by Olive East
“What kind of play is over this early?” I asked.
“A matinee, Ollie. Get some culture.”
Sadie snickered.
“Has he been doing this a lot lately?” I directed my question to Sadie.
I’m not a child, O. I can answer my own questions.
As she watched him signing, Sadie shifted a bit in her seat and Aaron almost tumbled over. “No. Why?” To cover up Aaron’s slip, she leaned into him to support some of his weight, but I noticed.
“Just wondering.” I took a seat in the chair closest to the couch.
Sadie’s cell started to ring. “Ooohh, it’s Heidi, it’s Heidi!” Her face could’ve illuminated a cave in the center of the earth. She answered and left the room before I could ask the obvious question.
Aaron slid further down the couch and closer to my chair. Heidi is our Jennifer Lopez wedding planner, and yeah, I know that movie. She never speaks to me, though, only Sadie. We both prefer it that way. If it was up to me we’d fucking get married at the courthouse, maybe not at all…
I don’t buy that. You’re the marrying type.
I think I did my best to keep any kind of reaction off my face.
I’d been waiting for Aaron to say something negative about the wedding since they’d gotten engaged. That was part of the reason why I tried so hard to distance myself from him for a while. But there it finally was. I pushed back as far as I could in my seat, leaving my feet dangling above the ground.
Aaron was always so frisky when he drank. We never had sex when we were dating, partly because he only ever tried when he was wasted, which really wasn’t all that often back then. I was not the kind of girl who wanted her first time to be that way.
You can be the marrying type all you want, but it doesn’t mean shit if it’s with the wrong person.
I fiddled with my hands and stared out the picture window facing Brooks’s house, anything not to look at him. And to think I could be kissing Brooks right now instead of signing to Aaron.
You’re only over here till he comes home, aren’t you? he asked, following my gaze.
I’m here because Sadie invited me.
But when his car pulls in that driveway, you’ll be right back over there.
You’re wrong, Aaron. He’s over there now. I wanted to add, “and he’s probably wondering where I am so he can undress me,” but I didn’t.
Well, thanks for honoring me with your presence when you could be over there. I started to answer but Aaron cut me off. “Do you love him?” he asked out loud.
Aaron, come on.
I wanna know.
Why are you being like this? Where’s this coming from?
We sat there for a few long moments—him looking at me, me looking everywhere else. All I could hear was Sadie’s muffled voice through the walls talking about wedding things that I wasn’t sure were going to happen anymore.
Eventually, he answered my question.
For someone so deep you sure are dumb sometimes, O.
Motion from Brooks’s porch caught my attention. He came out of the house, walked down the steps, and checked to see if my car was in the driveway. “Fuck him,” Aaron said out loud, like Brooks could hear.
I thought you liked him.
That’s right, liked. Past tense.
He picked up Sadie’s left-behind cooler and took a swig.
I snatched it from his hands. “You don’t need any more.”
He reached for it again, but actually getting it would’ve required him to stand up, and that was something he just couldn’t do.
You can’t tell me what to do anymore, Ollie Oxmend.
“I gotta go. Tell Sadie I said bye, will you?”
When I stood, Aaron reached for my hand, and for some idiotic reason I gave it to him.
That’s telling me what to do again. He smiled and clasped our fingers together when he finished signing.
“He’ll wonder where I am.”
“I wonder about a lot of things…” Aaron was strangely poetic in his condition.
“Like what?” We were holding hands, but I wasn’t worried about it. I could still hear Sadie in the other room.
“Where you are and what you’re doing. Mostly what it’s like to be with you, though.”
He grabbed my side with his free hand and pulled me closer and closer until he buried his face in my stomach. It was something he always did and something I always hated, mostly because I had the kind of stomach a face could be pressed into. But it also let me know he really needed me.
“You know what it’s like to be with me.” My free hand automatically went to his hair. He was being a child, after all, and he needed to be comforted.
“That’s not what I mean,” he told my stomach.
I watched Brooks walk out to the sidewalk and stare into the house. He took a few steps like he was going to cross the street, then returned to his place. I knew he couldn’t see me but I pushed back from Aaron anyway.
“I have to go.”
