Tell Me Everything

by Amy Hatvany

  “Hey Andrew,” he’d written. “Jess and I appreciate your reaching out, and she had fun with you, but unfortunately, we’ve had some circumstances come up that have made it so she can’t see you anymore. Please know that it’s not about you, just real life getting in the way. Thanks for understanding, and we hope you find what you’re looking for with someone else.”

  I looked at him and nodded. “Perfect,” I said. I hoped that Andrew would take what Jake had written seriously, and not contact us again. That he wouldn’t contact me.

  “With a dick that big, he shouldn’t have any trouble getting laid,” Jake said, smiling.

  I forced a laugh. Please let this be the last time we talk about Andrew, I thought. I worried if he kept coming him up, I might cave and tell Jake everything.

  My phone vibrated on the nightstand, and even though it was late, I grabbed it, reflexively, and checked the notification, expecting for it to be from another agent or one of my clients. Instead, I saw a text from a number I didn’t recognize, but instantly knew who had sent it. A chill shot up my spine.

  “You’ll be back for more,” it said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  I swallowed hard, and my stomach suddenly felt full of twisting, slithering snakes. I deleted the text, and blocked that number, too, wondering if Andrew had a second cell phone or if he had picked up a disposable one for the express purpose of contacting me, since I’d blocked him. Either way, his behavior was frightening. Goddamn it, I thought. How am I going to get him to leave me alone? I’d need to remember to block his email address so he wouldn’t keep reaching out to me, there, too. Or maybe I should delete that account all together, to be safe. I could tell Jake it was better to not leave it active, if we weren’t going to use it.

  “What’s up?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing,” I said, as lightly as I could as I set my phone back down. I rolled over and smiled at him. “Work stuff.” Shit, shit, shit! I hated lying to him.

  “We need a vacation.”

  “I wish,” I replied. Our current work schedules made taking time off together almost impossible.

  “How about a mini-vaca, tomorrow?” Jake asked. “We can work a few hours, but spend most of the day at the pool with the kids?”

  “Just what teenagers want, to hang out with their parents!”

  “Tough,” Jake said. “I say we do it. Whether they like it or not.”

  But in the morning, when we told the kids our plan, Tucker informed me that Peter was picking him up at ten o’clock to head to the jobsite. He also said he didn’t have any clean clothes.

  “Huh,” I said, ruffling his dark hair. “I guess you’re wearing dirty ones, then.” He’d gotten spoiled with my mom around—when she wasn’t with Helen, she’d kept herself busy with cleaning the house and taking care of both of her grandchildren’s dirty clothes. The clean house I’d enjoyed, but I knew that once she was gone, it would be a struggle to get Tucker, especially, back in the habit of doing his chores.

  “You’re such a slacker,” Ella said, tossing her long brown curls over one shoulder.

  “Shut up, Elf-a,” Tuck said, using the nickname he’d come up with for his sister when he was seven. Her ears actually were a little pointed at the tips, so of course she hated it.

  “You shut up, Smelly,” Ella said. Even at the tail end of fifteen, we still had to prod Tuck to take a daily shower and wash his bed sheets on a regular basis. He didn’t seem to mind his own stink.

  “Okay, you two,” Jake said. “Knock it off.” He looked at me. “What’s on your schedule today? I already arranged to let Justine manage the office.”

  “I have to start entering the new development properties on the MLS, but I can do that from here.” Earlier in the week, I’d met with the developer Peter had recommended me to—a stout, dark-haired woman in her fifties named Diane, who lived in the ritziest section of the Queens Ridge area with her husband, Chris. She had made her fortune by first flipping houses, and then eventually, used that capital to provide financial backing for new construction developments. She wasn’t the warmest person I’d ever met—she seemed a little rigid, actually, and clearly disappointed that I graciously turned down her invitation for me and my family to come visit her church. But ultimately, my professional track record was enough for her to list all of the houses in the development with me. It was a huge win, so I’d sent Peter a case of his favorite Scotch as a thank you, as well as hiring a maid service for the rest of the summer for Kari, since her pregnancy was making her so sick. The commissions I stood to earn from the sales were astronomical, so I figured these gestures were the absolute least I could do.

