by M. O'Keefe
Panic slipped over me like delicate, poisonous lace.
“I don’t think so,” I said, resisting the urge to put my sunglasses down over my eyes, leave the basket, and run.
“You’re working out at the Flowered Manor, aren’t you?” she said. “We live there.”
She looked like a teenager, covered in babies and toddlers. One of them, a little boy, was pulling down on the hem of her ratty Old Navy tee shirt until I could see the dark edges of a bruise on her shoulder.
The woman yanked her shirt out of the little boy’s hands. “Stop it, Danny,” she hissed. She smiled over at me, her eyes somewhere on the floor. “We gotta go,” she murmured, and then pushed her cart in the other direction.
Fast.
I stood there in front of the yogurt and shook for a moment. How many times have I done that? Without the kids and the diapers, but how many times have I dashed away, eyes on the floor? Shame a thick, awful taste in my mouth.
Should I find her? Talk to her?
Hell, no, my gut spoke up. Get what you need and get gone.
In and out.
It really was for the best.
My cart was far from full, but somehow impossibly satisfying, full of all the things I liked. I even splurged on a big bag of generic chocolate chips. I’d put them in the freezer and let myself have a few every night.
Mom would hardly approve, but that sort of seemed the point.
The woman with the kids had left the store. Her abandoned cart sat next to the manager’s hold desk, the big box of diapers wedged in next to a gallon of milk and a bag of apples.
She’d left it all. Everything she came here to get she just abandoned.
I asked the cashier for directions to the library across town and tried to pretend that cart full of things a family needed wasn’t even there.
Inside the library, it was quiet and empty and smelled like old books and air-conditioning.
Without looking too closely at the kind-seeming woman at the desk, I headed right over to the bank of computers on the far wall.
“Excuse me, miss,” the woman said, using that quiet librarian voice that somehow managed to travel across the room. I wondered if there was a class for that in college.
“Yes?”
“You need to sign in to use the computers.”
“Pardon?” I glanced around the empty library.
“We just need you to sign in, so we can prove that people use the computers here. That they are an asset to the community.”
“I’m not part of the community—I’m just passing through.”
“I still need you to sign in,” she said with a smile.
I’m being ridiculous, I thought, walking back over to the desk and the clipboard there, the red pen attached with a string and masking tape. Panic fluttered in my belly. I wasn’t a good liar and I’d been lying about my name all across the country the last week.
What if she asked for ID?
“You forget your name, sweetheart?” the woman asked, eyes twinkling.
I wish.
With a quick breath, like I was about to dive underwater, I picked up the pen and scrawled Layla McKay across the form and thought of Dylan.
He lurked in the back of my brain all the time. When I stopped thinking of something else, there he was. Filling my head with thoughts that made me uncomfortable.
“Thank you,” the librarian said.
“No problem.”
I sat back down at the computer and scanned the headlines for Oklahoma papers. No mention of me in Tulsa. Oklahoma City. Or in the Bassett Gazette, the town newspaper closest to the farm. I’d been checking that one religiously since I’d left.
I did a quick search of my name and all that showed up was my marriage announcement, my mother’s obituary, and the announcement of the land Hoyt sold to the electric company to put up windmills.
Nothing. Oh dear God. Nothing.
It had been twelve days since I’d run. And it didn’t seem like he’d even gone to the police.
I sat in the chair a little bit longer because my legs felt like jelly, my arms useless spaghetti noodles. There was no big search underway for me.
I had never made a will, but I imagine if he claimed abandonment or whatever, he could do what he wanted with the land. I had no idea how these things worked. But he was my husband after all. No one would argue with him.
This was the best possible outcome of my leaving. There would be no fuss. No scene of him in front of reporters with flashing cameras, pretending to cry, pretending to care.
But it meant that I’d vanished…everything I’d been. Twenty-four years of being alive, of being a daughter and a student and a member of a church. Of working, sweating, crying, laughing as Annie McKay. Gone.
No one missed me. Or worried. Or wondered. I’d vanished and the world just kept on spinning.
That no one seemed to be searching for me was a relief. Yet behind the relief…there was something else. Something I couldn’t look at yet.
Relieved was enough for now. Relieved was all I could handle.
“I know you said you’re not from around here, but we’re having a book sale this week,” the librarian said. “Paperbacks are a dollar, hardbacks are three.”
I got to my feet, bracing myself against the table for a moment when it felt like my knees were wobbling.
The librarian pointed to a little rack of books by the door, full of beat-up old bestsellers and hardback textbooks and literary novels.
I loved books. Loved reading. It not only gave me an escape from my own world, but opened a door into other worlds. It allowed me, at the beginning of my marriage, to suffer with some grace. As long as I had another world to go to, what did I care about how small and strange and terrifying my own life had gotten?
Then Hoyt took away my books. Put them right in the burn pile, and the smell had been worse than anything. Like every dream going up in smoke. I’d tried to get some at the library, telling him it wasn’t costing him anything. But he didn’t like it.
