When I entered, Jen embraced both of her sons. Josh hugged onto her waist. I’d always thought Josh was a mini version of my dad. His lips were open and eyes squeezed shut as quiet sobs hiccupped from him. I saw the top of Culter’s head as he held them both, medium brown hair, a little messy.
His face rose, and two familiar piercing blue eyes met mine across the hallway.
I turned away. I knew it was rude, but I didn’t want to be here.
“Did you fly here?” Jen said, voice muffled.
“I drove,” said a muffled male voice.
“All night?” Her voice broke.
I broke away from my father and walked around the living room area. As I passed my mother’s room, I caught the movement of Mike gathering up a bag. I kept walking, and without looking back, I slipped into my bedroom. Pulling at the knob, I left the door just a crack open before heading to lie on my bed. Josh’s pull-out bed blocked my path, so I climbed over it before falling into my rumpled jean sheets.
Outside my door, the murmur of voices continued. I closed my eyes and the voices washed over me. Scattered words and a myriad of sounds flowed through my room, skipping over my ears, making no sense but comforting me all the same. As expected, sleep didn’t come. Sleep was always pretty elusive to me. Usually I lay in bed, fighting through a tide of unwanted thoughts. The sleeplessness had come and gone since I’d turned fourteen, but for the last six months, my thought tides had been high and rising.
Today was the opposite, though; my mind was a long featureless road, stretching on into forever, a desert with no end. I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to darkness.
Chapter Two
Maybe it was the image of the desert road, but I woke with my throat so dry it felt hot. It was as if the friction from my sandpaper tongue lit a fire in my esophagus, and my mouth was filling with smoke.
Rubbing my bleary eyes, I checked the pull-out bed, finding it empty of Josh. Josh always shared my room during the summers, making me think that maybe it was still daytime, just dark. We had a strange over-crowded living style in the summers, too many people in a three-bedroom condo.
Charlie, my bestie, had always said, “Way too weird, your mom and stepmom living together. And they’re like best friends. Way too sister wives.” But it had worked, and been better than the long stretches of time that I was alone, with my Aunt Daisy checking up on me less than she was supposed to.
I climbed over Josh’s bed, stepping on the wooden frame and stumbling down. My ankle tried to roll as I hit the carpet and realized that I still wore my boots. I kicked at the heels of each boot, leaving them behind as I stumbled out my door and into the dark condo.
The condo stood both dark and unoccupied. Meaning I’d lain in bed for at least fourteen hours, maybe more.
Low light shone from a few night-safety-lights, one framed under a shelf in the kitchen, the other in the open bathroom, and the last beside me in the hallway.
As I crossed the living room to the kitchen, a head popped up from the couch, startling the hell out of me. I froze, seeing a face cast in sharp lines of blue light that emanated from a cell phone screen.
“Sorry,” the guy said in a deep voice. I was almost sure it was Culter, because who else could it be? But I didn’t recognize the poorly lit face or the deep voice.
After a moment of just staring at him, I managed, “No problem. You just startled me.” My voice even sounded like I’d been crawling through the desert. It hurt too, and no matter whom this guy was, Culter or not, I needed to go get water. I crossed to the kitchen, grabbing down a glass and filling it to the brim with water from the dispenser. I refilled three times, draining the glasses.
The light switched on, illuminating the space around me. Blinking around the kitchen, I found the guy who I was now positive was Culter, standing near me. I recognized his blue eyes, cyan blue, startling and piercing. Everything else had changed about him, though. He still towered over me, but not in a lanky, tall way anymore. He’d filled out in an athletic, football build, his shoulders wide. His hair had darkened from a tawny sandy color to a dark umber brown, while his skin had done the opposite, lightening from a deep rich bronze to a much lighter tan. I suppose all that could be explained by the fact I’d only ever seen him in the summers, and years before.
I refilled my cup, bringing it to my mouth again and gulping another glassful down. My stomach churned, beginning to feel sick and over-full, but I was still oddly parched.
