by Piper Lennox
“Sailors used to get them for safe voyages, or to mark how many miles at sea they had traveled.”
“You sail?”
“No. I got it in memory of someone. A family friend.”
Juliet rolls over, burrowing into her pillow, but her eyes are wider now. Focused entirely on me. “What happened to them?”
“He got old and died.”
She shoves my arm back to me. “Cohen.”
“Ow,” I laugh. “I’m not being irreverent—he was old. He passed away after having, like, four strokes, a heart attack, liver failure, and dementia. That’s what happens. If you live long enough, you get a little of everything.” My volume dips, but only for a second. “So I don’t know what killed him, exactly. He just…lived long enough.”
She watches me replace my watch. “Was he a nudist, too?”
“He was.” Briefly, I tell her about Alvin, his navy tattoos and my favorite—the barn swallow on his wrist, in the same spot as mine, that he got for his wife. “They helped my mom out a lot, when we moved there. Al was the one who got Mom to chill out about our climbing. He told her we were living as free as we could, which was the whole reason she’d moved us there, away from the Fairfields. He said, ‘You can’t bring them to a place like this, preaching freedom, then tell them to keep both feet on the ground.’”
“So that’s why you’ve got that part,” she says, tracing the letters in the banner held in the swallow’s beak, flowing from behind the watch band: FEET UP.
I nod. “Yeah. My life motto.” Before she can ask another question, I bend down and kiss her, then stand. “I’d better get going. Let you rest.”
She pushes up on her elbow. “You don’t have to leave right away. I mean...don’t feel like you have to rush out, or whatever.”
“Can of worms,” I remind her, winking as I vanish behind the partition. I shut the lights off as I leave, lock the door before I close it, and wait until I’m past the landing to put my shoes back on. A silent and fast escape.
On the street, while I wait for the ride-share, I lock my fingers behind my head and look up. Her window is dark, just like I left it.
The car pulls up. I check the driver’s name, climb in, and make small talk with the guy while pretending my wrist isn’t still tingling from where she touched it. First the wings, spread out mid-flight, and then the chest—that one splash of peach in the center.
The night Alvin died, Levi was too scared to go in and see him.
“There’s no point,” he’d snapped, punching my shoulder when I made fun of him, trying to coax him over the threshold. “He doesn’t even remember us anymore.”
We were sixteen and eighteen. The Thompsons were both in their eighties; Beatrix, while still up and about, had her share of health issues by then, and I could see her watching us from the waiting room. Not expectantly. Just staring.
Still, I reminded Levi, “Visiting Al would probably mean a lot to Trixie. He doesn’t know who we are, but she does.”
“Al wouldn’t want us seeing him like this.” Levi shrugged his arm out of my grasp. “Go ahead, if you want. I’m going to see if Trixie wants anything from the cafeteria.”
I watched him go. The last few years, my bravery steadily increased. Levi’s had, at best, plateaued—but I was still shocked he didn’t want to say goodbye. Alvin and Beatrix had been like grandparents to us all these years, even after we left Freedom Farm. We owed Alvin a proper goodbye.
“Pussy,” I called to Levi’s back. He gave me the finger.
In the ICU, I found his room and took a breath. The air had that clean-dust smell to it: sterile, but stale.
“Hey, Mr. Thompson,” I said, then corrected myself: “Al.” He’d always encouraged us to call him by his first name. Usually I remembered, but it was a hard habit to break: even our flower-child mother couldn’t forget all the formalities she’d had drilled into her when she was young and well-to-do. The one time in my life she’d heard me call the Thompsons “Al and Trix,” she whacked the backs of my legs with a spoon.
He was frail, skin translucent in the buzzing white light. His eyes fluttered just enough to let me know he was awake.
Slowly, his tongue wet his lips. I pulled a chair close and leaned in, listening carefully to what, for all I knew, could be his last words.
“Mick, you son of a bitch.”
I laughed, unfazed. With the dementia, Alvin had mistaken me for someone else—an old Navy buddy named Mick—for months. Instead of getting upset, I’d learned to play along. It made him happy.
