Why had I done something like this? I couldn’t explain it. When I was not much older than Bell, something happened while grocery shopping with my mother. One day after my mother had yelled at me about something, an idea came to me from nowhere. It was a familiar-feeling idea, whispering in my ear like something I’d always known. I wandered off from her and found the cleaning products aisle, and then I found a nice row, six across, of plastic bleach bottles. The bottles were blue, and the label had a rainbow that made me angry. My mother had called me bad names, and I felt myself being the things she said I was. One by one, I unscrewed the caps on the bleach bottles and removed the protective seals, then put the caps back on, tight enough that the caps wouldn’t fall off, but loose enough that the contents would leak if they tipped over.
There was a darkness inside me, a destructive force. My mother could see it, which was why she hated me. This darkness convinced me that if someone picked up a bottle of bleach and spilled some on their clothes, it would be fair. That bad things only happened to people who deserved what they got.
***
I was in bed that night, treading water near that waterfall edge of sleep, when my cell phone beeped with an incoming text message.
Ever since I’d gotten the phone, I’d had more wrong numbers than right, so I rolled out of bed with a groan, because the phone would just keep beeping until I checked or it died.
The text was from Sawyer, and read: How was bath time?
Me: A few tears. Shampoo in the eyes.
Sawyer: That’s always my excuse when I cry.
I grinned at his text and jumped back into bed, cradling the phone in my hand. I had never understood why people enjoyed texting so much, but as I read Sawyer’s joke, I imagined his voice and face a bunch of different ways, from serious to corny.
Me: :-)
Sawyer: Holy shitballs! Are you saying I made you smile?
Me: It wasn’t quite LOL but close.
Sawyer: I have the whole day off tomorrow.
Me: …
Sawyer: And I talked to Bruce so of course I know you have the day off. What I am trying to say is we should go to the beach and make sand castles.
I set the phone down and pushed it away from me. I lay back, facing the ceiling in the dark, ignoring my phone as it beeped again. We’d had two sorta-dates already, and they hadn’t gone so well. The first time, he’d tried to kiss me, and then he’d gone cold when I didn’t let him. The second time, we’d nearly had full-on sex, but then got into that argument over my neighbor kid. Things were definitely headed somewhere, and it promised to be dramatic.
The phone beeped again, so I grabbed it.
Sawyer: Hellooooo?
Sawyer: Battery died again?
Sawyer: I’ll just swing by and pick you up at ten tomorrow morning.
The phone beeped again in my hand, and I made a startled noise.
Sawyer: I’ll be there at ten, so just text me and say yes.
Me: Yes. Ten sounds fine.
Sawyer: Good. I hate it when you ask out a cute girl and she makes some dumb excuse instead of just telling you you’re despicable.
Me: I’m in bed.
Sawyer: Well, that escalated quickly! We’re already in the sexting phase?
Me: I’m tired so I’m going to sleep.
Sawyer: In that case I just deleted some really weird stuff I’m glad I didn’t send.
Me: See you at ten.
I turned the phone off without waiting for a response, and then I took it back into the living room and jabbed in the charger.
***
In the morning, all it took was one cough from Bell to make me feel like shit.
She coughed as we were putting on her coveralls—the ones she was a little big for, but insisted on wearing because “Nemo had to go to school.” The fish applique on the coveralls bib looked nothing like Nemo—it was green, and looked more like a whale than a fish—but you can’t argue with kid logic.
After she coughed, I tried to decide if it had sounded dry, or like the beginning of a cold. Winter was over, but I knew colds and flus could happen any time. Should I keep her home from school? The school had a policy of sending contagiously sick kids home, so they didn’t spread their germs to everyone.
I had a date with Sawyer that day, so more than usual, I really didn’t want her to be sick. Selfish me. She didn’t cough again, but she seemed to be moving groggily, hesitating.
Finally, I sat down across from her as she slowly ate her cereal.
“Bell, is something wrong? Do you feel sick? I should take your temperature.”
She gave me a new kind of look, one I didn’t recognize.
“I think I’m sick.”
“What kind of sick? Is it your tummy? Or do you have a cold?”
She gave me the look again, and then coughed, into her elbow like they’d taught her at school.
The cough seemed very deliberate. Exaggerated, and not sounding of phlegm.
Her eyes kept darting over to the side, and I turned my head to follow her gaze. The new television set.
She said, “If you’re sick, you don’t go to school.”
“And are you sick?”
She bit her lower lip with concentration and nodded.
I sighed. “You can stay home with me, I guess. There won’t be any television, though, because I need some help with laundry and a whole bunch of things. That’s what I do when you’re at school.”
“I can’t watch TV?”
“Nope. TV is not good for you when you’re sick.” Oh, the lies we tell the children, to counter their lies.
Her little rosebud lips scrunched together, her face revealing her internal struggle.
I considered launching into a lecture about lying to me about being sick, but my own lie still hung in the air over us.
She glared up at me, her little blue eyes blazing with something. Was she onto me, and all the lies I’d told her over the last three years?
