True Devotion

by Liora Blake

  When I’m convinced enough time has passed, relief courses through me—along with just the smallest tinge of disappointment—so I kiss McKenna on the forehead and head out the door. While I refuse to wholly admit it, something inside nags at the possibility I may have been hanging around the house longer than necessary because a tiny part of me hoped to spar with Simon a little more. Or catch him lifting up his shirt again. All of which is unnerving. Wanting a bit more time with Simon? Absolutely not. Nothing good about that idea.

  In the driveway, I start fumbling in my purse for my keys, holding it up in front of me and tilting it about so I can trace the jingling sound as the key chain reveals its location under everything else shoved in there.

  “Hey, Dev.”

  Slowly, I let the purse drop down from where it was obscuring my face. Leaning against the rear bumper of his truck, Simon winks before turning to lean into the pickup bed and grab a long-sleeved motocross jersey. He draws off his T-shirt and tosses it on the tailgate, before all too quickly pulling the jersey on. Gah, all that skin on display for a moment, and because his abs divert my attention, I still don’t get a good look at those damn tattoos on his chest. When his face pops out of the neck opening, I suddenly want to knock him over the skull with my bag. It would be like the best damn version of Whac-A-Mole.

  I grind my teeth together for a moment, then loosen my jaw enough to speak. “Why are you still here?”

  “Were you trying to avoid me?”

  Annoyed that he could possibly know that is exactly what I’ve been trying to do all day, I suck in a deep breath, hoping to calm the urge to win big at Whac-A-Simon.

  “We don’t need your help around here. We can hire someone to mow the lawn, so no need to bring your marginal landscaping skills back around again. Capisce?”

  “‘Capisce?’ Is that supposed to be your intimidating mobster voice or something?” He rests one of his arms up on the tailgate and adjusts his ball cap down, then raises his eyebrows at me. “I know you don’t need anyone’s help, Devon; you’re always crystal clear about not needing anything from anyone. Your mom, on the other hand, needed someone to mow the lawn. I like your mom, and I can push a mower around with the best of them.”

  “Don’t you have your own family? Shouldn’t you be torturing your own mother with your mere existence?”

  I walk backward down the rest of the driveway, and before I turn away from him, an expression crosses his face that I can’t identify. The skin around his eyes creases a bit and his chin flexes into a stiff line. Before I can process the look, he shakes his head with a grin.

  “No need to crucify me just because you got caught eating me up with your eyes, baby. I didn’t mind one bit.”

  Reaching into the pickup bed again, he pulls out a plastic Tupperware, lifts the lid, and waves an oatmeal cookie in my direction.

  “But I will be back, because your mom paid me in cookies. These are some seriously delicious cookies she made, and I’ll do just about anything for cookies. They’re my kryptonite.”

  I want to wrench the cookies out of his hands and explain they’re my cookies. I made them, not my mom. The only thing stopping me is the chance I’ll end up standing there with Simon looking me over and jabbering off a series of innuendos about how much he loves eating my cookies. That’s the last time I bring over homemade baked goods if my mom is only going to end up using them in some kind of Simon-approved currency exchange.

  Instead, I nudge my chin toward his dirt bike as he saunters around the side of his truck.

  “I’d tell you to not do anything stupid today while you’re out riding, but since ‘stupid’ is your default setting, just try not to kill yourself.”

  That obnoxious laugh, the one he uses when he knows he’s gotten to me, ripples through the air, drowned out only when he shuts the truck door and starts the engine.

  I hope he chokes on those cookies.

  3

  Somewhere between the entrée and dessert on our second date, I officially decide that Tate Martin is nice. Plain and simple. Tate Martin is a nice guy. The way he listens when I talk and smiles genuinely with his slightly crooked teeth makes him incredibly easy to like.

