by K. L. Kreig
We finish our lunch amid rather pleasant conversation, I must say. My mom asks Roth questions, but in a polite “let me get to know you” kind of way, rather than “I’m judging every word out of your mouth” sort. She’s open-minded and interested and most of the time I sit quietly confused, because this is not generally her operating rhythm.
“He loves you,” she proclaims softly when Roth runs out to the car to retrieve our luggage.
“Why do you say that?” I ask, shocked.
“I have eyes, Laurel.” She faces me. Roth spies us standing at the kitchen window, watching him. He quirks that one side of his lip up, and I always follow suit.
“You love him too.”
Why lie? It’s as plain as the smile on my face. I turn toward her. “I do, but—”
“There is no but. You love him or you don’t.”
I glance to Roth, then back to her. “I do, Mom.”
Her mouth moves into a semi smile. It seems forced.
Is she not happy for me? Does she not like him? Does it matter?
I don’t want it to, but it does.
We go back to watching Roth, who is taking his time pulling two small roller bags from the trunk.
“Were you worried about bringing him home to meet me?”
If I’d fallen and broken an ankle, I wouldn’t have been too disappointed. You know, nothing too extreme. But I stay quiet, my silence speaking truer than I can.
“I don’t blame you,” she tells me. “I remember when I brought your father home to meet your grandparents. I felt as though I had swallowed a whole carnival and every ride was going full tilt at once. I was already pregnant with you and Esther, and I’d planned to tell your grandfather that night too, but…”
I shift my attention from Roth to her. She’s still staring out the window, though by the fix of her stare, she’s lost in the past somewhere. My mother never talks about my father. Ever. And while I knew my parents had a short courtship, I certainly didn’t realize my grandparents hadn’t even met my father before we were conceived. That is a shocker.
I wait for her to continue, but she leaves me hanging for so long I have to gently prod, “But, what?” What happened? Was PooPa angry? Did he hug her and tell her it would be all right?
It feels like I’m standing on a sea of nails as I wait for her to answer.
“Your grandfather drew me aside after dinner and told me he wasn’t the one for me.”
Whoa.
What?
My PooPa was the most loving, supportive, understanding man I knew and though he wasn’t a fan of my father’s, I assumed it was because he’d abandoned his family. I had no idea he didn’t like him from day one.
“Why?”
“When I asked him that, he said…” My mother pauses, shaking her head as if she’s trying to exit her old life and step back into the present one. But with as far away as her voice still is, she hasn’t quite made it. “‘He’s missing the burn.’ And when I asked him what that meant, he said, ‘There’s no sparkle in his eye when looks at you, peanut. No blaze, not even a glowing ember.’”
She sounds so sad that I’m at a loss for words. Out of my periphery, I see Roth pull his phone from his back pocket. It’s almost as if he knows we’re having a moment.
“I was devastated. Here I was, unmarried and pregnant, and my father hated the man I loved and wanted to make a life with. And the thing is…” She catches my gaze. The corners of her mouth now droop toward the floor. “He was right, and I knew he was right when he said it.”
I had no idea, and I don’t have to ask how it ends. Candice married Sean Collins, had Esther and me seven months later, and three years after that she was a single parent when he didn’t come home after work, cleaning out their bank account on his way out of town.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” It’s meaningless and tastes stale, but I don’t know what else to say.
And why is she telling me this? Why now after all these years? Does she think Roth isn’t the one for me? Is that the reason? Because if that’s what she tells me, I’m gonna lose it. Roth is the only one and no matter what she—
“Roth has that burn, Laureli.” She interrupts my wild and erratic train of thought with a childhood nickname she hasn’t used in years. “Your grandfather would have approved.”
My chest puffs out, like someone’s blown air into it with a straw. It’s hard to breathe through the sensations now roiling around in there, bumping into each other.
What my mother thinks matters, even though I want to tell myself otherwise.
“I’ve no doubt your PooPa would have loved Roth.”
She has no idea how much her words or this story mean to me, even though it clearly opened old wounds for her.
“Do you approve?” I ask, trying not to sob. I hate that I need it.
She nods, emotional as I am and working just as hard to squash it.
I want to ask her so many questions. She’s opened a door that’s been locked to me my entire life, which quite simply, is her life. But now I understand this story was about me…not her, and she only opened that door long enough to get a glimpse of what’s inside.
Now it’s closed again.
“You don’t think it’s too early?”
“Can you see this man staying by your side through the hard times? And I mean the low of the lows, when the hardest decision is not whether to stay now but wondering if he should have stayed to begin with?”
I find her question interesting and thought-provoking. Life takes unexpected turns that drive you to dark places your worst-case scenarios couldn’t even conjure. When we’re there, wherever there is, if Roth could go back and do it all over again, would he have chosen to walk me to my car that first night at Rudy’s?
“Yes, I can.”
“Then don’t you let him go. Or I may just make a run for him myself.”
The thought of my mother chasing after Roth makes me snicker. I think she may give it a go if given a chance.
“Thanks, Mom.”
Something shifts between us in that moment. It’s microscopic, and maybe temporary, but it’s there. She feels it too, because she gives my hand a quick embrace as the front door opens.
