The Moment of Letting Go

by J. A. Redmerski

  The cashier hesitates, looking between us, and then reluctantly slides his credit card from the counter and goes to run it through the little device attached to the side of her computer screen.

  I just look back at him, baffled.

  “You won’t win this argument,” he says, “so just save your breath.” He smiles charmingly with teeth, and I don’t know whether to play-pop him on the arm and tell the girl not to use his card, or smile at him in return and let him have his way. But I get the feeling he’ll have his way no matter what, so I don’t argue with him.

  The bell on the door jingles again as we make our way back outside into the sunshine. Walking side by side down the length of the sidewalk, I glance over at him and say, “Maybe I’ll just find a bunch of really expensive stuff then. Make you pay for that, if you wanna play that game.”

  He grins, looking over at me briefly.

  “Like what?” he asks.

  I shrug. “I have a professional shopper and fashion guru for a best friend, just so you know”—I nod heavily once, one eyebrow arced in a dramatic fashion—“and she taught me everything I know about shopping and fashion.”

  “Oh, she did, did she?” Luke’s grin seems to deepen; I halfway expect something clever to come out of his mouth any second now, but it’s like he’s biding his sweet time.

  I cross my arms. “Yeah, she did. I didn’t really have much of a sense of style before Paige got ahold of me. And by the time she was done, I fit right in on Rodeo Drive with the best of ’em.”

  He purses his lips. “Wow, that’s really interesting,” he says smartly. “But y’know, I gotta be honest; I think your best friend is probably better at it than you.”

  Shocked, I stop on the sidewalk, turning to look right at him, not knowing how to take what he just said, but knowing that it stung.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Luke smiles softly, tilting his head to one side.

  “I guess that came out wrong,” he says. “I just mean that you don’t seem wasteful.”

  Still unsure, but feeling a little better, I just look at him, waiting for him to go on, and we both begin walking down the sidewalk again very slowly.

  “I used to buy stuff like that,” he says, and now I’m even more confused. And intrigued. “For about two years I blew every dime I earned on clothes and cars and you name it”—he looks over—“but now I’m back to being me. And I prefer me.”

  Wait … cars, plural?

  “Wow,” I speak up. “Do tell.”

  Unlike the enigmatic topic of Kendra and his brother, I don’t feel at all hesitant to probe for answers this time—and I hope he doesn’t keep them from me, either.

  We make our way back to his car.

  “Landon and I used to own a business,” he says, opening my door. “It started out fairly small, like most businesses do, I guess.” He closes my door and picks up where he left off after he hops in on the driver’s side. “Truthfully, we never expected anything to come from it. Made a few bucks here and there online—wasn’t enough to put gas to last two weeks in the car we shared.” He laughs and starts the engine. “But then the sales picked up, the money started rolling in, and next thing I knew, we each had a million in the bank.”

  Silence. From me anyway—I can’t seem to figure out what to say, much less get my mouth moving again to say it.

  As soon as we leave the makeshift parking space, the sky opens up again as if the sun had never shone.

  Finally I manage to say, “You made a million dollars?”

  Luke keeps his eyes on the road, driving slowly through the downpour.

  “By the time it was all over,” he goes on casually, “we had to split millions three ways—me, Landon, and, of course, Uncle Sam.” He laughs out loud, his voice filling the car with bitterness and irony. “Uncle Sam is a greedy, thieving bastard—everybody knows that—but I didn’t know just how much until I was out of the poorhouse and had to write seven-figure checks to him. But don’t get me started on government and politics or the IRS—they’re my least favorite topics.”

  Millions? I must’ve heard that wrong. No, I’m pretty sure he said millions. I am so completely surprised, it takes me a moment to get my next question out.

  “W-what … well, what kind of business did you have?”

  He looks over. “Well, it started out with apps,” he says and then begins to reminisce. “I think Landon was born with a chip in his head—a technological genius, my brother.” He smiles distantly. “We played a lot of video games when we were younger, obsessed, like any kid, spending hours upon hours every day in front of the television until our parents thought it was time we started doing more things outdoors.” He glances over briefly. “So enter that camping trip I told you about—anyway, later, when my parents finally let us on the Internet, our game obsession intensified when we discovered our first online multiplayer role-playing game. We felt like gods.” He laughs out loud again, demonstrating how ridiculous he thinks all of that was, and then turns left onto another road, the car now zipping through the rain instead of crawling through it. “Eventually, Landon—being more into the creation process than the game playing itself, like I was—abandoned the games and started creating his own. I thought he was crazy, and in a sense he probably was, but before he turned eighteen and graduated, he was offered a full ride to two different colleges and eventually a job at one of the most successful gaming companies in the country.”

  “Wow, that’s huge.”

  “Yeah, he thought so too, until after the first year, and he dropped out of college and never took the job.”

  We turn onto another blacktop road and the rain is beginning to die down to a drizzle.

  “Landon hated being … suffocated,” Luke says sketchily. “I was surprised he even graduated high school. He hated school. He hated working in the same place for too long.” Luke shakes his head and flips on his blinker. “He just didn’t like being tied down to anything—with the exception of Kendra, of course, and a couple of girls before her.” He laughs. “No, Landon enjoyed being tied down when it came to women, but that’s another story. A really boring one.”

