True Devotion

by Liora Blake

  The mention of Simon makes my teeth ache a little, but I’m not sure if it’s in desire, mortification, or annoyance now. Since the wedding, the memory of his mouth near mine and his growling claims about making me scream his name force the desire to simmer longer than I would prefer it to.

  Kate gives my shoulders a playful shove with hers. “This is the part of the conversation where you make some sort of hilariously brutal comment about Simon’s stupidity or his latest STD. Go ahead, I’m waiting.”

  Shit. I’ve got nothing. All I can think about is a drunken, clouded remembrance of his fingers as they rolled my stockings down my legs. Before the moment passes and Kate sees right through me, I force a small laugh. “Yeah . . . Simon. What a dumbass.”

  Weak, Devon. That right there was weak.

  “Holy crap, what happened? Did he hypnotize you at some point? That was the tamest insult I’ve ever heard from you. It almost sounded like you didn’t even mean it.”

  Silence echoes in my brain. I have to think faster, quickly enough to draw the conversation away from anything that reminds me of him, because it seems he may have had me drink his special brand of Kool-Aid and now I can’t find all the mockery I’m so well known for.

  When we reach the entrance of the restaurant, Kate holds the door open while narrowing her eyes at me as I walk past. By the time we peruse the menu and give the waitress our drink order, she’s leaning forward and staring at me.

  “Spill it, Devon. I mention Simon’s name and you get all tongue-tied. It’s disturbing.”

  “It’s nothing. New topic, please.”

  “That was so wildly unconvincing it’s shocking.”

  I let out a heavy sigh and slap my hands to the table in exasperation. “Fine. There was an awkward thing at the wedding. It was . . . I don’t know, it messed with my head a little. In a filthy, drunken, Simon looks hot in a sweater-vest kind of way.”

  “Shut. The. Front. Door.”

  “Nothing really happened; we just . . . Look, if I tell you, promise me you won’t tell Trev—”

  Before I can finish, Kate throws her hands up to cover her ears and closes her eyes.

  “Aaah! No, no, no. Don’t tell me!” She opens one eye to look at me and, once satisfied that I’ve stopped talking, slowly drops her hands from her ears.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  Letting a slow hiss escape her lips, she takes a drink of her water and leans back in her chair. “It’s the marriage clause. You were about to tell me I couldn’t tell Trevor something, which thus invokes the marriage clause.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “When someone tells you a secret, if you’re married, the secret never applies to your spouse. Even if the secret-teller says not to tell anyone, it is universally acknowledged that you could tell your husband without breaking said secret-teller’s confidence. In this case, I would have to tell Trevor, simply because it’s probably a superjuicy story. So, as much as I really, really, really want to know what Simon did to get you all dirty-minded about him, I can’t know without either lying by omission to my husband or betraying you.”

  She shrugs her shoulders and looks as if this should make complete sense to me. The problem is, now I desperately want to tell someone, thinking maybe if I do, that will deplete the power of it all. Perhaps if I say it aloud, the whole thing will sound so pathetic I’ll be able shake loose the bizarre grasping feeling in my belly.

  Trevor knowing, though, is not a good idea. He could react a few different ways, but none of them would be pleasant. Most will involve him doing the weird hand-clenching thing for a second before he breaks Simon’s nose or stops talking to me for a month. I’ll just have to figure out how to break this witchy-magic spell on my own. If I just steer clear of Simon for a while, that should do it.

  I sigh and break open my menu resolutely. “It was nothing. Let’s order. Two hours of hot yoga justifies drinking bottomless mojitos at eleven a.m. on a Wednesday, right?”

  After I finish lunch with Kate, I head home, then catch up on some laundry, and take a long bath. A big day, really, since Wednesday is always the day during the week that I lie low. I avoid scheduling any of my massage therapy clients and try to do nothing of significance. Unless sleeping in, watching hours of mindless TV, and drinking gallons of chai tea count as significant. Although, since I work out of a carriage house above my garage, people have been known to show up on my doorstep unannounced, just to see if I can squeeze them in. If I’m smart or feeling unaccommodating, I won’t answer the door. Other times, when people I genuinely like are staring at me in obvious discomfort, I’ll roll up my sleeves and do what I can to make it better.