  “When are we going to the pool?” Ella said. “I Snapped Bentley and told her she and her mom should meet us there.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, thinking it would be nice to have my friend to hang out with, too. She and Jake always got along. “I think we’ll probably head over around noon? It’s going to be a hot one.” It was the third Saturday in July, and the temperature was supposed to reach ninety-seven.

  “You just want to go so you can flirt with Carter,” Tuck said. He grasped his hands together and put them next to his cheek, batting his long, dark lashes. “‘Oh, Carter is so hot. I wish he would come over and rub lotion on my back!’”

  Ella’s arm shot out and punched her brother’s shoulder. “Shut up!”

  “Ow!” Tuck howled, grabbing his arm.

  “Who’s Carter?” I asked, choosing to ignore their bickering.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, smiling. “Who’s Carter?”

  “Don’t say anything!” Ella warned her brother, shooting him a dirty look.

  Tucker smirked. “He’s a life guard. He’s in college.”

  “I’m going to kill you, Tuck!” Ella screeched, but her brother only laughed and jumped out of her reach.

  “How old is this boy?” I asked my daughter, but she was too busy charging at Tuck, who ran for the safety of the stairs, heading up to his bedroom. She chased him, still threatening to kill him. I looked at Jake, deciding that getting the listings into the system could wait. “I guess we’d better get to the pool.”

  THE community center’s parking lot was packed by the time we got there, so we had to walk quite a ways to get to the entrance, where we showed our season passes and then headed inside. Charlotte had texted and said that she and Bentley had saved us a few lounge chairs at the far end of the pool, so once we spotted her, we made our way over.

  “Hey,” Charlotte said, using her hand as a visor to look up at us. She wore a hot pink string bikini and huge, black movie-star sunglasses. Her red hair was in a tight bun on top of her head. “About time you got here.”

  “Sorry,” I said as I dropped my bag to the ground. “Peter was late picking up Tuck.” I kept my eyes on Ella, already sitting next to Bentley, who was lounging about four chairs down from us. Charlotte had put down towels and her beach bag on the chairs so no one else would take them. I watched as my daughter’s gaze landed on a tan, handsome blond boy sitting in an elevated lifeguard’s chair. When his eyes skimmed over the busy pool in her general direction, she threw her shoulders back and stuck out her chest. Uh-oh.

  “She was going to work,” Jake chimed in, as he spread his towel out over the chaise lounge next to me. He had on blue swim trunks and nothing else. “But we talked her out of it. Had to come check out this Carter character.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Oh yeah. He’s all I’ve heard about for the last three weeks. He’s a sophomore at Wazzu, home for the summer, and the reason our girls have been hanging out here practically seven days a week.” She nodded her head in his general direction, and Jake’s gaze landed on the boy both Bentley and Ella were currently smiling at.

  “Hmm,” Jake said. “Maybe he and I should have a talk.”

  “You should!” Charlotte said, cackling. “I could use the entertainment.”

  Jake gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and then walked over to the edge of the pool, cl
ose to where Carter was sitting. Ella and Bentley watched him get closer to their crush, looking at Jake with wide eyes—horrified, I was sure, that he might say something embarrassing about them. Jake wiggled his fingers at the girls with a mischievous grin on his face, and then proceeded to jump in the deep end, which was full of bodies trying to cool off from the early afternoon sun. When he popped up again, he waved and got Carter’s attention, saying something that made the boy frown. The girls scowled and picked up their phones—probably Snap-Chatting each other even though they were sitting right next to each other—and Jake continued to bob around in the pool.

  Charlotte and I laughed as we watched this unfold. “I fucking love your husband,” my friend said as she settled back against her lounge chair.

  “Me, too,” I said. “How are things with yours?” I kept my voice low, so our daughters wouldn’t hear.

  “Better,” Charlotte said. “His doctor referred us to a urologist, and a couples’ counselor who specializes in this kind of thing. Who knew there were such people?”

