I had to breathe. He would know if I stopped.
“We didn’t get ready. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I thought that we could just go skipping into this and be great at it. We could just forget all the other shit because it didn’t matter. Because we were us, and we had this, and nothing else mattered.”
I was so sick of fucking crying. Fucking exhausted. Annoyed that he always knew when to let me cry, hide my face, and just be close to him. Annoyed that in the little ways he never got me wrong.
“So now we’re in this thing, right? And I want to take a couple steps forward. But we’re not in the same place. We’re together but- you know?”
I nodded and wiped my tears off his chest. A broad sweep of my arm. He laughed.
“I take a step forward. And maybe you do too. But my step and your step, even though they happen together, don’t put us in the same place”
I nodded again and felt like an idiot for it. “Yes.” The word sounded like it hurt. It did. But being seen, hearing the truth even if you’re ready for it, those things always hurt.
“So the house. Tell me what you want.”
“I-” I wanted him. That was the truth. I loved him. That was even truer. I wanted a family with him. I wanted the fairy tale ending. I wanted to get my fucking shit together. I wanted the tears to stop. The crawling sensation that everything was wrong. The heat behind my eyes. The heaviness in my tongue when there were so many words that felt like the right ones to explain what was happening to me. The hurt in my thigh and chest.
“Take a minute if you need it.”
Stupid to be mad. But I was when he said that. And I used the anger to push a bit of the truth out. “I need to be alone sometimes. Sometimes the two of you are too much and I need to run before I go insane wondering if you will.”
“What’s that mean?”
“My own bedroom which is weird if we’re back in a relationship.” I stopped. Better to ask. Better to know and be done with it. Fuck it. “Are we back in a relationship?”
That was when he touched me. One hand ran over my hair. The other down my back. “I think you’re the one that needs to answer that question.”
Chapter Twelve
Cassidy
It took me five days to realize how mad his non-answer of an answer made me. I was the only one that could answer that? Weren’t we in this shit to-fucking-gether? Why did everything have to get tossed onto my shoulders? Why did I have to swoop in and-
“Can you grab the plates?”
He cooked dinner every night. Like that made it better. Like he could just do that one little thing to remind me what we were before he decided I was in charge and he didn’t have to do a goddamned thing but show up and give me words I couldn’t do boo-shit with.
Grab the plates. Like they weren’t six fucking feet away from him. Oh. An excuse to touch me. To wrap his arms around my waist and-Nuzzle my neck? Could’ve put his face in my pussy if he was going to make me get up from the couch and leave my wine behind.
Selfish. That’s what a person had to be to just…
“Silverware, Cash.”
Oh, now I was a busboy. Now I was working in a restaurant. Weird. No one showed me a menu when I walked the fuck in.
Silverware on the table. Water glasses too. And fuck it, let’s use the nice napkins. Let’s light a few candles. Let’s get a wine glass for him and just put it-
I didn’t make a noise when the glass broke and sliced through my palm. Not a gasp or a hiss or a shriek. But he came over anyways.
“Go away,” I said.
“Let me see it.” He angled my hand towards the light.
Uh-huh. So fucking willing to fix this but when it’s time to fix the other things I get told that it’s all on me.
“Don’t move.” He rummaged around in the bathroom and came back to me.
“No. Of course not. I’ll just drip onto the table. It’s fine. I love it here.”
“The table is glass, Cash. Easier to clean than the floor or-” He pushed a pair of tweezers into my cut.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Stop it. We already have a baby. We don’t need you to be one too.” He held up the piece of glass he fished out of my cut.
And made me aware, really aware, of all the blood. “No. No. I’m supposed to be the one finding all the fucking answers.”
He didn’t do anything but shove those tweezers back into my fucking hand like I didn’t have any nerve endings and couldn’t feel any pain. But he’d always thought I was invincible, hadn’t he?
He pulled out another piece of glass. “One more. Try to hold it together for a few more seconds.”
This motherfucker. “I’ve been holding it together since I met you. What’s a few more seconds? What’s my actual blood being spilled? What’s a little glass between friends?”
And this man-this man that was supposed to know me so well- kept his eyes on my hand and laughed. Laughed!
“Get off me.” I said.
“In a second.”
“Now.”
“Cash-”
“-fucking now!” I snatched my hand away. The tweezers scratched over my palm. Who the fuck cared? I used one of our-his- fancy napkins to staunch the blood.
“What is your problem?” He had the audacity to actually sound and look confused. To back up like I was the one rooting around in his flesh for glass like I was on some kind of fucking treasure hunt.
Cute.
“If you don’t know then I can’t fucking tell you.”
“That’s not how any of this works, Cash.”
“Yes. Because you make all the rules and I just show up and hope you’ll stay with me or that your piece of rapist shit ex girlfriend doesn’t pop up pregnant.” That felt dramatic. Even for me. I liked it. “And hope that you won’t leave me now because I have to be perfect mommy and perfect friend and perfect pussy and-”
“-I’ve never said you had to be any of those things.”
“And you’ve never fucking told me that I didn’t! You’ve never said that I’m enough.”
