And then… and then I’d be tangled up in his life. His worldviews. His rules.
We’d be together, though, and he’d pull off his shirt and show me where his tattoos went. I would trace the lines with my fingers, and kiss his inked skin. That would be the good part, and if I could stay there forever, in that moment in time, it might be worth losing myself. Maybe for once I’d feel warm and safe.
***
I was supposed to start work on Wednesday at noon, but I was late because the school called. I immediately thought the worst—that she’d gotten hurt. To my relief, she’d just had a tantrum.
Bell was prone to these epic meltdowns, usually when she was hungry, but sometimes they just happened. I thought she’d outgrown them, as things had been relatively calm since the move to Surrey.
The woman from the school’s office explained that I needed to bring her a change of clothes.
“Shouldn’t I come take her home?” I asked.
“We feel it’s in the child’s best interest to have fewer disruptions. We try to carry on and keep things relatively normal, despite these incidents. It’s like getting back on the horse.”
“Back on the horse,” I repeated, dumbfounded. Did everyone around here say that?
I asked for more details, and the woman explained what had happened. Another child had taken one of the classroom’s hand-held video games from her, and she’d screamed and thrashed and worked herself up to the point of vomiting on herself.
Ah, the vomit tantrum. I was familiar with that one, unfortunately.
Poor Bell got the same bad temper as me and our mother.
***
Four of us sat in the nurse’s room: Bell, me, her teacher, and the school nurse.
The teacher, a dark-skinned woman with brown lips and big eyes, said, “Mrs. Braun, you seem so young to have a seven-year-old daughter.”
I shrugged and twisted my lie of a wedding band. “My makeup hides the crow’s feet.”
Bell was sitting at my side, listening in while pretending to be fascinated by a picture book on her lap.
The teacher pursed her brown lips, her judging eyes raking over my clothes. “Have there been any disruptions to Bell’s home life recently?”
“Disruptions? Well, you tell me. We just moved here. She’s only been at this school for three and a half weeks, dropped in from outer space, not knowing a single person.”
Bell looked up from her picture book. “Aubrey! We’re not from outer space.”
The teacher looked at me sideways. “She calls you by your first name?”
“We’re very modern that way.”
“I have some concerns.”
“Me too.” I grabbed Bell’s hand. “Sweetie, do you want to stay here for school, or do you want to spend the afternoon with grandma?”
She kept looking at her picture book. “School.”
The nurse and teacher exchanged a look, and then the nurse nodded.
“She seems calm enough now,” the teacher said. “Before her outburst, she was telling the other students that her grandparents were ghosts. That they returned from the dead. Any idea why she’d say something like that?”
I looked down at her pudgy cheeks, her innocent face. She wasn’t wrong. We’d been raised thinking our grandparents were dead, and now they were back. Alive again. I thought I’d smoothed it over with a story about how she’d misunderstood the stories our mother had told, but Bell had a good memory. A disturbingly good memory. Just not quite good enough to remember to call me Mom around other people like she was supposed to.
“She must have been telling one of her stories,” I said.
The nurse patted my hand, which I jerked away.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was just going to say that being a single parent is difficult. We have some programs through the school board, for single parents.”
I glared down at Bell. So, she’d also told people she had no father at home. What else had she told everyone? My ring seemed more pathetic than ever.
We talked a little more about bed times and getting Bell to get more sleep so she’d be less agitated during the day. The nurse wrote down a specific brand of vitamins they wanted me to pick up, and she tried not to insinuate I was a shitty parent, but I picked up on it loud and clear.
My cheeks burned with anger at being judged. They didn’t know the sacrifices I made, and how I always put Bell’s needs ahead of mine. To them, I was just some trashy single mother who’d be popping out another kid by a different father any day now.
The teacher kept staring at my stomach area, like she was checking for a baby bump.
I thought our “little talk” would never end, but finally it did.
With Bell in her new clean clothes, I hugged her and left her for the rest of the day.
Her grandmother would be picking her up after school, and I knew she would be in good hands, but as I walked away from the school, I felt like a failure. An utter failure.
Vitamins. I’d never given her vitamins, which made me a failure as a caregiver. And sleep. I’d been thinking that as long as she got a few hours’ more sleep than I did, she’d be fine, but apparently kids that age need way more rest than she’d been getting.
Here I’d been thinking my mother was Parent of the Year, and it turned out I wasn’t much better.
When I finally walked into the bar, I was half an hour late and full of apologies.
Bruce said, “Hey kid, if your face gets any longer, you’re going to trip on your lower lip.”
“Not funny,” I said.
“Start drinking until I get funny. That’s what I do.”
“I never see you drinking.”
He held his finger to his lips. “Shh, don’t ruin my reputation as an unrepentant lush.”
I put on a barmaid apron and got to work filling the trays with citrus slices as he transferred ice cubes into pans from the big machine that cranked them out.
Bruce looked up at someone coming in the door and said, “Here on a Wednesday? You working on becoming a regular?”
Sawyer paused in his stride. “Are there any perks to being a regular?”
“A big chocolate cake on your birthday.”