  “Dick doctors?” I said, and Charlotte laughed again.

  “We’ve been cuddling at night, though,” she said, “which has been really nice. Talking, too.”

  “And Bryan?”

  “Done,” she said. “Over with. Kaput. The end. Thankfully, he understood. He wished us the best.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. Maybe he could have a talk with Andrew, I thought, with more than a little bitterness.

  “Me, too.” Charlotte smiled. “We’re nowhere near a hundred percent yet, but I feel like we’re finally on the right track.”

  “That’s great.” I scanned the other side of the pool, my eyes landing on Tiffany and Lizzy lying next to each other. Tiffany wore a surprisingly sensible black one-piece—she was usually known for picking out bikinis that were better suited to girls our daughters’ age—and Lizzy wore a blue and white polka dotted bikini; her blond, wavy hair hung loose around her shoulders. She was thinner than her mother—which was saying a lot, since Tiffany was, at most, a size 2. I watched as Lizzy sat up, and began to roam the perimeter of the pool, and when her eyes landed on a group of teenage boys standing together by the snack bar, she headed their way. Tiffany sat up and said something to her, but Lizzy flipped her off, lazily, and kept walking.

  “Uh oh,” I said to Charlotte, nodding toward them. “Are you seeing this?”

  “What?” Charlotte asked, and then her gaze followed mine. We watched as Lizzy approached the group of boys, inserting herself into the middle of the small circle of their young and lightly muscular, tan bodies, smiling and tilting her head flirtatiously as she spoke to them. One of the boys hugged her, reaching down to grab her ass. My eyes flew back to Tiffany, who leapt from her chaise lounge, and marched over to the group. She grabbed Lizzy by her thin arm, but Lizzy yanked away, her face in a snarl er. The boys backed off and scattered, leaving Tiffany and Lizzy standing together, alone, arguing. Once again, Tiffany reached for Lizzy’s arm, but Lizzy stepped backward, out of her mother’s reach, and then ran off to the bathrooms.

  “Lacy talked with Tiffany and Ben, right?” Charlotte asked.

  “As far as I know, she talked to the parents of all the girls who had those accounts.” I wondered how Tiffany and Ben had handled the issue with their daughter. From the looks of what just happened, it hadn’t gone over well with Lizzy.

  “Did you hear about Tiffany’s mom?” Charlotte asked. “She got out of the house in the middle of the night and they had to call the police to find her. A silver alert, I guess it’s called, when someone with dementia wanders off. Tiff posted on the Neighbors app when it happened, asking everyone to keep an eye out.”

  “No!” I said. I’d been so busy with talking to Andrew, I hadn’t been paying much attention to the posts on the app. “That’s so sad. They found her, I take it?”

  “Yeah, but Tiffany decided to put her in a home so she’ll safer.” Charlotte shook her head. “Please shoot me if I start to lose my mind.”

  “That’s basically what both of our moms said.” The sun beat down on my bare shoulders, so I reached into my bag for the lotion I’d packed; I didn’t want to get burned. But after a thorough search, I couldn’t find the familiar bottle. “Shit,” I said. “I forgot sunscreen. Can I use yours?”

  “I didn’t bring any,” Charlotte said. Despite possessing a generally pale complexion, my best friend tended to tan instead of burn, something she attributed to the unknown ancestry of her father. I warned her all of the time that her blatant disregard for her skin put her at high risk for developing cancer, but she reasoned the that sun came out so little in Seattle, it wasn’t that big of a deal. As with most decisions my best friend made, it was pointless to try to convince her to change her mind.

  “Does Bentley have any?” I asked, as I leaned over and waded through the bag Jake had brought, too, but came up empty. I usually packed it for us both.

  “I doubt it,” Charlotte said. “She likes to tan, too.”

  I swung my legs over the side of the chaise, frustrated. “I swore I put in my bag,” I said. “Maybe it fell out in the car.”

