by Noir, Roxie
It’s a quiet, artistic task. Rusty’s smart for her age and good with her hands. I’ll keep a close eye on her.
“As long as you promise to be very, very careful,” I say, and her eyes light up as she nods.
I find her a small block of pine — it’s soft — and a penknife, then show her how to start. I suggest that for her first carving she try something simple, like an egg, but she informs me that she’ll be carving a wombat.
I drag her table over next to me, both of us wearing masks again, and I swear I look over at what she’s doing every thirty seconds. Every few minutes I put down the sander, go over, and give her a few pointers, stress safety again and again.
When it’s time to wrap things up, she hasn’t made a wombat, but she’s made progress toward one, and she positively beaming with pride.
“Nicely done,” I say, examining it. “You sure this is your first carving?”
“Can I keep the knife and finish it at home?” she asks.
“No,” I say, a little too suddenly and too harshly.
I clear my throat.
“You can’t have the knife, but you can finish it next time you visit, all right?”
“Please?”
“Sorry, kiddo,” I say. “You ready to head back home? I think your dad misses you.”
She walks back to the shelf of wooden animals and places the not-quite-wombat among them, and once it’s back, I turn and start putting the belt sander away.
“He tried to pour orange juice in my cereal this morning,” she says, matter-of-factly.
“Your dad’s not feeling very good today,” I tell her over my shoulder.
“Yeah,” she says. “I know.”
I manage not to laugh. Rusty hates it when we laugh at her being serious.
I close up the shop, load her into my car, drive to Daniel’s house, knock on the door.
It opens three inches, then stops short when it hits the end of the chain.
“Hey, guys,” half of Daniel’s face says.
He doesn’t look good: pale, a circle under the eye I can see, his hair slightly greasy and sweaty-looking, beard a little scruffy. I immediately have the urge to put him back in bed and put a cool cloth on his forehead.
Rusty shoves at the door, but it doesn’t budge.
“Daaaaaaaaaad,” she says, leaning against it with two hands.
“Just a sec, Rusty,” he says, then looks at me. “You can’t come in.”
I stand on tiptoes, trying to see past him.
“What happened?” I ask, alarmed.
I’m imagining a bodily-fluid nightmare. It’s gross.
“Nothing happened,” he says quickly. “I just don’t want you to get sick.”
“I promise not to lick your doorknobs,” I say. “Now can I please come in?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll help put this one to bed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Daniel.”
“I’m not letting you get Ebola, and that’s final,” he says, a slight smile around the single eye I can see.
So at least he feels well enough to smile.
“You don’t have Ebola,” I say. “If you had Ebola, you’d already be—”
I stop myself before I say bleeding from the eyeballs and probably dead.
“—sicker,” I finish, glancing down at Rusty.
Rusty just glares up at her dad and lets out a long, annoyed sigh.
“Charlie’s gotta get off the porch before I let you in,” he says to her.
“Seriously?” I ask.
“Seriously.”
“I can’t even come inside and make you Gatorade or something?”
“Away, Charlie.”
“You let Seth in.”
“Seth has a key,” he says. “Seth let himself in. Besides, if you miss the cake tasting Saturday…”
He trails off, one eyebrow arched, and even though he looks pretty rough at the moment, my stomach flutters.
Rusty shoves at the door again, this time leaning against it with one shoulder.
“Fine,” I tell Daniel. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I’d give you a kiss, but…”
“You really don’t need to,” I laugh, and then I ruffle Rusty’s hair. “Later, kiddo.”
“Bye, Charlie! DAD NOW CAN I COME IN?”
I descend the porch steps as I hear the front door opening and Rusty’s little voice saying finally. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Daniel for a split second: white undershirt, gray sweatpants, bare feet.
Before he shuts the door, he looks up and sees me, standing twenty feet away, and waves.
Then he blows me a kiss. Laughing, I catch it, and he closes the door.
* * *
Thursday:
“You’re not even contagious anymore.”
“Says you, a noted infectious disease expert.”
“Come on. I’ll bring you chicken soup.”
“Charlie, there’s so much chicken soup in the pantry here that I’d outlast the zombie apocalypse.”
I sigh.
“You don’t even need someone to hang out with Rusty?”
“Levi’s taking her to her piano lesson.”
“Does that have anything to do with the fact that June’s been at the Mountain Grind a lot lately?”
The Mountain Grind is two doors down from the Sprucevale School of Music.
Daniel snorts. I’m pretty sure he’s feeling better, but he swears that if I show up at his house, he won’t let me in.
“I’m not going to ask him that,” Daniel says. “Are you going to ask him that?”
I just laugh, because I think asking Levi that would result in a stone-faced denial that he’d ever met anyone with the name June.
“I’m not,” I say.
* * *
Friday:
“You’re serious.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“You could see me tonight,” I point out.
It’s been five days since I saw him. Peeking through the door Wednesday doesn’t count. That’s five days of thinking nonstop about being pushed against a truck on Sunday night. Five days with the promise of more dangling over my head.
