by Natasha Boyd
I stood up. I had to get out of here. Away from her do-gooding and bonding, from all this sticky sweetness.
“What’s the matter? Do you hate it?”
I pushed past her and flung open the door. Tom was midstride outside my room and stopped dead.
We locked eyes.
I felt naked.
I backed up into my room and ripped the pink shirt off, not caring they were both staring at me. Grabbing my black sweater, I hauled it on with no regard for my hair or makeup. The clip tumbled out. “I hate pink,” I choked out. “I’m sorry, Bethany.”
Looking at her aghast expression and Tom’s shocked one, I pushed past them both and grabbed my jacket to head outside. I should have gone to the bathroom and cleaned my face, but Fuckhead was in there. Walking to the beach was out, I’d kill myself if I attempted it in the dark. Bursting outside, I plopped down on the wicker seat on the porch, drawing my knees up to my chest and making myself as small as possible.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I pulled it out.
What the fuck was that?
I shuddered at his tone.
You saw it, what do you think?
You look beautiful. Stunning.
Like Abby, I know.
I felt the cold bite of the breeze sting the wet lines down my cheeks.
No. Like YOU.
Right. I bit my lip.
You. Are. Beautiful.
I let out a half sob. God, I couldn’t do this. Is this what it felt like to fall for someone you couldn’t have? Feeling every kind word they said pierce painfully into your heart? I thought of the little mermaid dancing on knives for her prince as he married another. How she would rather throw herself into the waves and become foam upon the sea than take his happiness away.
Amazing what some makeup can do. Why are you texting me?
Because I needed to tell you that immediately, and I have to take Bethany home so I won’t be able to. We’ll be out in a moment.
What was Bethany doing while he texted?
Where are you?
I’m in Fuckhead’s kingdom.
I smiled thinly, in spite of myself.
Don’t come back. It’s late, you should stay with her.
There was no response for a few moments.
I don’t want to leave you alone.
My heart thudded painfully in my chest.
That’s exactly the reason you should stay with her. Please don’t make me into more of a burden than I already am.
The front door and screen opened.
I stood. Here went nothing. Bethany stepped out, Tom leaning to hold the door.
“Bethany.” I sniffed and wiped carefully under my eyes, to compose myself. “I’m sorry I freaked out. I’m not sure if Tom told you, but my older sister Abby was… well, she was beautiful. Always perfect, wore makeup perfectly. She was gorgeous. Anyway, for a moment, it was like you’d made me up to look like her.”
At Bethany’s horrified expression, I leaned forward and took her arm. “It’s okay, I know you didn’t plan to, how would you? No more than I could plan to flip out when I saw myself. It, it just… for a split-second my reflection reminded me of Abby. To be honest, I couldn’t believe how beautiful I looked. You have an amazing gift.”
I stepped forward and hugged her stiff body, then let go, ignoring the way Tom watched me from the shadows behind her, the weight of his gaze heavy and uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry I ruined an otherwise fun night. Maybe, now that the shock has worn off, you could show me how to do this for myself one day.” I tried a small smile. “Thank you for dinner.”
Bethany nodded. “Uh, sure. And you’re welcome.” She turned and headed down the steps.
“I’ll be right there, Beth, I just gotta send Pete a text before we go and before it gets too late.” Tom pulled out his phone and stood typing under the porch light. When he was done, he canted his head toward me casually then headed down the steps. “Night, Olivia,” he tossed over his shoulder.
“Night,” echoed Bethany.
Well.
Didn’t I just remind myself of my place on the food chain? I was a taker with nothing to offer. Superfluous. Edging toward extinction.
My phone buzzed as Tom revved up the cart. I hauled it out again.
Liv, go inside. Go back and stand in front of that mirror. Please. Do it for me. I wish I could make you see what I see. Look at yourself closely. Look past all your bitterness and your pain. Past the fear and the bad memories. Look past your sister. See the girl I see. You get to choose this. You get to choose to be the person I see. Choose her. Please. She is absolutely breathtaking.
The sound of the cart, of Tom and Bethany driving away, finally faded into the night, and I couldn’t move.
FOUR: THE NUMBER of times Bethany came over during the following week.
Three: the number of pills I had left.
Two: the number of spiders Fuckhead killed.
One: the number of hearts beating painfully on a daily basis. Mine.
Zero: the amount of nights Tom and Bethany spent together.
It was my only joy.
Tom and I were back to tolerating each other’s company, like when I’d first arrived, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap. But this time the tension was thick and cloying, and clearly he was using Bethany as a shield between us. He had come back that night after dropping her home, but the following week she was at the cottage often, presumably at Tom’s invitation.
It was a violation. Like he’d allowed our delicate existence, the sanctity of our home, to be soiled.
I couldn’t help but watch him when he wasn’t looking. He had a funny habit of sliding both his hands into his thick hair and mashing it around. It seemed to be whenever he was thinking hard on something. And not that I ever saw him type at night, but I imagined he probably did that constantly as he mulled over word choices. So it wasn’t always the wind that whipped his hair all over the place after all.