  Training to be a massage therapist began as a way out of another dead-end job, more than anything. Eight years ago, I was working nights at a miserable packing warehouse back home, and every morning when I finished my shift, I would sit on the couch eating a bowl of cereal in front of the television before heading to bed. Same time every day, there would be a commercial for a local technical college. Train to be a medical transcriptionist! Or a diesel mechanic! Work just two days a week and make more money than you ever thought possible! That sort of thing. Being a massage therapist was the only vocation I thought sounded remotely interesting, so I drove down there one day, and two hours later, I was all signed up.

  When I told Trevor I was going to school, it was just after his first record had gone platinum and he was hell-bent on blowing as much cash as possible. Before I could stop him, he called the school and paid all my tuition, up front, for the entire program. Thankfully, once I started, I fell in love with the whole thing—it would have killed me to waste his money by dropping out.

  It was the first time I felt like I could fix things all on my own, heal someone and make them feel better. Plus, I finally was able to claim my work proudly when someone asked what I did for a living. Before that, I merely mumbled a halfhearted description of whatever office/warehouse/strip mall nightmare of a job I was currently sinking under.

  After my bath, I start on a batch of oatmeal raisin cookies because on Wednesdays, I’m also on McKenna duty. And consistently plying my niece with sugary baked goods helps ensure that I remain her favorite aunt of all time. Minor detail that I don’t have any competition to speak of, although Kate sometimes tries to outdo me with her ability to execute to best French braids I’ve ever seen.

  Even though time with McKenna never feels like work, I still have to make sure I get over to her fancy private school well before they let the rug rats out, otherwise I’ll never find a space to park between all the hundred-thousand-dollar rides the entitled mommies are driving. When I pull up in my old Jeep, I’m sure they all think I’m there to apply for a job as a janitor or a lunch lady.

  After my oldest brother, Nic, died of a heroin overdose, his junkie waste of a girlfriend, Raquel, showed up on my mom’s doorstep two days later, handed her McKenna, and then walked away. We haven’t heard from her since. It’s better for everyone involved, actually, because I can’t imagine any of us being able to bear letting McKenna out of the death grip she has on our marshmallow hearts.

  My mom has raised McKenna since she was barely a year old, but we’ve all made sure she knows who her dad was, even though it hurts us all to remember how much Nic loved that sweet girl. We say nearly nothing about her mother. The few times she’s asked where her mom is, we say we don’t know, followed immediately by reminding McKenna how much we love her. The same thing my mom always did when we asked about our dad—and we all turned out just fine, for the most part. One junkie, one rock star, one massage therapist. Not bad for a family from our neighborhood.

  Despite being such a glorious fuckup in the last three years of his life, Nic was a better dad than most men I’ve ever known. Better than our own dad, better than the dads we saw shoving their wives around in the hallway of our tenement apartment, better than the dads who yelled in their kids’ faces until tears were running down their cheek
s. The only guy I know who will be better at being a dad is Trevor. From the way he indulges McKenna, pays for her to go to a private school, and hangs on her every giggle, to the way he looks at Kate when he thinks no one sees him, he’s the softest hard-ass in the world. That combination will make him the best kind of dad ever: tough when it counts and tender when it matters.

  Trevor and Kate take McKenna duty on Mondays and I take Wednesdays. In the summers, I take her out all day. We go to the beach, I feed her junk she shouldn’t eat, and then I drop her off in a sugar coma at my mom’s house. Now, during the school year, I make sure she gets there on time, pack her lunch, and then pick her up after school. It isn’t much, but my mom is such a control freak, we’re just glad she lets us take the load off her for even a couple of days a week.

  When I arrive at Carlton Country Day, I end up flirting with a guy, one of the few dads I’ve seen waiting in the after-school pickup line. With the exception of how he stares at me a lot, which isn’t very appropriate given the setting, he seems like a decent guy. To his credit, when the kids roll out the front doors of the school, he immediately stops his ogling of me and straightens right up, tracking down his daughter in the mass of squalling little bodies and then ushering her into his black sedan before driving responsibly away.

