my life as a mixtape (my life as an album Book 4)

by LJ Evans

  “Oh. That’s good.”

  “So…will you come? You just know more about all this stuff than me.”

  “Sure. No problem, Leo,” she said with a tease to lighten the mood.

  She turned and started back toward her parents’ SUV but was halted when he called out. “Hey, Wynn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let them know how much I appreciated today,” he said, his head dipping toward her parents’ car.

  “Sure.”

  Then she left him to go home with her parents. None of them said much on the way home. When she got there, she went up to her room in order to collect her thoughts. To unravel the mix of emotions she’d been through. The surprise at seeing Zack again. The rightness of having Lonnie and Edie spending time with her and her family. None of it did anything for her promise to stay away from men altogether.

  And later that night, when her phone rang with an unknown number, she was challenged once more. She almost let it go to voicemail but then picked up at the last minute.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Wynn?” The male voice was familiar.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Zack,” he said and then paused, and of course it was. She knew it at the same time he said his name. “I hope you don’t mind. I got your number through Matt.”

  “Matt has my number?”

  Zack chuckled. “Well, it went around the block to Blake, who got it from Cam, and then back around.”

  Wynn rolled her eyes because she knew she’d be getting a call from Cam now.

  “Anyway, I hope it’s okay.” Zack seemed hesitant because she hadn’t responded.

  “No. Sure. It’s fine.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “I was a little stunned to see you here today,” Zack said.

  “I can say the same.”

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about Zack. But it had always been in that reminiscent sort of way. Over a childhood boyfriend who hadn’t hurt her the way the others had. Like he was the last good guy that had dated her.

  “I’d heard that you got married. But that guy today, Lonnie, he wasn’t your husband, right?”

  “No.”

  “Are you dating him?”

  Wynn sighed. “That seems to be the question everyone has these days, but no, Lonnie and I are just friends.”

  “Does he know that?”

  Wynn laughed. “Yes.”

  “So, then, if I asked you out on a date, you might say yes?” he asked with a tone in his voice that was so hopeful it made her think back to the first time he’d ever asked her out way back in middle school.

  “But you live in Colorado,” she said, picking at the thread balls on her old comforter.

  He chuckled. “I’m here for a week.”

  Wynn hesitated. She wasn’t sure she could go on a date yet. Her divorce had barely been final for two months, even though she hadn’t lived with Grant in over a year. It still felt too soon.

  But then, maybe dating was exactly what she needed. To get Grant out of her head. To put a safe distance between her and Lonnie. To just continue to move forward. Dating didn’t have to be serious. Dating could be fun and flirtatious. With Zack living in Colorado, it could hardly turn into anything more.

  She waited so long to respond, he had to jerk her back to the phone call.

  “Wynn?”

  “Yes,” she breathed out.

  “Was that a yes?” He sounded so excited. Like that teenage boy she used to know.

  “Yes,” Wynn repeated with a gurgle of laughter.

  “Does Thursday work?”

  She felt herself nodding in agreement again and had to repeat the agreement into the phone before they hung up. But once she’d plugged her phone into the charger and tucked down into her bed, she wasn’t sure her heart was really into it. She wasn’t sure she should have said yes. Because it was really more like she hadn’t wanted to say no. Like she was pushing herself into a step forward that her body wasn’t sure she was ready to take. But she’d said yes, and she always kept her promises.

  HAVE YOU EVER NEEDED SOMEONE SO BAD?

  Wants & Needs

  “And to the girl I gotta have,

  I gotta have you baby.”

  —Def Leppard

  After leaving Wynn on Sunday, Edie and I spent the afternoon curled up on the couch together, watching cartoons and playing on my computer. I’d downloaded some crazy phonics game, and she asked to play it all the time. I almost wanted to shoot myself in the head from the stupid music, but if it helped her with her language skills, it was worth it. I’d been working hard on correcting her speech ever since Wynn’s comment about it, but it hadn’t seemed to be enough.

