by Jones, Ayla
“Jazz is my guilty pleasure,” I admitted.
“What’s wrong with that?” She turned and smiled at me. A new song played, opening with vibrant horns. “It’s very nice to play my music loud without someone shouting that I’m too old for it to be up so high. I grew up an only child. Lots of cousins, but it was just me in my house. Sometimes I need the solitude. Ahsha and Pree are daddy’s girls, anyway, so I don’t even think they notice I’m not there until catastrophe happens. I once read that Dr. Maya Angelou kept a hotel room just so she could write, so I’ve been sold on the idea of creating your own special haven for work ever since.” She laughed and my heart splintered. It felt like I was betraying her by not speaking up about Charlie. I swallowed hard. Heat was sitting on top of my skin. I excused myself to the bathroom to splash water on my face.
I never quite made it because I saw into the bedroom when I walked by. There were pictures of Ahsha and Priyanka and Charlie and Vikram in there. Family photos. Candid photos. Snapshots of the life she was away from. This woman carried it with her. Even when she wanted to be alone. She still wanted them.
Mom. Dad. Tyler. I wanted them to want me. Even if I had done a terrible thing. Especially because I had done a terrible thing.
But no one wanted me.
Sitting on the bed, I cried. I bawled, really. I couldn’t stop myself. Then Ella’s arms were suddenly around me. She held me tight. She squeezed. I hugged her, too. The tears kept coming—they had started out as sadness but were strangely turning to gratitude that I had someone with me.
“Oh, honey…what’s wrong? Please tell me. What happened?” she said in a desperate whisper. “Tell me what happened.”
“I miss my family. I miss what you have.” Because I still had hope. Stupid fucking hope. And it was asphyxiating me. “We aren’t on good terms right now. We haven’t been for a long time. I hurt them. They hurt me. None of us is getting better. There’s just pain. That’s all there ever is.”
Ella held my face in her hands. “And it feels insurmountable.”
I nodded. “Yes. All the time. And I don’t know what to do about it. I hold on to it and it wears me down. It’s…it’s killing me.” When I shuddered, she wiped the tears with her palms. It was such a mom thing to do. I cried harder.
“Well, you’re okay right now. Right here, right now. You just have to breathe.” I did as she demonstrated until I finally had control. My ex-boyfriend’s mother was covered in my tears and snot and baggage, and she was still clinging to me. Eventually I wouldn’t have this anymore. And then my heart would never stop breaking. “Okay, honey, you just tell me what you need. If you want to stay like this right now and just cry, we can do that. If you want to talk, we can do that, too…but I’m here, okay?”
“All of it hurts. I don’t know how to make it better with my family.”
Ella took my hands as a wistful smile pulled her lips. “Has Charlie ever told you about his father? Not Vikram. Oliver. Oliver Madden.”
“Only that he passed away while you were pregnant and he never knew him. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It’s okay now. But the loss…my God…” Her expression turned solemn. “Oliver was just this light of a person. Older and worldly, too. Exceptionally intelligent. And kind. So kind. He was the representative from a company that came to a career fair at Pomona when I was a junior there. I really planned to only ask about internships when I took his business card. Then a phone call led to coffee, and then a real date, and then a relationship I never expected. We married a year after I graduated from college. We were so in love and living in Tampa, our first place after I graduated from Yale Law. And for four years everything was great. We had so much to look forward to. We had Charlie to look forward to. Then one day my entire world went to hell in the blink of an eye. He was on the bathroom floor. Cardiac arrest at forty-two. He died so suddenly he was still gripping his toothbrush. No time to even drop it.
“I was twenty-nine and pregnant with a baby boy who would never know his father. The love of my life was dead. He would never walk in and say, “Hello, my girl” again. He would never get to see the person our love made. I would go into Charlie’s nursery and stare at the words Oliver said when he took my hand and asked me to marry him: ‘I leave my heart here and feel even more alive.’ We’d put it on the wall above the crib. Bright blue letters.” Charlie’s tattoo. My pulse clapped under my skin. In my ears. In the air.
