by L.J. Shen
I needed to come to terms with that but couldn’t. Every time I saw her using an inhaler—including today—I got so fucking mad, the need to punch a wall took over me. Nebulizers, pills, nasal sprays. My apartment was full of them now. I had Dr. Hasting on my speed dial, her physiotherapist’s address, and knew the exact times and days she went for appointments and what to do when she started pounding her chest and hissing like a snake. I knew that the average lifespan of a cystic fibrosis sufferer was thirty-seven. I knew all of the male diagnoses with CF were infertile, and many of the women had difficulties having children.
And I didn’t want to know any of these things.
Because she wasn’t a fucking illness.
She was a person I made plans with. And those plans exceeded the ten years she statistically had left.
I started the car but didn’t release the E-brake. Staring out to the neatest tree-lined street in the world, where my family resided, melancholy trickled into my heart.
What the fuck are you doing, asshole?
“You have a secret. Big one,” Rosie whispered, looking out her window.
Rosie and I didn’t get off on the best foot in our relationship. I wanted her to get used to us before she knew I was actually a we.
Her whole package may have been explosive, but mine was messy. Very.
“So do you,” I said. She offered me a startled glance. No denial there.
“Yeah,” she said. “We already suck at this relationship thingy.”
“Are you kidding?” I chuckled. “We’re fucking killing it. It’s a bump. A little dog ear in our book of awesome.”
“In my reality, every bump can have crucial consequences,” Rosie reminded me.
“And in our reality,” I countered, “I will always be here to make sure we smooth things over.”
We drove in circles for a while, just like we did our first night together in Todos Santos. I took her to all the places we visited before we had sex for the first time. To our old school, the marina, Liberty Park, and then, finally—to that bench. People were calling us, our phones buzzing and vibrating in our pockets. My father, mother, Rosie’s parents, Vicious and Millie. So when I parked on the hill overlooking the basketball court, I threw both phones into the glove compartment and shut it before we headed to our seat. Nervous didn’t quite capture the chaos that brewed within me. I was going to place my secret in her hand. A secret no one was supposed to know but my immediate family. And I was going to bare my weaknesses before her.
All of them.
Layer by layer.
Naked and exposed.
And hear for the first time if the real me—all of me—was still worth loving.
It didn’t feel right to sit. There was too much adrenaline in my bloodstream, too much sorrow in the air. The winter nipped at our skin, and Rosie was covered head-to-toe, as she should be.
“Let’s take a walk,” I said. She coughed a little.
“I’ll only slow you down. I can’t do long walks.”
“You never slow me down. You give me time to appreciate my surroundings.” My balls protested again. Stupid balls didn’t understand that making her happy would benefit every part of my body. Them included.
We strolled downhill, past lush green knolls, dodging low hanging branches and untrimmed vines that had begun to invade the cleared path. Her hands were tucked inside her coat and mine were in my pockets.
There was never a good time to break the kind of shit I was going to tell her, so I did the Band-Aid thing and went straight to the point.
“My biological mother left me to die in a Walmart bathroom when I was three hours old.” My tone was blasé. She continued slugging ahead, her muscles tensing at my confession. “She was a crackhead. The minute she found out she was knocked up, she took off, left her family in the countryside and disappeared somewhere in the gutters of Birmingham.”
Rosie was a smart girl. I knew she was bound to suspect something was going down.
Maybe she thought I was a deadbeat dad who fucked off once things got too real. Yeah, that wasn’t an option. I always wrapped up Dean Junior. I had personalized condoms, for fuck’s sake. The only person I didn’t use a condom with in my entire life was Rosie herself. I’d never felt another woman’s pussy, flesh-to-flesh, before her.
“I didn’t…” She tried to gulp all the oxygen she could get to stop herself from crying. “Please, continue.”
“I was found by the janitor. My mother, Nina, was found a couple blocks down the road, buying cigarettes. Her dress was covered in blood. When they took her to the hospital, she called her sister to help her deal with the legal trouble she had gotten herself into. Nina’s sister is my mom, Helen.”
