Here I Go

by Jamie Bennett

  “Hi!” I told him. “Hi, I miss you.”

  “Do you?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “You won’t be lonely, though, with your cousin there. I didn’t know she was coming to visit.”

  I noticed that he hadn’t said that he missed me back, but that was ok. He was really busy. “I didn’t know it either! I guess there have been some big things happening at home. Things I missed.” All of a sudden, a large lump stuck in my throat. I pushed my fingers against it so I could speak.

  “Aria?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” It came out rusty-sounding. “I’m going to tell you about my cousin because we’re married so we shouldn’t have secrets, but I don’t want you to tell anyone else, ok?”

  “No secrets,” he echoed. “I won’t tell anyone. Is everything ok?”

  I had to clear my throat before I told him about what was happening with Kayleigh. “I’m really worried about her,” I concluded. “She’s always been a partier, ever since we were pretty young, but having her stomach pumped?”

  “It doesn’t sound good. She should go right back to San Diego.”

  “Well, maybe she does need a little break. I won’t let anything happen to her while she’s here,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t be the one responsible for her.”

  “Of course I am! When you love someone, you’re responsible for them. I mean that you want to help them and take care of them. I love her a lot, even if I think she was telling you that she sleeps in the nude. That’s not true, by the way. She gets very cold at night and she wears flannel pajamas.”

  He laughed. “What are you sleeping in lately, the pink pig outfit?”

  “I like those pigs!”

  “I did, too,” Cain said. “I’ve been—” He broke off. “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me. Please?” I asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about you and wondering what you’re doing. If you’re sleeping ok or if you’re scared to be alone.”

  “I’m ok,” I told him. “Not that scared. I’ve been putting the alarm on and I remember the code usually. But I wish you were here, because I do miss you.” I waited, wondering if he’d say it back this time.

  “I’m not there very much even when I’m not traveling,” he pointed out.

  “I know. I’d like to have dinner with you every night. And we could do things on weekends, like go to Carmel? I’ve been reading about that place and it sounds so pretty. There are a lot of pretty things around here I’d like to see.”

  “Maybe you and Kayleigh could go together, if she’s acting ok.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. That hadn’t been what I meant.

  “I’ve been working almost nonstop for the last few years. It’s just what I do,” he explained, and I nodded at the phone like he could see me. “I felt like I had to.”

  “Why? To support your aunt?”

  “That was a big part of it. I was far away from her but I was working hard so that she’d be taken care of. I guess that didn’t matter.”

  “Cain, she got sick! That wasn’t anything you could have prevented.”

  “Sure, I guess.” He sighed, like he was very tired. “I wish I’d been there with her. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t left Tennessee.”

  “Maybe you would have gone back with your old friends,” I said. “She would have been so unhappy if you had.”

  “Aunt Liddy was afraid of that,” he agreed. “When I first got out, I tried to live with her. The neighbors thought I was there to torch their houses and they treated her like shit over me.”

  “They shouldn’t have acted like that. You’d paid for the things you did,” I said angrily.

  “Yes and no. I hurt a lot of people and I’m sure they didn’t think that a few years of juvenile detention was sufficient punishment. My being sorry wasn’t enough.” He sighed again. “I didn’t want her to suffer more over me and I was afraid, really scared, that I’d get into trouble, adult trouble this time. I didn’t know if I had the self-control to stop myself, so I left.”

  “I think you have the self-control now. I’ve never met anyone more disciplined, even my Uncle Chuck and he was a drill sergeant in the Marines! And if you went home again, it might take some time, but people would forgive you. I think they’d see that you aren’t the same angry kid who would get into trouble anymore, because you’re not.”

  “People like your mama would forgive me?” He sounded very doubtful.

  “She will because she has to,” I told him. “Not just because that’s what everyone should do, but especially because you’re my husband. If she’s going to be around me and our family, then she has to treat you right.”

