by Natalie Wrye
“Hello Kitty shirt?” She nods. “Yes… Oddly.”
I let out a long breath, turning the car off. “That’s her.” I throw the keys in my purse. “I’ll be right in.”
Moments later, I storm back up to the front door of The Drunken Peanut, a spot I’d started to know well in my teens when I’d picked up Aunt Sandra on late Saturday nights, scared shitless.
Sans license, small for my age, I’d had to wrestle her off a stool some nights, and I’d stare there, wondering how she got like this.
But secretly, I knew.
Because Aunt Sandra never looked out for anyone else but herself.
In my eight-year old eyes, she’d been the cool adult—the drifter, the dancer, the lover. But eight years later, I’d seen her for what she was.
The loner. The loser. The lush.
And I’d make a pact with myself of sorts. To never be her.
Walking through the front door of The Drunken Peanut, that sentiment is only reinforced when I find her back at the bar, one of my Hello Kitty teenaged t-shirts on her soft fleshy frame.
In another life, with twenty years and forty pounds between us, we could have been the same person.
I walk slowly, my footfalls making soft thuds against the sticky planked floor before I reach for my alternate dimension twin, my hand falling softly on her shoulder.
She turns.
“Naomi.” Her eyes, the same shade of brown as mine are hollow and full of regret. She grins, a lopsided expression that adds color to her cheeks. “What are you doing here?”
“Barging in on you. You haven’t been home for two days.”
“Well, in that case, I didn’t expect you until tomorrow. Thought I’d at least get a three day start.” She shrugs, her tiny shoulders, lifting. “Now’s as good as time as any, I guess. Lucky for you all…” Her drunken words still hold a hint of grit. “I was suspended from work the other day, so I’ve got extra time.”
My gaze goes to the bartender who takes a step closer, looking worried. “Yeah, I heard. And you sure look sad about it. Smiles and beers and all.”
“Yeah,” she glances around at the one she’s ordered. “I could go for another one.”
“Looks like you’ve already got one.” I point towards the bottle. “Not to mention the forty other ones I’m sure you’ve already put away.”
Aunt Sandra stares. “I don’t need you counting how many beers I’ve had, Naomi.” She blinks. “Or anyone like you. Maybe Diego told you all about what I’m going through. Maybe he didn’t.” She licks her lips, and I try to avoid looking at them, at the dribbles of beer dripping down her chin. “Either way, I’m in the middle of something, and tonight I’m sure someone could use your help.” She hesitates. “That someone just isn’t me.”
“And why is that?”
“Because you’re trying to ‘parent me.’ Just like you always have.”
My eyes narrow. “You have no idea what I’m trying to do, Aunt Sandra.”
“I think I do…” Her voice is a slurred rasp, scrapping against my ear drums. “I could see it in your eyes, Naomi. I’m not blind.”
“No, just apparently deaf. Do you want to keep your voice down?” I hiss, ready to grab her arm at a minute.
Her stare hardens. “You’re always trying to control other people’s lives because you can’t control your own. Easier for you to be a robot. A little tinker toy interfering in everyone’s affairs but your own.”
My throat squeezes tight, emotion clogging the pipes within it.
Clenching my fingers into a fist, I stand there, rigid, turning into the robot she’s accused me of being. And she’s not the first.
Everything—every small still-sober ounce—in me wants to defy her. Prove the woman I’m terrified of being that she’s wrong. Prove that I’m more than a scared robot.
But there’s this voice inside that reminds me of the truth. A voice that sounds scarily like Rosalyn cautioning me against being something just made of gears instead of skin. The rumors. The nicknames.
The sentiment that I was less of a person and more of a shadow.
And in some way, walking amongst titans like Sawyer Kennedy and Sevin Smith, it made it harder for me to see myself. To see the woman who lies beneath the machine.
I open my mouth to defend that woman in the rearview mirror I’d just battered five minutes ago, but Aunt Sandra’s eyes brighten, glancing over my shoulder, her pink fingernails gripping onto the bar.
