I’d gotten off my knees and lay on top of him on the couch. We were silent for a few short moments until he said, “Hungry?”
I shrugged. “A little.”
“Want to go out or order in?”
I wanted to stay confined in the walls of his apartment, just the two of us, the rest of the world shut out entirely. “Order in.”
“Okay, but right now I’m not moving.”
I kissed his chin. “Good.” I put my head on his chest and listened to the steady pounding of his heart. It was slow and even, a soothing sound that almost made me want to drift off.
“You should stay.” I heard the words come out of his mouth but also felt them vibrate from within his chest, making them have an even more intense impact on me. God, yes, I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay the night, the week, the month…
“I wish I could,” I said.
“You should do what you want. Not what your parents want.”
I paused for a few seconds. “I just don’t want to deal with their questions. You know how they can be.”
He let out what seemed like a bitter chuckle. “No shit.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“I know what you meant. But…did you ever spend the night at Scott’s?”
The question stung. The short answer was yes, and the longer answer was that my parents didn’t mind because of who it was. Scott. The golden-boyfriend in their eyes.
“Sometimes, yeah, I did. I haven’t even told them that Scott and I broke up.”
“When are you going to do that?”
I shrugged.
Fuck. It was infuriating being twenty-five and still feeling like I was a teenage girl with heavy restrictions on her social life.
“The first step,” I said, “is having a plan to move out so I don’t have to deal with the backlash. They’re going to take the breakup harder than I did.” I propped myself up on my elbows. “So, I looked at some jobs online over the weekend. You know what sucks? I went to the college I wanted to go to, got the degree I wanted, and then I graduate and it’s like there was no point to it.”
“At least you have the degree,” he said. “While you were in college, I was fucking my life up and spending time in rehab.”
I felt bad hearing him say that. Felt even worse because of the tone of his voice. I knew how much he had wanted to go to college but couldn’t when his life spun out of control. There was a part of me that felt almost guilty for complaining now, because what he was saying was right. Having my degree was a big deal and maybe it would pay off. It just didn’t feel like it right now.
Wes put his arm behind his head and I saw his other tattoo as his bicep flexed. It was just a jagged shape and he hadn’t mentioned it, so I figured it wasn’t significant or at least nowhere near as significant as the lion.
“So,” I said, “you’re wanting to go back to school? Photojournalism?”
He nodded.
Wes had always loved photography, and he’d always been damn good at it. I remember the first time he got a real camera—replacing his cheap point-and-shoot one—and how he spent days outside, taking pictures of anything and everything. He rarely shared any of them with me or anyone else, but I did get to see the ones he got published in a local magazine. We were fifteen at the time, and he’d already been paid to do what he loved.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, saying, “It’s not going to be easy, but I have to do it for myself.”
“I’m sorry I brought it up.”
“It’s fine. Ask me anything.”
“What was rehab like?” I asked. “If you don’t want to talk about it—”
“I’ll talk about it. It sucked. I didn’t have my own room. Had to share a room with a guy who snored and talked in his sleep, kept me up most nights. There were group sessions where I heard stories that made me think if I had gone through what some of those people had endured, I would have rather died. A lot of people had it worse than I did. But that doesn’t matter. When you hit rock bottom, it’s your own personal hell, so there’s no comparing, no contest to see who had it worse. Then there was the physical part of it, the withdrawal. If I had known what that would be like, I never would have tried a drug stronger than aspirin.”
I laughed.
“You laugh,” he said, “but I’m not exaggerating all that much.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said. “The thing that helped me most was the one-on-one sessions. I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything. Let’s just say I wasn’t really truthful with the group. My therapist knew it, too. Said it was common, and that’s part of why they have one-on-one anyway.”
I thought of myself in classrooms, the library, study sessions, all the while feeling like it was a grueling experience. Meanwhile, Wes was battling for his life, in a truly miserable situation. He should have been where I was. He should have been with me.
All of this talk of the past brought back the flood of memories. “I hated you for leaving.”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you contact me? I looked everywhere online for you—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, I mean everywhere.”
He was rubbing my arm with his fingertips, sending a tingling sensation throughout my entire body.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m not on any of those. I’ve looked at those sites and most of it seems like bullshit, like people putting out a story about their lives that isn’t really the truth. It just doesn’t seem real.”
He sat up on the couch, reaching for his phone on the coffee table. I stood, got my dress and slipped it on. Wes pulled on a pair of shorts but remained shirtless.
I started to sit next to him, but he locked his hand on my hip and pulled me toward him. “You’re not going anywhere.” I straddled his lap as he swiped his phone open and said, “Let’s order something.”
He called and ordered Chinese delivery, and as soon as he hung up he swung me around and I landed on my back on the couch.
“We have twenty minutes,” he said.
He started kissing me. On my lips. My earlobes. Down my neck. His tongue traced along the edge of the neckline of my dress, teasing and tickling, and I felt my nipples tighten.
