by Tempest Phan
“You’re staring.” His voice was deep and soft, teasing.
“No, I’m just reacquainting myself with you!” I blushed. “You’ve changed a bit.”
“I have now, have I.” He reached over to the center console, his eyes straight on the road. I looked down and saw an open bag of gummy bears. He popped a couple into his mouth. “Want some?”
I laughed, bringing his bright eyes back to me. “Never mind. You haven’t changed a bit. You used to eat those by the shovelful!”
He just smiled, the rings on his lips catching the light as we drove by a street lamp. “When did you get all those piercings?”
“Three years ago.”
I glanced at the strong left hand on the steering wheel. A tattoo of black and grey wilted roses peeked out from under his sleeve, curling over his hand, dying onto his fingers, making me wonder just how much more ink he had.
“And the tats? Aren’t you supposed to be eighteen for that?”
“Same. I was fourteen when I got my first one. In SoCal, I met a really cool artist, and we became friends. His name was Saint Valo. I think he was a prospect in some MC. He certainly broke the law left and right like he was. Tattooing a teen was the least of it. Anyways, we started to hang out. He needed to practice. I was more than happy to oblige.”
“Wow! That was practice?” I stared at his hand again. The line work, shading, all the details were amazingly done. This Saint guy was really talented. But I wasn’t so sure about my Dame hanging out with a dude who broke the law left and right.
“Yeah. We got in quite a bit of work over the last three years before he moved to Northern Cali a few months ago. And here I am.”
He pulled in front of the Mack’s Drive Thru. “You like?” He teased.
“I love,” I replied in all sincerity.
Something I couldn’t quite capture fleeted across his face. He turned away, his tongue playing with his spider bites.
I continued to stare at him. Under the bright lights of the drive thru, his skin nearly glowed. He had the kind of complexion only obtained via camera filters. Vampire skin. It was smooth and poreless and pale and perfect, with a soft translucence and clarity that seemed out of place on a teenage boy.
Damien sighed, snapping me out of my silent contemplation. I turned to what had captured his attention. A mish mash of football players and cheerleaders from my high school were clustered at the walk-up window. I looked back to Damien. His mouth was set in a thin line as we got out of the car and made our way over. They turned to look at us.
“Mira!”
“Hi guys.”
“You gonna introduce us?” This from Rachel Hopkins, a Gigi Hadid look-alike, who oozed sex. In fact, I realized with disgust, there wasn’t a single girl in that place who wasn’t salivating over Damien. Who could blame them?
“Watch the drooling, Rach.”
She rolled her eyes and punched me in the shoulder in response.
I shrugged. “But yeah, some of you may remember Damien Mortensen—”
“Ah, right. His mom used to clean my house, no?” Sean Connor smirked. I felt a violent urge to slap it off his face.
“Correct.” Dame’s tone, ever so soft, was as dry as sandpaper.
“You’re such an asshole, Sean,” I gritted through my teeth, while he just smiled his fake smile at me.
“Come on. Stop being a prick.” This from another football player, fist extended toward Damien. “Welcome back, dude.”
“Thanks, man,” Damien said as he fist-bumped him.
“You guys wanna join us?” Rachel said, a hopeful lilt to her voice.
I glanced at Damien. While his face gave nothing away, I sensed that this wasn’t his thing. And, having just found him again, I, too, was reluctant to share him so soon.
“It’s ok guys, we have plans,” I jumped in and grabbed his hand as I turned to the register.
“Hey Mira. Where’s Jon?”
I turned to look at Sean who had a malicious gleam in his eyes. Another reason why I’d never cared much for my boyfriend’s asshat best bud.
“I’m not his keeper. That’s your job.” I went back to ordering.
“I dunno. Since he’s your boyfriend, I think he would like to know where you are headed to.”
I looked him in the eye. “Feel free to enlighten him. And while you’re at it, be sure to let him know I also told you to fuck off.”
