Dodging Trains

by Sunniva Dee

  We don’t make love before we go to sleep. Right now, I don’t care about day and night; the world doesn’t need us, and we need it less. He holds me with my arms soldered around his neck, and with the grey of morning tickling the curtains, I slip into unconsciousness.

  In the afternoon, I come to with Keyon rising from the bed and taking the room in three strides. He grabs clothing, drags them over his head, and pulls them up his legs.

  “Keyon?” I say.

  When he swings to me, I see that everything has changed.

  PAISLEE

  Breakfast in the restaurant is amazing. Awesome. Delicious. Especially made for the fighter who won and got up late. Keyon makes sure the rest of our group attends too, and soon I realize that he doesn’t want to be alone with me.

  We sit next to each other, but his hand is never in my lap, drawing mine to his thigh. His eyes don’t rest on me, don’t stray to my cleavage, and he doesn’t lift his brows in a suggestive arc.

  Keyon isn’t playful and happy. He speaks business with the guys and fills my coffee when the waiter isn’t there to assist. I’m nibbling on a Danish, my appetite dwindling with my lover’s behavior.

  I rise to go to the restroom, the first time Keyon looks up from his discussions about moves gone wrong yesterday and Vegas events coming up next. He doesn’t comment on my exit but acknowledges my return by retracting his vigilant gaze from the doorway as soon as I am back.

  Hearts can feel heavy, and mine does so now. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

  At the end of the meal, he turns fully to me. With the guys still there, still around us, he stares me right in the eye like I’m a contender for a fight purse.

  “There’s been a change. I have to go back to Tampa immediately so I can start preparing for the first Vegas match. I’m getting in the zone again, starting ASAP, so I need to cancel the hotel at the beach.”

  I feel my eyes go wide. I don’t have anything to say when his hands remain around his coffee, holding it still instead of reaching for me.

  There is no “I’m sorry, baby. I’ll make it up to you” when he packs his bags in our hotel room and obliterates the time we shared there.

  He doesn’t say, “I’ll fly you out. We’ll be together soon,” when Markeston’s limo takes him alone to the airport for a flight that leaves before mine.

  There’s just me, little me, at the elevator doors, watching him stare at lit-up numbers while the doors close between us. Me full of questions I don’t know how to ask.

  I’m Paislee, the town slut, and I put my heart out there to be stomped on. I got so much and then so little. It all disappeared, and I didn’t see where it went.

  My change and my future. My connection and my love. It all poofed off faster than a shot-down star across the winter sky of my hometown. So here I am, not at all ready, and yet it’s time for me to go home.

  I talk to my mother a lot, but this is too much; I’d need to reveal Keyon’s story for her to help me understand. He didn’t tell me to keep quiet, but despite his treatment, I can’t talk. I’m the only one who knows what happened to him. How can I share when he doesn’t?

  I used to live in the bubble he’s in, of being the only one aware of a deed you couldn’t avoid—you, a recipient of inescapable, everlasting filth.

  I message Cugs on Facebook, never getting a reply. It wouldn’t surprise me if he blocked me. I try to keep a few days between each time, but it’s hard when you need someone as much as I need him.

  I send my brother a sentence here and there. It’s always light: We made a mirror named Botticelli today—you’d like my crazy boss. And, I found a place that serves green mint caffe lattes. I might try one if you dared me.

  And I spend time at Mom’s house. This isn’t typical, because as much as I love her, she can be a lot with her chatty personality.

  My old room is still intact. She uses it as her combined sewing room and office, but my childhood bed always stands freshly made, and my shimmery fairy-curtains, so out of place for Icicle Land, swing in front of the windows whenever she commits one of her signature airings out of the house in the dead of winter.

  I haven’t been prone to depression since I was a teenager, not since I found out how to deal with my story, but now, after admitting to myself that I’m in love, I’ve regressed to that destructible stage. For a while there, I became a one-man woman, and now I’m paying the price.

