by Liora Blake
As I head downstairs, I try to calculate the minutes remaining but get distracted and pause on the last stair riser when I find him bent over at the waist, rifling through his bags next to the front door. Men might think they have a monopoly on blatantly gawking at a nice ass when the opportunity presents itself, but they’re wrong. We, of the fairer sex, aren’t immune to the diversion. And Jake is a whole heap of pleasant diversion.
“I’m going to walk over to the A&P real quick. I’m out of energy bars and stuff, and I’ll starve on the way home if I don’t get a few things to stash away.” Jake turns and straightens up, catching my ogle before I can properly pretend to inspect my fingernails or something.
A small grin twitches at his mouth. “What’s up there?”
“Nothing. Go, I’ll wait here for you to get back.”
He tilts his head, raising one brow as he does. “Were you just checking out my ass?”
It’s impossible for him to leave well enough alone. I shake my head and huff a little. “I wasn’t checking it out, I was admiring it. Men ‘check out’ asses. Women take full appreciation. There’s a difference.”
A sharp laugh sounds just as he opens the front door. “Call it what you want, I still feel a little dirty. I’ll be right back.”
The door clicks shut. The urge to skip down the sidewalk after him is immediate and overwhelming. But those words, “I’ll be right back,” and the way they make our worlds feel so perfectly, properly joined, make my heart hurt and swell until I can’t worry anymore.
I start to get a teeny bit anxious after an hour or so. The grocer is a grand total of five blocks away. It’s midday on a blustery Monday. Shouldn’t be a run on the inventory that might be holding him up. I refuse to go looking for him because that seems completely over-the-top, the behavior of a woman who can’t think rationally enough to let her boyfriend walk five blocks to the store on his own without worrying he was kidnapped, injured, or somehow otherwise negatively impacted on his stroll through Crowell.
Peeking out the window again, I catch a glimpse of him, head down and hands shoved deep in his pockets as he makes his way down my block. From this distance, he looks tense from the shoulders up, the heavy burden of a gray mood bunching up around him. When he reaches my walkway, he looks up at the house and pauses, taking inventory with his sweeping gaze. I let the soft curtain flutter back into place and step away from the window. If he catches me gawking at him again, I’ll never hear the end of it.
The door opens and I try to make as if I’ve simply been puttering about while he was gone, instead of pacing like a lost dog and whimpering out for his return. I open the refrigerator and peek in.
“Do you want something to eat before we leave? I can make you a peanut butter sandwich or something equally basic.”
No response. Silence.
The refrigerator door drifts closed and I can feel him in the room now. I steady my body and stand up straight, dragging my hand down the length of my ponytail, capturing a few moments to get straight.
“We need to talk.”
Well, frack me. Four words. Four measly, uncomfortable, spring-loaded words. I consider walking away to avoid whatever this is. To escape those words, which sound like a preface to destroying my day. Or my entire reality. Not quite sure yet.
Turning on my heels, I pivot slowly and find Jake slumping into the opening of the kitchen area, not looking at me but simply staring at his shoes. I let my eyes go blank, force the panic trying to consume me to stay buried under an impassive façade right now.
“I’m listening.” I cross my arms over my chest and wait.
“What do you and Kate call it when you have a run-in with Dusty?”
No luck hiding the panic now. My throat closes and my jaw tightens. Jake still won’t look at me. I take a breath. “A dust storm.” Jake nods at the ground, slowly. “Why do you ask?”
Jake looks up from the corners of his eyes. “Found myself in one helluva dust storm out there today.”
I refuse to take the bait; Jake can either tell me or continue to stand there and make cryptic statements. If I ask, Dusty wins. Whatever it is he’s done to make Jake tense up like this, if I ask, he wins.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Posing the question seems to return Jake’s backbone to his spine, because he rights his body and crosses his arms over his chest so we now mimic each other’s postures.
Mind reeling, I keep my voice calm. “Tell you what?”