  He didn’t speak for a while and I thought the call had dropped. “Dumb undersea transmission lines!” I exclaimed. I’d read a little bit about them, wondering how it happened that our messages could fly back and forth over the distance between us.

  “No, the transmission lines are fine. I’m still here,” Cain said. “I was just thinking. When I come back, I will try to be around more. Ok? I’m going to change my schedule so we can do things like take a trip to Carmel. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone.”

  “Prove anything? What do you mean?”

  “I wanted to show people back home that I’m better than they thought. I didn’t want Aunt Liddy to have to be ashamed of me. She’s gone and I know you think they’ll forgive and forget, but I don’t need to change anyone’s mind. And I’m missing a lot, being in the office all the time. I’m missing—I miss you.”

  I held my fingers over my chest, over my pounding heart. “I hope we get to see each other soon. I like hearing from you but I like it when you’re with me a lot more.”

  “I’m working on it,” he said. “I’ll call you later, when you’re getting ready for bed. In the pig pajamas, I hope.”

  “We’ll see.” He’d given me an idea. “Bye, Cain.”

  “Bye.” And then the call really did cut off.

  “This house is unreal,” Kayleigh’s voice called. She walked into the kitchen to join me. “I almost just got locked in some wine cellar!” She held up a bottle. “Want to try it?”

  “No!” I took it out of her hand. “You can’t drink Cain’s wine. You can’t drink at all while you’re here. You just swore you wouldn’t!”

  “It was only going to be a taste. Jesus Lord, Aria, you sound like Aunt Amber.” She made a face that was supposed to be my mama’s sour expression, and it was pretty close to the reality. Did I look like that, too?

  I didn’t care. “Kayleigh, how dare you talk to Cain like you did? He’s a married man. Married to me!”

  She didn’t meet my eyes. “I was just kidding.”

  “It wasn’t funny! Not to him and certainly not to me.”

  Now she looked at me. “I’m sorry, Aria. I really am. I won’t do that again.”

  Just like she’d sworn she wouldn’t drink and then brought up a bottle from that scary wine cellar?

  “Come on, forgive me!” she wheedled. “I’m very sorry. Let’s have fun and forget about it. What do y’all do around here?” she asked. “Show me the city!”

  “Um, ok. Give me a minute to get changed,” I said, and we both took her bag and dragged it up the stairs. “This is your room.”

  “Wow.” She tested the bed. “That’s like a rock!”

  I nodded. “Cain’s old girlfriend picked it. I think she picked everything in this house, except for the mattress in my—in the other guest bedroom.”

  “You know what we should do? Take out everything that witch put in this place and sell it. Or burn it!”

  “Kayleigh Lynn! We can’t burn Cain’s furniture. That’s terrible.” But thinking about it… “No,” I said firmly. She followed me into Cain’s huge bathroom with the soaking tub under the window, the shower with two heads suspended from the ceiling and all the jets coming from the walls, the double vanities and makeup table, the marble, the glass, the mirrors.

  “I’ll say
this. That woman did have good taste,” my cousin said. “She knew how to spend money, anyway. I bet this place cost a mint!”

  “I bet so, too.” I brushed my shoulder length, straight hair and applied some neutral lipstick. There. I looked underdone and boring.

  Kayleigh was digging in my makeup bag for my old stuff, and putting on more mascara and blush. “I think rehab just about killed me,” she said. “Don’t I look awful?”

  “You’ve always been the prettiest cousin,” I told her, and she stared.

  “That’s not nice, Aria.”

  “What? Cass and I both know it, it’s ok! She’s the smartest by far. No offense,” I added.

  “Of course Cassidy is smart, but everyone can see that you’re the prettiest. I’m the fun one.” She teased up the back of her hair and frowned. “I should wash it. That bus ride was long.”

  I stared at her in the mirror. Of course, she was kidding about me. She was probably trying to butter me up so I’d let her stay longer at Cain’s house.

  “You do look different, though.” She pointed at my shirt. “A lot more wrinkled than you used to be.”

