by Claire Adams
“It’s because I have bigger things to worry about that I worry about you,” she said. I hesitated near the bed.
“You never have to worry about me.” I held her thin, bony hand in mine and sat beside her. “Just get better. How are you feeling?”
She shrugged. “You know how it is: good days are great, bad days are the worst.”
Despite how weak her body was, she seemed happy and almost energized. I smiled, it seemed that today was one of her good days.
“Try to get some food in you,” I suggested. “You haven’t even opened the package of protein powder that I had delivered the other day.”
“Protein shakes just taste funny after a while,” she said. “I’ll try though, for you. What are your plans for the day? You’re not just going to sit here and tell me what to do are you?”
I laughed. “No, mom. I’m going out on the boat with Ron after a workout.”
“You work out way too much to not have a woman,” she said.
“I work out way too much to waste my time with a woman.” I kissed her cheek. “I’ll check on you later, and I’ll pick you up in the morning for your appointment. I love you, mom.”
She held my chin in her hand and kissed my forehead.
“I love you, Gavin, so impossibly much,” she said and settled back into bed.
“Nothing’s impossible,” I replied. It was a common set of phrases that we’ve used nearly my entire life.
I spoke with Karen a little on the way out, asking her if mom had eaten anything within the last twenty-four hours.
“She held down a pudding cup,” Karen said. “But other than that, no. Her appetite is completely gone.”
“Thanks, Karen. I’ll see you later.”
I left with my heart in my throat, struggling to hold myself together. If today was a good day for mom, how were the bad days?
I spent more time in my home gym than I had planned. Leg lunges, curls, squats, lifts, all in reps of 20 until my thighs were threatening to give out was my usual routine. My body was thick with sweat by the time Ron called asking if I was on my way. I cursed and promised him I would be there soon, and hopped into the gym shower to rinse off. I grabbed the protein shake from the fridge and finished it before leaving the house. Regular vanilla was definitely better than banana caramel.
I figured I’d have to eat real food at some point, but my nerves were getting the better of me. It seemed mom was only growing sicker, and I was worried that the chemo wasn’t helping.
“On your way doesn’t mean 15 minutes, jackass,” Ron said as I met him on the docks. He was already getting my most cherished boat, the Lupine, ready for sail.
“Maybe if you spent 15 minutes in the gym you wouldn’t have such bad luck with women, Ronald.” I climbed aboard and let Ron do all the work. He made his living fishing on boats anyways.
“Don’t be an asshole.” Ten minutes later and we were out on the water. Ron kicked back with a beer on the top deck, and I caught one as he flung it my way. “I thought you weren’t drinking?”
“On the weekends,” I said. “Weekends are for cutting and bulking.”
“That shit makes no sense.” He downed his beer. “But you have the body to prove it, I guess.”
Ron’s body wasn’t entirely awful; he was skinny with the beginnings of a beer belly and strong arms from spending so much time fishing, but he was constantly making fun of me for taking the time to improve my muscles everywhere. His dark hair was cut shorter than mine, and his skin sported a dark tan from being out in the sun for hours nearly every morning. His father, a man who passed away in his early forties, had taught the both of us how to fish when we were teenagers, and up until recently we both made a living catching and selling fish in the market.
“How’s Mona?” he asked.
“Sick.” I stared at the blue sky above us. I was glad for the thin sweater as the sun covered us in a warm glow. “She’s not getting better.”
“Is she getting worse?” Ron turned to look at me, but I refused to look back.
“She’s not getting better,” I repeated. “She’s a fighter though. Kept down a pudding cup, and she’s cracking jokes nonstop.”
Ron laughed. “Mona’s always had the best sense of humor.”
“At least we don’t have to worry about the financial part of this,” I said. “Stress makes people worse, I’ve read.”
“It does,” Ron said. “The hospital bills were piling up so high when dad was going through chemo and radiation. For the longest time, mom swore that the bills killed him, not the cancer.”
“Oh shit,” I cursed. “I’m so sorry, Ron. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“It’s okay.” He shrugged me off. “No one deserves to go through any of this, least of all Mona. I’m happy she doesn’t have to worry about anything else. Selling your dad’s company was a genius move.”
“It wasn’t easy,” I said. “His shipping company meant the world to him. I was surprised that he left it to me after he passed. I was convinced he’d leave it to one of his workers. He knew I didn’t really have an interest in it.”
“Maybe he wanted you to have it in case of a financial emergency,” Ron suggested. “It paid off in the end.”
“A financial emergency.” I took another sip. “I sold a multibillion-dollar company for a financial emergency, and now I’m stuck in a giant mansion I don’t give a shit about, with a mom sick with cancer, a dad in the graveyard, and nothing but my gym to keep me company. You know I don’t care about fancy cars or clothes or giant houses; I’d give every penny back if it would make mom better, dad alive, and everything to be how it was 10 years ago.”
“Ten years ago we were assholes in our early twenties, sleeping with a different woman every single night and making our parents sick with worry when we wouldn’t answer their calls for a week,” Ron said.
“Exactly.” I laughed. “Although I think we both would definitely see our parents a lot more if we knew.”
