Not Looking For Love: Episode 5

by Bourne, Lena

  "Or maybe it wouldn't," he whispers.

  I grip his hand in both of mine, but don't lean against him again.

  He sighs and leans his head back, staring up at the ceiling. "It's gonna be such a long day today."

  "What are you going to do?" I ask, terror's iron fist gripping my throat, making my voice squeaky and brittle. I can't stop picturing the cold morgue, the bloody sheet.

  "I'm gonna go see my dad. Hopefully Marjorie won't be there anymore, but she probably slept over. Then I'll probably have to finish the shit Mike started last night—"

  "No!" the yell leaves my mouth faster than the thought which preceded it. He winces because my nails are digging into his palm and shakes off my hand.

  "There's no other way, Gail," he says evenly like he's talking to a dumb five year old. "No one wants me over there. Mike probably spoke for all of them when he came at me with the bat last night. But I think I kinda have to go see them anyway."

  "How can you say that?" I shriek. His eyes are the color of dirty snow again, none of it melting.

  "Which part?" he asks, like I'm the one talking dumb.

  "All of it. Scott, accidents happen. Your brother went to prison instead of you, I'm sure he could see something like this as a possibility."

  "How does that change anything?"

  His chest is heaving, rosy color rising in his cheeks. And I have no words with which to make it alright. His phone rings somewhere by the door, and I scramble off the bed to get it for him, thankful this conversation is paused for now.

  I hand him his jacket and sit on the edge of the bed, as he fishes the phone from the pocket.

  "Yeah," he says.

  "Where are you, Scott?" I hear Andrew's voice through the phone, clear like he's on speakerphone.

  Scott's eyes lock on mine, and there's no trace of ice or snow in them now, like it all melted while I wasn't looking. "Around, why?"

  "I have a locksmith here, at your place. Come get the keys," Andrew says, and Scott mutters OK, already climbing off my bed, holding the phone against his shoulder and cradling his left arm in his right.

  "I have to go now," he tells me, releasing his phone so it bounces off the bed and lands on the floor.

  I get up too and look around for my jeans. "I'm coming with you."

  "No, Gail." He's already pulling on his pants, wincing, his eyes frozen again.

  I walk over and help him dress, standing so close my head brushes his chin as I straighten up. "I want to help you with this. You'd do the same for me."

  He gazes at me for a moment, his expression stuck between the mean, menacing Scott, and the one who loves me. "It could get nasty."

  "Which is exactly why I should be there."

  He lays his hand on my lower back and pulls me closer, resting his cheek on the top of my head. "No, Gail. That's why you shouldn't be there."

  He smells of clean sea air, my fabric softener and alcohol, and I wrap my arms around his waist, pressing my head into his chest. His heart is beating faster than mine ever could. "You can't stop me."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Andrew's waiting for us at the curb in front of the bakery. Soft snowflakes are dancing on the air, settling in Scott's hair, and my entire chest is struggling to fill with the childish glee I always feel on the first day of snow each winter. Only today, the glee is stuck under the heavy, immovable slab of panic and pain. And I'm not even sure all of it is my own. The shrill sound of a drill echoes from the alleyway that leads to Scott's apartment.

  "I wish you'd told me you weren't spending the night at home, Scott," Andrew says, his breath misting between us. "You really scared me."

  Scott is looking past him, rubbing his eyes with his right hand. His left arm is hanging across his stomach in the sling I fashioned out of an old scarf, and I hope it doesn't hurt anymore. "Well, I didn't know you'd come here at dawn."

  "I didn't think you'd fix the door on your own," Andrew says and his eyes flick to me, the only sign that I'm really standing there, that I didn't actually stay behind in my bedroom. "Did you tell her?"

  Scott nods, and I take a step closer to him, wrapping my arm around his like a pantomime answer to the question Andrew's really asking. I did stay and I am here now, not going anywhere.

  A short, stocky guy carrying a toolbox comes out and hands Andrew a set of keys. "All done."

  Andrew reaches into his pocket and hands him some cash.