“That Ruth Ann gave title to you on The Beauty Barn and the building.”
Immediately, I try to shuffle through the reasonable rationale of how Dusty could know this. How Jake knows this. How my little wonderful secret got out. My eyes lock with Jake’s and he shakes his head, a grimace growing across his features.
“I mean, can you imagine what an asshole I felt like, standing there while Dusty tells me this shit?” Jake adds a mocking parody to his tone. “ ‘Hey, Holt. You settling down here for good? Can’t imagine Lacey’s ever leaving Crowell now that she’s a business proprietor. Maybe we can get a beer sometime.’ ” Jake snorts and looks away, out the window of my breakfast nook.
“I stood there like a prick, no fucking clue what he’s talking about. And he knew it, too. He watched my face, then acted like he gave a shit. ‘Oooh, sorry, buddy. When I saw Tom Dorsey from the city clerk’s office at Deaton’s and he mentioned to me that the new deed was recorded, I figured I was the last to know. Guess Lacey’s been keeping us all in the dark, huh?’ ”
“I was going to tell you. I’ve been trying to tell someone for weeks. I couldn’t. No one knows.”
Jake’s features twist up into another loathing expression. “Are you kidding me? Weeks? What do you mean you couldn’t? Am I that goddam hard to talk to? This whole fucking time, I’ve been over here”—Jake squares an imaginary box around him—“like a chump, telling you we should get married and thinking about us being together for the long haul, while you’ve been not saying a damn thing about this huge-ass change in your life. Not. One. Damn. Thing.”
My voice nearly disappears. “I didn’t know how to say it.”
“Here’s a thought. Just say it. Just call me up and say, ‘Hey, Jake, this totally crazy thing happened, what do you think of that?’ ”
Tears start to brim around the edges of my eyes. Tears about knowing he’s right, knowing that all along, and sensing he’s about to make this even worse. The second I feel the tears grow, I grind my jaw together and turn away to press my forehead against the closest flat surface. In this case, it’s the cool of the freezer door on my refrigerator. I can feel the vibration of the motor humming under the delicate skin there, and all I want is to beat my head against it so I might distract myself from the panic trying to drown me.
“You’re never going to leave Crowell, are you, Lacey?”
I shake my head but don’t lift it up. “Probably not.”
After I say it, I know exactly what that utterance means. A tangible gloom starts to hover in the room, swelling up around our bodies in the silence.
“You know I can’t live here, right? Aside from the obvious, which is I can’t make a living here—more than that, I just can’t live here. It would suffocate me.”
I turn and when I see him there, mouth gaping and waiting for me to respond, I can’t find any words. He can’t live here. I can’t leave.
We had joking, yet weighted, exchanges about marriage and love. Even yesterday, when I asked him if he would take care of me and fix things, we didn’t come up for air to talk about this stupidly basic relationship thing: where we would live. Instead, we toddled around like pair of teenagers again, avoiding the things that might make it clear we have as little future now as we did then.
Jake sighs, the sound choppy and broken. “Say something.”
Pressing my palms to my eyelids, I groan a little
. “Sounds like we’re at a hell of an impasse. You won’t stay. I can’t go.”
When Jake lets out his own groan, I peek through my fingers and see him start to pace, taking a few steps into the main hall, and hear him kick one of his bags a few times. He calls back into the kitchen, voice raised enough to be heard, but each word so tense it’s obvious he’s holding back.
“You could go. You could close the shop, sell the building, what-the-fuck-ever. You could leave here. You won’t. Huge difference.”
I drop my hands and ball them into fists, digging my fingernails into my palms. “Screw you, Jake. You’re making a choice, too. I’m not the only one digging my heels in here.”
Another round of kicking commences, Jake taking his anger out on an innocent duffel bag, then the sound of his hand slamming against something sturdy. The wall? The front door? Then the house turns quiet. Jake returns and comes to stand in front of me, close enough to grasp my face in his hands.
