Here I Go

by Jamie Bennett

  “Thirteen days,” I answered immediately, because I’d been keeping track. Soon, it would be a month, then a year, then decades. I wondered how that would work, if we’d spend our lives in the separate rooms, hardly seeing each other. I tried to look at what Sebastián was drawing, but now his arm blocked my view.

  “You haven’t been married that long, Aria from Tennessee. Looks to me like it wasn’t even planned.”

  “Why do you say that?” I demanded.

  “No ring,” he said, and grinned. “Is there a baby on the way?”

  I felt the tears rise up in my eyes and blinked, hard. How was there ever going to be a baby? “I don’t want a ring,” I told him.

  Luckily Sebastián didn’t notice anything wrong, and I was glad for the darkness of the room. “You’re right. It’s silly symbolism. We might just as well wear handcuffs.”

  Sure, I could handcuff myself to Cain instead of putting on a ring. I considered it.

  “This is done,” he told me. “No, wait, one more thing.” He wrote something dramatically, then handed me the napkin. I saw a sketch of myself, with big eyes and a mass of hair curling out around my head like I was underwater. I looked beautiful! But underneath that gorgeous hair and face was a naked body. My naked body?

  “My word!” I gasped. “You drew me naked?”

  “I like to imagine. I’d love it if I didn’t have to.”

  “What?” I asked, and he grinned.

  The title of the work was written at the bottom above the hem, “Aria on her 13th day.” Next to my breasts was an address. “That’s where my studio is,” he said, tapping right on my naked nipple. The drawing’s naked nipple, I meant! “Stop by and visit,” he told me. He took the wine out of my hand, drained it, and threw the goblet into the corner, where I heard glass shatter against a wall. “I have to keep up my image,” he said to me, smiling, and walked away. I stared after him, my mouth hanging open.

  “Aria.”

  “My word!” I gasped again. Cain was directly behind me. Guiltily, I stuffed the napkin with my picture on it into my pocketbook. But why would I feel guilty for talking to someone? It wasn’t my fault that Sebastián had drawn me…that way!

  “How are you doing? Meeting people?”

  “Oh! A few,” I said. “Some women, but I didn’t catch their names, and a man who said he’s an artist. He was unusual,” I explained, which was very true, but I felt myself blushing again like I was making it up. Or holding something back. “Are you enjoying yourself?”

  “Sure.”

  It didn’t seem like he was, not from the way he’d said that word and not by the bored look on his face. I glanced over his shoulder, which I was able to do in my high heels, and saw his friend Blayden staring at us.

  Cain turned and saw that too. “Let’s go somewhere to get out of this crowd,” he said, and I nodded agreement. He took my hand to walk through them all, past Blayden and the furious women from the farm, past Sebastián, who waved his fingers at me. We walked up a narrow flight of stairs and through a dark den of a room to glass doors. Cain opened them and we stepped onto a balcony that looked out over the tops of the other buildings and to the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Oh, it’s just like a picture! I’m going to walk across there this weekend.” It was going to be my Christmas present to myself.

  “I’ve never done that. It seemed like a tourist thing to do.”

  It probably was. Probably only people who were trying too hard bothered to do it. “You can come with me, if you want. I didn’t ask because I thought you’d be busy. Working,” I explained.

  “I’m going to take the holiday off. What else do you want to do that day?”

  I started to get excited. “We could cook a nice dinner for the two of us. We could decorate a tree!” I bet he didn’t have much to hang, but we could string popcorn and homemade things like that. “We could get an ornament, too. It could be our tradition, since we got married so close to Christmas. Every year we could get another one until our whole tree is full.” He had such a strange expression now. “Cain? We don’t have to.”

  He seemed to shake himself out of it. “That’s a good idea. I never thought about making traditions before.”

  “We’ll start a lot of our own,” I promised him. “We’ll do things every year and then we’ll look back and remember how fun they were.”

  “Every year. Like it’s going to last a long time,” he said, and I shivered. “Cold?” He put his arm around my waist and pulled my back to his chest. “It’s warmer than it is in Tennessee right now.”