“We’d do a lot of things differently,” he said and pulled out two fishing poles.
We reminisced on all the things we did in our twenties for the next hour as we fished, catching barely two fish each. I released mine back into the wild while Ron dumped his into a bucket.
“After we get the fish stink off us, do you want to go find some women at the bar to take home?” Ron asked. It was his second favorite thing to do; the first was finding women at the club.
“I don’t think I have it in me to watch you fail at picking up women until you reek of so much desperation that you end up paying for a bachelorette party’s whole night,” I said. “Plus, I have to get up early and take mom to her appointment tomorrow.”
“Hey, desperation works.” We arrived at the docks and parked the boat. “But maybe next time. Tell me how the doctor visit goes.”
We said our goodbyes and I returned to my house. I hadn’t been with a woman in so long that the simple suggestion had stirred something within me. My body was stiff with stress, and finding a woman to release this tension didn’t sound like such a bad idea. I shook my head and dressed in gym shorts and running shoes. I could work this stress out now; finding a woman could wait.
Chapter Two
Maddie
The weekend had been full of cocktails on ice; rum spilled across the bar’s counter, men leering at us we took shots and pretended not to notice them. The morning after such a busy weekend was always the worst, especially when it ended with maybe two phone numbers exchanged inside Fairbanks’ most exclusive club. My phone’s alarm reminded me I planned on waking up early to call Martin, my agent, but I buried my head deeper into the soft pillow. The weekend had been full of too many cocktails and spilled rum, it seemed.
After 10 minutes of an internal battle, I forced myself into sweats and a t-shirt and started on breakfast. I made the greasiest food I could find in the heavily lacking kitchen that my roommate and I shared. Sausage links, Bacon, pork rolls, eggs cooked in bacon grease. Nanci
e would argue that our breakfast had way too many calories, but she had accepted many more drinks than I had, and my hangover was already starting to make my eyes sting.
I started the coffee pot and browsed through various social media sites as the old coffee maker took its time filling up a pot with steaming, delicious-smelling coffee. Nancie had gotten nearly 5,000 new followers over the weekend. I checked mine, knowing that my face was tagged in all of her posted pictures. Seven hundred. I groaned and chucked my phone onto the couch.
I made Nancie’s cup the way she liked it, with coconut milk, coconut sugar, and a splash of almond sweetener. It could barely be called coffee. I sipped on my black coffee as I opened Nancie’s door.
“Nancie,” I said and pulled on the bedsheets. She was stuffed beneath, her wild, dirty blonde hair a mess around her face and makeup smudged beneath bright, blue eyes. A fake eyelash clung to a high cheekbone, and as she stretched her skinny, long arms, she took the mug from my hand and yawned.
“Is it noon already?” she asked.
“It’s seven, actually.” I leaned against her door. “I thought you’d want to get a head start on the week.”
“On the week, Maddie?” She gulped her coffee until not a drop remained. I took the mug from her and took the three steps between her room and the kitchen to refill it. “I could have gotten a head start on the week at noon.”
“I thought you’d want to go to the gym together?” I suggested. “Eight am is the best time to go, when everyone else is on their way to their nine-to-five.”
“The gym,” she muttered and made herself a plate full of fried eggs and pork rolls. “I guess we do need to burn off all those drink calories, and this devil breakfast you torture me with.” She sat at the dingy, two-person dining table crammed into the corner of the kitchen and dug into her food. I sat her coffee beside it and looked for the Excedrin in our medicine cabinet.
“Your hangovers are always worse than mine,” I said and got her two pills. I took only one with a cup of water.
She muttered something incoherent as she checked her phone. “Oh, look at that,” she said and scrolled down on a page. “Five thousand new followers over the whole weekend. That’s pathetic. Kelly-Anne gets 5,000 almost daily. How many did you get, Maddie?”
I hesitated. “Not that many.” I made myself a plate of sausage and eggs and sat across from her. “You’re way more active on social media than Kelly-Anne is. She only gets that many followers daily because they’re paid promotions. You’re doing it organically.”
“Michelle did say to post three pictures a day, and the followers will come,” Nancie said. “Oh, shit.” I watched as she scrolled through the calendar on her phone. “I completely forgot I have a modeling shoot in the afternoon.”
“You forgot?” I laughed. “If I had a shoot I don’t think I could think of anything else.”
“It’s not that big of a shoot,” Nancie admitted. “But the clothes are to die for, Maddie. Straight import from Italy, one of their top designers. I’m doing a few full outfits and a bath suit spread.”
“Itchy leather again?” I asked, and we laughed. Nancie and I did a photoshoot together a few years prior for an Italian leather company, and we hadn’t realized until then just how uncomfortable true leather was.
“This stuff is itch-free, thank God. It’s even going to be in like three magazines, but they’re trying to get a spread of it in Glamour. This might be the shoot that sets the course for my future.”
I watched as Nancie voiced her dreams and ambitions over a plate of greasy food. It was something we’d done since late high school when we were in social studies class together, and the whole class said we should be models. I hadn’t taken them seriously, not until Nancie made a fake photo shoot with her parents and a few of our friends, and shown me just how much fun it was. We both had been blessed with skinny and tall frames, Nancie a pale skinned beauty in the sun with a dust of freckles across her nose, and me a tanned brunette with green eyes that demanded attention everywhere I went. Nancie had always aspired to be a model, and it wasn’t until our friendship that I realized my life ambition was to either to act or to model as well.
