Love Me Like You Do: Books That Keep You In Bed

by Fields, MJ

“Hold this to your face. I swear it will help,” I say, putting the meat in her hand and covering it with my own to guide her to the right spot.

  “Ah, it’s cold,” she says, flinching a little with her hand.

  I reach up and pull my shirt up over my head, wrapping the frozen beef in it once to take away the sting of the cold.

  “Here,” I say, helping her put it back in place.

  Her eyes settle on mine, and I look right back into her, holding the makeshift cold pack against her skin for almost a full minute in silence. I reach up a few times and tuck loose ends of her hair behind her ear.

  “I don’t know how you kept yourself from hitting her back,” I say, followed by a smirk and chuckle that fades quickly.

  Liv’s shoulders lift with a short and quiet burst of a laugh.

  “I can show incredible restraint; what can I say?” She shrugs and her lips fall into a wry smile.

  I pull back the cold compress to check her skin.

  “I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as I thought after first looking at it,” I say, lightly running my thumb over the reddest part. Liv’s eyes squint from the brief sting.

  “Good. Then I don’t want to look at it. I’ll be better off pretending it isn’t there,” she says.

  She takes the cold meat from me and holds it to herself, slipping back to find a more comfortable position on the bench. I hold the edge of the table and sit back slowly until I’m completely on the floor, with my back against the small set of kitchen cabinets that hide most of my mess. My knees pull up and I rest my elbows on top, folding my fingers together in front of me.

  “You want to tell me about it?” I let my head fall slightly to the side as a gentle urge for her to share. I know I can’t fix her broken family; I just want her to feel comfortable enough to talk to me.

  Liv briefly lifts one shoulder in sync with the side of her mouth.

  “I just pushed her buttons I guess,” she says, her brow pinching and her gaze falling to the tabletop. “She does not like that you and I…”

  She doesn’t finish that sentence, but she doesn’t really have to.

  “I’m sorry.” It’s the only calm thing I can think of saying.

  “Don’t be,” she says, pulling the meat away again and resting it on the table.

  She lifts up an envelope with her other hand and slides it toward me. I lean forward and take it in my hands before sitting back on the floor. I lift my eyebrows and glance at her while turning the thick, opened letter over and over in my hand.

  “I’ve been served,” she says through a dry laugh. “I ran all the way here to this place to get away from the nightmare—that I ran away from this place for—and still…Enoch’s fucking legal troubles chase me down.”

  She sighs. I slip the letter out, sliding loose multiple pages, mostly language I don’t understand.

  “It’s a civil suit for damages. He didn’t get the punishment he probably really deserved on the criminal end, but the civil case…that’s going to decimate him financially. Of course, he really doesn’t have much to take at all. That’s the entire problem. He sold dreams and turned his profit to dust. Just…poof.”

  “This says next Friday.” My eyes are down at the letter balanced on my legs. My fight is Saturday.

  “I know,” she says quietly. My gaze flits up to hers, and her eyes are bathed in guilt. That’s the last thing she needs right now. “I guess they sent a letter that was forwarded here, and then called to notify me that I would have to testify, of course…I’m not the one who answered that call. Leo doesn’t believe in writing shit down, or they just didn’t care since me being held in contempt of court is like…whatever to them.”

  I’m quiet. My heart and head battling over how my road got so misguided. This fight means so much to me. The name—Delaney—having that stand for something is all I’ve ever wanted, at least as long as I’ve known the name was mine. And now all I can think about is how if Liv isn’t there, I won’t have a chance. And maybe it isn’t as important as finding her. Maybe that’s what all of this cosmic bullshit that led me to this place was for—for finding her and giving a damn.

  “I’m charging the flights on my credit card. My name is still on an LLC for a small business Enoch set up for me. I was going to help with estates, for low-income seniors. I got to help one woman—one. She still calls me with questions. I haven’t called her back, but I’m all over her paperwork, and the LLC is still there, which means in a way, I’m still in Washington. They gave me a stipend to cover the travel, which…” She pauses to laugh, and it comes out nervously and desperate.