  I wasn’t cold with his body against mine. His arms settled around my waist and I leaned against him, not caring if my curls got crushed because it felt so comfortable and right, somehow, for us we’d be this close.

  But I hadn’t shivered from the cold. It had been the way he’d spoken the words, “Like it’s going to last a long time.” He’d said them as if it was a question. I stood with his arms around me, wondering how long this was going to last. Any of it.

  Chapter 8

  “Are you sitting down?”

  “Cassidy, it’s three hours earlier here than where you are. You’re calling me before six in the morning, and it’s the day after Christmas! Of course I’m sitting down, because I’m in my bed. Most people wouldn’t even have answered at this time of day.” But actually, I was already awake when my phone rang because I’d been listening to Cain as he left for the office. He’d headed out around four.

  I rubbed my eyes, very tired. I’d been up late the night before, too, not able to sleep even in this comfortable bed. When I’d eventually nodded off, I’d woken up again and again, until finally I decided to stay that way.

  “I had to call before your mother did,” Cass told me, and that made me sit up.

  “What about my mother? What’s happening?” I asked her. “Is everyone ok?”

  “They’re fine,” she said, and I lay back down. “Oh, hold on. It’s Aria,” I heard her say to someone else. “She’s telling me what Cain got her for Christmas.”

  “A coffee table book about California. A key to his car,” I filled in. “An electronic one that was expensive on a nice key ring. And I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge as a present to me.” At the last minute, Cain had gotten a call from Asia, and he hadn’t been able to come, not to church and not on the walk. He’d been sorry.

  “He gave her nice stuff,” my cousin relayed loudly to someone, and then said into the phone, “My mom says hi and she misses you. I’m going outside.” I heard a door slam. “Really?” Cass asked in a more normal tone. “That’s what he got you? A book and a key? I thought he’d give you a car, not just a key. Or he’d finally spring for a big ring.”

  “I already told him that I didn’t want a ring from him,” I explained. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s silly symbolism,” I said, quoting Sebastián from the party.

  “Is this really Aria? Being on the West Coast has already made a difference in you,” she marveled. “I guess you didn’t feel that way about silly symbolism here in Tennessee when you put your father’s wedding band on Cain’s finger. Does he know where his ring came from?”

  No, because I hadn’t told him. “Why are you calling so early, Cassidy? I’m tired.”

  “Because I have to tell you what happened yesterday. It was crazy! You really didn’t hear from your sisters?”

  “No.” I’d temporarily blocked them both. They were having a huge argument because Amory’s new sofa supposedly looked exactly like the one that Aubree had bought last year, and Bree was having a fit that Mory had copied her. Judging from the pictures they had sent, I guessed it was similar—they were both tan, after all, but Mory insisted that the legs and arms were different, and anyway, she wouldn’t have picked anything that resembled Bree’s ugly furniture because she had better taste. It had led to a bigger argument, another issue with their kids…I’d threatened that I was going to do it, and after the
warning made no difference in the number of texts I was getting, I’d cut them off.

  Then, after many tearful calls from different relatives on Christmas morning saying that they missed me and hoped I was happy with that man so very far away from the family that loved me, I’d turned my phone off for a while. The silence had actually been beautiful, but I’d seen when I’d powered on it after Cain left this morning that I had an unholy number of messages.

  “Ok, you really need to sit down,” Cassidy warned me again.

  “I’m really in my bed because it’s five in the morning. What? Tell me!”

  “Aubree’s getting a divorce and Amory almost went to jail.”

  “What?” I’d sat up straight again and screamed that word, which echoed through this dead, still house. It didn’t matter because there was no one to hear me. “Aubree? Amory?”

  The whole story came out. “You know how Bree’s always complaining about Clayton,” Cass started off, and it was true. Her husband drove her crazy. “Well, yesterday while we were making the ambrosia, she was going on about his cell phone bill. I guess they sent a notice to her last month because it almost went to collections. Clayton usually pays it and he had forgotten.”