Dame’s lips quirked up in a little smile.
“You know it.” Sean swaggered off.
I quickly finished ordering a couple burgers to go—a veggie one for me—and walked away as I waved goodbye to my “friends.” “Anyways, Dame, did you get your class schedule yet? I hope we’ll have classes together when school starts next week.”
He nodded slowly as we approached his car. “Yeah, I suppose I have some math, some English. Some science. The ushe. Haven’t really had a chance to look at the stuff too closely.”
I let out a small breath as I opened the door. How freeing it must be not to have the generational weight of academic expectations placed on you. Once safe in his car, Dame drove us off.
“Jon?” His eyes were pinned to the road.
“My boyfriend.” I cleared my throat. “A good guy.” Why did I feel the need to explain?
“He better be. Lucky guy.” Dame turned his face away from the road for a second to bestow his gorgeous smile on me. “Here we are,” he said as he pulled to a stop. We were at Pine Lake, the place of many of our childhood antics.
I opened the burger wrapper, leaving it on my lap as I took off the top bun and started to eat it.
Damien laughed, a loud, deep, full-throated sound, so at odds with his voice of whispers. “You haven’t changed a bit either. I never met anyone else in my life who deconstructs her burgers the way you do!”
I shrugged. “Small mouth. Fits better. Less messy.”
He gave me an odd look.
***
He drove me home and walked me up the stone steps to the imposing dark oak double doors. I hadn’t quite realized before how grandiose my house was. But as I stood outside the grey stone mansion, taking in the topiary plants in their imported Greek urns, next to Dame in his worn, black clothing, his beat-up car just at the end of my circular driveway, I felt ashamed at the sheer ostentation, the overwhelming pretension in front of me.
I was about to say something, but before I could get a word out or open the doors, my dad appeared, his face tight but beyond that, inscrutable.
“Finally.” His voice boomed out into the night.
I glanced down at my phone. It was near midnight. I’d hear all about that soon.
Before I could open my mouth to respond, Dame whispered, “I’m very sorry, Mr. Davenport. It’s my fault. I wasn’t paying attention to the time.”
My dad’s eyes were steel, a formidable, unyielding stare that had brought hardened men to their knees in court. But Damien just looked back at him, seemingly unaffected.
“Speak up. I can’t hear you.”
A lie, I knew. Dame’s voice was soft, but clear. He’d heard. Nonetheless, Damien smiled a tight smile, and repeated, “My fault, Mr. Davenport. I’m sorry.”
My father didn’t deign respond, just spun around and left us standing there. I turned to Damien and hugged him goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And thank you for tonight. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun in my life.”
“Same,” he responded. He glanced back toward the wide open french doors leading into our white marble-tiled foyer. “He seemed very angry, Bella. Will you be ok?”
My heart sputtered at the care in all of his words. This is what safety and love felt like, and their presence now only highlighted their absence in my life up to that point, up to the moment my best friend had walked through my front doors.
But, my father inflicted cutting pain through well-placed words, never fists.
“Yes,” I said softly, smiling before turning away. I heard the engine of his car, the s
ound of him driving away. Once inside, I looked around and didn’t see my dad. Thank God. I rushed up the double staircase to my room, hoping to avoid him altogether tonight.
***
Damien
She was lovelier than I could ever have imagined. As kids, I’d adored her, her spirit, her generosity, her big heart. It had never occurred to me that she was pretty. I guess kids don’t think in those terms. But tonight, I hadn’t seen her with a child’s eyes. We’d both grown up, and she was now devastating in her beauty, the kind that snuck up on you, like an adagio, and sucker punched you when the notes hit a crescendo. Not obvious, and so you never saw it coming.
She had a delicate, fine-boned face, with slightly slanted hazel eyes whose depths gave away her intelligence and mixed heritage, and long, straight black hair, so striking and foreign against the rich creaminess of her translucent porcelain skin. She’d stayed small, tiny even, a good head and a half shorter than me. I could probably lift her with the amount of effort it would take me to pick up a book. And in spite of how petite she was, she stood strong.