“Where should I take these, Candice?” Roth asks, standing with a suitcase in each hand. He studies me first, then my mother. His brows furrow.
I’m not crying, you’re crying.
“Your room is the first upstairs to the left. Laurel’s is at the end of the hall.”
“Yes, ma’—Candice,” he corrects in time. His wink makes her giggle. Hmm…seems Roth Warren Keswick has the same effect on all women. At least the Collins women.
When I told him we’d likely have to sleep in separate rooms, I thought maybe he’d balk, but he said, “I wouldn’t sleep with you even if you begged me to.”
That man. He makes my head swim and my heart float. I’m getting used to being dizzy and weightless at the same time.
Roth disappears up the stairs, taking them two at a time, even with his heavy load. We watch after him.
“He’s a keeper,” Mother whispers.
And for once, I have to completely agree with her.
13
I Could Not Ask for More
Laurel
Ten Years Earlier
July 4, 5:54 a.m.
* * *
Lifting the sheets, I slide in beside Roth, then draw them back up over us. I nuzzle against his back, moving quietly so as not to disturb him. It’s early, the sun barely breaking the skyline, but I’ve been awake for hours, staring at the plastic stars Esther and I painstakingly scattered all over the ceiling in a room that we shared until we were nine.
She was all around me yet nowhere at all.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
I needed Roth.
Yesterday after we got settled in, I gave Roth the grand tour of Leone, and that included the elementary, middle, and high schools, the main drag, as well as the riverbend. It took all of twenty m
inutes. I saved Sumner’s Square, our Main Street district for last. It was already buzzing with families, rides, street jugglers, and mimes. And the smells…freshly buttered popcorn and cinnamon-sugared funnel cakes. Yum.
We parked and walked around for hours.
We fed the baby goats and the llama in the petting zoo.
We watched the junior varsity drill team perform in the band shell. I gave them a B minus.
We moseyed through the art show. Even Roth was impressed.
We ate funnel cakes and slurped slurpies.
We got henna tattoos.
We played carnival games and Roth won me a cheap stuffed animal in the ring toss, setting him back thirty-six dollars.
My mother met us for the evening concert by Hip Hop Hooray, a local eighties cover band. Roth and I danced. I’d like to think the crowd was cheering on our swing dance skills, but there was no “our” about it. It was all Roth. He even convinced my mother to try, showing her a few basic moves.
We had a fabulously delightful time.
“I forgot how much I loved it here,” I told him absently on our way back to Mom’s, clutching my big-headed stuffed pig, which is about the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. Last time I was here for my PooPa’s funeral, I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I thought I would suffocate. I sensed my own mortality shadowing me everywhere I went.
The shadows are still here. I’m not naïve enough to think they’ll disappear. Light doesn’t penetrate the farthest-reaching corners after all. But they’re not as bleak and foreboding as they were before. They don’t hang over me quite as dense and heavy.
And that can only be because of a man who is as resilient as a willow tree in a straight-line wind.
“Then we will come back again,” he said to me, as if he had our future together already penned in ink. I believe he might have. I secretly hope he does.
“How did you sleep?” Roth asks, his voice crackly from slumber.
He wriggles himself around to face me and blinks his mossy eyes open. They’re murky when he first wakes up, I’ve noticed. More the shade of seaweed.
“I’m sorry I woke you.”
“No, you’re not.”
I don’t think I’ve known anyone who makes me laugh more than he does. Many nights my cheeks hurt when I go to bed. I laugh the entire time we’re together.
“Okay, I’m not,” I admit, grinning.
Slithering my arms around his torso, I press my pelvis into his.
“You’d better stop that, you little minx.”
“What? This?”
I do it again, this time with a little twist. He stifles a groan, fully hard against me now. Then he flips the script. Rolling his hips, he hits me in just the right spot. I gasp. My eyes roll back in my head.
“All fun and games now, isn’t it?”
When he grins, an unexplained naughtiness washes over me, and I morph into this exotic bedroom nymphet I’ve never seen before.
“I like games,” I say in the sultriest voice I can muster.
Bait laid.
Wrapping my top leg over his lines me up against his erection quite nicely. I glide back and forth, and honestly, I didn’t come in here for sex, but…well, good intentions and all have flown right out the window, and in their place is a coquette I think I like.
Roth sweeps my face to see if I’m serious. When he sees I am, a slow, sly smile curls his mouth. “What kind of games?”
Bait nibbled.
“Well…” I slip my hand underneath his boxers and grip his taut tush, making sure my fingers graze between his cheeks. He growls and the lines on his face sharpen. “I excel at the quiet game.”
“Do you now?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I bat my eyelashes and pray I resemble Marilyn Monroe and not Betty Boop.
“Isn’t your mother right across the hall?”
Bait taken.
“Her bed is against the far wall. She’s a heavy sleeper.”
Knowing I almost have him, I boldly guide his hand beneath my panties and let him make his own decision.
“Fuck, Laurel. You’re so wet.”
Don’t I know it.
