by LJ Evans
Your phone dinged while we drove, and when you looked down, your faced went white before turning red, and worry instantly coursed through me.
“What is it?” I asked.
And you looked up as if I’d startled you away from a bad dream. Your shield came down over your face, and you lied to me. You didn’t think I knew, but I did.
“Just Claire being Claire,” you said and tossed your phone in your bag as if you could ignore it.
I wanted to push it, to demand the truth out of you, but I had already pushed you so many times that day that I’d been afraid that if I pushed again, you’d run when you’d just agreed to stay. But I wish that I had pushed you because now I know what that text said and I hate it just like I hate him.
Stupidly, I turned my attention to driving instead of talking. We did a lot of that, didn’t we? Silence instead of words.
We pulled up in front of a tiny cottage from the fifties that you told me that you’d lived in since you were sixteen. Justice had bought it using the proceeds from your parent’s house in Seattle so you’d have a place to call your own. But I noticed that you still didn’t call it home.
You said it was tiny and old as if making excuses for it. You explained that Justice and Liv had worked hard to renovate it once Liv had moved in when you were at college.
I got your car door, and you led me up the steps, knocked, and then let us in with your own key. “Hello everyone! Make yourself decent. You have company!”
“Peej!” Liv responded from the back. “In here.”
You led me through the tiny, clustered living room into the kitchen near the back of the house. You watched me as if I’d look at the place and make a poor judgement of you or your family, but to me it just looked like somewhere a family lived. A real family with real lives.
In the kitchen, Liv was at the sink washing bottles. The baby monitor on the counter was turned on. You hugged her, and Liv returned it with warmth. Her eyes lit up on seeing me coming into the room behind you. Like she wanted to tease you again about the choices you were making. It didn’t send me over the edge like usual. Probably because she was smiling and for some reason I liked her for it.
“Hello again!” Liv said to me.
I just nodded.
“What are you two doing today?” Liv asked.
“I brought the receipts and cash for Justice so he can make the deposit on Monday,” you told her.
“Thanks, that’s perfect. He just went to get a pizza. Let me call him, and he’ll get another.”
“No, no, we aren’t staying.”
“We haven’t seen you in hardly a week.” She already had the phone out and hit the call button before you could protest again. “Hey hun, Peej and her hunky man are here, can you order another pie?” She looked at us, “What do you want?”
“Veggie?” you said looking at me. I didn’t want to stay. I wanted you all to myself, but you had already accepted and I wasn’t going to be the asshole who took you from your family.
“Sure,” I shrugged.
Liv got the pizzas situated and hung up. She went to the frig. “Beer?” she asked.
“Not for me, thanks,” I said automatically.
“Peej?”
“Nah. I’ll take a coke though. Seth?”
“Sure,” I repeated.
We settled at the kitchen table. “So? How’s it going?” Liv’s eyes twinkled with mischief.
You couldn’t help but blush. It was built into you. “Don’t start.”
The baby took that moment to wake up and let out a little pitiful cry on the monitor that could barely be heard. Liv was up and out of the room like a jack-in-the-box.
“I’ll be back, give me a few minutes to nurse him and bring him in,” Liz hollered over her shoulder.
When she left, you turned back to me. I took you in. You were more relaxed than anywhere I’d seen you except in my bed. I was jealous of that. I can’t deny it. You didn’t like my stare.
“What?” you asked.
How could I respond to that? So I didn’t.
“Don’t do that. Out with it, Mr. Carmen,” you said, and my chest tightened at my shit-for-brains father’s name.
“We agreed that dickhead was better than Mr. Carmen.”
“But it gets a reaction out of you at least,” you said with a satisfied smile that twisted my gut.
“There’s a better reaction you can get out of me,” I said as I pulled you from your chair onto my lap.
“Seth. Stop it. Liv will be in any second and Justice is on his way,” you protested weakly.
“Nursing a baby takes some time,” I replied as I began kissing your neck and running a hand down your side.
“How would you know?” you asked.
“I read a lot of books.”
“About nursing women?”
“Shhh. Stop talking.” And I kissed you again so that you were breathless and panting even though we’d barely gotten out of each other’s skin less than an hour ago.
A car door slammed outside, causing you to pull away. You barely had time to put space between us when Justice opened the back door.
You grabbed the pizza boxes from him. “S&M!” Justice said giving you a hug, and I couldn’t help but wince at the nickname.
“Hey,” you said hugging him back.
Justice turned to me, and I rose to shake his hand because I knew that you wanted me to play nice. “Good to see you again,” Justice said although it didn’t seem like he was really sure about it. That was okay, I wasn’t either.
“You too,” I responded drily.
Liv came into the room with the baby swaddled and hugged tightly against her chest. “You’re home!” Liv said with a smile, kissing Justice and handing off the baby to him. “Look who just woke up.”
Justice took the baby and made googly eyes at him. You were watching it all with a wistful look on your face like you’d just been left out of a holiday dinner, and I was about to pull you back to me when you went for the baby.
As you held Cole, Justice and Liv got out plates and napkins and more drinks. Justice brought back two beers.
