“Don’t do that,” he said, over his shoulder. “Lean into the turns, not against them. That’s what you don’t want to do, unless you want road rash.”
“I’m sorry. It was scary when the bike leaned over. I thought we were falling.”
“I know. And now you know what it feels like. That’s how you steer a bike. I won’t let you fall. Do you trust me?”
In my heart, I trusted him, even if my mind warned me against it. Shutting out the voice in my head, I let my heart speak for me. “Yeah, I trust you.”
We left my neighborhood and drove through several residential streets. Hayden was allowing me to get used to the feel of the bike before he took us further. He pulled over to the side of the road after a few blocks and glanced back at me.
“So what do you think? Do you like it? You wanna keep going?”
My heart wanted to scream, I would go anywhere with you, however, my brain put on the brakes so I simply answered, “Let’s keep going.”
“Okay, we’ll get out of these residential areas then. I’ve got somewhere I want to take you.”
Hayden put the bike in gear and we continued heading toward North Nashville. Riding on a motorcycle wasn’t conducive to carrying on a conversation and that was fine with me, so I let my mind wander while my eyes took in the sky above us and the scenery that we passed by. I was surprised at how quickly I had gotten used to the feel of the bike beneath me. After my initial fear had passed and Hayden had taken some time to ride through the neighborhoods next to mine, I found myself oddly loving it. I closed my eyes, breathing in the fresh air, and with each exhale, it felt like a bit more weight fell away from me, floating off into the distance as we moved forward with the wind pushing all of my troubles behind us.
Once in a while, Hayden would glance over his shoulder, and I would catch the corner of his mouth turning up. And when he did that…well, it did something to me.
At the intersection of Old Hickory Boulevard and Eaton’s Creek Road, we headed northwest. We made a left turn, then a right, which eventually took us to State Route 12. From there we turned right, heading north again toward Ashland City. This route featured some nice curves. We were driving near Beaman Park in Davidson County that took us through some beautiful farmland.
I enjoyed the ride, and from time to time, I would catch myself resting my hands lightly against Hayden’s sides. The most innocent of touches, yet it felt remarkably intimate.
We arrived at a divided four lane highway that would lead us into Ashland City and as we rode along the highway, Hayden took his left hand off of the handlebars and let his arm drop to his side. A moment later I felt his hand tighten around my calf muscle. The touch of his warm hand on my jean clad leg was unexpected. I smiled when he looked at me in the mirror. He smiled back.
After a while we pulled into a parking lot at the Riverview Restaurant & Marina. Not surprisingly, I needed help removing my helmet.
Hayden chuckled and removed his helmet with ease, hanging it over the handlebar. He then turned to me, tousling his hair, and before I even had to ask he unsnapped the strap for me, pulled the leather tab, and loosened the helmet so I could remove it. Once again, my skin felt hot everywhere his fingers touched. I placed the helmet on the opposite handlebar, letting it hang by the strap, like he had done.
I ducked to look at my hair in the mirror. Hayden walked around and opened one of the saddlebags and handed me a travel sized hairbrush. “You can use this if you feel like you need to, or if you want to brush some of the tangles out of your hair. The wind can be pretty rough on long hair.”
I took the brush, thanking him, while a pang of jealousy swept over me thinking of other people with long hair he might have had on the back of his motorcycle. I removed the ponytail holder and began brushing my hair while chastising myself for feeling that way. So stupid. I pulled my hair back through the elastic holder into a ponytail again and handed Hayden the brush. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
Hayden shrugged. “I picked it up this morning when I bought the helmet. I thought about the wind tangling your hair, figured you might need it.”
“Wait. You bought this helmet for me? This isn’t an extra one you had?”
“I never needed an extra helmet before today. And you can’t ride without one, so yes… I bought the helmet for you.” He grabbed my hand and started walking toward the restaurant.
“Aren’t they expensive?”
Hayden stopped, which caused me to stop. Facing each other now, he placed both hands on my shoulders, and looked me in the eyes.
I looked way.
He put a finger below my chin and pulled my face up so I had to look him in the eye. “It’s no big deal. I wanted you to ride with me, which meant you needed a helmet. That’s all there is to it. Now come on, there’s food in there calling my name.” He draped his arm over my shoulders and walked me to the door. Once inside he held my hand and it wasn’t until the waitress showed us to our booth that he let go so I could sit. After we were both seated, I looked at my hands. I felt like I was suddenly missing an extension of myself. Needing to push that feeling aside, I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room where I was hoping to gather some type of composure. I washed my hands and returned to the table and sat across from a man who intrigued me, made me angry, and had me melting all at the same time.
“I ordered a glass of water for us while you were gone,” Hayden said, motioning to the glass on the table. “The waiter will be back to take our order in about five minutes. I wanted you to have time to look over the menu.”
“Thank you,” I said, lifting the glass to my lips. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was until the first drops of water hit my tongue. I completely drained the glass and set it down, never taking my eyes off the menu.
I felt Hayden looking at me so I dropped the menu and made eye contact. His eyes were wide and he was smiling. “Thirsty?”
“Shut up!” I said, laughing. “And yes, I was.”
