by T. L. Hayes
“I didn’t go AWOL. I served my time is all. I left the proper way.”
“Doesn’t mean anything, and that’s not my point.”
“I needed to grieve. And with the panic attacks, I wasn’t fit anymore.”
“They would have let you do therapy, if you’d worked with them. But you didn’t tell them, did you? You did your time, then got out as soon as you could.”
“I got help, Cairyn. They’re much better than they were.”
“Yes, they are. But they are still holding you back, keeping you from moving on. You lost my necklace for a reason, Steve. Don’t you realize that?” There was such love in Cairyn’s deep brown eyes, and they glistened with unshed tears.
“You know about that?”
Cairyn chuckled softly. “Oh, honey, this is a dream. I’m just a part of you—you know that. And I know everything. I can see your heart. I know you’re grieving right now, but it’s not for me. You don’t need that necklace to hold on to me. You know I’m always here, whenever you close your eyes. But she’s a part of you too now. It was time to let go of the necklace, but don’t let go of her.”
Steve let out a strangled cry. “But how can I do that when she won’t talk to me?”
Cairyn laughed again. “Steve, I’m dead, what are you asking me for?” Steve let out a surprised laugh. “You know where she lives, you know where she works, you know where she’s going to be New Year’s Eve. You’ve always been romantic—figure something out.”
“You and my mother, I swear, you both think I’m some romantic hero or something. But there are worse things, I guess.”
“Who was it who got one of her security guard buddies to let us up on the roof of the tallest building in Oklahoma City one Fourth of July so we could watch fireworks? Huh?” Cairyn grinned and merriment danced in her eyes as she teased Steve.
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so.” Cairyn shook her head in exaggeration, then said softly, “Steve, come here.”
Steve stepped closer and sat down in the chair that was next to the bed so that she could lean in. “I’m here.”
“Let me go, Steve. It’s time.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. It’s okay—I’ve got this. It’s okay.”
“No.” Steve whimpered, then put her head on the side of the bed, clutching Cairyn’s hand.
Cairyn delicately disengaged her hand and ran it through Steve’s hair. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay. It’s okay…”
Steve woke up with a start, her face wet with tears. Instinctively, she reached over to the nightstand for the Capricorn pendant, but her hands came up empty. Instead, they found a small box, the box from Lou that held the necklace she had given her at Christmas. She sat up and reached for the box, then turned her bedside light on, automatically blinking at the sudden glare. She opened the box and looked at the five diamonds that represented the five star points in Cassiopeia and ran her finger over them delicately and started to smile. She gingerly took the necklace out of its box and put it around her neck, shivering at the coldness of the metal as it touched her neck. Then she put the box back on her nightstand. She put her hand over the constellation and sighed, then lay back down and closed her eyes.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lou left the campus gym, where she had gone for her workout. With most of the students gone for the winter break, the place was practically deserted, with only a couple of students scattered about, dedicated lifters from the looks of them. She had enjoyed a nice, quiet workout without running into anyone she knew and had no embarrassing encounters, for which she was grateful. On the drive home, her phone buzzed to indicate she had a text message. She read it when she came to a stoplight. She was relieved it was from Bill, making sure she was coming to the New Year’s Eve party. She didn’t have a chance to text back before the light changed, but she was only a few minutes from home and it wasn’t urgent, so she waited to answer until she was in her driveway.
Yes, I’ll be there, but I’m flying solo.
Since when?
I’ll tell you later.
She was on her doorstep when the phone gave off its continual buzz and she looked down to see he was calling her. She should have known he wouldn’t be put off that easily. She considered not answering it, but figured talking to him shouldn’t be too painful. She answered the phone with one hand while she unlocked her front door with the other, thankful she had left her workout clothes in the car so that she had less to juggle. “Hello, Bill.”
“Don’t Hello, Bill me, what do you mean you’re not bringing Steve to the party? What have I missed?”
