Here I Go

by Jamie Bennett

  We stayed that way for a while, holding each other. “I didn’t know you were coming back so soon.” I murmured against him.

  “I caught the first flight I could.” His chest heaved in a yawn.

  I leaned back to see him in the light from the bathroom, which I’d left on for safety. “You look so tired.”

  “I was going to bed,” he answered. “I didn’t expect to find you in it.”

  “Because of Kayleigh. I didn’t want her to know about what we’re doing. Not doing,” I explained. “She would tell everyone.”

  He loosened his arms and walked to the bathroom, where he flicked off the switch. Because of the extra thick, light and sound blocking curtains that someone (Demetra) had installed, we were in total darkness.

  “I’m not trying to pressure you into anything but I haven’t told anyone in my family about us sleeping separately,” I told his shadow. “I’ve been lying to them, really, and this is still a lie but will you please go along with it?”

  “I’m not going to talk about private things between us with Kayleigh. If you want to stay in here, it’s fine,” he said, so I lay back down. Cain lay down, too, on the opposite side of the wide bed from me. The stony mattress hardly even moved.

  “See? It’s like we’re not even in the same room,” I said.

  “Kind of.”

  “Except I’m talking,” I agreed. And then, I couldn’t help myself. I reached over through the darkness, feeling my way, and put my hand on his arm. “I’m so glad you’re here. It’s so nice to have you back.”

  “Is it really?” Cain asked, but he tugged my hand as he said it, and I scooted across the bed to him. He threaded his arm beneath me to hold me against his side, and it was absolutely the most wonderful thing I’d ever felt, just like when he’d held me back in my little bed in Chattanooga the night of my Aunt Harlene’s party. The night that had led to our marriage.

  His chest moved up and down in a deep breath. “This is nice,” he told me.

  “It is the nicest,” I agreed.

  “I went into your room and all your stuff was gone. I thought you’d left.”

  I sat straight up. “You thought I left? Left you, without telling you? No, of course not!” I fell back on him and he grunted, but I had to grab him very tightly. “I’m not going to leave you, Cain Miller.”

  He didn’t say anything but he held me just as closely. We fell asleep like that, cuddled up together, and this time, nobody woke us up screaming.

  In fact, I woke up that Saturday morning alone, but the dent on the other pillow told me that Cain had been there with me, and that I hadn’t been dreaming that he’d come back. I jumped out of bed and leaped into the bathroom, and after I did a little work to look slightly better, I ran down the stairs to see if he was still there. I found him sitting in the kitchen with Kayleigh, and she wasn’t flirting with him this time. In fact, she was crying pretty hard.

  “KayKay, what’s wrong?” I asked and immediately went to hug her.

  “I’m going back to San Diego today,” she told me. “I’m definitely going to go.”

  “She was talking to her mom,” Cain explained to me, and Kayleigh nodded. “The flight’s a lot shorter than the bus,” he told her.

  “Oh, I don’t know if Aunt Jill—” I started to say, and I meant that I didn’t think my aunt and uncle had a lot for extras after paying for Kayleigh’s trip out here and her stay at the facility. I didn’t think she did herself, either. Not after what she’d spent yesterday while shopping.

  “I’m taking care of it,” Cain told me.

  Kayleigh murmured something and got up and left, and I put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to put myself in his lap but held back. “Thank you for doing that for her,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. It wasn’t for her.” I must have looked confused, because he said, “I know you were worried about it.”

  “For me?” My hand flew to my chest. For me? That was about the best gift he could have given me.

  “I have something else for you.” He took a box from the counter and handed it to me. “This reminded me of you.”

  I opened it and found a silver necklace with a carved pendant in the shape of a heart.

  “It’s jade,” Cain explained. “The color reminded me of your eyes, that fresh green. Like spring.” He smiled a little. “It made you cry, though.”