And then I snuck them when I could, hiding some garage sale books in the barn.
But he’d found them.
And that had not gone well for me.
“I’m fine,” I said to the woman, feeling unbelievably outside of my body. Like I was floating somewhere near the ceiling, watching my thin arms and legs all scraped up from the work I’d been doing. The stupid bad dye job.
The scarf.
Stop. Fucking. Saying. That.
Everyone can see you are not fine.
“Actually,” I said and stopped at the shelf, “let me see what you have.”
In the end I bought ten paperback books. One of them was Fifty Shades of Grey, so worn the cover was nearly falling off. Chunks of pages were threatening to fall away from the spine.
“We’ve had to replace that book three times,” the librarian said with a twinkly smile.
“I’ve never read it.” I could not imagine the shit storm that would have fallen on my head had I tried to bring that into my home. But news of it had even managed to make its way to the rock I lived under. It had caused something of a revolution.
And I was ready to be revolutionized.
I clutched the plastic bag of books to my chest and headed back to my car. My hands were shaking so bad I barely got the key in the lock, barely got my body inside the car, the door shut behind me.
It was hot, and it smelled like the peaches I’d bought off the clearance rack at the grocery store.
I rested my head against the steering wheel.
He wasn’t looking for me.
I bought chocolate chips.
And a dirty book.
I pressed my hands to my lips, unsure whether I was going to laugh or cry. Until I was doing both. Loudly. Like a crazy person.
A sudden knock on my driver-side window made me jump, spilling my books all around me.
A cop stood out there. I must have shot him the worst look, because he stepped back and lifted h
is glasses up onto his head. He smiled.
I’m a nice guy, that smile said. I swear.
I used the old crank to unroll my window, brushing the tears away from my face with my other hand.
“I didn’t mean to spook you,” he said. He had a nice face. Round, with a little blond scruff around his chin. An uncommitted beard.
“It’s all right,” I said, my voice reedy and thin.
“I just…I saw you and I wanted to be sure you were all right.”
He saw me in the middle of some kind of freak-out. A panic attack. I was caught in that wide chasm between what I’d had and what I could have. What my life had been and what I wanted it to be, and every step, every huge step I’d taken away from what I knew and into the unknown, felt terrifying.
“I’m fine.” I gave him my best smile, which apparently wasn’t convincing, because he asked, “Are you sure?”
No. I’m not, but I’m trying here. I’m trying harder than I ever have and it’s so damn hard.
“Yep,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
Funny, but I felt like this time it wasn’t totally a lie.
In the twilight, hours later, the heat had broken and the breeze coming in through the windows was cool. My little trailer was ripe and delicious and homey with the scent of pasta sauce, bubbling away on one of the burners of my two-burner stove.
But my body was restless. Aching.
I sat up from where I’d been lying on the settee and put the book down on the table.
God.
I mean. God.
Between my legs, I throbbed. Actually throbbed. I felt swollen and wet and…throbby.
Honestly, I’d never felt this way before. Like my skin was too tight and aching and I needed something…something to split me open. To relieve this pressure.
No wonder that book was so popular.
I clasped my hands to my lips, closed my eyes, and tried to will the feeling away, but the more I thought about it, the worse the ache became, until it was in my bones.
I turned my head, staring back at my room.
The phone was in there.
Dylan.
I call him and…what? Have phone sex? Honestly, Annie McKay, is that what you’re thinking? You have no idea how that starts. How it even happens.
But I would bet my last seventeen dollars that he did.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I went back and grabbed my phone and took it back into the kitchen.
Away from the bed.
See how crazy you are?
Its face was dark and my intentions uncertain.
I’m twenty-four. Girls my age do this shit all the time, and worse! Why do I have to be different?
Dylan wanted to know about Ben, I thought, searching for a respectable reason to call the man. Something more…me. More passive and meek. Ben, a man with a penchant for tattoos and tomatoes. A harmless guy. So what would be the harm in calling Dylan and letting him know that the old man was fine?
Because Ben was not the threat.
Dylan is.
No, not even that was the truth.
I am the threat.
I’d promised myself in that bus station in Tulsa that I wouldn’t lie to myself anymore. The self-deception would stop. Because it had made me complicit in my abuse to some extent.
All married couples fight. That was one I told myself quite a bit.
Hoyt’s just under a lot of stress—that had been a doozey.
I’ll be fine.
That had been the worst of them.
So I wasn’t going to lie to myself now.
The phone was in my hand because I wanted to call him. Because my belly was full and my shelves were stocked with food I liked. Because my hands were raw from honest work, because I’d had a week of safety in this world I’d carved out for myself.
Because between my legs I was sore with…desire. Lust.
Those were such strange words. Foreign to my life.
Because I wanted to see what would happen if I talked to Dylan again.
What I might do if he asked.
Tell me no.
Because I wanted to be asked to do something I couldn’t quite do on my own.
