by Ava Alise
“Yeah right,” I say. “Do we have tea?”
“Uh. I think Paul has some of that nasty smelling shit in there.”
He sets his glass in the sink and heads for the patio door. “See you when I get back. If you’re still here. If not, tell MJ Uncle Nard says hello.”
“Alright,” I say half-heartedly and focus on finding the tea.
Thirty minutes later, Red and I are in the car headed down the highway. She has apologized about three dozen times, but really hasn’t said much past that. I want to ask her about her dream, but I can tell it was a bit more than just a dream. I don’t want to pry, I’m sure she will tell me if she wants me to know.
“Thanks again for this morning, Chris,” she says as we stand in front of her door.
“… And last night.” She tries to smile, but her eyes are still hurting.
She’s embarrassed. I should say something.
I don’t know what to say and, in this moment, I want to kiss her, pull her close, and put a real smile on her face. I don’t kiss her, but I do pull her against me.
After she goes inside, I’m back on the highway and headed toward Kinderprep Academy.
“Daddy, it was huge! Like this…” MJ says, holding his arms as wide as they can go.
“Really?”
“Grandpa Fred’s fish was gray, and mine was yellow, but mine was the biggest.”
“Well, that’s awesome, Frog.”
We are pulling up to my parents’ house. I didn’t tell them that we were coming for dinner, but I don’t have to, Mom always makes enough for us, even though we only typically come on Sundays. Usually, I would just be getting back from working the weekend and, instead of rushing home and cooking, we just come here. My Mom is sweet, and it doesn’t matter how much I decline her offers; she insists. Throughout the week, I will always find random servings of casserole or whatever else she has cooked in my freezer.
Not a second after we enter the house, MJ is on the search for Pops to tell him about fishing in Florida. Fishing is their thing—I don’t really care for it, neither does my brother. So when Pops discovered his grandson loved fishing, he almost pissed himself. I was happy too because he finally stopped guilting me into going with him.
I drop MJ’s book bag on the couch and follow my nose into the kitchen.
“God, Mom, that smells like heaven.”
“Well, hey there.” She smiles at me as she mixes something delicious in a very large pot.
I walk over, kiss her on the cheek, and grab a seat at the counter.
“How was your… weekend?” she says with a knowing tone.
This is as close as she will ever get to asking me about work; she always hated my job at the club. Surprised I told her? Of course, I did. After having to sit your parents down at eighteen and tell them that not only have knocked up your girlfriend, but you’re moving in with her immediately, you realize there isn’t any reason to keep much else from them.
“My weekend was great,” I tell her, maybe a little too enthusiastically. My tone is due to the amazing weekend I had with Red, but the disgusted look on my mother’s face tells me a lecture is coming.
“Chris,” she sighs, “how do you ever expect to find a nice girl, if you are constantly putting it on display for every woman in town? I know what you guys do, I’ve seen the movies. There is no way a nice girl will put up with that.”
“Mom, I don’t have a problem meeting women.”
“We aren’t talking about women. We are talking about a girlfriend, someone who will make you happy. I just want you and MJ to be happy,” she says, looking concerned.
I sigh, “We are happy. We’re great, we don’t need anyone else.”
She has to be getting tired of this conversation.
“Anyway, I quit, Thursday was my last show.”
Her eyes snap to mine, and a look of relief washes over her face.
“With all the mess with Shayla, I think it may be time for a change.”
The four of us have dinner, and I cryptically fill Pops in on the recent changes in my life. I didn’t want to clue MJ in that I quit my job. Even though he has no understanding of my occupation, I don’t want him repeating it around Shayla. I also take this moment to tell Pops how much ‘help’ his lawyer Larry was, and that I just received an email from a well-known family law lawyer for an appointment. My pops is loyal to a fault sometimes, so he wasn’t happy to hear that I wasn’t working with Larry.
“So what are you going to do now?” Pops asks, through a mouthful of chicken stew.