“Really?”
Bruce grinned his crooked smile, his knobby scar on his upper lip splitting that section of his dark beard. “Naw, not really.”
They both laughed their easy, masculine laughs. You never hear women laugh like that, and I don’t just mean the voice. I mean the easiness. A big laugh over a dumb joke.
I grabbed a bar cloth and started making my way around the bar. “I should give your table an extra wipe, so your sketch book doesn’t get sticky.”
Bruce called after me, “Hey, did you get that tooth yanked out or what?”
A couple of grizzled old-timers looked up from their spots at the bar.
I turned and gave Bruce a dirty look. “Root canal. It was awesome. So much fun. I highly recommend it.”
Bruce made a surprised expression. “Sarcasm? It’s the lowest form of humor, but it’s still humor. Aubrey, don’t tell me you’re developing a sense of humor.”
I shook my head and followed Sawyer to his table, where I gave the top a good scrub, and the edges as well. The table probably didn’t need another cleaning, but I wanted to do something. Sawyer had been good to me, first caring about my safety and then giving me the frog drawing I’d admired. I felt the desire to make some gesture in return.
His boots and jeans drew my attention. They looked expensive, like the kind of designer clothes that come with some holes rubbed into the jeans and scuffing on the boots so they look broken-in, but they’re brand new. Something told me Sawyer wasn’t the starving artist he appeared to be.
“How’ve you been?” I asked.
“Not so great. I think I bit off more than I can chew.” He reached for his phone and turned the display to me. The image was a tangle of dark lines, nothing recognizable.
“Your giant art project?”
He seemed pleased I remembered, his gorgeous, full lips twisting up in a smile that made his green eyes even more captivating. “As I mentioned, though, I’m stuck for inspiration. They say smaller pieces of art are just as hard as large ones, but they’re wrong. The big ones are way, way more difficult.”
“Do you actually earn a living doing this?” I handed his fancy phone back. “I’m sorry. That was so rude. I don’t know why I said that.”
“You asked because you’re curious. I’m flattered that you’re curious.”
I bit my lower lip, only realizing what I was doing when his eyes went to my mouth. I released the lip immediately. What was next? Twirling my hair? Giggling? Kill me now.
His voice sexy and husky, he said, “What’s on your mind?”
“I put your frog up on my fridge at home.”
“Yeah? Does it bring the room together? I could color it in to match the sofa.” He grinned. “That’s a joke, by the way.”
“As you heard my uncle say, I don’t have a sense of humor.”
He clapped his hand to his forehead. “That’s why you look so familiar. You’re Bruce’s niece. I couldn’t figure out why you looked so much like someone I had ...” He held two hands over his heart. “Such warm feelings about. Your uncle’s a cool guy. Decent.”
“He is. So much decency in one person is refreshing.”
Sawyer frowned and turned in his chair so his body was squarely facing mine. My eyes traveled down his shirt and below his belt, to where his jeans wrinkled and creased over a good-sized package. I jerked my gaze away, a flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck.
“The way you say his decency is refreshing, you make me wonder,” he said, his voice still low and gritty, pushing up under my skin. “Do you usually assume people are rotten until they prove otherwise?”
“Some people trust their first impressions. I’m not one of those people.”
“Tell me your first impression of me.”
My first impression had been… dangerously cute. And his beautiful moss-green eyes had made me want to confess and confide in him. That was the truth, but I sure as hell wasn’t spilling my guts.
“Messy tattoos,” I said. “Because of the coloring job your nephew had done. That’s all I remember. Just a guy with brown hair and messed-up tattoos. You weren’t drunk or complaining, so I thought you were okay.”
“How about now?”
“Kinda pushy.”
“You could walk away any time this gets too intense.”
I scratched my neck. “I dunno. Talking to people helps pass the time.”
“You were a gutted, wallowing candle.”
“What?”
“That was my first impression of you, Aubrey. A wick drowning in melted wax, your flame in danger. Just one more gust of wind and you’d be lost. You’d become that lost girl, sad through and through.”
The way he spoke of me sent a chill through my body. Also, the way he was looking at me. Head tilting to one side, his gaze traveled slowly from my feet, up to my knees. I wore black stretch jeans, but felt naked.
He continued, “You might not trust your first impression of people, but I do. You look like someone who would make a good friend, but isn’t able to recognize one. You treat everyone equally, but you shouldn’t. You want to believe people can change, because it means you might be able to change. And if someone asked you what one thing you would do differently in your life if you had it to live all over again, you’d say everything.”
“Sounds like you have me all figured out.”
He shook his head and laughed. “Sorry. That’s all bullshit. Horoscope-quality bullshit. I think I have this thing, where I like the sound of my voice, and I just keep going. Long story, but I thought I had a career in that, but then I didn’t.” The light danced in his eyes as he grinned up at me. “Try me again after a beer. I’ll give you the full horoscope and your lucky lottery numbers as well.”
“Of course.”
I turned around and walked back to the bar, the heavy sensation of being watched all over me.
When I returned to his table and set down the pint, he was studying the image on his phone again.