I pressed the power button and the phone slowly blinked to life.
He answered a breath after the first ring, but instead of his voice all I heard was the revving of an engine. Or lots of engines. I pulled the phone from my ear.
“Just a second,” Dylan yelled into the phone and then I heard his voice, muffled as he yelled to someone else on his end, “I’ll be in my office.”
A second later the roar of the engines was gone. “Hello,” he said.
Oh.
His voice made me ache harder. I sat back down on the settee and crossed my legs, squeezing them together until sparks shot out through my nerves.
“Is this Layla?”
I closed my eyes in a kind of embarrassed relief, because truly his voice sounded like he was smiling. “It is.”
“You okay?”
No. I’ve been reading a dirty book and it’s worked on me and I don’t know what to do with myself, and I thought if I called you, you might tell me.
“Fine.” My voice was shaky. Everything about this was shaky. “Everything is fine.”
Lie! Lying liar!
“I’m real glad you called.”
“You are?”
“I didn’t like thinking I’d scared you.”
No more lying. So, instead, I went with total naked honesty. “Truthfully, I kind of scared myself.” He made a rumbly curious sound that raised goose bumps across my spine and the silence after my words was loaded, filled with questions I didn’t have the answers for yet. “You…you’re at work?”
“I am always at work.”
“You work in a garage or something?”
“Why do you ask?” Something cold laced his words, something slightly defensive. Or accusing. Very distrustful. Like I had no right to wonder about him. Or ask.
“Because when you answered your phone it sounded like engines in the background,” I said quickly.
“Right. Yeah, you could say I work in a garage.”
Still, the small note of suspicion and distrust in his voice cooled me down some and made me doubt what I was doing all over again. Jesus, what do I know about this man? He could be worse than Hoyt.
“Look, I just wanted to tell you that Ben is fine—”
“You talked to him?”
“Sure. Wasn’t that the point?”
“No. It’s not the point. You’re supposed to watch him. Not talk to him.”
“What?” I laughed, imagining myself peering through the blinds at him. “Like a spy?”
“You need to keep your distance. He is not a nice guy.”
“I really don’t think we’re talking about the same person,” I said. “An older gentleman, with a silver buzz cut—”
“The words Free tattooed on the knuckles of his right hand and Dead on the knuckles of his left?”
So, that’s what those letters were. “Well…I couldn’t actually make out the words…but—”
“It’s the same guy. I know he seems innocent, and probably real likable, but that’s not real. That’s not the real him.”
“He gave me a bunch of tomatoes. I made him some pasta sauce.”
He was breathing heavily into the phone and his voice was hard. Not the way I’d heard him before. If he’d sounded like this the first time we talked, I wouldn’t have called him back. I would have been too scared. Of him. Not myself. “Layla, I know you have no reason to trust me, but please…please don’t get messed up with him.”
“Okay,” I said, placating him. I’d promised myself I’d stop with the self-deception; I didn’t say anything about lying to some stranger on the phone.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, sounding doubtful. “Because I need you to trust me.”
“I don’t know you.”
His chuckle felt like a hand across that tender skin
at the nape of my neck. The skin that had never been touched before. Not in kindness.
And I didn’t know if Dylan’s voice was kind. Or if he was. All I knew was that my body reacted to him.
“I guess that’s true.”
“Are you an ax murderer?”
“No. You?”
“Nope. Well, at least we got that out of the way.” I laughed. “Though maybe it would be funny if both of us were, you know, ax murderers. Like the worst coincidence. Or maybe a dream come true—I imagine that ax murderers don’t get to date—”
“You sound nervous.”
My mouth was hot and dry. Worse than the creek bed back home in August. “I…ah…a little. I guess. Yes.”
“Are you trying to be brave?” His voice tipped into that familiar place where we’d been last time. Like, he was letting me know there was something more he wanted to talk about. Underneath the laughter and the banalities, there was a darker place we could go.
“I’ve never been brave in my life,” I said, longing so hard for that darker place. If having a dirty book would have gotten me in trouble, wanting this forbidden thing would have gotten me hurt I don’t know how bad.
But not here.
Not with him—this stranger on the phone.
This is why I called, because I don’t know how to find these dark, forbidden places on my own.
“You’re talking to me, aren’t you?”
“Are you telling me I shouldn’t?”
“No, but you said you scared yourself last time we talked.”
The trailer was small and dark, and it was as if there were only the two of us in the wide world.
“I did,” I murmured, feeling almost powerless. But in a good way. Like I was giving up the power instead of having it taken from me. The act of willing surrender made all the difference.
Made it okay.
“Then talking to me is brave.”
“I guess so,” I said, giving myself some points when I was usually so damn stingy.
“What else do you want to be brave about?”
Everything. My life. My body.
“I bought a dirty book today.” I closed my eyes and slapped a hand to my forehead. Honestly, could I be any less cool? I felt like a teenager.
His chuckle was low. Rough. “Did you? Was it good?”