Keeping Claudia (Toby & Claudia Book 2)

by Suzanne McKenna Link

  My pillow was hot and lumpy, and my hair a mess. I hadn’t moved from my room, barely left my bed, for the whole weekend. I’d given myself permission to take Saturday to recoup, but when Sunday came, I needed that day, too. The clock on my nightstand read ten minutes past noon. Monday was only twelve hours away, and the thought of returning to work and class made me feel even more tired. It would require strength I didn’t possess. My head and limbs were as heavy as my heart.

  “You need fresh air. Go for a walk,” Mom had insisted when she checked on me for the third time that morning.

  When that didn’t work, she called for reinforcements.

  April slipped into my bed and hugged me. “Chica, if I weren’t so sad for you, I’d be really mad at you for not coming to me.”

  “You have so much going on with the wedding. I didn’t want to burden you.” I began a search for stray cuticles amongst my nail beds.

  “You’re my best friend.” She finger combed my tangled hair. “I don’t care what’s going on in my life. If you need me, you tell me. No matter what.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, my throat like sandpaper.

  “Which reminds me. June told me what happened at the dress shop, what Marla said. She’s been so awful to you. I’m so sorry. I have a mind to kick her butt out of my wedding party—”

  “No, don’t,” I said. “You’d end up starting World War III with your family, and I don’t want that blood on my hands.”

  “Let’s forget her and focus on you.” Like a fussy mother, she tucked my blanket in around me. “June and I started going to that yoga class, the one you told us about, the one Sabita teaches. June says its helps with the pregnancy.” She stopped and covered her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  A zip of anger spliced through me. I focused on the ceiling and breathed through it.

  “Please don’t do that. Don’t act like you can’t ever mention a baby in my presence.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I won’t have people tiptoeing around me.”

  “Okay.” She conceded, patting my leg. “June and I started going to yoga class a few weeks ago. It helps me de-stress with all the wedding stuff. Next class, come with us.”

  I said yes but was slippery about confirming a specific day.

  After April left, my parents went back to patrolling my room. He scolded. She pleaded. Their voices fell on deaf ears.

  But then I heard, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. We’re going for a walk.”

  It was a different voice, the one that haunted my days and nights.

  Lightheaded, I rolled over and saw Toby in the doorway of my bedroom. He stood there with his leather jacket slung over a shoulder, hair windblown, arms crossed with triceps straining the sleeves of his T-shirt. Dammit if he didn't look like God’s actual gift to women. It wasn’t fair that he looked that good when I was such a wreck. I could’ve cried. I wanted to. The humiliation of our last encounter needled my raw nerves anew, and I dragged my eyes from him, not able to bear having him see me after that appalling incident.

  “Go away.” I pulled a pillow over my head.

  There was no further noise, and I prayed that he’d really left. But then my pillow was knocked aside, and my blankets ripped from me.

  “Stop!” I made a grab for my covers. “I’m not taking a walk with you.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re going even if I have to drag your sorry ass the whole way.” His hands clamped down on my wrists, and he dragged me to my feet. I stood limply in mismatched yoga pants and T-shirt—one of his—while he snatched my red USC hoodie from the foot of the bed and pulled it over my head.

  So close to him, my body cycled through unwelcome sensations, but I couldn’t have moved away if I wanted to. His nearness was like breathing air to me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I know how you feel, Claude. I get it—it sucks, but you can’t lie down and let the world pass you by.” He dressed me like an oversized baby, shimmying the sleeves of my sweatshirt onto my arms, one after the other, and then pulled it down to my hips. All I could think about was that he was holding me.

  I didn’t want him to stop.

  “You used to tell me that even though you don’t feel like you can or want to, you have to put one foot in front of the other. And that’s what we’re gonna do.” He gently smoothed my snarled hair away from my face, readjusting the hood on my head, and sort of almost smiled at me. “Okay?”

  I didn’t want him to be nice or kind to me because then he made it too hard to refuse him.

