Tameless

by Gilmore, Jess

  I decided to go inside. I got my bags from the backseat, brought them up to the apartment, went back and got the rest from the trunk, brought those up as well, and stood outside for a moment before sliding the key into the lock.

  When I opened the door, everything looked the same but felt totally different. I brought my bags inside and left them by the front door. If all of this crap wasn’t going on, I would have brought them to Wes’s room—now our room, supposedly—and unpacked. But I couldn’t do it. I felt like I was intruding. I felt guilt transferred from my parents to me. I felt like I shouldn’t be here.

  I texted Wes and asked him how long he would be.

  After ten minutes with no response, I called him.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice extra soft without planning it. “I’m at your place.”

  “Our place.”

  My stomach and chest tightened. “Right. Our place.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. That little tingly feeling before I start to cry had developed in the back of my throat. “I’m okay. Why?”

  “You sound different.”

  Shit. He heard the stress in my voice. Now…I should tell him now, I thought. Don’t hide it from him. “Maybe I’m just tired.” I couldn’t do it. I was glad I hadn’t heard when I was far away out on the road, and I couldn’t do that to him. I also couldn’t do the “There’s something we need to talk about when you get here” thing. I hated when people did that to me, telling me they needed to tell me something, but it had to wait. I didn’t want to do that to Wes, especially with something this serious.

  “I’m exhausted too,” he said. “Maybe an early night?”

  God. It wasn’t going to be an early night. It was going to be a long night, maybe the longest of my life.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”

  I got one of my bags and brought it to the bedroom. I started unpacking, putting some of my things in one of the empty dresser drawers and on a shelf in the closet.

  What if Wes didn’t want me here anymore? I knew he wouldn’t blame me for what happened, but what if having me around was a constant reminder of what they’d done? Even if he was okay with it, would I be? How could I put that much stress into his world? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.

  I took my clothes out of the dresser drawer, off the closet shelf, and put them back in the bag. I had no business unpacking, making this my new home, when I didn’t know if Wes would still want me here. I didn’t even know if I wanted me here.

  My mind was buzzing with scenarios, mostly disastrous ones. I decided to get a drink and sit down, try to relax. Worrying was hard, but the hardest part was going to be telling Wes what had happened.

  I must have gone to the window ten times to check the parking lot for his car over the next twenty minutes. When I finally saw him pull in, I went to the front door. I planned on standing there. I would tell him right when he came in. I would take a deep breath when I heard the key sliding into the lock, and within seconds I would be giving him the bad news.

  But I didn’t do any of that. I opened the door when I heard him coming up the steps. I peered around the corner, seeing him walking toward me.

  We exchanged simple heys, both of our voices sounding a little different than usual.

  Wes came through the door. I took a step back, preparing myself.

  He moved toward me quickly, wrapping an arm around my waist, pulling me into him. His other hand came up to the side of my face, his palm resting on my cheek, his fingers slipping into my hair, and he kissed me. Hard, deep, slow and passionate.

  When his mouth separated from mine, he said, “I know. I know everything.”

  My eyes flung wide open.

  “I was at Jackie’s. She told me everything, and she told me she’d just talked to you.”

  My head dropped to his chest and I started to sob. I felt his hand on my back of my head, lightly stroking my hair.

  I managed a few words. “I’m so sorry.”

  He slipped his hand under my chin and raised my head.

  Through blurred eyes, I saw him smiling. Smiling? He was smiling about all of this? “You have nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t do anything. You didn’t even know.”

  My eyes darted away from his. I don’t know why. Just some kind of reflex.

  He ducked his head to the side. “Hey. Don’t worry, Dusk. We’re going to be fine. Promise.” And then something caught his eyes. He looked over my shoulder. “You haven’t unpacked yet?” He walked over to the bags, slung two over his shoulders and held the other two in his hands. “Come on. Let’s get you moved in.”

  . . . . .

  He promised we’d be fine, but we weren’t fine.

  Over the next two days, we spent way too much time covering ground that we’d already covered, rehashing everything my parents had done to him. What was odd was that I was angrier than he was. I kept insisting that we confront my parents over it, and he held the position that it didn’t matter anymore—what’s done is done, there’s no going back and changing it, and the best thing we could do is move forward together.

  On my third night there, I didn’t sleep at all. Things were strained between us, and I knew it was all because of me. I couldn’t let it go. Couldn’t just let my parents off the hook so easily. They’d done so much to fuck up his life and discredit him, while in the end they were the ones who had committed the worst act of all.

  When Wes woke up, his eyes slowly coming to life, he looked at me and knew. “You’ve been up all night.”

  I nodded.

  He shifted onto his side and looped his arm over me, pulling me close to him. “You’re not going to be able to let this go, are you?”

  “No,” I whispered. “And I just can’t see how you can, either.”