“Riding a motorcycle does that to you. All that fresh air and nothing between you and it.” He raised his empty glass and shook it, making the ice clink against the sides. “I downed my water before the waitress ever left the table.” He laughed and then pointed to my menu. “What did you decide on?”
“I think I’m going with the BLT.”
“Nice choice, for lunch. This is dinner. Don’t you want something more? Oh, and I ordered us an appetizer. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all. What did you order?”
“Bobbers.”
“Bobbers?”
“Yep.”
“Um, what is a bobber?”
“Well, you see, they take bacon, cheese, and garlic grits and fry them into bobbers. They’re delicious!”
“I will take your word for it.”
“You’ll do more than that, Beth. You will love them.” Hayden grinned and grabbed my hand across the table and gave it a squeeze.
The waiter returned with our appetizer, refilled our water glasses, and we placed our orders, along with requesting a couple of Coronas to be brought out with our main dishes. Hayden talked me into getting the grilled chicken. He ordered the catfish dinner and insisted that I try a bite, even though I told him I didn’t eat seafood.
“It didn’t come out of the sea,” he said with a straight face.
I rolled my eyes and took a tiny bite. Then he made me admit that I liked it. “Okay, okay. I liked it a little bit.”
We shared food, enjoyed cold beer, and afterward, we took a stroll on the pier at the Marina. We walked along the Riverview in the sunset on the Cumberland River, making guesses at how much this boat or that boat might have cost.
“Beth, look at that,” Hayden said, pointing up. Brilliant colors of pinks, oranges, and reds painted the sky. We stood there holding hands, watching the sun sink lower. There was a soft breeze blowing off the river and, aside from the smell of fish, it was maybe one of the most amazingly beautiful moments of my life. I saved a
mental snapshot of the moment, making sure to remember the feel of Hayden’s hand in mine and the way I felt standing next to him.
Walking back to the parking lot, I said, “Thank you, Hayden, for asking me to come with you today. I had a great time.”
“It’s not over yet. I still have to get you back home. Thank me when I walk you to your front door.” He opened the saddlebag on the opposite side of the bike from me and took out a pullover hoodie. “Here, put this on. It gets chilly when the sun goes down.”
Taking the hoodie, I noticed that it was brand new. Something else he had bought for me this morning, knowing I would need it later. He really thought of everything. He really thought of me. That thought did something to my heart.
We got back on the bike and were a few miles away from home when I realized it. I hadn’t thrown up. After we ate dinner, I didn’t even think about it.
I didn’t even think about it.
Hayden
I walked Beth to her door. Our day together had been stress free and fun, which was all I wanted when I woke up this morning. I wanted to put yesterday’s events out of our minds for a while and concentrate on spending time together. I knew that in order to cross off any of my goals¸ I would need to get Beth to trust me first. I also knew Rome wasn’t built in a day and I had my work cut out for me.
We could only ignore the elephant in the room for so long.
We stood on her porch. She had unlocked the door and hadn’t gone inside yet. She was smiling up at me and I wanted more than anything to lock that smile in place and throw away the key. I wanted her to always be smiling. So I struggled with doing what I wanted, and doing what needed to be done. And I came to this conclusion…sometimes life sucked.
“Hayden, I–”
“Make me understand, Beth. Make me understand. Please.”
In an instant her smile faded. Wiped clean, like it had never been there.
She sighed and lowered her eyes to the ground. “Hayden, how do I make you understand something I don’t understand myself?” Her eyes flickered back up to meet mine. They were sad, and it wasn’t lost on me that I had done this to her.
“Try,” I pleaded.
Beth pushed the door open and walked inside. I followed her, closing the door behind me. She tossed her keys on the kitchen table and held on to the back of the chair like she needed the support to keep her standing. “Why’d you have to ruin it?”
“What did I ruin?” I asked.
“This was the perfect day. I had one perfect day out of many bad ones. Why can’t we let it go for now?”
Her tone was bitter, and I inwardly kicked myself for messing it up. I pushed it down, though, because this was a conversation long overdue. I couldn’t sit back and watch her keep self-destructing.
I walked further into the room, paying close attention to the photos she had displayed. Some were in picture frames on the wall, while others decorated a couple of shelves on a corner bookcase. I studied them all, trying to figure out who some of the people were. I wanted to know the people who were special in her life, who’d earned the honor of being lovingly placed inside a frame in her home. I had so many questions, all of them leading me back to the question I had already asked. She hadn’t given me an answer yet.
I picked up a small picture frame of two little girls. “Why do you do it, Beth?” I asked. I set the frame down and turned to face her.
Her expression told me she wanted me to leave. Her eyes were narrowed…arms folded in front of her chest. This was her ‘I’m not telling you anything’ pose. She’d perfected it well, and over the course of the last few months I’d seen it many times. She was digging in with both heels, determined not to crack.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me about this.”
“About what, Hayden? Huh? What picture do you want me to paint for you?”
“The truth is all I’m asking for.”
“You can’t handle the truth.”
“The last person who used that line ended up spilling his guts if you remember.”