  “So?”

  “So Amory said that she had a great plan that was so cheap, and Bree insisted that her plan was better and they got pretty bitter, pretty fast.”

  Oh, my word. It was exactly something they would do while making the ambrosia. I felt a little nostalgic, like I had gotten while watching the old Christmas movies the day before while Cain had worked on his problem from Asia.

  “They went online to check the difference in their plans and they looked at Aubree’s bill,” Cassidy continued, “and there were hundreds of calls to and from one specific number and Clayton’s phone. Your sisters looked at each other, and then they looked up that number, and I swear, Aria, it was like you could have heard a pin drop in the kitchen. None of us spoke.”

  “Where was Aubree’s husband?” I demanded. “Where was Clayton?”

  “He’d said he had to go get extra ice or something, that we didn’t have enough, and he was supposedly trying to find a store that was open. No one was exactly sure where he’d gone. But Aubree could see that he’d gotten a call from that number just before he left!”

  “Where was he?” I screamed. “Where was he really?”

  “Do you remember the girl who used to drive the Mustang our junior year?” she asked me back.

  “No. No!”

  “Your sisters went over to her house!” Cass continued, her voice rising too. “Your mama was nearly fainting and we all knew there was going to be trouble, so we followed them, Uncle Jed and Bo and me. That girl came to the door and Amory started yelling at her, and Aubree’s husband came out with no shirt on, and Amory yelled at him too, calling him every name you ever heard, and then she kicked him. In the balls!”

  “Oh, my word! She did play a few years of soccer!”

  “He passed out for a minute,” Cassidy told me. “And then Mory went after the girl! She grabbed her by the hair and pulled her out on the lawn, and Bo and Uncle Jed were trying to separate them, and I think Bree and I were just screaming. And then the girl’s dad came home and he tried to kill Clayton. The Mustang girl called the police!”

  I had flopped back onto the squishy mattress, unable to support myself. “They all got arrested?”

  “No, because the deputy who showed up had known your father. They went through training together. He let Amory and the girl’s dad go with a warning and he told Aubree’s husband to get some ice for real this time, to put on his testicles because the swelling…yikes. He also told him to stay away from that house. I think Clayton really will because I don’t think he’s going to walk for days. I don’t know if he’s going to be able to father more children.”

  “Good!” I said.

  “That’s what Amory said, too. She hugged Bree and told her that they were going to the bank to take out every dime and then they were going to set Clayton’s truck on fire. Uncle Jed stopped them because the deputy wasn’t going to overlook arson. It was the craziest Christmas ever.”

  “Should I come?” I asked anxiously. “Should I come home and help?”

  “I think Amory’s got it covered, and of course we’re all going to help her ruin Clayton’s and the Mustang girl’s lives. Uncle Jed and your mama moved Bree and the kids into your memaw’s house last night.”

  “Oh! The kids.” Poor Aric and Gentry. I wiped away tears with the luvbug pillowcase from home. The rest of those sheets didn’t fit on this huge mattress.

  Cassidy filled me in on more details, and it did sound like Bree was ok for now. “She’s really glad that Mory spent time on soccer instead of more dance lessons,” she said. “It’s nice to see them as friends, too, supporting each other. But Bo and I are taking bets on how long it lasts. He says two weeks, but I think that’s generous.”

  I had to agree. It was just so shocking! Not that my sisters would get along—I’d seen that happen before, when things got tough. It was just that if any of the three of us was getting a divorce, I would have put my money on…no. No, I was going to make my marriage work!

  Cass told me about the tortured Christmas dinner after the bad news about Aubree’s husband and Amory’s brush with the law but also about the nice time she’d had with her new fiancé. He’d given her a locket with their pictures in it from when they’d met back in elementary school, and he’d carried mistletoe all day long so they could kiss wherever and whenever it suited them.

  “What about your wedding?” I asked. “Any new details? Any date?”

