Lost Years

by MK Schiller

  She grew quiet. “Mr. Castings came to the diner today to ask if I’d say a few words at the memorial. They are spreading Tommy’s ashes tomorrow at the beach after church services. I have no idea what I’m going to say. I can’t take all the things he meant to me and put them in a few sentences. I don’t want to screw this up.”

  “Don’t make it so big, then.”

  “But he was big. He was the best person I knew.”

  “Just tell a story about him to show that. Make it something personal between the both of you.”

  She looked at me. “That’s more manageable. Thanks.”

  “Sure. Do you want to meet up after?”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m going to be a wreck most of the day.”

  “Would you like me to come with you?”

  “We just met. I can’t ask you—”

  “You didn’t. I offered.”

  “I’m not going to burden you. Some things are so heavy, they make you forget how to float. I want to float with you.”

  As much as she wanted to float, I had the feeling she also needed me there. My heart ached for Scarlett, my brave, proud girl.

  “Are we not friends?” I asked. “Isn’t that the basis for every good relationship?”

  “Yes, we are but—”

  I placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face to meet mine. “Then lean on me. I can’t take this weight from you, but I can lighten the load. Maybe I can help you remember how to float again?”

  She blinked her eyes. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want you there.”

  I hooked my pinkie around hers. “Then I’ll be there.”

  She exhaled a long breath. “Thank you.”

  We were quiet for some time while I polished off my second helping. “How did you learn how to cook like this?”

  “Some I picked up on my own through trial and error.” She glanced at the kitchen. “A lot of error. But your aunt taught me some, too. She doesn’t trust boys in the kitchen, except for Bob.”

  I almost licked the sauce off my plate. “This is so good. It’s like I’ve craved this food all my life and never known it.”

  “Well, you certainly ate enough to make up for it.” She took a long swallow of her milk. “I’m glad you like my cooking.”

  I patted my stomach. “I am going to get so fat living here.”

  “A fat man is a sign of a good woman. At least that’s what my grandma used to say.” She started clearing our plates.

  Then I’d be huge. “What’s the first thing you ever made?”

  She tapped her lips in thought. “Probably a boiled egg. Nothing creative.”

  “What’s the first big thing? The first creative thing you made?”

  She crooked her head on her palm. “Apple pancakes.”

  “I bet they were delicious.”

  She laughed, waving her hand in dismissal. “You’d lose that bet. I’ve learned since then not to mess with recipes. At least not the first time I make something. I added more apples, and they didn’t cook all the way. Lucky for me no one ate them. They’d probably have ended up in the ER.” A shadow fell across her face, just for a second, a small flicker muting the brightness of her smile.

  “Why was there no one to eat them?”

  She shook her head. “No one was around. It was just as well. I should clean up.” She began clearing our plates.

  Standing, I took the dishes out of her hands. “I got this. You relax. You made dinner.”

  “We’re not done yet. You saved room for dessert, right?”

  “I’m not a dessert person.”

  “Oh no, you have to have my dessert, and don’t look at me like that. I’m being literal, not sexual.”

  I rinsed the dishes. She placed a frosted cupcake in the middle of a plate centered on the table. “This is a pineapple upside down cupcake with cream cheese frosting and topped with shredded coconut. It’s decadent, sweet, and sinful. Just like you. It’s the best thing I make.”

  “Then why aren’t you having one?”

  “I can’t eat just one. Why don’t we share? Or you could taste it and then describe it to me.”

  “You want to live vicariously through me?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do. I made these for church tomorrow.”

  She broke off a corner, full of frosting, and popped it into my mouth. I chewed slowly. “The church is lucky.”

  “Close your eyes and tell me what you taste,” she whispered.

  I complied. “It’s delicious.” She fed me more. “I like it.”

  “You can do better than that. C’mon, fuck me with words right now.”

  I smiled. She traced the smile with her fingertips. “It’s melting in my mouth. Moist and rich. Tongue-tantalizing indulgence.” She nibbled on my ears and kissed my neck. “Luscious.”

  I opened my eyes. “Your turn.”

  I broke off a piece and fed her, letting her mouth capture my fingers. She closed her eyes, moving her mouth slowly. “Yummy.”

  “Weak. These cupcakes deserve more than that.” I moved her hair to the side and kissed her shoulder. “Lip-smacking good.” She opened her eyes, brushing her lips against mine, barely touching. “Creamy satisfaction.”

  Fuck.

  Food and foreplay had to be the headiest combination. We kissed, succumbing to the tension between us. Her lips tasted like fresh green grapes today. I planned to have my fill.

  “Will you sing me a song?” I asked.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I love your voice.”

  She leaned back against my chest. “What do you want to hear?”

  “You pick.”

  Her voice was soft, almost tentative. I didn’t recognize the song at first. Then it came to me in a flash, along with all the words and the cadence, as if I’d heard it a million times before.

  “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  She turned toward me and kissed me. I pulled her closer. The softness of her body and her weight seemed a perfect fit. We were like two lost puzzle pieces.

  “Want to take a bath with me?” she asked.

  Was that a rhetorical question? “Hell, yes.”

