Cowboy Daddy

by Hannah McBride

  “Thanks,” Vanessa replied in a daze. “Bye.”

  * * *

  Once Vanessa had dropped Emma off at kindergarten, she walked upstairs with what felt like blocks of lead for shoes. Each step seemed to melt her feet into the floor, dragging her down, preventing her from making the pilgrimage upstairs for the first time in over a year. Her room and Emma’s room were on the ground floor, and all that sat on the top level were her parents’ rooms: a home office, the master bath, and of course, their bedroom. Gulping, Vanessa turned the handle on the door to reveal a ghostly, ethereal memory. The smell of a life she used to know came whooshing toward her, drowning her in nostalgia. Everything is as it was: all the trinkets her mother collected were in perfect order on the bookshelf, and all her father’s books were stacked on his bedside table. The only thing separating their room from its lively counterpart in the past was dust, blanketed over every surface and populating the air. The dust was a thick smog inside this forgotten room, preserved in time.

  Vanessa knelt down beside her father’s side of the bed. With hands that trembled in the ocean of sentiment that poured through her just by walking through his door, she managed to spin the dial on the lock of the safe where he kept all his important documents. Tears blinded Vanessa momentarily as her mind flashed back to the day he died, three days after her mother, to whom she never got to say goodbye. Her father’s injuries in the car accident were just as severe, yet he wasn’t killed on impact. For him, death came slowly and methodically.

  The last three days of his life were stretched out by a metaphorical medieval torture device, which maimed him to death in creatively anguished ways. He whispered to Vanessa the code to the safe, instructing her to memorize it, in the final hours she spent with him—before he was put into a morphine coma to pass away peacefully. He was dying—being slowly chipped away by the knife of death—and he hissed at his daughter to memorize a code for a safe. Nothing important was even in the safe, just birth certificates, social security cards, scarcely used passports and bank statements to accounts without a substantial amount of savings. There were no heartfelt confessions of unconditional, parental love, no tear-stained goodbyes. Just three numbers whispered in a hoarse tone for a daughter who didn’t know how to march out of the room unassisted, much less into the next phase of her life.

  Here, now, in her parents’ empty room, Vanessa found her documentation: two little pieces of paper over twenty years old that signified who she is. That’s all she had to do to prove her identity, flash these two documents. We’re all just piles of paperwork, she thought to herself. Is this all I am? Is this all anyone cares about? While Vanessa was certainly far from her own biggest fan, she couldn’t help feeling like she meant more to the world than two fraying, decades-old sheets of paper.

  Chapter 17

  “You’ve made a miraculous recovery, Mr. Ridley,” Mr. Lee said with a genial smile across his face.

  Aaron sat up in the chair next to his father’s home hospice bed. “Which one?” he asked.

  “Well, both, of course,” Mr. Lee grinned a little too wide. “I’m sure Mr. Ridley, Senior is excited about returning to the company. Am I correct?” He was speaking to Charlie as if he were in grade school, successfully sleeping through the duration of nap time.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie croaked, hacking. “Retirement sounds nice right about now.”

  Aaron said nothing, looking at the floor. He’d stayed by his father’s side since he was released from the hospital after his hallucinations stopped. He screened every call that came in and interviewed every prospective visitor. There was no evidence, of course, that Desiree had unleashed some destructive poison on the both of them, but Aaron was determined to sniff if out and go to the police. First, though, he had to be sure.

  “Well,” Mr. Lee said a little too pleasantly, “You are the pro, aren’t you? Aaron, can I have a word with you outside?”

  It infuriated Aaron to his core that Mr. Lee, despite having known him since he was a baby, refused to call him Mr. Ridley. This was his subordinate, but he acted more like a sovereign ruler than a Vice President.

  “We can speak in here,” Aaron said with authority in his voice.

  “Oh,” Mr. Lee replied sharply. “Well, I wanted to ask you how you’re doing with your diagnosis,” he replied softly.