  Today, he finally saunters over and introduces himself. Tate Martin. That’s his name. “Tate” sounds so . . . I don’t know, Orange County. He looks exactly like a Tate should. Tall, lanky but fit, with liquid blue eyes and dark blond hair just starting to gray at the temples. When he asks about my “daughter” I squash that, making sure he knows I’m not a mom and certainly not anyone’s wife. Tate is probably too old to take me too seriously—I’m pegging him for early forties, so he has a good ten-plus years on me, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find something in common. He’s built as if he might do some yoga. Maybe I can illustrate how beneficial yoga is when you’re naked and sweaty.

  McKenna spends the entire ride home to my mom’s talking about learning to play the recorder in music class. Luckily, she can’t reach her backpack. Otherwise, I’m sure she would have demonstrated how to play the recorder for a half an hour straight. Even I can remember how annoying the creepy wheezy tone of a recorder sounds after the first five minutes. She talks nonstop about it, right up until we pull in front of the house, then she looks out the windshield and claps her hands.

  “Yay! Simon Says is here!” Before the car engine is off, she throws off her seat belt, leaps out, and tears up toward the opened garage door. I try to convince myself she’s talking about someone else, until I see Simon’s dark gray truck sitting in my mom’s driveway, with a dirt bike loaded and strapped in the pickup bed. Groaning, I drop my head to the steering wheel and knock my forehead gently against it a few times.

  Four hours of Simon-free thoughts. That’s all I got. A blissful but fleeting four hours.

  Why? I ask the universe. It was going so well: four full hours spent sans Simon that included a leisurely lunch, flirting with a real man, baking cookies, and even the odd pleasure of finishing a few loads of laundry. All such good things. The day had such potential.

  Trevor’s truck isn’t even here. Why is Simon here unescorted? Despite how Simon has wormed his way into our family get-togethers for the last couple of years, he never just shows up at my mom’s house to hang out. Is he in there watching The Talk with her? Are they clipping coupons and drinking warm Diet Coke out of a two-liter bottle together?

  Dragging McKenna’s bag out of the backseat and tucking the tin of cookies I made under my arm, I trudge up to the house, hoping whatever awkwardness I encounter inside will end as quickly as possible. I can still save this day; I’ll just think about Tate’s pretty eyes while Simon says idiotic things to me.

  The house is eerily quiet, which doesn’t make any sense, given that McKenna and Simon are both on the premises. A little girl who can’t stop talking and a grown guy who won’t shut up: a deadly combination for anyone who values the ability to speak only when necessary like my mom does. Instead of walking straight in like I usually do, I peer around the corner of the hallway leading from the garage into the kitchen, breathing a sigh of relief to see only my mom there, scrubbing the already-clean grout lines of her tile backsplash with a toothbrush.

  I drop McKenna’s bag on the floor and let out a growl. “Why the hell is Simon here, Mom? Did he get lost on the way back from the free clinic or something?”

  “He’s mowing the lawn,” she says matter of factly, as if this is a normal occurrence.

  “Why? Why is Simon mowing your lawn?”

  Leaning back, she studies the area she just scrubbed and then wipes it down with a damp towel.

  “I mentioned to Trevor that the kid across the street broke his leg and couldn’t do the mowing for a few weeks. Simon overheard and offered to help out.”

  “Perfect. Now he’s probably out back mowing a pentagram design into the yard. You can blame Trevor for that; Simon’s his friend.”

  “Fine. It’s all Trevor’s fault. I’ll be sure to cut him out of my will.”

  Some kind of Zen calm comes over my mom when she’s cleaning things. Right now, when I really need to pick a fight about Simon so that annoyance trumps every other craving, that personality trait is driving me nuts.

  “Where’s McKenna? I’ll help her start her math homework before I leave.”

  “Out back with Simon. She couldn’t wait to have him do that whole ‘Simon Says’ thing with her.”

