by L. D. Davis
“We need to move,” he said one night, trying to find room at the table for his papers. “We’re outgrowing this apartment. We need a house, where Lucas can play outside.”
“Oh,” I said. I never thought that far ahead. I never imagined leaving the small apartment, but he was right. It was getting tight.
“I’ll call an agent tomorrow,” he said, frustration laced throughout his voice.
“Can I get you something before I go to bed?”
“No, I’m fine. If I need anything, I can get it. Thanks.”
I turned to go into the bedroom when a thought occurred to me, and I instantly felt guilty for not considering it sooner.
“Luke, why don’t you sleep in the bed tonight? You’ve been working your ass off and sleeping on a blow-up bed. It hardly seems fair.”
“Are you trying to seduce me, Miss Grayne?” He raised his eyebrows.
I snickered. “I’m pretty sure my girly parts have withered up and turned to dust by now. I’m serious, though. Just come to bed when you’re ready. I can come out here.”
“I’ll think about it,” he nodded slowly. “Goodnight.” He took a few steps and kissed my cheek.
I don’t know what time it was when I felt him climb into bed next to me. I mumbled something about taking the couch, but he put his hand on my hip to hold me there.
“Does it bother you to sleep in the same bed as me?” he asked.
I looked over my shoulder at him. There was just enough moonlight seeping through the windows to highlight his facial features. The view was stunning, so stunning I forgot what he asked.
“What did you say again?”
“Does it bother you to sleep in the same bed as me?” he repeated patiently.
“No. I thought it bothered you.”
“Maybe in the beginning, but not for the reasons you would think.”
I rolled my head back to my pillow. “I didn’t put much thought into it.”
For a little while, it was quiet. Only Lucas’s soft snoring could be heard. Luke’s hand stayed on my hip, making me a little anxious.
“I want to ask you something, and I want you to be straight with me.”
I rolled over onto my back so I could look at him. He readjusted his hand so that it rested on my belly and propped up his head with his other hand.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Did Kyle hit you?”
I held my breath for a moment, tried not to look as startled as I felt. “Why are you asking me that?”
“You alluded to it months ago. You said something about being used and abused, and then when I asked you about your last day in Philly, you said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” I said as panic settled in.
“Yeah, I knew you would react this way, so I talked to your mom and Mayson.”
“What the fuck,” I muttered. I rolled away from him and out of bed. He followed me into the living room, talking.
“Mayson said you came back from a trip to Miami with a broken wrist, and the day after the cast was off you were walking around with that fancy bracelet. You told her you fell while you were drunk, but she didn’t believe you, and she especially didn’t believe you after you started wearing the bracelet. She thought it was some kind of compensation from Kyle, probably for breaking your wrist.”
“Mayson is a crazy bitch. You can’t believe anything she says,” I snarled.
“That’s cruel and wrong and you know it,” he said firmly.
I kept walking away from him, but he kept following me.
“Your mom said she didn’t even know about the broken wrist until I asked her today. You gave her a different story about the bracelet. She also said you called her a little after midnight New Years and told her you were going to be there later in the day. You got there a day late, claiming you were in a car accident to explain away the fresh bruises on your face, on your arms, and even on your back.”
I stared at him in horror. Every day I had to work on eradicating those memories from my head. I kept only enough as a reminder of the things that can happen to me when I fuck other people over.
“He really fucked up your head, didn’t he?” Luke asked. “You feel like you deserved everything he did to you.”
I didn’t have anything to say. I just stood there staring at the floor, and he stood there watching me watch the floor.
He sighed and shuffled around a little.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t press you like that. When you’re ready to talk about it, I will always be ready to listen.” A lingering kiss on my cheek and he was gone.
I looked at the clock on the oven. It was three-thirty in the morning, and I knew sleep was going to elude me the rest of the night. I shuffled into the living room and planted myself on the couch. I sat there until the sun came up, trying hard not to let the bad shit from the past take over my emotions. I was just barely able to get a grip by the time Lucas woke up.
I bathed him, dressed and fed him, all before Luke rolled out of bed. He looked as bad as I felt: tired, worried, and drained.
“I’m not going in today,” I said, packing up Lucas’s diaper bag. “Can you drop him off at Lena’s?”
“I’m not going in either,” he yawned. “I’ll drop him off anyway.”
Okay, so I was being unreasonable, I realized. I had never spoken to anyone about the things Kyle did to me. Speaking about it aloud was distressing. I didn’t want people to know how weak I was, how stupid I was, and did I think I deserved it? I felt that karma was a bitch, and karma got me good.
What happened to me was humiliating and made me feel ashamed. I knew everyone would look at me differently if they knew, and even though I was definitely different in countless ways, I didn’t want to be pitied. I’m sure Luke didn’t want to extend me his pity. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what Luke’s intentions were. His behavior over the past several weeks was confusing. I didn’t know where it all was going.
