by Anna Cruise
“Nash?” The disbelief is gone, replaced by fear. “What’s going on?”
“You’ll need to run the gig on Friday. You know how.” I take a deep breath. “And if I’m not back for the others…you run those, too, okay? I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.”
“Wait—”
“Thanks, dude.” My throat constricts and I swallow hard. “You’re a good friend. The best.”
I click off before he can say more. The phone rings immediately. Chase, calling me back. It takes me a minute on the dinosaur phone in my hand, but I find the block button. And press it.
The next call is just…something I have to do.
Sara’s voice is cautious. “Hello?”
Like Chase, she doesn’t recognize the number.
“Sara.”
“What do you want?”
“I called to apologize.”
“For what? For fucking someone else? For cheating on me? Or for being a loser boyfriend for the last six months?”
Her last words sting.
“Sara—”
“You know what?” Her voice drips venom. “Save it for someone who cares. Because it isn’t me.”
“I just—”
“You know something?” Her laugh is harsh. “You weren’t just a loser boyfriend. You were a loser lay. So good fucking riddance to you, Nash Williamson.”
The phone beeps in my ear. I’m tempted to call her back, to tell her she’s a bitch and a whore, but I don’t. She’s pissed at me and she always says shitty things when she’s upset. She’ll call back in a day or two, apologetic, trying to make amends. It’s what she does.
Except I won’t be here to get it.
The next call is harder, the hardest one I’ll have to make. For one panicked moment, I don’t think I remember the number. But then it comes back to me.
Mom picks up on the third ring. “Hello?” Her tone is wary. She doesn’t recognize the number.
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Nash?” She sounds happy and confused.
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“Wake me?” She laughs. “It’s lunchtime here.”
I could never keep the time difference straight. “Okay, good.”
“Is everything okay?” she asks. “Nothing’s wrong with the house, is there?”
“No, no,” I say, shaking my head. “I was just calling to say hi.”
“Okay.” The word drags out a little, like she’s having a hard time believing this. I don’t blame her; it’s not like me to just call and say hello.
“I’m…I’m on a little vacation and I realized I didn’t tell you.”
“Vacation? Where are you?”
I think quickly. Should I tell her something different or should I give her the same story as Chase?
“Joshua Tree,” I tell her. If anyone questions them, it’s better they have the same story. It will sound better, more believable, if they corroborate.
“Joshua Tree?” she repeats.
“Yeah. I’d never been here before so I thought I’d check it out.”
“Well, okay,” she says, chuckling.
I can tell she’s still confused as to why I would call and tell her this. I’m twenty-two years old and I’ve been on my own for years. I can’t remember the last time I called her that wasn’t a holiday or because I had a question about the house.
“So, anyway, I just wanted you to know.” I rake my hand through my hair, stopping short when I encounter the rough stubble. Fuck. I don’t even feel like me anymore.
“Well, have fun,” she says. “Wear sunscreen. And stay hydrated. I’m sure it can get hot out there, even in February.”
I have no clue if it does. “Will do.” I close my eyes because I feel the tears building. “I’ll talk to you soon. I…I love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart.”
I click off and the phone clatters to the counter. I squeeze my eyes shut tighter but it doesn’t stop the tears from flowing.
I’m creating another Lydia, another Claire. Someone – two people, really – who will wonder what has happened to me. Two people who won’t have answers. Two people who will question what they were told, who will wonder if they could have done something different, said some magical words that would have altered the course of events to come.
Two people’s lives that will be made worse because of me.
thirty-two
“Nash?”
Someone is calling my name.
I’m done with the clippers. The pile of hair is gone from the sink, the last of it in the toilet bowl. I’ve flushed it away in stages so as not to clog the pipes. Figured it was the best way to get rid of the evidence.
“Nash?” It’s Claire. “Can you come here?”
She’s calling from down the hall. Her voice is echo-y, which means she’s probably still in the bathroom.
I’m better, a little less wrecked. The stranger in the mirror staring back at me looks fine. My eyes are tinged red, the only evidence that I was bawling my eyes out just minutes earlier. There are still bruises on my face and the cut is still there, but everything is starting to look faded, muted. On the outside, I’m healing. Inside? That’s another story altogether.
I splash some water on my face, hoping it takes the red away.
She calls for me again.
I stride down the hallway, wondering what she needs.
The door to the bathroom is open. She’s standing in front of the sink, her hair plastered to her scalp. She’s cut off several inches – not as short as her sister’s, but enough that it alters her appearance. Her hair is dark and I wonder what color dye she’s using.
She gives me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’ve never done this before. I was wondering…could you just check and make sure I got the back?”
“Sure.” I step closer and inspect the back of her head. The dye is on her scalp, a dark maroon color, and I see a couple of spots that are clear, which means she probably missed those.
I take the bottle from her and squirt some on her hair. She strips off her gloves and hands them to me. “Here. You might need to rub it in a little.”