It’s five days of working on an antique table and carving staircase parts for some yacht and wondering what to wear Saturday.
It’s five days of quietly wondering if this is the universe giving me the signal that going there with Daniel is a bad idea. It doesn’t feel like a bad idea. It feels like a great idea. But deep down, there’s a part of me that’s afraid of change, afraid of taking the risk.
There’s that part of me that’s afraid that if I leap, I’ll be left with nothing.
On the other end of the phone, Daniel pauses. I know he went back to work today, so he’s at least that much better.
“Charlie, if I get you sick before tomorrow I will lose my goddamn mind,” he says, keeping his voice low. He’s in his office and I’m on my lunch break.
I swallow my piece of sandwich.
“You’re just that excited to taste cake with me?” I tease, even as my pulse picks up.
He just laughs.
“Sure,” he says. “I’m really excited to taste cake.”
Just then, one of my coworkers who also happens to be in the break room glances over.
I jump out of my chair so fast I nearly knock it over and walk out of the break room, into the empty back hallway, face flushing pink.
“You still there?” Daniel asks.
“Still here,” I say. “And you still haven’t given me a good reason I can’t come over tonight.”
“I threw up seven times in two days and sweated through all my bedsheets twice,” he says. “How’s that for a good reason?”
I sigh.
“And if there’s four more days when I can’t see you, I’m going to start flipping tables over from frustration,” he goes on.
I lean my head back against the wall, close my eyes.
“Don’t do that, someone worked hard on those.”
“I’m pretty sure my desk is from Ikea.”
“Then someone Swedish worked hard on that.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” he says. His voice is low, quiet, shiver-inducing. “And I won’t flip any tables.”
“All right,” I finally acquiesce, because despite being the most even-keeled Loveless brother, he can be stubborn as a goddamn pig-headed bull sometimes. “Tomorrow.”
“Ten?”
“Ten,” I confirm, we say goodbye, and we hang up.
I shove my phone into my pocket. I kick the cement floor once and make a face at it, because it’s there. I pack up the remnants of my lunch, put it back in the fridge, and go back to work.
That night, it’s me and my vibrator. Again.
Chapter Seventeen
Daniel
“What kind of cake are you going to taste first?” Rusty says, taking the stairs to Charlie’s apartment two at a time. “I want to taste red velvet first, and then chocolate, and then strawberry and then vanilla but then chocolate again because that’s always the best. Sometimes weddings have carrot cake, but I don’t like those weddings…”
I’m barely listening as my daughter goes on about cake. She’s been pumped for this day all week, and now that we’re here, picking up Charlie before heading out for a day of sugar consumption, she can barely hold still.
I feel pretty much the same way, only it’s not cake-related. I haven’t seen Charlie in almost a week, and I’m not counting the day that I was feverish and talked to her for a minute through a door.
“…but the best cake is birthday cake. I like when it’s got the colors in it…”
I knock on Charlie’s door, feeling like a car with the clutch down and the engine revving. Vroom. Vroom.
The door opens and there she is, all freckles, curls, and hazel eyes, looking a little bit haphazard like she always does, like somehow despite confirming what time I’d pick her up seventeen times, she wasn’t expecting us.
“Hey, come in,” she says.
She’s wearing a purple bathrobe, the waist cinched shut but she’s got one hand over her chest anyway, like she’s just making sure it doesn’t fly open.
“Charlie you’re not even dressed!” Rusty exclaims, waving both arms over her head. “We have to eat cake in forty minutes.”
As she says this, she checks the bright green watch that her uncle Seth gave her last year, like she’s a CEO late for an important meeting or something.
“Well, the first bakery is twenty-five minutes away, so we’ve got time,” Charlie says as a ball of pure energy — that is, Rusty — sweeps into her living room.
“Are you wearing that?” I ask, my voice low enough that Rusty, already flipping through a carpentry book on Charlie’s coffee table, doesn’t hear me.
Charlie’s hand holds her robe closed a little tighter.
“Give me five minutes, I still gotta get dressed,” she says. “Sorry, I was a little late getting out of bed and then I hadn’t washed the coffee maker last night so I had to do that and make coffee before I could function, and—”
I lean in and kiss her. It’s nothing but a quick greeting of a kiss, a hello-how-are-you kiss, but I’ve been waiting a week for it and I swear I can feel it ripple through my whole body.
I want more. I want so much more, but Rusty’s not even ten feet away, so I give Charlie one polite kiss and back up.
“Be right back,” Charlie says, and disappears into her bedroom.
This time I hear the door click shut, thank God, so I sit on her couch and Rusty clambers up next to me, flipping through the pages of Premodern Jointing: An Enthusiast’s Guide. Apparently, she doesn’t find anything that interests her, because ten seconds later she hops off the couch and grabs another book.
A few minutes later, Charlie comes out of her bedroom.
She’s wearing another dress. This one’s a deep purple with bright flowers, sleeveless, the waist tight and the hips loose, the skirt ending at her knees.
“Ooooooh, pretty dress,” says Rusty as she looks up. “How come you wear dresses all of a sudden?”