“You need one big thing,” I said, pointing to a spot to the right and below the center of the image. “Everything’s really busy, and that’s good, but my eyes keep traveling to here, expecting something.”
“This is the focal point, though.” He tapped and zoomed in on the upper left. “See, this blossom is the focus. The dominant motif.”
“No. You start there, but your start isn’t where you end up.”
He chuckled. “Your start isn’t where you end up. See, you’re helping me already, and all I had to do was hit on you repeatedly.”
“Hit on me? I thought you were just being friendly to the married girl.”
“What’s it like? Being married?”
I winced. “Stable.”
“Is he good to you? He doesn’t pick you up from work. If you were my girl I’d be down here all the time, beating guys like me away with a stick.”
“He’s not the violent type.”
“Oh, and I am? Just because I can move and stop some dirtbag from hurting a girl, that doesn’t mean I’m violent. It means I know right from wrong and I’m not afraid to act on my instincts.”
“But you didn’t have to punch him in the face.”
Sawyer raised his eyebrows, his sparkling green eyes showing amusement. “You’re the one who had murder on your face. You would have buried the eight-ball in that guy’s eye socket.”
I shuddered at the memory and rubbed my arms. Bruce had installed the mirror in the corner, and we were all on alert to be more careful, but I didn’t like to think about what happened.
My voice soft as a whisper, I said, “Defending yourself is okay.”
“It certainly is. You have to fight, or you won’t believe you’re worth fighting for. Now tell me more about this husband of yours.”
I looked around the bar for some reprieve, but there was nothing to save me on the giant TV screens or in the neon beer brand advertisements.
“He hasn’t been around much lately,” I said.
A thunderous crack startled me, and I whipped my head to see some of the old-timer regulars starting a game of pool. Looking at the green felt lit up under the low-hanging lamp made my blood feel chilled, like ice water.
“Let me help you,” he said. “We can be friends. You help me with this giant albatross of an art project, and we can play a few games of pool. Low pressure.” He took a sip of beer, never moving his eyes off me. “Let’s be friends.”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it because I talk too much? I could try to talk less, but it helps me let off steam. It’s good to use your words instead of your fists to communicate. I think real men talk.”
Some new patrons took a seat nearby, so I began to back away.
“You do have a nice voice,” I said, then I turned and quickly walked away.
For the rest of the afternoon, we talked a little more each time I came by to check on Sawyer Jones. He kept working on ideas for the mural, doing quick sketches in his book. As he’d done the previous visits, he drank only two pints of beer, sipped very slowly as he worked. After the second one, he requested a water. As I set the water glass down, he said, “I’m just off to the boy’s room. Would you keep an eye on my laptop?”
I was confused for a moment, then realized he’d sketched the image of an open laptop inside two pages of the book. Both the drawing and his joke were cute.
He clapped his hands together and hooted. “Did it! Made you smile.”
I covered my mouth with my hand, embarrassed. Everyone in the area had turned to stare.
He was still chuckling as he disappeared around the corner to the washrooms.
I stood there for a moment, “guarding” the drawing of the laptop until I realized what I was doing. Shaking my head, still smiling, I walked away from the sketched laptop.
“You look great today,” she said.
“You too.”
She smoothed down her brightly-dyed purple hair. “No I don’t. I look like shit. I barely put on half my face, because Curtis wanted to make love.” She rolled her eyes.
“Oh.”
She poured two shots of something—vodka—and nodded down at the second one as she picked up the first.
“It’s Wednesday, so happy humpday,” she said.
I picked up my shot and held it up to clink with hers.
Grinning, she said, “Shit it!” and tossed back her drink.
Shit it was a Lana-ism I’d recently learned about. She had no problem the F-word, so it was an odd substitute, but it suited her.
“Shit it,” I said, tossing back my shot of vodka.
We chased these shots with another set for good measure. It was Wednesday, after all.
With the drinks in my system, plus no more pain from my tooth, I was light-headed and free. Giddy.
I wasn’t watching where I was going. On one pass back to the sink, Lana and I bumped into each other spectacularly, and she folded over in a fit of giggles.
“Don’t you love that feeling?” she said between gasps.
“What feeling? Bruising? Not really.” I was rubbing my hip, where I already had a bruise from the ice machine’s unforgiving corner.
“When your arms get heavy,” she said.
“I’m not that drunk, just buzzed.”
She laughed hard and flopped forward like a rag doll. “No, I mean when you laugh so hard your shoulders slump, like you can’t bear the weight of your own arms. And then you get that sharp pain behind your ears.”
“From laughing?”
She stood up and grabbed me by the shoulders. I was getting used to the constant body contact from Lana, so I didn’t pull away.
She leaned in until the top of her forehead was touching mine and we were eye to eye. “You need to get laid,” she said.
I humored her with a nod as I pulled my forehead off hers. “Yep.”
She shook me by the shoulders like I was her play toy. We were standing just inside the room I thought of as a kitchen, but was actually just a dishwashing station and storage for some of the mixes that didn’t fit behind the bar.
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