  “I can’t even afford the red eye, but I have to go. I’m staying in a hotel that…well let’s just say the place is decorated with crime-scene tape. And I’ll be taking public transit, which is probably how the murderers who left the dead bodies at the hotel got there and back. And I’m going to have to pack granola bars and drink tap water, because forget food costs. I can’t eat in the city. Everything there is expensive and…”

  She’s rambling, and her face is growing pink from her lack of taking a breath. She’s adding to her own stress, so I stop her, sliding up on my knees and running my hands forward on the table, palms down until I’m near her. I twist them open for her to take my hands, and she does, shaking a little with the sensation of defeat that slips out in her long exhale.

  “I’m going to miss your fight.” Her eyes look so damned sorry. I have to lie to her and say it’s okay. I hate it though, because she’s the only person who I really feel is in my corner.

  “It’s okay.” I can tell I didn’t sell it well. I mean it even though I don’t. How did I get so selfish? Is it this place? I crawl around the table to her lap and slide my hands up her thighs, kissing her stomach through her shirt and looking up at her like a begging man. I would beg, too, if it would somehow make a difference. I know it won’t.

  “It isn’t okay, and I’m so sorry,” she says, a tear getting through. She runs her arm along her eyes then squeezes me to her in a tight hug, kissing the top of my head. My hands slide around her waist to hold her back. We remain still, like this, for almost an hour. I trail my hand up and down her thigh while she stokes my hair as I rest my head in her lap.

  “You’re not going to believe this but…Memphis?” I lift my head at her question and look into tired, sad eyes. She forces a slight smile on one half of her mouth, so I lift myself up higher and kiss it, taking my time and brushing my lips over hers slowly until I feel the muscles in her mouth stretch more, the curve growing stronger and more genuine.

  “What is it? Anything…tell me, or ask me. I’ll do anything.” I lean my forehead into hers and she lightly chuckles.

  “I actually really want to go somewhere and share a fucking soda.”

  My lips pucker, trying not to laugh at her request, but when she breaks, so do I. I lift her to stand, brushing her hair behind both ears and cradling her face in my hands, kissing her gently as I grin against her lips.

  “My baby wants a soda with two straws. Done and done,” I say, stepping back and taking her fingertips in mine, pulling them forward until her feet follow.

  “And…I’m regretting it,” she says, words drizzled in her brand of sarcasm. She’s feeling better, which makes me feel better. I have thirteen days until the fight of my life, and somehow, for the first time in the seven months since we booked it, I feel like Omar Morales has the advantage.

  Seventeen

  Liv

  Yesterday was the first time my mother kicked me. She’s hit me before—a few slaps, really. She and I have gone rounds with shouting matches, and I’ve said some things that have triggered her. I know where all of her buttons are, and I’m guilty of pushing them in the past.

  It’s how I was raised.

  The abuse, though—that’s on her. She’s the one who reacts like a monster.

  My dad always pretended nothing was wrong. He would whisk in from somewhere else and call me princess for a day then ruin
it all in the next twenty-four hours. When he was happy and here, my mom played the part of doting mother. When the luster faded, so did her fake kindness—every single time. Pretty soon, I started to call her out on it. That’s when she grew violent.

  Now I’ve threatened her livelihood, though—her business. I know things, and she hates that. She doesn’t want me close to Memphis, because she believes I’ll poison him, but she’s doing such a great job on her own, all I have to do is watch. He deserves better than her and my uncle. He can mooch off their clout and then he needs to get out of here.

  I need to get out of here.

  Memphis had a hard time motivating himself this morning, and I don’t feel right about that. There’s a part of him—the respectable part—that doesn’t want to associate himself with Leo after yesterday. But he needs him for now. If anything, to get through next Saturday’s fight. My uncle may be a shit of a person, but he’s one hell of a corner man. He sees things, sometimes before they happen in the ring. He’ll know when the heavy rounds are coming. He’ll be able to tell Memphis when to hold back. More than any of that, though, my uncle is invested. There’s money in this for him, and I’m sure he has a buddy splitting money on the line somewhere too. He never bets against his man. Leo is Memphis’s best shot, and after a lot of persuasion, I convinced him of it, too.