  I couldn’t speak because it was just so beautiful—the gift, yes, but also what he’d said about it, and also that he’d been thinking of me while he was away. I gave into my instincts and put my arms around his neck to hug him. “I love it,” I said. I only let go so I could put on the necklace and I looked at the green heart resting over my real one on my chest. “I’ll always wear it and think of you.”

  He looked at it too. “I missed you,” he told me. “I was worried leaving you after that man died, and I kept thinking about you alone here. We should get a dog.”

  “Or you could never leave again,” I suggested, and he smiled. I hugged him again, snuggling against his shoulder.

  “I will have to work sometimes,” he reminded me. “I was glad your cousin was here, but she told me what happened.”

  “She did?”

  Cain nodded. “She told me about the people she had over and what they did. They stole the etchings and the mobile? The Man Ray photograph? ”

  My head popped off his shoulder. “Cain, I’m sorry about that. We did fix it, but you deserved to know. I was going to tell you, too.”

  “I know,” he said. “You don’t keep things from me.”

  I felt a burning in my stomach as I thought about Sebastián, and that feeling was shame. It wasn’t a secret, and it wasn’t a lie, but it felt that way. I was so embarrassed that I’d thought he would be a friend, and that I’d gone back to his studio with Kayleigh. That I had two drawings he’d made of me—no, I was going to think about those.

  “I don’t even like that stuff very much,” Cain went on, “but it is valuable. I’m glad you got it back.”

  “How valuable?” I asked, and when he told me what he thought it was all worth, I was lucky he was holding me, because I would have gone down just like my mama. “That much?” I gasped.

  “Demetra wanted to make a statement. We were so wealthy, we could hang Miró etchings in the bathroom.” He shrugged. “I let her do it.”

  I nodded, thinking that it was those pictures in the powder room that had made Sebastián so angry, and thinking that Demetra was a big show-off. That wasn’t a very charitable thought, so then I added in my mind that I was sorry for being unkind. I was sorry, but I still believed it. “I’m really, really glad we got it all back,” I said out loud. “I never would have been able to pay you for it, not if I worked for the rest of my life.”

  “I have insurance. And why would you have to pay me? You should know that I took the money you started to give me for your ballet gala outfit and put it into a retirement fund for you.”

  “You did? For when I retire? I never even thought about that.”

  Cain nodded. “Well, now you have an account started and we’ll keep adding to it. If you give me more money to pay for the dress, that’s where I’ll put it.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, and smiled at him, thinking. “You know, you’re like Miss Liddy. That’s what she did for you, isn’t it? You sent money for her to use and she saved it for you, because she was worried about your future. Because she loved you.” I jolted. “Not that I’m trying to say—”

  “I’m ready,” Kayleigh announced as she came into the kitchen, and I hurried to put something on so that we could take her to the airport ourselves, since I didn’t trust a driver. Well, I trusted the driver. I didn’t actually trust my cousin very much.

  She hugged me as she stood on the busy sidewalk at San Francisco International Airport. “I know I was a huge pain in the ass for you and I’m sorry about that. I’m glad I got to see you, anyway,” she told me. “I’ll be back in Tennessee in a few months, be
fore Cass’s wedding, and I hope you’ll come home and visit.”

  I hugged her and nodded, hoping so, too. We watched her walk inside and I prayed, very, very hard, that she would be all right. “I’ll pray tomorrow in church, too,” I said to Cain. “I always feel like that goes faster. Like an undersea transmission line.”

  He laughed and put his arm around me, as I wiped away a few stray tears. “I’ll come with you to church, if you want.”

  “Yes, of course I want that!” I was already missing Kayleigh, but I was so glad, so glad that he was home!

  I called my Aunt Jill to let her know that her daughter was on her way back to the rehab place, and she cried, too, very grateful to me. “It wasn’t me who got her there. You convinced her and Cain bought the ticket,” I answered.

  “Tell him thank you, Aria. I’d like to say it to him in person, too, so please come home and see us soon,” she said.

  I was thinking about that, and wanting to discuss it, when Cain’s phone rang. He pushed a button on the console. “Hey, Blayden,” he greeted the caller.