I wiggle my fingers into them. They are tight on my hands, like a condom on my dick, and I wonder if they’ll tear. But they don’t and I concentrate on the dye and her hair, trying to make sure she’s fully coated. I don’t want to be the one responsible for any fuck-ups.
I squeeze the last of the bottle on to her head, then run my hands over her hair. It feels awkward, like I shouldn’t be touching her that way, but there’s something in the connection that feels good, that makes me feel more human, more Nash-like. I might be kissing my life goodbye, staring at an unknown future, but this – this human contact – makes me feel a little more whole. Even if all I’m doing is rubbing hair dye on Claire’s scalp.
“I think it’s good,” I say. It takes a concerted effort to lift my hands off her hair.
She checks herself in the mirror. “I wouldn’t call this good.”
“Okay. As good as it can be. Considering the circumstances.”
She manages a small smile. “If you say so.”
I know where her head is: the same place mine was a few minutes earlier, when I was calling in my goodbyes.
“What color will it be?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “It’s supposed to be a reddish-brown.”
“Like Lydia’s used to be?”
“No. More subtle. I think.”
“How long do you have to leave it in?”
She checks the instructions unfolded on the counter. I don’t see the box anywhere. “Looks like twenty minutes.”
“Okay.” I stand there for a minute, unsure what to do. Finally, I take a step toward the door.
“Wait.” Her hand is on my arm. “Can you…will you stay? Keep me company?”
I don’t have a reason to say no. “If you want me to.”
She nods. “I do. I…I don’t want to be alone.”
It
’s a bathroom and there’s nowhere to sit so I lean against the wall.
“It looks good,” she says.
“What?”
She motions to my head. “Your hair. It looks good.”
I make a face. “I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Kinda surprised I didn’t slice my scalp open.”
She smiles. “I’m glad you didn’t. My first aid skills are pretty much limited to applying ice and Band-Aids.”
We’re quiet for a minute.
“Did you make your phone calls?” she asks.
I nod.
“How did they go?”
“Fine.” I realize she wants more so I add, “I didn’t tell them much. Gave them both the same false lead so at least their stories will match if anyone questions them.”
I use the word “if” but we both know it’s more a matter of “when.”
“Was it hard?”
It’s a question I’m not prepared for. “Hard?”
“To tell them goodbye. But without really telling them.”
I nod again. It was insanely hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
“That’s why I didn’t call anyone,” she says. She sits down on the toilet – the lid is closed – and props her elbows on her knees. “Not that I have many people to call.”
I start to protest but she cuts me off. “My parents are dead. Or at least gone. Disappeared.” She laughs, a dry, brittle laugh. “The irony isn’t lost on me. My parents disappear, presumed dead. And Lydia and I are about to disappear. So there’s no close family to miss me, to look for me. And I don’t have a boyfriend…” Her voice trails off.
This sort of surprises me. She’s smart and beautiful, and she has a good future she has meticulously planned out. She’s the kind of woman a lot of guys dream about, someone confident and in charge of their life, someone who knows where they’re going and what they’re doing.
“No time,” she explains when she sees my expression. “And no real time for friends, either. I mean, I have law school friends, people at the firm. But they’re not close friends, best friends. Lydia has been that for me ever since our parents died. It was just”—she takes a deep breath—“it was too hard to get close to anyone else. Because I didn’t want to lose them, too.”
Something stirs inside me. Sympathy. Empathy. I feel for her and I want to comfort her.
But I can’t. There is nothing I can say, nothing I can do, that changes our reality. We’re leaving our lives. Cutting the ties, permanently. We’re leaving each other.
I don’t have platitudes to give her. I don’t have hope I can offer her.
Because there is none.
She stands up. “It’s probably been twenty minutes, right?”
There is no clock in the bathroom and for all I know, we’ve been talking for an hour. Or five minutes.
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly.
“I’m sick of sitting with this on my head. It smells gross. And it feels even grosser.” She turns on the faucet attached to the tub, adjusts the setting. “Help me rinse it out?”
“If you want.”
“I want.”
She bends down at this awkward angle and somehow manages to get her head under the stream of water. A river of purple fills the tub, swirling toward the drain. She runs her hands over her hair, squeezing the color out.
“Did I get it all?” she asks.
I squat next to her. There is still some dye on her forehead, a small spot, and the water is still a murky purple. I stripped the gloves off when I was done with the bottle of dye so this time it’s my bare hands on her hair, on her scalp. I dig my fingers in gently, scrubbing the dye off her. She tilts her head back and the water washes over her again, splashing on to me.
She notices when I pull back. “Sorry,” she says.
The horrible checked shirt is specked with water drops tinged purple. “It’s just water.”
“And dye.”
“Anything additional is an improvement to this shirt.”
She chuckles. “If you say so.”
She spends another minute rinsing, then grabs a small bottle of white stuff and squirts it all over her hair. It smells fruity, a huge improvement over the ammonia smell of the dye. She rinses this out and then twists into a position where she can turn the faucet off. I leap up and grab a towel from the rack, a thick, navy blue one. I hand it to her and she runs it over hair. She stands up, her face flushed, a blue turban perched on her head.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. One step closer to a professional hairdresser,” I tell her.
