I woke up in silence. I breathed. I waited for Saturday to begin. For the routine to begin.
He left early. Rolled out of bed and showered, groomed, dressed. He was so quiet I thought I dreamed it in that half space between awake and sleeping. He was gentle when he kissed me goodbye. A kiss on my lips that reminded me, in an instant, that morning breath, crust on my face, satin cap askew, I was desirable. I was desired.
He fed the baby. Changed her. Gave her words and hushed laughter and an admonishment not to “wake Mommy up.” Olivia was back in her crib, and he was gone.
Every other Saturday when he left to see Tseday and exchange lunch boxes like children on the playground that wanted to be friends but didn’t dare to hope, I laid in the bed for as long as possible with my eyes screwed tight and my hand over my mouth. I didn’t want even the air to move. Let her stay asleep for as long as possible.
Not that morning. I got out of the bed that morning. I picked her up. I held her. I filled her baby bath. I didn’t hum. I thought about it. I almost did it. Mouth open, lungs full of air, head full of melody. Instead I sang the last song Cahir and I cooked to. Sang it over and over and over again until my feet wanted to move. I played it. She bounced in my arms. So I danced.
I had to refill the tub, but that was okay. The way my hand shook was okay too. Shakes happened when you went slow. And I was. Slow to rub the little cloth over baby soft skin. Slow with shampoo on hair that filled in quickly, darkened, lengthened. Slow to rinse. Slow when I sang. Slow when I smiled.
She was fast when she smiled back. My tears were fast when they tracked down my cheeks.
I dried her. Dressed her. She fell asleep, and I thanked the ancestors. Too much. Too much. Too much to hold.
I got into bed and drifted back to sleep. I was tired of tired. Tired of sleep.
Cahir came home. I heard his clothes when they fell to the floor. Jeans and a belt that wasn’t freed from his pants. A t-shirt. I had to concentrate to hear that one. Socks. Boxers. I heard those. Oh, I heard those.
His arms were around me. His smile was pressed into my neck. I didn’t have a smile to give back to him. I was so tired of tired. But I was glad he was there. Glad his arms were what I remembered. Glad he didn’t ask if I was okay as I could remember what okay was.
“Tseday asked if she could see Olivia. Have a relationship with her.” There was no smile pressing into me.
His arms were tight. I couldn’t turn. Couldn’t see him. How could I give him the anger that bubbled up in me and wanted to ooze out of my mouth like sludge if I couldn’t look him in the eye?
“I don’t want to do it,” he said. “I told her no. It wasn’t a decision for me to make on my own though so…”
“I can’t.” I couldn’t sound like I had my shit together when I said it either. “I can’t give her you and the baby and-”
“I thought so.” He kissed my shoulder. “I thought so.”
I knew he said everything was okay. I willed my body to believe him. To stop my heart from racing and the blood draining from my feet so fast it left a tingling sensation that was offset only by the pounding in my ears and the tightness in my back and thighs.
“We won’t do it.” His kisses trailed over my ears, my neck, my shoulders. His fingers pushed the muscles of my thighs until they relaxed. Until the only ragged things about me were my breathing and my tears.
“I’m sorry.” I choked on it. Forced it out. I couldn’t watch Olivia drown. “I can’t fix it. There’s something wrong with me.”
“No. There isn’t. There’s something wrong with us. Can we talk about it?”
Chapter Ten
Cahir
Her tears stopped. Just like that. And she was still. She was there. The Cash I fell in love with carried an energy with her. Playful, frenetic, barely contained anger, curiosity, impatience, love, loyalty, and a desire to compete with herself first because she didn’t believe anyone else could really keep up, defiance. I didn’t notice the absence of that energy until she went still. I didn’t realize how much I missed her.
“I think I know what’s happening, Cash. I think. But can you tell me?”
There were the tears again. The shaking.
“I love you. I’m going to tell you what I think. And then I’m going to tell you I’m not leaving.”