Roth curves two fingers just so and slips them inside me. There’s no resistance. I’m ready. It feels so good, I have to turn my head to the side and shove the pillow in my mouth to stifle my cry. He pumps them in and out, then circles my nub ever so lightly with the pad of his thumb. He whispers in my ear, “You’re going to come already, aren’t you?”
Yes, yes, a tiny wail of a “Yes” bursts through the Tempur-Pedic.
I wasn’t entirely truthful. I suck at the quiet game. I always have.
“I thought you weren’t supposed to make noise?” Roth teases, his chuckle tempered.
“You did that on purpose.”
I blink up at him, my vision hazy shades of summer sun.
Wearing a lopsided grin, in a few practiced moves he has our underwear removed and me on my back. He spreads my legs with his knee, settles between them, and pushes my nightgown above my breasts so he can suckle a nipple.
“You have to be quiet too,” I challenge. I’m weak. Wired. Flying through the clouds.
“I don’t recall that was the game.”
“But it—”
He cuts me off, driving inside me in one smooth thrust. Slamming his mouth over mine, he swallows my scream of heady bliss. Goose bumps race across my arms. My thighs tremble. I pulsate with need.
“You excel at quiet…” As he nips his way down my throat, my walls tighten around him. He holds himself steady. “Said no one…” He nibbles the spot on my shoulder that renders me powerless. I beg him to move. He doesn’t. “Ever,” he croaks, giving his hips one sharp tuck and roll.
I want to dispute his sex-glazed accusation but a) he is right and b) I’m already dancing with an orgasm and can’t exactly speak at the moment.
I lose all desire to argue anyway when Roth starts to piston like a man possessed. Sadly, our clandestine rendezvous comes to a tragic and abrupt ending when the bedsprings protest. And I mean, so loudly they could wake the dead.
Or my mother.
My eyes fly open. Roth reacts the same way, except his are stuffed with horror.
I slap my hands over my mouth and giggle uncontrollably.
My mother’s door creaks open. Her footsteps pad slowly against the floorboards.
Roth’s eyes round and pop. He doesn’t move. He looks mortified.
I laugh louder. Her footsteps stop, then retreat.
“Busted,” I whisper then snort. I’m out of control.
Her door creaks again and clicks softly.
Roth rolls off of me and flops onto his back. “I’ll just pack my things and go now,” he bemoans, throwing an arm over his forehead.
“I forgot this mattress was so loud.”
His face whips toward mine. “What do you mean you forgot?” He squints, and I realize where his mind has gone.
“I…” My sides hurt. “Well, it’s not what you think,” I muster. I take a few deep breaths until I’m somewhat settled. “This is Esther’s old bed. We may have broken a few springs jumping on it back in the day.”
“That would have been a nice memory to surface before your mother caught me boinking her daughter.”
“Boinking?”
I roll.
I don’t even care that my mother will hear us. Peals of my laughter bounce off the walls.
“Boinking?” I parrot again, in hysterics. I start to hiccup.
“Would you rather I say fucking?” he asks, unable to stop chuckling himself.
“Yes.” Hiccup.
“But you don’t like swearing.” Roth reaches over to pinch my nose and I swat his hand away, sitting up.
“I don’t like to swear. I don’t care if you do.” Hiccup.
I hold my breath. One. Two. Thre—Hiccup.
“So noted. You need water,” he proclaims, bouncing up from the bed. He’s buck naked and beautiful as he s
earches the floor for his underwear, turning in frantic circles.
He reminds me of Meringue when she’s chasing her own tail.
I lose it again.
“Laurel, Christ. What is your mother going to think?” His snags his boxers from under the bed.
“That I’m finally happy,” I reply with the utmost sincerity.
Roth stops. He stares at me as if I’ve sprouted a pair of black angel wings.
“What?” I tip my head and wait. Hiccup.
Have I never told him that before? That he lights me up from the inside?
“I love you today, Laurel Linnea Collins.”
Mush. Out-and-out mush.
“And I’ll love you tomorrow, Roth Warren Keswick.”
Sliding on his underwear, he leans in for a kiss. “I’m glad I make you happy.” His lips brush mine. It tickles.
“I’m sorry I haven’t told you before.”
“I knew it. I was just waiting for you to figure it out.” He slips a brown belt through his short loops and buckles it.
I push myself up on my elbows. “Is that so?”
“It is so.”
He’s so straight-faced I don’t even argue.
Roth throws on a fresh blue tee. This one reads, CHICKENS, THE PET THAT POOPS BREAKFAST. My PooPa would have gotten a kick of out of it.
Propping his hands on his hips, he stares at the closed bedroom door like Lizzy Borden might be on the other side waiting with an ax.
“Want to see something?” I ask. The devil twinkles in his eyes. “Not that.” Although I would be game. My mother already thinks we did the deed anyway. Snatching the robe, I’d dropped on the chair, I wrap it around me. My hiccups are gone anyway. I don’t need the water. But I do need caffeine. Lots and lots of caffeine. “Let me throw something on and I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“I’m not going out there without you.”
“Are you serious?”
One brow meets his hairline.
He’s serious.
“Good thing I didn’t need water then.”