by Jamie Knight
Down the drain—I felt like it was a symbol of what would happen to my friendship with James if he knew what had just gone on in my mind, and what I wished could go on in real life between Natalia and me.
I got out of the shower, got dressed, and laid down in the bed. I told myself that I couldn't have any more thoughts like that, of her, or else I would be in some serious trouble.
I drifted off to sleep with hopes that the thoughts would somehow just float out of my head.
Somehow, though, I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be all that easy. I would be fighting this very strong attraction to my new best friend’s daughter—and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to win.
Chapter 6
Natalia
“We'll be there in about twenty minutes,” said the tow truck driver, his raspy voice loud on the other end of the phone.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my phone away from my ear, glad to be done talking to him.
I finished getting dressed, lacing up my long black boots and throwing a sweater on over my tank top. I was grateful to be getting my car back on the road, especially after the crazy day that I'd had the day before.
It was one of those days where one crazy thing happened right after the other. I was hanging out with my best friend Grace at her house and her mom came in and started talking the way that she always does.
This time, Grace’s mom started out by saying, “What else are you going to do with yourself, other than sit around here all day? You need to be thinking about your future, not rotting your brain on TV and sugar all day.”
She would drone on and on. She did that a lot, lately. Usually, we would just tune her out, almost make her invisible, the imaginary character in our haze.
But, that day, I noticed Grace getting agitated. She just kept talking about life after high school and trying to put together a plan. I just listened like I always did.
“Don't you think that we should have some sort of plan? I mean, maybe not have it all figured out, but a general plan?” she asked. I thought that it was a rhetorical question until she turned to me and yelled in frustration.
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Don't you get it? Don't you care about any of it? You just walk around like you don't have a care in the world. Like we all don't have cares. Our world is about to change completely. Don't you think that we should start figuring things out?”
I opened my mouth and tried to speak, but no words came out. I stood there, opening and closing my mouth for a while.
Grace laughed.
“I sound like my mother,” she said, the words sliding out of her mouth like toxic waste. We both laughed loudly at that. She really did sound just like her mother.
We laughed, but I couldn't forget the worried way that Grace had asked me the question. Up until that point, I really hadn't given much thought as to what I wanted to do with my adult life. There was nothing that really struck my fancy.
My father was very traditional and believed that I should do womanly things. His idea of being new-aged in his thinking was that I should at least go to college. In that way, I could be self-sufficient, if I chose to be. I think being with my mother all of those years made him realize how important it was for a woman to be able to take care of herself.
I grew up a military brat. My dad was always gone. He traveled all the time. So, most days, it was just me, and my mom. We would always find other people, military or otherwise, to hang out with, take trips with, and do other activities with, but in the end, it was always me and my mom in some way, shape or form.
And she was the best mom. No matter where we were or what we were doing, I always remember her smiling. She always challenged me to use my imagination and have fun doing whatever it was that I was doing.
I remember a particularly hard doctor's visit that I'd had as a child. I needed shots. I walked into the office and my knees were knocking, I was shaking so badly. My mom told me that we were on an adventure and were superheroes. She even used a gown from the doctor and made a cape. She ran around the office, claiming to be Doctor Woman.
As usual, she was such a riot. She had all of the staff and everyone in the waiting room bowled over with laughter. And I laughed the hardest. I was her biggest fan.
In fact, that was what she called me. She would tell me that I was the president of her fan club and she would make little jokes about it all the time.
“Be sure to get this new picture printed out and sent to all the fan club members,” she would say, while showing me a picture of herself that she had just taken and that she was particularly proud of.
I laughed with my mother so much that my cheeks would hurt.
“Mama, I have to lay down,” I would say. “My belly hurts from laughing so much.”
Those were happy times. And I remembered when the laughter stopped.
It didn't happen all at once. It was more of a slow process, much like the setting of the sun. You couldn't quite see it happening if you stared at it, but the fading light let you in on the secret that soon, you would be standing in complete darkness.
We knew that the darkness was coming, but we tried to pretend that we would forever be living in the light. Until the one day I couldn’t deny that the end was near. I knew that things were serious when my dad came home from duty.
It was like meeting a stranger that you'd heard about your whole life. I knew that he was my dad. I saw pictures of him all of time. We talked on the phone. But, he wasn't someone that I could say that I knew, not in the same way that I knew my mom. I knew what she liked to eat for lunch. I knew what colors she liked to wear. I knew her pet peeves.
I idolized him in scattered moments. But I really didn't know my father.
For the first few days that he was home, I would yelp, startled when I walked into a room and he was there, or if I was in a room and he would walk in. I could tell that he was embarrassed when it happened.
I could only imagine how he might feel, feeling like a complete stranger in his own house. But, the fact was that he had spent so little time there, it was almost like he was a stranger.