  No. No. No. My back slumps against the wall and I consider how to yell for McKenna to get in the house while not seeing him. I consider a carrier pigeon, or maybe calling Kate, to have her call Trevor, to have him call Simon, to have him tell McKenna to come inside. This seems to be a plan with potential until I realize that I also sound like a complete maniac. Allowing Simon to get me all fuzzy like this is unacceptable.

  I shuffle quietly out of the kitchen and make my way around to the back of the house, pausing to stand on the deck outside. Across the large yard, with the scent of newly cut grass everywhere, Simon is standing next to the swing set with McKenna just in front of him. Her back is to me, and even though I can’t see her face, everything about her body language shouts that he’s trapped her in his charming little flypaper personality. Apparently, his appeal transcends all age groups. Whether they’re seven, seventeen, or seventy-five years old, if you have two X chromosomes, Simon will reel you in using his captivating little lure. I can’t decide if this acknowledgment should make me feel better or worse about the way I keep running my tongue over edge of my teeth in an attempt to moisten my suddenly uncomfortably dry mouth.

  McKenna starts to bounce restlessly in place, urging Simon on as he looks up to the sky and squints, clearly pretending to be in deep thought. Finally, he looks down and says something to her. Grinning, he watches her do five jumping jacks, and when she’s done, he says something else. She bends her arms at the elbows and starts to flap them like a chicken, prompting a loud belly laugh from him. Just as he starts to give her another set of instructions, he catches my stare before I can look away. Quickly, he says something else and McKenna starts to twirl, her plaid school jumper spinning around her until he shakes his head. I’d guess he didn’t say “Simon Says,” because she falls to the grass and groans.

  Laughing, he stops and crouches down to take a drink from a bottle of water on the ground next to him. After rising up, he lifts the bottom of his T-shirt up to draw it over his mouth, wiping what I can only imagine is the sweetest-tasting bit of perspiration from around his irritating mouth.

  Everything drifts into slow motion, and under that shirt, even from this distance, I can see every ridge and crest along his torso, the same one I had my fingers against a few weeks ago when my hand was teasing under his belt buckle. It’s clear now that what I felt tensing there was an expanse of wickedly toned muscle, resulting from hours spent riding and wrestling around a dirt bike, hours onstage, and, probably, hours spent na
kedly engaging his core to make some poor girl scream his name. His loose cargo shorts hang provocatively low, and with all that skin on display, I can see hints of the tattoos that cover his chest. Unconsciously, I squint and lean forward, trying to see more. From here, all that’s evident is writing of some kind.

  All. Of. It.

  That’s what I need to see. Every single inch of lettering, every tiny wisp of ink. Ideally, he would be lying beneath me, keeping his mouth shut, while I complete this inspection. To avoid storming over there and demanding that he lift his shirt again so I can see everything, I lean into the deck railing and wrap my fingers around the wood until my wrists start to tremble.

  When he drops the shirt, he catches me staring, and the inevitable slow smirk that follows punctures my private ogling. Squatting down once more, he motions for McKenna to get up, and when she does, he whispers something in her ear then juts his head in my direction.

  Fuck.

  He’s about to use my innocent niece as some sort of pawn in whatever his latest game is. McKenna barrels across the lawn toward me, her wispy blonde hair flowing behind her, and when she reaches me, she’s smiling her beautiful gap-toothed smile.

  “Auntie Devon!”

  “What?”

  McKenna turns to look at Simon and he nods his head at her, urging her to do whatever his stupid bidding is. Huffing her shoulders in preparation, she delivers her line.

  “Simon Says . . .” Faltering a bit, she straightens her little shoulders and brings up two fingers on her right hand to point at her eyes. “Simon Says, ‘Eyes up here, sunshine.’ ”

  His giant bellowing laugh careens across the yard, slamming into my ears until I drown it out by snarling something unintelligible under my breath and stomping into the house behind his innocent little minion.

  An hour later, when I hear the mower shut off again, I glance up at the clock and decide if I just wait it out a bit longer he will be gone. Until then, I can finish up with McKenna on her homework and then scurry out to my car without having to confront Simon by using my fist against those delectable abs of his.