“Oh, goodie!” She claps her hands announcing out loud. “New strangers. I love when new customers come into my favorite place on earth.” She rotates towards me on her stool. “Goodbye, Naomi. Thanks for dropping by. Hello, Man-I’ve-Absolutely-Never-Seen-a-Day-in-My-Life. How lovely of you to stop by. Can I get you anything to drink? Apple juice? Beer? Champagne? Maybe all at the same time.”
I groan, reaching out to her, hoping she doesn’t fall off her stool. I start to turn towards the stranger who just walked in, but something stops me.
Probably the familiar smell of this new guy.
Smoke. Soap. Cotton. The freshly earthy scent of charred apple orchards, spice and masculinity.
Clasping my hands in front of my heart, I spin softly on my heel only to stare up into the man who makes me feel like so much more than a machine.
Sawyer.
To ignore him is impossible. To look anywhere else in a room he’s in, unthinkable.
He’s just that gorgeous.
In the semi-crowded space of the half-full pub, he is a constant. Solid and still.
My lighthouse in the chaos, he stares at me as if we’re the only two people in the bar, his cerulean blue eyes alight with a sentiment that looks eerily close to hunger.
I have to fight from swallowing, my tongue suddenly dry.
It should be illegal to look as good as he does.
And what’s more? He knows it.
Wrapping his hand around the seven-hundredth beer the bartender tries to slip to Aunt Sandra, he takes a gulp from its brown, stretched neck, tilting it towards his lips.
And the second our eyes meet, I instantly remember. Remember last night. All those little dirty words.
The ones I used to improperly try to seduce him are stuck in my mind on repeat. But that’s not what the scary part is.
The scary part…is that he’s looking at me as if he’s found the lost treasure he was searching for.
With one glance, he ruins any chance I had at putting our night together behind me, his solid cobalt eyes unraveling each tightly wound nerve as if he were working my system with his long fingers.
His fingers tap impatiently on the side of his beer’s dark glass, begging for my attention, and I give in immediately, grateful to see his face.
And so is Aunt Sandra.
She grins up at the hulking baseball player, the adoration in her brown eyes apparent—palpable.
Bringing her home seemed impossible two minutes ago, but the second Sawyer’s sights set on the inebriated woman on the stool, I know I no longer need to.
I sidestep both the beautiful beast and the beer wench, letting the man beside me do what he does best, my swollen lips spreading into a grin.
Aunt Sandra will never know what hit her.
“Excuse me, gorgeous.” He smiles down at her, showing full teeth. “Is this seat taken? Naomi told me to meet her here actually. I’m sorry I’m so late. I’m Sawyer Kennedy. Second baseman for the Chicago Cougars. Naomi’s friend. I’ve heard a lot about you…”
Chapter 24
SAWYER
I should have sprung for a separate hotel room.
Maybe if I had, the Hilton’s new installed carpet in the hotel room I booked wouldn’t be as wrecked as the current state of my career.
The drunken woman in my arms is apologetic as I close the door behind us. But an apology won’t erase the champagne stains from the luxe beige material beneath our feet as we stumble into the foyer of the giant suite, her loud laughter bouncing off the wa
lls.
She holds the champagne bottle over her head, almost dropping it again, but she’s too drunk to care.
Too drunk to remember my name.
Too drunk to call it out if she did.
I release my hands from her waist, staring down at her, fishing for an excuse to get her to calm down. Or at least put the bottle down.
I lick my lips.
“Well, that settles the question of whether or not the hotel carpet is thirsty.” I tap the wet spot on the floor with my scuffed boot. “But the question is: Are you?”
Naomi’s Aunt Sandra giggles, descending into another fit of laughter, the bottle still dangling from her fingers. I grab it.
“Sure.” She smiles as I extract it from her grasp, the sloppy expression on her pretty face widening. “Got any apple juice?”
“Apple juice?” Ambling in the direction of the kitchenette, I set the champagne to the counter, glancing over my shoulder. “I was thinking more along the lines of some ice cold water. Something you wouldn’t have to share via ceiling with the downstairs neighbors.” I jerk a finger towards the floor. “But if apple’s what you want, apple’s what I’ll provide.”