  After a few more furtive flirting sessions outside McKenna’s school, we figured out that we seemed to have Wednesdays in common at Carlton Country Day. The one day a week I was on McKenna duty happened to coincide perfectly with the one afternoon he picked up his daughter so they could go to family therapy together. What a kick in the ass, right? I’ll never get over how people in California are more than happy to tell you all about their therapy sessions. In our part of Cleveland, nobody went to therapy, unless it was court-ordered, and even then they sure as shit didn’t go telling everyone about it.

  But it’s the “nice” thing that does it. I’ve done the whole not-nice-guy routine before, for way longer than I should have, and there isn’t a damn thing fun about it. I’m not talking about boys with tattoos who just look like trouble. I’m talking about men who are real, certifiable trouble, in every sense of the term. Like the Hey, can you bail my ass out of jail again and the You know I didn’t mean it—stop crying kinds of trouble.

  I never sought out those kinds of trouble, but when it came in the form of a beautiful neighborhood boy with the cutest dimple in his left cheek, I was done for. He was the same one who swore he would find a way out of the ghetto and take me with him, so it was easy to believe he would never hurt me. Even after the nasty parts of him started to show, those flashes of anger merely reminded me of my place in the world. It took me a few years and a few rounds to remember I was a hell of a lot stronger than he gave me credit for.

  But when you’re nineteen and all you’ve ever seen is couples who shove and fight and rage, you don’t know any different. My ex, Kyle, and I followed the predictable script that was written for people like us, every dramatic word. We loved hard but fought harder, and only toward the end did I realize how much of a tinderbox our relationship was. Once he started dealing, and indulging in the inventory on occasion, the way we pushed each other was bound to erupt. Yet, the night he actually hit me, with a full-on, rear-back-and-wind-up kind of punch, the way he came at me so brutally was still a shock.

  The next morning, I left Kyle and Cleveland. On my drive out here, bruised and aching, my mind reeled through every emotion imaginable. Hurt and anger. Confusion and sadness. Shame. That one was the worst, the hardest to shake, because somehow, shame hit even harder than Kyle had.

  The days and miles between Cleveland and LA gave me plenty of time to think. By Iowa, I realized how much I always depended on the premise that shoving back was the great equalizer between us. If we battled over something and his hands came to my shoulders with a shove, as long as I pushed back, it was OK. Tit for tat. Eye for an eye. But this time, it all happened too quickly, and there I was . . . with nothing to balance the scales.

  By Denver, I understood what it was he truly took from me when he landed that punch: my fucking pride. Which is sometimes the only thing you have, growing up the way I did. Others might have power or money or status to fall back on when people wound them. But for us, pride is all you have that’s completely yours. Most of us don’t own much else.

  At the state line between Nevada and California, I resolved it would never happen again. Any other man in my life would have to be good and kind. If they so much as sniffed of a capacity for cruelty—if they swatted a fly without acting like it pained them to do so—I would disappear before they realized I was gone. Since then, being alone, with the exception of an unremarkable date here and there, has been easier. Bearable. Safer.

  So, “nice” absolutely works for me. I don’t think there is a tiny thing boring about a good guy. In fact, while some women might have zoned out after the first fifteen minutes of Tate’s bicycling-through-Napa story, I hang in there. I’m also a hundred percent present and accounted for as he tells me about his ex, a “great mom, good woman, but a less-than-stellar wife.” I’m all
ears when he explains what his forensic audit firm does. And, when he follows me into my kitchen a few minutes after I leave to make us some tea, I’m right there with him as he presses me against the countertop and his warm hands find my hips, the curve of my ass, and the backs of my thighs.

  I don’t check out for a single second, which is probably why I focus on one thing. Once we strip our clothes, our bodies against each other’s in my bed, I notice he keeps repeating the words “so beautiful,” again and again. Not “You’re so sexy,” “You’re so hot,” or anything a touch more specific, just “so beautiful.” What makes it even weirder is that he isn’t even looking at me when he says it. Mostly he is mumbling it into the skin of my neck. He isn’t uttering a sincere appreciation of my body as he soaks me in. Instead, it feels like he is delivering a line, saying what he thinks he is supposed to say the first time he gets me naked. It’s hollow, empty of anything resembling authentic desire.

