by K. L. Kreig
“I got to thinking about what you said the other day, about sticking as close to the truth as possible, and I thought the same thing should apply to how we met. I was going to talk to you about it tonight but I didn’t get a chance and it just popped out. I may have gone a little too far. Sorry.”
I chuckle. “No, don’t be. You’re right, of course. Besides, you’ll have a nice little nest egg when this is through to buy your own new car, right?”
I know I’ve said something wrong when her face falls. “Right,” she murmurs.
“Did I say something to upset you?” I look down to find her hand in mine. How it got there, I’m not sure.
“No.” She looks away when she answers, and I know she’s lying.
“Look at me.”
She hesitates.
“Willow.” That gets her attention. I’m not sure what I expect when her eyes reach mine, but it’s not emptiness. Her façade is securely snapped in place. It pisses me the hell off. I fucked up, sending her back underground, and I have no idea how.
“Hey.” I lean toward her so our faces are only inches apart. “I’m sorry for whatever I said to change your mood.”
“You didn’t say anything I didn’t need to hear,” she responds mildly.
“Willow,” I plead, not even sure what it is I’m begging for. I just want to see that dazzling light back in her eyes when I make her smile.
“It’s okay. I’m okay. Really.”
Her plastic smile bugs me. When she slides her hand out from under mine and goes back to dinner, I feel the loss of her touch acutely. It confuses me.
We eat in silence until I can’t stand it anymore. “So, your neck? Is it really sore?”
I’m treated to another curve of her mouth, relieved it was the right thing to say.
“A little, but no spasms.”
“Well, that’s a damn shame. I could have rubbed them out for you.” I wag my brows, and she giggles. Bingo. “Did you have it looked at by a doctor? I’ll pay for any medical expenses you have,” I tell her adamantly.
I’ve been kicking myself that I didn’t trade contact information with her the day of the accident. I was so damned focused on my own life, my own inconsequential issues that I acted like a complete bastard.
“No, Shaw. I’m fine, really. It just lasted a couple of days.”
“You need to let me fix your car. You pick the body shop, and I’ll take care of everything.”
“I will. I’m just…I’ve been really busy with other things. It’s drivable. I’ll find some time soon.”
My mouth turns down, wondering what has her so damn busy she can’t take a day or two to get her car repaired. I don’t like the fact that she’s driving around in a wrecked car because of me. In fact, I don’t like that she’s driving around in that death trap at all.
“I’m really sorry. About that day. About how I acted.”
She sets down her fork. She’s barely touched her meal, and I’m sure it’s cooled off by now as has mine. “You were distracted. It happens.”
“I was a jackass.”
“There is that, too.” She winks. I laugh. The tension disappears like it never intruded in the first place.
“So…you realize you’re going to have to meet my family very soon now.”
“Already?” That sends her into a near panic.
“I’m afraid so. You were brilliant with Emily, but that woman invented yayas.”
“Yayas?”
“Yeah, that’s what my mother calls them. Blabbermouths, chatterboxes, gossipmongers. Emily Smith may be the city council president, but she’s best known as the busybody of city hall.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen at the realization of what she’s just done. “Oh, crap.”
“Hey, it’s okay.” Once again her hand is in mine. It feels so damn good. Too good, in fact. Warning bells should be deafening me with the way this woman makes me feel, but they are strangely absent. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. This is exactly what we need.”
“Yeah, okay.” She says the words without conviction.
“How did you get here?” I ask quickly, not wanting her temperament to plummet again.
Her smile is thin. “Cab.”
“It’s settled then. I’m taking you home.” I wave down the waitress and ask for the check.
“No, Shaw, you don’t have to do that.”
“That’s the only way a proper date ends.”
“But this isn’t—”
“Don’t even say it,” I snap. “This is a fucking date, Willow, and I’m not taking no for an answer.”
Her fiery gaze burns holes into my skin. It’s full of defiance and tenacity. It tugs on my cock something fierce. Her chair scrapes the floor when she stands, and just when I think she’s going to leave me sitting here all alone, she gives.
“What the hell. I guess I’m all in now that you know my name. You’ll just track me down anyway if I say no.”
“You’re probably right.” I grin, feeling triumphant.
“Probably?”
“Maybe?”
Her supple neck elongates when she leans it back and giggles, causing a chain reaction. Every time her face stretches into a grin, so does mine. Every time her heart races, mine keeps pace. Every time her gaze fills with desire, I want to slide into her and live there.
“You ready?” I hum, my lips skimming her cheek. Christ, how I’d love to feel that hitch in her breath against my root as she holds me deep.
Fuck, what was this new game plan again?
I throw down three one-hundred-dollar bills, which leaves a nice tip for our waitress. With my palm low on Willow’s back, I usher us through the throng of tables, politely saying hi to several people along the way, including a reporter for the Seattle 7-Day, one of the more alternative newspapers in the area who have a penchant for political gossip. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an article about us on the front page of the next edition.
Once Willow is settled in my Rover, I ask, “Which way?”
“Beacon Hill.”