I was exhausted. I picked myself up off of the couch and dragged my tired ass to bed. I wanted to occupy my mind for a while, with someone else’s life. I picked up my kindle and started to read. Luke came in a little while later.
“I have such a crazy headache,” he grumbled as he kicked off his shoes. “I feel like my head is going to explode.”
Forever ago, when Luke was my boyfriend, when he had a headache, he would lay his head in my lap and I would run my fingers through his hair, letting them gently graze his head. As if no time had passed since the last time we did this, he got into bed and put his head in my lap. Hesitantly, I put my free hand in his hair and began the old ritual.
I went back to reading while my hand was lost in his soft hair, pretending that this wasn’t an unusual event, pretending that it wasn’t giving me butterflies big enough to make me want to hurl. I read the same sentences over and over again before I understood the words, taking forever to get through a few short paragraphs.
Luke was silent and I heard his breathing slow down. I looked down at his sleeping form, amazed.
And scared.
I had no idea what the fuck was happening between us.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eventually, I was able to fall asleep after readjusting myself under Luke so that his head rested on my stomach instead of my lap. When I woke up a couple of hours later, he was sitting up, remote control in hand, lazily changing the channels.
“You hungry?” he asked, when I sat up.
“I could eat.”
“I’ll order some pizza and wings.”
“Sure,” I said and got up to go pee. “How’s your head?”
“Perfectly fine thanks to your magic fingers.”
“Cool.”
When I came out of the bathroom, Luke had his laptop open on the bed.
“I ordered our food.”
I sat down next to him and looked at the screen. He was on a real estate site, scrolling through pictures of houses.
“Whe
re do you want to move to?” I asked.
“Maybe closer to Lena? What do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter to me. As long as it’s pretty safe. You want to get away from the city?” We currently lived almost in the heart of Chicago, not far from downtown and all of the tourist areas.
“I think so, but I don’t want a two hour commute to work either. Maybe somewhere close to public transportation.”
I nodded in agreement. “How big of a place are you thinking of?”
“Four bedrooms and a space for an office.”
I nodded again, counting who was going in what bedrooms in my mind. “So, we’ll have one room left over for a guest room. What are we going to do if, you know, you get married or something? I mean, it’s something to think about if we’re buying a house together.”
He looked at me funny, like I just said the dumbest thing.
“What happens if you get married?” he asked.
I almost laughed. A stupid chuckle left my mouth instead. “I think my current state is as good as it’s gonna get for me. I’m so not on the market.”
“Why would you even say that?” he said, irritated.
“No one buys broken items,” I sighed, and reached over him and scrolled through the houses.
“People buy broken cars and fix them up all of the time.”
“I’m not a broken hot rod. I’m more like…a shattered vase. No one buys those.”
“Why are we talking about you like you’re an inanimate object?” he growled.
“What about this house?” I clicked on a four-bedroom house, but Luke pushed my hand away and slammed the laptop shut.
“This is driving me crazy,” he said, jumping to his feet. “Sometimes I see that woman I knew so well, but as soon as she starts to come out, you push her back down into the dark.”
“That’s poetic,” I smirked, also getting to my feet. I needed something to do instead of sitting there. I started folding some clean laundry sitting in a basket.
“Why?” he asked. “Why are you so afraid to be her?”
“Maybe you’ve forgotten, but that woman you knew so well screwed you over and broke your heart.”
“You know what? Honestly?” he said, snatching the clothes away from me. “More often than you think, I do forget, and really, I may never forget entirely, but I have forgiven you. I forgive you entirely, no more animosity, but you can’t forgive yourself.”
“Luke, really!” I snapped. “Why are you bombarding me with all of this serious shit lately?”
“Because in order for us to move forward, we need to deal with that shit, Em. You need to deal with what Kyle did to you and you need to deal with your feelings about yourself.”
“I am dealing with it!”
“Hiding behind your kid and your job will only hold up for so long.”
I rolled my eyes, exhaled loudly, and walked out of the room. Luke followed.
“Great idea! Run away! That’s a great way of dealing with your problems.”
I paced the living room, while Luke stood off to the side.
“So, you’ve made some mistakes,” he said, with a little less aggression. “We have all made some mistakes.”
“Yeah, your mistake was, how did you put it? Oh yeah. You had this inflated idea of who I was and it’s not my fault that I didn’t live up to your expectations.” I stood in the middle of the room, staring at the floor, breathing heavily. Saying it out loud really made me understand how badly it had hurt me when he said it.
“I was hurting pretty bad,” he said softly. “I wanted you to feel my pain. I apologize, I didn’t really mean it. Had I known then how deeply damaged you really were, I would have behaved differently, and I should have anyway. I didn’t treat you the way I should treat the mother of my child. I’ve really been trying to make it up to you and be a better man.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was a little surprised.
“Em, I know you’re broken, okay?” he said with a sense of urgency. “But I need to know what broke you so I can fix you.”