  Aaron leaned back in his chair, sulking. The day after his latest rendezvous with Vanessa, he didn’t come to work. Worried, Mr. Lee found him in the hotel where he always stayed, in the midst of a seizure. The closest hospital was a military treatment facility. Once Aaron regained full use of his mental faculties, a doctor informed him that he had been given a rare serum over time which diminishes the effects of the central nervous system, and can have transformative, beast-like properties in the body. It explained the mental fogginess, the superhuman strength, the hallucinations, and the seizures. This serum was used only in military operations and was by no means available to the public, which alerted the attention of the FBI. It was suggested to Aaron that he leave the country while the investigation take place as to keep him out of potential danger from further poisoning.

  Sensing the awkwardness that he’d unleashed in the room, Mr. Lee piped up with, “And also… I want to remind you that you have the investors’ morale seminar in the Maldives next week.”

  “How could I forget?” Aaron replied, smiling.

  “Yes, well,” Mr. Lee said, smiling obnoxiously. “Unfortunately, I’ll need to tie up a few loose ends here at the home office. However, I think it would be a nice way to welcome your new secretary to the company if she were to take my place.”

  Blood pumped through Aaron at the thought of Vanessa, sprawled out naked on some bed that smelled like coconut oil, the cyan sea behind her, the sun high in the air over a straw roof. He couldn’t harness his thoughts, he could barely contain them within his mind.

  “Aaron?” Mr. Lee said, disrupting his daydreaming.

  “Yes? Oh, oh… well, we’re sorry that this has come up, Mr. Lee,” Aaron stumbled verbally, strategically moving his briefcase onto his lap. “But I certainly commend you for your hard work and dedication to this company. And you’re right. I think she’d really love the opportunity to go on a business trip to such a relaxing atmosphere. Thank you for that suggestion.”

  Mr. Lee beamed in a way that seemed inauthentic. “Very good, sir. Rebecca in Human Resources wanted me to relay to you that your new secretary was coming by to sign her paperwork after lunch, at one o’clock.”

  “Today?” Aaron jumped out of his chair, his briefcase clattering to the floor. “I… I need to be present for that.” Without saying goodbye to his father, brushing past Mr. Lee, Aaron bounded out of the room and outside toward his car, thinking only of hooking his hands around the curves of her neck and pulling himself into her once again.

  * * *

  Documents blanketed Rebecca’s desk. Vanessa felt her hand cramp as she signed paper after paper, so many times that her own signature began to look warped and corrupted like a word that someone says over and over again. Rebecca had counseled Vanessa on her new salary, her health insurance benefits, her company car insurance, and her 401(k) options. The idea of a retirement account completely evaded Vanessa, whose mind only swirled with how Aaron’s tongue felt rolling across her skin, how he whispered inside of her as he made her explode.

  “Okay, that’s everything,” Rebecca said suddenly, as Vanessa was drowning in her own personal sea of dreamy nostalgia. “I’ll walk you down to Mr. Ridley’s office. He’s going to handle the issue of the car with you, if that’s okay.”

  Not knowing who this Mr. Ridley was, Vanessa nodded blankly. Rebecca’s smart flats padded down the linoleum hallway along the same floor that Vanessa had tripped and spilled salad on a week before, in what felt like another universe. Approaching a door marked Aaron Ridley, Chief Executive Officer, Vanessa felt her heart clomp through her chest. She’d been dreaming about him—about his eyes, about every part of h
is body—for two days now, since she’d left him in his hotel room last.

  After a brief knock, Aaron yelled, “Come in,” from the opposite side of the door. With a sort of professional, easygoing hesitance, Rebecca let the two of them inside. “It’s just us,” she said with a light chuckle.

  “Excellent. It’s good to see you again, Vanessa,” Aaron said, sitting behind his desk, beaming. “Thank you, Rebecca,” he said, with a motion toward the door. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Excusing herself with a smile, Rebecca shut the door behind her without a word.

  “Vanessa,” Aaron whispered as a grin slithered across his face. “Lock the door,” he said with a wink.

  Chapter 18

  “I hope you have your passport handy,” Aaron said with a smile, zipping his pants. Vanessa was sitting on the couch in his office, hooking her bra in the front and shimmying it around the back. She could feel Aaron inside of her still. The memory permeated her mind and lingered in an amorous fog over her brain. She almost didn’t hear him over the flashbacks streaking across her mind, but his words seemed to cut through all of it with unmistakable clarity.