As Lou closed her front door, she said, “I don’t want to go into it, just that we’re done.” There was a note of finality in her voice that was hard to argue with and most people didn’t when they heard her take that tone.
“Since when?” Bill wasn’t most people. “Last time I saw you, you were slobbering all over each other. You practically made a lesbian baby on my couch when you thought no one was looking. How can you be done?”
Despite her mood, she couldn’t help smiling at the image he created. “I kissed her one time on the couch. You make it sound like we were making out.”
“There was tongue. I know tongue when I see it.”
Lou chuckled. “There was no tongue. And there wasn’t then, nor will there ever be any lesbian babies with her. Sorry to disappoint you.” She immediately thought of Lorraine and her chiding Steve for grandchildren and felt a pang at losing her relationship with the woman. She knew that she would have to recommend a different instructor for her.
“What the hell happened?”
Lou sighed. “Suffice it to say, I don’t appreciate being hit. That’s kind of a deal breaker for me.” She threw her keys on the kitchen table, then reached in the fridge for a fresh bottle of water. After opening it and taking a refreshing sip, she sat down at the table.
“That bitch hit you? Did you file charges?”
“Simmer down, it wasn’t that bad.”
“It was bad enough to break up with her, and don’t downplay it.”
“Sorry, maybe I up-played it. It was an accident.” Bill scoffed, but before he could speak, she cut him off. “It was. It’s not like I said I ran into a door. I just meant that the circumstances around it were accidental, but considering how it happened, it could happen again. And I don’t want to be around if it does.” She shrugged as if he could see her through the phone.
“Could you be more vague?”
“I could, but I choose not to.”
“I’m sorry, honey.” Bill softened his voice. “I’m just worried about you. If it truly was an accident, then why’d you break up with her?”
Lou took a moment before she responded. When she finally did, she said, “It just put me in a bad place. A place I don’t like to be. A place I told myself I would never be again. I can’t go back to that.”
“Oh, honey…”
“Listen, Bill, I should go. It is okay if I just bring me, right?”
“Of course, sweetie. You are more than enough.”
Warmed by his words, Lou smiled.
Bill tsked. “Too bad about Sgt. Hottie, though. I really thought she had potential.”
“Why do you always give the women I date very descriptive nicknames? You called my last girlfriend All the Way May, which wasn’t even her name. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now.”
“I do it because it’s fun.”
“Fun for you, maybe.”
“Yes, and? By the way, I called her that because she loved sports and she looked a little too much A League of Their Own for my taste.”
“Well, you weren’t the one dating her.”
“Thank the goddess.”
Lou scoffed. “Anyway, I’ll see you at the party.”
Bill said in a more serious tone, “Honey, I’m here if you want to have a real conversation about this. Whatever really happened, I’m always on y
our side.”
“I know. I appreciate it and I thank you. I’ll talk to you later.” She ended the call and put the phone on the table, stretching her legs out in front of her, holding the bottle of water on her stomach, staring into space. She leaned forward, set the bottle on the table, then laid her head on her arms and let out a big sigh. “Adulting is too fucking hard.”
* * *
Later that night, Lou had trouble sleeping. It’d been weeks since she had dreamed about her father, but this dream wasn’t like the last time. Instead of dreaming about the first time he had hit her and the last time she ever kissed Tanya, this time she dreamed about something more pleasant. It was reminiscent of all those times as a child when they would lie out in the backyard on the grass, looking up at the stars, him teaching her the constellations. But it was different this time. This time, she was herself, at her present age, and he was the age he had been when she last saw him. But instead of looking at her in wonderment, at the fact that his child had just broken his wrist, or in distaste, as he had when he caught her kissing Tanya several months earlier, when she came upon him in this dream, he looked up and smiled.
“Well hello, girlie, ’bout time you showed up. What took you so long?”
“Sorry I’m late.” It was all she could think to say, though she wasn’t sure why she was apologizing, other than habit. She lay down beside him on the grass and put her arms behind her head.
“It’s all right. Not much out tonight, too much cloud cover.”
