by Laney Wylde
He laughed. “He told me as long as we use a condom every time and I’m respectful of you, it’s fine.”
My eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“Oh, and that I swear not to tell Mom he said that to me.”
I grunted a laugh. Jake’s mom was a devout, though new, Christian, so she could never find out about our sleepovers.
“Also, he bought you an early Christmas present.”
“He did?”
Jake pulled the bulky backpack from his around his shoulders. “He said, ‘always use protection.’”
I took the black leather jacket and helmet from Jake. “He did not say that.”
“It was awkward for me, too.” He smirked.
I laughed. “I’m never going to be able to look him in the eyes again.” I slipped each arm into the coat and pulled my hair out from under it. “I know you haven’t lived here a whole year, but it rains. A lot.” The fact it was overcast and not pouring right now was a fluke for a December afternoon.
He adjusted my jacket at the top of the zipper. “That looks so sexy on you.” Was he even listening to me?
I bit my lower lip. “What are you going to do when it rains? Or hails? Or the one day a year it snows?” I raised my eyebrows and gave him a little shove.
“Come on.” He intertwined his fingers with mine and took a step toward the bike.
But I didn’t want to go near it. And I didn’t want to admit I was scared to. My mom had seen her fair share of accidents in the ER. She called motorcycles donorcycles. And I knew what it was like to watch someone bleed out in a crash. It wasn’t a moment I was eager to relive, so I stalled. “Don’t you need a special license for this?”
“Yeah, I’ll get one. My dad knows all the cops since the fire station’s right next door to them. They’ll leave me alone.” Damn this tiny shit town.
I pulled the helmet over my hair, and Jake faced me to buckle it under my jaw. “Does your mom know about this?”
“Dad and I are going for an ‘ask for forgiveness, not for permission’ thing. Are you done with your interrogation now?” He swung his leg over the bike. “Get on.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and closed my eyes when the engine roared to life. This was Jake. I could trust him. I did trust him. He’d keep me safe. He had so far.
I ducked behind him to dodge the misty air rushing at us on the coastal highway, my hands staying warm by stroking the skin under his shirt. The grey Pacific was ominous on our left. It was bound to rain. We were just out of city limits when it started.
5
FEBRUARY 2015
“What the hell?” I shouted toward Michael, Jake’s dad. The crowd was roaring, and Jake looked like shit. He staggered in the ring, half his face shimmering with blood. There was no way he’d be standing five seconds from now, and the round still had fifteen seconds left. Why wouldn’t the ref just call it? “If this isn’t time for a TKO, I don’t know what is!”
“No, no,” Michael said in that patronizing tone he always used with me. “He’s got plenty of fight left in him. He’s fine.” Men and their sons and their stupid egos. I was about to point this out when Jake caught a second wind and knocked his opponent to the mat. He didn’t get back up before the round ended. “Told ya.” He winked at me.
Jake lifted his boxing gloves above his head in triumph, took two wobbly steps, and then collapsed. “Shit,” I hissed, starting to push my way to the ring. I climbed through the ropes, onto the mat, and stroked Jake’s dewy back. “Hey, babe, you’re okay. You’re okay.” But he had blacked out, his face smearing red onto the mat. I pulled out my phone to call an ambulance. Why wasn’t there one standing by like at our varsity football games? Stupid cheap fight. Michael went to roll him onto his back. I slapped his hand away. “Let the paramedics do that. Hi, I need an ambulance at—”
Michael glowered at me. “I’m a firefighter,” he retorted before he continued to move his son. I rolled my eyes. As far as I was concerned, this was his fault, so he wasn’t allowed to touch him.
Jake came to just before the ambulance arrived. I swept his sweat-saturated hair off his forehead. “Hey, Jake. How you feeling?”
“Sawyer.” He smiled, his hand moving cautiously to cup my cheek. “You’re so pretty.”
“Oh, wow.” I let out a hesitant laugh. “You musta got hit pretty hard.”
His throat jumped with a labored swallow. “Did I win?”
