by L. D. Davis
Her tiny shoulder went up. “But I was just playing,” she whimpered.
“You painted a beautiful picture yesterday. How would you feel if Alex came in and crumpled up all your hard work?”
“Ss-ss-saaaaaad,” Natalie wailed as her guilt finally took hold. She sounded so wretched that it made me acutely uncomfortable. “Ss-sorry, Alex,” she said without prompting.
I found that very impressive. Most children I knew were forced by their parents or some other adult to apologize, but at the age of four, Natalie understood the gravity of her actions.
Alex didn’t find it necessary to be forgiving just yet. He looked at the pieces of the ship in his hand, sniffed and then walked out of the room.
Grant was talking softly to a still sobbing Natalie. I felt a stab of pain watching the father and daughter, as it made me think of my own father. He used to hold me the same way when I was upset—if he was home, which wasn’t often.
“It’s okay, M&M,” he used to say as he rubbed my back.
I smiled faintly at the thought of the nickname that I hadn’t heard in eighteen years. He gave it to me for my first and middle names, Mayson Mariah.
“I love M&M’s,” he would say. Then he would nibble on my arm or fingers or shoulder. “Are you a plain M&M or a nut?”
I blinked away the memory as Grant settled Natalie into her bed with the promise of a story. My heart ached with the memory of my dad, but I couldn’t stop the half a smile that came when I saw that Grant was still clutching my bag. He caught my eye as he sat down on a chair next to Nat’s bed with a book. He held the book up for me to see.
It was Snow White.
He winked at me, put my bag carefully on his lap, and began to read. I scowled to keep myself from laughing, and left him alone with his daughter.
I was going to wander back to the kitchen to wait for Grant, but curiosity carried me to the open door of the next room over.
Alex sat at a round table with the pieces of his starship laid out. His brow was furrowed in concentration as he examined it. I leaned against the doorframe and looked around the room. The kid was a Star Wars fanatic. There were all types of memorabilia on display. There was an enormous Death Star on one wall and life-sized decals of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker on another.
Amongst all that, was a single framed picture of a pretty light-skinned woman, smiling broadly from under the brim of a large beach hat. Alex’s and Natalie’s deceased mother, Shyanne.
I looked away from her picture and pushed away the odd combination of emotions it evoked in me.
“How long did it take you to put that together?” I asked Alex.
He glanced up at me, a little surprised, but then looked back at the mess of Legos and seemed a little hopeless.
“A few weeks. It has over three thousand pieces. I’ll never be able to build it again. She probably lost some of the pieces.”
I tentatively stepped into the room. “Can you buy any missing pieces?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but I don’t know what pieces I’m missing yet.”
I sat down in the chair across from him and picked up a few of the scattered pieces.
“Do you put all your models together?” I glanced around the room, mentally picking out all the model ships on display.
“Yeah. Some of them are Legos and some of them are other materials. I don’t really care about Legos, but the Star Wars stuff they have is pretty cool.” He gave me a slightly wary look. “Do you like Star Wars?”
I knew I was being tested. I was pretty sure I had passed Nat’s assessment earlier at dinner, but it was Alex’s turn to decide whether or not I was worthy.
It shouldn’t have mattered if he thought I was worthy. I had absolutely no plans to be a part of his life. None. As I told Grant, I wasn’t mother material. I wasn’t even girlfriend material.
However, even if it didn’t matter to me, it did matter to Alex.
I stole a cursory look at his mother’s photograph again and sighed.
“I have all the movies on Blu-Ray,” I confessed. “And I may, or may not have a poster of Hans Solo in my closet at home.”
Slowly, a smile appeared on his face.
“Hans is awesome.”
I passed the test.
Together, we began to rebuild his starship, chatting amicably about all things Star Wars. I don’t know how much time went by before I noticed Grant standing in the doorway watching us, or how long he had been there. I didn’t immediately go to him, though, and he didn’t interrupt.
I was actually enjoying the conversation with Alex; it was better than most conversations I’ve had with adults. Putting the pieces of the ship together was surprisingly soothing and comparable to how I felt making origami. I probably could have sat there for hours, but after some time, Grant finally came into the room.
“Alex, I’ll give you another half hour, little man.” He rubbed Alex’s head affectionately. “Then it’s lights out.”
I carefully put down my section of the ship and stood up.
“Thanks for helping me, Mayson,” Alex said.
To my surprise and horror, the kid got up and hugged me tight around the waist. I glanced at Grant with bewilderment, but he seemed a little surprised, too. Hesitantly, I hugged him back, awkwardly patting his back.
“Where’s my bag?” I asked Grant when we stepped into the hall.
“In the kitchen. Now that I know how to keep you here...” He trailed off and smiled.
“Is that how you won over your wife? You stole her pocketbook?”
“Nah, I did that with my good looks and remarkable charm.”
I snorted in response.
Once we reached the kitchen, he handed me my bag and leaned in close to me.
“You don’t think I’m good looking and charming?” he challenged.
I shrugged nonchalantly. “You’re all right for a thirty-nine-year-old.”
“Smartass.” He placed a light, quick kiss on my lips.