I sat at the kitchen table one morning as he did it, and my fingers suddenly itched to smooth it down, which filled me with so much irritation I slammed my coffee cup onto the table harder than I meant to. This earned me a perplexed scowl from Tom before he disappeared down the hall to the bathroom.
The clocks changed.
Winter finally peeled her frigid fingers off our island, leaving her cool chill to loiter in the shade of the leaves. And the extra evening hours lit by lingering sunsets brought more customers to Mama’s, full of the frisky fever of spring.
Marjoe let me work into the dinner hours to accommodate the uptick in business.
Fuckhead was finally allowed out of the bathroom after Tom said he tried to bite his dick off. I couldn’t even imagine the events that had led up to that scenario, but I laughed so hard when they both came crashing out, Tom wrapped in a towel, practically throwing the poor cat down the hall.
I set the litter box up next to the washer and dryer, and we were both extra careful not to let the cat outside the cottage lest he ran away.
I brought the chess set back out one morning, set it up and made a move. Then I went for a run on the beach. I felt like all I’d done since I’d been here on the island, and for as long as I could remember if I was honest with myself, was just survive. Running felt like I was moving forward, adding to my daily schedule, forcing myself to live again. I’d never really been into track or anything, but it felt good. Head clearing.
The spring tides had washed massive clumps of dead marsh grasses onto the beach, along with their stench of decay, but in return for the inconvenient detritus, the actual marshes around Mama’s were bright and alive with fresh green growth. Everything seemed brighter. Everything but the cottage.
Tyler came into Mama’s one of the days I was working, and Marjoe refused to serve him. I was embarrassed and humiliated that she knew about my stupid escapade, but at the same time, speechless that she would take a stand to protect me.
“Don’t you get produce from his father?” I asked.
“I’ll just have to make other plans if he’s that stupid,” was all she said and waved me off as if it was no big deal.
Tom and I were now playing an estranged game of chess, each one of us taking a turn in our own time. Every day that went by, Tom seemed more agitated and tense until I wondered if it had anything to do with me at all.
One night he was gone again overnight, and I got a single text.
You okay?
Fine. Thank you.
I was grateful for the extra hours at work. Before long, I had three hundred dollars cash in my pocket from pay and tips and the occasional cake order. The crisp bills were the sweetest things I had ever held in my hands. I almost didn’t want to spend them. Almost.
I wasn’t sure when Tom was going to Savannah next, so I left the money on the kitchen table with the old receipt from the tampons and condoms, and also a shopping list. But what I really wanted was for him to take me to Savannah.
Next time you go to Savannah, can I come with you?
I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to go, I just did. Maybe I wanted to see his Savannah, how he spent his time, his boat. Something. I missed him.
He didn’t respond for hours. I was making a salad for dinner and opening a can of tuna that Fuckhead was going nuts over when he finally walked in, windswept and disheveled, in jeans and a white T-shirt. I stopped what I was doing to stare, and the cat leapt over my feet and between my legs, meowing repeatedly.
“Well, can I?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I have to do something for someone, but if I don’t, you can.” His eyes flicked to me briefly.
“Cryptic much?”
“Sorry, I just, uh, I just have some stuff going on right now.”
“With Bethany.”
“No. Yes. No, not to do with her.” He raked his hands through his hair, taming it, then headed to the fridge.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I thought we had a… a friendship or something, and I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong.” Addressing it made a weird emotional bubble grow in my chest, and my eyes started to sting.
He stopped and turned around.
I blinked rapidly, trying to dissipate any water that was collecting. The cat let out a mournful moan.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, Liv.”
“Then why do I feel like I have? Are…” I swallowed. “Are you disgusted with me now?”
“What?” he whispered. His face creased, like he was in pain and his eyes did a slow blink. Then he took a step toward me and just kept coming. And suddenly I was wrapped up in his arms, my face pressed into his hard chest, breathing him in. Breathing in his unique scent of laundry and male exertion and the fresh outdoors. Salt and weathered wood.
I froze, stiff with surprise from the sudden contact, then endured the brazen heat that immediately followed and whipped through my belly.
His head dropped on top of mine, and he breathed into my hair. “I know you don’t mean that.”
“Mean what?”
“How could I ever be disgusted with you? I—”
He lapsed into silence, just holding me. His chest was warm, his heart beating hard under my cheek.
Lifting my arms tentatively, I slid them around his waist. I thought I felt him shudder. His muscles were bunched tight, or he was tense. I didn’t know. He was hugging me. I could hug him back, right?
The cat embarked on a continuous series of desperate meows and threaded his body between our legs in a figure eight. I willed him to shut the hell up and stop ruining this moment, but it was no use.
Tom chuckled and pulled away.
“Fuckhead,” I growled vehemently at the cat, who proceeded to give me a nice view of his butt.
I looked up, and Tom was watching me, amused. He reached his hand up and slid it behind my head, and I stopped breathing. His gaze flicked to my mouth for a millisecond. My lips burned. My eyes fluttered closed as he drew me in and placed a soft kiss on my forehead. His beard, he’d taken to wearing clipped closer to his skin these days, torturing me with glimpses of his beauty, grazed my brow.
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat, my heart hammering.