  “Okay.” I met his eyes for two seconds. Two seconds too long. My lungs seized in my chest, and it took a colossal effort to move away from him and stand on my own.

  He said we were taking a walk to the beach and somehow coaxed me out of my room. My mother was armed with my coat when I got downstairs, and I understood. She and Toby had this worked out.

  “Fresh air will be good for you.” Mom flitted around talking about ‘fresh air’ as if it was the magic ingredient, the solution that would make my problems vanish. With fussing hands, she helped me with my tall, fur-lined boots and bulky, hooded parka. She was trying so hard to sound happy and upbeat, but I couldn’t give her what she wanted most, a smile or some kind of confirmation that I was okay. Her nervous hands and anxious eyes only made me feel worse.

  “What’s with all the food?” Toby eyed the platters of plastic wrapped baked goods lining the counters in the kitchen.

  Cooking and baking had always been my panacea, but though I tried this time, it hadn’t worked. I didn’t respond and hoped my mother wouldn’t give me away so he wouldn’t see how pathetic I was.

  “We were trying out some new recipes,” Mom said. “Feel free to take some home with you.”

  I grabbed a loaf of banana bread and a plate of chocolate chips, his favorites, and pushed them at him. “Take these.”

  “Um, thanks.” He awkwardly accepted the dishes. “I’ll put them in the Jeep.”

  I dawdled inside, much to my mother’s chagrin, before following Toby out the door. A black nose smudged the inside of Toby’s car window, and when he opened the passenger door, Bernie, ungraceful in her exhilaration, plopped out. She ran to me and squirmed for my attention until I bent down to rub her square head.

  “How’s my sweet girl. I missed you,” I cooed. She slammed into me, knocking me onto my butt, and licked me wherever she could. Wiping off her slobbery kisses, I smiled for the first time in a few days.

  Toby wrapped a scarf around his neck and grabbed Bernie’s leash. Together, we headed down Foster Avenue towards the bay. It was cold; our breaths puffed out in a cloud of vapors, but even the frosty temperature could not hide the giant elephant between us. I knew I had to be the one to address it first, but I didn’t dare look at him.

  “I didn’t go over to your house with the intention of anything happening.” The back of my throat burned with my swallowed tears. “I’d never purposely try to hurt you or lead you on.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Forget it. It was just break-up sex. You were lonely, and I’m familiar. Happens all the time.”

  “It’s never happened to me,” I said. Trivializing that day, the sex, made me once again feel like such an amateur.

  He glanced at me with what I assumed was a look of pity, and embarrassed, I snuggled deeper into my bulky jacket. The silence that grew between us was uncomfortable, but I could think of nothing to say.

  Out of the blue, he asked, “Did you hear about that guy who ran over himself?”

  I eyed him, skeptical of an impending joke. I wasn’t in the mood to laugh. “That’s not physically possible.”

  He stopped, and I stopped, too. “You didn’t hear about it? It was all over the news.”

  I racked my memory, but I’d had a very narrow attention span the last several days. Nothing came to mind.

  “No.” I burrowed my chin into my neck of my coat and continued walking. “What happened?�
� I asked mostly to be polite.

  Pulling Bernie away from sniffing a yellow fire hydrant, Toby got in step with me. “Apparently this guy was at his office somewhere in the Village of Patchogue, and he was having a really crappy day. He asked a coworker to pick up some important documents at the printers just up the block.”

  I waited for him to continue.

  “Well, at the end of the day, the coworker never picked them up. The guy, as you’d imagine, was not too happy about it. The coworker felt bad and offered to pick them up on his way home.” Toby paused just long enough to make me impatient for him to go on. “The guy said never mind… and he ran over himself.”

  “Oh no,” I moaned. I was the victim of a horrendous and awful, awful joke. But then I laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard, I had to stop walking.