I pulled the strap of my bag onto my shoulder. “I have to go. My neighbor was kind enough to take Dusky out this afternoon and feed him, but he’s probably ready to go out again.”
“Do you want to take my car?” Grant asked as we walked to the door. “I can pick it up tomorrow or Monday.”
“No, but you can call me a cab.”
“I’ll come down with you. We can talk while we wait. We have some unfinished business,” he said ominously.
Downstairs, in the doorway, our unfinished business was conducted by touch. No words flowed between us as our tongues were tied in a salacious kiss. His hands were on my waist, holding me possessively close to him. My own hands were flat against his chest as if I meant to push him away, which I had at first, but I had given up quickly.
When we finally pulled apart a few inches, we were both breathless.
“It’s been thirteen long years,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “You said it yourself, we’re different people. So, why does everything with you feel so familiar?”
“It does seem familiar, but…” He kissed along my jaw. Then his lips were lightly touching mine. “I am hungry for you, craving for you like a man who has been starving for thirteen years, and you are the only one who can satiate my appetite.”
He kissed me hard, groaning into my mouth as he took his pleasure from me. When he stopped, I was again short of breath.
“When did you become so poetic?” I asked, and licked the taste of his mouth from my swollen lips.
“About five minutes ago when I tasted your smartass mouth,” he groaned and kissed me briefly.
As much as I wanted to keep kissing him, we did still have a few things to discuss, and my cab would arrive at any moment.
“Grant,” I panted his name as he kissed my neck. “I was serious earlier. I’m not mother material.”
He withdrew and looked down at me with dark, serious eyes.
“I’m not asking you to be a mother. I just want you to be yourself, to be Mayson.”<
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“Those are very pretty words, but the fact remains that you have two children and I don’t want to be a mom.”
“Again,” he said more sternly. “I’m not asking you to be a mother.”
I looked at him doubtfully but moved on from that.
“I’m a recovering drug addict, Grant. You left because of my addiction.”
“You are a recovering drug addict, Mayson, and I didn’t leave because of your addiction.”
“Right. You left because you didn’t want to watch me die,” I said dryly.
He nodded slowly. “That is part of it, but we don’t have time to get into the rest of it. You don’t have to tell me what you are, Mayson. I see what you are. I see you better than you see yourself.”
I snorted. “I don’t know about that because I’m very honest about the person I am.”
“I believe that, but you're honest about the person you think you are.”
Shaking my head in disbelief, I said, “We can debate that all night and never come to an agreement.”
“We can, but we don’t have time for that, either. What’s next on your list?”
“There is so much you don’t know about me. To be perfectly honest, there is so much I don’t know about me. I can’t remember everything. Some things are really cloudy and other things are completely dark.”
“We’ll learn together along the way,” he said, bringing a hand up to my face.
“But…” I raised my hands helplessly and let them fall back on his chest. “I’m not exactly what you would call a stable person.”
He shrugged. “Who’s stable these days? Do you think I’m stable being a single, working father?”
I eyed him cautiously. “Well, I would hope that you are stable since you do handle deadly weapons fairly often.”
He smiled and wrapped his arms around me. I stretched my arms to wrap around his neck, not by choice, but by reflex.
“You’re a deadly weapon,” he said in a low voice that made me shudder slightly. “You fucking slay me.”
With that, the conversation concluded when his mouth again devoured mine.
The taxi arrived a moment later. Grant opened my door for me and leaned in to kiss me once more before closing the door. He handed the driver some money and gave him my address. Scowling, I put my window down.
“I don’t need you to pay my cab fare,” I snapped. “I can pay for my own cab fare. This is not going to be one of those relationships where you walk around with your big fat wallet throwing money around and making me feel like a damn moocher, Grant Alexander.”
He leaned on the door and peered down at me with a big grin.
“Of course not,” he said and meant it. He wasn’t just trying to pacify me. “I am just making up for starving you and nearly catching you on fire this afternoon.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Why are you still grinning like that?”
His grin grew wider, which worried me a whole lot.
“You acknowledged that we are now in a relationship.”
He laughed when my mouth fell open in realization.
I had no time to argue with him, slap him, or kick him or anything because he stepped away from the car and then we took off down the street.
“It was just supposed to be lunch,” I muttered agitatedly under my breath.
I zoned out a little bit during the drive, as I thought about how quickly things had progressed—or deteriorated, depending on one’s point of view. I had gone to Grant’s with expectations of lunch and the determination to push him back out of my life, but in one afternoon, I folded like a cheap suit. I didn’t get any lunch. I didn’t push him out of my life. Instead, I left his home late at night with kiss-swollen lips and wearing his clothes.
I pulled the neck of the shirt up over my mouth and to my nose. It smelled like him, like Grant. The shirt had been clean when he had given it to me, but after having his body pressed against mine and being so close to him for hours, the shirt smelled like his body.
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply. When I opened my eyes, we were stopped in traffic, waiting for a light to change in front of a coffee shop I used to frequent in the evenings after work. Ice spilled down my spine as my eyes met the eyes of the man standing outside the shop, smoking a cigarette.
