Sweetheart

by Sarah Mayberry

  “It’s got great light,” Haley agreed.

  She was busy shaking out the fitted sheet and I went to take the other end from her.

  “Goes faster with two,” I said when she gave me an appreciative smile.

  “I feel like I’m going to wake up from a dream. A hot guy who knows where the clitoris is, vacuums, and helps change the sheets? You’re officially a unicorn.”

  “Let’s not get too carried away,” I said. “Housework and I are casual acquaintances. But I figure the sooner this is done, the sooner Larry and I get you back.”

  Haley shot me an amused look. “Not going to touch the clitoris part?”

  “Oh, I’m gonna touch it a lot, but that’s also for later,” I said, giving her my best lazy, dirty smile.

  She laughed and lifted the mattress’s corner to put on the sheet. She froze, a frown on her face. “What the hell...?”

  She nudged the mattress so it slid sideways across the bedframe, and I followed her gaze—someone had cut a hole in the boxspring’s fabric, creating a hiding place between the springs.

  “Oh my God,” Haley said, reaching inside to draw out a heavily tarnished silver bracelet.

  She blinked at the piece of jewelry, clearly astonished to see it.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “My grandmother gave me this bracelet for my sixteenth birthday. It was one of hers, and I’d always admired it. I thought I’d lost it...” Haley frowned. “I searched everywhere for this thing. I cried for hours. And Jess had it all along.”

  “Let me guess—your grandmother didn’t give Jess a bracelet for her sixteenth birthday?”

  “I don’t know. It’s so long ago now.” Haley rubbed the bracelet against her shirt, trying to polish off the tarnish. “This is so weird. I can clearly remember Jess telling me she thought this bracelet was ugly. She teased me about it every time I wore it.”

  I’m a guy, and even I could tell the bracelet was lovely, a delicate confection of fine links that had been woven and joined together. It was obvious Jess had wanted the bracelet for herself and had taken it. She’d shoplifted several times when we’d been together, and once she’d stolen a small figurine from a friend’s apartment, claiming it had been given to her when I called her on it.

  “Anything else in there?” I asked.

  Haley shot me a quick look, and I knew it hadn’t even occurred to her that there might be more. She set the bracelet on the mattress and peered inside the hole for a second before reaching in to pull out a stuffed animal, followed by an old paperback copy of The Hobbit.

  “This thing is like the Bermuda Triangle,” she said.

  She was joking, but I could see she was a little thrown.

  “Is all this stuff yours?” I asked.

  “The book is mine. I know why she took it, too. I was obsessed with The Hobbit for a while there. I’d finish reading it and start all over again at Chapter One. She hated that I preferred it to doing whatever she wanted to do. The Beanie Baby is Laura Carmichael’s, though. Her most prized possession. Its disappearance was a neighborhood mystery for years.”

  “Well. I always wondered what Jess was like as a kid,” I said dryly.

  Haley shot me a quick, assessing look.

  “She only did things like this when she felt threatened. Mostly it was about needing attention for herself. She’s always needed a lot of proof that she’s loved.”

  She contemplated the Beanie Baby and book for a few seconds, then tucked them back into the bed base. She shrugged when she saw my frown.

  “They’re her treasures now. But I’m keeping the bracelet. Granny Elliot’s been dead eight years and it would be nice to have something to remember her by.”

  I helped her right the mattress, and together we finished making the bed. When we were done, Haley studied the room and looked thoughtful for a moment.

  “Maybe some flowers from the garden, and then I think we’re through here.”

  “Which bedroom is yours?” I asked as I followed her out of the room.

  She pointed to the door across the hall. “That one. Mom turned it into her study a few years ago, but feel free to be a snoop.”

  She grinned at me and resumed her mission to get some flowers from the garden. It was typically thoughtful of her to go the extra mile for her sister, and I was smiling to myself as I nudged open her old bedroom door.

  This room was half the size of her sister’s and much darker, thanks to a single, north-facing window that offered a view of the neighbor’s fence. Compared to Jess’s room, it was a closet, but it made sense that Haley had drawn the short straw—Jess would have made Haley’s life hell if she’d scored the better room.

  I made my way through the house and out the kitchen door to the backyard and found Haley using a pair of scissors to snip roses and other summer flowers from the garden beds. She piled them on the picnic table while I threw a stick for Larry. When she was done, Haley took the flowers inside and returned with two tall glasses of iced water.

  “Read my mind,” I said, accepting a glass.

  “Being the resident strong man is thirsty work,” she said, taking a seat beside me.

  We drank, the sound of birds and insects filling the silence between us. Then Haley set her glass down and cleared her throat.

  “So, since it looks as though Jess is going to be around for a while, I wondered if maybe we should talk about the stuff that we said we were going to talk about.”

  I knew exactly what she meant, because our unfinished conversation regarding the details of my relationship with Jess had been weighing on me, too.

  “You’re probably right,” I said, shifting my glass a few inches to the left.

  “If you don’t want to do it now, that’s okay,” Haley said quickly.

