Wesley

by Leanne Davis

  It also has the intended effect of making me see the little old lady up close for the first time. I shake her hand, so delicate with veins visible and gnarled with arthritis. She’s as wrinkled as a wrung-out shirt left all crumpled to dry in the sun. I see how fragile she is up close, and I feel terrible for stealing anything from her now. Crap. Damn. Not the reaction I expect. Guilt pricks my conscience, and I’m compelled to spit out my heartfelt apology.

  Once we are free of her, Tara glances at me. She swears under her breath as she squeezes my hand. “Don’t let your guilt make you overreact. I’m glad you care. But repaying ten-fold is far more effective than simply apologizing and making her afraid of you. Then what? You’re being punished. If I didn’t think this was the right thing, I wouldn’t do it. It’s far more right than the law could provide. You’re becoming aware of what you did. You’re doing more good than the harm you did.”

  I don’t know. It just makes me feel like admitting it to Mrs. Carson. She’s older than I first thought. I’m not proud of what I did. But then, I have to admit, I eagerly take the easy route Tara has offered me.

  “She’s right.” I turn when Dani’s voice comes up behind me. I’m leaning on the counter, staring at some residual bubbles left over from my last scrubbing of pans. “I saw your regret, too. You’re doing more by the changes you’ve made. And all the money you’re earning to donate will make a big difference. As long as you follow through, you’re definitely earning your redemption as far as any of us are concerned.”

  “Maybe. She’s just an old lady I scared. It was a shitty thing to do.”

  “She is and it was. Maybe next time, no matter your reasons, you’ll remember this feeling. And mostly, just don’t do it again.”

  I glance back at her, rolling my eyes. “It sounds so simple. It’s easy to feel bad now because I don’t need anything. But when I’m desperate, I might do things, and then my survival is all I care about.”

  “So, when you find yourself in need again, you don’t have to commit a crime as a first response.”

  I shake my head, straightening up. “You always have the logical answer.”

  “Yes.” She nods. “I do. Besides Mrs. Carson has bad eyes. Ironic, huh? She works for the blind charity, but she didn’t recognize you.”

  “How has no one else figured it out, just from the dates of my arrival?”

  “You have a cop and his wife vouching for you. Calling you their son’s friend from college. Powers of persuasion. You get that.”

  I nod. “I get that.”

  She’s quiet. “I was thinking about the beach—”

  “Yeah?” I cross my arms over my chest as if I’m angry at her. I keep scowling. I don’t want to hear whatever words she’s about to say. We haven’t mentioned it, and I do not wish to now. I try to keep her at a distance from me. We stand in the corner of the kitchen area and no one is within hearing at the moment.

  “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

  “It’s not exactly a comfortable conversation.”

  “No. It isn’t.” She licks her lips. Her gaze leaves mine and she stares at the counter near my elbow. “You should consider staying. Here. After you’ve paid back your debt and made good on the Kincaids’ deal. There is nothing for you anywhere else. I think you must realize that. There is something for you with the Kincaids in Silver Springs, and in this café even. But heading out of here all alone? I think you need everyone you’ve been involved with here.”

  I pull back and scowl harder at her. She thinks because she knows one sad thing about me, I should hole up here in Nowheresville and play house? Then what? Watch her and her boyfriend make out? Oh, no! Fuck no.

  I sneer. “And do what, Dani? Make them my parents? Make Wyatt my brother?” I shake my head. “One of these times you won’t be there, and he’ll come after me…” I draw out the sentence, my smile small and mean. “I’ll have to take him on. You think I fight fair? What about those scars on my back would lead you to think I do anything fair? I was raised in a world neither you nor Wyatt could ever understand, so when we fight, he can’t win. He’ll be destroyed. When you see what I can do to him, well, all this care and concern, everything you’ve convinced yourself I am will freeze and disintegrate. You’re going to hate me, fear me, and beg me to leave.”