  I scooped her up in my arms and carried her toward the bathroom. She ran the water and checked the temp a few times. As it filled, she rummaged through the bathroom drawer. Occasionally, she’d find a dark-colored bottle or what looked like bright pink confetti. She measured these items out in her palm and throw them into the warm water.

  When she was done, I had no idea what was in the bathtub, but the water smelled like a garden and had bubbles for miles. She sets her phone to a Maroon 5 playlist. I normally would not be too excited about bathing in a garden and smelling like roses, or listening to Maroon 5, for that matter. But when Scarlett’s dress fell to the floor and she slid into the tub, I forgot all about that. I got rid of my clothes in two seconds.

  She moved up to let me in. The water came dangerously close to the edge with my mass but stopped just short of going over. She leaned back against me.

  Closing my eyes, I tried to relax. I still had a million questions for her, but those could wait. They needed to. I could not afford to blow this.

  “Why did you come here?” she asked me. “You’ve never been to the island, right?”

  For you, I thought.

  “I wanted to visit Rose.”

  “What is your life like in New York?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one with questions.

  She leaned forward and grabbed a bottle of shampoo. I took it from her.

  “Let me.”

  After filling the plastic cup in the tub with warm water, I wet her hair.

  “It’s not great. My life.”

  “Really? I figured it’s full of parties and deciding where to summer.” Her voice took on a weird New England accent when she said summer.

  “Who do you think I am? Gatsby?”

  She laughed and splash water back at me. “You’re more Gyllenha
al than DiCaprio, but I can see it.”

  I curled a strand of her hair over my finger. “There isn’t anything that compares to this moment.”

  “Take a bath? You have low expectations.”

  “Well, it is a bubble bath.” I kissed her shoulder. “It’s true.”

  But she didn’t seem shocked or surprised. She just leaned back as I ran my fingers through her strawberry strands. I washed her hair and confessed my sins. They rinsed away, purified with her presence.

  “Tell me more about your life.”

  I nuzzled her neck. “It’s not very good.”

  “Good is overrated, especially when compared to truth.”

  “Okay, then. I was a very destructive person, Scarlett. I drank too much. I slept with many women…some of them married. The justification I got them off, doing what their husbands couldn’t, was really fucked up, but that’s how I thought. I’ve also had my fair share of fights.”

  “Why?”

  “It was a distraction. I looked for things to dull me. You are wrong. I am not a good man. I want you to know all of me…even the ugly, especially those parts.”

  “There is nothing weak or ugly about you. You think there is evil in here?” she asked, holding a hand over my heart. “I only see a tenderness, a need to protect, a sweet boy, and a fierce friend, the kind any person is lucky to find.”

  I took her hand and kissed her fingertips. Adam Levine sang about driving for miles and miles to put a smile on a girl’s face. I get it, Adam, I really do.

  She’d let me lean on her and lifted some of my weight. I’d never felt so light in my life as I did when she spoke those words.

  She told me her fears then. “I have a lot of friends and some family here. But no matter how many people I have around me, I’ve always felt lonely. I wanted to go to Nashville not really to live a dream, like I told you, but so I could find something to fill me up. I’ve never known what that’s like, but I do know I’ve never been whole. Am I making any sense?”

  “Yes, you are.”

  She shivered. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a chill.”

  “Yeah. Bath time is done.”

  We toweled off. She yawned, her eyes half-lidded. I wrapped a towel around my waist then wrapped her up in another towel and carried her to the bedroom.

  I tucked her in the covers and kissed her forehead.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Shh, go to sleep. I’ll straighten up and be in soon.”

  “I’ll help,” she murmured, rising and pulling off the covers.

  “You cooked. I can do this.”

  She traced the black band circling my upper left arm. “You know what’s weird?”

  “What?”

  “Russ has the same tattoo in the same spot.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I was going to bring it up the other night, but…well, it seemed weird.”

  “Well, that was the right call. I appreciate you not bringing up another man’s body when we were together.”

  Her laugh turned into a yawn again. I kissed her. “Go to sleep, baby. Sweet dreams.” I wanted to figure out what it meant that Russ and I had the same tattoo. He was no fan of mine and no way I could even ask him. I didn’t have this tat in the dreams, but then again, I didn’t get it until a few months ago. In the middle of a snowstorm on a cold February night, half-wasted, I walked out of an underground rave and straight into a tat shop.

  Not even bothering with the posters on the wall or huge books of samples, I told the man in simple detail I wanted him to ink a thick black band circling my upper left arm. He sent me away, saying he didn’t give tats to drunks.

  I went to the coffee shop around the corner, drank my weight in beans, and returned a few hours later. Satisfied with my determination, the artist agreed.

  “I’ve never had anyone come back like this,” he said.

  “I’ve never been so sure of a tattoo before,” I answered.

  Weird night, even for me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sitting at the table in Scarlett’s small kitchen, I reflected on the past few days.

  The cat curled around my leg.

  “You’re starting to like me, aren’t you, boy?” I stroked his fur. He hissed and darted away. “Yeah, whatever. I’m not a fan of yours, either.”