“Hey, Whitman.” I nudged his arm. “How you feeling?”
Whitman was Alvin’s Navy nickname. Trixie divulged it to me one afternoon: “He used to write poetry in his letters home to me. Beautiful, beautiful pieces. But the boys gave him hell for it, of course. Started calling him ‘Whitman’ on his first hitch.”
Alvin stirred, probably trying to sit up. “Think I’m on my way out.”
I forced whatever the lump in my throat was into a laugh. “You? No way in hell.”
He muttered some gibberish. After so many strokes, his speech center was fried: for every real sentence he got out, he grumbled at least four along the lines of, “Cat in the tin. Get toast, that’s why going.”
When he quieted, I took his hand through the bed railing. His eyes opened again, staring at my fingers as I flattened the skin on his wrist to see the swallow.
His pulse was so faint.
“If you need to go,” I said quietly, running my sleeve over my eyes, “you can go. I—I’ll make sure Trix is okay.”
Another garbled sentence came at me. Then, suddenly, his other hand lifted and gripped my wrist.
“She doesn’t need your brand of help, Mick, you old bastard.”
I laughed again. This one was real. Even though it triggered the tears, it made me feel better.
“All right,” I told him. I studied the tattoo again, one last time. “I’ll leave your girl alone, Whit.”
It’s been a long time since I thought about that night. Now, as I pull down my Murphy bed from the wall and hate how different it feels from Juliet’s, I look at my tattoo and wish I’d stayed a little longer. Maybe told her more about Al and Trix.
It’s not like I didn’t want to. If I had my way, I’d dive into Juliet’s bed every night.
But that’s not what she really wants. Just a post-sex craving for intimacy or something. Whatever it was, it isn’t part of our arrangement.
When Alvin met Beatrix—at least, according to him—he knew she was the one because she acted like he wasn’t. “Really made me work for it. I won her over eventually.”
“You did,” Trix would call, from wherever in their trailer she was, whenever Al told the story. Sometimes she was right beside him, giggling like a teenager and slipping her hand into his. “Buying me candy, sending me flowers, the letters.... That was Al’s secret: showing me what I was missing.”
I can’t send Juliet flowers or write her poetry, of course. One: I know nothing about flowers, and can’t write for shit.
Two: I can’t do those things anyway, because that was our deal. All business.
Still. I have no doubt that the second I left, she started thinking about me. I bet she still is. Not just what I did to her, but all those things I didn’t—slipping underneath the covers and fitting her body against mine, keeping her warm through the night. Being there when she wakes up tomorrow.
I want those things, too. It took all my willpower to leave her behind in the dark and pretend I was fine doing it.
My plan’s going to require that short-term sacrifice, though. If I want her to give me a chance, a real one, then I need to leave her wanting more.
Maybe I can’t show Juliet what she’s missing. But I can make her wonder. And maybe, before it’s all over, that’ll be enough.
13
“How are things going with your broke-ass Fairfield?”
I barely justify Abby’s teasing with a glance and take Stella from her when we get to
the hardware store, balancing the little girl against my hip. She grabs my necklace in one chubby fist, shoving it into her mouth.
“Fine.” Carefully, I replace the chain with her pacifier. “Why?”
“No reason.” The quirk of Abby’s mouth, that barely contained smile, makes me narrow my eyes while I set Stella back in her stroller. “I was just wondering,” she continues, as I knew she would, “because Lionel said he saw a Fairfield Party Suppliers van outside your apartment, last night. Late.”
“I thought we were here to pick out a Father’s Day gift for Dad,” I remind her. “Not so you can tease me.”
She just yawns, rubbing her stomach. Lionel convinced her, by some miracle, not to find out the genders of the twins, so they’ve been referring to them as Baby A and Baby B. I don’t know which one sits where, but one of them kicks—hard—as soon as I place my hand near hers.
“Whoa,” I laugh, startled. “That one’s strong.”