She hiccuped.
I loved her. “I think it’s not about the baby. I think it’s us and I think it’s us because of me. And I think you don’t want to-Why do you think I’ll leave you?”
I had to let her go when she curled into the fetal position. I had to fill my fists with our sheets and feel the helplessness that comes with having a solution and knowing it isn’t going to be right. Not if you offer it.
“I love her,” she said when the tears stopped. Her body still shook. “I do. I want to be there. I had this…There was a moment in the hospital-She’s never going to look like me.”
I thought about touching her. Just a hand down her back. A kiss dropped on all that hair. But I remembered what it was to be touched when it felt like everything inside of me had finally broken. Fist. Sheets. Slippery because of the sweat. The effort.
“It’s not important. I know I should know that. But it was just-every time I look at her it’s like I remember that night. I’m in the elevator again. I just want to get past it. I want-But then I feel like I’ll never get past it. Like everything I do with you is just some kind of karmic payback for being with Kevin. Cause I kind of knew he was married. Or at least that something wasn’t right.” She shuddered when she breathed. So still I almost worried. I almost reached for her. “I thought Kevin would be over. I ended it. I did the right thing eventually. I thought I was right because I got you. And then you did that. You lied to me too. Hid from me too. And I realized no, no. The cycle is going to continue.”
I knew about that. The guilt that you didn’t deserve what you had. It came to me every time my parents forgave me when I was a child. Came back when I got Cash. Receded when she left. It was almost…soothing. To know that I was finally going to pay for all my mistakes. To know that the inevitable had finally happened. I didn’t have to worry. I didn’t have to tread lightly anymore. The bottom had fallen out. I could do it. I could prove I deserved Cash. I could prove I deserved the future I made for myself.
Except…
“I can’t-I can’t make you tell me the truth. I can’t make you treat me like a partner. I can’t make you stay or stand in the open where I can see you-all of you. So I’m going to be a good mother. That’s what I decided. I’m going to be a good mother. Except she looks like you and her, I think. And it stops me. I love her. Then one day I love her more. Then one day she’s everything. Then you decide I’m not, and everything is gone. I didn’t put myself together last time. I just came back. What would I do if you left again?”
“I’m not leaving.”
She laughed. She laughed like bullets confident in where they were going and the havoc they were going to wreak. She laughed like she knew she could kill me and thought she should. For fun. For justice. For a bit of balance in an otherwise uneven and shitty life.
Ok.
“What? How in hell would I know that?”
The baby cried. Cash moved before I did. Leaned over the crib. Just put her face close enough to Olivia’s and there was silence. Whispers between the two of them. I heard their smiles. And I-
Fuck.
I carried dualities once. I held Zion and loved her as much as I hated her. Wanted to get close as a way to figure out a way to get away. A way to figure out the hold she had on me so I could detangle it. A way to figure out the love I had for her so that I could get back to it, that pure place, even though I knew we would never be the same again. Stay and go. It wore me down. I stayed silent through it. Cash had to hum.
She got back in the bed. No more laying down. She faced me. I sat up to face her. She scooted closer. Our knees touched. She took off the satin cap. Shook her hair loose. Looked at me.<
br />
Okay.
“You don’t. I do. I know what the consequences are because you taught me. I know what waking up without you day after day feels like. I know what sleeping alone is like. I know what not being able to talk to you feels like. Not being able to touch you.” I leaned forward and found my favorite of her curls. I wrapped it around my finger. She smiled and leaned into my touch. “I know what it’s like to know it’s funny and know there’s no one that would laugh with me the way you do. I know what it’s like to have a thought that no one but you would understand and know that you won’t show up. You showed me your boundaries.”
I dropped my voice and hoped she remembered the night she made me watch her favorite movies. “You showed me the gun line, boss.”
She laughed.