  I bent over, holding my stomach as my eyes filled with tears. “Jeez, that has simply got to be the worst joke I’ve ever, ever heard.” I dug around in my coat pocket until I found an old, wadded tissue to wipe my face.

  He watched me blot my tears, a small smile splaying across his lips.

  “Why did you tell me that?” I asked.

  “You really want to know why?” He glanced at me from the corner of his eyes.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” he said, stopping to face me. “Stand still.”

  I did. I stood there, staring at him, thinking how handsome he was, until his lips turned up into that boyish, cocky grin that still made me weak in the knees. With a rush of warmth, my own smile followed.

  And then he said, “That’s why.”

  I squinted up at him. “But, you didn’t say anything.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “And so are you,” he said. “It was a stupid joke meant to make you laugh. And it did. Not everything has to mean something or evolve into more.”

  “Jerk,” I muttered getting one last dig because I refused to admit he was right.

  He snorted, and without waiting for me, he started walking again. Bernie immediately took up the slack on her leash. The fresh air did feel good, and thinking about his stupid joke had me smiling despite myself. For several minutes, we walked in a relaxed silence. Though surprising at this juncture in our relationship, the easiness between us had always been so natural, and I was grateful to not feel obligated to fill the gap with talk.

  At the beach, the sand was hard and uneven under my clunky boots. A thin layer of ice along the water’s edge reflected the late afternoon sun. Further out, curls of angry white caps broke in a multitude of places across the expanse of the bay. Brisk February winds whipped against me, daring me to stay. I stared at the fenced off area on the west end of the beach where the old, rustic beach buildings had once been. They had vanished.

  Toby noticed my rancor. “The town knocked them down.”

  Without them, the beach looked free and open.

  “I’m glad they’re gone,” I said quietly. I drew my parka hood over my head, nestling the lower part of my face inside its protective cocoon.

  “What’s happening with the job in Boston?” He asked without turning around.

  Andrew’s offer seemed like ages ago; I’d almost forgotten about it.

  “Nothing right now,” I said.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look terrible,” he said.

  “Thanks.” My gratitude dripped with sarcasm. “I’m having a hard time sleeping through the night. My doctor tried to give me a prescription for Xanax, but—”

  “You hate taking medications,” he finished and held Bernie’s leash out to me. “If this is because of the miscarriage, maybe you should talk to someone.”

  “Do you need to talk about it to someone, Toby?” I snipped, swiping the leash from him. “It was your baby, too.”

  With a sigh, he bent to scoop up a handful of stones, his gaze shifted away from me. He didn’t have a response because the loss of our baby didn’t affect him.

  I took a seat on the low landscaping ties that bordered the beach’s small strip parking lot, releasing Bernie’s leash so she could sniff the winter-burned beach grass that edged the sand. I was already fatigued.

  I watched Toby skim stones, one after the other, across the surface of the bay. His practiced sidearm toss sending each stone hopping four or five times before sinking. He was lithe and sure as he chucked the rocks, looking part man, part boy and allover beautiful. I was all too aware that the handsome exterior was a contradictory of the whole. Inside he was hurt and bruised, and this made him behave callous at times. It was our own personal hurts and bruises that wedged us apart.

  His hand-held arsenal depleted, Toby recaptured Bernie’s leash and sat down next to me. “Claude, I don’t get why you’re so upset. Breaking up was all you. You pushed for it.”

  Self-preservation, I thought, but I didn’t say it aloud. The wind gusted hard, blowing sand into my face. I stood and stamped my feet, trying to stave off the cold biting at my toes. “I’m freezing. I’d like to go back.” Without waiting for him and Bernie, I started walking.

  They caught up, and we circled around, taking a different road on our walk back. River Road took us past the ferry terminals. I couldn’t help remembering the day we’d spent together on Fire Island, seeing the whale, making love and how magical and unshakable our love had felt, like nothing could ever come between us. The memory splintered inside me, and shoving my fisted hands deep into my pockets, I forced it out of my head.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Fire away.”

