I couldn’t tell her the real reason. I thought quickly, trying to phrase things in a way that wouldn’t make me look bad. “I got kicked out,” I said. “I lived at a motel for a few weeks, and I was running out of money. I had nowhere else to go.”

  Her brow furrowed. “But you’re an adult. Twenty-three, I think.”

  “Yes.” It was slightly heartening that she knew my age.

  “You should be able to take care of yourself,” she said. “Don’t you have a job?”

  I bristled. Was she going to have the same attitude Sophie had always given me? I’d gotten so sick of her yelling at me to make my own money. I’d hated every job I’d ever had, and they’d felt the same way about me.

  I couldn’t have kept one of those jobs if I’d tried. The bosses were always yelling at me for this, that, and the other thing. I’d tried confiding in Sophie once or twice, but she’d just told me to work harder. Whatever I did never seemed to make a difference. Me and jobs just didn’t go together.

  Laney didn’t know my whole history with employment, so it was different. But then, wasn’t she being a bit of a hypocrite?

  “Who are you to talk?” I asked with a sneer. “I know you weren’t making much at your hardware store – especially when you ran off with the contents of the cash drawer.”

  She looked abashed. “That’s me, not you. I wanted better for you. That’s why I gave you up in the first place.”

  “At least I’m not a drug addict,” I spat.

  I strode out, vowing not to come back. If Laney wanted to judge me like everyone else in my life, she could forget having me visit her. She’d be alone, since she’d clearly alienated everyone else in her life. I wouldn’t feel bad about abandoning her. She would’ve been dead if not for me.

  I might’ve been a piece of shit, but at least I wasn’t like her.

  *

  Later that night, my phone pinged with an email. Someone had replied to my Craigslist ad, and he understood exactly what I was offering. He said
he’d pay even more than what I’d hinted at.

  So I’d be a dealer, if not an addict. Whatever. It was only once, and it was for a good cause. I wasn’t going to make a habit out of it.

  Are you free tonight? I wrote back. We can meet up anytime. I have no plans.

  He agreed, and we set a time. I nodded to myself, satisfied with my own resourcefulness. I’d come here with nothing, and now I was going to make some cash for only a few minutes of effort. I was practically an entrepreneur.

  At eight, I used Google Maps to find the intersection the man had suggested. I hadn’t realized what a shady part of town he’d chosen, although that did make sense. I stood on the street corner, holding a plastic bag with the pill bottles. I glanced at everyone who walked by, unsure of how I’d recognize this guy.

  After a minute, someone approached. He was older than I’d expected, maybe mid-forties, and more clean-cut than I would’ve expected a pill addict to be. Then again, you never knew. Laney didn’t look like a junkie, either. I would’ve thought she was a normal person, if she wasn’t hooked up to IVs at the hospital.

  The man gave me an odd smile as he came toward me, and something shifted in the pit of my stomach. I had a bad feeling about this. I couldn’t have said why, and yet my inner voice was telling me to run. Something was off here.

  But with no idea what it was, I gave the man a weak smile back and said hi. “You’re the one from online, right?”

  “That’s right,” he said, the odd look in his eyes intensifying. “You have the stuff for me?”

  “Yeah.” I held out the bag.

  He didn’t take it. “What is it, exactly?”

  My gut churned. Just tell him, get the money, and get out of here. “Fentanyl and hydrocodone,” I said in a low whisper. “Five hundred for everything.”

  “Thanks for making this so convenient.” His eyes flashed, and he shoved a badge in my face. “Officer Lawrence, Oakland PD. You are now under arrest. You have the right to remain silent…”

  TWENTY-FOUR – ANDY

  Another night. Another failed date.

  I drove home alone, my spirits dampened by the disappointment of the evening. I’d been meeting men semi-regularly for the past two months, and nothing had gone anywhere. I’d tried out a few second dates, wanting to give them a chance. I hadn’t reached a third date.

  I wasn’t sure what was going wrong. Not all of the dates were as bad as the first one – I’d actually started using it as a funny story on my other dates. The men I’d gone out with twice were all attractive, educated, and intelligent.

  Tonight’s date was like that. He seemed to have everything I could ask for in a man, and yet there was no connection there. No chemistry. I could’ve tried kissing him, but I’d already learned what would happen. There would be no spark.

  I pulled my car into my driveway and headed up to my very empty apartment. I’d spent the entire dinner thinking about someone I had no right to be thinking about. I’d had one night with him. I didn’t even like him. And he clearly didn’t care about me.

  He was back in Oakland, starting a fresh new life with his biological mom. I probably hadn’t crossed his mind once since he left.

  I sank into the chair in front of my computer, yawning as I reached for the water bottle I’d left there earlier. I logged onto the dating site again, already doubting I’d find anything interesting on there. The LGBT population in Harrotsford was limited, and I felt like I’d dated my way through half the men on the site. The other half weren’t attracted to me, or vice versa. More than likely, I’d have to wait for new people to join before I could find another date.

  I checked my inbox anyway. Some men had messaged me enthusiastically at first before trailing off into silence, and there was a chance they could’ve decided to reply after all. But no, they hadn’t. I skimmed through the old messages, wondering if I could catch their attention again with a new message. Probably not. They could’ve met someone else by now.

