“Um, it’s not that I don’t want to . . .” John-John also had this same gift—the ability to push and push, transform a subtle threat into an accusation of hurt. How could you?
“Trust me, you don’t want to wait that long to experience acceleration like this. All you have to do is sit back and relax! I’ll have you back here in fifteen minutes. You’ll be glad you did it.” His voice was so hopeful—almost pleading—that Zack didn’t have the heart to say no. Even if he did not trust Jensen. Even if it almost killed him to delay Mel’s arrival even further. He consoled himself by remembering she was a night owl, often staying up until two and three in the morning. And he couldn’t wait to tell her about his new job!
“Okay, dude. I’m in,” he said to Jensen. “Let me just send a quick text.”
“Yesssss!” said Jensen, opening the driver’s-side door.
Zack typed a text to Mel as quickly as he could. So so sorry but Jensen just dropped into gym and I need another 15 min or so. He’s leaving really soon then you can come, I’ll even come pick u up if that’s better, just hang tight and I’ll text u as soon as coast is clear sorry can’t wait xoxoxo
Five minutes later, Zack couldn’t stop himself from whooping as Jensen drove way too fast down the PCH, accelerating into the curves that lined the bluffs as the Porsche blazed north along the ocean. Jensen cracked the windows so the night air swirled into the car, and Zack tasted the brine rolling off the sea mingled with exhaust. Bruce Springsteen blasted out from the luxury sound system, and for a moment, Zack lost himself, singing along with Jensen to “Born to Run,” riding an unexpected wave of happiness.
He closed his eyes, inhaled the tang of new leather, and pretended it was his new car. Mel in the passenger seat dancing with abandon, making him laugh with her fist pumps, all the while looking sexy as hell, the tops of her breasts jiggling in a low-cut tank top.
He sang loud enough to make his throat ache.
Maybe, Zack hoped, this was the start of a new life, not just for him but for the two of them. Malibu, though less than twenty miles from Santa Monica, was its own cozy community. A playground for rich celebrities, sure, but also a secluded haven for aging surfers and bohemians. Mel would love it there. He imagined them in a little bungalow above the beach, the metal shutters rusted by salt air. A welcome mat at the front door. Zack + Mel.
Jensen interrupted Zack’s fantasy, shouting through the whir of the wind whipping in through the open windows, “Screw going back to the gym, Z! You can clean up tomorrow. I got some cigars and a bottle of twenty-year-old single malt back home. I know you’re a teetotaler like me but, hey, let’s celebrate properly. You down?”
“No, man,” Zack said, a bit more harshly than he’d intended. “I mean, maybe another night. I’m beat.”
“What the hey,” Jensen said, switching lanes at the last minute, darting in front of a truck, Zack clutching the side of the passenger door. “You’d think my number-one employee, who just got a hella big promotion, would be down for a quick drink with his boss.”
Zack’s good-news high deflated. What was the deal with this guy who refused to accept no? He heard Mel’s voice. White man privilege, simple as that.
“You got a piece waiting for you tonight? Is that the real story, you dirty dawg?” Jensen slugged him in the chest. Zack stopped himself from wincing, and from telling Jensen to keep both hands on the wheel of the speeding car.
“No, man. I wouldn’t lie to you. You know I wouldn’t—as you said—fish where I swim.”
Jensen let out a bark of a laugh.
“Not that this stops the CT ladies from falling all over themselves,” Zack added, giving Jensen what he assumed he wanted to hear—bro-talk. “Begging me to show them proper form for lifting, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, indeed I do,” Jensen said. “Bitches they be begging! It’s cool if you hit that shit.”
“What? No!” Zack steadied his voice. “I mean, that’s just totally not my thing, man.” Could Jensen know about Mel? And if he did, so what?
“Sure, it’s not,” Jensen said, drawing out the Sure. “Let’s head to my place, where you can tell me all about the women you are in no way banging.”