My mother acted like he had never left, though. Despite her waning health, she kept in great spirits. When the cancer hit hard, the doctors had put her on so many medications that she was hardly alert at all most days. Her best days, though, were the ones in which she was able to see my father. The nurses said that those were the days when she would smile the most.
On days when she didn't see my father, they said that she was withdrawn and irritable, that she didn't want to cooperate. Those were the days when we would get the calls from the hospital, begging us to have someone come down and help with her, to talk to her, to soothe her.
I would always go, of course. I’d be by her side constantly, just like she had always been by mine. But I knew that all she really wanted was to see my father.
But, when he couldn't come, when it would just be me, Mom acted like I was someone that she didn't know. The doctors explained to me that the cancer had spread to her brain and that she had a condition similar to dementia. For the most part, she knew who I was, but sometimes she would be delirious or just not be herself.
One day, when my father had been out of town for a brief trip, I got a call and went to the hospital. When I got there, my mother’s face was red. They said that she had been throwing things. They had her barricaded in one of the rooms and they were waiting for me to arrive. I went into the room and saw my mother sitting there fuming like a raging bull.
“Mom, what's going on?” I asked.
“These fucking idiots aren't letting me have my ice cream. They told me that I could have my ice cream if I let them fucking poke me with the needle and now they're trying to tell me that they're fucking out of ice cream. They can all suck a bag of dicks!”
She was fuming mad. I had never seen her so upset. She was usually happy and liked to get along with people, and she rarely cursed. But, I knew that she was not herself. And that whatever ha
d brought on this change in her attitude had nothing to do with ice cream.
“It's okay, Mom,” I said. “I can take you to go get some ice cream when we leave here.”
“I don’t want your fucking ice cream!” she screamed, even louder now. “I want the ice cream that they promised me!”
There was no reasoning with her. She started to throw more things in the room, tissue boxes, her slippers. I had to dodge a book that almost hit me in the head. I slipped out of the room just in time to hear a glass crashing against the door.
I broke down and cried once I got home. My mother lived a few more months after that, but I always thought of that day as the one in which I had truly lost my mother.
After she passed, it was hard dealing with the realization that she was gone. Even though I had heard the doctors tell me some years back what was happening with her, it didn't really sink in until after she was gone.
I remember my grandmother coming into town for about a week. She made a few pans of lasagna and asked me if I wanted to come stay with her and my grandpa for a while. I told her that I didn't and she didn't really push the issue.
When she left, it was just me and my dad in the house. At first, we didn't say much to each other. We simply coexisted.
My father had been given a few weeks of leave to decide what he wanted to do. He had already been gone from active duty in the Air Force for a year while he was caring for my mother.
From what I could tell, they had been really understanding about everything that was going on and told my father to take all of the time that he needed. I guess they figured that all he needed was a week more to decide on what he wanted to do for the rest of his life now that his wife was gone.
Of course, that was a silly thought. So, he just kind of sat around the house, staring, sometimes at the TV, sometimes at his plate if he attempted eating, and other times at the blank wall of nothing. I stayed around the house, partly because I was so lost, of course—but also out of sheer curiosity.
I didn't really know enough about my father's personality under normal circumstances, let alone how he might react in crisis. I didn't know the extent of the relationship that he had had with my mother, or his end of things. I just imagined that he couldn't have been too emotionally invested if he had to spend as much time away from her as he did. But I suppose his death hit her just as hard as it had hit me, even though it was difficult to see it at the time.
Eventually, he chose to go back to work, and threw himself into it even more than before. It was just his way of getting through his grief. It meant I was home a lot by myself, but I got used to it. I had school, and Grace, and my other friends, and knew that I too would just have to find a way to work through my own grief. But, boy, was it lonely sometimes.
Chapter 7
Natalia
Just then, the honking of the truck out front broke me out of my swirling thoughts of parents and the past. I ran outside to meet the driver, seeing that my car was hoisted up on the back.
My mouth fell open when I saw the driver. Here I was expecting a middle aged, overweight guy covered in gray hair with a gut hanging over his belt, dirty with grit from towing cars all day. That’s what his voice on the phone had sounded like.
What I saw, though, was something else altogether. He was a guy about my age. He looked like one of the football players that I'd gone to high school with, the ones with whom I’d wanted nothing to do, because they were so mean and full of themselves.
“Well, hello there, gorgeous,” he said, throwing me a charming smile.
“Hi,” I answered back, flatly. It was disappointing to hear such a boyish approach when I was sitting here on the verge to full womanhood. Well, maybe not entirely full…
“How lucky—a hot guy like me running into a hot girl like you?” he said, brushing his long, blonde hair out of his face.
I rolled my eyes at his bad attempt at flirting. I had to stifle laughter as he stepped closer to me, fanning his neck so that I could get a whiff of the cologne that he was wearing.
“How do I smell?” he asked.