“Do you not understand what I’m saying? I’m worthless here, Lace. I spent years trying to make something of myself and I did. Living here would destroy that.” He closes his eyes for a beat. When he opens them, the fear and plea buried there make my eyes burn.
“My mom carted my ass out here and dumped me on Grandma’s doorstep without a second thought. You know what she said when she left? Nothing. Not a goddam word. The woman never smiled much, but when she drove away, she was grinning like a fool. You know why? Because she finally got rid of me. That’s what Crowell reminds me of. Every time I’m here, I remember how much my own mother couldn’t wait to cut me loose.”
Jake pauses, then lets out a defeated exhale. “I’m asking you to choose me over this shithole town. Please. If you hate Santa Monica, we’ll move. I will go anywhere else with you.”
I drop my gaze and try to think. Anger bubbles up through my chest at the way he acts as if this should be so easy for me. He whispers my name and I close my eyes, decide to let the tears start because what I’m about to say is the beginning of the end of this conversation.
“You’re asking me to give up everything. This is my home. I don’t know anything else but this place. And The Beauty Barn is the only thing I have, the only thing I’ve ever really done on my own. I can’t give that up.”
Jake begins to breathe heavily, keeping his jaw clenched tight, nostrils flaring under the pressure. He doesn’t look away, simply lets his gaze turn harsh, then impassive. “But you can give me up. No question about that, I guess. Good to know I’m near the fucking bottom of your priority list, right after clothes and shoes and animal crackers, right? What about Dusty? Where does he fall on your list? Before or after me?”
“Fuck. Off.”
His weight shifts, distancing from me, hands dropping from my face. Jake rises up from the floor and I can hear him start to say something else, then stop himself. The sound of his bags rustling in the hallway ceases as the front door opens.
“Lacey . . .”
The tears make it easier to get pissed, to know the pain of this entire thing crumbling and hurting so badly I want to scream. He showed up here, in my town, and did all of the things he could to make me love him. He said the right things, called me his, claimed my body and my heart, but he forgot to figure out how not to leave.
I wait to hear an apology. A proper good-bye.
Nothing.
Through the shock of it all, I hate myself for imagining I could ever have more than what I do. He says my name again, but I cut him off because he’s only trying to draw this out and I want it over.
“Get out, Jake.”
He tries once more. The sound of my name, whispered and broken in his mouth, through the thick of what may be his own grief. I hate the sound more and more each time he says it, so I respond the only way I can. The words I mean, but not really. Words you say when things hurt so badly you merely want it to stop. Words that inevitably prompt a door to shut quietly, and when the room goes silent, you immediately wish you never said them.
“Go. To. Hell.”
19
My first official act as a business owner? Don’t open for a week. Stay in my house for days and stare at the walls while my heart breaks. I’m off to a killer start as a proprietress. The Donald has nothing on me; I should get my own reality show. The contestants could perform a series of challenges geared toward proving their utter inability to cope.
I don’t cry. Much. Too numb for all that. If I cry, it means I’ve admitted to losing everything and tears would be my body acquiescing to that loss. I’ll take an absentminded sort of delusional thinking instead. I’m convinced that if I don’t bawl, it means this week off is a mental reset: I’m merely regrouping after a small setback.
Television helps, endless hours of binge-watching shows I shouldn’t. I only need two channels. Thank you, Lifetime and Bravo, you’ve been there for me with back-to-back episodes of shows that make my natural disaster of a life seem manageable. At least I haven’t murdered anyone, developed one of those nasty meth habits, or suffered through the horrors of a botched rhinoplasty. All I have to survive is one teeny, tiny, oddly familiar round of heartbreak. Totally doable.
Kate calls after two days. I don’t answer, let it go to voice mail instead. If I answer, either those tears will kick in or I’ll end up speaking nonsensically, quoting reality-star truisms that only make sense to someone who has spent the last forty-eight hours watching television shows about people with more money than self-awareness.