Charlie just shrugs, grabbing her purse.
“I just felt like it,” she says, darting a quick glance at me.
“They look nice on you,” I offer.
There’s that word nice again. Nice. The least good, technically-complimentary thing I could possibly say right now, but what the hell am I supposed to say in front of my daughter? Ravishing? Fuckable?
“Thanks,” she says simply. “Elizabeth evaluated my closet and found it lacking, so we went shopping. Shall we?”
Rusty doesn’t even say yes, she just leaps to her feet and makes a beeline for the door. Seconds later I can hear her clomping down the wooden steps like she’s an elephant.
“You need to wait,” I call out, following her.
The clomping stops. Charlie and I leave. Rusty’s halfway down the stairs, looking impatient, and Charlie turns to lock her door behind her.
The dress doesn’t have a back. At least, it doesn’t have half a back, just two purple straps criss-crossing over Charlie’s shoulder blades, attaching to the fabric halfway down her spine.
Instantly, I wonder if she’s wearing a bra. I can’t help it. That’s not what I want to be wondering right now, with my kid stomping impatiently ten feet away, but I am.
Charlie turns back to me, stops short.
“What?” she says, alarmed. “Is this dress okay?”
“It’s fine,” I manage to say. “It’s nice. Great. Ladies first.”
I gesture toward the steps, and Charlie descends them.
Nice? Come on.
* * *
The moment we walk into Susie Q’s Cakes, Rusty gasps like she’s just been crowned Miss America, only more dramatic because she’s way more interested in cake than in beauty pageants.
Then she stops short, standing in the middle of the entryway, and stares around in childish, slack-jawed wonder.
“Move it, kiddo,” I tell her. “You’re in the walkway.”
Rusty wanders in, still agog, and Charlie and I follow, her hand in mine. There’s cake everywhere: inside the massive glass-fronted bakery case, a cupcake display behind the counter. There are cakes under glass domes on the counter itself, not to mention a few beautifully decorated five-tier cakes in the front window.
I don’t think those are real.
Rusty’s eyes are the size of saucers, and she stands in the middle of the store, hands clasped together, looking for all the world like a sweet, charming second grader.
Which she is, but she’s also a lot of other things.
“So, cake,” Charlie says.
“Cake,” I agree, sneaking another glance at her.
I can’t stop staring, because I never see her this way. Charlie’s always in regular clothes, jeans and t-shirts, sometimes coveralls, occasionally shorts. I can’t remember the last time I saw her bare shoulder, the notch of her collarbones, the sharp curve of shoulder blades.
I feel like I’m watching a striptease made just for me.
It’s not the dress, which is perfectly modest. It’s the way her body moves under it that has me transfixed. It’s the suggestion that she might not be wearing a bra. It’s how I see a flash of thigh when she sits down and the material shifts.
“I’ve never exactly been wedding cake tasting before,” Charlie says, still looking around. “Do we just start pointing at things, or—”
“You must be Charlotte and Daniel!” a voice says, followed quickly by an apron-wearing woman who bustles out from the back. “Welcome to Susie Q’s Cakes! I heard all about you from Violet, she’s just so excited that the two of you are finally making it official. Here, go on, sit down.”
Suzie ushers us to the café portion of the bakery, where a table is already set up with three place settings, complete with delicate teacups on saucers, plates with flowers, and forks with curlicu
es. Rusty plops right down, but Charlie eyes the whole setup a little warily.
“And you must be Rusty,” Susie said. “I’ve heard all about you. This will be your first cake tasting, then?”
She’s still addressing Rusty. It’s quickly becoming clear who the star of the show is going to be today, and it’s not either of the people getting fake-married.
“Yes,” Rusty confirms, as seriously as she possibly can.
“Excellent,” Susie says. “I’ll be right out with your samples and tea.”
“There’s tea?” Charlie murmurs as Susie walks back into the kitchen, the ruffles on her apron fluttering.
“Is this Violet’s doing?” I ask, keeping my voice low.
Rusty leans over the table, examining the delicate teacup and saucer, then finally picking it up.
“There’s a flower on the bottom,” she tells us.
I settle back in my chair, even though it’s wildly uncomfortable, and stretch one arm over to Charlie, my hand on the back of her neck. She’s tense, so I rub the knots lightly, my fingers edging under the crossed straps on her back.
I don’t think a single dirty thought. It would be inappropriate.
Okay, maybe one.
Possibly two. But they’re quick.
“I thought we’d be eating cake bites out of tiny paper cups while standing at a counter,” she says, crossing one leg over the other. There’s a flash of thigh. I keep rubbing her neck, and she leans into my hand, ever so slightly, and brush away a third dirty thought.
“Not dining off of fine china?” I ask. “Just hold your pinky out when you drink the tea, that way it’s proper.”
“Says you, noted etiquette expert,” she teases.
Rusty’s already pretending to drink tea, the cup held carefully in her fingers, both pinkies out.
“Like that,” I say, nodding at Rusty. “See, she knows how to do it.”
“Don’t worry, I can teach you,” she assures Charlie.