“Pretty good,” I said, patronizingly.
He leaned back and smiled, fully satisfied with himself.
“I bought it from the mall. It's called Man Musk. It's aftershave. Because I shave now.”
I couldn't hold back my laughter. I could see his shoulders droop a little as he started to realize that his hotness was not getting him the sizzle that he was looking for.
He shrugged and walked away, heading toward the back of his truck where my car was. He unlatched it, lowered the flat bed, put my car in neutral, and backed it onto the driveway. He shoved a clipboard toward me, mumbling for me to sign it. I did. He threw the keys in my direction, jumped back in his truck, and drove away.
I was slightly amused at the way that the tow truck guy had acted. If the shoe had been on the other foot and I was the one getting laughed at by someone with whom I was shamelessly flirting, I would probably feel embarrassed or angry, too. But, I didn't really care.
There was only one person that I was thinking about, the one person that I probably shouldn't have been even thinking about. That was likely why I was having a hard time thinking about much else, other than him, even knowing that there would be so much trouble if it was found out.
My father would have been disappointed at the very least and be very angry at the most. But, I couldn't help but feel a burning attraction, one that I couldn't control and wouldn't want to even if I could.
Bradley.
My father told me that one of his Air Force buddies was going to be staying with us for a while, but I didn't remember when he said that he was coming. I had been going out so much lately that I really wasn't spending a lot of time at home, anyway.
My dad had called me yesterday, saying that he was going to be leaving town soon and that he wanted to have dinner with me at least once before he left. I told him that I would be there and would have been early if my car had not broken down. He didn't mention that we would have a dinner guest, though, so I was slightly caught off guard when I saw him.
Sure, he looked older, but not in an old man kind of way. He looked seasoned, like he had had some adventures in life, like he had seen amazing things that he couldn't wait to share with others.
He had dark hair and a serious face. His eyes were sharp, but kind. He held his head with an air of confidence that drew me to him. I could feel his eyes watching me when I walked in the door. When I came over to the table, there was a warmth exuding from him, almost like a fire.
Who was this man?
When we talked for a bit, for the few minutes that my father had walked away, I felt a calmness just listening to him. There was almost a seductive way that he talked to me, making me want to talk to him more, to be in his presence.
I tried to tell myself not to think about him in that way. He was much older than I was. I knew that my attraction to him was nothing more than a fantasy. I was sure that he looked at me like a little kid, not as a woman that he could entertain in a sensual way.
But, even knowing that didn't stop me from thinking about him, from imagining the unimaginable. There was no one who could compete with him.
He was handsome in a way I hadn’t noticed in other men before. I’d always been attracted to guys my age, I guess, like most girls I knew. So I never really noticed other men like Bradley before, not one bit, really. But he was like a magnet to my eyes.
He seemed both experienced and fresh; he didn’t feel as old as I guessed he was. There was something exciting about him, even with his air of calm. Like he knew about life, but he still wasn’t boring or all self-absorbed.
I laughed, thinking about how crazy I was being. But still, I was more disappointed that there was no chance of anything with Bradley. I had a feeling that there would be more disappointment to come, since the only person that I wanted to flirt with and to want me was so out of my reach.
When I got home, I went to my room and th
rew the keys on my dresser. My phone made a sound letting me know that I'd gotten a text message. It was Grace. I had texted her the night before, filling her in on all the details about Bradley. She told me to keep her posted on the details. I hadn't had anything to report yet, but as usual, she couldn't wait to get a juicy tidbit.
Grace: Have you made your move yet?
I laughed, thinking back on our conversation from the night before. Grace told me that I needed to stop letting my life pass me by, that even though I was young, I wouldn't live forever and that whenever life gave me the chance to grab it by the balls, that I should reach out my hand and give it a squeeze and stop being so scared.
I told her that I would give life a huge honking squeeze when I saw the opportunity. She asked me why I shouldn’t try to make things happen with Bradley, since I liked him so much?
I didn't respond when she asked that. So, now I took the opportunity and texted her back.
Me: No, I haven't tried yet.
Two seconds later she texted back her response.
Grace: Well, what are you waiting on? A dare? Fine! I dare you to make a move with Bradley.
I shook my head. It was nothing but Grace being Grace, but that didn't mean that I had to be pulled into her taunts. I didn't want to respond to her dare, so I turned my phone off instead.
It was a stupid, anyway—just a silly crush. I didn't have hopes of it going anywhere. There were just too many reasons why it wouldn't. Why it shouldn't, really.
Chapter 8
Bradley
I figured that my imagination was best spent wrapped up in the romance novel that I was reading. That way, at least I knew that it was a piece of fiction and I wouldn't entertain thoughts of it being real. Especially the ones that I liked to read.
This latest one was about a love affair on a pirate ship. It took me so far from my current reality that I felt like I was transported to another place every time I opened up its pages.