“You hungry?” he asked, startling me again with that deep, almost unrecognizable voice.
I looked away, trying to figure out if I was hungry. My stomach churned in a nauseated kind of way, which could mean a number of things.
“Maybe,” I said, looking back.
He stepped past me, opening the fridge. Pulling out a Chinese takeout container, he opened it up and looked inside before closing the fridge.
“Take a seat,” he said to me, as if he wasn’t standing in my kitchen looking through my fridge . . . likely at my food.
I’d get in his face about it, but honestly, I wasn’t up for that and he probably thought he was being nice. I took my cup, walked over to the table and took a seat. Leaning into my chair, I stared off.
“Here you go.”
Culter set a plate in front of me, the ceramic plate making a slight grinding sound on the glass tabletop. Steam rose up, filling my senses with the familiar smell of cashew chicken in plum sauce, and from my favorite restaurant off of Sepulveda. When he set the fork beside me as well, I scooped up a bite and brought it to my mouth.
Culter took the seat beside me, setting a plate before himself as well. “You don’t mind if I have some?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer before he took a bite.
“I mind,” I said, looking over.
His fork hesitated an inch from his mouth as his gaze met mine in surprise.
“I’m kidding.” I shook my head. “Sorry, I don’t think I can carry a joke very well right now. Thanks for getting me the food, though.” Turning back to the food, I focused on scooping up cashews with my chicken. About halfway through, I realized I was wrong—very, very wrong. I wasn’t hungry.
Jumping up from my chair, I barely made it back to the bathroom in time before my cashew chicken made a very unwelcome second appearance into my toilet.
As the second wave hit me, my hair lifted from my head. Damn it, Culter stood in the bathroom with me watching me throw up. “I’ve got it,” I choked out, as my eyes streamed and nose burnt with acid.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. There was a strong pull to my hair and the tug of an elastic band before my hair stayed up. After a second, the door closed behind me.
I took my time in the bathroom. When brushing my teeth didn’t feel good enough, I went the full distance and showered. The fault in my plan was apparent when I stood in my towel and realized I had two choices: put on my nasty clothes that I’d worn for two straight days, or run the risk of walking past Culter as is. Peeking out, I found the kitchen once again dark, and no other lights shone from anywhere but the three nightlights, one of them beside me.
I tiptoed down the hallway to my room.
“Hey.”
I spun to find Culter, hands on either side of the hallway door frame, leaning in.
I gripped the top of my towel, making sure it stayed secure. Turning toward him, I met his gaze.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m good.” I stepped back toward my room, hoping that he’d notice that I wasn’t dressed for company and he’d leave.
But he didn’t. He didn’t leer or anything, but he didn’t walk away either. He nodded back toward the living room. “I’m going to bed, but if you need anything, I’ll just be out there. You can wake me up, it’s fine.”
“Culter, I—” I licked my dry lips, knowing I needed to nip this shit in the bud, “I appreciate it. Thank you for trying to take care of me and all, but you don’t have to, I’m good.” And I was also pretty much nake
d, so I took another step toward my bedroom.
“It’s no problem.” He shrugged, making the light ripple over the muscles of his arms. Jesus, he was ripped. What did he do, live in a gym? He pointed back into the living room. “You want me to go grab you some water?”
Feeling way more annoyed than I should, as he was only being nice when I was having the mother of all shit days, I shook my head. “I’m good; I’m going to head in now. Goodnight.”
“Night, Cassie,” he said before stepping back out of the hallway.
Chapter Three
The thing about shit days—I mean, the worst days of your life—is that they end. I’m not even saying that’s a good thing, because five days later, on the day of my mom’s funeral, she felt even more gone. On the day she died, she was still sort of there—I could still feel her papery hand against my fingers, still smell the essential oils Daisy rubbed onto her feet, still recall the sight of her eyelashes sticking together and bunching to one side.