  "You could've called me last night, Scott," the man says, pocketing the money, his eyes stopping on my breasts just a little too long. "I would've come."

  "Alright, Tom, thanks. Maybe next time," Scott says, his eyes piercing the man's back as he climbs in his truck so hard I'm surprised he isn't keeling over.

  Andrew hands the keys to Scott, and adjusts his hat, sending snowflakes tumbling to the ground. "How about some coffee?"

  "I think I should go see Dad," Scott mutters.

  Andrew sighs and shakes his head slightly, but only I see it, because Scott is still looking off down the street.

  "Is Mike there?" Scott asks.

  "No, but Marjorie is," Andrew mutters.

  "And later I thought I'd go see Derek. Can I do that today?"

  Scott's eyes finally fix on Andrew's and I know he wants to be told he doesn't have to do any of it. And judging by the expression on Andrew's face I almost believe that's what he'll hear.

  "Alright," Andrew finally says. "But maybe she should wait here."

  I grip Scott's arm harder. "No, I'm coming."

  Scott shrugs, his shoulder bumping into my neck. "She's kind of used to getting what she wants."

  "Stop talking about me like I'm not here," I say, my voice echoing in the silent street, like maybe I'm really not.

  Scott smiles down at me, but mostly with his eyes. "See what I mean?"

  "It's just that it won't be an easy visit," Andrew tells me, and I was so wrong. His eyes are nothing like Scott's, nowhere as mysterious and deep.

  "I'll be alright," I mutter, and then we're walking along, tiny snowflakes landing on the pavement in front of me, all perfect and unique, soft as dreams, and just as fragile.

  Andrew holds the door open for us once we reach the house, and the stuffy heat inside hits me like I've just walked into a furnace. The TV is blaring with some children's shows, and kids' laughter echoes from the living room. I feel more than see Scott cringe, as I help his take off his jacket.

  When I look back down the hallway, a tiny girl is standing in the doorway to the living room, with a long strand of blonde hair wrapped around her finger. She can't be much older than five or six.

  "Uncle Scott!" she shrieks, and then the hallway is filled with her thumping footsteps as she runs toward him.

  I step out of the way as he crouches, pulling his cast from the sling moments before she crashes into his chest, her thin arms wrapped tightly around his neck.

  He lifts her up. "How are you, Amanda?"

  "I knew you'd come, Uncle Scott," she shrieks and I'm swallowing hard, blinking, because all I'm seeing is me and Sarah playing in the sands, seconds before the storm took her from me forever.

  A boy pokes his head through the door, a baby bottle hanging from his mouth. It falls to the floor with a clank and he runs forward too, wrapping his arms around Scott's leg.

  "I told Luke you'd come," the girl is saying. "And Mommy. I told her too."

  It all only takes a few seconds, but I feel like I've been standing in this hall for hours, maybe days.

  "Come here, Amanda, Luke!" A short woman brushes past me, knocking me back against the coatrack, as she tries to pull both of her kids away from Scott at the same time.

  Scott tries to put Amanda down, but she's still holding on too tight, and her mother is screeching now for her to let go, tears running down her cheeks like rivers.

  "Alright, Marjorie, calm down," Scott says, and pries Amanda's hands from his neck.

  "Don't tell me to calm down, Scott. You don't get to tell me to calm down!"


  Luke is already standing behind his mother, his eyes wide, shooting from Scott, to Amanda and his mother, his bottom lip shaking like he's about to start crying too.

  "Not in front of the children," Andrew mutters, startling me, since I had no idea he was still standing right behind my back.

  "I'll do what I want, Andrew!" Marjorie yells and Amanda finally lets go of Scott, tears bubbling in her eyes. Her mother grabs her arm, and ushers both her children down the hall and into the living room.

  Andrew steers both Scott and me into the kitchen. Tina's sipping from a cup of steaming coffee by the window, staring at the snowflakes now coming down hard and fast.

  She turns as we enter, smiles sadly at Scott, then goes back to watching the snow. Her curls are all flattened at the back of her head, and she's wearing a light blue bathrobe like she just got up.