  I’d spent some time reading up on child development online. And I realized Edie was behind in quite a few things. That, and the fiasco at the emergency room, had prompted my call to CPS in L.A. in order to get the insurance figured out so I could take her to a doctor here.

  In bed that night, I let my thoughts swallow me up again.

  I was so pissed at Lita at the same time I just ached for my twin. That she couldn’t get her shit together enough to see the gift she had sitting in front of her. The gift that Edie was. And I guess that kept me from being pissed for too long because Edie had been a gift to me, too. She’d changed my life already. In a way that was only for the better.

  When she left, it was going to hurt like hell.

  It was pretty unclear on when that would be. I knew Lita was about ready to be released. All the programs she’d ever been in were only eight to ten weeks long. I didn’t know where she was going to go after, and she wouldn’t call me back to talk to me, so I couldn’t set up a new apartment for her and Edie. Because there was no way I was going to be able to hand Edie back to her until I was sure it was going to be somewhere that Edie deserved to be. No more squalid, pay-by-the-day motels.

  The burden was heavy. It was hard to be thrown into it alone.

  If my parents weren’t such selfish assholes—if they were more like Wynn’s parents—I wouldn’t be in this alone. Tim was Wynn’s stepdad, and yet he treated Wynn more like a daughter than my parents had ever treated Lita. He and Cary had treated Edie more like a grandkid, too.

  Wynn came from a family that knew how to truly love and support each other. It was probably why I knew now that Wynn would never be a Lita. She wasn’t on a cycle of highs and lows with no escape in sight. Wynn was a strong-as-hell woman who had hit a low after her life had fallen apart in pieces around her, but she’d had good role models and people to help her pick the pieces back up. I admired how she was resilient enough, strong enough, to set everything behind her and go in a new direction. I loved that she could be there for me and Edie even though she was still trying to get on track herself.

  That I loved those little things about her made my heart skip a beat. But I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. She was beautiful. And sexy as hell. So, yeah, I wanted her. But now that we were friends, now that she helped me with Edie all the fucking time, it was even more complicated. Because I didn’t want to sleep with her once and lose all of that.

  It made me stop and re-question what I really wanted. Not just with Wynn, but with my life. With relationships in general.

  The thought of Wynn and relationships turned my head to that skinny guy at the diner: the old boyfriend. The wave of emotions I’d felt when I’d seen them standing so closely together, with her long fingers on his arm, were hard to define. Jealousy was there amongst them. It was what had prompted me to kiss her on her head like it was something I did all the time. It was what had prompted me to act like she’d expected me to show up, when she clearly hadn’t.

  I didn’t know what the fuck to think. All I knew was that I had too much going on in my brain to sleep. I flipped on the TV and laughed when I saw Charmed on the menu. I couldn’t stop myself from turning it on and thinking all over again of Wynn in my bed, in my clothes, and how damn right it had felt.


  * * *

  The next morning, Wynn met me at the doctor’s office. I tried to pick her up, but she’d refused multiple times. I tried not to read into it. She had her own battles to fight as I was fighting mine. I’d just continue to be grateful for the time she gave me. And I knew I was going to be asking her for more of her time…so I just let it slide.

  She came into the waiting room of the doctor’s office, smelling like berries as always. She sat down next to me with a smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said back.

  Edie was on the ground, Mask under one arm, cape flowing out behind her, and she was watching another little boy play with some contraption that had nobs and gizmos on it. She didn’t ask to play too; she just watched.

  “You ready for this?” Wynn asked.

  I rubbed my chin. It was smooth. I’d been able to shave that morning. I didn’t always get a chance these days with Edie. Sometimes, she just demanded more of my time than even a shave allowed, but today, she’d been happy to play on my laptop while sitting on the counter as I scraped the red fur off my face.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  She placed her hand on my arm, reassuring. Calming. Our roles had reversed from the first few times together. She seemed to always be calming me down.