  Luke is different when he talks about his brother—he seems really proud, but despondent and even bitter at times. I feel like he’s holding something back, and I’m still not sure yet if it’s OK for me to probe.

  Ultimately I leave it alone. I don’t want to risk making too much of his business mine.

  Finally we pull onto a concrete driveway shrouded by trees and bushes on either side, creating a canopy of lush green over it like an arch. A little blue house sits off in the distance amid more trees and bushes, and just beyond it, down a sloping, grassy hill, I can see the beach and then the ocean. Luke shuts the engine off and leaves the keys in the ignition. He looks over at me. “But to answer your question,” he says, “we owned a business called Trivium Studios. A few failed smartphone apps eventually led to one successful one, which led to our own online multiplayer game, which led to a few other things, which put a lot of useless money in our accounts and eventually drove a wedge between my brother and me.” He smiles faintly, maybe to bring the light back into what had briefly become darkness, and then he opens the door, the smell of rain filling my senses. “But that’s also a boring topic,” he says, and I get the feeling that boredom has nothing to do with why he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “And you’re not here for that.” His smile turns into a grin.

  “Now, I haven’t had a chance to clean,” he says, unlocking the front door. “Oh, and for the record, I don’t have roaches like the nasty ones over on the mainland, but Hawaii is notorious for these large, freakish cockroaches and you might see one from time to time. Oh and centipedes. Just a warning.”

  I know I must look pale all of a sudden—maybe he’s just screwing with my head. Or exaggerating.

  God, I hope so.

  He grins and says with a gesture of his hand, “Let’s get inside before it starts raining a
gain.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Sienna

  Luke’s place isn’t at all what I imagined on the ride over here, at least not since he told me about the money he and his brother made. When I step through the front door, I’m surprised to be standing in something kinda small with dingy white walls that need a serious paint job and a ceiling pockmarked by discoloration from water damage. The linoleum floor is old and beyond repair and the only thing that could do it justice would be to rip it all up and replace it entirely. But it’s only cosmetic, I see right away, as the house overall is livable and quaint in a bachelor pad sort of way.

  Before I step farther in I take my sandals off at the door.

  “Nah, you don’t have to do that,” he says, but I do anyway. “This isn’t exactly a palace, as you can see.”

  I can also see a hint of slight nervousness hidden behind his eyes and that innocent smile of his, as though he’s quietly worried about what I might think of him now that I’m seeing his house. I don’t really know what to say. I want to say, If you had that much money, why didn’t you buy something bigger and more updated? Because that would be an obvious first question. But I don’t want to offend him. So I say nothing at all and continue to act as though I’m not bothered by it. Because, in truth, I’m really not bothered by it—I lived in a tiny two-bedroom trailer in a mobile home park for a long time growing up and I’m no stranger to the less extravagant things in life. In fact, I’m more familiar with it than any other lifestyle.

  Luke leads me into his living room and his nervousness only seems to grow. Maybe it’s because I haven’t said anything at all.

  “I thought you said you didn’t have time to clean?” I finally think of something. My gaze sweeps the area lit only by the gloomy outside light filtering in through the open windows on the far side of the room. I sniff the air. “And it smells like some kind of lemon disinfectant, so somebody’s been cleaning.” I grin at him, and his expression falls under a shroud of blushing guilt.

  He did clean this house, that’s a definite, and now all I can envision is Luke running around with a mop and a broom, cleaning the way I think most guys do, by sweeping everything out the front door and stuffing dirty clothes in various hiding places all confused and panicky-like. And the visual is hilarious.

  “So you’re one of those,” I accuse in jest.

  “One of what?”

  “When you know your house is clean, but a guest comes in and you wave your hand about the room”—I wave my hand to demonstrate—“and then say, ‘Please excuse the mess.’ ” I roll my eyes for dramatic effect.

  Luke smiles and shakes his head. “OK, you got me. I did clean a little last night.”

  “Where’d you sweep the dirt?” I ask.

  He points behind me. “Out the front door, of course.”

  I laugh. “And I bet your dirty clothes are stuffed under a chair somewhere.”

  “Nah,” he says. “I’m super-organized when it comes to laundry.”

  That takes me by surprise—now I’m visualizing him folding laundry in a precise manner, turning his washcloths into perfect little squares and rolling his boxers up like fancy dinner napkins, and this too is hilarious. And adorable.

  Luke gestures toward his very gently used navy sofa. He still appears a little nervous, but he’s shedding it quickly.

  “Sit down wherever you want.”

  I take a seat on the center cushion without any hesitation. With a smile, I look around some more. Up at the ceiling and then the walls and then the large flat-screen television mounted across the room from me, surrounded by a small entertainment center with two speakers on either side, and a stereo, movie player, and satellite box underneath, sitting atop an oak stand. Two framed posters stare back at me from different walls, one of the biggest moss-and grass-covered cliffs I think I’ve ever seen surrounded by a yellow-orange mist and a mountain backdrop. Two figures sit atop the cliff looking out at the world. The other poster is of a guy in some kind of sports gear that I can’t recall having ever seen before. It looks like an oversized ad of sorts.