“Yeah.” He was quiet. In the face of my yelling and my body leaned over the table so that he had to look at me instead of the floor. His voice didn’t raise. Not once. “I did. I have. And I will. I’m sorry you didn’t hear me.”
Excellent. “Don’t give me some bullshit apology. Either you can really apologize or you can get the fuck out of my face.”
“Okay.” He went to kitchen counter, to the bowl where we kept our keys and picked up his. “Okay.”
“Where are you going?”
“I need to walk away from this.”
“No shit. I’ve been waiting for you to.”
We were both still and let my words explode in the silence around us.
“There’s bandages in the bathroom. Wash your hand out. Well.” His fingers rubbed over his scars. “It’s gonna hurt but pull the cut apart to make sure there’s no glass left. It’s not deep enough to need stitches. At least I don’t think it is. But if it’s still bleeding when I get back we’ll go to the hospital. I’ll tell your grandmother you’re up here by yourself.”
She didn’t make a sound when I was yelling. And he didn’t slam the door. But the minute it closed Olivia open her mouth and wailed like the world was ending.
Fuck.
Chapter Thirteen
Cahir
When I remembered it, it always felt like the arguing started at the same time that I really understood that I was adopted. There were never going to be pictures of my mother pregnant with me or in the hospital bed, exhausted and elated. There wasn’t going to be exclamations that I looked more like one of them or the other.
There would be no mention of the personality traits I inherited from my grandparents. No hiding behind my parents. I would always be seen. It would always be obvious.
I thought they signed for me. Like a package. And like a package, I could be returned. They had all the paperwork. It would be easy
to undo things. It would be easy to send me-not home. I didn’t have that. I didn’t have a point of origin. Just away. Away from everything I knew. I didn’t quite understand wealth but I knew my life was easier. I knew I had things before I asked for them and my parents never said I couldn’t have something because they couldn’t afford it. I would never go to school on scholarship.
I didn’t want to give up my life. I didn’t want them to argue. But I couldn’t make them stop.
They always did it at night. My father came home late. Too late, my mother screamed. He smelled like a distillery. He smelled like her.
I didn’t know who “her” was and when I was old enough to understand, I didn’t ask.
He was tired, he would say. Tired of the way she nagged him, the way she wanted more and more and more. He just wanted a little peace.
She laughed. No. My mother’s laughter was kind and soft and made you feel like you’d just won Olympic gold. The sounds she made those nights made me feel like I was being stripped of everything I loved.
He wanted peace? That wasn’t what he said when he chased her out of her first marriage. He said he wanted wild. He said he wanted untamed. He said he wanted to fuck her until she broke. Was he mad that he hadn’t accomplished it? That she’d found his soft places and he’d never bothered with hers?
And more? Why in holy fuck shouldn’t she want more? Her voice was so strong it made me wonder too as I hid under my covers. She’d left her home and everything she knew to come to America and help him chase a dream. She was the reason that dream came true. Or did he think he secured his promotions and later started his firm because he was just lucky? Did he think she hadn’t gone out among those vapid, shallow women that couldn’t see past their own implants to bring him business? Did he think he could do this without her? Oh, they could let the courts decide. She did that thing that wasn’t a laugh. A divorce would be fun.
Night after night after night. Divorce, divorce, divorce. She waited until the end to throw the word out. It meant I had to be silent when I cried so they wouldn’t know. I couldn’t give them another reason. I couldn’t remind them that I was there. Better to shrink and be smaller and smaller.
They would forget I was there. Maybe they would forget until after the divorce was over and I could just hide where they were. Maybe they wouldn’t mind that I was still around.
Eight months. I was quiet every night for eight months. One night I hiccuped and coughed and they went quiet. It was my father that found me. My father that held me as I sobbed in his lap and sent my mother away. My father that listened to me explain that when they weren’t together it wouldn’t matter to me. I didn’t want to leave them. I would do whatever. I had been. Straight A’s. I played whatever sport I thought he liked. Practiced until I was better than good and knew if I looked at the stands he would be there smiling. I helped my mother with dinner. I went with her to the grocery store. I read to her. I made her laugh with my impressions of her favorite actors. I watched her put on her makeup and told her every day that she was beautiful. Before my father could. If he did at all.
“So you don’t have to send me back. I won’t be in the way. I proved that. I can be good.”
My father kissed my forehead and tucked me in. He told me he loved me. That would never change. He left my room. I saw my mother in the hallway. Her face was wet. The door was quiet when he closed it. So was he.
“There won’t be a divorce. It’s over now, Maeve.”
And it was. I never heard them fight again. He made my mother smile at him. Then he made her laugh. And then one day she reached out to him, kissed him, in the middle of breakfast.
I didn’t feel relieved. There was no room for it. I was too full of gratitude for my father. He saw the problem. He fixed it. He made sure I had a home.
Chapter Fourteen
Cassidy
I hated the feeling of the bandage on my hand. Hated the look on Gran’s face when she came up the stairs to make sure I did right by my injury. The way she held my hand and turned it this way and that.