“Every day from that moment was a battle for my happiness and I definitely fought. Because of Charlie at first. Then it became for myself. I worked so hard to be better for the both of us. And I got to a good place. Then, just when I thought things couldn’t get better, a sweet pediatrician asked out a widowed mother, they fell in love, they got married, he adopted her three-year-old child without hesitation, and has raised three children that are not biologically his but loves them as if they are. I have a very beautiful life. It’s not perfect, but it’s so beautiful. I couldn’t even imagine any of it back when Oliver died. Now I have a great family and job, I’m healthy, and I’m happy. But it was a fight. Sometimes with medication and a therapist, and sometimes just forcing myself to face the day. I can’t tell you it got easier with time, because I’d be lying. Here’s a secret, Nikki. And as simple as it sounds, it took me years to realize: Pain is strong. Be stronger. The world will not adjust for you. You have to adapt. Fight with everything, like you have no choice. Because you really don’t. Want what’s on the other side more than anything else. Figure out how to get it. That’s how you survive pain.”
****
Charlie
I’m so in love with you, Charlie Dara.
Pathetically. Irrevocably. Ridiculously. Infinitely.
“His nose is fine in case you’re wondering,” Ghost said, yanking me from my thoughts as we pulled up in front of Julian’s. I was surprised he decided to come with me, and I actually felt like shit that he was in the middle of Deacon and me. But the truth was, if Ghost was with me, to Deacon that was the same as making a choice.
“I’m not.” I shrugged. “Haven’t wondered at all.” I eyed my cellphone as we got out of the car, and spotted a missed call and some texts from Elliott.
First one: So what’s the deal with Fallon? She’s single right?
I made a face. What the fuck did I look like to this kid? Tinder?
Second one: Hey you said you wanted a thirty-day supply, right?
Third one: My mom was saying something to me and I forgot.
For fuck’s sake.
Me: Wrong person
Me: Don’t fucking text me anymore.
I was going to call him later, because he was right about the conversation, but this fucking kid was the worst.
“You shouldn’t have punched him,” Ghost said.
“I shouldn’t have waited that long to punch him.” I knocked on the front door. It was always strange to hear silence on the other side, even in the middle of the afternoon. Food smelled great, though. Too bad my appetite was nonexistent. “Sorry but it’s the truth. He fucking hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you…” Ghost said with a sigh, but hesitation rang in his voice. “Okay, whose call are you expecting? Nikki…or that young girl who pops up every once in a while? Is she your rebound? Because you said you and Nikki—”
“Which young girl? Oh, Fallon? Jesus, no…” I scrunched my face and shoved my phone inside my pocket. “She’s…a friend. No, not that kind of friend.”
“Wait…Hannah Montana is your dealer, isn’t she? Fuckin’ shit.” He studied me a moment. “Look, it’s hypocritical as fuck of me to say anything about this, but dude…I don’t want to get a call from Ella or Vikram about you being in the fucking ICU or something, it wouldn’t…be good for me, okay?”
“I know, man…”
“Even Dee—”
When Julian opened the door I saw Samira standing at his stove, overseeing, but she knew better than to touch. “Gabriel and Charlie.” Julian embraced us one
at a time and ushered us inside.
“Hey, old man,” I said. “Thanks for having us. And this is for you. For your glaucoma, as requested.” I pulled a pill bottle from my pocket and handed it to him. It was the seven grams of pot he’d wanted.
Julian nodded and shoved money in my hand. “But where is your lovely girlfriend? She has not been here in a while. I miss her cupcakes.” He meant Nikki, of course. She’d taken my suggestion and started coming here on her own. I guess now that we were having problems she didn’t want to bump into me, or maybe she thought I didn’t want her to come anymore.
“She’s good,” Ghost said before I had a chance to stammer and make excuses. “Busy with work, right, Charlie?” I nodded. I saw the back of Lux’s head as she peered through the sliding glass door to the backyard, slapping her hand on the glass and squealing at whatever had her attention.