  “Now is good.” I’d rather have it over and done with, then Haley and I would both know where we stood. I took a moment to gather my thoughts, then raised my gaze to meet hers. “You know the basics. We lived together in a little place above a laundromat in Queens. I worked in a café during the day and nights in a bar to pay the rent while Jess looked for modeling work. And at first it was fun. We got to know the city. When I had nights off, we’d find clubs and bars in obscure places. Jess made a bunch of new friends. She was always good at that.”

  “Charisma,” Haley said, nodding in recognition. “She’s got it in spades. Same as you.”

  “Me?” I gave her a look. “No.”

  It was her turn to give me a look. “Seriously? You don’t see the way people flock to you? You’re a charisma machine, Beck.”

  I shook my head. “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe that’s part of your charm—you have no idea how charming you are,” she mused.

  “Anyway,” I said, determined to get this over with. “Things were okay until it started becoming clear that Jess had a lot of competition for every job she went for, and after the rejections started to pile up, things turned sour. She got sad, then angry, and I was the only one around to absorb all of that, so...”

  “I know what she can be like when she’s like that,” Haley said. “I’m really sorry you had to deal with it on your own.”

  “She started drinking a lot, going out with her friends. There were lots of texts at weird hours from guys I didn’t know. Men’s clothes mysteriously showing up in our apartment, that sort of thing. I kept telling myself she wouldn’t cheat on me, but I realize now that was pretty naive.”

  Haley looked down at the table. “She once told me that sex is a tool, something she uses to get what she wants. But sometimes she just does impulsive things because it makes her feel good in the moment.”

  “That sounds about right. I didn’t know how to bring it up with her, so I didn’t, but then she started accusing me of cheating on her. She’d go through my phone, and every time I mentioned a woman I worked with, she insisted on knowing everything about them. It messed with my head, especially with all the other stuff going on—the drinking, the shop
ping, the staying out all night. She started blaming me for everything that was wrong in her life, from failed job bookings, to the plumbing in the apartment, to us not being able to afford a vacation. I couldn’t seem to do or say anything without setting her off. It was pretty fucking awful.”

  Haley’s eyes were sad as she watched me, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I was worried about her, to be honest. The way she’d fly off the handle, the crying jags, then suddenly she’d be fine, like all the other stuff hadn’t happened. I wound up telling my mom about it, and she said it sounded like Jess would benefit from therapy. So I stupidly raised that idea with Jess, suggesting we could go together.”

  Haley winced. “I can only imagine how that went down. She has always been super resistant to the idea of therapy.”

  “It wasn’t pretty. She was screaming and yelling so much one of our neighbors called the cops. I backed off, but I was pretty freaked out by then and thinking about ending things. Then she landed a big shoot, and all of a sudden things were good again. I was the best boyfriend in the world, our apartment was cute as a button, the world was our oyster.”

  “Confusing,” Haley suggested.

  “I had whiplash from the turn around. It kept going like that, up and down, up and down, and then one day I found a condom wrapper under our bed that I knew was definitely not mine. And honestly, I was kind of relieved I finally had hard evidence of how badly things were fucked up between us. Jess was so, so good at shifting the blame to me. She literally made me doubt my own memory of events, constantly accusing me of making stuff up. When I showed her the condom wrapper and told her it was over between us, she lost it. She accused me of planting it so I could get rid of her and claimed I’d been having an affair with the woman downstairs and threw a whole bunch of other accusations at me. She was getting more and more upset, so I figured we both could use some space, and I told her I was going for a walk to clear my head. I walked around for a while, called home to let my folks know what was happening, and texted a friend to ask if I could spend the night. Then I went back to the apartment.”

  I stopped to take a couple deep breaths, remembering that day.

  “If you need to stop, we can do this another time.”

  “I want you to know. It might explain a few things. Like why I was such an asshole when you first turned up at Dark Horse.”

  “Okay.”

  "I really didn't want to go back, you know? I promised myself I'd just grab my things, retrieve Larry, and leave and not get sucked into another fight. Jess was curled up on the couch when I let myself in, her eyes all puffy from crying. She didn't say a word, just stared at me. There was so much accusation in her eyes, Haley. That was when I realized Larry hadn’t come rushing to greet me when I came through the door the way she usually did."

  Remembering that awful moment made my guts tight and the back of my eyes burn.

  “I asked her where Larry was, and that’s when she told me I’d left the door to the apartment open when I went out. According to her, Larry had followed me. She told me she’d heard a horrible noise from down on the street and she’d run down to find Larry had been hit by a car. She said Larry died instantly, and that she would never forgive me for letting that happen.”

  Haley gasped, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, her eyes wide. “Beck. No.”

  “She’d lied to me before, but I didn’t think she had it in her to lie about something like that. Not about Larry, when she knew how much I loved my dog. And hearing it was my fault she’d died... I couldn’t get my head around it. Jess and I were both so upset, and somehow over the next couple of days our shared grief turned into a reason to stay. I was hardly thinking straight at that point, I was so busy giving myself a hard time.”

  “What did she do with Larry?” Haley asked, her face pale.

  I smiled grimly, remembering how I’d put all the pieces together afterward. “She put an ad on Facebook, claiming she needed to rehome her dog urgently because she had to go home unexpectedly to care for her sick father.”