  “What?” She looked up, wanting him to repeat himself. She wanted to hear it again, hear it from his lips, hear with remarkable precision that he was whisking her away.

  “We’re going on a trip,” he said, his smile widening across his face.

  Possible destinations swirled through hear head. Would it be Mexico? The Caribbean? Europe? Vanessa had only ever been to Canada, and only to drive up to Alaska with her parents. The thought of going on a vacation after the year she had had was intoxicating. The smells of a new country, foreign accents chirping in her ears, local wine and traditional food started to entrance her there, in Aaron’s office, before she ever knew where she was going.

  And then, a sledgehammer. Everything she dreamt just now, all the ambrosial sights and sounds smashed apart in her mind, as if they were just travel brochures that someone ripped in half right in front of her. That someone was Emma, so small and so needy, reaching out to Vanessa for everything she needed. She wanted to scream. She loved Emma. She wanted to give Emma everything in life, but she began to hate the fact that her parents left her in charge. Vanessa wasn’t Emma’s mother. She didn’t want to be. She hated herself for feeling this way, for harboring these thoughts toward her handicapped little sister who, for all intents and purposes, didn’t ask for this life either. Vanessa wanted with all her might to run away with Aaron, to leave all the tragedy behind, to start fresh and build a life with the man she felt herself falling deeper and deeper for every day.

  Vanessa couldn’t control her tears. Like a busted fire hydrant, she sat on the couch and spewed emotion, sparking a sort of fear in Aaron. A flash of confusion rose through him as he scrambled toward her, asking her in a panicked tone what he did wrong.

  “Did I say something to hurt you?” he said, locking eyes with her.

  “I… I… I need to tell you something,” Vanessa squeaked between sobs.

  “You can tell me anything,” Aaron said, taking her hand. She held onto him, but loosely. Without feeling.

  “I have… a little sister,” Vanessa managed to tell him. “She… is six. And I am all she has. That’s why I began stripping. That’s why I can’t stay with you overnight. That’s why I do everything that I do. I am all she has,” Vanessa repeated.

  “That's… very admirable,” he said, squeezing her hand. She didn’t squeeze back. “Where…” he began, treading lightly. “Where are… your parents?”

  Vanessa’s sobs turned into full-bodied wails, and Aaron knew immediately that he shouldn’t have asked. Her torso quaked with the sobs and she kept gasping for breath as he took her into his arms and rocked her slowly. Up until this point, Aaron found Vanessa to be standoffish, devoid of most human emotion, and that was a huge chunk of his attraction to her. She was a challenge for him, a high wall to scale. And yet, here and now, she was damaged and real, swimming in her own humanity. She was beautiful in a way he hadn’t seen yet, opening up to him in a way he hadn’t expected.

  “Listen,” he whispered into her ear. “You don’t have to talk about this now. I’m sorry I asked, okay? Can you forgive me?” He bent his head down and looked into her eyes, glassy with never-ending tears. Vanessa nodded solemnly.

  “Okay,” Aaron continued. “It’s up to you, but I can arrange for care for your sister. If you’d rather not go with me, that’s fine. But I think,” he said, a new smile brimming from his mouth, “that you need a vacation. Am I right?”

  Vanessa’s tears had dried on her face now, white-hot with the grief he’d accidentally evoked. More than anything, she wanted to get away. She wanted to follow him wherever he went, feel his hand squeeze hers, hear his voice whispering in her ear. He was more than just a sexual side dish to her now. She’d spilled her weakness to him and he didn’t flinch. Maybe this is what it’s like to be with a man, Vanessa considered to herself, realizing that the boys she’d dated in the past held her to a disgusting standard. They expected her to be supremely angelic while they, themselves, were allowed to wallow in their own filth.

  “Where are we going?” Vanessa asked timidly.

  “The Maldives,” Aaron replied, pulling her lips into his.