Zack wouldn’t be swayed into doing something he did not want to do, and the way Jensen was weaving in and out of lanes without using his signal was starting to freak him out. Not to mention, the lewdness—what kind of employer used that language? (Monstrously offensive language, he heard Mel say.) Sure, they’d bonded through a few politically incorrect rants in the gym’s back office, but Jensen grilling Zack about his sex life was just gross. He wanted out of this car. He wanted Mel—the warmth of her soft flesh scented by the oil she dabbed between her breasts.
“I want to go back,” Zack said, trying to sound stern. “Take me back, man.”
“Have it your way,” Jensen grumbled and made a sharp last-minute exit onto Topanga that tossed Zack into the side door. Zack swallowed a What the fuck. Jensen flipped a tight U-turn (the car was epic, Zack had to admit), and gunned back toward Santa Monica.
Zack turned up the stereo’s volume to fill the silence of the return trip, fifteen minutes that felt like an eternity. Were things tense now? Had he screwed up enough that Jensen might renege the Malibu offer?
“Nothing better than Bruce!” Zack shouted as he tapped “Born to Run” on the car’s display screen. “He deserves a freakin’ encore.”
“Right on!” Jensen said, pumping a fist in the air. Zack was relieved to see that wide smile back on his boss’s face, Jensen’s bleached teeth twilight-blue in the seaside night. “The Boss is a true patriot!”
As the car raced back down the PCH toward the Santa Monica Pier, the neon lights on the Ferris wheel spokes flashed the color of flames—yellow, red, orange. A beacon, Zack thought, calling him home. To Mel. A sign from the Heavenly Father above, St. Thérèse might claim.
At last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love . . . I will be love, and then I will be all things.
Finally, Jensen turned back into the lot of Color Theory and braked hard, two inches from the dumpster, then pulled Zack into an awkward hug across the gear shift.
“Thanks for indulging me, Z-man. You’re the best. Get home to bed and I’ll have a contract ready for you to review just as soon as I’m back from Maui.”
“Can’t wait, Jens,” said Zack, opening the passenger door. “I’m pumped. And thanks for the ride. This car is sick.”
“We’ll get you one too, before long,” said Jensen. “Soon as you kill it in Malibu.”
As soon as Jensen’s taillights disappeared from the parking lot, Zack texted Mel. He was shaky with adrenaline—from the ride and the anticipation of finally, finally, getting to touch her.
Okay!!!! all clear NOW! pls hurry or lmk if you want me to pick you up. Otherwise I’ll be waiting in the back of CT. He added the emoji with hearts for eyes and hurried back into the office.
He locked the door, shut the blinds, and tried to read an article—“Mark Wahlberg’s Core-Blasting Workout”—in Men’s Health while he waited for Mel to respond.
Five minutes passed, then ten. It was after eleven now; could she have fallen asleep?
He told himself to be patient. Mel was prone to distraction and losing track of time; perhaps she’d gotten into a conversation with Lettie, who, he reminded himself, was there to babysit; or maybe Sloane had woken up and needed her mom.
When fifteen minutes had passed, Zack closed the magazine and sent another text: U okay???
Almost instantaneously, she replied. Yes & no. I’m sososo sorry, but I’m not coming. I can’t get into it now, but we have to stop. I know telling you over text is lame/cowardly. I swear I was going to do it in person tonight but now it’s late and I just can’t. I know I should SHOW UP and OWN IT etc. But you know I suck at those things. I’m really really sorry but please respect my decision and trust me that it’s necessary. Thank you for everything & take good care.
He re
ad the words again and again, not fully comprehending—actually wondering, for a moment, if they might have been written for someone else.
Surely, Mel could not mean this. The text could not have come from the same person, who, just a week ago, was draped naked on top of Zack in a hotel room, begging him to do things she claimed she’d never done with another man.
Breath quickening, he texted her back. No. I’m not accepting this. We have to talk. In person. Now. Please come to the gym. Just for a minute. Please Melissa.
When he hit Send, the message did not behave as it usually did. Instead of transforming to a white bubble on his screen with delivered at the bottom, it turned green.