“Beer?” He offered to me.
“No, thanks, your lovely wife already asked,” I responded, meeting the challenge in his eyes with coldness.
Your eyes narrowed at the interchange.
“What gives?” you said, pulling the beer out of his hand and putting it back in the fridge.
“What?” Justice was all fawned innocence.
“Don’t give me that. Spill it.”
“Your brother is wondering if I’m really a recovering alcoholic or an alcoholic that’s covering,” I told you.
“You are not?” You turned indignant eyes on him.
Justice shrugged. “Locke told me he’d been in AA.”
“Let’s go.” You handed the baby back to Justice, picked up your purse and headed towards the door, but Justice’s voice stopped you. I hadn’t moved. I couldn’t blame your brother for looking out for you.
“Stop. I’m sorry. I just,” Justice ran his hands through his hair. “You know I can’t stop looking after you just because you’re all grown up.”
You looked up at him angrily. “You have to butt out of my life.”
“I know. I know. I promise when you move back, I won’t interfere,” Justice said apologetically.
“Wait? What?” you said in surprise.
“Claire came by to see the baby today. She said she was moving in with her aunt, and so I assumed you’d be moving back,” he replied with a sheepish smile.
“I can’t believe she told you that.” You were stunned.
“She’s not moving in here,” I intervened.
“What?” Liv and Justice said at the same time that you said, “Seth!” in warning.
“She’s moving in with me,” I responded and you huffed while your family stared at us in disbelief.
“Bullshit,” Justice said and turned to you, “Peej?”
You didn’t resp
ond, you didn’t have too. The color creeping over your face said it all. I itched to touch your cheeks, but I actively restrained myself.
“Well,” Liv said clearing her throat, “Now that that’s resolved, can we please eat? I’m starving. Breast feeding is like running a marathon.”
And I liked Liv even more for her ability to take the pressure off you. She put a plate in my hands, forced her husband to take a seat, and the tension in the air slowly loosened up.
“So, PJ, where are we celebrating your graduation?” Liv asked.
It was your turn to shrug, and I could see how you were undervaluing your achievement. As if it wasn’t something to celebrate. As if it wasn’t a big deal.
“When do you graduate?” I asked, and it made us all aware of just how little we knew each other. I didn’t miss the look that Justice gave you that said “see” without saying a word. But the thing he didn’t know, was that I already knew the important things about you. I knew your heart and your soul.
“Next month. The 18th of May,” you responded.
“We can do a party here if you’d like,” Liv offered.
You shook your head because you didn’t want them to do anything for you. But they weren’t letting you off the hook and it made me like them more than I wanted to. This family of yours that actually knew how to be a family. I’d had no one at my graduation. I hadn’t walked because there was no reason to do so. There would be no one in the stands calling my name.
“Nah. Why don’t we just go to La Traviata afterwards?” you told them when they hadn’t relented.
“That doesn’t seem like enough to mark this auspicious occasion. Locke and I have been making bets for years on whether you’d actually go through with it or not,” Justice grinned.
You threw a mushroom at him.
“We always celebrate there. It’s tradition,” you told him.
“That’s really all you want?” Justice said with a frown. As if he didn’t want to disappoint you.
“Really. I don’t want to make a big deal of it. It’s not like I’ve got big plans or anything,” and you said it with a load of self-depreciation in your voice.
I didn’t understand it, but it only made me want to show you all the more why you were worth more than you let yourself believe.
As we left that night, I heard Justice’s comment to you about not moving in with me. You didn’t think I had, but when you told him that moving in with me was the right thing, my heart filled again with the same happiness I’d felt that morning, and as you walked toward me with the sunset glinting off your hair, I was overcome with more images that I wanted to bang out in glass and steel.
But, I also knew it would have to wait because when you reached me with that heart-stopping smile, I knew that all I was going to be able to do that night was touch you until you moaned and smiled up at me with that contented smile that was mine alone.
* * *
The next morning, I woke up with that sunset vision of you still in my head, and I knew I needed a few things I didn’t have in my studio to make it come to life. So I took you to the junkyard for the first time.
It was also the first time you rode my motorcycle, and I couldn’t help but think of the first time I’d gone to the junkyard with Cam. That wasn’t comparing you to Cam, it was just a memory coming back of another time at another junkyard with another girl. She’d ridden on the back of my bike too. And she’d come back to the studio in my grandparent’s barn and seen the waterfall and been impressed.
You didn’t seem all that impressed by the junkyard. And you didn’t take to an assignment for finding things like Cam had.
“I’m going to look for an old radio to take out of a car. Can you go look for some kind of orange ceramic or glass?” I said and tried to walk away, but you grabbed my hand.
I looked down, and I was surprised to see a wary look in your eye. “Bella?”
You eyeballed the grease-monkeys that worked at the yard, and the rough and tumble men that were moving through it doing jobs or finding parts like me. I realized you were way out of your element.
“Hey. It’s okay. You can just stick with me,” but then I saw your stubbornness emerge. You didn’t want to appear afraid.
“Nah. Just had to get my bearings for a moment. Any place you suggest?”