  The little boy got called back, and his mom picked him up, leaving Edie with the toy alone. Then, she carefully reached out a hand and moved one of the little beads along the track like he had. She did it slowly, as if she was unsure if it was okay. Or maybe unsure of how to do the movements. It brought me back to exactly why I was sitting in this room. For her.

  When it was our turn, I picked Edie up, and Wynn grabbed her diaper bag, and we headed back to the patient rooms. A nurse had Edie stand on a scale, measured her height, and took her temperature before showing us into one of the rooms. Edie had taken it all in silently. As if she was now mute, which definitely wasn’t the case.

  We’d barely sat down in the chairs when a man so old I wasn’t sure how he was still walking came in. His hair was completely white and reminded me of Doc in Back to the Future, which was a movie that I wouldn’t call girly even though there was romance in it. I smiled, thinking that I could tell Wynn that and she’d laugh.

  “Wynn!” he said with a smile.

  “Doctor Mallard,” she replied, returning his smile.

  He gave her a hug and she hugged him back. He looked down at the chart in his hand. “I don’t think I realized this was your daughter.”

  “Oh, she’s not,” Wynn responded. “I’m just here for moral support.”

  “Ah,” the man said before turning to me and Edie. He stuck out his hand. “Alec Mallard.”

  “Lonnie Brennan.” I shook his hand. “And this is Edie. She’s my niece.”

  The doctor squatted down in front of us, and Edie pushed herself back into my chest, hand squeezing Mask so hard I thought he’d permanently have a new waistline.

  The doctor took Mask’s paw and shook it. “Nice to meet you, Edie.”

  This made Edie giggle. “I’s Edie.”

  “Oh! Well, hello then, little lady.” He stuck his hand out to her, and she shook it gingerly. “Who’s this then?”

  “T’is Mask.”

  “Nice name. Pleased to meet you too, Mask.”

  Edie giggled again.

  Doctor Mallard stood, and I was surprised I didn’t hear creaking bones. He took a seat on a stool on wheels and slid over in front of us.

  “What brings you all in today?”

  I looked at Wynn, and she just smiled reassuringly.

  “First and foremost, I have no idea if Edie’s had any of the shots she’s supposed to have had by now. My sister is…unavailable, and we don’t have any medical records.”

  “That’s an easy fix. We can draw blood to find out what she’s got immunity to, and then we can go from there. Or we can just start all the necessary series again.”

  “I’d say whatever is going to mean less time with a needle,” I said grimly, thinking of the screams Edie had let out the day I’d tried to take the cape off of her back in L.A.

  “Blood draw it is, then.” He made a note on the chart in the computer and then turned back around to us. “What else?”

  I couldn’t help rubbing at my beardless chin again. It was a bad habit I seemed to pick up along the time I picked up Edie. Nervousness that I never really had before. Worry that I’d never had before.

  “I’m worried about some of her developmental milestones.”

  “What specifically?”

  “Well, her size. And Wynn’s noticed that her speech seems delayed for an almost four-year-old. She’s got some pretty crazy sleep habits, and when she gets wired up…hell…nothing stops her. And she’s still in Pull-ups.”

  “And the cape,” Wynn added gently.

  Doctor Mallard eyed the cape that was starting to look a little ratty.

  “If we take it off, she screams like someone is sawing off an arm,” I told him.

  “Can you tell me anything about her birth history or her time with her mother?”

  Wynn’s hand settled on my thigh behind Edie’s little butt, as if to tell me it was all okay. That I could trust this man. And I knew I had to. That Edie was counting on someone in her life to do the right thing.

  “Honestly, my sister is on some pretty heavy meds for her bipolar disorder. And she pretty much self-prescribes every type of illegal drug that will keep her from feeling anything. She didn’t know she was pregnant with Edie until she was several months along…” I trailed off.

  “Okay. So we know there’s probably been some drugs introduced into her body when she was a fetus.”