“That’s okay, we still know they’re there. They’re always there,” Lou replied wistfully.
“That’s right. We can always count on that.”
“I’ve always thought it was sad, though, that the stars we see are actually long dead by the time we see them.”
Her father looked at her sharply. “Who told you that?”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“That wasn’t me. Don’t believe everything you see on that damn internet bullshit.” Lou snickered. Her father pointed up to the sky. “Those are just as alive as you and me.” He turned to her sheepishly, then said, “Well, as you.” Lou smiled and he went on. “They’re just really old. They live for a very long time. There are stars in Andromeda that are over two million years old.”
“Wow,” Lou whispered.
“That’s right. We got nothing on them. It almost doesn’t seem fair, does it? Why do we only get these really short lives that only last a nanosecond in the grand scheme of things, and those little twinkling bastards get to go on, doing their thing for millennia? I don’t know, but I tell ya, if there’s a creator, I’m going to ask him that question. I didn’t get nearly enough time with you and your mother as I wanted. But that wasn’t all his fault.”
“Dad…”
“It’s true and I know it. I had choices and I made all the wrong ones. I let you and your mother down. Mostly you.” He sat up and turned to face Lou, who mimicked his posture. “I’m sorry, Louise. I wasn’t the father you deserved. I was a rotten son of a bitch a good lot of the time, and to say you deserved better is the biggest understatement of all time. I’m so sorry, Louie.”
Her father was the only one who ever called her that. Her mother hated it. Her mother hadn’t even liked the diminutive Lou, but Lou had insisted and she had caved on it, though still called her Louise more often than not. But something about this conversation didn’t sit well with her and she just shook her head in denial. “See, that’s how I know this is a dream. My father would never apologize to me. He was never sorry for anything he did. I need to figure out how to wake myself up from this and get out of here.” Lou moved to stand up, but her father reached out and clamped down on her arm. With vehemence, she snarled, “Let go of me, old man, and stay out of my dreams!” She shook him off and stood up and started to walk away, but he called her name and his voice stopped her quicker than his grip ever could.
“Are you ever going to let go of your anger and stop hating me?”
She turned on her heel, stalked back up to him, and pointed a finger in his face. “I did let it go, but you won’t leave me alone. You’re dead, get it? You’re dead. So act like it. Leave me alone!”
“You haven’t gotten over your anger—you just keep pushing it aside. You think you’ve buried it, but it’s not even buried that deep. It’s right there, right now, and you want to hit me, but you also don’t want to be like me, so you bury those feelings and you run away. You gotta stop running, girlie, and look at what you’re leaving behind.”
“I’m trying to leave you behind, but you won’t go away.”
“I’m not talking about me. She didn’t mean it, baby. Don’t make her pay for my mistakes.”
“I’m not talking about this with you.”
“Fine. But just put the blame where it belongs.”
“She hit me—don’t you get that? Accident or not, she fucking hit me, and who’s to say it won’t happen again? And don’t you dare say love, because love is not the answer to everything, and it does not conquer all. That’s a bullshit lie women have been fed, and many stay in bad relationships because they bought into it. Or some asshole told them that’s what happens. I’m not falling for it. Some people don’t get a happily ever after. Sometimes things just end, period.”
“And often too soon.”
Lou’s eyes opened and she was back in her darkened bedroom, clutching a pillow to her chest, the covers thrown off. She threw the pillow aside and sat up, then reached for her glasses, not bothering to turn on the light. She got out of bad and padded through her house to the door that led to the small backyard and stood there in her boxers and Army T-shirt in the moonlight and looked up at the stars. Sirius was shining bright tonight. She automatically thought of Homer and began to recite to herself, “Beneath the rage of burning Sirius rise…” She hugged her arms to herself and shivered, then closed the door and shuffled back to her room, but not to sleep. Instead, she turned on the light and took the book of poetry Steve had given her for Christmas off the corner of her nightstand and settled back into bed with it, pulling the covers up to her waist. Gidlow was always more pleasant than Homer any day of the week.