  “She gave Larry away to a stranger?” Haley asked, sitting up straight, a fiery light coming into her eyes. “Are you kidding me? How did you get her back?”

  I really hated telling this story, but seeing Haley get so angry on my and Larry’s behalf was almost worth it. She got it. She understood what Jess’s betrayal had meant to me.

  “I was so fucking lucky. I was running through the park a couple of weeks later, and I decided to take a route I hadn’t run in months. And there she was. She was playing fetch with this skinny guy with a beard, doing that thing she does where she won’t return the ball right away. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I mean, I thought I was hallucinating, Haley, I really did. Then I called her name and Larry came running over, going crazy. I’ve never seen her so happy, and I was standing there laughing and crying like a maniac. The guy filled me in on the Facebook ad, and I explained I was in the middle of a breakup with my girlfriend. He was a decent guy, didn’t try to stake a claim or anything, just handed Larry over on the spot because he could see how much Larry loved me. I went straight home, packed my bags, and left and never looked back.”

  “Jesus. Beck. I don’t know what to say. Jess has done a lot of shitty things in her time, but that’s so cruel. It’s so awful...” She trailed off, unable to find the words.

  “I figure she thought it was a win-win—maybe she could guilt me into staying, and if I left, she knew she’d taken the thing I loved more than anything in the world from me.”

  “She’s always at her most dangerous when she’s been rejected,” Haley said slowly. “But I still can't believe she did that to you. No wonder you didn't want anything to do with me."

  I picked up my glass and drank until it was empty. Then I very deliberately tried to relax my shoulders, which felt as though they were up around my ears.

  “Jess and I haven’t communicated in any way since that day,” I said. “It took me a long time to come to terms with how fucked up our relationship was. I took a lot of crap from her. I let her mess with my head in ways I never thought were even possible.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Haley said, nodding. “She’s such a good liar. She’ll say and do anything to get what she wants. Or to hurt someone if she feels threatened.”

  That was when it hit me that more than anyone in the world, Haley understood what I’d gone through. What it was like being gaslit and manipulated by a pro.

  “Sorry if that was hard to hear,” I said, because on top of everything else, I was always conscious that Jess was Haley’s sister and Haley was still looking pale and shocked.

  “I don't know what to say, Beck. What she tried to do to you and Larry... It's so fucking awful. She’s always been volatile. When she was little, she’d throw tantrums at the drop of a hat. We all learned to walk on eggshells around her when she was in a bad place, because she could make life hell if she put her mind to it. I think Mom and Dad hoped she’d grow out of it, but she never did. When she was in high school the principal wanted her to go to compulsory counseling after she had a major meltdown at school. But Jess flat-out refused. She wouldn’t talk or eat for days and threatened to hurt herself, and finally Mom and Dad negotiated for her to do a ‘personal development’ program after school.”

  Larry roused herself from her sunbathing and came to join us at the table, her tongue lolling out of her mouth as she looked from Haley to me and then back again. Then she came to my side and rested her head on my knee, her way of soliciting ear scratches. Haley smiled faintly as I obediently followed Larry’s prompt, scratching behind her ears until her eyes were slitted with pleasure.

  “Have you ever googled any of this stuff? I mean, did you ever try to figure out what might be wrong with Jess?” Haley asked suddenly, her gaze searching mine.

  “Yeah. Afterward, when I had enough distance to process what had happened.”

  “Borderline Personality Disorder seems like the most likely dia
gnosis. But there are a bunch of other things it could be, too.” She shifted guiltily. “My parents would kill me if they heard me talking like this. They’ve convinced themselves Jess is just highly strung and sensitive. They think that if they wrap her in enough cotton and love her enough she’ll get better, but I don’t think that’s true. And in the meantime, she’s hurt herself, and you, and poor Larry. God knows what’s gone on between her and Jonny. But my parents are so scared of pushing her after her suicide attempt, they won’t even discuss getting her help.”

  Haley shook her head, her expression bleak.

  “I feel like I should give you a head start so you can make a run for it,” she said.

  I reached across the table and took her hand. As I’d noted before, she had strong hands, the nails short and practical, her grip firm. Good hands. Capable, hardworking hands.

  “I knew all this going in,” I told her. “You’re worth it, Haley. A thousand times over.”

  She blinked, then her hand tightened around mine and she lowered her head to press a fierce kiss to the back of my hand.

  “Thank you for saying that.”

  “It’s just the truth.”

  We smiled at each other, grateful we’d had the conversation despite how much the memories obviously sucked for both of us.

  Haley gave my hand a final squeeze, then pulled hers free and picked up our glasses.

  “Let’s get out of here and go do something completely frivolous for a few hours,” she said.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  As long as I was with her, anything sounded good to me.

  As for what would happen when her sister blew back into town... Well, we’d deal with that when we came to it, and we’d do it together.

  34

  Haley

  I spent a fun afternoon with Larry and Beck hiking through Hubbard Park. We took donuts we bought at a Montpelier bakery and sat in a sunny clearing to eat them, licking sugar glaze off our fingers before Beck decided to push me back onto the grass and kiss me till I couldn’t see straight.