“You always did have a temper,” she said. “Remember when you fought that girl that one summer?”
The first day of fashion camp. My stomach was in knots and that girl wouldn’t stop looking at me, my shoes. I wore Payless because it was cute. Not because I didn’t have a choice. I made sure she understood that.
“Or that teacher. What was her name?”
“Mrs. Wheeler.”
“The way you tore that woman’s classroom up.” Gran chuckled. “Your father so proud of how you wouldn’t back down when you knew you were right. Your mother sick of the both of you.”
I smiled. “It wasn’t my fault her classroom policies were so short-sighted.”
Or that she didn’t understand that I needed to walk away. The classroom was too warm, too close, and there was a boy. I’d seen him before. That day my body noticed him and I didn’t understand how something that had always been in my control could disconnect from me so easily.
“Your mother figured it out first. Then me. We had to tell your father. You should have seen how he denied and then worried. Almost wore a path into the floor.”
“What?”
“You, and your tantrums, and your fists, and your destruction. It only came when you were afraid. When you felt like you’d lost control and needed that fast way to get it back.”
There was a time, long ago, when I argued with Gran. In that moment, I just held my breath while she poured peroxide over my hand.
“You won’t need stitches. You can tell Cahir I said so. I won’t be here when he comes back.”
I rolled my eyes and yelped when she plucked me. Right on my cut.
“You’re allowed to do what you want. That’s what being grown means. You can set your life on fire and let it lead you down the path to hell if it’ll make you smile.” Her hand cupped my cheek. “Problem is it won’t make you smile. You love him. Why can’t you let yourself do that? What’s the denial, and the holding back, and the anger getting you?”
“Way to fuck my night up.”
She plucked me again and laughed when I hissed, kissed my cheek, kissed Olivia, and left.
I was on the couch when he came home hours later. Olivia slept on my chest. I was tired of keeping my eyes open. I wasn’t worried about where he’d been. Who he’d seen. What he’d done. I did not compare my lack of reaction to Kevin, to the times he crept out in the middle of the night only to return in the morning and try to pretend as if he’d never left. I didn’t think about it at all.
I ran my finger over Olivia’s curls. I would treat her hair the way my mother did mine. Full of barrettes and beads and little braids that led nowhere and didn’t make much sense in their placement. I would let her straighten it once a year, maybe twice. Her birthday and one other day of her choice. Like my mother, I would pretend I didn’t see how excited she was, how she found any reason to move her head from one side to another. I’d brush and comb it and tell her that it didn’t make her beautiful. No matter what she did she would be beautiful. But caring for her hair was caring for herself, a therapy Black women everywhere understood, embraced, and celebrated. I would teach her to love the way it grew out of her head, the way it defied logic, gravity, and what the world thought softness was. We would have that connection. In that way, we would be the same.
He sat on the coffee table and looked at Olivia and I. I wanted to ask what he saw, what he thought. Then he looked at my hand.
I didn’t want anything but to go away. I didn’t want to apologize.
“I can’t do it anymore.”
The apology rose up in me like bile. Maybe alongside it.
“I can’t do the shouting and the arguing with you about shit that wouldn’t have mattered a few months ago and doesn’t really matter right now. Not with you. Not in front of her.”
There was only shame. None of the jealousy that would have shown itself when we first brought Olivia home.
I didn�
��t know what my father’s raised voice sounded like until I was seventeen years old and went with him to a job site. I never heard my mother’s voice rise above a conversational level. I didn’t know what their anger looked like. They never directed it towards me. And there I was. I realized for the first time, for real, how much a baby changed everything.
“I want you. Not just as a friend or a coparent. As a life partner. As the person I do this thing with. If there were no Olivia, I would want that. You.” He took a deep breath. “You aren’t a replacement for Zion. I’m not biding my time or trying to bide my time until I can go back to her. You’re it. It’s you or it’s no one. And, goddamn, I want to be with you.”
It would be stupid to cry. I’d cried so much already. And I was finally feeling a little less tired.
“But I can’t do it without you. I can’t be with you unless you choose to stay. Like really stay. I’m not saying you’re not gonna be scared sometimes. I’m just saying I’m going to be there when you are.”
“Life partner?” It hurt to say but I couldn’t hold the words and everything else inside.
“If I thought you were ready, I’d marry you tomorrow. Because you’re you, and we’re us, and it’s never going to be better than what we have. Ever.”
He didn’t touch me, but I still felt him. Everywhere.
“I can’t make you decide to stay though. I can’t tell you what you want. Or how you should have it. I’m all in. You’ve gotta decide if you are too.”
I nodded when I should have apologized.
“No matter what you decide though,” he stood, “don’t ever talk to me like that in front of our daughter again.”
Chapter Fifteen
Cassidy
I thought he would leave me alone. I thought he would leave. His body would come home every night, the same as mine did. Whichever of us hadn’t spent the day with Olivia would snatch her from her carrier and hold her, breathe her. It was me the first day. Me that held her and said thank you without knowing who the words were for.
Better as Lovers Page 6