by Strong, Mimi
“Grab me another while you're in there gettin' one for yourself,” Damion says.
“I'm not drinking. No way. I don't need that kinda trouble.” Damion's father, Derek, would tan my hide if he found out I snagged one of his precious beer.
Damion grabs a wooden kitchen chair and spins it around, so that he sits straddling it, his arm relaxed against the back.
“They're out for a date night,” I say.
He gazes up at me with intense concentration, and says, “I know. They won't be back for hours. And I won't tell them anything.” His eyes rove across my body. “Not a word.”
Chapter Ten
SAWYER JONES
That attempt to kiss Aubrey on Thursday afternoon damn near cost me my life.
I was riding home, mindful of the misting rain turning the roads into a hazard. I missed the turn to go to my house, probably because it was the last place I wanted to go. The damp was setting in, but the rain hadn't gotten serious yet. I decided not to loop back, but to keep going—get out on the highway and clear my head. Something about the air whizzing past made the thoughts rinse clean and pure, leaving me only with what I needed.
What did I need?
Aubrey.
Maybe I didn't need her, but I wanted her, right from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and everywhere in between.
I hadn't been with very many girls since Janine, and she and I ended well over a year ago. I wished that when we'd made love, I would have known it was the last time, but you never know if you're the guy. And you never see the end coming.
Janine was one of those girls who always said she wasn't hungry, but you could hear her stomach growling. Whenever we got naked, I had to be careful to keep the lights off, and to keep her focused on me, or better yet, her eyes closed. If she caught sight of my thighs right next to hers, she would get upset by how big hers looked in comparison.
Through my eyes, Janine had a beautiful body, but she didn't see herself through my eyes. I always told her that a healthy body that was free of disease or injury was the greatest gift a person could have. In retrospect, that was not the right thing to say. I should have told her she was a goddess. I wouldn't have been lying, either—I would have gladly worshiped her body. I thought it was an unspoken truth she knew. I hadn't considered how important it was for girls to hear those positive words.
When Janine told me she'd booked an appointment for liposuction, I'd actually laughed. I thought that was just her funny excuse for eating half the fries off my plate, as usual.
The lipo was no joke. They drew lines on her body with felt markers, and then they put her under and suctioned the fat away from around her thighs, and that round part beneath her navel that I liked to rest my hand on when we were in bed.
After the surgery, she had terrible pain, and took enough pills that she had me worried she might not wake up. I slept over at her place, but on the couch so I wouldn't see her naked until she was all healed up.
When she finally did invite me into her bedroom, I was giddy with excitement. Being around her and smelling her skin but not being able to touch her had made me crazy. She made me sit on a chair and watch as she stripped for me. It was a weekend afternoon, raining and cold outside, and her roommate was out shopping. As she took off her shirt, I started to feel nervous, and it wasn't just my hard-on. She was looking at me funny.
I clapped my hands and whistled, the way I imagined you were supposed to react when someone was stripping for you.
She gave me a withering look, and I dropped my hands to my sides.
“You don't have to be a prick about it,” she said. “You know I did this for you.”
I was speechless. The idea that her needing to have liposuction had anything to do with me was preposterous. Right then, I should have realized that she and I did not share a similar belief system. We were barely even on the same planet. But… I'm a guy, and she took her skirt off, and once we were both naked, we didn't seem so different after all.
Together, we made it through the long, dark nights of winter.
Spring came, and we talked a lot about “getting ahead.” I'd ask who it was we were supposed to be getting ahead of, and she'd say it wasn't people, but bills. We'd get ahead of the bills, and once she was out of school and working, we'd buy a condo together.
I never did meet any of her teachers, even though I'd heard so much about them. She finished her schooling to be a Registered Massage Therapist, and she took some other guy with her to the graduation party. So I heard, through friends of friends. She broke up with me three weeks before her course finished, giving me some bullshit line about us having different destinies.
She had her destiny, with her new career and her shiny new boyfriend—I heard he was in law school—and what did I have?
A motorcycle. That's what I went out and blew a stack of cash on.
By the time I met Aubrey, a year later, Janine seemed like someone who happened to another guy, like one of those urban legends guys tell each other as a warning. Like the story about a girl poking holes in a condom.
Here's my urban legend: Girl gets liposuction, forgets about boy who supported her emotionally and financially through all but three weeks of school. Girl ditches idiot boy and upgrades to wealthier boyfriend. Girl gets engaged immediately. Girl shows off enormous diamond ring to ex-boyfriend's mother at grocery store.
Be warned, guys. Be warned. If the tuition you're paying isn't for a course you're taking, you might be getting played.
Yes, Janine really did show her engagement ring to my mother at the grocery store. When my mother told me, I couldn't tell who she was more disappointed in.
The second thing I noticed about Aubrey was she didn't wear a diamond. The first thing I noticed was her eyes. You know how you can hear the ocean when you hold a seashell up to your ear? Sure, it's just the sound of your own blood rushing in your veins, but it's a cool trick, all the same.
When I looked at Aubrey's eyes, so gray and pure, I could feel the pull of the moon.
