Thou Shalt Not

by Jj Rossum

  Occasionally I felt a surge of anger toward Carrie, even now, and it was usually always in relation to baseball. She continued to advise me, and then strongly suggest, that I quit baseball after my sophomore year. But, I wasn’t going to. We had gotten into a pretty severe fight the night before the first game of my junior year. I was accused of loving baseball more than I loved her, etc., etc. But, I went out and played the next night. And in the fourth inning I hit a line drive down the right field line. I drove in a run and was racing to second base when my knee blew out. Torn ACL. Season over. Happy (but wouldn’t admit it) wife. It took a year to heal, and when I finally neared playing shape again, Carrie got cancer. Obviously, taking care of my wife became a priority. I never played on a field competitively again after tearing my knee. Now, it was playing on the occasional softball team in some random city leagues. And, when people see me play, they inevitably say, “You are really good. Did you ever play baseball? What happened?” Motherfuckers should just mind their own business. Sometimes I feel like playing on a team and purposely being terrible, like most of the rest of them, just to avoid the questions or the “Hey, weren’t you the guy...?” But, I am too competitive for that.

  April could apparently sense my hesitation to answer the question.

  “You know, it’s really not any of my business. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, you’re fine. I blew my knee out. At the end of my junior year. It wasn’t fully healed until the end of my senior year, so I didn’t get to play.”

  That wasn’t entirely true, but it worked.

  “Oh, wow,” she said. “I am really sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” I smiled. “Those sorts of the things happen. Nothing you can do about it.”

  “A few years ago, Marco hurt his elbow,” she said, between sips of her wine. “Everyone was worried it would require Tommy John surgery.”

  Vaguely, I remembered reading that. Tommy John surgery is basically the worst thing that could happen to a pitcher, minus their arm flying off in the middle of a game. It usually meant they were out a year at the very least, and few pitchers every returned to pre-injury form.

  “That would have been worse than blowing an ACL, for sure,” I said.

  “It was the only time I have ever really seen him worry about something. He was a different person for a week or so.”

  “Different, how?”

  “He was just...I don’t know. Scared, mostly. He is a talker, and he can be pretty macho and aggressive. But when he got the news he might need surgery, he was quiet, melancholy for a few weeks. Like he was contemplating losing it all.”

  “That’s understandable,” I said.

  “He was actually pleasant to be around.”

  She paused, and for a moment I think she went back to that period of time.

  I knew that as a collegiate athlete I was incredibly competitive, driven by the sport I had played for so many years of my life. I knew the kind of funk I had gone into during my injury, and I could only imagine it magnifying once you had reached the professional level. It would be terrifying to think you might not ever be able to play at the same level again in the way you always had. Part of me wished for her sake that maybe he would have had the surgery, stayed “pleasant.” But, I knew if someone like him had been forced to have the surgery, he would have become bitter and angry and an even more gigantic asshole.

  “Anyway,” she said, shaking her head like she was trying to shake whatever she was thinking away.

  “Anyway,” I said back.

  It was time to ask her. I wanted to know her story.

  Terry Who Belonged at Cracker Barrel brought us our food. I had to admit, April’s dish looked better than mine, but I had eaten mine before and knew I would be happy. Plus, I would never admit that someone had out-ordered me.

  “This is delicious,” she said in between her first few bites. “Good call, Harper.”

  I hadn’t been called “Harper” since baseball. Part of me thought that she must know that.

  “I’m glad you like it,” I said. “I used to come to this place more often. But it’s not exactly a dine alone kind of restaurant, you know?”

  “What’s the matter? No hot dates lately?”

  I laughed and continued eating, hoping it was more of a rhetorical question. It was either that or “Actually I took a girl out to dinner last night. We have pretty hot sex. It’s great.”

  “So, what’s your story?” I asked, pausing between bites. The food had a way of filling you quickly and I was trying to pace myself. “How did Mrs. Batista come to be...Mrs. Batista? There’s quite the age difference there.”

  “You don’t say?” she smirked. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “A cradle robber. I’ve done the math.”

  “Oh, you have, have you?” she asked, her eyes peering up at me over her glass of wine. The light seemed to be dancing around her eyes, like there was fire inside them.

  “I am not a stalker, I promise.”

  “Thank God. I was going to ask if you were.”

  Such a smart-ass.

  “So, answer my question, Batista. What’s your story?”

  She put her fork down and sighed sarcastically, like my line of questioning was bothering her. But, she smiled, and I knew it wasn’t.

  “What all would you like to know?”

  “Anything. Where you are from. How many siblings you have. How you met and married someone so much older than you. The usual.”

  “Well, my father is basically an asshole. He moved down to Miami from Charleston after he divorced his first wife. He just left her and the kids, and went south. He’s a lawyer, so he joined a firm down there and started fooling around with one of the receptionists. This receptionist was young and newly married. And my father got her pregnant. With me.”