  My morning is a lot less predictable. I’m pretty sure I still have a job. As essential as Leo is to Memphis’s success, I’m kinda key to my mom’s taxes. At least for this year. The books aren’t done, and I still haven’t been able to bring the balance to black from the deep, bloody red it’s in. I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to, but my mom knows that her best shot at getting some of her questionable moves through an audit is by letting me turn them into legitimate business expenses. Anyone else would flag half of that office.

  I take my time after Memphis leaves, showering in the small space that smells of him. I use his shampoo, lathering the musky scent in my hands and smoothing it over my entire body. My clothes are still on the other side of the alley, in a house I’m not ready to walk into again yet, so once I’m dry, I look around for more sweats and T-shirts I can thieve. The one he slept in is slung over the driver’s seat of his RV, so I pull it over my body and hold the front up over my nose, breathing in him. Pants seem a little trickier, and I eventually find a smaller pair of sweats tucked under the dining bench, a storage area hidden under its cushion.

  I slip into the dark blue pants and begin to close the lid on the bench when something catches my eye. A shoebox marked with Memphis’s name bears familiar handwriting, an address scribbled on the corner of the lid.

  It isn’t mine and I know I shouldn’t, but something nudges me to keep reaching for it until I’ve grasped it in my hands and held it close. I know before I admit it, and I use that as the excuse to sit down with the box in my lap and remove the lid. The things inside are exactly as he said they were. I’m careful with the old boxing wrap rolled neatly and bound by a band, the rubber brittle and ready to break. There are unsent birthday cards, and meaningless notes and receipts, a few from restaurants, mostly just junk. There’s a golden ring that I can tell isn’t real, and a green stone is embedded in the side. A birthstone for a pinky ring, I’m guessing. I find a stack of old photos at the bottom, pictures of people wearing styles from years ago—men in shorts that creep up high and Hawaiian shirts hanging open. The visual makes me smile briefly until I see his face and the earth drops.

  The box falls to the floor, spilling everything and leaving me with nothing but this one photo in my hands. He’s on the bike, Memphis’s bike. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize it as the one Leo used to ride, and my young mind never considered that Leo could have borrowed it or that it was someone else’s. But it was. It was his.

  My dad rode that bike, too. He rode it once—on a road trip from here to New Orleans with some guy who had been working out at the gym. Some wannabe fighter who was just getting started. Some guy who my dad took an interest in right after Charles left. He was one of dozens that they tried to groom, but nobody was Charles. Especially not in my dad’s eyes—or heart.

  I remember answering the phone and getting my father’s drunken slurs when he called from the road. I handed the phone over to Leo, but I sat at the kitchen table and listened to his end of the conversation. He called my father careless. He told him he was weak. And then he hung up and forbid me from picking the phone up again when it rang. It did ring. It rang all night, and eventually Leo ripped the phone cord out of the wall.

  Dad didn’t come home until days later. The bike was gone. He said he needed to sell it. I never thought about the fact that it wasn’t his to sell. I thought it was Leo’s, and my dad selling something that belonged to my uncle for cash wasn’t strange at all. It was exactly the dick-move they’d always done to each other. My father came home angry, and he started to box sloppy. Booze, women, men, drugs—inconvenient distractions. This was the beginning of the end—a golden career marred by ugliness. Though, I guess my dad was just finally showing everyone else how ugly he was while I knew all along.

  I was fourteen then, which means Memphis was fourteen, too. There are some gaps in this puzzle, but my gut is filling them in, and I’m pretty certain that I’m right.