  “I’m going to change. I fell asleep by mistake,” I explained, and went to get something else.

  “Why were you napping in the middle of the morning?” she called. “What about your job?”

  That was pretty funny, coming from my cousin! She’d never let a job stand in the way of her napping or anything else she wanted to do. “I got fired,” I explained. “I got caught giving out the muffins that we were supposed to throw away when we closed up. It was such a waste, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t get along very well with the other people that worked there, anyway. I wanted to be friends, but they didn’t like me. Especially after Cain came one day and they got the idea that I have a lot of money.”

  “Don’t you? Your husband is rolling in it!”

  “It’s not mine,” I insisted, and finished buttoning my shirt. I had gone through my wardrobe and pared it down to the plainest, dullest things I owned, and I saw Kayleigh frowning at me.

  “Is brown really your color?” she asked. “I remember you buying that shirt only because it was on sale.”

  “I’m ready,” I answered her. “Let’s go.”

  We spent the rest of the day sightseeing and shopping, because apparently, my cousin was still in possession of her credit card. She filled quite a few bags, but she only told me not to act like my mother when I asked her how she planned to pay that bill. “Stop worrying about everything. This was so fun!” she said, grinning at me, and it really was the best day I’d spent so far in California. “I’m glad I came here. Cassidy and I have been worried about you.”

  “You two have been worried about me?” I avoided a pedestrian who almost leapt in front of the car. “Oh, my word! Why do people here do that?”

  “Whenever we’ve talked to you, you’ve seemed so down,” Kayleigh explained. “Like you’re always sad or something. You never talk about friends or anything.”

  “I’ve only been here a month,” I defended myself, and she reached over and pinched me. “Ow! Why did you do that?”

  “Because when I got here, you were sleeping in your clothes! You’re sad, Ari. I can tell.”

  “I have a friend. Kind of. I mean, I know someone!” He’d gotten my number the day we’d gone dress shopping and he’d been in touch a few times. Ok, a lot, asking me why I hadn’t been at the ballet gala and telling me to come over to his studio so I could model for him. I hadn’t responded because it just felt off, wrong somehow.

  “Is he from here?” she asked me, and I nodded. “Then maybe he’ll know something good to do tonight, because I bet you don’t. Let’s go see him!”

  “Fine!” I told her snippily, mostly because I was annoyed that she’d guessed that I didn’t really know the social scene here. I drove back to the address that was written on that napkin with the drawing of my body, which I’d hidden with my summer shoes in the back of the big closet.

  “This is where he lives?” Kayleigh asked me, wrinkling her nose.

  “This is where he works,” I corrected. “He’s an artist.”

  “Oh, wow! Does that sign on the door say to buck off? That’s so funny!”

  She’d used the real word, and yes, that was what it said. I reached through the steel bars to knock and after a moment, we heard movement inside and the door swung open. “Well, if it isn’t Aria from Tennessee,” Sebastián drawled out, imitating my accent. “And you brought a friend.”

  “I’m her cousin, Kayleigh,” she told him. “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

  Because that was true. He had only a towel wrapped around his waist and I was having a hard time not staring at his mostly naked body. My cousin wasn’t even trying not to. Her eyes roamed up and down his tattooed chest and arms, and that towel wasn’t very large either. There was a lot of leg on display, and Kayleigh was twisting her head around to try to see even more. Like, what was at the top of his legs!

  “We can come back when you’re dressed,” I said, and put my arm through Kayleigh’s to start to tug her back to where I’d managed to park the car.

  “No, come on in,” he said, and stepped backwards. My cousin immediately threw open the metal bars to go in after him and I followed down the hall. We walked around a pile of guitar parts and five or six bikes, some of which had two wheels. It was freezing in the studio but it didn’t seem to bother Sebastián.

  “Aria, you remember Annemily,” he said, pointing to a woman sitting in a stained armchair. “She probably doesn’t remember you, though.”