“What do you think?” I smirked. My fingertips skimmed his supposedly steel jaw. I couldn’t feel the bone through the swelling. Two paramedics stomped into the ring. “You’re bleeding pretty bad, and your dad says you have a concussion. They’re going to put you in an ambulance, okay?”
“Why?”
“Um…for the reasons I just listed.”
“Do I have to?” Jake’s voice was small, his chocolate eyes wide as he tried to sit up to prove he was fine.
“Hey, try not to move,” the EMT said with his hand pushing Jake’s shoulder back down.
“You’re coming with me, right?” He grabbed my hand as the paramedics inspected him. Apparently, he was too injured to keep up the cocky fighter act all boxers did with an audience.
“Of course, babe.”
“How’s your pain?” the female paramedic asked Jake. “On a scale of one to ten?”
“Which part of me?”
“Which hurts the worst?”
“My head. It’s like a seven.” Then he squeezed his eyes shut. “Maybe an eight.”
“Do you want something for it?”
Jake nodded slightly.
Once we were in the ambulance, she hooked up an IV bag. I patted his hand. “Hey, you’re going to get some fun pain meds!”
He grunted, eyeing the needle in the paramedic’s hand. “Uh, no.” He cleared his throat and deepened his voice, “No, I’m fine.” He tried to lift his head, but then grimaced.
I shoved his chest down. “Don’t be stupid, Jake. This will make you feel better.”
“I don’t like needles,” he whispered, moving his right hand to cover the vein in the crook of his left arm.
“Are you serious? Your face has like a pint of blood crusted on it, and you’re afraid of a little needle?”
“Hold my hand,” he whimpered when the paramedic pried his arm free from his right hand’s grasp. I laughed and intertwined our fingers. What happened to my ass-kicking boyfriend? His grip on my hand relaxed when the morphine kicked in.
“Sawyer?”
I nodded and leaned toward his face.
“You look more Cuban than usual today.”
“Thank you?”
“I think I should start calling you my Latin lover.”
I bit my lip and shook my head. “Nope. Nope. Please, never ever call me that.” Lover? Grossest. Word. Ever. Right up there with semen and moist. Disgusting.
“Why isn’t your name Cuban if you’re so Cuban?”
“My dad loved Mark Twain. I was doomed to be Sawyer if I was a boy or a girl.” Of course, he knew this already, but the memory had apparently been knocked from his head.
He took a hard-earned breath, before letting it out. “Did you know you’re beautiful?”
I smiled. “You are, too, Jake.”
“I like your nose a lot.” His finger poked at it. I tried my best not to flinch, harder not to laugh.
“I like your nose, too. Don’t let anyone break it, okay?”
His eyes floated to the ceiling where they lingered. A few long blinks interrupted his view. I thought for sure he’d doze off, so I jumped when he yelled a panicked, “Sawyer!”
“What?”
“I haven’t kissed you in so long! I can’t even remember the last—”
“A couple of hours ago, Jake.”
“But I can’t remember.”
I snickered at his puppy-dog eyes, but still took his lips between mine, the bottom one bleeding and swelling fast. His hand caressed the nape of my neck as he brought me closer. When I pul
led away, I could still taste that rusty flavor on my tongue. “I love you,” he whispered, his fingers tangled in my hair.
“Jake, you’re so sweet, but maybe you should wait until you don’t have a traumatic brain injury to say that. And until you aren’t high.”
“No.” His expression turned intense. “I’ve known for months, since, like, the week after we got together. Remember? We were on the beach, and it was so cold. I’ll never forget because you took your clothes off and had a bikini on under them, which was insane. You planned to swim. You got in the water and complained I wouldn’t join you, like I was weird for being bundled up on the sand. When you were soaking wet, you ran to me and curled into a ball in my lap. I called you an idiot, and you said, ‘Piss off,’ then hugged me tighter and said, ‘No, please don’t. I’m freezing. Stay here.’” He tightened his fingers around mine.