  Does it matter in the end? Not really. Everyone gets what they want. I come, he comes, he stays the night, I make coffee in the morning. Then he buys us breakfast at a little diner down the street from my place. A diner with more kinds of pancakes on the menu than it has tables and chairs.

  The postcoital breakfast has promise until I order a large stack of chocolate chip pancakes and he says something about allowing me to eat just pancakes for breakfast this one time. I imagine he says the same thing to his daughter on occasion. He winks and tries to make it clear he’s joking with me, but then he keeps shoving bacon slices on my plate, claiming I need some kind of protein to make it a reasonable meal. The bacon keeps tainting the pools of syrup on my plate, and with each piece I eat, he only shoves more at me.

  I kiss him good-bye on the sidewalk in front of my house, watching him drive away in his very expensive and very sensible German sedan, then head inside and call my mom. Within three minutes, I switch my McKenna duty from Wednesdays to Thursdays. Because, as it turns out, I’m not big on people telling me what they think is “reasonable.”

  “Please tell me you brought the good stuff.”

  Behind me, whispering in my ear, Preston feigns desperation. When he grabs my upper arm and squeezes gently, I know he’s jonesing for what I’ve got in the canvas bag slung over my shoulder.

  I whisper back in mock conspiracy. “Of course. I know you can’t go more than a few weeks without it. Where’s your wife? You know she hates it when I hook you up and she isn’t around. She knows you’ll blow right through it before she has a taste.”

  “Don’t worry about her. Just give it to me.” Preston starts to playfully wrench the bag off my shoulder. Laughing, I pull it close and wrap my arms to fend off his advances.

  “Stacia! Get out here, your husband is totally assaulting me!”

  A red velvet curtain at the other end of the room sweeps back and Stacia emerges. With her glossy black hair styled in big forties-style curls and her alabaster skin contrasted by red lip stain and full black lashes, she’s like Vivien Leigh gone burlesque.

  She stops in the middle of the room and points her finger directly at Preston’s shaved head. “No way, Preston. She’s my tattoo client and my friend, so hands off the good shit. I’m the hookup here.”

  Before Preston can try again, I open the bag and pull out what they both want: two big, round loaves of still slightly warm country bread. My homemade bread smells of rich yeast, with a cracked top crust browned so dark it borders on just shy of burnt, and I know these two would fight over it like rabid dogs. To stop them from divorcing over their inability to share a loaf evenly, I started making two. We avoid a lot of unnecessary bloodshed that way.

  Bread baking began merely a way to pass the time after I landed on my mom’s doorstep, fresh from leaving Kyle and Cleveland behind. Because I showed up without the slightest plan beyond saving myself, I spent three months doing nearly nothing, simply trying to get my bearings living in a new city with no friends and the tug of depression niggling at me every minute of the day. So I watched a lot of television. As in, hours and hours a day. The Food Network and I became close, which evolved into a near-debilitating addiction to cooking blogs and food porn. As addictions went, this was probably the least problematic one I could have fallen into, so, slack-jawed, I trolled the pretty pictures of tasty things for hours on end, getting lost in the fantasy of all that perfection.

  One foray into baking up a loaf of no-knead bread quickly turned into wanting to understand hydration and autolyse, tweaking recipes, and putting every bit of my misguided angsty rage into punching down loaves. Eventually, my hands understood dough the same way I did people when I was working on them. I could tell from one touch if the dough was ready, if it was time to knead or if it should rest some more. And when people started liking the results, asking me to bake something just for them, I started to feel whole again.

  Standing between Stacia and Preston, I put one loaf in each hand and outstretch my arms.

  “No fighting. Just approach slowly and keep to your separate corners.”

  Stacia grabs hers first, lifts the whole thing up to her nose, and takes a huge inhale of the savory, yet almost sweet, yeasty goodness. Preston takes a different approach, snagging his in both hands and scurrying off toward his side of their shop, the art gallery and studio where he paints during the day. Placing the loaf on his drafting table and shoving a small canvas off to the side, he pulls a menacing pocketknife from his paint-speckled Carhartts and proceeds to saw off a piece. Groaning, he chews and looks straight at his wife with a smile, then turns his appreciative stare on me.