“Sweets, Cha-Cha is here!” Samira said.
“Boog!” I called out. “Come here, baby doll.” She spun, smiled, and ran toward me. “Cha-Cha?”
“That’s going to be your name to her. Seems like karma for calling her snot,” Samira explained when she hugged me. At least Samira and I were back on good terms. The reason was why we were here—well, Ghost just came to eat. Mira had already set up her laptop on Julian’s dining room table, and a booster seat was on a chair.
“Just in time for stuffed plantains and oxtail stew.” Julian set the platters on the long table he used when he invited the neighborhood over. I wasn’t hungry but I wasn’t going to turn down Julian, so I took everything he offered.
“Charlie, those caffeine shakes are getting worse,” Samira said to me.
“Yeah, they are…” I said. Ghost looked at me and if his stare had been a bullet, I’d currently be bleeding to death on the floor. But he kept his mouth shut. He was my friend and friends were supposed to mind their fucking business on occasion.
“And, my god, eat. Have you stopped working out? You’re losing muscle definition.”
“I’ll try to get sexy for you again.”
She shoved something vomit-green and vomit-pureed into Lux’s mouth. “Please do.”
“So, you’ve been talking to Nik?” I whispered to Ghost as Julian and Samira chatted. I asked not out of jealousy but because I was edging into insanity wondering how she was doing. Every night I’d wondered. My heart would be beating so fast from the drugs and thoughts of her—already pushed to the limit when I couldn’t get Chuck and Sami right—and I’d want to call her. But I never called. Instead I’d get in my car and find curved roads with no end in sight, and then drive until my brain went numb. I missed her so fucking much.
Okay? Okay is really all you have to say? After all Nikki and I had become, after everything we’d built, I’d reduced us to a four-letter word. Man, I’d failed her. Failed us.
“Lea and I went to the reopening thing a couple weeks ago at SoBe,” Ghost explained. Weeks. We’d been over for weeks. It still felt like hours ago. It still felt like I was being torn in half.
“And? They closed the Sinners & Saints lounge? Why?” SoBe paid decently, but she didn’t get a check if she didn’t work. Shit. Was Nikki okay financially? Would she even take money from me if I offered? If she wouldn’t, I’d make Ghost and Lea tell her it was from one of them. “Is she doing okay? Look, we’ll stop at the ATM on the way back and then you can—”
“It was just a few nights, man,” he said with a reassuring smile.
“You’re absolutely sure she’s not strapped for cash? Ghost, if she told you not to tell me she’s in trouble because she doesn’t—”
“Chill out. This is Nikki we’re talking about. She’s fine. And even if she weren’t, she knows how to survive.” I cringed at the wording. “Not letting anything get her down. She’s coming to Lux’s half-birthday. You’re not gonna stop her, right?”
“No. Why would I?” I’d get to see her and be in the same room with her. It would be torture at the time, and still worth every bad feeling I’d have.
After Samira put Lux down for a nap, we ran our idea by Julian for a potential web series. We wanted to get his permission to use parts of his background and give it a script treatment. It was a compromise between Samira and me because I’d already started working on his would-be memoir, so we had something to turn into a script. Julian happily agreed. Eventually, Lux woke up disgruntled, and Samira left Ghost and me behind. I needed to stay busy before thoughts of Nikki invaded, so I volunteered the two of us to help Julian set up for tonight’s gathering. I hadn’t told him yet I wasn’t coming. I wasn’t really in the mood to socialize.
“You’re quiet today,” Julian said to me, but he was staring at my hands as I vigorously scrubbed the cooking grids for his grills in the backyard. Could he see them shaking? “It’s over with the lovely girl? Nikki?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I didn’t want to say how I’d almost lost it in the car twice. How I couldn’t bear to tell my mom when she asked about her. How for the first time in a long time I missed the way Deacon and I used to be.
