I’m pretty sure I fell asleep two seconds after she came, which is the best send-off into sleep I can think of. To be honest, though, I must have been really drunk to let that happen. Not that I don’t want her riding me when I’m sober. But I don’t know that I would have gone there if not for the beer. I hope to hell she doesn’t regret it. I pray she won’t regret me.
I yank on the shirt, head for the kitchen, and pour myself a glass of water. I down it in one gulp, then fill another glass and drink that up too.
Better. Now I’m not so parched. I look for a clock and find a radio by the sink. It’s almost noon. It’s Friday. I need to be at work in an hour, and I need to shower. Then I realize my mouth tastes like a sock.
I hate morning breath even when I’m alone, but if there’s a chance she’s still here, I better brush my teeth now. I head for the bathroom. The door is open and no one’s in there. It’s a tiny bathroom, with squeaky faucets and a streaked mirror.
I check out the toothbrushes. One’s red. One’s green. I have no clue which is Harley’s. She’s the kind of girl who likes red, but then Kristen wears red glasses. I shrug. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll buy them both a pack of new toothbrushes as a gift. Yeah, I’m classy like that.
I take my chances and grab the red one, squirt some toothpaste on, and a minute later, I have minty fresh breath.
“That’s my toothbrush.”
I startle when I hear Kristen’s voice.
“Sorry,” I say as I return the toothbrush to the cup holder. “I’ll get you a new one. Where’s Jordan?”
“At work,” she says, then walks away.
“Where’s Harley?”
“I don’t know. I’m going back to bed. I don’t have class, and I have to work tonight at the restaurant.”
Well, that’s that. The morning has its own stark way of erasing all the good that darkness brings. Story of my life. I head back to the living room, find my boots, tug them on, lace them up, then grab my phone and stuff it in my back pocket. I snag my backpack from the floor – seems like eons ago that I sat on the front stoop drawing and waiting for her. But she’s nowhere to be seen, and she didn’t leave a note.
I sling my backpack on my shoulder, run a hand through my messy hair, and head for the door, computing how quickly I’ll have to haul ass across town to shower, then race back to work. I reach for the handle, but someone’s unlocking and opening the door. I step back quickly, but even so, she nearly bumps into me and grabs my arm to steady herself.
“Oh, sorry,” she says. Then, in a softer voice, meeting my eyes briefly. “Hi.”
Oh shit. That voice slays me with its sweetness. I’m a dead man walking when she looks down at her shoes in a strangely shy way. And maybe it was the beer lubricating us night, but right now, regrets or no regrets, I want more. Because not only was last night the hottest thing ever, but now my heart is thumping like a jackrabbit for one simple reason that has nothing to do with sex, and has everything to do with how I find it immensely cute that she’s shy right now. I want to swipe my thumb across her lips and tell her not to be embarrassed, because she’s beautiful and sweet and kind and funny and has the biggest heart I’ve ever known, and that no one has ever cared in the way she has. Because she gives a shit about me.
She lets go of my arm. I wish she hadn’t let go. The slightest contact from her is electrifying.
“Hey,” I say, and I’m probably grinning like an idiot too, and damn, I’m glad I brushed my teeth.
“I got bagels,” she says, and thrusts a brown paper bag at me. “Sesame seed. Just-out-of-the-oven from the bagel shop around the corner. Your favorite.”
This girl knows me too well. I reach into the bag as my stomach growls. She laughs first, then I join in. “I guess you’re a mind reader. And these are definitely my favorite. I need to get to work soon. Mind if I eat and run?”
“You can even eat on the run if you want. Don’t let me hold you back,” she says playfully.
“I’ll stay a minute,” I say, though I really want to stay all day and night. Call in sick, curl up with her, watch a movie, kiss her more, touch her everywhere.
She’s in jeans again, like last night, and a black t-shirt with an upside-down monkey on it in pink. She wears her Converse sneakers, and she has two leather bracelets on her wrist. I love it when she dresses like a hipster instead of a schoolgirl.