  Wow. I was hoping my face wasn’t betraying the fact that this story was already taking me by surprise. I have a pretty good poker face, so hopefully it looked to her like I heard this kind of story every day.

  “So, my mother came clean to her husband of eight months, and he left her. Almost immediately. My father wasn’t planning on getting married again, or at least not that soon. But, he knew that word would spread that he was the cause of her divorce and pregnancy. So, he swooped in like a caring father figure and married her. Everyone at the office thought my mother had gotten pregnant by her husband, and that he had cheated on her and left after finding out she was pregnant. That’s the story my parents spread around the office anyway. Whether anyone believed them or not I don’t know. They got married, my father became the hero, and I was born a few months later.”

  “That’s quite the story,” I said, once I could finally say something. “Are you close with your parents?”

  A mildly disgusted look blanketed her face.

  “No. Definitely not my father. I see my mother every so often, but I can’t say we have ever been all that close.”

  “Any siblings?”

  “No. I mean, I have my half-siblings from my father’s first marriage, technically. But I have never met them and couldn’t even tell you their names. I can’t remember him ever mentioning them. My mother was the one who told me about them.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, like I said, he’s an asshole. He defended Marco’s scumbag older brother when I was in high school. Got him off scot-free. So, the family took my father in and treated him like the savior. That’s how he met Marco. I was just graduating and my father threw me a big graduation party. He invited Marco and a few others from the family, and I met him that night. He was a charmer, and I knew he was a big-time athlete. So, I was pretty flattered that he would spend the whole night talking to me, flirting with me. He asked my dad if he could take me out to dinner and my father said yes without asking me what I thought. I probably would have said yes anyway, but he didn’t care. He loved the idea of me being with someone so successful, as if he had something to do with it.”

&nb
sp; “So, you guys started dating and hit it off?”

  “I wouldn’t say we hit it off so much as I liked that everywhere we went people knew who he was. He could give me things none of my other boyfriends had been able to. He took me places I had always wanted to go. He treated me well, even though I knew his reputation. The fact that he was friends with my dad should have been enough to tell me to run in the opposite direction. But I was young, and eventually I fell for him and ignored what my friends and other people were telling me.”

  “What would they say?”

  “Well, my mother was never a fan or proponent of it. She said it reminded her of what she went through—young girl marrying a much older man. My father is fifteen years older than her, and she said that even though it seems like a good idea now, you’ll regret it eventually. She also reminded me that I wasn’t pregnant and didn’t have to be stuck with him. That I could make my own choice. She always pushed me to date other people, people my own age. And when I would actually start convincing myself that maybe it was a good idea, Marco would do something like spontaneously fly me to New York City while he was playing there. He’d put me up in a nice hotel, give me money to spend in the fancy department stores, take me to great restaurants, and I would think to myself maybe I didn’t need to look elsewhere when someone treated me that well. Sure, he was an asshole, but he was never one with me. Not until we were married anyway.”

  She went back to her food and I resumed eating mine. My mind was taking it all in. Basically, she had married an older asshole just like her mom had. And when you are young you write things off, you ignore things. I knew I had when I got married. What you like when you are fresh out of high school is not necessarily what you like when you find yourself nearing thirty. I guess you could say I got lucky. I technically could now redo my decision, as horrible as that probably is to say. Just like your taste buds change as you get older and you find yourself liking the foods you never thought you’d enjoy, your taste in people changes almost as dramatically. I could look back on “friends” I had chosen in high school and college and wonder what the hell was going through my mind. You hit an age where things change, where you grow up and look around and realize that you can’t spend the rest of your life with people like that. You can’t have them around you anymore. Carrie and her illness had been my focus, and so most of my friends had fallen by the wayside in place of taking care of her. Then, I lost her and was left with practically nothing, no one. Most people don’t get to fresh start everything like I was getting to. At first I didn’t see it that way, obviously, but the further away from her death I got, the more I saw it for what it was—a tragic blessing. You would never hear me say this out loud though.

  “Have you ever been married?” she asked, laying her napkin down on the table to signify being done. My heart dropped. I didn’t want to go there with her. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  Thankfully, Terry came to ask if we were doing all right, and if we wanted to look at the dessert menu. I could always eat dessert. I’d prefer that over the meal half the time, but people usually frowned on that sort of gluttonous behavior. April said she was too full, so we declined and Terry went to go get our check ready.

  “Do you normally avoid desserts?” I asked, hoping to bury the marriage question for the remainder of the evening. “You must, to be able to keep in shape like you are.”

  She laughed.

  “I love dessert. All of my teeth are sweet, not just one. I eat too much of it.”

  “You don’t look like you’ve ever eaten dessert in your life.”

  She raised her eyebrow.

  “People who don’t eat dessert are miserable and always have a scowl on their faces. Is that what you’re saying, that I look miserable to you?”

  Her voice changed to sound like one of the Godpigeons from Animaniacs, and I laughed.

  “No, just that you probably don’t have an ounce of dessert-induced fat on your body.”