“Wait until you feel it for yourself. It’s wild.”
I don’t mean for my smile to fade, much less for Abby to notice.
“How are you doing with everything, by the way?” she asks softly. She picks up a multi-tool from a sales display, turns it in her hands, and puts it back. “You excited yet?”
“I haven’t even fully accepted I’m pregnant,” I confess. I hold up a magnetic hammer; she shakes her head, reminding me that Dad already has four.
“It’ll hit sooner or later,” she assures me, fanning herself with a book from Stella’s diaper bag. “I’m not sure I accepted it until I saw the sonogram. Not that squiggly little early one—the one when you can really see their features. That’s when you realize, like, ‘Oh, damn. This is a person in here.’”
It’s strange, getting any kind of advice from someone five years younger than me. But it does make me feel better.
I take over the stroller for her, feeling my shoulders relax while I push. A few weeks. I can do that.
“Have you talked to Vi at all, lately?” Abby’s voice tenses my muscles all over again. “They met with another surrogate last week.”
“She didn’t tell me that.” I don’t know why I feel offended. While Abby leads us into the lawnmowers, I find my neutral voice and ask, “Did they like her?”
“Marco did. Viola did not. Apparently she ‘gave off the vibe of a secret smoker.’”
“Can’t blame her for being picky.”
“This isn’t being picky. This is her pouting because she didn’t get her way.” Abby glances at me over her shoulder. “She didn’t get you.”
The guilt I’ve managed to ignore the last few weeks roars back. It might not make sense, but that doesn’t make it easier.
“I hope they find someone soon,” I mumble. Then, because I’m desperate for a topic change: “What about this can crusher, for Dad’s recycling bin?”
“Oh, sure. ‘Happy Father’s Day, Dad. Here’s a can crusher.’ He’ll be thrilled.”
I put it back, sighing. Between the three of us, plus our collective tendency to overcompensate—giving Dad twice the gifts every holiday, because we have half the parents—the man owns every good present already.
“I don’t think Viola will ever choose a surrogate,” Abby says a few minutes later, picking up the conversation. I wish we could leave it behind in the lawnmower section forever. “She doesn’t really want it.”
“You don’t think she wants a baby yet, after all?”
“No, she does. I’m saying she doesn’t really want surrogacy. Watching another woman carry her child. I think the only reason she ran with the idea was because she immediately had you in mind. Everyone else they’ve met with was just a formality—she wanted you from the start. Not that she’d ever admit it, obviously. Maybe she doesn’t even realize it.”
I consider this. “Why me, though? If it’s too hard watching someone else carry her baby, she wouldn’t have asked me, either. She would have found some problem to rule me out, like she’s done with the other women.”
“Because you,” Abby says, veering into the patio section, “are the closest person to herself. What’s that word—living through someone else?”
“Vicarious,” I answer, biting my lip as Abby’s observation sinks in.
“Right: she wanted to be pregnant vicariously, through you.” She watches me. “Not that her other reasons weren’t true, too. You being healthy and trustworthy, all that.”
We sit in a couple of padded chairs under an umbrella. Abby slips her feet from her shoes, flexing her toes and sighing with relief.
“Can I ask you something?”
She pushes her hair out of her face and studies me again. “Sure.”
“Do you think.... That stuff I told you Vi said, in the fertility clinic—do you think she meant it?”
She takes a breath and leans back in the chair. “I want to say no, because...shit, how insane would she have to be? But,” she adds, fishing some crackers out of the diaper bag for Stella, “I also still can’t believe she asked about the surrogacy thing, in the first place. I figured cosigning on that car she crashed was the extent of her crazy demands. Besides the wedding planning, of course.”
“She was so upset.” I deflate against the cushions. “We haven’t even gotten a chance to talk about it—the last time I saw her was a few weeks ago, at Dad’s for dinner, and she and Marco have skipped every one since. I know she said they just had a lot of work to do, but I feel like it’s because of me.”
“It probably is.” Abigail: honest as ever. “But that’s her problem, Jules. Not yours.”