“You look nice,” I say, but then I want to kick myself, because I really want to tell her she looks hot and sexy and smart and strong and independent and not the least bit like her mother’s daughter. But I’d probably sound like a guy who’s spent way too much time in therapy, and I’ve got to maintain some degree of dude cred.
“Thanks,” she says. “So do you.”
I take a bite, then look down at yesterday’s clothes. “You like the day-old, Harley?” I tease.
“Yeah. And I suppose now I should let you know those are day-old bagels too,” she fires back, but she can’t hide the smirk.
“May I never ever hear you use the adjective day-old to describe a bagel you’ve given me.”
“I’ll have to keep you on your toes then. Always worried about such a horrid breakfast possibility,” she says, leaning against the wall in her entryway as I eat more of the bagel that’s fresh and hot and perfect.
“So what are you doing today?” I ask, and it’s nice to slide right back to the joking, the teasing, the way we are. I don’t know what’s next, but I know I can’t lose her, and right now, I feel like I still have her as a friend. That’s what matters most, I remind myself. Not how much I want to have every inch of her.
“I have to go to my mom’s. Intercept that package from Miranda. Besides, my mom wants me to come by anyway. She wants me to work with her this summer. Be an intern or something for her articles,” she says. “I don’t have anything else to do.”
“You could take summer classes,” I suggest.
“I guess.”
“You said you miss creative writing. You could do that. Go back to the fun stories you want to write. Your animal tales and magic stories and whatnot. Take a writing workshop for real. Because you don’t even like the kind of reporting your mom does.”
She shrugs. “I know. But I need to do something,” she says. I hope she’s not thinking about other ways she can earn money. The ways she was considering last night. But then, it’s not as if one drunken grind on me is enough to make her change her stripes, is it?
“Hey. I have a question, Trey. About last night…”
I stop eating, look at her, and she’s the Harley I’m crazy about. I should just kiss her again. But I don’t know if everything changed last night, or nothing. I don’t know if we’re coming or going. Harley is both my best friend and my biggest fear. I need to put my armor on, protect myself from her. But I don’t know where I left it.
“Yeah?” I raise an eyebrow. Waiting for her question. Hoping she’s going to say she’s done with Cam, done with her past, and she wants me as much as I want her. If she said that, I’d tell her. If she told me I was the only one, I’d chuck all the damn rules, and tell her I think about her all the time, and it’s not obsession, it’s not addiction, it’s something.
Something real.
“You said you had three brothers, Trey. You never told me that before.”
The moment slips out of focus and the room blurs.
That’s not what she’s supposed to say.
That’s not what I’m supposed to hear.
That’s not what anyone’s supposed to know.
Because we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about them.
The floor starts spinning, and my stomach plummets to the ground. There’s a ringing in my ears, and it spreads through my whole head, rattling hard against my skull. I said that? What the fuck is wrong with me? Why the hell would I have said that?
“What do you mean?” I ask in a strangled voice, as if there are rocks in my mouth.
She reaches for me, to
uches my shoulder, rubs gently. “I asked you about your tattoos.”
I close my eyes, shrug off her touch. No fucking way I said that. This can’t be happening. This moment is a stitch in time, a hiccup. A massive fucking mistake we’re all going to forget in seconds when it’s undone. Because there is no way way I am standing here in yesterday’s clothes with this girl who was with her pimp last night, then with me, and then I told her about the three brothers I never knew. My family that no longer exists. The reason why I became all sorts of fucked up.
I open my eyes, shake my head, adopt a false smile. “That’s crazy,” I say wishing I were an actor so I could pull this off.
She shoots me a worried look. “Crazy? Why?”
“Seriously, Harley. You should not believe the shit I say when I’m drunk.”
Then I grab my phone, check the time, and shake my head. “I gotta jam. I’ll be late and I have ton a of shit to do. I’ll catch up with you later. At the meeting or whatever. Thanks for the bagel. It’s awesome.”