  “I run. A lot. Or I would be a cow.”

  “Oh please.”

  Terry brought the check, I handed my card to her right away, and off she went.

  “You didn’t have to pay, Luke,” she said, grabbing her purse.

  “I told you that you were going to dinner with me,” I said. “I couldn’t very well split the bill or let you pay.”

  “Well, if I had known you were paying I probably would have ordered more food!”

  The light was dancing around her eyes again. Either she naturally had a pretty flirtatious personality, or I really do bring out the best in her. I had seen her interact with some of the other teachers, but she seemed pretty even-keel with them. Maybe it was me.

  God, I hope it’s me.

  “Consider this your ‘Welcome to Lakefront’ dinner.”

  “I technically haven’t officially gotten the job, you know?” she said as Terry brought back our check and wished us a lovely evening.

  “Well, perhaps this is your unofficial dinner then. Maybe I will take you to dinner once again when it becomes official.”

  She smiled.

  “You are assuming I am having a nice time and would want to go to dinner again. Kind of a bold assumption, isn’t it, Mr. Harper?”

  “When the invitation comes, you can decline if you’d like. No one will be forcing you to do anything.”

  She started to say something when I added, “But you’ll accept.”

  April sat back in her chair and her eyes went wide. The restaurant was dark, but it appeared she was beginning to form a blush on her cheeks, down her neck, and to her chest. She looked beautiful.

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I was about to say that no one likes a passive man, then you go and tell me I’ll be accepting your invitation.”

  Truth was, I could be a pretty passive guy. If I asked a girl out in the past and she so much as coughed, I would say, “But, if you aren’t feeling well, I totally understand. We can reschedule or you can let me know when you are free.” But, April was bringing out feelings in me that I wasn’t quite used to. I am not a jealous person, but I found myself hating Marco, wanting him to be gone. She hadn’t gotten into much about how he treated her, but I knew it had to be poorly. April wasn’t happy. She needed someone to be aggressive with her and show her that she was special. That’s what I found myself wanting to do for her. She was apparently just a prize to him, a trophy. She was his arm-candy, but he had probably never truly tasted or appreciated her flavor. If he had, she wouldn’t be here having dinner with me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t hate him so much. Hell, I should be grateful he was such a douchebag.

  “Shall we go?” I asked, sliding my chair back.

  “We shall,” she replied. “Did you want to stop by and pick up the book? Or should I just bring it tomorrow?”

  I wanted to go to her house.

  “I can pick it up, if that’s okay. The night is still young; I might even be able to get some reading in before bed.”

  “Okay.”

  We got up and walked out of the restaurant. Thankfully, Gianna was nowhere to be seen as we left.

  I walked her to her car.

  “You are okay to drive, right?” I asked. I knew she hadn’t consumed much wine, but she was lean and could very well have been a lightweight.

  “Yes, sir,” she said, patting my chest. “I’m fine. Married to a Cuban, remember?”

  Like I could forget.

  “Hey,” she said suddenly, and much louder than anything else before.

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you mind if I text you my address and you come like ten minutes after I get home?”

  “Uh, sure, I guess. That’s fine.”

  “Okay. Paula is there and if we both showed up at once she would think something is up. And I don’t need that. So let me get her out of the house and then you can come over.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Why don’t you just text me when she leaves?”

  “Perfect. T
hank you.”

  She opened the driver side door and was about to get in and turned around. I had already started backing away from the car.

  “Luke,” she said, walking back toward me.

  “Yes?”

  She held her arms out as she neared me and I took her into an embrace.

  “Thank you for dinner.”

  We hugged for longer than was probably appropriate and much shorter than I would have liked. Her scent was addicting even from a slight distance, but up close it became even more powerful. I imagined Poison Ivy from the Batman series probably smelled this delicious. But, she was a villain. I didn’t think April was. I guess I had to get to know her a little bit more. But, anyone who could put up with Marco for as long as she had wasn’t a villain. Hell, she probably deserved a medal.

  She got into her car and drove away, and I stood waiting until she was out of sight before returning to my car. My phone had been in my pocket all night and I pulled it out to wait for a text from April. I didn’t feel like driving around until she texted, so I sat in the parking lot and waited.

  When I looked at my phone I noticed I had two texts and a missed call from Holly. She didn’t really ever leave voicemails, but she didn’t call all that often either. I checked the times and she had called before she texted.

  Just checking in. Hope you had a nice day :-) read the first one.

  Where are you? read the second one, which she sent an hour later.

  I figured I should respond but really didn’t want to get into any kind of conversation with her at the time. I supposed it would have been nice to ask how things were going with her brother, but even that felt like work tonight. I wanted to hear from April, and no one else. If Holly asked, I would just say I was having a bad day and decided to avoid everyone. She would buy it, I’m sure.

  The text with April’s address came through after about ten minutes. To the text she also added: Feel free to just drive around the neighborhood or park across the street until Paula leaves.