  Despite everything I’d learned, the questions only grew more frequent and urgent. The kid in the dreams looked like me and had my name, but it wasn’t me, even though I recognized parts of me in him. If it was another dimension, what happened to us that caused me to dream of her?

  If the dreams were trying to tell me something, I had no idea. Maybe I was just supposed to find her. But why didn’t they stop once I got here? Why did they keep coming, with greater frequency and detail than ever before? In fact, I knew things that weren’t in any of the dreams—odd, little things I’d picked up for no apparent reason.

  I tapped a finger against a deep scorch mark on the laminate table. Scarlett had placed a hot pot on it. I had a memory of that, even though I was positive I’d never dreamed it.

  I ducked my head beneath the table. Sure enough, there were plastic lids stacked under one of its legs to keep it steady. I knew they would be there. It was familiar to me, as were the rickety, mismatched chairs and the painting of the ocean.

  Memories of Scarlett flooded my mind every second as if my conscious and subconscious were fusing. We did our homework together at this table. We’d played board games and Xbox sitting on the shag carpeting in the living room. Staring at the kitchen window, I remembered an epic water balloon fight in the backyard. Once when we played tag, I accidentally punctured the screen door. On a chilly day in March, she’d bandaged my skinned knee when I wiped out on my skateboard.

  Then there was one special day when things shifted for us. The day we became an “us.” The memory came to me with such clarity I might have been reliving it. It all started with apple pancakes.

  She had mixing bowls and recipe books out. She shook her hips to Brantley Gilbert’s “You Don’t Know Her Like I Do.” Yeah, that song made so much sense like it was meant for me to hear it. It clearly catalogued all the stuff about Scarlett I couldn’t articulate.

  She almost dropped the bowl when she turned around. “Jesus Flynn, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “No, um…”

  “Did you just walk in?”

  “The door was open.”

  “I could have been naked.”

  Yeah, bad timing on my part. I shoved my hands in my pocket, humiliated and turned on by the raunchy thought.

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s up?”

  I shrugged, forgetting why I’d come. “I’m going into the city. Want to tag along?”

  “Why are you going into town on a Sunday?”

  “Anna wanted me to get Aunt Rose some stuff. You know, on account of today.”

  “You’re getting Rose a Mother’s Day present?”

  “Yeah, Anna’s been hounding me about it all week.”

  “And you waited till the last minute?”

  “The last minute still means I got a good minute left. So, you up for it? Ferry ride’s on me.”

  “I can’t.” She gestured to the kitchen. “I’m making my mom brunch.”

  When I arrived, the driveway was empty. “Where is Janice?”

  Scarlett whipped the mixture in the bowl with more intensity. “With Frank, but she’s taking the afternoon ferry back.” Her fingers tightened around the bowl. She fought the urge to set it down and plant a few braids in her hair.

  My jaw tightened at the mention of his name. I didn’t like him. That’s wrong…I hated him. “Forget that. Come with me. We can go to Starbucks. Tommy and Russell are doing stuff with their moms today anyway.”

  “So?”

  “We should hang out. You and I are the same, right?”

  “What does that mean?”

  I sighed, not wanting to hash out
the explanation. “You know, Scarlett.”

  She slapped a dishtowel against the counter. “Damn it, Flynn, she is coming. She promised me. We planned a whole girl’s day.”

  I held up my hands. “Don’t freak out. I’m just saying.”

  “It’s fine,” she said in a way that made it sound the very opposite of fine.

  “What exactly is a girl’s day?” I asked, wanting to change the subject. I groaned as a new excitement entered her eyes.

  “We’re going to eat brunch, do facials, and paint each other’s nails and watch Princess Diaries.”

  My feet shifted back and forth. “Sounds fun.”

  “You think so?”

  I faked a yawn. “Nope, just trying to be polite.”

  Scraping my nails against a chalkboard sounded better.

  “Well, it’s a perfect Sunday for me.”

  “I’ll catch you later, Jones.” I headed toward the door.

  “Hey, wait up. Can you do me a favor? Get me a bag of chocolate chips while you’re in town?”

  “You plan on baking me some cookies with those chips?”

  “They’re for the pancakes.”

  “I like pancakes, too.”

  “Funny. Look, if you fetch me two bags, I might find the kindness to make you a dozen cookies.”

  I narrowed my eyes, jutting my chin at her. “Guarantee the kindness, girl.”

  “I guarantee it. Please hurry. I want them before she gets here.” She all but pushed me out the door.

  “Hey, quit it. I’m going.”

  I did rush, pedaling my bike as fast as I could. I searched the ferry both ways for Scarlett’s mom, but she was nowhere. “Did you see my mom?” Scarlett asked when I came back. She looked so hopeful I almost lied to her. I counted three more braids since I’d left.

  “No.”

  “Oh, okay. I’m sure she’ll be on the next ferry.”

  My gaze wandered the room. She’d spruced up the place with flowers and a painting of a beach that looked pretty close to Serenity Beach.

  “What’s this?”

  “Mother’s Day present.”

  “Nice.”

  “Maybe I should wrap it. She might not want it in that spot.”

  “It’s a good spot.”

  “Okay.”