How did he say so many coherent words in a row just now? I stared at his dark eyes—well, what I could see of them through the bruising. One was okay, but the other was swollen to a slit.
I leaned toward him to brush my lips over his fingers laced through mine. “I’m pretty sure I said fuck off. Piss off is so British.”
“Fuck is a bad word, Sawyer.”
I snickered, and his voice broke into a chuckle.
“That’s the moment, though?”
He nodded.
“Interesting.” I pursed my lips and searched the ceiling. “For me, it was right before Thanksgiving. We were doing homework on the floor in your room. Well, I was. You were asleep on your back in that army-green Henley you wear like every other day.”
He interrupted with an affectionate, “I love that shirt.” Maybe he just loved everything on morphine. This was the worst time to be having this conversation.
I breathed a laugh. “I know. Anyway, I dropped my pencil and laid my head on your chest. And I just remember realizing I never wanted to be with anyone else. It was too late for me, you know? I was yours.” His eyes softened as he listened, and not from the drugs. Ah, crap. So embarrassing. Deny. Take it back. “And I’m only telling you all this because you won’t remember tomorrow.”
Half his mouth curled into that crooked smile as he closed his eyes. “I’m always going to remember that.”
Unfortunately, he did. Though he forgot the Latin lover thing, thank God.
We stayed overnight in the ER so they could make sure Jake hadn’t sustained any brain damage, which was never what anybody wanted to have to wait to find out about their boyfriend. I woke up the next morning stiff from sleeping in a chair, with red indents on my forehead and cheek from having my face pressed against my arm for hours. I rubbed my eyes and checked my phone to find out the time. There was a group text from Michael to Jake and me.
I opened it to find a picture of us.
Michael: Jake, I sent this to your mom to show you were okay. She said it was cute, and I should send it to you. Sending to Sawyer, too.
The photo quality wasn’t great; the lighting was dim and cool in the emergency room. Jake’s forehead was bandaged, his eyes tinging black, his jaw uneven with inflammation. He was asleep. I was sitting beside his bed in a chair, leaning forward with my head resting on one bent arm on the thin mattress, my other hand in my wavy hair—monkey on a lice quest again. Jake’s hand was over mine. I was asleep, too, obviously, or the photo would have never happened.
I saved the picture to my phone. One photo couldn’t hurt.
6
JULY 2015
The knock at the door came a half-hour after my food arrived. It was like a blurry echo. Had it really happened? I took another swig of Corona Extra and kept my eyes on A League of Their Own, the only light I could endure in the living room. The closed curtains blocked the brightness of the summer day. Hopefully if someone was there, they would just go away.
The doorbell rang.
I pried myself out of my nest of pillows on the couch, wrapping my dad’s loose flannel around my bare midriff. My half-full bottle accompanied me to the door. Through the sheer curtains, I saw his familiar silhouette.
“Hey, babe,” I said after cracking open the door. Even squinting, I couldn’t see Jake clearly. “God, it’s so bright.” Why did it have to be sunny today? It was overcast and dreary every other day. Could the weather not cooperate for once in this shit town? “Come inside.” I ushered him in and tipped my beer to my lips as I made my way back to the couch.
“I’ve been texting you all morning. Where’s your phone?”
Geez, Jake wasn’t usually such a girl.
“Uh…” I did a cursory search of the room and ruffled my matted ponytail, “I think it died. Beer?”
Jake closed the door behind him. He eyed the living room, taking in the empty bottles and partially eaten order of fish and chips. “No, it’s two in the afternoon. Are you drunk?”
“No, I’m pacing myself. I’ll be hammered in six hours if you want to stick around.” I tilted my beer toward him, half-singing, “You’ll get lucky once I break out the tequila.”
“Sawyer, what’s wrong with you?”
“You’re mad that you’re going to get to have sex?”
“I’m not having sex with you when you’re like this.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow and dropped my flannel to the ground, standing before him in just my black bra and matching cheeky lace panties.
“What’s the matter with you?”