“You know how sometimes I help you out at the shops? I was thinking of buying one of my own. I have enough experience, and I’ve been watching you run them my whole life.”
“Do you have the money to invest?” Pop says.
“Mr. Greenwood’s Auto Shop in town, he’s posted it up for sale. I have more than half of what he’s asking in cash, and I can get a loan for the rest.”
A look passes between my parents, while MJ makes pea forts with his mashed potatoes. I know what’s coming.
“You don’t have to get a loan, son, we’ll help. We’d be glad to.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I really want to do this on my own. I want to show my son what it means to work hard. No one gave you a handout, so I won’t accept one either.”
We go back and forth like this for a while. They lecture me on the financial strain that owning a business can cause, and how unexpected money pits can arise. Twenty minutes later, my food is ice cold, and I have agreed to a business deal with my father. We will go into business as equal business partners, and he will allow me to buy him out once we get out of the red.
MJ and I get home after 7:00p.m. In the few minutes it took me to drive from my parents’ house to our duplex, MJ fell asleep. This is earlier than usual, and I hate that he didn’t get his bath, but I know he’s exhausted. It’s been a busy few days for him, so I carry him straight to bed.
As much as I love hanging out with the guys, I really love coming home. I stick the chicken stew and mashed potatoes my mother forced me to take home in the freezer and fall onto the couch. I realize now that I’ve quit the club, I really don’t have a good reason to keep my room at the house, but I’m not ready to let it go. There is no way I will bring women or the guys here to hang out, not even Nard. I mean, Nard and JJ have been here, but only to stop in for a minute, never to hang out. My mind travels to Red, and I dig my phone out of my pocket.
ME: Hey, sexy. Feeling better?
RED: Yes. I died of embarrassment, but I’m back now.
ME: After what we did last night, the last thing you should ever be is embarrassed around me. Naked, maybe?
RED: Oh hell. Now I’m blushing.
I imagine her biting back a smile as I text her back. I tell her I want to see her again soon, and she agrees; this makes me smile. I won’t lie, I was kind of worried that she’d freak and not want to face me again. She’s just a hook-up, true, and I have Haley and many others I can hook-up with in her stead. I don’t know, though; I would hate for things to end as fast as they begun and, for some reason, the idea of never being able to touch her again makes something bad happen in my stomach.
Yawning, I toss my phone on the coffee table, turn on the TV, and lay back on the couch. I’m still pretty tired and will probably call it early tonight.
A loud explosion echoes through the living room, waking me as Will Smith defeats the aliens in “Independence Day”, and I zone in on a knock at the door.
I grab my phone to check the time and to see if anyone called.
Who in the hell would be knocking on my door at 8:30 p.m.?
My parents have a key, and no one else would show up here without calling first.
A yawn wrecks through me as I shuffle to the door and open it. A man I don’t recognize is standing on the other side, holding magazines and smiling at me.
“Hi, are you Mr. Chris Preston?”
“Yeah,” I say, not hiding my annoyance.
“You’ve officially been served.”
LIZ
The apartment is quiet, Ros must not be home. I close the door behind me and lean against it. After Chris dropped me off, I came into the house, changed my clothes, and immediately left for a run. I don’t usually run in the neighborhood, but today was an exception. I ended up at the playground. I don’t know why, but there’s something about watching kids that lift my spirits. I guess it reminds me that everything in the world can’t be shitty if the kids can still laugh and play.
It took everything I had not to burst into tears in the car with Chris earlier. He didn’t need to see that, not again. God, I suck. Last night was so great; it had to be the best hook-up in the history of hookups. Granted, I don’t have much to compare it to, but I know a mountain had to move somewhere. Doesn’t matter, though. I had to make it completely weird by ugly crying the morning after. Who does that? How much awkward can two people take? I probably broke things for good. Maybe I’m not ready for a sex buddy after all.