“Jesus.” Rosie’s lips trembled, and so did the fingers she covered them with. A part of me, the logical part, I guess, acknowledged that it was fucked up that none of my friends knew I was adopted. But this, right here, was exactly why I wanted to keep it that way.
I was powerful.
I was imposing.
I was a motherfucking god.
These looks of pity and hushed whispers of sweet words did nothing to soothe the gash Nina created when she dumped my ass. Only reason I was willing to tolerate them now was because it was Rosie who was giving them to me. I would take any emotion from her. Even pity. Even hate. Anything, as long as it’s not indifference.
“My mom—my real mom, Helen, the one who raised me—decided to adopt me. I think Eli was game because…” I gave it some thought, a chuckle escaping my lips. “Well, because he is pussy-whipped, I suppose. He really loves my mom, you see. Nina didn’t want me anyway. She had a lot of shit going on in her life. I don’t even resent her for that. I mean, it’s pretty screwed up to leave your newborn in a public restroom, yeah. But that’s not why I hate her guts today. Not really. By the end of the first day of my life, we were all at the same Birmingham hospital. Nina signed my birth certificate and didn’t include my father’s name—she said she didn’t know, and honestly, it wasn’t that surprising to anyone in her inner circle—and my parents started filling out the paperwork for the adoption.”
“Oh, Dean. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry,” Rosie repeated herself. We were still walking, which was good. I didn’t want to have this conversation with the unnecessary discomfort of eye contact. Already, it felt like the truth was being ripped from my mouth like teeth, one by one. She took my hand, squeezed it in hers, and I drew in a breath, feeling the pressure in my lungs as they filled.
“My dad accepted a job offer in California, and they moved. Mom got pregnant with my sisters. And I looked so much like my family that no one bothered to ask. People just assumed I was Helen and Eli Cole’s son. We never bothered to correct them—because why the fuck, you know? It worked. We got away with it, and the lie became so big, so fucking huge, it was too late to backpedal and expose it to the world.
“It’s not like my family ever made me feel different. My sisters know. My parents always treated me the same as them, so it’s not like my adoption mattered to anyone.” I paused, scowling. “Well, anyone but me. My mom was under the false illusion I could bond with Nina. My dad believes that everyone deserves a chance—well, he would. He’s a lawyer. His job is to defend criminals. Either way, they always made me go and visit her in Alabama. Every summer until I was eighteen. That was the deal.”
I thought back to my last summer with Nina when I turned eighteen, and a chill broke down my spine. The gold-digging bitch. The mere thought of what she did had my fists itching for a bloody fight.
“At some point in her train wreck life, Nina got married to a dude named Donald Whittaker. People called him Owl because he used to deal drugs from two a.m. to six a.m. on street corners. Real catch, as you can imagine. Whittaker got locked up, was released, and decided to move to the outskirts. Bought a piece of land—a farm—and lived the farmer’s dream. Nina kicked her crack habit, so as far as my parents were concerned, she was clean. She looked clean, because she was n
o longer shoving needles with poison into her veins. She moved to more dignified mommy drugs. Adderall, Xanax, oxy. The fun stuff that makes your addiction fairly invisible. And I never bothered to correct them because I was a pathetic little bastard who hoped to shit that one day the woman who gave birth to him would realize that he is worthy and love him.”
“Dean.” she shook her head, her tears flying from her cheeks. “Oh, Dean.”
“Every summer when I came to see them, she made me bike the twenty miles from the farm to the city to get her her housewife drugs.”
“Why did you agree to do it?”
“Because I wanted to make her happy?” I laughed, a bitter lump twisting in the back of my throat. “Because I sought her acceptance? I mean, how fucking worthless can you be when your goddamn mom wants to flush you down a toilet before you even open your eyes. At seventeen, I finally opened my eyes and said no to spending the summer with them. Told my parents I was tired of doing labor work for two months. They agreed, but then I fucked it up at a party and they decided to send me anyway as punishment. It turned out to be the worst summer of my life, because it was then that I realized not only Nina didn’t love me…she fucking hated me.”