  “Back already?” Blayden said through the speakers. “I thought you’d be gone for months.”

  “No, I finished up. I’m here in the car with Aria,” he answered, and there was a silence.

  “Hi,” I offered, and Blayden said it back, in a much different tone than the one he’d used before.

  “I’m having people over tonight,” he said in the same voice. “Drinks, dinner, nothing special. You two should come.” I looked at Cain, wondering if he’d want to go.

  Cain glanced across the car back at me and I nodded. I wasn’t going to keep him from his friends, as much as I didn’t want to go to Blayden’s house. It was obvious that he didn’t like me, which didn’t matter except that it made me so uncomfortable. And if those other people were there, like the Furies, or Sebastián—but I nodded, because these were Cain’s friends.

  “Sure,” he answered Blayden. “We’ll come.” He turned to me after they’d hung up. “Are you sure you want to? I don’t know who’s going to be there, but I didn’t think you liked them much before.”

  Maybe I’d made that too obvious. I’d spent a lot of time at Blayden’s previous party hovering around Cain’s elbow, uncomfortable and unhappy. But now I had my new hair, new makeup, and a lot of deadly dull clothes that would make me feel like part of the crowd.

  “No, I think it will be interesting. It will give me a chance to get to know your friends better.”

  “My friends,” Cain echoed, and I nodded.

  “And listen to this.” I cleared my throat. “Hello, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Aria.”

  He turned quickly. “Are you choking on something? Are you getting sick?”

  “No! That’s my new accent!” I told him. “I’m not sick, I’m trying to sound like I’m from California. Oh, my word. Is it that bad?”

  “What’s wrong with your current accent?” he asked me, instead of answering.

  “What was wrong with yours?” I asked him back. “You dropped it right quick when you came out here, didn’t you? I was thinking that I should do the same thing.”

  “No. No, you shouldn’t,” he told me, and after I thought about it, I agreed. I’d probably embarrass him talking like that, like I’d been drinking something strong and also had been hit in the mouth. My California voice was a pretty bad imitation.

  Cain did have to work some that day, but we also went for a walk, and we went to the Ferry Building near the water, which I really liked. We planned some for Miss Liddy’s memorial service, not setting a date quite yet, but looking at locations and choosing flowers that we thought she’d have liked. That was so hard for him, but I held his hand very tightly, putting it against my cheek sometimes, and I tried to make it better. I could tell after a while that he’d had enough, and he escaped to his computer screens where he could think about something else, and I went into the closet to plan what I was going to wear tonight to the dinner at Blayden’s.

  “You don’t have to be so nervous.”

  I looked at Cain, startled, as we walked those long blocks to his friend’s house. “How did you know that I am?” I hadn’t been fidgeting and I was already practicing my smile.

  “Your eyes show it. They get so big.” He stopped on the sidewalk in front of the door and put his palms on my cheeks. “It doesn’t matter if they like you or not, Aria. They don’t matter.”

  He must have already known how they felt about me. And it did matter, it certainly did if I was going to spend the next forty or more years of my life around these people with them thinking I was a cheap, dumb hick. I was going to have to change their minds.

  “Aria,” he said again, and leaned down so that our faces were almost touching. Our mouths were almost touching. He looked into my eyes and parted his lips.

  That was when the Furies showed up. “Cain,” they greeted him, and said something about hello to me, and we all went into the house for the dinner party.

  “It’s Aria from Tennessee,” a voice called to me, and it was Sebastián, barefoot and smiling, holding one of the goblets of wine I’d seen at Blayden’s first party. The Furies were there, of course, and standing with our host and looking absolutely gorgeous was Cain’s former girlfriend, Demetra. I held onto the jade heart for courage because I could feel mine draining out of my body and it was all I could do to keep the pageant smile on my face. Cain reached down and took my hand.