“Well, this isn’t A Few Good Men. My life isn’t a movie, Hayden. The truth is…” She looked exhausted. She exhaled a surrendering breath. “I’m not sure what the truth is.”
“Well, let’s discover it together, then. When did the bulimia start? Surely you know that much.”
She held her lips tightly together, which indicated to me I couldn’t pry them open with a crowbar. Fine…we could go about this another way.
“My name is Hayden Christopher McCoy.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know your name, Hayden.”
“I am the heir to a multi-million dollar company.” Her eyes went wide. Good. I had her attention now. “And I walked away from it.”
“Why?” Her tone was a bit softer.
“Long story… and one that no one else knows, except me. I keep personal things close to the vest too.” I picked up another picture, not really seeing the faces staring back at me, and continued to talk. “I had it all growing up. None of it mattered, though, because they were just things… things that could be bought, and easily replaced. What I ultimately learned that made me walk away is that money in the hands of morally depraved people can be a very powerful weapon.” I set the frame back down, and turned my body toward hers again. Time to share the one thing I’ve never shared with anyone. “I have a half-sister named Annabeth. She’s five.”
Beth went from being tight-lipped to her jaw dropping open. I took the shocked look on her face as my cue to keep going.
“I’ve wanted to tell you about her. I want to tell you about her so bad that I ache to share that part of my life with you. But you have to tell me something about you now. We’ll do this together. I tell you one thing about me every day, and every day you will tell me one thing about you. We can learn about each other in small doses. One sad, fucked up, complicated, heartbreaking layer at a time. Maybe by the time we’ve told all our secrets, we’ll have a complete picture of who we are. Maybe you’ll finally understand why you do what you do. I want to help you, Beth, that’s all. Can’t you see that?”
Beth dipped her eyes toward the floor, looking up at me through her lashes. The muscles around her eyes and mouth began to relax. She unfolded her arms and ran her hands through her long blonde hair.
“You want to know what I was thinking on the ride back home?” She glanced at me and then stared at the wall in front of her. “That I didn’t throw up my dinner today.” She laughed bitterly. “Ain’t that some shit? I actually measured a good day based on whether or not my face was in a toilet, something normal people don’t do”
“What are you thinking about now?” I asked cautiously.
“How bad I want to lock myself in the bathroom right now and purge. It’s a craving that I seek…the release I need to feel better, however short-lived it may be. Like alcoholics who need to drink, or drug addicts who need their next fix. Food is my anxiety, purging is my relief, and together it is my addiction.” She shook her head. “I am disgusted by my own words, so you’ll have to forgive me for choosing not to verbalize my sick thoughts. You don’t want to hear them. Hell, I don’t want to hear them. It’s bad enough that I have to live with these thoughts in my own head day in and day out. You think I want to talk about this shit with you?”
“Beth–”
“I know you’re expecting to hear a sad story… that I had a terrible childhood or whatever. Truth is, Hayden, my childhood wasn’t perfect but no one’s is. I had good people in my life …like I do now.”
Beth walked over and picked up the picture of the two little girls I had been looking at before and traced their faces with the tips of her fingers. She eyed the picture like she was recalling the day it was taken. I wanted to ask her who those little girls were, and what they meant to her. I wanted to ask her a million things and all at once. I kept quiet though so she could work out whatever she needed to work out inside her head.
She placed it carefully back on the shelf and c
ontinued to talk without looking at me. “The problem isn’t the people I surround myself with. The problem is me. I’m the problem. I’m broken and I’ve given up on trying to pick up the pieces. This is who I am. I don’t know how to be anyone else.”
“Well then I guess I know what I need to do now.”
“And what’s that?”
“I pick up the pieces for you.”
“You can’t–”
“I can, Beth. And when I’m done, you’ll be a masterpiece. A one of a kind work of art.”
“You think it’s so easy don’t you? If it was don’t you think I would have done it by now? You think I like living this way?”
“No, I don’t think it’s easy, Beth. But you have me now…something you didn’t have before.”
“Oh, so you’re the white knight who’s gonna ride in on your white horse and solve all my problems?”
I stepped forward, and gently touched her face with the back of my fingers. “You just admitted to me that you didn’t want to vomit today while you were with me, so yeah, let me try to be the white knight for you.”
For one brief second she leaned into my touch, and then she was putting distance between us again. “You don’t understand! Just…stop, okay? I am not your project!”
She was getting angry again and trying to push me away by lashing out. Her mood swing after seeing her happy today was hard to take. I fucking hate this. I hate that we have to go through this. I scrubbed my hands over my face trying hard not to react to her words. She wants me to get mad and leave so she can lock herself in her bathroom and shove her face in the toilet.
Not happening.
“I’m not saying that, Beth. Why won’t you let me help you?”
“Why do you want to? See, that’s what I don’t get. I’m sick. My thoughts are SICK. Have you been listening to me at all?” She was yelling now and I clenched my jaw, trying to keep my voice low so I didn’t yell back.
“I’ve heard every word you’ve said. I’m even listening for the things you don’t say.”
“Well that’s great. Stop trying to fix me, Hayden! I’m not a puzzle for you to solve!”
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