* * *
A breeze blows through Michele’s open window, and it feels like a crime that there’s a gentle, warm wind right now. It should be sleeting, hailing, lashing cold, cruel rain at me, like a punishing.
“He died in my fucking arms. My little brother. He died in my arms. How do I tell her that? How do I say that?”
“Like that,” Michele says in a kind, calm voice. “Just like that.”
I drop my head into my hands. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t fucking relive it,” I mutter. I don’t look up. I don’t want to look up. She’s the only person I’ve told, and it’s hard enough to look at my shrink when I talk about them. But I had to see her. I called in late to work and tracked down Michele for an emergency appointment. “It was so awful. Knowing he wasn’t going to live. My parents letting me hold him. And it wasn’t the first time it happened.”
“I know,” she says quietly. “It’s incredibly hard.”
“And I could never say that to her,” I mumble into my hands because they still cover my face.
“But you’re saying it to me. You’ve told me. You can do this, Trey.”
I raise my face. I bet I look like hell right now. A pathetic man. Boy. Man-boy. I don’t even know. “Because you don’t know me. Because I pay you. Because you have to listen.”
“I want to listen. That’s why I’m a therapist. I want to help.”
“You probably think I’m a loser,” I say, and I don’t know why I’m egging her on or fishing badly for compliments, but maybe it’s because my compass is off, the needle all skittish, pointing this way and that way, and I desperately need to right myself. I need an anchor. I need her to be that right now.
“I don’t. I would never think that. I think you are a bright, sensitive, caring young man, and I want to help you believe in yourself, and feel better about all the possibilities. And I know you want that too. That’s why you called in late to work. That’s why you asked to come in. Because you aren’t willing to settle for less from yourself. You want to grow and learn. And the possibility I want you to consider is what would happen if you told Harley?”
I shake my head, narrow my eyes, and run my hand roughly over my chin. I need to shave. I need to get my act together. “I’d fucking break down and cry. Because I would feel it all over again.” I stab my chest with two fingers, knocking them hard against my sternum. Watching him die, after my other baby brothers had died, it was like two giant hands cracking open my chest, reaching in, and hunting for my heart. “It would be like it’s happening again. And I have done everything I can to move on.”
“You have,” she says, nodding. “You’ve also turned to women and to sex and to conquests to move on. And that hasn’t entirely helped, has it?”
The question is an arrow piercing me, cutting through my flesh and blood, exposing nerves and guts and the frightening truth of the last few years of my life. When sex became a numbing agent for the pain.
“No,” I whisper, my voice broken shards of glass.
“Maybe it’s what you need then. To feel it again. To go through that pain. To know you can say it and you’ll survive.”
Chapter Twelve
Harley
The house is quiet when I unlock the door. My mom is nowhere to be seen or heard. She usually calls out to me when I come home, but if the house is silent she must be at the office.
Thank God.
That’s exactly where I need her to be. She’s out on assignment a lot, or meeting sources, or visiting with her editor – my chests tightens when I think of her editor, the woman my mom reveres, the woman who mentored her – for her books. And while she often writes her books and articles from home, she spends time at the office too. She says she likes the discipline, the sound of other voices, the clickety-clack of colleagues tapping away on keyboards. The camaraderie helps fuel her. No surprise. My mom is a social beast.
I say a silent prayer of thanks for her office mates, and now all I have to do is wait thirty more minutes. Miranda said the package – her marked-up pages of edits – would be here around three-thirty. I’ll grab it when it arrives, tuck it under my arm, and like a quarterback with the ball, keep my head down and run like hell out of here.
I leave my purse on the marble table by the door. My stomach rumbles. I never ate lunch. All I had was coffee and toast at the diner this morning. Then I picked up the bagels for Trey.