  The model from the first time I’d been at the studio was dressed, kind of. She wore a robe that wasn’t tied, so it gaped open when she stood up and stretched.

  “Aria?” she repeated. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “What kind of a name is Annemily? Your parents have a hard time making decisions?” Kayleigh shot right back at her.

  Sebastián laughed so hard that he sat down in another dirty chair, his legs splayed out. I looked away, but my cousin bent her head to stare right there, in his private place. She pursed her lips and nodded, eyebrows up. Annemily only stomped out of the room, her robe flapping open, and I heard a door slam somewhere else in the building.

  “So, what brings you by, Aria from Tennessee and the bitchy cousin?” he asked us.

  “Kayleigh,” she reminded him, and didn’t say a word about the insult. “Aria said that y’all are friends and you’d know the best places to go out with us tonight.”

  “No,” I started, “I didn’t say—”

  “Friends?” Sebastián asked me, smiling. “Then why haven’t you posed for me yet?”

  “I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I told him, which made him laugh again.

  “Comments like that just make me try harder. And get harder,” he told me, and my jaw dropped.

  But my cousin laughed also. “So where are we going?” she asked him.

  “What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you?” he answered, and he didn’t seem amused anymore.

  “Let’s leave, Kayleigh,” I told her, because this was all too strange and naked for me.

  “Hold on.” Sebastián got up and walked to a very, very cluttered drafting table. He bent over slightly to draw something, and the towel hiked up in back—my cousin pointed so I wouldn’t miss it and nodded her head with appreciation. It took him a while to finish what he was doing so that even Kayleigh got tired of standing there and staring at all the thigh he’d exposed. My neck ached from holding my chin tilted to look at the ceiling.

  “Here.” He handed me a piece of paper. “That’s the address. See you there at nine.”

  It wasn’t just an address, though, because there was also a picture of me. Naked (again!) with my head thrown back and a big smile on my face. And this time, with one hand on my own breast and the other down touching my…

  “Oh, wow! You’re making yourself come, Ari!” Kayleig
h said. “You have to show Cain that. He probably will too, it’s so damn sexy.”

  But I was embarrassed as all get out, so much so that tears started up and I couldn’t even move for a moment. “Nobody’s going to see that! Please stop drawing me unclothed,” I asked Sebastián, who laughed again. I snatched the paper out of his hand, put the drawing into my pocketbook, and quickly wiped under my eyes. “Kayleigh, we need to go.”

  She didn’t seem to want to, but I was a lot stronger than she was after all the exercising I’d been doing. “Jesus Lord, Aria! Why did you drag me out of there?” she demanded.

  “Because he was nearly nude and he drew a picture of me…of me…”

  “Masturbating. Yes, I saw! He’s so talented. And so cute,” she went on. “Why didn’t you tell me that? Does your husband know?”

  Cain didn’t know that I’d visited the art studio or that Sebastián had helped me pick out the billion dollar outfit for the ballet gala. I felt a wave of guilt about that. “There’s nothing much to tell, nothing wrong,” I informed her, which was true, even though I didn’t feel better about it. “I’m barely acquainted with that man.”

  “He knows you well enough to draw you naked,” she teased, but put her hand on my arm. “Aria Louise, I know you wouldn’t cheat on your husband. I’m sorry.”

  I wiped my eyes again. “I don’t think I want to go out with him tonight. I’m sorry I brought us over here.” I’d just wanted to show off my new, interesting life, but that episode had been much too interesting for me.

  “Oh. Ok, well, whatever,” Kayleigh said, but I could tell that she was disappointed. It was better, though, that we didn’t go out. She shouldn’t have been around people drinking if she was trying to stop herself. I understood that a little—my whole life I’d been with my mostly skinny family as they ate themselves silly, desserts and ham and cheese and biscuits…oh, now I was about to start gnawing on my foot, I was so hungry. It was always so, so hard not to dig in right along with them, and saying no to liquor must have been so much worse. But if Kayleigh was drinking herself sick, then she absolutely had to stop.