  She holds my fierce glare. I don’t blink. I’m all but snarling at her not because I want any of that but the complete opposite. My heart blips harder at the thought of staying. Staying here. So, no. Fuck no, no way can I start longing for something real or lasting here. Shit. That crap doesn’t happen to guys like me. Not to throwaway kids like me. It’s not an overreaction or even a “poor me” way of thinking, it’s just a fact of my life.

  She answers finally, “Then just don’t fight him. If he does try, it’s about more than you. I know he’s being a jerk to you. But it started before you showed up. So, walk away from it if he ever tries, and then just stay here.”

  I step closer to her, surprising her. I’ve never taken the liberty to invade her personal space before. She backs up, hitting the next prep counter with her back and looks up at me. “I have no desire to go after him, but if he comes after me, he’s fair game. You two have been having problems since before I came? Interesting. So how are you going to justify being around me if I’m here? I think you’d want nothing more than to shuffle me out of town and save yourself the uncomfortable conversation of why you and I are always hanging out.”

  She reaches behind her and grips the edge of the metal countertop. I’m challenging her silently. I want her to back off. I want her to stop looking at me and making me feel like she’s reaching into my chest and twisting my heart in her hand. I don’t understand what I feel for this girl. I don’t know what to do with it. It scares me and I don’t like the power of it. It seems to be gaining more control over me with each and every interaction we have. Which I don’t like. I want less. I want to feel less. Like her less. Feel her physical presence less. So, my mature solution? Piss her off. Scare her away from me. I fear I can’t pry myself from her.

  Suddenly, she lets go of the counter and puts her small hands on my chest and shoves me. I step back and she shakes her head. “Don’t be a jerk.”

  Ashamed, I glare at her, but step back more. “Why not? I am one.”

  “You’re not. You don’t like my boyfriend and therefore you don’t want to like me. But you do. So, don’t be such an ass about it.”

  Damn her. Who can defuse me like her?

  “Consider what I said. I have to go. Chloe’s eyeing us. See you later.” She hastily swerves around the counter, going through the door and out of my view. I stare after her. With longing. Confusion. Unease. And damn it all but it’s true! She stood up to me and seems to get me more than I get myself. She sees the motives I didn’t even know I had. She also ignores the fact that I do like her, and it was jealousy over her current boyfriend more than any hatred of him that motivates me to go after her.

  Fuck. I want to slam my fist on the counter, but it’ll probably break my hand so instead, I just start the hot water and get back to work.

  Chapter 9

  DANI

  I make a quick escape from the kitchen. I have to stop and lean against the closed door. No one pays me any attention as I gulp for breath to stop my racing heart. My curling toes. He was so big and hulking as he hovered around me. And instead of feeling scared, his closeness made me want to lift up on my toes and touch his face, if only to draw back the angry glare. I longed to smooth away the pain that lurked in those dark eyes of his. To what? What did I want? Why was I feeling these things when I surely wasn’t allowed to? Not at all!

  I shake off the intensity of the encounter and more alarming still, my reaction to it as I quickly finish my rounds. Serving the drinks and meals, I pretend every time I happen to glance back and see him, that my heart doesn’t hammer harder. I don’t stare with more concentration at whatever I am doing, because my entire focus is centered on him. It is
hard work to keep that from being obvious.

  Over the next week, I try to keep our interactions at the café natural and fun without the intensity. I hate those moments where we stare at each other without blinking or moving. No more of those. I try not to look at Wesley. Not to stare. Not to notice how he moves around. Or how he smiles. Or how he scowls. Or how he concentrates. Being bored, he still performs his job with patience and perfection. I try not to notice everything, but of course, it feels like that’s all I do.

  On the weekend, Tara and Ryder are hosting a family get-together. Her brother Tristan, his wife Kylie, and their three kids are coming. Claudia, their oldest, aged five, is my favorite. Wyatt loves his cousins. Chloe and her husband Chet have twin boys, Devon and Damion, now aged eight, who are coming over, too. They are identical and so adorable that I know they could successfully model for a kid’s clothing catalogue.

  I go over early. It’s my boyfriend’s house. No big deal. But the thought of it being Wesley’s house, too, cools my jets.