“You never want to talk about you…” He hauled a lawn chair over and sat.
“I come here to talk about you, Julian. So talk. Tell me what happened at the Tropicana with the girl.” I’d never heard the end of the story. “She showed up at the club and then what?”
He held a compassionate look on me, like he wanted to say something that would cheer me up. I was glad he dropped the idea. Nothing would, anyway. “It was my wife. Future wife, at the time. Which you probably figured out. She told me she couldn’t leave anymore because her brother, Marcos, had just killed her husband.”
My scrubbing slowed. “What?”
“Yes, and she was shaking, like she was cold, and there was a huge bruise on her face—it looked like a handprint that she’d hastily covered with makeup. There were even bruises around her wrists. It happened during a fight. She said they needed an alibi.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Ghost said in a whisper that became a yell. He was standing right behind us, tearing a soda can off plastic rings.
“Watch your mouth.” Julian glared at him. “Anyway, she asked me to help her get rid of the body.”
“Holy shit,” Ghost said, and then made a face. “Is that better, old man? ‘Holy shit’?”
I tried to picture Julian—those hands that stirred pots and flipped ribs and welcomed people without question into his home—lifting a dead body. You really never knew people at all. Even the ones you knew. “You told the people who come here this story?” I asked, laughing a little, studying him.
“I might have left a few specific details out. So, anyway, I agreed to help Lucia. Marcos arrived shortly after, and I made sure the three of us were in every picture that was taken that night at the Tropicana. Bribed a few bartenders to remember Lucia and Marcos being at the bar all night. To remember Lucia and me dancing. Then we went to her house and got rid of Enrique Chavez. We put him in my trunk and took him somewhere no one would ever find his body. And no one ever found it. Maybe because he was a cruel, abusive drunk, no one paid much attention when he stopped going to work and stopped showing up anywhere at all. The theory was maybe he got mixed up with the wrong people...” Julian slowly shrugged. “And someone took him out.”
“And all three of you kept the secret your whole lives?” I asked.
He nodded. “Marcos has never told anyone as far as I know. And Lucia took it to her grave. So, yes. We all kept the secret. But it put a strain on our marriage in the beginning. You’d be surprised how the act of sharing a secret can drive two people apart. She closed off for a while. I think she always carried the guilt of asking me to do it. She probably knew I loved her deeply by that point. Which meant she knew before she asked that I would do what she needed me to do. She hated that she’d put me in that situation, though, and she thought some day I would resent her for it when my guilt over it got to me.”
“Did you ever regret it?” I asked. “Do you regret it
now?”
“It was wrong what we did. It was a crime. I think of his mother not ever knowing what happened to him. His entire family. But, no, I don’t regret it. Because I did love Lucia. So, so much. And I would’ve done anything for her. Absolutely anything. I probably would’ve killed Enrique for her.”
I shivered. “That’s dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked. “What people are willing to do for each other when they are in love?”
“Very.” He nodded.
“I guess love is as dangerous as it is powerful.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “it’s dangerous because it is powerful.”
Chapter Fourteen
Nikki
I bet you think I started drinking again.
I said this to myself as Samira’s inspecting gaze hit me when she opened her front door. I hadn’t. I’d done a lot of other things instead. I called Fallon Gregory like she was the mistress, and I breathed heavily through her endless hellos, and then hung up like I was the mistress. I did this until she blocked my number. Lea and I cuddled a lot. We ate our combined weight in pizza. The Sinners went to Universal Studios to celebrate the success of the show. In every one of the pictures I was dead-eyed. Mariella Dara and I became texting buddies. I thought a lot about what she said about pain. And I realized it was also comfortable and easy to sink into for me. Some people couldn’t help living with it; their brains were wired that way. Pain was still inevitable for the rest of us, too, but I was starting to see how it had replaced alcohol for me. I had become so dependent on feeling guilt as heavily as possible since the accident. And that person who went to Stu’s, my past, she fed on it. Now, it was time to starve her to death.