Nancie and Maddie, always together, modeling together, making our careers together. We had made the decision to get separate agents, and I was beginning to wonder if that had been a mistake.
“You should go,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“To the photo shoot; they always need a stand-in just in case, and you would look amazing in the bikinis,” she said. “Your squats are really paying off.”
“I wish,” I said honestly. “But I already made dinner plans with my parents, and you know how they get.”
“It’s your career, though,” she said. “Wouldn’t they understand?”
“They don’t see it as a career.” I started cleaning up our kitchen. “They think it’s just a hobby, and they’re so serious about family time that if I canceled they would probably take me out of their wills.”
“Fine,” Nancie sighed. “It just would have been fun to have you there. We haven’t done a shoot together in forever.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Next time for sure,” I offered. Our shoots together had been one of my favorite things to do. Nancie was fun to work with and always made sure everyone in the room had a smile on their face. She was alluring, and I always strived to be like her on my own shoots.
“Well, now that I just ate 10,000 calories, do you want to go to the gym?” she asked. I knew that I needed to call Martin at some point, but I decided to save it until later and agreed. We dressed into our workout clothes, and I drove us to the gym, where we shut everyone else out for the hour before going for a light jog.
Once upon a time, I hated working out. Nancie convinced me to give it a try after I complained about gaining three pounds after a holiday, and we had started with running. The first time we went for a jog I lasted barely two minutes before having to take a break and sit on the ground. It wasn’t until we found something else I enjoyed that I actually wanted to go to the gym.
We took our time getting ready for the day in our bathroom. I gave Nancie the majority of the time and didn’t rush her. We watched a few episodes of our favorite modeling reality show while eating salads for lunch, arguing over the host’s decisions and which girls were cut out for the modeling gig and which weren’t.
“You have to have a thick skin,” Nancie said. “Like us. She cries every time someone even looks at her.”
“It’ll just be harder for her than the rest,” I argued. “She gets the best pictures though; she deserves to be final two at least.”
Our miniature marathon ended, and we went our separate ways after a quick goodbye, Nancie toward her future, and me toward my parents’ house on the outskirts of the suburbs.
My childhood home wasn’t anything special; in fact, it was much smaller than the average family home and almost always full of trash that my parents never wanted to get rid of. It was on the other side of town from the nicer homes, and just close enough to school that taking a bus was useless. I walked to school every day, with a beat-up backpack drooping from my shoulders and a younger brother retying the laces of his worn shoes.
I didn’t hate my childhood home, but I certainly didn’t have any pleasant memories associated with it. I parked in their tiny driveway, behind a car that was a few years older than my early two-thousands Corolla, opened the outer screen door, and knocked on the door.
“Maddie!” my dad answered the door as if my visit was entirely unexpected. His hair black with soft gray tips around the scalp, and brown eyes that my younger brother had gotten. He was tall and lean, exactly where I had gotten my height from.
“We’re so glad you’re here, sweetheart,” Mom said and gestured at the dinner table. “I was just finishing up setting dinner.” Her hair was long and brown, like mine, and we both shared the same startlingly bright green eyes. Mom had gotten the freckles though, and I always wonde
red if maybe I would have been as popular as Nancie had I gotten freckles as well.
“We have dinner once a week, guys,” I said and dropped my purse into a chair. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had a missed call from Martin. “Is it okay if I call my agent?”
Mom gave me a disappointed look, and I returned my phone to my purse. “Fine, I can take a hint. No phones.”
“Only for emergencies,” Dad said as he hugged me. “How has your week been?”
I never knew how to answer that. They didn’t understand the importance of keeping up a social media presence in the modeling world, so I definitely couldn’t say that I spent the weekend partying in popular clubs and posting pictures to attract more followers.
“Long,” I said. I glanced at the simple house, with its simple decorations that hadn’t changed in more than 20 years. The TV was old and dusty, with the cords of a cable box, DVD player and Blu-Ray player tangled behind a wooden entertainment center that was older than me. “You do realize you can get one simple box that does all of that?” I pointed at all of the boxes beneath the TV.
“We don’t need anything fancy,” Mom said. “Plus, there’s no point in spending money we don’t have.”
I groaned. Dad had been an electrician for 10 years after serving a term in the army, and for a while, he had made decent money until mom decided to quit her job in the lucrative field of selling makeup door to door. I had begged her not to quit, and to save up until they could afford a more lavish lifestyle, but they both refused. Instead, wanting to spend more quality time with another they decided that dad would work from home for a call center, barely making enough to pay the bills, much less their debt.
“Maybe one day we’ll get a new TV,” dad suggested. “We have some DVDs that would look good in HD.” His arm rested around mom’s shoulders comfortably as they shared an inappropriate joke.
“Ew, no.” I helped mom set the rest of dinner on the table, a meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, and a basket of bread and butter. I could hear Nancie in my head warning me how many calories must have been in everything.