As I rode away from her that night, my body steering the bike on instinct without the help of my conscious thoughts, I could feel the moon pulling at me.
The moon teased me.
All my instincts were wrong, and I couldn't trust my feelings. I'd tried to kiss her, but she'd pulled away, and I was so sure I'd ruined everything. Even if she wasn't married, as I suspected, she probably thought even less of me after that.
I cursed myself for being such a fucking idiot, and I rolled through a stop sign. A truck honked as it bore down on me. I was already out in the middle of the road, and the best evasive maneuver was to gun it, but I hesitated. What scared me was my willingness to die, to be free of all the emotions and heartbreak of this world. What scared me was the tiny blossom of acceptance.
I hit the juice at the last possible minute and peeled out of the way. The truck couldn't have rubbed my back tire. It couldn't have come so close to killing me, then simply nudged my back tire enough to give the bike a wobble as I crossed the street, but it did.
To the right of me, on the sidewalk, two boys stood holding their bicycles, both of them with their mouths open, staring at me.
I came to a stop, my feet on the pavement, and yelled to them over the sound of the engine, “Did you see that?” Had they seen my near-transformation into an organ donor?
The boys looked at each other like they were about to get in trouble, jumped on their bikes, and pedaled away quickly.
I wondered, where were they off to in such a hurry? Did they also feel the pull of the moon, telling them to do things they knew they shouldn't?
Chapter Eleven
AUBREY
I woke up Friday morning twisted up in my bedsheets. The alarm clock hadn't gone off yet, but I could hear Bell up already, doing something. I crawled out of bed and found her, bottomless, dragging sheets off her bed.
Without a word, I opened the bi-fold door for the stacking washer and dryer that we were fortunate to have
in the apartment. I flipped up the lid of the washer and started stuffing the sheets in, careful not to react to the stench of urine.
“I'm sorry, Mommy,” she said, pressing her face against my hip.
She'd never called me Mommy in private before, and I didn't know how to react or what it meant.
“Don't worry,” I said. “We've got the plastic cover on your mattress. It just wipes right off and washes away, okay?”
“Taylor will know.”
“Your friend? She won't know if we don't tell her.”
This answer seemed to satisfy her, and she padded off to brush her teeth.
I couldn't remember if I'd gotten her to pee one last time before bed the night before. After Natalie and Taylor left, I'd been on the phone with my grandmother, finding out what happened at the hospital. It had sounded a lot worse than it really was, and his fall had been minor. Apparently they'd mixed up my grandfather's Parkinson's medications, and the big yellow pill that actually helped the most was the one he hadn't been taking.
“I've been having too much fun,” my grandmother had said over the phone. “With my darling granddaughters.”
“We're a burden on you. I'll ask Bruce to cut back my shifts. Maybe I can find something else that's mornings or days only.”
“Don't be silly,” she'd said. “You and Bell give me more comfort than you know. My family was broken for a long time, and now it's finally whole again.”
I wondered if my grandmother had changed as she got older, or if she'd always been so loving. My mother had denied me knowing her when I was Bell's age, and that made me so angry.
To think, I could have had my sweet grandmother in my life all those years.
I didn't think I could hate my mother more.
On Friday at work, I kept staring at the entrance, expecting a certain regular to come in.
Maybe he was staying away on account of how we'd left things Thursday night. I worried he wouldn't come in ever again, and Bruce's feelings would be hurt.
A tall, muscular guy with dark hair came in and sat at Sawyer's table, and I felt angry and sad that my mind kept playing tricks on me, making me think it was Sawyer when it wasn't.
Toward the end of my shift, Sawyer hadn't shown, and I was regretting not letting him kiss me. I replayed the moment in my head, over and over, only with me crushing my lips to his, drinking him in as I wrapped my hands around him and up into his hair.
Lana was in a weird mood, mixing things in the blender again, but I only had a couple of small drinks. After my shift, I had the entire evening off, as Bell was staying with her grandmother overnight, in her new Princess-on-Vacation room. It just was my grandfather's office, with the sofa made into a small bed, but they'd put up pink curtains over the brown ones, and flowered wall decals.
At the end of my shift, I was grabbing my purse to go when a tall young man with dark wavy hair walked in. I cursed this new doppelganger, but this time, it actually was Sawyer, and my heart sang at the sight of him.
“I was in the area,” he said. “Thought you might like a lift home.”
We stared at each other, neither one acknowledging the near-kiss the previous day.
“That's nice of you to offer,” I said.
“That's what friends do.”
“So it is.” And we were friends, except I was staring at his lips, thinking about kissing him.
Lana, who was still messing around at the blender, stopped and looked up at us both with big, hopeful eyes. “Don't go home!” she said to Sawyer. “Aubrey's got the night off. You two should go out dancing. Shake your tail feather.”
Sawyer smirked my way. “I don't think Aubrey has a tail feather.”
“All the more reason to shake it,” Lana said.
“My band's playing,” he said. “That band I play bass for sometimes. They're playing not far from here.”