  I let out a sigh. I didn’t need a boyfriend, anyway. I could get a pet to keep me company. A dog or a cat, maybe. Or something exotic, like an axolotl. What were those, anyway?

  Twirling a finger through my hair, I opened Google to look it up. I didn’t type the word, though. As if my fingers had a mind of their own, they started typing something else.

  A name… the same name that’d been on my mind for two months.

  I pushed my chair back, shaking my head at myself. What was I even expecting to pop up? I already knew he wasn’t on social media, and I highly doubted he’d have written a tell-all confessional blog post about how he finally found his mother.

  I started to close the tab, then stopped and glanced down the list of results instead. There were a few headlines that clearly weren’t about him… and then a police report from two months ago.

  My heart dropped. I peered at the screen, struggling to make sense of the words on it. Tyler Bernhardt had been arrested and sentenced to up to two years for selling drugs. That couldn’t be my Tyler Bernhardt, could it? The report was from Oakland, so it had to be. But why would he have sold drugs right after finding his mom? Where would he even have gotten them from?

  Or had he even been looking for his mom in the first place? Had I driven him across the country just to bring him to a new market for his drug dealing? What did I honestly know about this guy?

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing heart. Wright had looked into Tyler, and he was who he claimed to be. He’d had minor run-ins with the law in the past. This was more serious, though, and I couldn’t understand why he would’ve done it. Or how it related to Laney Jefferson.

  I shut off the computer and swigged down the rest of my water. It didn’t matter what Tyler had done, or why. He was out of my life. His actions had no effect on me. He could do whatever he pleased, and if he was in jail, that was because he deserved it. I had no delusions of him being innocent.

  I took a quick shower, and bittersweet memories of arguing with Tyler about showering flashed through my head. From there, more memories of that night with him came back to me – not that they were ever too far from my mind.

  I couldn’t deal with not knowing. Still wrapped in my towel, I headed back to my desk and turned the computer back on. With only a few clicks, I’d found the phone number for the facility where he was staying.

  The jail. Where he was being held. I couldn’t trick myself into thinking this situation was less serious than it was. I’d never called a jail before, and never thought I’d have a reason to.

  As I looked closer at the website, I realized I still wasn’t going to be able to. Inmates were only allowed to make calls, not to receive them, and Tyler had no idea I wanted to talk to him.

  And the fact that he hadn’t called meant he didn’t want to talk to me. He had my number – he could’ve contacted me anytime. Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t thinking of me. And I needed to do the same with regards to him.

  I shut the computer again and got into bed, already knowing it’d be a sleepless night.

  *

  I didn’t mention Tyler’s situation to Mom during our morning calls over the next few days. I didn’t mention it to anyone, actually.

  I kept thinking about him, though – replaying every one of our interactions in my mind and wondering how he’d managed to land himself in jail so soon after we parted.

  My curiosity was eating me alive. I’d been more focused at work since our road trip, but now I was spacing out ten times a day. I kept daydreaming about what was happening to him in jail. Were the others being mean to him? Could he handle it?

  Knowing him, he’d probably found a way to place himself at the top of the prison food chain. Still, I worried – and I was going to keep worrying until I heard from him.

  When the weekend came, I didn’t have work to distract me anymore. I hadn’t managed to line up any dates, either. There was nothing at all to keep me from obsessing over Tyler.

  Just write to him, I told myself –
and somehow my inner voice began to sound like him. Just fucking write to me, Andy!

  So I bought an envelope and a stamp – I hadn’t sent a letter since the turn of the century – and banged out a letter.

  Tyler, hi. It’s Andy. I hope I’m not bothering you. I heard you were locked up, and I had to say something. What the hell happened? I need you to explain how you ended up selling drugs within a couple of days of me leaving. At least, I want you to.

  Look, I know we weren’t planning to keep in touch. I guess I just ended up caring about you – at least enough to worry about you now. Let me know you’re safe and that no one is beating you up or anything. I don’t really know how things go in prison.

  You can ignore this letter if you’d like, but I figure you have to be bored in there, right? Write me back, or give me a call.

  I signed the letter with my name and phone number, then printed it and slipped it in the envelope before I could talk myself out of it.

  Now all there was for me to do was wait.

  TWENTY-FIVE – TYLER

  I walked through the hallway at nine in the morning, as soon as telephone hours began. I hadn’t used my phone privileges yet, but today I had someone to call.

  I’d acclimatized reasonably well to being in jail. Losing my freedom had been hard at first. I hated not being able to do what I wanted when I wanted, and I hated how they didn’t even let me see the outdoors unless it was on their schedule. The food sucked, and there was no way for me to get my hands on any alcohol.

  Now that some time had passed, though, I was getting used to all of it. I’d made a couple of friends, or at least what passed for friends in prison. Even the crappy kitchen job I’d been assigned was becoming bearable. Still, I was counting down the days until I could get out.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number that Andy had given me. My hands shook slightly as I held the phone to my ear. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to him. I wasn’t sure why he wanted to talk to me.