  “Lita—that’s Edie’s mom—she didn’t live a safe lifestyle even after Edie was born. There’s been a lot of movement and transition. Different people in her life.”

  “Did she get the cape from your sister?”

  I nodded. “I guess it wasn’t long before they both ended up in the hospital, and CPS called me to come get Edie.”

  He was taking notes. I was so ashamed. Of Lita. Of myself. I shouldn’t have left L.A. I had known. I couldn’t say I hadn’t. I knew that Lita was going to continue to live her screwed up life. I’d just wanted something more for her so badly that I’d allowed myself to believe it would happen.

  Doctor Mallard asked Edie if she and Mask would sit on his big table, and he ran a bunch of regular tests that I didn’t even think doctors did anymore, like thumping her leg with a mallet-like thing to see if her reflexes were normal. He talked with her and had her walk down a line in the hallway. They did a vision test, and a hearing test, and then settled us all back into the patient room.

  He told us that he did see some small physical delays—size, weight—but that those might just be genetics and not a product of her environment. He said the speech delays were there and that we should continue to work on correcting her language as well as talking to her as much as possible. Many times, just having someone verbalize a lot would correct things, but he would refer us to a speech pathologist who could work on a plan with us.

  He said that her sleep and activity levels might be a result of the drugs she’d been exposed to in the womb. Many drug babies developed ADHD and other behavior disorders. Routine, structure, and limiting sugar intake could help with all of those things. He gave me a bunch of pamphlets on ADHD symptoms, checklists, and plans. He also gave me some potty training brochures. I tried not to feel overwhelmed again by my lack of knowledge, by the fact that life was never going to be what it was once, and by the fact that Edie was going to need something more than Lita could ever give her.

  Wynn took all the brochures for me, placing them in the diaper bag.

  “I’d definitely recommend we check back in on her growth in about six months. Sooner if you’re worried about something that comes up specifically.” The doctor made more notes in the computer, his old hands moving deftly over the keys.

  “I’m…” I choked up a little. �
�I’m also worried about whether my sister’s mental disorders could be passed down to Edie.”

  Doctor Mallard turned on his stool and faced me. “I’m not going to lie to you. Most research shows a definite tie to genetics and many mental health issues like bipolar disorders.”

  My heart fell to my chest.

  “But there are also lots of studies that show that limiting stress factors can make a significant difference,” he added.

  I just nodded. What else was I going to do? Would Lita ever be in a stress-free environment? What did that mean for Edie? For me?

  We thanked the doctor, made a follow-up appointment at the front desk, and went toward the door to head down to the lab. Edie stopped at the toy she’d been playing with in the waiting room.

  “I’s keep?”

  “Sorry, kiddo, that toy needs to stay here so other kids visiting can play with it too.”

  “But I’s want it.”

  “I get that, Chicken Lips, but it’s not yours.”

  She turned to Wynn.

  “Wynn. I’s keep?”

  We both chuckled. “Nope. Uncle Lonnie is right. It belongs to the doctor’s office.”

  She pushed the toy over.

  “Edie!” I picked her up, righting the contraption, and headed for the door. She started to kick and scream.

  We walked out into the hallway.

  “Edie, calm down,” I said, trying to stay calm myself.

  “I’s want. I’s want. I’s want.” Then she buried her head into my neck and started crying, her whole body rigid and tight.

  I just looked at Wynn, at a loss of what to do, my heart breaking.

  “We’ve been talking a lot in front of her,” Wynn explained. “Kids get a lot more than we give them credit for. You’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed, so imagine what she’s feeling.”

  I hugged my niece tightly, letting her cry. Her body started to relax, and her cries started to subside as we stood there in the hallway, with people walking by us, trying not to stare. I felt like the biggest asshole in the world.

  Once she’d gone quiet, sucking her thumb, I rubbed her back again. “We have one more stop, Eds. Then, we can go get a burger and a shake. How does that sound?”