  He moved quickly, moving me from my side to my back, and suddenly he was over me. “This is all that matters, Dawn. You and me. I don’t care about anyone else. I don’t care what anyone says about us, I don’t care what anyone tries to do to keep us apart. I love you. I’ve always loved you…I just didn’t know it back then. I lost you once and I’m never going to let that happen again.” He paused for a moment. My eyes were welling up, but I could see his mouth tight-lipped, his jaw muscles clenching, as if he were trying to hold back his own tears. “No person, no job, no obstacle is going to get between us. I’m so in love with you it hurts when you’re not around.”

  My tears flowed freely by the time he finished that sentence. I managed to get the words “I love you more than anything” out of my mouth through the sobs, and then his lips were on mine, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, tightly, locking them together, locking him against me.

  That was the first time sex was more than sex.

  It was as though our emotions were colliding like a chemical reaction, my body a glowing ember ignited by the promise he’d just made to me.

  Sunlight streamed in through the window behind Wes, and I lost sight of his face as he became a silhouette hovering over me.

  His hands touched mine, our fingers interlaced, and he spread my arms wide across the bed as he lowered himself onto me. All the stress and worry and pain vanished in an instant, replaced by the pure bliss of Wes inside me.

  Nothing existed outside of this room. Not even time, and I wanted to feel him inside me forever.

  Every nerve in my being was hypersensitive. I felt heavy and light all at once, as Wes and I moved together in a perfect rhythm.

  “I could do this until I die,” he whispered.

  My body tightened in the span of a half-second, then slowly unraveled as he spoke those words. And I could feel Wes’s body doing the same.

  So much more than just sex, this was making love.

  Afterwards, as we lay together, I felt a tiredness that was fulfillment rather than exhaustion. I was more than content. I was whole.

  . . . . .

  “Do you want me to
go with you?” Wes asked.

  “No, I should probably go by myself.”

  It was the next morning. I was getting ready to go to my house—correction, my parents’ house, it was no longer mine—to get more of my stuff. The sun was just coming up, it was just after 7 a.m. I knew my parents would be awake, and rather than wait until afternoon or evening to go, I wanted to get this over with.

  Wes and I were standing near the front door of his—now our—apartment.

  “You have to be at work, anyway,” I said.

  He nodded. “You know I’d go.”

  “I do, but this job is huge for you.” He’d just started working for OLIVIMAX Studios, it was a chance to living out his dream, so why screw it up just for me?

  He kissed me and told me to call or text if I needed anything and he’d be on his way.

  When I pulled up to my parents’ house, both cars were in the driveway. I turned off my car and sat there for a few seconds, then realized the last thing I needed was to sit there conjuring up all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong. I just needed to do it.

  The front door was locked. I still had my keys in my hand, so I didn’t have to rummage through my purse to find them. I slipped the key into the lock and it turned by itself. Or, rather, someone on the other side was turning it.

  My father opened the door. “You’re back.” He said it with a soft voice and pressed lips, the corners of his mouth turned up into a half-smile.

  “I’m just getting some of my stuff.” I stepped into the doorway and brushed past him.

  He touched my arm. “Dawn, let’s talk about—”

  I spun toward him, cutting him off mid-sentence. “You want to talk? Really? Okay, let’s talk. Where’s Mom?” I looked around. “Mom!”

  “She’s not up yet,” my dad said. “She’s been sleeping a lot lately. A lot more than usual.”

  I looked at him for a second, then yelled, “Mom!”

  I heard a door upstairs open, and my mom rushed down the hall, tying her robe in the process. Her hair was a mess. Her eyes had large, blue-brown bags under them. I could see it all the way from the bottom of the stairs.

  “What is going on?” she said, then, “You’re back.”

  “Dad wants to have a talk, so let’s have a talk.”

  Mom came down the stairs quickly, reaching for me, trying to give me a hug. I didn’t reciprocate.

  “Actually,” I said, “let me get the things I came for, and then we can have this talk.”

  I started up the stairs.

  My mom called out, “Dawn, please don’t do this. Stay.”

  I ignored her, went to my old room, and packed all the clothes I wanted in my suitcases. I had two boxes in the closet, and they held the items from my shelves and my desk that I didn’t want to leave behind. Next came the bathroom, where I raked all the stuff off the counter and emptied the drawers into the other box. I almost forgot my shampoo and conditioner, two expensive bottles that were almost full.

  I moved quickly, and ten minutes later I lugged the stuff down the stairs, refusing my father’s offer of help.

  “At least let me help you take some of this to the car,” he said, and that’s when I knew he had given up on trying to get me to stay. I wasn’t sure my mother was quite there yet, but she’d have to be.

  Dad helped me carry the suitcases and boxes to my car. We loaded them in the backseat and trunk. At one point he whispered, “Your mother isn’t going to take this very well.”

  I ignored him.

  We went back inside. Mom was standing, waiting, crying. I had to look away from her. I couldn’t let her emotions affect me; I was making the right decision, I knew it, and there was no turning back from it.

  Dad started to say something, but I cut him off. “You know what? There’s nothing to discuss. We aren’t going to have a conversation about anything.” I paused, looking at my father, then at my mother, the expressions of shock on their faces. “I know what you did.” I faced my father. “I know what you did to try to save your business. I know you took money that was meant for Wes.” I turned my eyes to my mother. “And you knew. You knew all along.”