  I shake my head, gripping the steering wheel of my car. NO! I can’t react like that. It’s Wyatt’s house. It means nothing if Wesley is STAYING there. I need that concept to be very clear in my head. It’s starting to feel so muddled, which worries me as much as Wyatt’s current aggressiveness and moody behavior.

  I park and quickly go into the house. Wyatt is out on the back deck. It’s huge with patio seating. Colorful balloons are all around, celebrating the cousins’ visit. Wyatt’s tying the helium balloons to the deck railing. He greets me with a huge hug and kiss. I take a fistful of balloon string and continue on the other side, trying to ignore that Wesley is right there. He turned at my entrance and watched me kiss Wyatt. So what? I kissed my boyfriend hello. Normal. Totally normal. It would be weird and awkward not to. Why do I feel so uncomfortable with Wesley’s eyes aimed our way?

  I shrug it off and continue tying balloons. Brainless work that has my attention wandering back to Wesley. Ryder is showing him the riding lawn mower. Wesley and Ryder have the front cover of the engine up and they stare at it as Ryder points to the parts while they confer. Then they close it, talk some more and then Wesley gets on the green machine and starts it. He begins to mow around the deck, backyard, and side yards. The mower’s engine makes it too loud to talk.

  Wesley likes it. All of it. The chores. Working with Ryder or with Tara at the café. The interactions with them and with me. He likes everything he feels a part of here in Silver Springs, and I wish desperately that he understood that. I’m not so sure he even recognizes his true feelings.

  He likes Ryder showing him how to do stuff. Guy stuff. Typical guy stuff. I know, it’s not real liberated of me, but I could care less how the boat motor gets taken out of the boat or put back in. Or how the lawnmower works if I ever have to use it. But then again, Wesley never had a father or any kind of authority figure to teach him something. Anything. Even how to be a decent or moral person. No one taught him not to steal. Not to cheat. Not to be a jerk. I don’t think he’s most of those things. So, his ability to be as decent, as I believe he is at his core, seems to be an innate part of Wesley and stronger than all the negative things that were done to him. All the soul crushing, emotional abuse, cruelty and neglect. He manages to use the experiences of everything negative he was exposed to for better, not for worse.

  I don’t feel guilty for not having experienced excessive pain or abuse. My dad is wonderful, gentle, kind and sweet. He works hard, and he always provided for me. That’s a pretty potent recipe. I love and respect my father. I don’t have much memory of a mom. So, there was a great loss in my life. But having my dad and an upbringing filled with love and affection made me turn out okay.

  There’s been no one for Wesley.

  The mower purrs far enough away now that I can hear Wyatt. He and his dad are arguing about how to set the awning up over the deck. They struggle for twenty minutes longer than it should take to do the simple chore. I shake my head. Why is Wyatt always stirring up something? It isn’t like him. But Ryder walks off and flags Wesley down, explaining the technique he uses when he mows the large field Wesley is now working on. Wyatt stalks off, going towards the barn.

  Tara startles me when she flops down beside me. “Do you think it’s just jealousy?” She nods towards Wyatt. Her concern is evident in the warm glow of her eyes.

  “No. I don’t. I think it’s a symptom of something bigger. He won’t tell me. He sticks to his too-tired-from-school story.”

  “Yeah, that’s all he tells me, too.” We gaze out towards the field where Ryder and Wesley are laughing together as Ryder stands beside the mower. I wonder if Wyatt can see them.

  “It started before Wesley.”

  “It did,” Tara agrees.

  I clear my throat. “Tara…”

  “Yes, honey?” she turns her attention to me. She’s been a bit of a surrogate mother to me and so easy to talk to. She took me to the store when I got my first period and helped me figure out what to buy. She helped me get on birth control even. Shocking, perhaps. But she never made me explain why I wanted it. She asked me one day when I was eighteen if I’d ever been to a gynecologist. I had not. She thought it was time and she took me. She was always kind and supportive. And though she never asked when Wyatt and I first started having sex, she was neither ignorant nor reproachful about it either.