She had blocked his number. Zack jumped up from the desk, grabbed his phone, and with all his might, pitched it straight into the wall.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
33
Mel
“PRESSURE, SLOANIE, PRESSURE!” MEL SHOUTED AS SLOANE FOUGHT for the ball only a few feet away from the opponent’s goal. Pressure was code for fight—a word, Mel had learned after being reprimanded by Coach Crystal herself, considered too combative for a ten-year-old-girls’ soccer game.
Sloane, at least four inches shorter than every girl in the pack closing in on her, took a flailing kick (no, Mel thought, not the left foot) and the ball bounced off the goalpost.
Awww, the spectators on the Santa Monica side groaned.
“Do it again!” Mel shouted through cupped hands. “You got this, Tsunamis!”
She watched Adam, who was subbing for a side ref who hadn’t shown, hustle down the field in his bumble-bee-yellow referee shirt and black shorts, long black regulation socks pulled up to his knees.
There was a time she’d actually found those socks sexy. Now, he looked ridiculous. Even though she’d accepted Adam had never cheated on her, something between them still felt broken, despite the fact that he was trying harder than ever to restore their marriage. He’d dialed back the criticism. Had stopped telling her to “find ways to relax” or “take better care of herself.” He’d been on his best behavior. Not once, since the session in Janet’s “office” had he suggested “Mommy needs her medicine.” Was that really something to be grateful for? Mel wondered. Was it enough to save a marriage?
She still felt hurt. Rattled. As if she had PTSD from his imaginary cheating.
Also, she missed Zack.
She missed Regina, too. It was no wonder the woman looked the way she did, Mel understood now: Regina’s willpower was hard as diamonds. No matter how many texts Mel sent, pleading for forgiveness, Regina continued to act as if Mel didn’t exist.
Mel watched a throng of girls race down the field, their ponytails leaping off their backs. The striker on the other team, a gazelle of a girl wearing two tight French braids, elbowed Sloane in the ribs. The center ref, a dad with a ponytail of his own, did not issue a call.
“Come on, ref!” Mel screamed. “That’s a foul!”
“Shhh, Mom,” said Coach Crystal. It was when she was most irritated, Mel knew, that Coach C referred to the soccer parents, whose names she knew well, as Mom or Dad.
Mel wished she could text Zack. She pulled out her phone and stared at the screen, imagining what she’d write.
At the soccer game watching my special snowflake. Coach could learn a thing or two from you. #winningIS everything.
But that was the only place Zack could live—in her imagination. A week after that horrific meeting at Sloane’s school, she’d cut all ties. Blocked his number on her phone. Deleted every single one of her social media accounts. But Zack was still with her—his voice in her head, his scent on her clothes, in her car. The memory of his hands, his tongue, on her skin. But she was, as therapist Janet might say, in healing mode.
“Earth to Mel!”
She looked up to see Adam standing in front of her, swigging Gatorade, sweat coating his handsome face.
“Oh! Hey!”
“Sloanie and I have been trying to get your attention. Put down the phone, babe.”
“Sorry.”
A whistle screamed and Adam darted back onto the field.
Dammit, she thought, dropping her phone back into her purse. She needed to be more present. More thoughtful, more engaged. All the things she’d promised in the two therapy sessions she and Adam had had with Janet since . . . well, since the shit hit the fan, Mel thought. She’d had to email Janet and apologize for going MIA those two Zack-filled months. In Janet’s incense-scented back house, Mel had flagellated herself again and again in front of Adam, coming clean about her anger, and the hurtful mistakes she’d made—the abusive comments made to Adam (in front of Sloane, twice as bad), the mood swings that disrupted their family’s life, the late-night medical marijuana deliveries, the bingeing on Sloane’s school snacks until she had to stick a finger down her throat.
Mel had come clean about everything. Except Zack.
No one, not even Janet, knew about Zack. Certainly not Adam, with his die-hard moral center. They’d both been unforgiving of close friends who’d turned out to be cheating spouses. There was no way Adam would forgive her. As Adam himself had told her more than once, sometimes honesty was too much.
The whistle blew. Only one quarter left. The thought of the game ending, of having to go back to her house, back to her life, made Mel feel hollow. If there was one part of her life that had its shit together, maybe the only part, it was her soccer-momhood.