I stared at him for a dumbfounded moment before returning my attention back to the floor. “Why would you want to bother? Is it making me a bad mom?”
“You’re an excellent mother. I want to because I love you, and it kills me to see you like this.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t have to respond any further, because the buzzer sounded. Luke grabbed his wallet and went down to meet the pizza guy. I sat down on the couch, feeling anxious and confused. Luke had not told me he loved me in a very long time. Did he love me love me? Or just love me as the mother of his child?
When he returned with the food, I expected him to pick up where we left off, but he didn’t. We sat on the couch for the rest of the afternoon nibbling on pizza and wings and watching television. He sat close to me and always had an arm behind me across the back of the couch. My anxiety grew until I thought I would burst, but just before reaching that point, Luke got up and left to get Lucas.
We slept in the bed together again that night, but this time my rest wasn’t disrupted by intruding questions about my past. We crashed on opposite sides of the bed, much to my relief. In the morning, I woke up to find Luke and Lucas at the dining room table having a meaningful conversation about Elmo. I could only understand a few words, but Luke nodded and spoke at what seemed like the appropriate times.
“Are you playing hooky again?” I asked Luke after kissing the baby good morning.
“Impossible. I am co-owner of the firm. I can do whatever I want.”
“Humble.”
“I want to take Lucas to the zoo today and tonight you and I are having a date night.”
“Date night?” I asked doubtfully.
“Yep. I already asked Diane to babysit.”
Diana was Luke’s nineteen-year-old cousin. She was cute and perky and all of the Kessler kids loved her.
“I know I’m not Brad Pitt, but I think I make a pretty good date,” Luke said when I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t hide my small smile. “I guess.”
“Oh my god, Lucas! Did you see that?”
“Smartass,” I muttered and went into the kitchen.
The boys went to the zoo, but I stayed home to clean and do laundry. Luke wasn’t letting me off of the hook for date night, explaining that I needed to get out. Maybe he was right, because unless it was a family function, I didn’t do anything or go anywhere. While he and Lucas were gone, I convinced myself that this was a good thing, that it didn’t necessarily signify anything romantic.
Diane arrived at four-thirty and Luke and I were out the door a few minutes later.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we stomped down the sidewalk.
“Let’s just see where our feet take us,” he said, taking my hand.
“You mean you didn’t plan anything?”
“Nope.”
“You suck a little at this dating thing,” I said.
“Was that a joke?”
“Nope.”
An hour later we found ourselves at a Barnes and Noble, standing a few feet apart, quietly sifting through books.
“This is a hot date,” I said.
“I know you think so. The only thing missing are your sexy pink rubber gloves.”
“Maybe we should go buy some, I mean if that’s what rocks your boat.”
“Only if you promise to wear the gloves and nothing else.”
I snickered. “Yeah, because my body is so rockin’ after having a baby.”
“I think your body is even more rockin’ than before you had a baby.”
I threw a sideways glance at him. “I haven’t lost any weight since the day Lucas was born.”
“You’re hot, I’m telling you,” he tried to reassure me.
“You think so now. You haven’t seen the stretch marks on my belly.”
“I don’t care about your stretch marks,” he said, putting his book back on the shelf.
I fel
t the conversation was going in a direction I wasn’t ready to go in, so I changed the topic.
“Are you flying to Jersey with me and Lucas for Labor Day?”
Donya’s baby was a couple of weeks old and I was anxious to see her in person. She named her Rosa, after her husband’s deceased mother.
“Do you want me to?” He looked at me.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Don’t be so excited about it,” he frowned. I think I actually hurt his feelings.
“I don’t get excited about anything these days. Don’t take it personally.”
He looked at me doubtfully.
“I would love for you to come,” I said with as much excitement as I could muster.
“Right here in the book store?” He feigned shock. “I knew my bad ass girl was in there somewhere. I haven’t done it in a public place since that one time in the bathroom at the diner.”
“Walking away now,” I said and left him in the aisle with the two older women who had just witnessed our whole conversation.
We went to dinner after the bookstore. The first thing Luke did was order us some hardcore drinks. I eyeballed my drink with apprehension. I hadn’t had a hard drink since before I found out I was pregnant with Lucas.
“Drink up,” Luke insisted after devouring his.
“This is going to hit me like a pile of rocks.”
“It will loosen you up a little.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you calling me uptight?”
He pressed his lips together and we had a staring contest, but I quickly lost, because he was right. Every day I felt tightly wound, knotted even. Sometimes it was hard to breathe, because everything inside of me felt squeezed tightly, as if there was a boa constrictor slithering around inside of me, squeezing and squeezing, suffocating me.
“Hey, are you okay?” Luke reached across the table and took my hand. And the snake squeezed a little tighter.
Why did Luke make my condition worse? So stupid.
I picked up the drink and took a deep breath. I wasn’t going to sip it like a little bitch. I was a master at drinking in my past life. I was going to make this tall, hard ass drink my bitch. I downed it faster than Luke had downed his.