I feel so stupid just hearing his name in my head. I can’t believe I thought everything he said last night was real and true. Then he point blank admitted to me this morning that I shouldn’t believe a word he says when he’s wasted. Maybe that’s the reminder I need to apply the brakes because I was starting to think there was hope. But capitalistic love and sex and kisses are better. Safer. At least they’re honest. No one’s pretending they feel. The money is on the table, and no one can get hurt.
Without an exchange, you can be played a fool.
With money, everyone is safe.
Cash can be recouped. It can be made and multiplied. Feelings can’t. They are loaned and borrowed and you can never pay them off.
I head to the kitchen.
There’s a tupperware container on the counter, and a Post-in note bearing my name. For Harley, only. Your favorite cookies in the whole world.
Inside are chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. I run a finger along the edge of the container, feeling wistful for a moment, longing for more of the cookies, more of the homework help, more of the bedtime stories.
More of the mom.
These treats from her will be a reminder that she can play that part too.
But first I need food, so I open the fridge and find a tupperware container full of African stew from the other night. I have no interest in food my mom makes for her latest lover. I spot a container of pasta primavera, but I bet that was last night’s culinary offering to Neil, so I pass on that too. I grab some carrots and hummus, set them on the counter, and open the drawers for a napkin.
I see a shadow in the living room. Only it’s not a shadow. It’s a man. It’s Neil and he’s about to walk into the kitchen.
In. His. Birthday. Suit.
“Oh crap.” He is tall, lanky, furry and his parts are swinging around.
I jerk my head away, because I want desperately to wipe the image of his limp dick from my brain. But it’s like an ambulance siren, screaming at me. You just saw your mom’s lover’s penis, and you noticed it was smallish, and had a mushroom head and now you can never ever ever escape from the image of his pecker swinging flaccidly between his hairy legs.
“I’m so sorry.”
I drop the hummus container onto the floor and it explodes on the tiles.
He jumps back, makes sure the hummus didn’t hit his toes. I stare at him – above the neck only, I will not look down – my eyes wide with shock. “Seriously? You are walking around the house naked and you’re worried about hummus on your feet?”
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“No. No. No. I was just surprised.”
I roll my eyes. “Obviously. Now get the hell out of here,” I say, and I don’t care that I don’t live here anymore. I don’t care that he probably has every reasonable right to have fucked my mom in an afternoon delight on a Friday. But he is naked and gross and in my house where I grew up, and I have had enough of my mother’s lovers.
“Barb went back to work, and I was taking a nap after –”
I hold up my hand in a firm stop sign. Shake my head forcefully. “No. Don’t go there. I don’t want to hear the story,” I say sharply because I don’t need to know he was taking an after-sex nap. I don’t need to know that my mom helped herself to a naughty nooner, then left her lover to snooze when she knew I was stopping by. That is the very definition of TMI.
“I’ll just turn around and go.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
I bend down to pick up the hummus, and I want to throw it at him. But then I’d have to lay eyes on his naked body and there isn’t enough bleach in the world to white out what I just saw. I grab a towel, wipe up all the hummus, then toss the towel and the container in the trash.
Tears well up, but I don’t let them out. Because they’re mixed with far too much anger. Too much frustration. And way too many foul memories. Even though my mom’s at work I can smell her. My nostrils are filled with a scent I want to erase from the entire universe, and I can recall other encounters like this, when I’d bump into her after she’d had a roll in the hay while I was home. She’d be wearing a red dressing gown, mid-thigh length and silk, and smelling of sex. Musky and dirty and adult, like sheets tangled up that beg for a washing. Her scent, the scent of her bedroom, her nightgowns, her sexuality that she shared freely with me. I wrinkle my nose and try to hold my breath as the olfactory memory floods my senses.
I grab the bag of carrots from the counter and crunch into one, biting down hard. Chewing as if I can rid my mind of these images if I bite hard enough. Drilling into another carrot, I bear down, my teeth now a lethal weapon, slicing the carrot in half. I imagine it shrieking. Wishing it could.
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