I said soothingly, “Your friend Taylor would miss you if you didn’t go to school today.”
“Okay.”
“Okay… you don’t care, or okay, you’re going to school?”
She coughed again, watching me sidelong as she did.
“All done.” She held her hands up. “Not sick anymore.”
“Great,” I said, though I didn’t feel that great. As she’d been testing my gullibility, I’d heard those whispering voices telling me I chose this.
I chose this, and chose wrong.
The whispers said I would have been better off on my own. I should have dropped Bell off at the police station with a note, and gone on my way. But I couldn’t have, because she was only four, and I’d grown to love her over those years. She needed me as much as I needed her.
I should have run away when we first moved in with Derek, when she was still too tiny to have much personality. But even then, her tiny fists had grabbed hold of my heart. If I’d made myself cold and disappeared, everything would have been different, and I’d be on my own now.
And then I had the darker thought. That everything would have been better if she’d never existed. Maybe I’d be at college right now. Maybe if I hadn’t been up late getting her bottle and soothing her, I would have gotten better grades in school and earned a scholarship.
I bowed my head from the shame of these thoughts, looking up only when she banged her spoon on the table and declared that she was done.
Squirming on her chair, she kicked her feet against my knees until I looked up again.
She caught my gaze and pointed to the green fish on her coveralls.
“Nemo!” she cried. “I found him!” At times, Bell acted much older and more mature than her seven years, but I enjoyed these times where she regressed to baby talk.
She laughed, her pink tongue poking out between her two front teeth, the way it always did when she was being silly.
I had so much love for her that sometimes it flooded me, and I heard this love in my mind,
fierce like the roar of a lion. If anything happened to her, or if I let her down, I’d never forgive myself. My grief would suffocate me, and I would deserve to die.
“Blub blub,” she said, flicking the fish applique.
“Blub blub, let’s get you off to school.”
Chapter Fifteen
SAWYER JONES
Aubrey had been telling me, in her own way, to keep my distance. But then, just when I was about to back off, she invited me in.
She stood three steps up from me, on those stairs with their dark blue carpets, and said, “There is no husband.”
I honestly thought we were going up to her place for another beer, or to talk about what she’d meant.
Not many of my friends were married, but of the ones that were, all the women wore two rings: the engagement ring, with the diamond, and the wedding band that fit alongside it. Something about Aubrey’s plain gold band had never seemed right to me. No way would any man on this planet, no matter how broke he was, not give a woman that beautiful something equally pretty to show off to her friends.
I’d actually had this crazy thought that maybe she was in a religious cult, and they were all married to their cult leader or something. That happened in a movie I’d just watched, so it was fresh in my mind. I didn’t really believe it, but I knew something was weird about her situation.
I followed her up the stairs to her apartment. My roommate Spanky wasn’t wrong about her having a nice ass. I tried to keep my thoughts under control, but my blood was still racing from dealing with those little shitheads by the front door. I’d wanted to use the one kid as a bowling ball and knock the other ones down—bang their heads together until some manners came tumbling out. Little fuckers like that didn’t understand reasoning and talking things out. That’s what their mothers had been using on them for years, for all the good it did.
If somebody has no sense, you have to smack it into them. That’s just how it is.
Once Aubrey and I got inside the apartment, she looked at me with those pale eyes, and I felt the pull of the moon. The force was stronger than ever, drawing us together.
She let me kiss her, and her sweet lips made me hungry. I stopped thinking. All instinct and desire. Her neck. My mouth on her breasts. Her writhing underneath me. Pushing against me and pulling me to her at the same time. So much confusion and desperation. Up was down, and she let out that sweet cry of relief.
Orgasm.
The little death, as the French call it.
As she came underneath me, my hand deep in her panties, I felt a peace I didn’t think possible.
Then someone had knocked on the door, and everything went to shit within minutes.
Total shit show.
I opened my stupid mouth. She heard the things I said. The arrogance. The hubris. And she was not buying whatever I had for sale. Out I went, out the door.
Bad doggie.
Bad Sawyer.
As I trudged down the building’s long corridor, each door giving off its own pungent cooking aroma, I tried to believe I hadn’t ruined everything between us.
My heart lurched as I imagined I heard her calling me back, but I looked back and saw only walls and closed doors. Only then did I realize she was one of those girls who needs space. Not space forever, but in the beginning. Space all around her. Like the sky around the moon.
That was on Friday, and I would have called, but I didn’t have her number.
Over the weekend, I consulted a few of my non-roommate friends, who were much smarter than me, and suggested I call her. On the phone. So I got her number from Bruce, and I did.
Talking to her on the phone made me happy.
But she had a kid, and that scared the fuck out of me. The girl had golden-brown hair and looked full of hope, like the way I imagined Aubrey had looked, once upon a time, before whatever it was happened that stole away her smile.
The little girl looked about the same size as my nephew Toby, and I always had such a great time with the kid. He didn’t understand the concept of coloring within the lines, but he had a good eye for composition.