  Tears streamed down her face. She stepped toward my father, her fists balled tightly, and she started to hit him on the chest, yelling, “I told you! I told you this would happen if you did it!”

  Dad managed to restrain her, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close to him. I saw her body relax. Her physically violent outburst was over, but her crying persisted.

  My father looked at me. “We didn’t know what else to do. We did this all for you.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s not true and you know it. Don’t try to put this guilt on me.”

  “Dawn,” my father said, “we’re in trouble. Big trouble. We’re going to lose the house. All those trips we were taking…we were house-hunting out of town.”

  I suppose I should have felt sorry for them. This was, after all, their dream home, built long ago, the place they brought home their one and only child when I was born, the site of many parties and celebrations. Now it was just walls and a roof and…stuff. Expensive shit they’d bought over the years, all funded, at least in part, with the money Wes was supposed to get.

  “And,” my father said, “this was all for you. We wouldn’t have been able to afford your tuition without that money.”

  I felt like I could have fainted at that point. I had unwittingly benefited from my parents taking Wes’s money.

  “Do you know what you did to him?” I said. “Do you have any idea how that money could have changed his life for the better?”

  My father closed his eyes.

  “You stole his future,” I went on. “Or at least some of it. Just so you know, you can condemn him all you want for who he used to be, but you should know that he’s different now and he’s doing really well. All the bullshit you planted in my head about him…all of it was wrong. He wasn’t the bad guy.” I paused, working up my nerve for this next line. “You were.”

  I walked past them, removed the house key from my key ring, placed it on the table near the front door. I opened the door.

  Mom said, “Dawn, wait.”

  I had one foot outside. I didn’t turn around. I stepped onto the porch, pulled the door closed, and left forever.

  Chapter 28 – Wes

  Dawn was slipping. I could see it every day. She’d started to call in sick to work. Twice the first week, three times during her second week.

  Each day before I left for work, I’d ask her what she was doing that day. Sometimes she’d shrug, other times she’d tell me she hadn’t decided yet. I didn’t want to press her. It wasn’t my place to force her to do anything. I didn’t want to do that anyway. But I saw something in her that I’d seen before in myself and in others.

  The stress of all that had happened in the last two weeks since she’d been living here was taking its toll on her. I tried to prevent it. Tried to turn it around, reverse the trend, move her (and me) closer to the happiness we both deserved, the happiness that I know we both believed was possible as long as we were together.

  But she had unresolved issues with her parents. Understandable. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to find out that your parents were lying thieves, so I didn’t try. But one thing I did know very well was what it was like to lose your parents.

  All of my anger toward them for what they’d done was trumped by the rational side of me knowing all too well that Dawn needed to reconcile with them. Maybe not that very day, maybe not even in a matter of weeks or a few months. She was never going to get to that point if she didn’t find a way to be the Dawn she was without her parents’ wrongdoing casting a shadow over her entire existence.

  Did I want to go to her father and kick his ass? Yeah, I did. But that would only lead to legal trouble for me and it would make things even worse for Dawn, and she was all I cared about.

  So instead I focused on making things right with her. Or trying anyway. I tri
ed gently, not in a pushy way, because that’s the only way it would have worked.

  I made it a point for us to get to the beach at least once a day. That’s where we’d spent so much time as kids. Things weren’t perfect then. We weren’t together at the time. But the sand and surf was the backdrop of our lives for so many years.

  Some evenings we sat on the beach until the sun dipped below the horizon line of the Pacific. Sometimes we talked, laughed, told stories; other times we just sat there, me holding her close, the only sound coming from the wind and the water.

  One early morning we went out with some stale bread and fed the seagulls. One afternoon, when a production meeting was cancelled, I left work early and Dawn and I spent the day on the beach—me surfing, her standing on the beach smiling and clapping and laughing when I exaggerated a wipe-out in shallow water. She ran over to me as I feigned injury, and she jokingly called me a pussy and told me to get out there and grab the next wave and keep doing it until I got it right. She yelled all of it, and as my eyes scanned around us, I saw a few people looking at us, probably wondering why I would put up with such an abusive surfing coach.

  She hadn’t lost her sense of humor. She was often the playful Dawn I knew and loved.

  One evening as I arrived home, she told me she’d been invited out by her girlfriends. We had a laugh about the last time they’d all gone out. Dawn insisted no strip clubs were involved in these plans.

  But she said she wasn’t going. All she offered was a shrug when I asked why. I encouraged her to go. She needed it. Being with her friends would get her out of the apartment, give her a few hours of doing something without me.

  Look, I was no expert on this kind of situation, but I’d been there myself and I’d seen others in the same predicament. I couldn’t provide talk therapy. I couldn’t prescribe medication. But one thing I knew was that getting out and living life was one small punch in the face to depression. It was one way to get a foothold on your life again.

  I never told Dawn I thought she was depressed. I feared her reaction, like she might think I was judging her. I knew how that felt, too. But she was clearly on the verge.