My legs wrapped around his waist and I wished he didn’t have his shorts on. I felt his cock, hard as steel, pressing against me. My eyes were closed and all I could think about was him sliding my panties down, unzipping his own, and fucking me right here—fast and rough and frantic like I wanted it.
A knock at the door interrupted us. Wes raised his head. His face had a reddish hue to it, he was so worked up.
“Has it been twenty minutes? Fuck. I was just getting into it.” He smiled and kissed me, then shot up off the couch, walking over to the door as he pulled his wallet out of his pocket.
He opened the door and then started to close it, but a hand reached in a stopped him. I couldn’t see who it was, but it was a girl. A girl with a very shrill voice, saying, “Who are you with?”
“Leave.” He said it in a calm but stern manner.
Who the fuck was this?
“Let me in, Wes, or you’re going to regret it.”
The girl pushed on the door.
I sat up, holding my breath, my eyes growing wider with concern.
“Not now,” Wes said.
“Yes now. It has to be now. You know why?”
Wes didn’t say anything.
“Do you know why?” she repeated, her voice becoming even louder and more screechy.
“Leave, Meghan.”
Meghan? Shit, I’d almost forgotten. That was Meghan, the stalker girl he’d told me about.
“No,” she said, pushing on the door, trying to get in. “You need to tell whatever skank you’re fucking that you’re going to be a father. I’m pregnant and it’s yours.”
Chapter Sixteen – Wes
I stood in the doorway, blocking Meghan from entering my apartment. It was one thing to prevent her from physic
ally entering, but her words had obviously made it inside, considering how she was screeching.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dawn sitting on the edge of the couch. She looked at me wide-eyed, her mouth slightly open.
Meghan pushed on the door again.
I pushed back, edging through the doorway and stepping out onto the sidewalk, but not before turning my head toward Dawn and telling her to give me a couple of minutes. She nodded in response.
Out on the sidewalk, with the door closed behind me, I said, “What the fuck are you doing? How did you find me?”
She crossed her legs as she stood, looking like someone who needed to pee really badly. She fidgeted with her hands and her shirt. She was a fucking mess.
“I know the places you work, remember? So I just followed you here a couple of days ago.”
I shook my head. “So you followed me? Nice. Aside from all the other shit you’re into, now you’ve become a stalker.”
Her eyes became glassy. I didn’t know if she was about to cry or if this was some side effect of whatever drug she was on these days. “Fuck you, Wes.”
“Tell me why you’re really here, and then you need to leave.”
“I told you,” she said.
I took a deep breath and looked around, relieved to see no neighbors were out here.
“You’re fucking lying,” I said.
A bitter laughed escaped from her mouth. “No, I’m really not. The baby is yours, Wes. And who’s the cunt you have in there?”
“How far along are you?”
Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with strands of it frizzing out from her head like she’d just been exposed to static electricity. Her cheeks were sunken, the bags under her eyes a light purplish hue. She looked like she’d been up for days, and very well might have been. She looked like shit.
She crossed her arms. “Long enough to know you’re the father.”
“How long?” I repeated. “Tell me, goddammit.”
It had been a little more than four months since we’d last had sex. Something told me she wouldn’t remember that time-frame, so this was my way of proving she had no idea who the father was. Assuming that was really a question at all—maybe she wasn’t even pregnant.
“I haven’t been to the doctor yet,” she said.
I shook my head and was about to tell her to get the fuck away from my place when the door opened behind me. I turned and Dawn, with her head down, moved past me.
“Wait,” I said.
Meghan made a move toward Dawn, but I caught her by the arm and quickly let go when it was clear she wasn’t really going to do anything.
“Stay here,” I said to her, and started down the sidewalk after Dawn.
She was moving quickly and I almost had to jog to catch her as she reached her car.
“Dawn, wait. She’s lying.”
She opened her car door and put one foot on the floorboard, her forearms leaning on the open door between us.
“I have to go.”
My shoulders slumped. The last thing I wanted was for her to leave. And it pissed me off that she was leaving because of this drug-addled psycho.
“She’s lying, Dawn. She’s probably not even pregnant.”
She looked at me with a sadness in her eyes, and all I could feel was guilt that I’d let her down somehow, even though I hadn’t done anything and none of this was my fault.
She said, “I just can’t be here right now, okay?”
I exhaled a long, slow breath. The night was ruined. It had started out so well, had gotten even better, and who knows how great it could have been?
“I’m sorry.”
She sat in the car and started to pull the door closed, saying, “It’s fine. Take care of whatever you have to take care of.”
“I’ll call you later.”
She closed the door. Didn’t open the window. Just looked at me. Nodded. And then she drove off.
I watched her leave the parking lot and as soon as I turned back toward my apartment, my mood shifted to furious because Meghan had ruined a perfectly good night. And the fury almost slipped over the line into rage when I saw that she had gone into my apartment.