“Beyond that, we’re a family now. I get why-” I shook my head. “I get that it’s been tough and you aren’t sure. But Olivia is yours. Not because of the paperwork or because I want her to be or because-You say you’re struggling, but you should see yourself with her. She’s yours. I can’t take her from you. I wouldn’t.”
I didn’t catch her tears. She didn’t either.
“If I mess up you and I, I mess up you, me, and her. I can’t say I love Olivia and not do and be everything I’m supposed to be for you.”
She crawled into my lap, and finally, finally, I held her while she cried.
Chapter Eleven
Cassidy
I’d always known when it was time to go. Always.
A simple reach for my things. Panties back on. Where were my heels? There. I stood in them. At Beyond, I packed up my files. At Kevin’s-well, there was never a time, he said, that was right for me to be in his space. But I left him. I walked away again and again even when he asked and justified and begged. Head high. I knew what I deserved. I knew what I wanted.
I should have left Cahir when he told me about Zion. Not the peeling out of the garage or the online profiles. Not the first date. None of that. I should have sat in the sadness. I should have done without him. Hurt until the numbness set in. Stayed numb until the day the feelings broke back through. I should have. I should have believed I was strong enough to sit in the dark until the sun came again. I should have believed that I could be his friend, just his friend. I should have remembered that trouble don’t last always and everything has an expiration date. Seasons and reasons. Longing didn’t matter. What was best for me was. Sometimes sadness was best.
Instead I decided to love him. Instead I decided to lay in his bed or mine and whisper in tones too quiet for him to hear that I would try one more time. But I was bruised. My heart was so bruised and I didn’t want to fix it alone and I didn’t have the words to show him where it hurt.
Anger wouldn’t guide him. Fear wouldn’t help him fix it. If I wasn’t going to leave, if I was going to call his baby girl mine and let her own every part of my heart that didn’t belong to him, and didn’t have room for me, I would have to fix it.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to stew and fight. I wanted to hide in my misery and revel in pointed fingers. I wanted to feel the bitterness grow and list reason after reason for why it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to fight through smiles and sleep. Darkness and quiet around me. I wanted to hum.
I wanted the half in, half out. I wanted a family and an exit strategy. I wanted the familiarity of fear.
That was why I cried in his lap. Anger was for the victim. Growth was for the survivor. Release was for the survivor.
Cahir
Days of sitting, wondering if she heard me or if my words didn’t mean anything at all. Days of watching her smile at the baby, whisper to her, dance with her. Slow dances. Not the blur of feet and arms and hips that I knew she held inside of her.
Who was she being gentle for? Who had she slowed down for?
I went back to work. My office was too big so I ordered a crib and toys and things. Things I thought Olivia would like and I brought her to work with me. I held her in my lap during business calls and team meetings. I took her with me and took all of the jokes, the questioning looks, with a smile.
I made us dinner. Every night. It was on the table when she came home. Or a dress. Sometimes there was a dress on the bed for her and a question in my eyes and a tightness in my shoulders and back until she nodded and said yes. She never smiled when she said yes.
I’d take her out. She didn’t want to dance. Dinner, then. Shows. Comedy shows. Plays. I took her to see an illusionist and wished I could capture the looks on her face. The looks on my face when she reached for my hand.
It was different-doing it for the second time around. The first time I didn’t understand until I was in it. I didn’t know what I did wrong. I didn’t know what she thought. I didn’t know that it wasn’t fixed. I didn’t know how deep losing her went. I didn’t know the baby wouldn’t make it easier.
Having someone we loved in common didn’t make us love each other any more. I could wrap an arm around her waist and stand with her, smile with her, at Olivia. Olivia’s eyes would close and Cash would be gone.
But dinner. She was with me then. And breakfast. And lunch. I obsessed over food as much as I obsessed over her. Over the nights my hand traced over hers until her body was flush with mine and her air was all I had, and wanted, to breathe.
That day, she woke me with it. The first time in too long that her hands were there when I woke up. Possessive and sure that what was on me was built for her, just her. And her pleasure. No hair to tickle my ear. Just the softness of satin. Just her lips on my neck.