If I still even have a job to provide it.
I don’t say that last part, preferring to keep that little tidbit to myself as I grab for the apple juice in the mini-bar and whatever beer I can hide from Aunt Sandra fastest.
My hands search blindly in the back on the cold shelf, but instead of wrapping around the closest bottle of brew, they close around hard frozen cardboard, and I pull out a drink that looks nothing like the six-pack of craft lager you’d normally see.
I peer down at a colorful tiny blue box that has no business being in my hotel refrigerator. “What the hell is this?”
Aunt Sandra stops giggling just enough to peer over my shoulder. She stumbles closer. “Oh, cool. Coconut water.”
“Coconut water?”
“Don’t tell me: You’ve never had coconut water?”
I open the small box, sniffing it. “And at this point, I hope I never have to. It smells like…”
“Well, to be fair,” Aunt Sandra interrupts, “I’ve never seen that brand.”
“Smells like sweat.”
“I’ve had other brands, you know, after a workout. But never that one,” she rambles.
“Or sewage. Urine, maybe…”
Her voice deepens. “Maybe that’s a new brand. Maybe your girlfriend left it in the fridge.”
“Vomit. Yeah, that’s it. Vomit. It definitely smells like vomit.”
“So, it’s true, then, huh? Naomi is your girlfriend?”
I peruse the fridge, still clutching the box. “Dirt and disease is more like it. And just where the hell is that beer? I’m hoping it was the front desk that remove it. Unless a ghost drank it.”
“Hey!” The sound shocks me from my search. I glance up at my company’s now angry face. She looks ready to stomp her foot at any moment.
I close the fridge. “Yeah?”
“I said, “Is Naomi your girlfriend’?”
“She…” But I can’t say the words. Not now. My long hair slips down my face as I stare back at that blue box in my hand, my mind searching for answers. I find only one.
Naomi.
That explains it. The brown-haired fireball had to have rearranged the room. She’d had a head start on my hotel suite. I’d made sure of it.
My eyes peruse the newly rearranged space, noting the changes compared to the pictures on the internet, and somehow in the span of half an hour, Naomi had transformed the entire suite.
Signs of her were everywhere.
Suddenly, Aunt Sandra’s question of my relationship status is starting to make more and more sense, and I take in the sight of the bare hotel suite I’d seen in photos, lingering on the little touches, the small changes she’d made in time at all.
It’s the throw blanket neatly folded over the back of the leather sectional. The new placemats on the dining room table.
There’s a scent of sweet dark cherries in the air, not to mention to the new espresso maker on the kitchen counter…
And are those new curtains she’s put over the windows?
Goddammit, the woman had taken over.
And it wasn’t just that.
There was new food in the refrigerator and no sign of alcohol. I reach for the pantry two feet away, only to find more blue boxed bottles. And some green juice inside the color of puke.
I tear through the rest of the blue bottles, my hands side-swiping boxes every which way. But to no avail.
The mini-bar bottles of vodka are gone. And Naomi’s name is written all over the new replacements.
Aunt Sandra’s plan to get as drunk as possible tonight was going off the rails. And my little Naomi was the train tracks on which it was set.
That’s the type of woman she is.
Anticipating your every need. Knowing before you knew it yourself.
Long ago, I’d thought it was because she was cold—pure plastic and metal. But there was nothing robotic about it.
It was something as comforting as bottles of coconut water for her AA-attending aunt. It was the way she helped bartend with Chris at the Alchemist. The way she checked in on Sevin. And secured her arms around me.
The woman was full of emotion, full of love.
You didn’t hop on a red-eye back to Miami unless you were, and it was one of her qualities I loved the most—the surety of her selfishness, the breadth of her caring.
Responsibility was the way she showed her love. And me?
I’d been running from anything that looked like responsibility so long that I couldn’t see it.