  I don’t hear much from Keyon. I can’t bear the thought of his answer, so I don’t ask him about our status. We’ve talked on the phone since Mexico, but it’s hardly been productive. He’s taciturn and aloof, only animated when he talks about Markeston’s promotional genius and the latest antics of Zeke or Jaden. I keep a glass of water close by for a swallow if I feel like crying at his lack of emotion.

  I’m on my bed in Mom’s house, trying again. Mostly, my calls go to voicemail, but tonight Keyon answers. My heart does an enormous bounce. It might be landing in my esophagus, because it spasms.

  “Paislee? Are you okay?” he asks. It’s always his first question when he’s there to pick up the phone. When he’s not, he texts me later, wanting reassurance that I am indeed fine.

  “Yeah,” I say and feel the loss of him again. We’re reduced to this—quick health updates over the phone. “How are you?”

  “Good. Training like a madman. I practically live at the Cage Warriors.”

  “How’s Simon doing? Is he missing me?” I ask, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks at expressing an intimacy we haven’t uttered in weeks.

  Air hits the microphone on his side. I’m thinking it’s a silent chortle, but he catches himself before I can fully enjoy it. “That boy, always trying to steal the chicks from under my nose.”

  I cherish the undertone in his voice. “He’s a charmer,” I say. “Betcha he’s got a shot with most of the girls. So silky and well-groomed. That look in his eyes. You’ve got nothing on your roommate.”

  There’s a suppressed grunt coming through the speaker. He can’t hide his amusement this time, and it makes me high-five myself inwardly.

  “What are we doing, Keyon?” I burst out and want to slap myself. Why? Where did that come from? Just, I can’t live like this either. I don’t know what to expect, how to go on in limbo—I have no experience.

  At work, Mack keeps staring me down, keeps asking how I am. I still get text messages on my phone. Friends call to see if I’m available for dates, and—

  I’ve never felt this alone.

  I hide in my hands, trying to keep the despair at bay.

  “Paislee, I’m sorry. I’m not being a good boyfriend.”

  Fear pricks my spine, so I say, “No, I live so far away, and you’re busy making the cut in Vegas.” I can’t stomach the thought of changing status quo. What do I do if it’s over? Who will I be?

  Paislee, you’ll be yourself.

  I sob. I truly sob. It’s not the understated sounds I’ve disguised on our phone calls earlier.

  “TELL me how you are,” he growls. “I don’t want stories—”

  “How do you think I feel, Keyon?” I shout. “You left me in Mexico with some mumbo jumbo about you needing to prepare for Vegas after sharing the best night in my life.”

  How can something echo off the wall in such a small room? How can it reverberate in one’s ears after simply expressing it on a phone?

  I cry now, regretting my words. I’m scared of the repercussions they will have. He’s going to tell me what I can’t hear, and suddenly I’m glad that my mother is in the den so I don’t have to be alone.

  “Are you seeing someone else?”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Are you seeing someone else,’ Paislee?” He sounds like I’m not the only one about to lose my shit right now.

  “How can that be the first thing you think of? Are you, Keyon? Are you going to Stripes and grabbing girls with Jaden and Zeke? Are you guys having sleepover dates with Hooter chicks?” I lash out.

 
“No, I’m not. I told you: all I do is train. Train, train, train.”

  “Which I have nothing against!”

  It’s quiet on the other end. God, I’m hating this. I want to drive to the airport and get on a plane. I want to throw myself into his arms, maybe hurt him–physically.

  “We’re fighting,” he tells me. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  I have dark, ugly thoughts swirling in my head. They are frustration and heartbreak, and Keyon can’t say another word or I’ll—

  “You pussy!” I explode. “You’re such a pussy. After everything I’ve been through—after what you’ve been through—how can you be such a pussy? Sure, go hang with your buddies, why don’t you. Fight the stars, strangle the hell out of them and make them bleed until they give up, all right?

  “Why don’t you spend all your precious time on that, because God forbid you squander courage on a girl who fell in love with you. That could have scary repercussions.”