I want to hold her hand, but I don’t. Now that we’re away from the public eye, there’s no reason to. I’m surprised at how much I don’t like that. I’m surprised at how upset I got that she didn’t want to admit this was a date, although she’s right. It’s business. I’m surprised at a lot of things, in fact, especially at the thought of what my family will think of her. Why would I even care? In four months’ time, I doubt I’ll ever set eyes on Willow Blackwell again.
At the thought of that, another surprise hits me in the form of a sharp pang in the middle of my chest.
All too soon, I’m turning onto Court Way and pulling up in front of a two-story condo. Willow’s bumblebee Fiat, with its cracked, barely hanging-on bumper, is a beacon, so I know we’re in the right place. It’s not run down, but it’s also not very nice either.
“You live here with your friend?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure it’s safe?” I push my face closer to the windshield, noticing the trees and bushes are overgrown, giving a perpetrator the perfect hiding place.
“Yes, it’s safe. I’ve lived here for four years without incident.”
“Do you have a security system?” I face her.
“You know, I’ve managed quite well without you my entire life. I think I’ll be just fine.”
“Have you?” I ask. Now that she’s opened that door, I’m stepping through.
“Have I, what?”
“Managed quite well?”
Her face blanks, and we stare in uncomfortable stillness. Not even the air dares move. I see her answer clearly, although she won’t voice it. No. I haven’t managed at all. But it’s obvious that while I may have stepped through the door, it doesn’t mean she’s going to let me stay inside.
The porch light pops on, drawing her attention. I feel the not-so-subtle shove back over the threshold, the glimpse of her vulnerability gone. I almost feel the door stinging my ass when she
slams it closed.
“Thanks for a nice dinner. I’ll be waiting on pins and needles for your next call,” she quips. It’s strained, awkward. I can tell she wants to get away.
I’m onto her. I broach a subject she doesn’t like, she diverts by running.
“I’ll be in touch,” I tell her.
What I want to say is: Come home with me. Let me fuck you until you’re sobbing with so much satiation you don’t notice your darkness anymore.
With a tight smile, she pulls the latch, releasing her from my SUV. I let her go without so much as a word or a kiss goodnight. She moves gracefully up the walk, ascends the three stairs on the front porch, and stuffs her key into the lock. The front door swings open, and right when I think she’s going to shut it, she turns and flashes a genuine but brief smile before a hated piece of solid wood separates her from my view.
I shift the Rover in reverse and slowly drive away, taking one last lingering look at the condo. It’s only then that the biggest, most shocking revelation of the evening rolls through me like a crescendo.
If letting Willow Blackwell walk away from me just now was harder than I imagined, what the hell will it be like in four months’ time when I let her walk away from me for good?
12
“Hello?” I call into the quiet house, setting my purse and keys on the kitchen table. My gaze roams around the spacious, lifeless room. I don’t think anything has changed since the day my father passed away four and a half years ago. In fact, I’m not sure much has changed in the past fourteen since my sister, Violet, died.
I scan the canary walls, noting they could use a fresh coat of paint. My eyes stop on the third cupboard from the left, which still holds a thick, circular dent from where Violet tried killing a mammoth spider with the wrong end of a broom. She got it, but she also was in big trouble when my parents came home and saw the damage she’d done.
I smile when I note the scratches still visible in the middle of the hardwood floor from where Violet and I tried perfecting our runway walk in my mother’s high heels. I was five. Violet took the brunt of the punishment that time, too, because she was “older and should have known better.”
Violet may have been five years older than me, but she was my best friend. She never treated me like a dumb, annoying little sister. Up until the end, she treated me as an equal. I loved that about her, and I appreciate it all the more now that I’m grown up.
When my attention lands on the dusty KitchenAid mixer, an unexpected wave of sadness washes through me. I miss my sister. I miss my father. I miss our family, the way we used to be. Happy. Oblivious to the tragedies that would befall us.
I run my finger along the shiny, smooth top of the mixer, remembering. Once upon a time, my momma loved baking, and she swore the Jonagold apple made the best apple pie. Every fall we’d take a day trip to Skaggit’s to pick bushels of them. Violet and I would eat them until we were sick.
I’ve seen this appliance week in and week out for years, yet for some reason today, I’m ripped apart by an unwelcome memory.
“What’s this?”
“Just open it, Evelyn,” my father coaxes. We trade glances. I can tell he’s anxious, hoping this will pull his wife out of her depression. I don’t agree. Nothing short of raising her favorite daughter from the dead will do that, but I didn’t try to talk him out of it either. I’ve never seen the love of a man for a woman so deep and wide as my father’s is for my momma. Even at sixteen, I dream of finding that someday.
“But it’s not my birthday.”
“It doesn’t have to be your birthday for me to buy my lovely wife a gift, does it?”
“I guess not.”
“Good.” He leans down, placing a chaste kiss on her lips. “Now open it.”
She gets a sparkle in her eye as she lifts the bulky box. “It’s heavy.” When she tries to shake it, I suddenly get excited because she’s getting excited, and I can’t remember the last time I saw her excited about anything. Maybe my father was right. Maybe this is exactly what she needed.
I lost my momma four years ago, the same night I lost my sister. I want her back. So does my father. I hope this brings her back to us.