So, by the time I get Aunt Sandra to bed, her hands full of those blue bottles, by the time I hit the sofa, staring at the front door until Naomi finally makes it back to the suite after checking up on Diego, I’m already ready, arms wide open.
My shoulders are still killing me from today’s workout but I sweep her in them anyway, hugging her close.
I barely plant her on her feet before she is scampering away. Hands shaking, wrapped around a smuggled bottle of beer, she goes for the kitchen drawers, pulling multiple open before saying anything.
I watch her in disbelief, eyes narrowed at her face. “I’m sorry, but… I don’t think you’re going to find the answer to tonight’s events in there.”
Her head stays down. “I’m looking for a bottle opener.”
“Right. Better to get drunk.”
“I’m not getting drunk. I’m trying to pour this out. I found it stashed in Aunt Sandra’s jacket and I want it gone before she even wakes up.”
I sigh, hand sweeping across the kitchen counter, ready to land on her frenetic one. I hold her fingers. “It’s okay to not be okay.”
She tries to twist the bottle of beer open with one hand. “Gosh, how can you tell?”
“You have no reason to be nervous, Naomi.” I let her go, releasing her small hand. “Sandra’s safe. She’s here. Nothing happened.”
She grunts, fumbling with the bottle’s top, two hands now twisting together. She doesn’t look at me. “I don’t? Because the fact that I wasn’t here says I do; I do have every reason to be nervous.” She wrestles with the top—losing. Badly. “I should have never left Miami. What the hell was I thinking?”
I reach for the bottle, wringing it from her hands. This time, she lets me. “You were thinking that you wanted to do something nice for your brother…and yourself. You were thinking you wanted to build a life for the both of you, and the job with Sevin let you do it.” I open it easily, handing it back to her, willing her to look at me instead of the floor. “There’s nothing ‘wrong’ about that.”
Naomi sighs, one thin strap of a camisole she wouldn’t have worn two weeks ago sliding down her shoulder. She puts it back. “Nothing except for the fact that I abandoned my brother. I left him here without a parent or a prayer.”
“Except, kitty” I emphasize, “you are his pr
ayer. You’ve raised him right so far. He was six when your parents died. Six. And as far as I can tell, he’s as well adjusted as a thirteen-year old can be. Aunt Sandra told me a lot…before she passed out, of course. Diego is doing just fine. He’s on the honor roll. He has friends. And aside from his big sis driving him crazy,” I say, smiling at her sullen face, “he has a neighborhood here. Extended family and friends who care.” I pause. “And that’s all because of you. Because of what you’ve set up for him here. Because of who you are. And you’d have those same things here, too. That’s if…you were to ever come back. But I don’t think you should.”
She finally glances up, eyes full of fire, directed at me. “Then what do you think I should do?”
I blink, bracing my shoulders, one breath leaving my mouth in a rush. I place one hand on the counter…over hers. “Because I think you should stop running from yourself. Running from everything that you also want. I think you should let Diego come to stay.”
“Stay?”
“With you. Or me.”
“With you?” Her eyes turn into saucers—perfect circles on her pretty head. Her bottom lip falls.
“Yes.” I grin, almost not believing the words coming out of my mouth. “You and Diego. You can both stay with me. I’ve got plenty of room in the penthouse. And you can both come there. Just until you find an apartment big enough for the two of you. Or…”
“Or what?”
I exhale soundly, hating the rasp in my voice. I speak up anyway. “Or you can come stay with me forever…indefinitely. Let someone take care of you for a change. Let me…” I inch closer, rounding over the kitchen counters, “be the man we both I know I want to be. For you.”
The words are off my lips and it’s too late to take them back.
Naomi says nothing, reaching out to hug me instead. I hug her back, loving the feel of her in my arms, acutely aware that the embrace isn’t the answer I was looking for.
I sigh, wondering what the hell I need to do to prove to the woman next to me that as wrecked as my career may be, I’m more of a man than ever. A man who wants to take care of her.
A man who wants to take responsibility—real responsibility—maybe for the first time in his life.