She’d left the door slightly open and had taken a seat on my couch.
“I like this,” she said, when I walked in. “Nice place. But we need to get you some more furniture.”
I closed the door behind me and stood there, not getting any closer to her. “Are you high right now or just fucking crazy?”
“Wes.” She stood. “I didn’t know how strongly I felt about you until you weren’t around anymore. I fucking love you. So fucking much.”
I held back a laugh but couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. “I don’t believe you about that, about the pregnancy, about anything. When I told you months ago that it was over, I meant it.”
“You weren’t this angry then.”
This girl was unbelievable. “You weren’t as crazy fucked-up then.”
“The baby—”
“Yeah,” I said. “The baby. Right. Go see a doctor, then show me the paperwork. Otherwise, I don’t believe you.” I opened the door. “Get out, Meghan.”
“Don’t make me leave—”
“Now,” I said, interrupting her pleading. “Leave and don’t come back.”
She took a few steps toward me. Someone knocked on the door. For a second, I had this image of Dawn appearing in the doorway, having changed her mind about leaving, coming back to claim her rightful place in my apartment.
But it was the Chinese food delivery guy. I paid him, tipped him, thanked him, took the bag, and placed it on the counter.
Meghan walked over to the kitchen area and started to reach for the bag.
“You really need to leave,” I said, without raising my voice.
“Are you going to eat all that by yourself?”
I thought about giving her something. Maybe she didn’t have any money for food. Maybe it would have been the right thing to send her on her way with something to eat.
Then again, maybe not.
“Yes, I’m going to eat it all.” I pushed the bag away from her. I reached for her wrist, not forcefully, just enough, and led her to the door. She stepped outside and I closed it without saying anything.
Give her some food? No way. At this point, at the condition she was in, it would be like feeding a stray cat.
Chapter Seventeen – Dawn
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Sitting in his apartment, trying to hear what was being said but barely being able to make any of it out, I decided to leave.
It wasn’t an easy decision. I wanted to stay. I wanted Wes to get rid of that girl. I wanted our night to continue. It had started out in an amazingly unexpected way, and had ended the same way.
What pissed me off the most was that it should have been her leaving, not me. But I couldn’t continue sitting there, mainly because of one thought swirling around in my mind: Wes was denying everything she said, and while I wanted to believe him, there was a part of me that didn’t.
He had mentioned the girl by name to me before. He’d told me how she was clinging to him, basically stalking him, but he’d never said why. I guess maybe it was because she cared for him, maybe even loved him, but she was going about it in such an intense way, it just made sense to me that maybe there was more to it—like a pregnancy.
All of this was a lot to process while driving around and avoiding going home.
I needed to talk to someone. I needed a friend to listen to everything. I didn’t need to be told what to do, I just needed to say it out loud to another human being. Maybe that would be a valve that would relieve some of this stress.
I texted Maggie, waited a few minutes, no response. I texted Rachel, same result. They were my two closest friends and I hadn’t seen them much in the last couple of weeks, so I had no idea what they were doing. Rachel traveled a bit for her job. Maggie was always with her boyfriend when she wasn’t with us girls. I tried cal
ling them, both calls ending up in voicemail, but I didn’t leave any messages.
It was then that I thought of the one person I’d always been able to talk to confidentially. Aunt Jackie, my mom’s sister. She lived in Redondo Beach, which was only a thirty-minute drive from Santa Monica.
Aunt Jackie had no kids of her own, and as far back as I could remember, she’d always referred to me as the closest thing she’d ever have to a daughter. She had also told me that if I ever got in a situation that I couldn’t tell my parents about, I could always go to her and she’d keep it private while we figured it out.
This was exactly the kind of predicament she was talking about.
She’d lived in the same house for as long as I could remember. It was just a block from the beach. She was single, never been married. She divided her time between the health-food store she owned, and doing yoga on the beach in the mornings and evenings. She was just about to go out to the beach when I drove up and surprised her.
“Dawn!” she yelled through the screen door, pulling it open and hugging me. “What a nice surprise.”
She held me, and I held on tighter. “I should have called.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I was getting ready to walk down to the beach but I can skip it.”
She let go. I didn’t want her to. I guess it showed in my face, too, because as she looked at me the smile dropped from her face and her expression turned into one of concern.
“What’s wrong?”
I sighed, closed my eyes, and lowered my head.
“Come inside,” she said, guiding me through the doorway with one hand on my shoulder. “Hungry?”
“God, yes, I haven’t eaten since lunch. I had dinner plans, but…well, I’ll tell you about it. It’s part of why I’m here.”
She told me to sit at the kitchen table while she prepared a plate of leftovers for me.
I don’t think I’d ever seen my aunt not look amazing. She was in better shape than most women in their twenties. She had short brown hair, a golden brown complexion, and a statuesque build, probably 5’9, taller than any other woman in our family.
She put a plate of food in front of me.
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