Why couldn’t this be enough? Why couldn’t she just be a soccer mom, with a star player for a daughter and a star filmmaker for a husband?
“Mom!” Sloane appeared, panting for breath, gulping air between gulps of water.
“Spray me!”
Mel picked up a blue water pump from the grass and sprayed a fine mist around Sloane’s head.
“Aaah,” Sloane sighed. “More, more!”
The spray caught the sunlight, and Mel watched a rainbow arch over her daughter’s goggled face.
This, Mel thought. This right here. Right now. This is enough.
“You’re kicking butt out there, baby,” she said, leaning in to peck Sloane’s cheek. “Just make sure you’re first to the ball, ’kay? You’re faster than those big girls.”
“Mom,” Sloane groaned, “Coach C is my coach. She says she is the only person who should be doing any coaching. Not the parents.”
“Oh, did she?”
But Sloane had already run off.
Mel tried to get back in the game. To lose herself in the back and forth of the girls’ passing. Pass, pass, pass, lulling her into a trance until, bam, one girl broke away with the ball—her girl!—Sloane zigzagging up the field toward the goal, faking out one, two, three girls, almost close enough to shoot, almost, and then a beast of a girl, number twelve, rammed a shoulder into the side of Sloanie’s head, throwing her to the ground.
“Oh my God.” Mel gasped into her hand, ready to run on the field and carry her baby off if she had to. But, as usual, Adam was there first, bending over Sloane so Mel could only see their daughter’s short legs, her blue-and-gold-striped socks.
Both sides of the field erupted in applause as Sloane got to her feet and waved her fist in the air.
“Woo-hoo!” Mel screamed, eyes watering. “That’s my fierce girl! Shake it off! Way to go, Sloane!”
“Melissa, shhhh,” hissed Coach Crystal. “Give her a moment to recover. Did you see my email about not overreacting when players are down?”
“There are so many soccer emails,” Mel said. “I’m sure I got it, but . . .”
“I’ll resend it to you,” interrupted Coach C.
Mel wanted to reach out and swipe Coach’s Tsunami visor off her head—one of twelve Melissa had paid to have custom-made for every member of the team. How dare Coach C speak to her that way? After everything Mel had done for the Tsunamis?
Keep it together, she imagined Adam telling her. For Sloane.
“So sorry about that, Coach C. I’ll be more on top of things fr
om here on out.”
“Good,” the coach said with a curt nod.
Mel forced a smiled and turned away from the game. She needed a break from the nonstop cheering, from Coach C’s judgment. She drifted away from the chaos of the field, until she found a shady patch of grass under a peeling eucalyptus tree, the ground covered with thin rolls of bark like holiday wrapping paper. She eased down into the grass and sat with her back against the tree, cross-legged, and forced herself to count slow breaths, the way Janet had taught her, claiming it soothed the parasympathetic nervous system and eased the need to consume.
One. Exhale. Two.
The need to consume. Would Mel ever defeat it? Would she ever become stronger than the tug of food, of TV, of her stupid virtual sheep farm app, of marijuana? Of any distraction she could find that blotted out the unnamable dread throbbing deep inside her?
Exhale. Three.
She imagined herself empty inside. Hollow and clean. A vessel ready, as Bri liked to say, to FILL WITH LIGHT.
Four. Exhale. Five.
Mel imagined herself filling with LIGHT.
She was LIGHT.
“Mel,” a voice whispered softly. So softly she was sure it had come from her own mind.
Then she felt the hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes to see Zack crouching beside her, under the tree. Mel bolted to her feet, using the tree for balance, and took a step back.
It was really him. His hair longer, his cheeks and chin stubbled. A look of earnest pain on his face.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Whoa.” Zack raised his hands, palms facing her. “Come on now. Don’t get Him involved.” He chuckled weakly, but Mel didn’t crack a smile.
“You can’t be here, Zack.” Her voice already trembling. “You need to go. Now.”
He grabbed her hand. She yanked it away, but not before a buzzy heat shot up her arm and into her chest. “Is it Adam? Is he making you do this? Push me away?”
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