If Aubrey’s kid was anything like Toby, I could handle that situation. I would more than tolerate a kid. I could help out, maybe even adopt the kid one day if Aubrey and I got married.
Or at least that was my line of thinking the morning I rode over to pick her up for our trip to the beach. Aubrey wasn’t a big talker from what I could tell, but if she did put me on the spot and ask about my level of commitment, I was ready to answer honestly. I was all in. Hers.
The night I called from outside her building, riding away had been so awful, like abandoning the best feeling I’d ever known.
Tuesday.
I pulled up in front of her apartment building at five minutes to ten on Tuesday morning. It was early for me, since I worked nights at a restaurant and even later nights on my art. The top of my head felt tight, like it was being gathered into a knot. Time and sunshine would help loosen me up, and the summer day promised to be a hot one.
Was she expecting me to text when I got there? I squinted up at the corner apartment, and she appeared in the window. I waved up, and she made a hand gesture I took to mean she was coming down.
I sat on my bike and waited. Had she meant for me to come up? I didn’t know her buzzer number. Should I send a text and ask? No, she’d think I was an idiot. My mouth felt dry and fuzzy, which was odd, since I’d had nothing to drink the night before.
Aubrey came out of the glass doors, sunglasses on and her mouth in that perpetual straight line, neither up nor down.
Her feet crunched on the gravel as she got closer to me.
Over the sound of the gravel, and traffic and birds in the distance, I said, “How’s your little girl?”
She ducked her head and looped her purse across her body in preparation for putting on the bike helmet. “Good.” She licked her lips, looking like she wanted to say something further.
I wanted to fish it out of her, but waited instead.
She continued, “I think she tried to pull a big fib on me this morning. She was going to fake being sick, to stay home and watch her new TV.”
“We could have taken her with us to the beach.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at the bike. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”
Suddenly I saw my choice of transportation as being the exact opposite of what a single mother would find appealing. My beautiful Harley, my shining joy, turned foolish, just like that.
I had to fix this.
“I’m going to sell the bike now that summer’s just about here.” Really? Sell the bike? This nervous Sawyer didn’t think about what he said.
She grimaced and pulled on the helmet. “Why?”
“You get a better price for bikes at the beginning of summer.”
“No, I mean why are you selling it?”
I thought about my vow to give Aubrey some space, not to come on too strong. Aw, fuck it. I hated lying.
“Because I’m dating a single mother. And I want to be able to take her and her kid to do things. Like mini golf. Does your daughter like mini golf? What about you?”
I grinned at the idea of Aubrey trying to putt a ball between the rotating blades of a miniature windmill. I would seriously pay to see that.
She shot me one of her Aubrey looks, like a splash of cold water, and I felt like one of those little dogs who runs at the ocean, nipping at the waves.
I started the bike and she got on behind me. Selling the bike would mean no more of her sitting behind me, clutching her arms around my body. I would miss that, but I’d rather be kissing her, and more.
We drove through light traffic—light because it was a Tuesday morning—and I felt like we were in a TV commercial for something, because the weather was so clear and sunny and we caught nearly every green light along the way.
We hit White Rock way sooner than I expected, and I reluctantly parked and let her off the bike. Her arms felt so good around me, like
all the goodness in the world wrapped around my torso.
“You warm in there?” I asked. She had on a red hoodie, zipped up, and I realized that with the wind, she’d probably been cold on the ride. I’d been hot, and I should have offered her my leather jacket for the ride.
She said, “I’m fine.”
“Then why are your shoulders up around your ears?”
She uncrossed her arms and dropped her shoulders back down, pretending she wasn’t cold, but I already had my jacket off and was sweeping it around behind her. She let me drop it onto her shoulders, and I seized my opportunity to snare her with my coat, pulling her in close to me.
Awesome move, Sawyer.
I stared down at her lips and leaned in closer.
She turned her head to the side, as if suddenly very interested in people walking their dogs nearby.
Her ear was so close, and I planned to bite her earlobe if she wouldn’t kiss me. I hesitated, and she wriggled back and the edges of the jacket slipped out of my hands.
She slipped out of my hands.
Next time, I’d hold on tighter.
She ran one hand back through her wavy brown hair and flipped her hair out over the collar of my so-big-on-her leather jacket, shooting me a look as if to say, try again later.
I noticed her left hand was bare. No ring.
“I see your divorce went through,” I said.
She frowned and stuck her hands in her pants pockets.
We were walking along the sand now. I had my boots on, so the sand wasn’t a problem, but it was probably getting into her shoes. Aubrey wasn’t grumbling at all. My ex-girlfriend Janine would have been complaining her face off with this amount of sand.
Aubrey didn’t complain. She didn’t seem to notice minor problems.
I asked her, “Am I doing anything right?”
She glanced over at the ocean, then up at me.
“This is nice,” she said. “I’m glad you invited me out.”
“Really?”
She frowned at the horizon, her lips in that tight, straight line again.
I wished she’d give me some sign of encouragement. Should I even bother trying to win her over?
We continued walking, she with her hands pushed down in her pockets.
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