Rosie was crying. I didn’t dare look at her, but I felt her shoulder vibrating against mine. And I hated myself for making her cry, and I hated Nina for making me have this conversation in the first place. “To make a long story short, Nina did some deplorable things to me when I was a kid. I was a pawn in a very fucked-up game. A means to an end. She used me as an errand boy and made me do some stupid, illegal shit, then bribed my ass with alcohol and weed to make sure I shut up and didn’t rat her out to my parents. I was twelve when I had my first bottle of whiskey and hit from a blunt. I thought it was cool that Nina and Owl gave me stuff like that. That it meant that they saw me as a grown-up.”
Rosie gulped and looked away. “That’s why you do it,” she said. “That’s why you’re an addict.”
My nose twitched. “That’s how it started. It made me feel good. Weed and alcohol made my summers move faster. They put a smokescreen on my reality—a thin shell that no one had managed to crack through. And so I carried the habit, even when I came back to a place I did love, back with my parents and sisters.”
“Nina never told me who my dad was. That bothered me. I knew she was a fuck-up, but I always wanted to know if I was a full-blown fuck-up from both sides, or if maybe I had some redeeming genes in me. And after shit reached a boiling point eleven years ago during my last visit on the farm, I decided to drop the subject and walk away. Cut her out of my life. It worked through college, because I had nothing to my name but a trust fund and a dorm room. But when we founded Fiscal Heights Holdings and started rolling in the dough, she agreed to tell me who he was.”
“And?” Rosie asked, a little breathlessly. I slowed down my steps.
“And she wants six hundred thousand dollars to give me his name.”
“That’s insane!” Rosie protested, stomping her leg on the ground. I halted and turned around to look at her. Her face was red, streaked with pain. My pain. I put it there. And even though it was never my goal to hurt her feelings, I enjoyed her warmth, because she burned for me.
“So? Did you ever pay her?” She kicked some mud around.
“Nope.” I ran a hand over her braid, tugging at it. “But that’s why she’s acting like a deranged stalker and keeps calling me every half hour. Whittaker’s farm is losing money, and she has an expensive coke habit to keep up. Prescription drugs just don’t cut it anymore. She hates her husband. Wants out. And she wants me to help her. That’s out of the fucking question.”
“But you want to know who your father is, right?” Rosie blinked, confused.
I nodded. “Yeah, but the feeling is not mutual. If it was, he would have contacted me by now.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know of your existence,” my girlfriend suggested. That was what I hoped. And prayed. And convinced myself every night.
“Or maybe he doesn’t care.” I resumed walking, and she fell in step with me.
“Or maybe he’s scared of your reaction after all these years,” she countered. “Maybe, Dean, you need to do what’s right for you, even if it isn’t what Nina wants.”
“Or maybe.” I was acting like a fucking four-year-old, I knew it, but couldn’t stop. “He is competing with Val over the worst parent award—there’s a lot of candidates for this title—and just like Luna is better off without her no-show mom, I’m better off without him.”
We stopped in the middle of what looked like the woodlands but was less than a mile away from the car. Rosie was striding at a snail’s pace. She turned to face me, and I don’t think I’d ever seen so many tears on one face. Her cheeks and chin were wet, gray clouds of mascara fanning her lashes.
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said, and she was. But I didn’t want her pity. I wanted her to know that I was a beast of a man who’d carry us both through storms and hurricanes. Hell and back. Through life—and if necessary, then yes, even through death. “I can’t believe you hid this from us all those years.” Rosie wiped a tear with the sleeve of her black pea coat. “Your friends have the right to be there for you, Dean. You should tell them.”
Yeah, not happening.
“Nah-ah, baby doll. It is what it is. We all have our secrets, trust me. That’s what makes us who we are. It doesn’t make our friendship any less strong.” And it was the truth.
“You know what you need to do?” Rosie chewed on her bottom lip, contemplating. I stared at her. Even if she had told me to do naked burpees all the way down to Todos Santos and back, I would.