  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t dated Wyatt because now she is my boyfriend’s mother, and less so mine. I’ve been struggling with the cigarette marks on Wesley’s back. They continue to haunt me. I wonder what to do with my knowledge of them. I don’t know how to deal with them or the effect they must have on Wesley. And I just think he needs something. I don’t know what it is though. I can’t fix it, but I definitely want to try.

  “Wesley… he has… well, we went swimming. He has deep cigarette burns on his back. A lot of them. He got them when he was eight years old, from a woman. Someone who hurt him, and he didn’t explain everything she did but…”

  Tara sighs heavily, resting her hand on mine and squeezing it. “I couldn’t have told you that, but I could have told you it would be an ugly story whatever it was.”

  “You have to convince him to stay here. I mean… he can’t keep traveling or doing whatever he thinks he’s doing—”

  “It’s not thinking he’s doing it, Dani. He is doing it. It’s real. I knew a guy who was in his eleventh year without ever once having a home. Or going home. He started when he was eighteen. But he wasn’t homeless. Actually, he was always quite happy.”

  “But Wesley… he’s happy here.” My tone is a little too insistent. Desperate. Almost whiny. I can’t let my boyfriend’s mother see me like this! But I just did. I clear my throat and keep my tone calmer. “I think he’s doing it to escape a history of pain. Foster care. A system that used, abused and then spat him out.”

  She lowers her head with a heavy sigh. “Believe me, I know.”

  “He needs you guys.”

  “He does. But it would come at the cost of our son. I’m not sure we can do that.” She stares out. Wyatt walks out of the barn just then holding a rake. He’s helping with the yard after Tara asked all three of them to do it before the guests arrived. The mower with Wesley crosses past him. She stares after both of them, her eyes heavy with longing. “Then again, I’m not sure we can’t.”

  I nod. Feeling her same feelings of confusion. I feel them, too. Both men. Both boys. Both are needy little boys, emotionally-speaking. Now, about Tara and Ryder… and me.

  But probably in entirely different ways. “Dani…?”

  I turn after our shared moment of collaborating in Wesley’s misery and our own confusion over Wyatt. “Yes?” My eyebrows rise in curiosity.

  “It must be very confusing.”

  “What is?” I ask, my stomach knotting. What could she mean? I don’t even know what my own confusion is. I haven’t been able to identify why I’m so confused. She couldn’t know, or could she? She wouldn’t? She’d have
to hate me first. Warn Wyatt. Kick out Wesley. My thoughts start to scatter and flee as I panic.

  “Caring about two people at the same time…” She pauses. “In the same way.”

  I jerk my hand from hers. “I don’t! You don’t know that.”

  She smiles and it’s soft and tender, but strangely annoying, too. It’s a knowing smile of hers. “I do. I have eyes.”

  I bite my lip, holding back tears. “He doesn’t see it. Wyatt, I mean. Strange that isn’t part of his jealousy,” I admit, without clarifying exactly what Wyatt doesn’t see.

  “No. He doesn’t. Whatever is going on is more than that for Wyatt. Just make sure you take care of yourself and when you know what to do, act on that. Don’t drag it out… either way.”

  “Shouldn’t you tell me to get out?” I wipe my eyes, turning my entire body towards the back door. I refuse to look at the two men who have me wound up in knots. “Or make me realize… it has to be Wyatt?”

  “It doesn’t have to be either. You’re only nineteen. You’re also only human, sweetheart. Confused. I would never tell you to get out—”

  “Even if Wyatt does?” I challenge her. However, I have no intention of making it come to that.

  “Even then. But I also know whatever happens, Wyatt won’t be a victim either.”

  I want to grab onto her and hug her. I want her to keep talking to me and convince me I’m not a bad person. I’m not a whore. I’m not a cheating slut for… for whatever all these confusing feelings mean. For the first time in a few years, I desperately want a mother to confide in. And hold me. To just get me. I can’t imagine telling my dad about this. He’d freak out. He loves Wyatt and would surely not understand me suddenly pursuing a homeless guy I met after he robbed an old lady. Put in that context, I would understand his reaction. But that’s not my point. Right now, I just want someone to understand my confusion and heartache to help me get through it. Like I imagine a good mother would.