“What kind of music?”
“It's hard to describe. They have a lot of influences, but the sound is unique, yet also familiar, in that way great music feels familiar.”
“Country?”
He laughed. “I said they're playing not far from here. Not out in Langley.”
I shrugged, feeling stupid. A lot of the people I knew back home were into country music, but I always forgot it wasn't so popular here. You had to go further east, away from the city, to find country bars.
“I should just go home. Can you give me a ride home?”
He grinned. “Sure. We can go to your place after we go hear some good, non-country music.”
My mind tripped over him saying “go to your place.” I imagined him in my apartment, kissing me at the front door, then coming in… and undressing me. His mouth on my skin. His hands on my body.
Lana latched onto me, her arm around my waist. “Fun! Don't you think, Aubrey? Wow, I'd go if I were you.”
Sawyer said, “You can come too. All of us are friends, right?”
Lana pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “The big guy's got me working 'til closing. You know how it is.” She mimed cracking a whip.
Bruce was behind the bar messing around with the draft taps as usual. He was barely taller than me, but she and some of the other waitresses called him big guy as a term of affection.
Sawyer nodded over at the pool table, where some college kids were laughing and playing a very sloppy game with no apparent rules. “Get any practice in today?”
“I'm comfortable enough over there,” I said.
“Good.” He turned back toward the door, glancing back once to make sure I was coming.
Outside, the night was like a blanket that was supposed to be black but had been washed many times. The lights of the city drifted up in a haze, so you could see the stars only if you looked straight up. I didn't miss the complete, broad view of the stars that much, since they always made me feel lonely and reverent.
Riding the motorcycle at night felt different, in the way that everything feels more intimate in the dark. There was more distance between us and everyone else, and Sawyer and I felt closer, huddled together on the leather seat, his back my comfort.
He took me to a place that seemed like an alternate universe version of Bruce's bar.
You wouldn't know it from the plain-looking exterior, but inside, this bar had an Irish theme, with green-striped paper on the walls above dark woodwork. Framed prints of a rolling-hill countryside dotted with sheep graced the entrance.
A band was already playing, doing a slowed-down version of a song that sounded familiar. This pub was bigger on the inside than it seemed from outside, the opposite of Bruce's place.
We found a seat and ordered drinks. I still couldn't place the song, so I asked Sawyer.
He grinned. “Katy Perry.”
“Oh!” I made an exaggerated show of smacking my forehead. The song sounded so different slowed down and sung by a guy. Not bad.
“Wanna dance?” Sawyer nodded over to the tiny dance floor, not much more than a space between tables.
“Lemme warm up.”
“Come on, before our drinks get here.” He jumped up, not taking no for an answer, and wove his way over to the space before the stage. The singer, an otherwise-cute guy with stringy hair, grinned and leaned down to give him a fist-bump, then went back to singing the Katy Perry.
This was the band Sawyer played in sometimes. They were good, I thought, but what did I know?
I didn't want to dance, but I didn't feel any more comfortable at the table by myself, so I got up and joined him on the dance floor.
We swayed back and forth, me with my arms stiffly at my sides, him with an easy confidence. He faced the band and sang along with the chorus, then played the air drums for a moment as he made grinning eye contact with the drummer.
I got this strangely intense feeling about him not looking my way, like I was jealous of his love for the band. Which was ridiculous.
The song finished, and they started an eighties song, Summer of Sixty-Nine.
Sawyer gave them
the thumbs up and then started clapping.
After a moment of swaying, I leaned in and said, “So, they're a cover band? That doesn't seem so hard to describe.”
“This is just the crowd-pleaser stuff. Gotta give the people what they love, make 'em feel smart, singing along with lyrics they know by heart.” He held his arms bent up in front of his chest, wiggling his fists side to side in a cute move as he sang along with the chorus of the Bryan Adams song.
I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to relax, let go. My feet weren't moving much, I realized, and all my movement was in my hips. I shook one leg and then the other to get them going.
“Nice moves,” Sawyer said, making fun of me.
“At least I don't dance like this.” I held my arms up at the same angle as his and made a goofy face as I wiggled my fists with the beat.
He leaned back and laughed so loud, it distracted the band and caused them to lose a beat or two.
“Drinks!” he said, pointing to the server making her way to our table. “Race you back. Loser buys the round.”
He covered the distance quickly with his long legs, but then he did that thing again, where he made me pay using money from his pocket.
After a few more cover songs, the band did play an original. I wasn't sure how I felt about the song. Unlike the others, it was my first time hearing it, and I couldn't say I had any strong feelings, good or bad.
Sawyer leaned in and said, “This song is about his mean girlfriend. Notice how he punches the word cruel. That was a bad scene, but it's been an endless source of creative inspiration.”
“What did she do? That was so cruel?”
“She lied.”
I took a sip of my drink—a rye and Diet Coke.
“What did she lie about?” I asked.
He fixed me with his green eyes that looked so dark and bottomless in the low light. “Does it matter what she lied about?”
“Of course it matters.”
“A shorter list would be, what things did she not lie about?”