  “If I didn’t love Stacia like I do, I would woo your ass so hard, Devon. How are you still single? This is what most guys live for. A beautiful woman who can bake like this is a fucking wet dream.”

  Making a show of wiping his brow, Preston slides his little black browline glasses off and polishes them with the hem of his plaid shirt. Then he slips them back on and shakes his head a little before scooping up the bread and walking toward the rear staircase that leads to their loft upstairs. “I have to go find some butter and a quiet space to eat myself into a coma. Adios, senoritas.”

  Stacia’s heels click across the floor and she wraps one arm around my shoulders in a hug while still clinging to the bread with her other hand. Her teeny, rail-thin frame could easily absorb the calories of a hundred loaves before showing even the slightest softness, but underneath her delicate form is a sturdy power and strong heart that simply doesn’t yield. Even when she lost two babies she made with the man she loves, even when her Orthodox parents told her never to darken their door again because she started tattooing, she stood up straight and kept on walking. There is fight in that girl that goes on for days.

  Stacia was one of the first people I met in LA. After my massage license finally cleared in Cali, I went to work for a holistic day spa, and she was the second client I had there. By the time she got off the table, we had plans to meet for drinks that weekend. Since then, I’ve held her hand when she cried so hard over the two miscarriages that she passed out and, in better times, laughed at things we both found hilarious until we couldn’t catch our breath. In return, she has mercilessly straightened my ass out over dumb shit so many times I’ve lost track.

  Stacia begins wiping down her chair and setting up everything within reach, her little mise en place ritual. I’ve spent so many hours here in that chair, while she etched her inky vision across my back and down the backs of my arms, that I know her rites almost as well as she does. “Where’s Trevor?” Stacia asks as she sets one imposing-looking instrument up against the next.

  “He texted that traffic was a joke, so he might be a few minutes late.” Trevor decided he wanted another tattoo all of a sudden. Even though he still gets bleary-eyed remembering how unbelievably dramatic he was about the pain of the first and only tattoo he got on the inside of his forearm, something recently made him decide to go under Stacia’s hand again. The first time, he was trying to push away the darkness of Nic’s
death by imprinting the words of a Rilke poem on his skin so that he would remember how to live again. I don’t know exactly what this second round is about, but if I had one guess, the reason rhymes with “mate” . . . or “late” . . . or “gate.”

  The bell on the shop’s front door tinkles and Trevor comes striding in, grumbling and swearing as he pulls off his sunglasses. “I don’t know why I leave the fucking house some days. It’s like a goddam freeway to hell out there.”

  “Hello to you, too, asshole.”

  Trevor shrugs his shoulders and relaxes a bit, giving us a small apologetic smile. “Sorry. It’s just a joke out there. I’m in a shitty mood.”

  Moving across the room, he gives Stacia a hug and then gently slugs me in the shoulder.

  Rolling my eyes, I slug him back with more force than he did me. Kate left two days ago to speak at a writers conference in Austin—she’s a big-time novelist, though you’d never know it unless Trevor’s bragging about her many accomplishments—and Trevor’s been acting like it’s the end of days since then. So when he called me to meet up with him at Stacia’s for “something important,” I hightailed it over, worried my brother was about to do something more than a little impetuous.

  Which, by the looks of things, he totally is.

  Ever the efficient one, Stacia already has Trevor stripping out of his shirt and is prepping a spot over his heart. She’s smart enough to know that Trevor isn’t much for having patience. Only when she has him at her mercy in that chair will he have to play along with her plan. They’re standing in front of a full-length framed mirror along the wall, with the stencil applied to his skin, and he’s grinning and nodding at her. Stacia stands behind him, her small body almost completely obscured by his, squinting at the reflection to ensure everything is exactly as she wants it.