After I swallowed the rest of my beer, I slammed the bottle on the coffee table. “It’s July 17,” I declared as I popped open another beer.
“So?”
I dropped to the couch and kicked my heels on the table, crossing one over the other. “Have I ever told you how my dad died?”
He sat next to me and rested his elbow on the back of the couch. “Car accident, right?”
“Rock slide on Highway 199. He swerved around it, but the roads were slick because it was raining. The car rolled down the bank toward the river until it hit a tree. Landed upside down. Dad was pinned in his seat, his gut sliced open by his seatbelt. He just kept saying, ‘Todo va estar bien, mi niña. Todo va estar bien,’ as he bled to death. I hung upside down in my booster seat watching him die as he told me everything would be okay. Over and over: everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be okay, everything is going to be fucking okay.”
“Sawyer.” Jake rubbed a lock of my hair between his fingers. “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the car?”
I just shook my head as I took another sip, the neck of the bottle between my middle and ring finger.
“It was today?”
I nodded. “Ten years ago.”
“Then why isn’t your mom here?”
I sat up and swiped the bottle from the table. “Do you know how long she waited to get remarried?” Before Jake could answer, I stood and added, “Eleven months.” I circled the room as I guzzled the beer, the sting of the bubbles dulled by the drinks that came before it. “She couldn’t even wait a full year.”
“You had a stepdad?”
“Have.”
“Where is he?”
“Prison. Oh, excuse me, Dad is in prison,” I said with feigned endearment. “They started the adoption paperwork the week after he proposed. Changed my name and everything. Sawyer Emilia Lindley.”
“De la Cruz isn’t your last name?”
I shook my head as I drank the last inch.
“We went out to dinner when the adoption was finalized. Some bullshit about celebrating, I don’t know. My mom had a shift afterward, so Jeff tucked me in that night, insisted on it, like I was incapable of getting under blankets by myself. I mean, really? I was almost eight. He brought his laptop. I thought maybe I’d get to watch a show before bed. Sometimes Mom would let me do that. But Jeff pulled up this video of a man and a girl my age.”
I gazed down at the bottle, regretting its emptiness. “I couldn’t understand what they were doing, but I knew I didn’t want to watch. Jeff said, ‘This is wha
t we get to do now. This is what daddies and daughters do. Isn’t it beautiful?’ Then he prayed with me,” I cackled. “After, he pushed this kiss on my lips the way he kissed my mom and said, ‘Our secret, baby girl.’”
“God, I’m so sorry.” He stood and brushed his hand down my arm. “He’s in jail now, right? He can’t hurt you any—”
“Bullshit,” I screamed and threw the bottle at the wall. It shattered, the remaining liquid splattering sticky drops on the matte-yellow paint.
“What?”
“If you’re going to be an ass, you should just leave!” I pointed at the door and yelled, “Go! I didn’t invite you over. I don’t even know why you’re here.”
“No, I’m not leaving you like this. And where the hell is your mom?”
“In Portland with her sister. She’s been leaving me home alone every July 17 since I was eleven.”
“Why?”
“So I can get drunk and she can pretend it doesn’t happen.” I reached for another beer on the coffee table.
Jake clutched my wrist. “I can’t pretend it’s not happening.”
“Sure you can.” I struggled to try to get free, but his hand grasped me tighter.
“Let go of the bottle.”
“I told you to fuck off!”
“Let go, babe,” he said softly as his body eased closer to mine.
“Please.” I choked on tears that ambushed me. “I don’t want you here.”
He pulled me into him and whispered, “I don’t care.” His fingers slid down my wrist to the beer in my fist, forcing me to release it into his hand. I huddled into his chest and sobbed. “I’m here,” he breathed, “I’m here.” And somehow, that was enough.
* * *
I woke up under a thin blanket on the couch. A clear glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen stood on the table in front of me. All the beer bottles and trash were gone, and the curtains were open to let in the bearable evening sun. I sat halfway up and swallowed four pills to quiet the pounding in my head. All the broken glass and beer had been cleaned up from my tantrum.