  Chapter 19

  The room was darkening around the two of them, fusing together in the cocoon of coitus. Their skin tones swirled together in the fading light like the exact moment that milk hits a robust espresso. Aaron and Vanessa lay there in his bed for hours as the world carried on. The day darkened and the people piddled around in rooms just a few walls away, and yet the two of them were the only people alive. It felt post-apocalyptic in nature, the way that she kissed him with a tantalizing softness that made him dizzy with desire, the tenacity with which he grabbed her breasts and awakened an animal in her that, all her life, she never knew could exist. It felt as though they were alone in a newly extinct world, a world all to themselves, a world where no one could judge them and there was a sense of urgency about the act: dire, imperative.

  They were ferocious with each other at first, shaking in passion pent-up by mounting days of effervescent impatience. Their hands were desperately deliberate, twisting all over each other's skin like a time-lapse video of lush ivy sprouting up a garden wall. She nibbled on his bottom lip, took it between her teeth and gently sucked on it, mentally citing a blurb she read in an issue of Cosmopolitan she stole from her mother's bathroom when she was eleven that stated that such an act would "drive him insane," and ensure that "he'll think about you long afterward." She had kissed like this with every boy before, never questioning the validity of the article. It always seemed cemented in her mind as a sexual gospel of sorts. It couldn't be wrong. She read it in Cosmo at such an age that Cosmo was lauded as a kind of coming-of-age Kama Sutra, a sensual bible for the sexually inept.

  Once it was all over—once the two of them thoroughly fatigued themselves, their batteries drained—they lay together as the last shreds of Tuesday bid them farewell. Aaron lay on his back and closed his eyes, watching the color blue float around his mind in several different shades: a whirring rainbow of sapphire behind his eyelids drifting him under a cobalt sky, down an azure river, into a cerulean sleep. And yet, Aaron couldn't sleep, not yet, anyway. Not only was it too early, too premature, too infantile to drift off at this hour, but the primary reason still glimmered beside him. Vanessa was here.

  They never talked about Vanessa staying over, never discussed such formalities. In the Maldives, it was all very casually cloak-and-dagger. She would sneak over when the coast was clear, after all the board meetings, after the investors retired back to their own rooms, before dinner would be served and eaten with strained pleasantries in the company of dull colleagues. After all the work of each day was done, Aaron and Vanessa would instantly fall into his bed and begin. No foreplay, just brass tacks. The passion would unfurl as soon as the door to Aaron’s suite shut behind him. They would do som
ething quick, something that felt almost cheap, something that lasted no more than ten minutes.

  And then, for the proceeding two hours, they would explore each other's body with their eyes, with the skin-to-skin contact that made every touch feel more charged just because they were there, they were naked, and they were together. They would always do this and, at some point in the afternoon (it was always the afternoon), Vanessa would sigh sharply, almost as if she were expecting something, expecting Aaron to ask her to stay, and of course he never did.

  He couldn’t, not with the company hinging on the tightrope of collapse with every passing month of lost revenue. Not when all eyes were on him to turn the profits around. Investors and employees, of course, would flippantly wave off Aaron’s feelings for Vanessa as uncontrollable lust, getting his dick wet with minimal effort. And admittedly, to the casual observer, it seemed that way. But no one knew about Vanessa’s life being snatched away from her just as she stepped over the threshold from adolescence to adulthood. But Aaron recognized that from the unbiased perspective, Vanessa seemed like a hot little side dish, a stereotype in disgusting clarity. As much as he hated himself for doing it, he had to keep his affair with Vanessa a secret until he could turn things around at work. For now, she was his behind closed doors, after the lock clicked itself into place, once the curtains were drawn.

  Vanessa’s sigh would always fly out into the air and linger between them, her head resting on his chest and their legs intertwined. She would always make one last-ditch effort to subtly woo him—to make him realize that she couldn't possibly leave him in bed alone—by blinking a few times, her head tilted sideways in schoolgirl naïveté. Butterfly kisses along his chocolate skin.

  At first, he was staunch and resolute. No one can find out, he demanded internally. And yet, Vanessa persisted on this Tuesday afternoon as four o’clock loomed over the ocean outside. She didn’t want to leave, she didn’t want him to make her leave, so away her eyelashes fluttered, the tickling across his collarbone radiating through him like an aftershock from the way she’d made him burst in ecstasy just moments before.