  With numb and quivering hands, I scoop up the things that spilled from the box and put it back in its place under the bench lid, but I keep the photo. I stuff my feet into my tennis shoes and lock Memphis’s door from the inside so it’s secure when I close it behind me. It’s early still, which means my mother will be in her room. She’ll hear me, but not before I can ask my questions.

  I grab the keys from the hook inside Leo’s house and unlock my parents’ front door, opening and closing the door as quietly as possible. I pause at the creaking sound and hold my breath, my heart hammering in my chest and my inner voice begging my mother not to hear me come in. I wait a full minute, at least, then lock the door behind me and take soft steps up to my dad’s room.

  His bed is lifted when I walk in. He’s sitting up enough to look out the window at the traffic congestion below. His room is hot, and I wonder if he likes it this way or if my mom just forgets to check on him sometimes. The door clicks behind me, and my dad’s attention comes to me with the slow swivel of his head.

  I didn’t want to come back in here, to see him or talk to him again. But this is too important. His eyes are heavy with sleep, his mouth drooping on one side where it’s been numb for years now. I move to the space next to his bed, standing between the chair and his mattress, near his head, and I waste no time getting to my point.

  “You knew this man,” I say, holding up the photo of Memphis’s father, standing in front of the bike.

  My father’s eyes stay on mine, the whites scarred with red veins, and deep wrinkles underneath, just above his high cheekbones. I hold his stare and leave the picture where it is, knowing he won’t bother to look at it. He doesn’t need to see it. He knows who it is, who Memphis is.

  “Does Mom know?”

  His eyelids close in a slow blink, so heavily I wonder if they’ll open again. His expression is unchanged when they do, not that he can express much anymore. I could always read his eyes, though. And the lack of anything in them means I’m right so far.

  “The man in this photo is Robert Delaney, isn’t he? He was here—he was your friend after Charles left. You took him to New Orleans. I remember, Dad. I remember enough, and I think I can guess the rest,” I say, swallowing the surge of bile creeping up my throat.

  I lift my father’s dry, frail hand in my own and curl his fingers around the photo, squeezing while my mouth bunches in frustration and anger. My father’s nails are long, in need of a trim, so they scratch and puncture the photograph as I force his fist to hold it on his own.

  The entire time he leaves his gaze on mine, but the subtle changes I’ve been waiting for happen in his face. The right side of his mouth frowns, and he swallows hard, a short burst of breath c
oming out his nose and forcing his lips to part to help him get more air.

  His eyes close again and this time open on the image that he’s balanced in his fist against his chest. He blinks several times, and the longer he looks at the photo the more his mouth curves downward until he looks sick.

  “You were different when you came back,” I say while he continues to stare at the picture, holding it close and forcing his eyes to scan and take it all in.

  “What’d you sell the bike for?” I wait, knowing he won’t answer. His speech is pretty much nonexistent; the sounds he is able to make consist of moans and grunts. He’s lost the ability to form words. “Did you have to pay someone off? Was it a trade to make a problem go away? Did you kill him in the ring? Or did you beat him up again after the fight, while you were drunk or high?”

  My father’s lip ticks, and he struggles to keep his mouth from quivering, a slobbery breath shaking loose.

  “It was in the ring.”

  My mom has been standing behind me for a while. I heard the door click open, but I’m not afraid of anyone in this house, and I wasn’t going to stop asking questions just because she could hear them. They’re questions for her, too.

  My dad’s hand falls flat against his chest with the photo underneath. I will take it back before I leave, but for now, he can suffer from the touch of it. I’ve grown so cold toward my parents, and I used to regret it and let it make me sad. Now it just is what it is. There are better people in my life, people worth my heart and effort. People whose lives have been forever changed by my parents just like mine have, unfortunately.

  “How did you know where to send the box?” This question is for my mom. It’s her handwriting on the box. The Tennessee address I assume is the hotel where Memphis found the items when he was fourteen.

  “Seemed as good a place as any,” she says.

  My eyes fall closed, and I hurt for Memphis. He’s built a life around a lie my mom orchestrated on a whim.