I took a look around and realized that I didn’t want you anywhere that I couldn’t see you either. I gripped your hand tighter and all but dragged you with me. We found an old Buick that I tore the radio out of while you helped me by handing me tools. We shoved it into my duffle and headed off to another section of the yard. I’d pick up random pieces, and you’d watch with curiosity in your eyes.
After about an hour, I was done for the day. As we left, you noticed an old Tiffany style lamp that had several panels cracked.
“This is so sad,” you said, with true emotion in your voice. “This was probably in somebody’s house for several generations.”
I took a closer look. “Nah, it’s a knock off. You don’t have to feel bad.”
You looked shocked. “Wait, what?”
I shrugged. “I went to art school too.”
I picked up the lamp and carried it with me towards the front office.
“I’m sorry,” you started as if you’d offended me. You hadn’t. “I keep forgetting you went to college. I think it’s because the idea of you sitting in a class seems so contradictory to everything else about you.”
“There were times I wanted to give up.” And that was the truth. I was never good at doing what other people wanted me to do. But with art, I’d always had more leeway than with regular classes.
“What made you stay?”
“Mac. My grandparents.”
“Whose Mac?”
I stopped and looked down into your gorgeous face. I’d never told anyone in L.A. about Mac. I doubted Locke even knew. Mac and Marisella were why I’d survived that last year in New York. Especially after my mom.
“Mac is a gang prevention officer in the NYPD.”
You looked a little startled. You swallowed. “Were you in jail?”
I traced your cheek with my finger. “Would it matter?”
“No.” You said it so instantaneously that I believed you.
“It would to your family,” I said watching you and saw the flicker of acknowledgement in your eyes that you would never admit. “But, no, I’ve never been arrested.”
“So, how’d you meet Mac?”
“My dad was a low-level drug dealer for a gang and Mac was tasked with intervening with known gang kids.”
“I bet he doesn’t meet with much success.”
I didn’t comment.
“So, Mac?”
I cringed inwardly.
“CPS was called when I turned sixteen. Between my social worker and Mac, I got sent to live with my grandparents while they arranged for me to have an audition at LaGuardia.”
“Wow.”
We stopped at the office, I paid some cash, and then we made it back to the bike. We had to strap the lamp onto the seat with some bungee cords. I shoved the duffle over my shoulder, pulling it to the front so that you could climb on and still wrap your arms around my waist. When we were settled and almost ready to take off, you let me know you were still taking in everything I’d said.
“Why was CPS called?”
My body tightened. Uncomfortable with the direction you were going but wanting to be honest with you. You deserved that much. “Broken ribs. After there’d been too many visible bruises.”
You squeezed me tight, your strong arms reaching all the way around me as if you could make the pain inside me go away. But, there wasn’t really any pain there from my dad. Not until it reached my mom. And, I didn’t want you to feel any goddamn pity for me. I didn’t deserve it. I’d been a prick to many of the same people who’d been good to me.
Later, that night, when we were laying tangled in each other’s arms, you began a slow trail of your fingers up the scar on my
left side. I could tell, your brain was back to what I’d said earlier about Mac and CPS.
I didn’t say anything.
“Tell me,” you said quietly. And we both knew what you were asking. I wasn’t sure I could. You were asking so much from me. Did you realize that?
“Seth?” you prodded quietly.
“Hmm.”
“Tell me.”
I pulled away and sat at the end of the bed, head in my hands. “It’s not worth talking about.”
“How can you say that?”
I stood up facing you, anger flooding me. “Don’t. Don’t even pity me.”
You sat up on the bed, your own anger flaring, eyes flashing. “Is that what you think?”
You moved across the bed so that you were kneeling in front of me with your hands on my chest. The t-shirt you wore clinging to your naked bits underneath. You looked ravishing with those stormy eyes and rosy cheeks. And I realized, as I had before, that whatever you demanded, I would always give to you.
“I just want to know what happened to you. Not so I can pity you, but so I can understand you.”
“Do you want to talk about your parents?”
“If you want to hear about them, I’d be happy to tell you. But right now. Right now, I want to hear about you.”
I groaned.
“Tell me.” You insisted searching my face with eyes still storming, but storming now with emotions I wasn’t sure I wanted to read.
But I was still angry at you for making me say it, so it came out like I was yelling. I’m sorry. “I went to pay the rent for my mom. My grandparents would send it to me so that it didn’t get spent on drugs. I’d always stop in to see her while I was there. This time, when I got there, mom wasn’t breathing. My shit-for-brains dad was in the chair next to her, high as a kite. I called 911 which somehow woke his crazy ass up, and he tried to get me to hang up because he had a couple bricks of drugs laid out on the counter and didn’t want anyone in the place. I picked up my mom, and I knew…”
I stopped, trying to disassociate from that feeling of my mom’s dead weight in my arms. Of my dad trying to grab at me. At her. I took a deep breath and moved on, calmer this time.
“I made it to the hallway and he followed. With a cracked Jack Daniels bottle that he used on my side,” I looked up at the ceiling. “I barely touched him, but he hit the floor, and I got her to the street.”