  “Paislee—”

  “You! Started this. Remember how you butted in and dragged me out of that coffee shop on Halloween? I would have been perfectly fine with my computer geek.”

  “I know…” He trails off sounding like he’s at fault, and damn if that isn’t the reddest flag. He should have sounded happy.

  “You spoiled me.”

  “What?”

  “You made me think I was worth something.”

  “Paislee, you’re priceless. You don’t even know how much I value you.”

  “Then how are you treating me like this?”

  He destroys me. He can’t make me feel better. There is nothing in Keyon these days that could make me feel better. “I don’t know what happened that last day in Mexico. I don’t know why we didn’t go to the coast, why we didn’t relax and hang out and have all the sex and bathe in tropical waters. I can’t do this anymore.”

  I need us to be over.

  “Honey?” Mom pokes her head in, loud, apologetic, and revealing how she’s eavesdropped on me. “Dinner’s ready. I’ve got the candles lit.”

  Mom’s added flair of nonexistent candles stops my train wreck from unfolding. Because her advice has never led me wrong, I say goodbye to Keyon before I break all ties between us once and for all.

  PAISLEE

  “No,” Mom says, serious for once. Serious like she was back when Dad left with Cugs. “Your story doesn’t make sense, Paislee. I’m not stupid. I see when you’re not telling me the truth. What happened in Mexico?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “You sound like you’re not talking to your mother. You also sound like you have a lot of friends with whom you share secrets on a regular basis.”

  Low blow.

  She keeps guessing, knowing me from before I was born, which has been annoying more often than it’s been a relief. Again, I promise myself I won’t be this close to my own children. Then, as always, I reconsider.

  “Don’t be mean.” I sink over the straw she’s put into my sangria. It gets you drunk on less effort and less money, they say.

  “Well, something happened, because that boy was more taken by you than a bee to honey.”

  “Wow, what an original comparison.”

  “Sweetie, you see what I mean. If I were to guess, Keyon is in love with you. Listen: I’m your mother, and it’s my job to keep your secrets—unless you gave me permission to share, of course. With Keyon for instance.” Irises as green as my own light up at the thought of having a chat with him.

  I try to leave a few times during the evening, but she’s got more stamina than me. She wants me to sleep over. She wears me down. It is Saturday tomorrow, and I have nowhere else to be.

  Thanks to Mom, I go to sleep early. It’s the only way I’m going to catch a break. My mother overheard too much, and she’s a bartender and used to fixing people’s lives. If that wretched person is her daughter, then her efforts will be tenfold.

  The morning comes bearing sunny childhood memories. Before I’m fully awake, a film clip of my father steadying me on a pony makes me smile in my sleep. I doze long enough to replay the last clip of Cugs and me, where we’re hugging in the car before they drive off. It reduces my bliss from an eight to a zero.

  I sit up in bed and swallow my sadness. I open my laptop, look around for inspiration, and send my brother a short message. Slept over at Mom’s house. She has turned my room into the Seamstress Room, that meanie. ;-)

  Then Mom’s there. I shut my laptop and curse myself for sleeping over on a Saturday she has off from Ivy’s. “Can you smell it?” she asks.

  “Peach pie?”

  “Yeah. For breakfast, because you’re not feeling good.”

  In addition to being the noisiest, my mother is the sweetest. I’m going to feel gross all day, but her peach pie is so delicious it’d stop nations from bombing each other.

  Mom brings it to my room with Cool Whip and coffee, a bad sign. It means I’m going to owe her and she’ll never let me pay her back in chores.

  We eat while her eyes twinkle with questions to come. I chew my last bite so slowly it turns into pulp in my mouth.

  Mom cuts straight to the core, showing exactly how much she overheard yesterday. “Why would you think Keyon is sleeping with someone else? I thought you guys were exclusive?”

  I groan and shut my eyes as I let the last crumbs of pie slide down my throat. “We had a fight.”