“Life isn’t all diamonds and rosé, but it should be.”
“What I don’t want is . . . birds chirping, and butterflies, and rainbows. I don’t want to live that way.”
“This is like the last time I tried to woo a saber-toothed tiger. It didn’t work.”
Ain’t all that the truth. But if you haven’t watched two straight days of television as I have, or if you’re Kate and hardly ever watch television in general, these things won’t resonate quite as powerfully. I get that.
I listen to Kate’s message a day after she leaves it. My chest feels slightly less as if it might collapse under my next breath, so I might stand a chance of struggling through an interaction with another human being.
“Lacey. I’m terrible at this, you know that, but I waited forty-eight hours before calling you and inserting myself into your crisis. But as my ever-perceptive husband reminded me, unlike myself, not everyone prefers to be left alone when something like this happens. Anyway, Jake stopped by the house on his way out of town, told us what was going on. Christ, I’m not sure what to say first. Congratulations? For The Beauty Barn thing, of course. The Jake thing? I’m really sorry about that. He’s a mess over it all, Lace. I hope you know that. He looked . . . I don’t know, lost or something. I’m here if you want to talk. If I don’t at least get a smoke signal by Friday, I’m coming over to make sure you haven’t choked to death on frosted animal crackers.”
Deleting the message, I respond to her with a smoke signal text.
Please send frosted animal crackers. The front door is unlocked.
An hour later, the front door creaks open and I mute the television. Kate shuffles up the stairs and peeks in my bedroom, tossing the bag of cookies toward me. It lands on the mattress with a thwack, then lies there waiting for me. That’s when I start to cry. A sloppy, slobbering, unfettered round of bawling that evolves quickly into something that sounds like a bleating little fawn. Kate silently tosses her coat on the floor, kicks her shoes off, and crawls up on the bed until she is close enough to wrap her arms around my shoulders.
I fall asleep after a while and when I wake up, Kate is still in bed next to me, pointing the remote at the television and rolling her eyes. She has the sound down so low it’s nearly muted.
“Daytime television is atrocious. Vile. Abhorrent. I hope you haven’t been watching this crap for the last two days.”
Grumbling,
I attempt to shimmy myself up into a slumped sitting position. “If you just keep watching, after enough hours, it starts to seem tolerable. Good, even.”
Kate settles on an at-home-shopping network where an overtanned middle-aged man is hawking food dehydrators. She drops the remote to the bed and reaches down to grab the bag of animal crackers, then slides them up against my side.
“You want to rip the bag open and get a few in before we talk, or are you ready now?”
The bag rips under my hands and I pointedly shove a few in my mouth and look at her. Kate nods and slouches down into the pillows a bit, waiting for me to finish chewing.
“Let’s start with the obvious. What the hell happened?”
The cookies taste funny today. Instead of that candy coating making my tongue tingle delightfully under its artificial allure, it makes my mouth taste rank. I’m sure the fact I haven’t brushed my teeth for days isn’t helping. I try to swallow the last remnants without gagging.
“Dust storm.”
“Awesome.”
She doesn’t press for more. Likely because she knows the details of whatever Dusty said don’t particularly matter this time. He was simply the catalyst. But when Kate turns onto her side, settling in so she can see me, and focuses intently, I decide to tell her everything. Or at least, everything I can manage.
“When Ruth Ann left me everything, I wanted to tell him. So much. But I didn’t know how. If I’d told him, he would have walked.”
“What? Why would you think that?”
“It would have been over. Because he would know I wasn’t ever leaving Crowell. Not now that I have something of my own here.”
Kate sighs and stares at the television again. Finally, after a few minutes, she flops her head toward me. “You do realize I have to give you the same speech you gave me three years ago, right? Word for word, almost.”
Mimicking her move, I let my own head drop her way, raising my brows a bit. She raises her own.