  The entire space is airy with all of the windows open and the breeze pushing through the screens. I see that just beyond the open kitchen area there’s a screen door that opens out onto a lanai, which overlooks the beach a few yards away. The house might need a lot of repairs, but being that close to the ocean more than makes up for it.

  “I’ve got beer, water, and V8 juice,” Luke calls out from the kitchen. “The V8 is Seth’s, but if you like that kind of stuff you’re welcome to it.”

  I shudder at the thought of drinking a bunch of vegetables. “Water is good.”

  He comes in carrying two bottles of water and hands me one. “So I know you’re probably wondering about the house,” he says, sitting down next to me on the sofa.

  “No … not really,” I lie and take a sip just to fend off the awkwardness.

  Luke grins, takes a drink from his water, and sets the bottle on the coffee table stained by years of wet-bottomed glasses. “So you’re one of those,” he says, getting me back for earlier.

  “One of what?”

  “Itching to ask certain questions, but afraid to offend.”

  I shrug and take another sip.

  “Hey, you can’t offend me,” he says. “Go on. Ask.”

  My eyes stray toward the bottle in my hands, until finally I work up the courage.

  “Well, not that there’s anything wrong with your house”—I lock eyes with him to point out how much I mean that—“but if I had millions I might’ve gone a different way.” I take another nervous sip, not feeling very good about how that came out, after all.

  “I did in the beginning,” he says. “Owned a big house about an hour from here, but later sold it.” He pats the sofa arm with the palm of his hand. “This place feels much more like home than the other one did. You don’t like it?”

  I shake my head rapidly. “No, that’s not it at all,” I say. “I actually like this house. It’s adorable.”

  He laughs gently.

  Then he stands up and takes my hand.

  “Let me show you the rest of the place,” he says, and I follow.

  It doesn’t take long to see the other rooms: the kitchen, the bathroom, and then a quick peek into his room, but he doesn’t offer for me to go inside, probably because he doesn’t want me to get the wrong idea. And instead of letting me see inside Seth’s room across the hall from his, he points at the door and tells me whose it is.

  The last room he shows me is the biggest room of the three, covered in his paintings from ceiling to floor on every wall and stacked against them on top of one another in disarray, all different sizes and landscapes that each take my breath away. Paint is all over the floor and the walls and even on the ceiling. A few different size easels are folded and propped against the closet door, one easel with a painting half-finished sits in the center of the room. It’s easily the messiest room in the house, but also the most inspiring and certainly the most beautiful.

  “Luke … I just can’t get over what you can do to a canvas. These are”—I reach out as if the painting is a magnet to my fingertips and I want so badly to touch it, but I stop just short—“so lifelike.”

  He steps over a large piece of fabric sheeting covered in paint that lies across one section of floor and bends down behind a box underneath a window.

  A laptop hangs from his hand when it emerges. He opens it and walks over to me.

  “I showed you mine; now you get to show me yours,” he says, wriggling his brows.

  I know right away he’s referring to my photography website, which I told him about back at the community center.

  Luke sits down in the center of the floor Indian-style, placing the laptop on his lap. I look at the floor and then at my dress, white and bound to show every little speck of paint that might get on it no matter how dry—he realizes right away.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says and starts to get up. “I’m used to just c
oming in here and sitting wherever. I didn’t even think about your dress.”

  I stop him before he gets up by sitting down with him, my legs bent beneath me. A light beaming in from two horizontally elongated windows washes over the space. I don’t care about my dress. It’s just a piece of fabric. Luke’s face softens and something passes over his eyes that I can’t make out, but it makes my heart race.

  Reaching out for the laptop, I take it from him and prop it on my own lap. The Internet speed isn’t all that great here so it takes a few minutes to bring up my site and for the thumbnails to load, but once everything is there, I turn it at an angle so Luke can see. He scoots over closer to me, his side touching mine, and peers down into the screen. I feel breathless to have him next to me. My palms begin to feel moist and my pulse quickens.

  I can’t remember the last time I felt so eager to share my photography with someone other than my mom or Paige. It’s very personal to me; I may display it on my website for all to see, but this is different. Meaningful. And with Luke, already it feels so natural.

  Luke looks at every last photograph on my site, enlarging each one to get a closer look at the details.

  “And you say I have a gift,” he tells me and I smile in thanks. “You definitely have an eye for a good shot, that’s for sure. Who is this woman? She’s in several photos.”

  “That’s my mom.” I point to a close-up of her sitting near the kitchen window waiting for my dad to come home. A shadow is cast across her face by the window blinds, creating a dozen dark lines over her skin. “Dad used to work as a truck driver. For about three years, I think. I was fifteen when I took this one.” I pause, thinking back on the moment. “I just thought it was so out of character for my parents—Mom in this case—to miss Dad and to show it like this. I don’t think she even knew I was aware, or that I even took this photo. But Dad was gone a lot on the road and Mom would always sit in front of that window when she knew he was on his way home and she’d watch for him.” I smile to myself, thinking about it. “And for about three days, before Dad had to leave again, my parents were the happiest people.”