  Marjorie storms back into the kitchen, her big layered haircut bouncing as she strides right up to Scott. She's wearing so many rings she'll leave scars if she strikes him. The belt of her bright orange bathrobe is cinched so tight, I'm not sure where her real waist is because it can't be that tiny, not with her huge boobs and hips spilling over on either side of it.

  She stops right in front of him, panting, her head not reaching much higher than his chest, a lilac fingernail shaking as she points it at his eyes. "This is all your fault. All of it. I could kill you, literally murder you for this."

  Tears are flowing down her cheeks again, doing nothing to mask the hatred burring bright and clear in her eyes.

  "We said we'd be adults about this, Marjorie," Andrew says, his voice sharp as the knife I'm afraid she'll grab at any moment to carry out her terrible threat.

  "Adults? I don't think Scott here falls under that category!" Marjorie yells. "He's just a baby who had to be saved by his big brother, and look what happened now. Just look what happened! What are you even doing here? You destroyed this whole family! You should have just done the right thing and stayed away. Stayed in jail, because that's where you belong. You, not Derek!"

  Her yells are still echoing in my mind, but the silence that fills the kitchen after she stops yelling rips right through my heart.

  I step closer to Scott and wrap my arm around his, willing it to stop trembling.

  Marjorie's eyes fix on mine, her lips climbing up into a snarl. "And who are you?"

  "I'm the one who'll make you stop talking like this, if you don't do it yourself." I have no idea where the words are coming from, or which Gail I'm channeling to make my voice so menacing and firm. Or maybe it's actually granddaddy Henderson, ruling over his family of drug dealers and killers, somewhere high up in the Ozarks. But it's a threat I'll carry out a thousand times over, if she doesn't back off.

  She's squinting at me, her mouth open like she's about to say something, but no sound comes out. They're all staring at me now, even Amanda who's peeking into the room through the cracked kitchen door, chewing on a lock of her hair.

  "This is not how families should behave," I say more quietly, but just as firmly. "No matter what."

  And if Mike came in right now, waving around a baseball bat, I'd take him on too.

  "I will not be spoken to like this, not by some random stranger," Marjorie shrieks, looking at Tina and Andrew for support. But apart from Tina's sad smile in her direction she gets nothing.

  "Gail's right," Scott's dad says and opens the door wide, ushering Amanda and Luke inside. I step aside as he walks up to Scott and pulls him down into a hug.

  "You should have come last night, son," he says, and kisses both his cheeks. Alcohol fumes are wafting off him like we're standing in a brewery.

  "I didn't think I was all that welcome," Scott mutters, sounding like he's about ten.

  "Of course you're welcome here, Scott," Andrew says, taking off his glasses and rubbing them on his sweater. "Can we just have some breakfast now?"

  Marjorie humphs and grabs her children, leading them from the room. A few moments later I can hear her heavy footsteps thumping above our heads.

  The front door slams and I lunge to stand between Scott and the only way into the kitchen, his arm falling through thin air as he tries to stop me. A second later, Mike's standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his bottom lip swelled black and blue to three times its normal size, the bruise extending down his chin and up towards his eye.

  But his dark eyes aren't hard and cold now, and his hands are shaking as he looks from Scott's cast up into his face.

  "I'm sorry about last night, Scott. I don't know what I was thinking," he says, not moving from the doorway.

  I glance back at Scott, who's staring Mike like he's not going to accept the apology, his eyes darker than pitch.

  "It's alright, whatever," he finally says.

  "I shouldn't've come at you like that," Mike mutters, and finally takes a step into the kitchen. "I don't know what happened."

  "As long as it won't ever happen again, right?" his dad says, and wraps his arm around Mike's shoulder leading him to the table.

  "Right," Mike mutters and sits looking down at the wooden surface, as Tina and Andrew bring enough cups for everyone.

  I pour the coffee for Scott and myself, clutching his hand so hard our skin might just get fused together.