“I just wish....” My words fall away. I don’t know what to wish. That Vi would talk to me about all this. That I had the spine to bring it up myself. That she could get pregnant, and none of this surrogacy drama happened at all.
As Abby and I force ourselves back to shopping, I realize there’s one thing I didn’t wish: that I wasn’t pregnant. Maybe I’m beginning to accept it, after all.
My phone pings when we’re in line to checkout, Dad’s new birdfeeders in hand. He already has two, but we’re out of ideas and energy.
The text is from Cohen. “On tonight’s menu: fresh donuts from Brown Sugar Bakery.”
I hide my screen from Abby, knowing exactly what kind of message is coming next.
Ping. “Followed by me eating you out until your mattress is soaked. Again.”
My face is close to combustion, just reading it in public. But that’s nothing compared to the heat between my legs. Two nights ago, Cohen did, in fact, perform oral sex on me until my sheets were wet, the physical proof of his hold on me seeping right through to the mattress. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since: the relentless swirl of his tongue inside me, the sound of sucking and licking filling the loft when he’d come up for air and basically devour my clitoris. He made me come until my voice was hoarse, I’d called his name so many times.
Then, when I was exhausted, he left. Like he always did. I felt bad I’d fallen asleep before offering to reciprocate, and even worse when I woke at midnight to find the bed empty, save for a towel. The one he’d placed over the puddle. The rushing, uncontrollable wetness he’d brought out of me, like no other man had ever done.
“The scrub?”
I start; I had no idea Abby was even watching me. “No,” I lie, slipping the phone back into my purse without answering.
“Bet he sent you a dick pic. Your face is as red as that hummingbird feeder.”
“Why are you giving me shit? I thought older sisters were supposed to do the teasing.”
“You just make it so easy,” she laughs, the sound echoing throughout the store as she bumps her hip against mine.
“You can’t do this to me, man.”
Levi crumples the empty BC Powder sleeve in his fist, refusing to look me in the eye. “I’m not doing anything to you, Cohen. I’m doing what I think is best for my company.”
“I told you, I can handle this on my own. You were just bitching this morning ab
out how you haven’t had time to lock in that storefront you want. Remember? Wasn’t that the whole point of you hiring me—so I can take over here in the warehouse?”
“The whole point of me hiring you,” he says, “was to get Mom off my back.”
He says it like some dramatic reveal, but this is old news. Mom bugged him to give me a job two years ago, after I got laid off from a moving company and spent four months crashing on her couch. It was part bad luck—our area was in a verified hiring slump—and part laziness: I didn’t feel like looking for work outside the “doesn’t drug test” category. Most of my days during that time were spent high as shit, playing video games until Mom got home and goaded me into chores. Not my proudest season, for sure.
Once Levi gave me this job, though, I buckled down. I knew all his goals: build up the clientele, scale to a bigger warehouse, rent a storefront, and focus on front-of-house operations. He wanted to be the suit-and-tie side of the business, finally getting to enjoy the fruit of all his labor.
And that’s the thing: I want to make that happen. I want Levi to step away a little more—not just because I want to step in, but because he deserves it. He’s a high-school dropout who started this business from the ground up, nothing but a truck, some dinged-up tables, and one shitty bounce house (even worse than what we have now) to his name. He thinks I’m jealous of him, but I’m not. I’m proud of him.
“I want your job,” I tell him now, sitting on the edge of his desk. He pushes me off. “I like the chaos of events; you hate it.”
Hesitantly, he nods his agreement. Which is funny, because we were the complete opposite as kids. Levi was always first to jump into the fray, while I stayed at the edges and watched, only venturing into risks if he made me. I don’t remember when we switched.
“The anniversary party is just way too big. Every single guest is a potential client—I can’t afford to lose them.”
I narrow my eyes. “Is this about that birthday party?”
“That mom gave us a one-star on EventCraze,” he says flatly. “She dinged us bad for that bounce house shit, and we didn’t get a single referral.”