But as I said, shit days always end, for better or for worse. And five days later, I was stuck in a somewhat less shitty shit day, and it was almost over too.
Years ago, the first time we’d feared my mom was going to die, she’d made explicit plans for her funeral. Everyone had their comedic parts, and we were to play some wildly inappropriate songs and toast mildly dirty things in her name—I was even allowed to drink a little booze, according to her. But when her cancer went into remission that first time, we destroyed her funeral plans. My aunt, Mom and I sat on the balcony of our then apartment, and made voodoo dolls out of those funeral plans, dedicated to the insurance assholes that would no longer cover her. We’d said, “To letting go of things we don’t need,” one after the other, and then Aunt Daisy lit them on fire.
She never made any funeral plans when round two of cancer hit her. I sort of wished we’d never burnt those first papers—the best thing I could say about her funeral was the ceremony was over quickly and I managed to get through her eulogy without crying. My aunt Daisy had not only cried during her eulogy, she’d dropped the f-bomb twice.
Two days ago, my father and Jen drove me up to the spot where my mother and I stargazed to say goodbye; somehow, that had felt much more like my mother’s funeral than accepting condolences from a long precession of black-clad people, some of whom I barely knew.
My aunt and I snuck away as soon as we could manage without offending Dad and Jen. I gave Daisy the signal and we hid out behind the tall line of bushes that separated the side of the reception center from the street.
I pressed my black utilitarian heels into the dirt as my knees brushed against the hedge wall that hid us.
My aunt Daisy lit a new cigarette with her previous cigarette, and then exhaled a thick cloud of smoke, blowing it away from me. “Fuck,” she said, as if that explained it all.
It pretty much did.
I sighed. “Seconded.” Snapping a branch off the hedge, I scratched in the dirt under the manicured bush.
“Yeah.” She leaned back against the wall and made her tattoos dance. In a former time, my aunt could have easily grabbed a job as the tattooed woman in a circus freak show. Every inch of her body was intertwined with colorful inked designs. I’d drawn a couple of them. The tail feathers of a blue jay I’d designed for her peeked out of her black v-neck dress, though the gory part where the bird’s talons clutched a bloody heart was safely underneath the dress. Daisy also sported several piercings, gauged ears, two-tone hair, and permanently heavy makeup. Basically, she fit in well in my home city.
“So baby, when are you leaving?” she asked as she tapped the ash off the butt of her cigarette with shaky fingers. Her voice had turned high and reedy, something that happened only when she fought emotion.
I leaned back so I could get a real good look at my aunt. For the first time since I lost my mom, it occurred to me that I might not be the one facing the worst consequences from my mom’s death. Yeah, I lost a huge part of my family, but Daisy was about to lose all of her family.
“I don’t have to go. I’ll stay here if you want me to—”
She leveled a look on me, her big, fake eyelashes bending against her eyebrows. “Cassie, who is the adult here? If you want to stay, for you, I’ll move in with you and buy groceries and shit. But if you want to go, don’t you dare let worrying about me stop you. Besides, I want you to go.” She inhaled the cigarette deeply and spoke on her exhale, “You need some family healing time type of stuff, and I’ll probably just fuck you up more.”
“Thanks” I said, dryly.
“You know what I mean, baby. I’m a mess, we both know that.”
“I’m not sure about how much healing I’m going to get there,” I mumbled.
“You talking about the prodigal stepbrother returning?” she asked, before coughing.
“Dearest aunt, I came out here to enjoy your secondhand smoke, not to talk about Culter. Unless you want to give me one of those?” I glanced down to her cigarette.
“Ha, no,” Daisy said as she blew out another cloud of smoke. “I doubt living with him will be all that bad.” She raised a painted brow at me. “Maybe you were wrong about him. He doesn’t seem much like a dickwad to me. Running all over the place today, making sure you didn’t have to do anything. I thought he hated you?” The doubt was clear in her voice.
“He does. This is just temporary. Just one of those ‘I’m being nice to you because your life sucks’ things. It’ll wear off after we’ve cohabitated for a week.”