He drew away slowly.
I kept my eyes closed. I couldn’t bear for him to see what mine must look like. Desperate. Yearning. Drowning in agony.
And the knowledge that I could never tell him how I felt, that I had to keep it locked in my heart where it couldn’t ruin this, was almost a comfort. I would be safe and able to stay here with him as long as I didn’t mess this up. God, and I’d come so close to messing it all up when I came on to him.
I hated the memory of myself, of who I’d been then. How could a person change so much in so short a time? It was both the beauty and the agony of my lot. Falling in love with him had forever altered me, but to let it out of my heart might lose him forever.
“You want some salad for dinner?” I asked, thickly.
“Fuckhead does. Count us both in.”
“He’s in it for the tuna,” I said. At the word, the cat let out another long yowl. “Dang, you’re noisy,” I grumbled.
“I’m not sure he needs tuna, have you smelled his breath recently?”
I laughed. “Yes, every morning when he bats my head, trying to wake me up to feed him.”
Tom slapped a hand to his chest and scowled at the cat. “Dude, I thought I was your go-to guy in the mornings. I’m so hurt.”
Fuckhead glanced at him, then came and sat down right in front of me, glaring and swishing his tail sulkily. “Wow, it didn’t take you long to grow an attitude, did it?” Tom asked the cat. “Don’t even think of trying your luck with me tomorrow morning. We need to keep you lean and mean to take care of the spiders, snakes, and rats.”
“The what?” I dropped the salad tongs with a clatter.
Shrugging, and clearly trying not to smile, Tom pursed his lips and gave me a look that said, poor you, you thought spiders were your biggest threat…
I shuddered and returned to salad making. “Is this going to be enough for you?” I asked.
Tom grabbed a can of soup out of the pantry and tossed it in the air, catching it deftly.
We ate dinner and compared notes about the cat, whom I now adored for giving us a neutral topic of conversation. We both agreed he probably needed a new name. But as usual we disagreed on agreeing. “Will you read me some of your stuff tonight?” I asked as we cleared up dinner.
“Hmmm.” Tom paused. “Yes, but you have to read to me first. It’s non-negotiable,” he added at my raised eyebrows.
“You’re hoping I’ll fall asleep while you drone on and not get to pass judgment on your writing skills.”
“Nah, never. Anyway, I thought you liked my voice?”
“I do.”
“Okay then, there’ll be no droning.”
I glanced wistfully at the fireplace. “I wish it was cold enough to lay a fire.”
“That’s what doors are made for.” He grinned. “We let out a little of that spring warmth that’s built up in here, so we can still enjoy a fire.”
“Even though those evil no-see-ums seem to make it through the screen.” I grimaced. “But, let’s do it.”
Tom laid a fire, and I got comfy on one end of the couch with a quilt from the closet in my room. I hefted the large tome of fairy tales onto my lap and spent a long time pretending to find the right page as I watched him bend and stretch over the fire to get it going. His ass was… well, it was… he turned around, and I dropped my eyes to the page.
“Far, far from land,” I started.
“Wait.” Tom came over and settled himself on his end of the couch. “Go on.”
“Far, far from land, where the waters are as blue as the petals of the cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom, live the mer-people. So deep is this part of the sea that you would have to pile many church towers on top of each ot
her before one of them emerged above the surface.”
“A deep blue eternity,” Tom interjected his eyes on me.
“What?”
“Sorry, it’s lame. When I was younger, in school, high school, I was asked to describe what I thought love was. And that’s how I thought of love. Blue and infinite, clear but deep, where no man could truly reach. A deep blue eternity.”
I stared, waiting for him to crack a joke or something.
“Whatever. Go on,” he said, shrugging and taking a sip of the beer he’d gotten out of the fridge.
I cleared my throat. “Now you must not think that at the bottom of the sea there is only white sand…”
I went on, reading the beautiful and heartbreaking tale. “…the youngest was the most beautiful. Her complexion as fine as the petals of a rose, her eyes as blue as the clearest lake…”
Tom finished his beer and set it down, then laid his head back and closed his eyes. On I read, even though I knew he was sleeping. “…The prince opened his eyes and looked up at those who stood around him. He did not look out to sea where the mermaid was hiding, for how could he know that it was she who had saved him…”
Was he snoring? He looked so peaceful, I let him be. The cat jumped onto my lap and settled himself, finally getting comfortable by wedging his head right under the book. “…Many a night she heard the fishermen talking about how good and kind the prince was… more and more she grew to love human beings and wished she could leave the sea and live among them.”
Tom let out a deep snore and woke himself up. “Shit, sorry.”
“I was about to kick you, aren’t you lucky? Anyway, I’ll go on… She’s at the part where she wants to know how to win a soul, her grandmother’s telling her how.”
“What? I don’t remember that part of the story.”
“You saw the Disney one?”
He nodded, sheepishly. I rolled my eyes. “Anyway… and he cared so much for you that all his thoughts were of his love for you… while he promised to be eternally true to you, then his soul would flow into your body and you would be able to partake of human happiness. He can give you a soul but yet keep his.”
“Impossible.”
“Peanut gallery, shut up.”