  “People fight. It’s normal. People don’t usually find other partners because they fight though, Paislee.” She doesn’t say the obvious, that I’m the exception to most rules when it comes to men. “Is Keyon just that kind of a guy?”

  “No! No…” I correct my tone, lowering my voice. “I don’t think so. It was amazing to see him again after the match. He won, right. He was so happy. He rented a room for us, and… after everything”—I clear my throat because it’s weird to mention sex to her—“we talked all night. Then he woke up uninterested and detached, and hours later, he left.”

  “He left?”

  I bob my head. My eyes are brimming, which reduces my ability to speak.

  “Sweetie, the talk you had, was it a good talk?”

  “I thought so. He shared a really huge secret he hadn’t shared with anyone else, a dark one, and it must have been such a burden off his shoulders.”

  “Uh-oh.” Mom looks grim. She grabs the edge of my tray, adds her own plates and the Cool Whip, and gets up. I’m relieved for a second, but then she doesn’t exit my room. Instead she deposits the tray on the office desk, comes back, and climbs in bed next to me.

  “If Keyon’s secret was tough to share, then that might be why he’s less communicative these days. What was it?”

  “Mom. How can you ask that?”

  “Daughter. Do you really think Keyon will be the wiser? And don’t you think it will make you feel much better to talk about it?”

  I bite my lip. Mom and I have been through this before. Whenever I’m around for her to see me sad, she makes me talk. And she will wear me down.

  I pucker my mouth in an exhale. “Remember how Keyon became the high-school bully? How he started taking martial arts classes again even though his father had put a stop to it?”

  “I do. Such an angelic-looking boy, he was. And then he became a bit of a devil child. Not with you, thank goodness…” she trails off.

  “Keyon was raped, Mom. It happened right before he became aggressive, and by the sound of it, we had the same attacker.”

  “Oh Lord.” My mother covers her mouth, wide eyes the only feature visible on her face. “Does he know what happened to you?”

  “Yeah. I told him while he was here for the inauguration.”

  Mom’s hand slides off her face as she nods. “And he’s aware that the two of you might have been molested by the same person?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now you, his girlfriend, knows that he let a man do such a thing to him.”

  “What? No! He didn’t let him. He was
assaulted in a train bathroom.”

  “Exactly. Listen, you know how long I’ve volunteered at the rape crisis center. It took you years to tell me what happened to you—”

  I sit taller on the bed. “This again, Mom? I didn’t feel like talking.”

  “—which is why I’m so dedicated to helping others in your situation,” she continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “But men are different. They’re not as resilient as women. They’re taught to be strong, to believe they should be able to protect themselves, and they bottle things up.”

  She joins me against the headboard, leaving us shoulder to shoulder. I’d aimed at some physical distance between us, but I’m not getting that. “Look at you, Paislee. You took four years to share your secret. Keyon took even longer.”

  “Because he didn’t remember until Mexico,” I say. “Keyon’s imagination had conjured up a better story, something less horrible.”

  Mom nods like it’s understandable. “His mind lied to him to make the situation digestible. See, men don’t think of themselves as sexual objects, which means the whole experience makes no sense in their heads. A common reaction, which we try to amend at the crisis center, is that they question their own sexual identity, even their masculinity.”

  This is a lot to process. Over the years, I’ve read a lot about sexual abuse, but I never had a reason to read about male victims.

  “So you think he’s questioning himself?” My nerves from earlier raise the hairs on my neck.

  “I’m sure he is. Right now, Keyon is trying to stomach what occurred all those years ago. Either that, or he’s working very hard to forget again.”

  KEYON

  The last weeks have been a tornado of weight training, running, controlled weight loss, sparring, and mini-fights with small-time pros.

  The win in Mexico spread like wildfire and increased my ranking like crazy. It’s why other martial artists want to fight me now, that and having Markeston’s talents and money in my corner.

  Dawson has wanted me to reject the fights, but I’ve never had this many opportunities and I use them to get ready for Vegas. It’s in two weeks, and at this point, I am damn prepared.