I really wasn’t prepared for that dream; it was beyond horrible. I watched my sister die over and over in my sleep last night. Each time I’d try to stop it, but each time it would end the same. I saw Chris and knew it was a dream, but the pain and terror had gripped me so tightly, I couldn’t breathe through it. Usually, when I have a dream like that, I take a few deep breaths and repeat, “It’s okay. You’re okay,” but it didn’t work this morning. I kept repeating it, but it wasn’t okay and I wasn’t okay. My sister’s screams echoed in my head, and every breath I took felt like fire. Chris’ reaction surprised me; hell, my reaction surprised me. I would’ve expected him to be completely weirded out, but he wasn’t. Yet another layer of compassion hidden under his hard body and perfect smile. I guess that’s why they say to never judge a book by its cover. I appreciate him not making me talk about it.
Pushing myself off the door, I head toward my bedroom for a shower. The run helped a lot, but I need to shake this mood because Sean will be here in thirty minutes. If not, Sean will be able to see right through me, and I don’t want to talk about it with him either. By the time I met him, it had been a year since Della had died. Living was too hard, so I chose to stand between surviving and existing, and that wasn’t even my lowest point. Grayson had already served a year of his four-year sentence, and I was starting to be able to breathe again. We didn’t talk about my past; it hurt too much. He knew that I had a sister who died and that I was getting divorced, but not much else. Sean never had to watch me hurt, and I preferred it that way. He had no idea Della tried to introduce us that night at the ball; I’m not even sure how much he even knew about Della’s death before I told him. They weren’t friends, just lab partners that semester. After things kicked off with us, and love started growing, I never wanted to show him that hurting part of me; he didn’t need to know that girl. We were months into our relationship before I was able to start opening up more about what happened with Della, and even then, it was only in small doses. Sean quickly became all I knew. He took away the pain and forced me to focus on the things I could control, like my life, my grades, and my career. Everything about him was so opposite of Grayson that I knew immediately why Della wanted me to be with a guy like him.
Sean knocks promptly, thirty minutes later, and my heart sinks as I walk toward the door. It’s starting to hit me that this will officially be our first time hanging out since the breakup, and I really don’t know what to expect, I don’t even know what this is. I’ll just call it a ‘maybe date’—maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I take a head-clearing breath and open the door.
“Hey,” Sean says, and my heart sings. I greet him with a smile and step back allowing him inside.
“So, how was your weekend?” I ask, rubbing my sweaty palms against my jeans. We are sitting on the couch and have been making agonizing small talk for the last seven minutes and twenty-two seconds, twenty-three seconds, twenty-four seconds. I wasn’t expecting this to be weird. I’m probably not helping. I’ve been so stiff and tense sitting next to him it’s probably ruining the mood. My heart is screaming at me because while I’m ecstatic he’s here it still hurts. I don’t expect him to apologize every time we see each other, but I know there is still so much left unsaid.
“So, Tegan said he saw you and Ros out at The Lounge a few weeks ago. He said you were wearing some slinky red dress.”
“Yeah, I remember seeing him.”
“He also said you were wasted,” he frowns.
“Well, it was my divorce celebration, Sean.”
And the night I met Chris.
“Wasn’t that the week of exams? Don’t you think that you could’ve utilized your time better?”
“I did great on my exams. My divorce deserved to be celebrated, you know what that meant for me.”
His jaw tightens.
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to carry on like a drunk, Liz. It’s irresponsible; you’re too smart for that. Are you still set to go to Emory in the fall?”
“Yes,” I sigh.
Words dissolve on my tongue, I stand and ask if he’s hungry. In the shower, I had made up my mind to attack this thing head on, ask him how he felt about us and where he wants to go from here. Instead, I dutifully fetch him popcorn and beer as we watch a movie. Well, he’s watching the movie, I’m watching him, analyzing his every move. Like how he leans back comfortably, allowing his knee to touch mine, or how he throws his arm across the back of the couch, not around me like he normally would, but as if he would be open to the possibility.
God, I miss him.
Okay, New Liz.