Chapter Twenty-three
On Saturday, Lou waited for Lorraine on the mat at the Wushuguan. She was dressed to teach, but she wasn’t sure if she was going to. She had talked to one of the other instructors there and he had agreed to add Lorraine to his schedule, as he was the only one who had time on the weekends when Lorraine normally saw Lou. Lou paced with her hands on her hips, waiting for Lorraine to arrive.
When Lorraine finally walked in, she stopped midstride when they made eye contact. Lorraine looked just as nervous as Lou felt, but she took a deep breath and stepped forward to face her. “Hello, Lou.”
Lou replied with a weak smile, “Hello, Lorraine. We need to talk.”
“You’re not breaking up with me too, are you?” Lorraine gave her a forced jovial smile and Lou chuckled.
But she sobered when she said, “I think it’s for the best, don’t you?”
“No, I do not. I don’t see why what’s happening between you and my daughter should affect us. I’m here to learn kung fu from you, not anyone else in this joint. I want the best.” Lorraine crossed her arms over her chest and stood in front of Lou defiantly.
“I appreciate that.”
“So are we going to do this, or what?” Without waiting for a reply, Lorraine strode onto the mat and waited for Lou to join her and start the lesson.
Amused, Lou said, “I guess we are.” The rest of the session went well and they both focused on the task at hand. Lou realized that maybe she could teach Lorraine and have it just be about that. Steve needn’t be a part of their relationship. She was glad. She would miss Lorraine if she had to stop teaching her. When she had come to the decision to find another instructor for her, it had been painful.
Once the session was over, they were both toweling the sweat off and getting drinks of water on the sidelines. Lorraine s
aid, “I totally understand, you know? I would have broken up with her too, if I were you.”
Lou checked herself from giving Lorraine a harsh look and, instead, did her best to tamp down her emotions. “Thank you. I’d really rather not talk about it, if that’s okay.”
“No, perfectly understandable. I wasn’t going to get into your business. I just want you to know, I don’t approve of that sort of thing at all, and I gave her a major dressing down for it. She knows better than to hit a woman. Her father and I taught her respect for women and this was uncalled for. So I understand. I told her she was lucky someone as wonderful as you went out with her in the first place.”
“Now wait, I don’t know what she told you happened, but I think you got the wrong impression. It wasn’t a domestic violence type of situation. It was an accident. She was having a panic attack at the time. I’m not trying to excuse it, but she wasn’t really hitting me. She just put her arm up like this”—Lou put her arm up to demonstrate—“but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She closed her eyes and hung her head. When she opened her eyes again, she saw Lorraine looking at her with a kind smile. “I overreacted, didn’t I?”
Lorraine put her hands on Lou’s shoulders. “No, honey, you acted fine. That’s what you needed to do in that moment. That’s just the place that situation put you in. You were following your instincts.”
“But my instincts were wrong.”
“Your instincts are there to protect you. Now, I don’t know what’s in your past—Steve’s kept your secrets, just as she’s kept Cairyn’s—but I do know that whatever it is, you’re not going to get past it by running away from it.”
“Steve told you that I—”
“No, as I said, she hasn’t told me anything, she never would. But we all have a past. Things we don’t want to think about anymore but sometimes can’t help it. When I met Steve’s father…when I met that lovely man, I hated men. I never wanted one to touch me again. Now, I won’t go into all that, but suffice it to say, if I hadn’t gotten help from the campus counseling office, I wouldn’t have been ready to let Steven into my life when he showed up. Don’t misunderstand me—it took a while before I could trust again, and it wasn’t like I met the man of my dreams and everything was right with the world. Oh no, there was a healing process. And even after we started dating, I made him take things real slow. And he was so patient. He didn’t mind waiting for me, he said.” Lorraine smiled at the memories. She caressed Lou’s cheek. “I’m not telling you to let bygones be bygones. I’m telling you to put one foot in front of the other and see where the path leads.”