But it was the warmth she radiated, her appealing weirdness as she’d dug into her veggie burger, the gentle enthusiasm wrapped within an air of intrepidity. It took me back to one of her earliest and most defining moments of kindness toward me. We were seven and in her playroom while my mom was cleaning her house. My stomach had growled, forcing me to admit to having gone to bed hungry the night before. She’d knitted her little brows and cocked her head, looking so confused. But she hadn’t asked any questions. Instead, she’d grabbed my hand and led me to her kitchen, only to be intercepted by my mom who’d taken me home. At my next visit, Bella had pretended to find an entire box of cookies in her backpack, which she’d immediately stuffed into mine. After that, she’d always had an extra snack on her, acting like it hadn’t been planned, sparing me any embarrassment. This was one of my earliest encounters with Bella and her huge heart, and I’d kept that bittersweet memory close in the last five difficult years. It still made my heart ache to think of it.
She truly hadn’t changed at all.
Of course, she would have a boyfriend. A catch like her.
I pulled in front of my “new” home, a run-down rambler. As I unlocked the front door and walked through, I heard my mother calling out to me from the living room where she’d been sitting in the dark. Her slight body was tucked against one end of our ancient, shapeless couch, a couch in a chartreuse color Emily had called “puke green.” That used to make me laugh but now it only made me ill.
“Where were you, boy?”
I turned on the light. She cringed and closed her eyes as the light glared.
I turned it off. “Driving around.”
“You should have been here helping me with all of these boxes. Ungrateful bastard.”
I eyed the three boxes stacked neatly against the faded, chipping living room wall. Of the dozen we’d brought with us, these were the only ones left. She’d conveniently forgotten that I had spent the better part of the week moving us in and unpacking, without much help from her, given her condition.
And yet, I only responded, “I’m sorry, Mama—”
“Not as sorry as I am! Why did it have to be her, and not you!”
When she was in one of her moods, it was useless. I spun around and walked to my room, ignoring the insults she continued to hurl at me.
Once inside the safety of my bedroom, I closed and locked the door before leaning against it, a familiar despair taking over me. If your own mom wished you dead, how could you be deserving of any love? When the darkness took hold of me, it felt like I was buried under a hundred pounds of rocks, fighting for breath. The dark voices in my head, hating, accusing, telling me I’d failed, would fail anyone who ever got close to me, just like I’d failed her, failed her in the most horrifying way possible.
Emily.
As always, I tried to drown the whispers with loud music. I grabbed my headphones and started blasting old Cure songs, one of the many bands I’d listen to as a kid with my dad. Music was the only language he’d ever spoken with me. I picked up his well-loved acoustic guitar and plucked softly along, not too loudly or there would be hell to pay with my mom.
Suddenly, I felt my phone vibrate. I took it out of my pocket.
Goodnight, Dame! Sleep tight… Don’t let the bedbugs bite!
Bella. I smiled in spite of myself. She was like a lifeline in this storm.
ME:
'Night, Bella.
I put my phone away and closed my eyes.
***
I awoke and cautiously made my way to the kitchen. My mom was flipping pancakes, humming to herself. She was still dressed in her faded blue dressing gown, and large, tan slippers seemed to swallow her feet whole, the way I sometimes felt the ground swallow me.
“Ah, here you are, baby boy.” She smoothed my hair off my brow, a losing proposition as the long bangs just fell over my eyes again. She gently caressed my cheek with her fingers, fingers made frail by years of being soaked in bleach, of scrubbing floors.
My heart broke all over again. Living with her was a nightmare, made so much more so by these moments of clarity—few and far between—that gave me a glimpse of the gentle, loving mom she could have been. It made it harder to truly hate her, to walk away and let her wallow in her misery, her sickness, because I knew that deep down there was still goodness. She wasn’t just her illness.