“Cohabitated?” she laughed, but the laugh turned into another cough. “Anyway, just tell me when you’re leaving and if you still want to keep the appointment with José.”
“Yeah, of course.” I stared at her, feeling a sudden bout of nervousness that the appointment was even in question.
“Are you sure? Because, how you explaining that to your folks? You going to tell them?” She looked back toward the reception center. “Your dad has lectured me more than once on my tattoos, says they’re the mark of the devil—”
“No, he hasn’t said that. And I’m sure,” I said, even though she completely brought up a point that hadn’t occurred to me. There was no way that I wasn’t getting my tattoo. I’d worked on the design for a year, and I’d given it to my mother as a gift of sorts. It was a tattoo for her, a design that I’d drawn to honor her even before I thought the cancer might win. Now there was no choice in my mind but to get it for her.
José and I had talked about it for months, adjusting my drawings so they’d work on skin, making the appointment for just a little after my eighteenth birthday. I’d already paid him in full, eight installments earned from underpaid freelance concept art jobs online.
Nodding furiously, I said, “I’m getting the tattoo, I’ll figure it out.”
“If you say so, honey. You could always wait a while. I’m sure José would give you a refund, then you could come back next year—”
“No, Daisy. Trust me, even if I have to bear my dad’s scorn for the rest of my life, I’m getting that tattoo.” But if that was a fate I could avoid, I would definitely avoid it. José was a badass tattoo artist, and one of the best in the city. I trusted my Aunt Daisy on very few subjects, but she was an expert on which tattoo artists were quality and safe. My dad didn’t think any of them were.
Daisy stood, brushing off her homemade, black fifties-style dress. “We should go back in. I can’t keep hogging you to myself—you’ve got friends in there. And, my dearest love, your aunt needs to go home, get sloppy drunk and have an ugly cry.” She offered me her hand, her long, bright red nails looking lethal so close to my face.
Grabbing her hand, I stood and brushed off my own black dress.
“Hey, I was thinking I’d go visit you in Bovine,” she said as we walked down the length of the building.
I grinned, feeling the first smile in a while creep up my cheeks. “It’s Bulvin, not Bovine.”
“Bulvin, my bad,” she said, though the grin she shot back at m
e on her red lips told me she’d said it intentionally.
“Do it, visit me,” I told her.
She gave me a wry look. “You don’t think I’ll scandalize the hell out of your new rural Coloradoan friends?”
“It’s Colorado, not like, the Bible belt. I’m sure people have tattoos there.” I shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t care. Scandalize the town.”
Throwing down my stick, I rounded the building to find a couple of my high school friends leaning against the wall of the reception center. A big cloud of car exhaust caught me as traffic roared past. Headlights blinked on as cars sped down the PCH, though the sun had not quite set yet.
“Yo,” I called out to Charlie, who leaned against the building, pretty much blocking my view of Max and Christine, I only saw their shoes and Christine’s leg.
“Yo yourself,” Charlie smiled, tucking a big section of black hair behind his protruding ears.
Even though they were all pretty much wearing matching outfits, my three best friends looked more dissimilar than ever. They were three stair steps in height and weight, Max being small and thin, Charlie humungous all around, and Christine falling just in the middle of that.
Christine leaned forward around Charlie’s bulk, looking almost unrecognizable in a plain black dress and lace-up army boots. She wore no makeup, not even liner on her pencil thin eyebrows, and her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. “You done avoiding us yet?” she asked in her low, raspy voice.
Like her, I skipped the makeup today. My hair was also tied away in a long dark braid down my back. I’d been preparing for tears, or possibly, another bout of nausea—thankfully, neither happened.
I leaned into the wall next to Charlie. “I’m sorry. You know I’m crap at goodbyes and all that.”
One of Charlie’s tree trunk arms went around me. “Who says it’s goodbye?”
Making Bad Choices Page 2