She smiles. The towel slips a little and her hair looks a little less dark than before and I wonder what color it will end up being. I’ll miss her blond hair.
“Not just for that,” she says. She grabs the towel and tugs it off and her shortened hair falls to her shoulders. The ends are still wet enough to drench the t-shirt she’s wearing. “For listening. For being here.”
“Oh.” The heat rises in my cheeks. “Well, you’re still welcome.”
“You were a friend when I needed one.” She drops the towel to the ground. “And you didn’t have to be. I wouldn’t expect you to be. Not after what we’ve put you through.”
I know what she’s saying. We shouldn’t be friends. I should be pissed at her. I should hate her and Lydia for what they’ve done to my life. But as much as I’m angry and frustrated with her sister, none of those feeling transfer to Claire. She’s been the one who’s sided with me, the one who’s listened to me, agreed with me. She’s the one who’s worried about me, who’s considered how my life has been affected.
And the feeling is mutual.
“I’m scared, Nash.” Her voice is soft, her eyes locked on the towel on the floor.
My pulse quickens. “I am, too.”
She looks up at me and her eyes are filled with tears. I hate that they’re there again. I hate how often I see them pooled in her eyes. She deserves to be happy. She deserves more than what we’re getting.
“I just want things to be back to normal.”
“Me, too.”
She shakes her head and wipes at her eyes. “Who am I kidding? Life hasn’t been normal in years.”
“No. But you had a new normal. A normal you adjusted to. And that’s what you’re losing now.”
She nods. “Yes. Exactly. I don’t want to lose my normal.”
I have no words of wisdom, no words to comfort her. So I do the only thing I can do.
I hug her.
She melds herself to me and I breathe in her scent, a mixture of soap and the lingering smell of fruity conditioner and acrid hair dye. She’s soft and warm and I take just as much comfort from her as I think I’m giving. Because I’m going to miss my normal, even though it wasn’t anything special.
I’m going to miss my house. My cat. My friends. My job. And I might even miss Sara a little. Or at least what she gave me.
Claire’s arms tighten around my neck and I stiffen because I don’t remember them being there. Her mouth is close to my neck and her breath is warm on my skin.
“Nash,” she whispers.
I pull back a little so I can look at her.
She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me. Softly, closed lips, and it feels friendly, not heated: like an extension of her hug. But then she presses into me and her hands shift to my scalp and her mouth opens and suddenly, she’s hungry, insistent, and I don’t stop to think. I just kiss her back greedily. She’s in my arms and she needs me and fuck it but I need her and what she’s offering.
A chance to not be alone for just a few minutes.
My hands go to her waist and I tug on the hem of her shirt, stretching it so I can slip my fingers under and touch her bare skin. She’s warm and soft there, too. My hands are on fire and my breath catches in my throat.
“Help me forget,” she whispers against my mouth. Her lips graze mine again. “Give me one last bit of normal.”
This isn’t normal. We don
’t belong together. And, if Lydia’s plan goes the way she wants, we might not ever see each other again. But I know what she means, what she’s asking for. She wants an escape from what’s waiting for us. She wants to close her eyes and be someone else, even if only for a little while. And I want to be the one to take her there.
I trail my fingers up her back, shifting from light touches to kneading her skin. She moans and fits herself against me and I know she can feel my cock pressing against her hips. I’m hard as a rock.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Touch me.”
I want to touch her everywhere. I back her up against the sink and drop to my knees. Her hands go to my hair again and I lift her shirt up and kiss her stomach, trailing my tongue along her skin. My hands reach up and I trace the underwire of her bra before cupping her breasts. She sucks in a breath and I straighten enough so that my mouth can shift from her ribs to her tits. I yank her bra out of the way and close my mouth over her nipple, sucking and teasing it with my tongue. She’s writhing in my arms, her hands clenched tight in my hair. But there’s nothing left to grab, nothing left to hold, and her fingernails dig into my scalp instead.
I shift my mouth to her other breast and use one hand to cup her waist, then her pussy. I can’t feel her through her jeans, can’t do anything but stroke the rough fabric, but she still responds, pushing into my fingers, grinding against me. I attack the button, then the zipper and yank it down. I shove my hand inside her jeans, then inside her underwear and bury a finger inside her. She’s hot and wet and I want to feel her warmth wrapped around my dick instead of my finger.
Her body is saying yes. Screaming it, begging for it.
But I pull away to make sure.
She’s staring at me, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glassy. Her hair is still damp, still too early to see what color it’s going to end up being.
“You sure?” I ask her. My hands are on my waistband. “Tell me now.”
She responds by pulling me back to her and cupping my cock through my shorts. “I’m sure,” she breathes, wrapping her fingers around me. She pulls on my shorts and they drop to the floor. She pulls my boxers down, too and I’m standing there half-naked, my cock pointing straight at her.
She looks at it, then takes it in her hand. I groan at her touch. She shifts away from the counter and crouches down, taking me in her mouth.