“Let’s get a house.”
I was awake and harder than I’d ever been in my life. So fast it made me dizzy. So fast she gasped and moaned and moved in ways I knew she didn’t mean to when I slid inside her.
“Say it again.” My voice pitched lower. To feel her body contract. To ensure I didn’t wake the baby.
“Let’s get a house.”
“When?” A nudge. Not even a push. But I heard her. Smelled her. Felt her sigh and the way her eyes rolled back in her head.
She kissed me. Another nudge. She moaned into my mouth. Tartness of early morning and underneath that there was her. I got high on it. Wanted more of it.
I filled my hands with her. Back. Hips. Shoulders. Pushed. In and out and in again. Part of me hoped I’d find the part of her that didn’t feel like heaven and made me comfortable with going through hell for her if it was what she wanted.
It was her nails in my back that brought me back. “When?”
“I- Cahir, please.”
“No.” I whispered and dropped kisses on her jaw. “No. You started it. Finish it. When?”
“When we find the right house.”
I laughed. And went still. She wrapped her legs around my hips and let her knees open wide, wide. Because she knew. She knew what made me lose my mind. She didn’t know, hadn’t considered, how much crazier I felt when I thought that she might not come back. How it made me want to peel away and crawl out of my own skin.
“Do better, Cash.”
“Now. Whenever you say. Please.”
A thumb on her clit. A whisper of touch. It didn’t need much more. She was so wet. Hot. She would leave marks on my back. If I didn’t kiss her, she would wake Olivia.
“You’re gonna live with me?”
“Yes. With conditions.”
Even that sounded sexy. It dropped like a brick in my stomach, but it didn’t make me stop. Her moans in my ear, the way I felt her spill over and around me, the burning in my back and thighs, the absence of time and space and light. I didn’t stop.
When I asked her for answers, I wanted her to remember who the fuck I was.
Cassidy
Fuck. He could just…And I would just…leave. Float into another place where there was only me, but I wasn’t me. I was larger than galaxies and more powerful than any god that I’d ever read about, and content to do nothing but float. Float as I came down from the high, from the flying.
His smell was what came through first. It never smelled any different with Cahir. Just him. My tether to reality and my self. He brought the warmth back into me and made me want to do more than float. He made me want to see. And when I saw him- on top of me, under me- I wanted to hear. His breath. His laugh at how absolutely insane every second of us together was. His whispered “I love you, Cash.” I heard, and then I wanted to feel his heart beat against mine. His body be both hard and soft and know that it was because of me. His hands as they found the places I didn’t know would hurt in a minute or an hour or a day and massaged them into compliance.
How could I compare smelling desserts and fruit to that?
It would’ve been easier for me if Cahir weren’t better in every way, if I didn’t know it.
He pulled out and away. Soft feet crossed the floor to the bathroom. Gentle hands rubbed a warm cloth over my body. So much of me was his that I didn’t blush anymore when he didn’t. Why shouldn’t he polish his trophy?
He laid beside me and I rolled and rolled until my body sprawled across his and his arms wrapped around me and held me in the place that I wanted most of all. His chin rested on my head. I laughed, quick, subdued, when he took off my bonnet and fluffed my hair. I let myself forget. Forgetting the past was easy. In the early morning when it was just us I could forget there was a time before. The present…I was strong. I could always forget when I wanted to.
His hands traced patterns over my skin. “We didn’t really prep for this.”
“Hmm?”
“The baby. We got rid of all the sharp edges. Covered up the outlets. Read the books. Went to the classes. Annoyed the doctor. We did all of that.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But we didn’t really do anything to get us ready.”
My eyes wanted to open. I shut them. I screwed them shut. No.
“Every married person I know says that babies don’t make it better. They show you all the places you’ve gone wrong. They show you all of the things you don’t like.”
Better as Lovers Page 5