“I’ve made you pancakes, my boy,” she said. “Here!” She plopped a full plate at one end of the table, motioning for me to sit and eat. She rarely ever cooked, but when she did, it was the language of love in this dark home.
I walked over and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Thanks,” I said and pulled out a chair.
“We will be ok, Damien. We will start over, just you and me. We will be ok. It wasn’t your fault.”
I looked at her, my heart bleeding. “Yes, we will be ok, Mama.” But it had been my fault. All of it.
Bella
When I opened my eyes, it took me a minute to remember all that had transpired the night before. And then it came rushing back. Damien. My Damien James. Suddenly, my life seemed brighter, somehow, just because he was back in it. I stretched and looked at the floor-to-ceiling window that opened onto my bedroom balcony. Soft rays of light were already streaming through the sheer cream drapes, making the sunny yellow of my walls seem even brighter. It would be another beautiful day.
I ran to my bathroom to wash my face and headed downstairs for breakfast. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with my dad. By now, he would already have left for the office. He was a founding partner at one of the most significant law firms on the West Coast and owned everything in our fucking gilded town just thirty miles east of Seattle. I rarely saw him as he was often jetting to and from this office and the ones in Portland and Los Angeles. I knew he had his heart set on Northern Cali and the East Coast as well. A matter of time, really, which meant that I would likely see even less and less of him.
“Mirabella.”
My dad’s voice caught me by surprise as I skipped into the kitchen toward the breakfast “nook.” Nothing in our gargantuan home could be called a nook without irony, given the sheer size of each room. The nook had a built-in wooden table painted a distressed grey with red cushioned benches. It had been my mother’s idea to have a homey, unpretentious diner-style booth in her luxurious mansion. Or so said Lynda, my dad’s personal assistant and the closest thing I’d had to a maternal figure these last few years. My mom had long faded into a dream, only a soft, ephemeral memory of warmth and hugs and lullabies sung in a foreign tongue.
I slid into the booth, pulled in my legs to cradle them against me, and looked at my dad. He stood behind the island dressed in a slim black suit. He looked impeccable and imposing, as always. He was perfectly coiffed. His hair was smoothed back, that dark brown hair that had gone grey at the temples the day my mom had died after her short and catastrophic battle with cancer. All the mo
ney in the world, which he’d had and some, hadn’t been enough, in the end.
I sometimes thought about that, how someone who’d been able to mold and shape every single outcome in his life hadn’t been able to control that one, the most important one of all.
“Daddy! What are you doing here? I thought you were leaving for L.A.” I accepted the mug of coffee he handed me.
“I delayed my trip. I’m going to catch an afternoon flight instead.”
“Oh. I thought you had a pretty big case to deal with—”
“I do. I wanted to talk to you about your behavior yesterday.”
I looked up from my mug cautiously and started to chew on my bottom lip. Aside from his clipped tone, which really was not at all unusual, I couldn’t tell just how upset he was. My dad was a master at keeping his cool and hiding any clue that he might have emotions at all. Or did he? Regardless, these qualities made him the poster boy for Lawyer of the Year. Father of the Year on the other hand? Well, you win some, you lose some.
“I’d prefer you not associate with that boy. I’d prefer that you not disappear like that. Especially with that boy. I have a lot going on right now, and I would prefer not to have to worry about you.”
Oh yes. In spite of his even tone, he was clearly pissed at me for keeping him from the more important shit he had to deal with. Nothing new there.
“That boy has a name,” I whispered, surprised that I’d found the courage to talk back at all.
“What did you say?” He turned his light blue eyes to me, a hard edge to his lips.
I cleared my throat and said a bit more loudly, heart thumping, “The boy. He’s got a name. Damien. In case you forgot.”
He slammed his mug down on the island. “I did not forget, unfortunately. I wish you had. Mira, I repeat, you are not to associate with him.”
“We’re just friends, Daddy. And why? Is it because of the way he looks?”