  The clock on the wall ticks and ticks, but time does not seem to be moving. It's like we're stuck in some paining, some eerie void in time, which is trapping all the pain and tension, leaving none of it outside. The idea solidifies as Marjorie and her children come back down. She pours herself a cup of coffee and drinks it leaning against the counter, her large breasts rising and falling with each breath she takes as she stares off at the wall of snow falling from the sky outside.

  I let go of Scott's hand so Amanda can climb into his lap, and watch her fight off Luke as he tries to do the same. The room is filled with their childish bickering, but it's not breaking though the timeless silence does nothing to make the void dissipate.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "Well, at least that's over," Scott says to me later, as we're standing on the porch, each clutching an umbrella his dad forced into our hands before we left.

  I have no idea how long we spent in that silent kitchen, and I'm not really sure any time passed at all.

  I open my umbrella and descend the three steps off the porch. Scott follows me.

  "Yeah," I mutter.

  "That was really hot the way you stood up to Marjorie for me," Scott says, looking at me from the side, the edges of his lips curled up into a sheepish grin.

  I close my umbrella and stand under his, wrapping my arm around his waist. "She had it coming."

  "She's really pissed at me. And with good reason," Scott mutters.

  "Be that as it may, she has no right to threaten your life." My feet are slipping in the snow, and my whole right arm is white from it.

  "Shouldn't take her so seriously. She's always been explosive like that," Scott says. "But she wouldn't actually hurt me. Her and Derek have been dating since I was like Luke's age."

  "All the more reason for her to be nicer to you," I say.

  The harsh, commanding anger that permeated my words to her is bubbling up in my chest again. My entire family is made up of a dad doing his best to disappear in his work, an aunt and two cousins I never see, an uncle living in California, a grandma who berates me all the time, and a bunch of crazy drug dealers who I've only met a handful of times and don't really want to see ever again. Meanwhile, Scott's got this big loving family that'll obviously stay together forever no matter what, and they're threatening each other like that's something you just throw away.

  "Your niece and nephew really love you," I whisper and snuggle even closer to him. Marjorie packed them up and stormed from the house when another argument broke out after lunch and she didn't come back that time.

  "Yeah, they're great," Scott says.

  "She shouldn't keep them away from you," I mutter, fighting down the thought of how much our daughter would love him t
oo, if I hadn't murdered her. I try to bury her under the anger, but that's dissipating like it never was.

  "She'll come around," Scott says. "At least I hope she does."

  "And Mike, you forgive him, right? You won't go finishing anything with him?" I ask.

  Scott's eyes turn as hard as the concrete beneath the slippery blanket of slush. "Not really. Mike's been getting away with too many things, because of what he went through. This time he went to far."

  I couldn't agree more, but I won't encourage another altercation. "What happened to him?"

  "He was the one who found my mom when she was stabbed. It messed him up pretty bad," Scott says.

  My heart is thumping in my chest, a whole new understanding of Mike forming in my head. He couldn't have been more than 12 when that happened. I still can't get my mom's gleaming dead eyes out of my mind. How horrible it must be to see your mom lying in a pool of blood.

  "That's terrible," I whisper, though it hardly conveys the real emotions cluttering up my chest.

  "Yeah, it is. He came home early from school, and she was still alive then, but she died in his arms. She kept trying to say something to him, but only blood bubbled out of her mouth, because they'd punctured her lung. Or at least that's how he described it. I never can tell when he's lying to me."

  "It's still a horrible thing to go through," I muse. "Even if only some of what he told you is true."

  Scott turns to me, his expression twisted in anger, pity and compassion. "He described it to me so many times it's like I found her too. But let's drop it now. I don't even know why I'm talking about all this."

  "Must be from sitting in that kitchen all day," I say, realizing a little too late that he might get offended.

  He laughs. "You noticed it too, right? How nothing ever gets resolved?"

  I nod. Mostly I just noticed the void, the trapped sorrow and pain. But trying to explain that would make me sound insane, and Scott has enough of those examples for now. "Maybe that's how families work, in general."