He was so average looking that in most cases I probably would have overlooked him a dozen times before I noticed him. He had dull brown hair, a plain face, and below average height and weight for a man. There was not one thing extraordinary about him, but something about him felt so menacing, that I refused to walk anywhere near that shop after three p.m. when he was usually there working.
The first time I’d encountered him, he’d been sweeping the floors inside as I stood at the counter ordering my drink. I had felt his eyes on me, but I’d ignored him. It was the city; very often some weird people stared or said strange things. I learned to ignore it long ago, but that guy’s eyes on me were hard to disregard. So, I’d looked up, hoping that if I met his eyes directly, he would have felt forced to look away as many people who stared tended to do. When I’d met his eyes, however, I was jarred by both the familiarity of the man, and the nausea the site of him induced. I didn’t know where I knew him from, but I was sure I had seen his face before.
He’d smiled at me and said hello. His voice had been polite, but the sound of it made my skin crawl.
Fear and disgust had simultaneously swarmed over me, and I became so frazzled by the man that I’d dropped my coffee. When he’d rushed over to clean it up, I’d bolted. I’d run into him a couple times more close to the shop, with the same sickening result. He had always been nice, always said hello, and always scared the hell out of me.
Sitting in the cab, out of his reach, I should have felt safe, but I didn’t. I should have looked away from him immediately, but I didn’t do that, either. He nodded his head once in acknowledgment, gave me a short wave and a beatific smile.
I gagged and my stomach twisted violently as my dinner threatened to make a reappearance.
After the cab dropped me off, I searched my surroundings anxiously, as if I expected to find the man standing nearby. Once I was inside my apartment, behind a locked door with Dusky jumping happily up to greet me, I felt a little better.
Then I remembered that the dog needed to go out and cursed aloud.
“Why couldn’t you be a vicious guard dog?” I asked Dusky accusingly.
If someone attacked me, the dumb dog would more likely just bark at them rather than tear off a limb.
I went to my bedroom closet, glanced at the poster of Hans Solo, and quickly put on a pair of sneakers in case I had to run. I tucked a small can of pepper spray into my back pocket. As an afterthought, I stowed a switchblade in my front pocket. The blade and pepper spray were gifts from Lily after I moved into the city. She took her personal defense very seriously after she had been attacked by the same guy twice.
I was pretty sure I could spray pepper spray in some perp’s face, but I wasn’t sure if I could stab anyone—even in defense of my life. There was a higher probability of someone stabbing me with my own knife, but I felt better with it in my pocket anyway.
By the time we set off on our usual route, my nausea had passed, but not my paranoia. I was hyper-aware of every sound, every movement, and anyone near me. Maybe I was irrational, but one could never be too safe. There is danger in the places we sometimes least expect it, whether it be in your own neighborhood, at a coffee shop, or in the home of a friend…
When we were on our way back to the apartment, my phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and narrowed my eyes when Grant’s name flashed across the screen. Despite myself, I smiled and answered.
We only talked for a few minutes, but by the time we hung up, I had forgotten about my heebie-jeebies. My mind was back on Grant and the “how the hell did we get here” question on repeat in my head. I was so distracted by my thoughts surrounding my old flame that I almost missed him as I neared my building.
>
As I crossed the street, only steps away from my apartment building, I shifted out of a daydream and looked directly into the face of the man crossing from the other direction. He smiled and winked.
I don’t know how I made it inside and back up to my apartment, but once inside with the door locked again, I dashed for the bathroom and vomited.
I woke in the early morning hours shaking violently and drenched in perspiration. Disoriented in the dark, my hands pushed at air, frantically trying to push someone away from me that wasn’t actually there. My breathing was quick and frantic.
Even though the nightmare had begun to fade and reality started to set in, I still sat up in my bed and looked around my room with a pounding heart. I was petrified of finding someone besides my dog occupying the room with me. There was no one, but I scrambled out of bed. I swiped the pepper spray and knife off of the bedside table as I went and cautiously stepped out of my bedroom and into the main room. My apartment was an open space, with no walls between the kitchen, dining room, and living room. No one could hide out there. I turned to the bathroom and found that empty as well.
Before going back into my bedroom, I double-checked the lock on the door. Inside my room, I went to the window and swept the curtains aside to peer down into the street. The light outside was gray in the moments between darkness and sunrise. A couple cars went by, but no one moved on the sidewalks.
After a couple minutes of making sure that no one lurked outside, I closed the curtains and went back to my bed. I swiped away the origami I had made late into the night onto the floor. Dusky lifted his head from his paws and looked at me with worried eyes, but he didn’t move from his position at the foot of the bed. I turned my head away from him, curled into a ball, and cried.
Chapter Eleven
Monday morning, I found Grant waiting for me at the usual spot. He was dressed in a black T-shirt, black cargo pants, and black boots. At another time, I would have probably taken a moment to appreciate how sexy he looked, but the thought was fleeting. I was still reeling from my encounter with the creepy man, and nausea had been my constant companion ever since. Along with my nausea and anxiety, I felt unheralded anger. I hated having the lapses in my memory that prevented me from knowing who the hell he was. I hated how the site of him made me feel weak and powerless. As I marched down the street toward Grant, I irrationally hated just about everything and everyone.