Right after the movie, I will pull up my big girl panties and ask him where we go from here. It’s not too forward, right? It needs to happen, right after this movie.
Decision made, I’m finally able to relax. We’re halfway through “SuperBad” when we decide the popcorn isn’t enough, so I’m off to the kitchen to throw together a quick stir fry. Sean follows me into the kitchen and breaks the tension as he jokes about the first time I tried cooking him stir fry. I was so nervous that I burned the chicken, and instead of just starting over, I convinced myself I could fix it with a little seasoning. That night we ate crispy chicken stir-fry, and as delicious as that sounds, it wasn’t.
He watches me cook, and I watch him. My heart is so happy and, for a second, I forget the current status of our relationship. We smile, laugh, and pretend while we stuff ourselves sick with stir fry and a pick apart every hilarious moment in “SuperBad”.
“I kind of miss this,” he says after the movie ends. He leans back on the couch and grins.
“What do you mean, this?” I ask, hoping for the answer I want to hear.
I miss us, being with you, being together, say it.
“You know, our banter. You’re always talking shit about something,” he laughs.
Not knowing how to respond, or how I feel about his reply, I give him a smile, hoping he interpret it as “Yeah, it’s because I’m awesome and you know you miss me.”
As the time winds down and as he prepares to leave, I begin to panic. My words, all of my questions, my one question—everything is stuck. I’ve been praying he says something first, to take the conversation where I need it to go because I can’t find the courage to do it. This night has been good and bad. Good to know we can just move past him breaking my heart, and bad to know we can just move past him breaking my heart. He’s too casual. Earlier in the night, it was excusable, now it’s beginning to feel cold. I know Sean may be a lot of things, but he’s not cold.
“This was nice,” he says. I walk him to the door; he opens it and turns to face me.
“Yeah,” I sigh.
I drop my eyes to the floor, and he backs a step out of the door. When my eyes return to his, I’m shocked to see pain dancing in them. The forced smile I’ve been holding begins to hurt, and I know he must be able to see through to my pain as well.
“I want to do this again,” he says and walks away quickly
.
Twenty minutes later, I’m lying in my bed alone, feeling empty and bruised. Using my foot, I push my overnight bag onto the floor and throw a pillow across the room. I think I understand Ros a little better now. Every time I mention Sean’s name, she turns into the ‘Fuck him’ police, and now I see why. Just a word, or lack thereof, from him can turn me inside out.
My mind races toward Old Liz, wanting to submerge myself into missing, needing, yearning for Sean, but I know I can’t let myself go there. Instead, I roll over and call Kesha.
I need a distraction.
“Hey Kesh, you home?”
“Just walking in. Why do you sound sad?”
“Come downstairs.”
I meet Kesha at the door, opening it before she knocks, and her expression goes from ‘what’s wrong’ to ‘what the hell’ the second she walks into the room. I probably look like I’m about to burst into tears.
“What’s going on, Liz?” she asks, heading straight to the kitchen to get a corkscrew. Kesha must have sensed this was a red wine moment and bought an already chilled bottle.
I tell her about my movie with Sean, how high it got my hopes up, but inevitably got me nowhere.
“I’m so sick of feeling like this, Kesh.”
“So why don’t you just ask him where y’all stand? He has been making himself more of a factor in your life since you told him about the divorce, maybe he doesn’t know how to proceed,” she says, very carefully.
“Maybe.”
A burn behind my eyes begins to match the burn of the wine as it trickles down my throat. I take a deep breath and force myself to go on.
“I’m not ready,” I say, dropping my eyes from hers and finishing my glass of wine in a large gulp.
“Life was finally getting somewhat close to being back on track. The way it should’ve been from the start. So no, I can’t ask him yet. I can’t ask him where we stand because I’m honestly not ready to hear the answer. How fucking dumb is that?” I mock a laugh at myself and grab the bottle of wine, quickly pouring another glass and bringing it to my lips. I feel the contrast of cold wine flooding down my throat as warm tears run from my eyes.