“What would that be?”
“You need to get to the belly of the beast and kill it.” Her eyes zinged with determination. I smirked, tucking a loose lock that fell from her braid behind her ear.
“Killing Nina? Tempting, but I don’t think she’s worth the jail time.”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean talk to her. Pay her the money. See him. Move on with your life, no matter what you find out. The truth of the matter is, you are never going to let go of your vices if you don’t, and I think we both know that.”
“She doesn’t deserve the money,” I murmured.
“After what she’s done,” she placed her palm on my neck, dragging it down to my torso, “nothing will ever make her happy. She’s tainted. You don’t come back from that. Making others feel bad is never gratifying, no matter how badly you’re hurt. Compassion, however, is the most rewarding trait one could have. That’s why all wars eventually end. That’s why most people love their children, not abuse them. Promise me you’ll answer her?”
I nodded, even though dealing with Nina’s ass was the last thing on my to-do list. My life was complicated as it was. I was crazy about a girl who went to sleep every day not knowing if she was going to wake up the next. And I was fighting the alcohol demon, wrestling my way out of his claws. Every. Single. Day.
“I promise,” I said. “I will do this for you.”
“No,” Rosie stressed, pulling at the collar of my Ted Baker floral sweat bomber. “For you,” she corrected, the tears still running down her face. Then she took a step back, just when I was about to reach and hug her.
“My turn.”
“I’m listening.” My eyes clung to her face. Rain started sprinkling on our heads, and we both looked up, silently staring at the ashen sky. I took off my coat and bundled her with it, then reached across her back and behind her knees and lifted her into my arms, honeymoon-style, and began walking up the hill back to our car. It was just a sprinkle, not really all that cold, but I was still worried about her, even if I hid it every time we were together for her sake.
Her arms knotted around my neck. She looked down to her midsection and started talking.
“A year ago, when Vicious and Millie reconnected and he hooked us up with this crazy awesome health plan, I met Dr. Hasting for the first time. She wanted to run a bunch of test
s on me to get a better feel of my overall condition, especially as I was just recovering from another lung infection I couldn’t seem to shake off. I was about to get back to nursing school when she told me that…” Rosie stopped, swallowing hard and shaking her head. Her eyes were closed. I broke a thousand times inside, but on the outside, I stared at her blankly, waiting for more. She gulped air before she opened her mouth again. “She told me that I shouldn’t bother going back to school, because I could never be a nurse. My immune system is so weak at this point, I have to get her okay before I even board a plane, which is why I was kind of shocked and worried when you picked me up to the airport for Thanksgiving. There was no way I could ever work around sick people, so she suggested I might as well look for something more practical to study. But I love helping people.” She coughed out the last few words, and I picked up my pace a little, a dash of panic thrown into my gut along with the wrenching feeling of grief. “So I decided to volunteer instead. The only place that is absolutely sterile from diseases is, you guessed it…”
“The ICN.” I finished for her. The place that served Rosie a constant reminder that she couldn’t have kids. And she still did it. Fuck my life.
“Dr. Hasting didn’t just come to me bearing bad news about nursing school, though. She also said that it looked like I am completely infertile. I can’t have any kids. Ever. Too much mucus around my reproductive organs. She said it’s like dropping a sponge into a pool full of sticky glue, hoping it’d make it to the bottom. Technically feasible, but extremely unlikely.” She bit her lower lip, staring ahead at nothing.
“Rosie…” I inhaled, my nostrils flaring. “Baby, do you have any idea how many options are out there for you? For us?” And, yes, it was no longer about her. It was about us. We were in it for the long haul. We were in it for forever, however long forever may last. “So fucking many, not only medically, but also adoption. We’re rich and young and have spotless criminal records.” I was already bunching us together as a married couple and conveniently giving her access to every single dime of my multi-million-dollar empire. As I said, full-blown stalker mode with this girl. “We could adopt a kid tomorrow morning if we wanted to. We are the perfect candidates.”