  “When did you start hanging out with Leah?”

  He walked a few paces before answering, his gaze straight ahead. “In February, a couple of nights after I visited you at college. You made it clear we were not getting back together. We’d just finished up a bar gig, and like always, there were women looking to hang out with us. Leah was one of them. I’d see her around before, but until that night, I’d ignored her and all the others, too. Let Dan and Bones have their pick.” I envisioned Leah, dressed in revealing clothes, tenacious in pursuing him. “It was my own fault for getting my hopes up with you, but it sent me for a loop. It was a low point for me,” he continued. “For a couple of nights, I lost my way, stumbled backwards. I did things I’d sworn off. I smoked. I drank. Too much.”

  I was assailed with vivid images of his misery. I remembered the loneliness after he had left, too. I didn’t seek comfort in someone else’s arms, though. I had dug into my schoolwork, but Toby was impulsive when he was consumed by any extreme emotion. Careless and reckless. His lack of control was far out of my comfort zone.

  “And Leah?” I prodded.

  “She was just another vice those nights.”

  Like the unexpected strike of a rattlesnake, I felt the stab of jealousy’s venom. Spiteful ugliness coursed through my veins, and I whirled around to face him.

  “Did you hook up with her out in the parking lot of the Mad Monkey? Or did you get off in her car? Your Jeep? Somewhere inside the bar?”

  He moved closer, swallowing me in his shadow. “How does that make you feel to ask me that? Does it feel good?”

  “No. I hate it. I hate it!” I dug my fingers into my scalp and tore at my hair.

  He snatched my hands, forcing them still. “Then stop it. Just fucking stop it.”

  “I want to stop. I really do,” I cried, and weary from the outburst, I rested against him. He held me, his hands moving up and down my back, soothing the tangles in my heart.

  “Claudia, I’m sorry I couldn’t be as innocent for you as you were for me. Growing up, things were tough, and I found a break from it where I could—in fighting, drugs … and with girls. It’s my past, who I was.” His fingers fidgeted at the collar of my coat. “I can’t change it, but if it were possible to erase some of it and make it easier for you to accept, I would. I’d do that… for you.”

  His eyes seared me with a warmth that beckoned me back to what was so easy an
d felt so right, those beautiful blue-greys fueling the addiction I couldn’t kick no matter how much I tried. Exhaling a short, fast breath, I latched onto his shoulders, my whole body clamped in anticipation. His hands fumbled to my hips, eyes dilating with awareness, as I rose upwards to close the distance between our mouths. At the last possible second, he grabbed my arms and wrenched me away from him.

  “You can’t do that,” he growled. “Not unless you mean it. And I know you don’t mean it.” He constricted the motion of my arms, not allowing me to touch him nor pull away.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “You’re a goddamn walking contradiction. When I asked you to move in with me, you insisted you needed a ring and a commitment. I gave you both, and still I wasn’t good enough.” From his hostility, it was indisputable that his visit to see me was made only because my mother must’ve asked him to. “You put on a good show, but deep down inside, you’re a cynic. And a liar, too.” The pain of his words trolled through my body like barbed lashes biting my flesh. And still he went on. “In all the time you’ve thought about how I wasn’t good for you, did you ever consider that maybe it’s you who’s not good for me?”

  Tears darted the corner of my eyes, and I pressed the back of my hand to my lips, unbalanced by his curt rebuke.

  “You can’t keep pulling me in and pushing me away. I won’t keep playing this game with you.” He released me abruptly, and I stumbled backward.

  Hunching myself low into my hood, making myself as small as possible, as small as I felt, I stepped around him and took off, speed walking up the block to get home.

  Keeping several feet behind me, he let me wallow in the ugly, castigating thoughts. I could hear Bernie panting on her leash, trying to catch up with me and fighting with Toby as he held her progress in check. At the house, I bolted up the driveway, planning on making a silent and quick escape inside, but at the steps, he grabbed my arm and tugged me round to face him.