  “Not yet. He’s still arguing for ninety days but I need to go dress shopping first.”

  “Oh! I want to be there.”

  “We’ll have you on the phone,” she assured me. “I don’t want you to worry about throwing the shower either.”

  But I objected to that. “I’m absolutely throwing your shower!” I told her. “I’ll fly there for yours and also for Eimear’s.”

  “You got a job, then? Those plane tickets have to be expensive.”

  Well… “I’m going to look today, for sure. I’ve been busy. There’s a lot to do in this big house! Like, I didn’t even know it, but Cain has a wine cellar.” I’d gotten locked in there by mistake on Christmas Eve and it had been terrifying. I’d had to climb on top of a rack and hold my phone to a vent over the door to get a signal, texting him to please let me out. Luckily, he’d been able to do it on his phone through the alarm system he had set up, because if I’d had to wait until he’d gotten back that night, I would have been stuck in there almost until Christmas morning.

  “I’m glad you’re doing so well, Ari!” Cass said happily.

  I was glad I’d managed to make that impression on her. “Yes, the house is amazing, and California has beautiful winter weather and a lot of natural attractions.” That was one hundred percent true.

  There was a pause. “What did you just say? Natural attractions? Please. What’s wrong?”

  I started to spill, and once I’d started, it was impossible to keep it in. “It’s not great, Cass. I never see Cain. We went to one party together but besides that I might as well be living alone like you do now.”

  “Well, now that you and Kayleigh are gone, Bo’s here at our apartment a lot…but I get what you mean about living alone,” she finished quickly.

  “I don’t know if you do. This house is like a museum where I’m afraid to touch anything! I don’t like to leave my room.” At least with all my things strewn around, it felt somewhat familiar.

  “But you have that beautiful city to go out in,” she argued.

  “Alone. Things aren’t as much fun when you’re going out alone. And it isn’t like home here. It’s so much harder to do anything! Everyone acts like we’re all in competition, like to get on elevators they push each other out of the way! But the biggest problem is Cain.” The closest we’d been to a real married couple had been f
or a few moments on Blayden’s balcony as he hugged me and we talked about Christmas plans. And sadly, that had been over very quickly.

  “Ari, you hardly know him,” Cass counseled me. “What did you think was going to happen after the wedding, instant love?”

  “That’s exactly what I hoped for!”

  There was a short silence. “Really? Love?” she asked. “How do you feel about him?”

  “I don’t know...but I think I really like him, Cass. I see him and my heart pounds! I miss him so much when we’re not together and I think about him all the time. I don’t know how it happened, except seeing him with Miss Liddy, and hanging out together, and how he stood up for me with Mama and other people, and watching how hard he works, and hearing about his life…I don’t know,” I repeated.

  There was another silence, a long one this time. “Oh. So that’s why you wanted to marry him.”

  “It wasn’t just my own feelings. I thought that maybe he needed me! He’s had such a hard time,” I tried to explain. “I looked at his face when he asked me if I was going to go through with it and I swear, I swear there was hope there. Like he really wanted us to be together! But I must have been seeing only what I wanted to, because that was wrong. He doesn’t even want to be in the house with me, let alone…” No, I couldn’t tell her that we didn’t share a bed. It was just too personal, and also, too shameful.

  “Start small,” she said. “You didn’t even date him! Do that now.”

  I nodded. “That was what I was thinking, too. I made all these plans for us on Christmas and he ended up on a six-hour call and then staring at his computer for the whole day, up until I went to bed last night.” I’d lain in here listening for his footsteps on the stairs.

  “Then worry about what you’re doing and not him! I think that you need a job, too. That way you’ll get out of the house and I bet you’ll make a lot of friends. You always have at the places you worked.”

  “I already met one person at a party,” I said. “An artist.” Even though Sebastián had insulted my hair, makeup, and clothes, he’d been funny and he’d told me straight out that he liked me. He’d told off the Furies, too. I’d looked that up, and it turned out that they were horrible monster women, so he’d been spot on with the nickname.