The anticipation in the room mounts until I can hardly stand it. My momma slides her thin finger underneath the seam of the wrapping paper, carefully separating the tape that binds the thin sheets together. She always does this with gifts. It takes us forever to get through opening presents on Christmas morning. Violet and I always sat anxiously, trying to shame her into ripping the gift wrap to shreds instead so it could be our turn again. It only made her go slower.
She makes her way meticulously around the rectangle. I’m completely breathless now. I don’t think I’ve taken a full lungful of oxygen in an hour, and I feel slightly dizzy. Finally, when she slowly lowers the paper from the box, time freezes.
Excitement turns to anxiety when she stares blankly at the brand-new KitchenAid mixer in a color that matches her kitchen décor. Silence thickens around us like chunky pea soup, coagulating the longer she remains quiet.
My father clears his throat, which sounds like a tornado bearing down on us. When he speaks, it’s as if the sound is being forced through a million shards of glass. “I thought maybe it would make baking easier. My assistant raves about hers.”
Without a word, my momma sets the box on the kitchen table and leaves us staring at her back as she walks out of the room. I don’t know how long we stand like statues, unable to move, unable to breathe.
“She’ll come around,” he finally whispers.
I move to his side and wrap my arm around his waist. “Yeah. She’ll come around,” I agree. We both know it’s not true. If she hasn’t come around after four years, she’s lost to us forever.
To my knowledge, my momma has never used the apple-green mixer my father thoughtfully picked out for her. After she walked away, he pasted on his smile similar to the one I always use and set about unpacking that thing, finding just the right spot on the counter, where it sat untouched. Year after year. If my parents spoke about that gift privately I would never know, but I know it wasn’t ever spoken about in front of me again. We all just went about our lives like the thing my momma used to love almost as much as her girls didn’t die right along with her eldest child.
The fact that she talks about baking now, incessantly sometimes, boggles my mind. She hasn’t baked a thing since I was twelve. Baking was always “girl bonding time” when I was growing up…at least it was before.
That’s how I categorize my life.
Before and after Violet.
Before Violet, my mother was engaged, happy, easygoing, loving, teaching.
After Violet, she became withdrawn, short-tempered, anxious, paranoid, depressed.
Before Violet, our house was filled with music and laughter and joy.
After Violet, it was deathly still. The silence was earsplitting.
Before Violet, I admit my prodigy of a sister received most of the attention and that was okay. I also worshipped the ground she walked on. But after Violet? I was all but forgotten by my mother who couldn’t move past her death and by my father who had his hands full trying to keep his wife from becoming another statistic. Uncanny that he was the one who succumbed to that instead.
I didn’t blame my father for focusing on her. In the early years after Violet overdosed, my mother tried killing herself twice until they found the right balance of antidepressants to numb her sufficiently. I didn’t blame her for not wanting to live in a world without her beautiful, gifted child. I didn’t want to, either. I didn’t even blame Violet anymore, although for a long time I did.
At twelve, I didn’t get it, but at twenty-six I do. The need to escape from the pressure bearing down on you can sometimes be overwhelming. And while I always envied my sister for her unnatural gift of turning a simple piece of sheet music into something that actually pulsed with life, to her it was a burden she felt saddled with.
“Hey, are you ok
ay?” Millie’s voice yanks me by the collar back to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” I stutter, trying to shake ghosts that keep sticking to me no matter how much I try to coat myself in Teflon. “I’m fine. How are you?”
I give my mother’s full-time live-in caregiver a hug.
After Violet, we settled into a new routine, and as the years passed by, my mother spent so much time lost in herself we didn’t question her forgetfulness or her confusion or the fact that she was nearly a recluse. We’d grown quite used to it, actually. It was the “after Violet” effect, I thought.
I was wrong.
At the young age of fifty-nine, when I was eighteen, my mother was diagnosed with moderate-stage Alzheimer’s, a disease that generally affects those in their seventies and eighties. Once we knew what was wrong, it made more sense. Easier in a way to handle, but she progressed quickly to the point it was difficult again.
By the time I graduated college, she’d become a hazard to herself. She started a mini fire in their bedroom upstairs when she forgot she’d plugged in the iron and left it flat on the ironing board. Did over ten thousand dollars’ worth of damage. Had my father not come home when he did, she’d probably be dead, the house burned to ashes around her.
I had big dreams when I moved out and went to college. I wanted to move to New York City and land a gig on Broadway. I wanted to make my parents proud. Make Violet proud. I was weeks away from making it a reality. I had an overpriced, run-down studio apartment already picked out. I’d landed a small part in an off-off-Broadway play as an extra. I planned to supplement my nonexistent income with clichéd waitressing. My life was finally beginning.
After the fire, though, I knew I couldn’t leave Seattle. My parents needed me. I was all they had. The pressure of his job and caring for his failing wife was taking a toll on my father, and I couldn’t leave him to handle it all alone.
But I guess we weren’t enough to keep him going, and knowing that just fucking hurts more and more every day.
Millie sets a hand on my shoulder. “Are you sure you’re okay, Willow? You look pale.”