  We got through the cocktail part of the evening. That afternoon, while he was working, I had prepared several different topics of conversation: large universities on the west coast, Greek mythology, artists of the twentieth century like Miró, Calder, and Man Ray. But tonight, everyone wanted to talk about Cain’s trip and how he was expanding his company into Asia.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said quietly to him when Blayden had gone over to the pornography bar to refill his drink and there was a moment of near-silence. “You didn’t tell me that was why you were in Korea, you just said you had to go for meetings when I asked you.”

  “That was right, meetings,” he said, but I understood why he hadn’t shared the details. He probably thought I wouldn’t understand, that it was too complicated for me or something. I let go of his hand to smooth my hair and then I didn’t take it again.

  “Let’s move into the dining room,” Blayden announced. He was watching me. “Astra, you’re here,” he said to one of the Furies as we walked in, and directed her to a chair. “Sebastián, Demetra, Aria.” He had a seat picked out for each of us, with himself at one end of the table and Cain at the other. He didn’t sit with his girlfriend, the Fury I’d learned was named Oriana, and I was apart from Cain, too. I was between Sebastián and a woman I hadn’t met, and Demetra was at the end of the table, next to my husband. I tried as hard as I could not to watch them as we were served soup, because apparently a “nothing special” dinner at Blayden’s house included waiters.

  “Do we need to go over utensils?” Sebastián murmured to me, and when I glared at him, he laughed so loudly that everyone at the table turned to look at us. “Your wife is hilarious,” he told Cain, who didn’t look like he found anything funny at all. I watched Cain pick up his cocktail and finish it, and then the waiter poured him a glass of wine.

  “Aria,” Blayden said from his end of the table, “what do you think of our city? What have you been doing here?”

  All the faces turned to me. I decided to ignore the first part of his question. “I’ve seen a lot of San Francisco,” I said, and had to clear my throat. It was just like the interview portion at a pageant and while my sister Bree had shone at those, I had been a total failure. “I was working. My cousin was here visiting. Briefly.”

  “Your cousin,” Sebastián said. “How is Kayleigh doing? You should bring her by the studio again.”

  “How well do you know her, Bas?” Demetra asked him. She laughed.

  “We got along great,” he said, and raised his glass. I looked down at my soup bow
l and my palm itched, just like Amory used to say hers did when she wanted to slap our other sister across the face.

  “What were you doing for work, Aria?” Blayden continued. “I think Cain mentioned something about a coffee shop?”

  “Really?” one of the Furies asked. Astra, that was her name. “A coffee shop?”

  “I don’t work there anymore,” I told her, and closed my mouth tightly before I admitted that I’d been fired.

  “Why are you so interested in Aria, Blayden?” Cain called from the end of the table, and now the faces turned to him.

  “She’s your wife,” he answered, and the way he said that word made it sound like it was wrong somehow, like it had a secret, ugly meaning or was just plain false.

  “She is my wife,” Cain agreed, and looked into my eyes. It seemed like he was trying to tell me something but I didn’t understand.

  “So, no more coffee shop?” Blayden asked. He smiled and I couldn’t even pageant smile back at him. “Maybe you can start modeling for Sebastián. I heard that you already have.”

  “What?” My head came up from the soup. “No. No, I haven’t done that.”

  “I heard there are some very interesting drawings,” Blayden said, and laughed. Other people at the table laughed, too.

  “Be careful, Aria,” one of the Furies said, and I didn’t bother to figure out which one she was. “Sebastián isn’t discreet.”

  I looked first at Cain, who was staring down the table at his friend, and then at Sebastián next to me. He didn’t meet my eyes. “I don’t need him to be discreet,” I answered her. “Sebastián made drawings of me,” I said directly to Cain, “but I didn’t pose for them. I told him to stop doing that because they were—they were inappropriate.”

  Laughter erupted around the table and the waiter came in to remove the soup and put plates of salad in front of us. How long was this dinner going to last?

  “Aria,” Demetra started to tell me, and Cain turned to her.

  “Whatever you’re going to say, don’t.”

  “The protective husband,” she answered, and smiled at him. She put her hand on his arm. “I remember how you liked to—”