  “Oh, live a little!” Charlotte said, but I ignored her. The last thing I wanted was to deal with the itchy, biting sting of a sunburn.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, and then I headed toward the exit with my car keys in hand. My trajectory took me past Tiffany, and seeing the despondent look on her face, I hesitated, and then decided to approach her. “Hey, Tiff,” I said.

  She looked at me with tears in her blue eyes. “Hi!” she said, with a forced smile. She wiped her cheeks with the tips of her fingers. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Are you okay?” I asked, ignoring her attempt at small talk.

  “I’m fine,” she said, blinking fast. “Is Ella here, too? Maybe she and Lizzy can hang out.”

  Ella and Lizzy were not friends, but I smiled and nodded. “Sure.”

  Tiffany put her hand over her eyes, looking in the direction of the snack bar. “I think she went to get an ice cream.”

  “I saw you guys arguing,” I ventured. “After that boy grabbed her.”

  “Oh, that was nothing,” Tiffany said. “They were messing around.” But her eyes told a different story. Clearly, she was aware of what Lizzy was doing, and had no idea how to handle it. I couldn’t imagine that Ben would be of much help when it came to something like that. He was an affable guy, but as Jake had pointed out, I couldn’t remember him ever doing anything parental with their kids.

  Deciding to take a chance, I reached out and put my hand on her forearm. Her skin was warm, and felt paper-thin. “You can always talk to me, if you need to, Tiff. Teenagers can be hard to deal with.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’m fine,” Tiffany said.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your mom, too.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and her shiny façade finally cracked. I noticed the dark circles under her eyes, and the fan of crow’s feet at the corner of her blue eyes. She clearly hadn’t been getting enough sleep. “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.”

  “I can only imagine. I’m around, if you need a shoulder, okay? I mean it. Call or text me, anytime.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll talk with you later.”

  She nodded again, and I quickly made my way to our car. But as I approached, I noticed a small piece of paper under the driver’s side windshield wiper. I grabbed it, unfolding it with a sense of dread.

  “I miss you already,” the note said, and I had no doubt who it was from. My body went rigid, and I swiftly glanced around the lot, wondering how the hell Andrew knew that we were here. I didn’t know what kind of car he drove, and it didn’t make sense to walk around looking for him, but I did, anyway. He was nowhere to be found.

  I felt sick as I crumpled up the note and tossed it in a garbage can near my car. I popped open the trunk and sure enough, the spray ca
n of sunscreen was in the corner. I grabbed it, locked the car, and looked around again to see if Andrew was watching me. He must have followed us here, and the thought of that instantly made me want to call the police and report him as a stalker. But what would I say? That I’d fucked this man a few times while keeping the full truth about my interactions with him from my husband, and now he’d left a note on my car? It wasn’t like he wasn’t making overt threats toward me or my family. They’d probably laugh me out of the station.

  On my walk back to the pool, I thought about how Andrew had insisted, the day he first called me at my office, that he wasn’t a stalker, and I felt ill. Don’t the things that we joke about tend to possess slivers of truth? I found myself wondering if it was a coincidence that he had found me on Facebook, or if he had set out, purposefully, to track me down after our first meeting. With his technical prowess, he may have been able to snoop through public records to find my divorce from Peter and subsequent remarriage to Jake. He’d pretended not to recognize me when we met for coffee—what else could he have lied about?

  I considered going to confront him, but decided that giving him the attention he craved would only encourage his behavior. Better to ignore him, hope he’d get the message, and that eventually, like a child throwing a tantrum, he’d realize what he was doing wasn’t working and stop.

  And so, despite feeling a wobbly sense of apprehension, I plastered a smile on my face as I rejoined Jake and Charlotte at the side of the pool. “Found it!” I said, with mock cheerfulness, holding up the sunscreen like an Olympic medal. I looked over at Ella and Bentley, who were slathering their young skin with coconut oil, making it glisten in the sun.

  “Hand it over, woman,” Jake said. He held out his hand, and I dropped the spray can into it, feeling my jaw tremble. He gave me a concerned look. “You okay?”