“Fine.” He dropped his hold on me then without a fuss. “Just know that tonight when I’m fucking Sadie, I’ll be thinking of you.”
Chapter Eighteen
His comment made my skin crawl with pure disgust. I didn’t want, or need, that mental image. I got out of the house as quickly as I could without breaking into a full on run.
“What’s up, buttercup?” Brooks said as I crossed the street. He was holding his arms out to me and I couldn’t imagine a better image to wipe my mind clean with.
“God, you’re old,” I told him as I jumped in.
“Visiting your friends?” He kissed me hard on the lips like he was making sure we were still all right.
“Kind of.”
When I looked over my shoulder, I could see Aaron, who had managed to get off the couch and walk down the steps, watching us from the door. Wishing he lived anywhere else, I took Brooks’s hand as we walked into the house.
“You’ve been picking your scabs,” he said as he rubbed his palm on mine.
I had been picking them, purely out of absentminded habit, and it was kind of hard to deny, so I just said, “I’ll stop.”
Brooks had this quirk where he had to take a shower as soon as he got home from the hospital. I guess making sure he washed all the animal smell, and worse, off of him wasn’t a bad quirk to have, really.
I missed him so much during the day, as dopey as that sounds, that it became part of my routine to sit on the sink while he was showering.
It was pathetic and on the verge of being insanely needy but I didn’t care at all. We’d tell each other about our days, which led to plenty of time for other things later.
The way he smelled right after a shower was intoxicating. If they really wanted to make a cologne that would drive women crazy, Giorgio Armani should start bottling William Brooks’s bathwater.
“Are you going to tell me about Sadie and Aaron?” he asked while wrapping one of his oversized bath towels around his defined waist.
I considered telling him everything. I wanted to tell him everything—it had been a lot to carry by myself—but then it hit me. After all the things we’d already gone through in our short little relationship, there was so much more I was keeping to myself.
I could’ve told him all about Aaron, but I made the executive decision in that moment not to. I’d do what I was always unable to do on my own and keep my past where it belonged.
“Just wedding stuff. We’re really getting down to the wire here. What is it? Like, one more month?”
The thought rolling around in his head was practically visible. I’d gotten very good at reading him. He took his towel off, which was enough to distract even the most devout nun, and rubbed it through his blond curls a few times, then snapped it at me before he set off to find some clothes.
I followed him out of the bathroom, taking the same path through the maze of all my crap on the floor as he did.
“Are you taking a date to their wedding?” He was
pulling on blue boxer-briefs that made his eyes look heartbreakingly handsome.
I sat on my legs on the bed. “No.”
He frowned. “I can’t go too?”
“What?”
“As your date.”
“Wait, what?” My short little legs shot out from under me and I had to brace myself with my hands.
“Can you not hear me or am I way off base here?” Wearing nothing but underwear, he knelt down beside me and kissed both of my hands. “I assume you got a plus one to this shit show and I want that spot.”
Brooks didn’t swear too often, but when he did I always found it adorable.
“You want to come to the wedding? With me? Aaron and Sadie’s shit-show?”
“Well, yeah.”
I would never get over how vulnerable he could still be with me. He honestly believed there would be a possibility I wouldn’t want him. “I never asked you because I never imagined you’d want to come.”
He pulled himself up on the bed to sit next to me. “Free food, alcohol, you in a dress, cake…why wouldn’t I want to be there?”
Ugh, the dress.
Despite the fact that each of us maids was given her choice of dress, I still somehow managed to get the strapless one that could hardly contain my tits and made me look as if I was being squeezed from a tube of human toothpaste. Sadie insisted I looked great in it when we picked it out together and that the cleavage was hot. I, of course, agreed. Anything to keep the peace.
“So, you’re coming?” I asked with optimism.
“It’s decided.”
Chapter Nineteen
The next weekend Brooks was ready to take me to his special place.
“Dress comfortably,” he called up to me from downstairs where he waited impatiently, “and hurry up.”
He sounded like a kid on Christmas morning.
“Coming.”
The spare room that Brooks had furnished for me was only slept in that one time, and I wish I could say I felt guilty about that. Yet, despite all the space, my things mostly ended up scattered everywhere. I kept my makeup on the vanity and more clothes in the closet, though I preferred to wear his clothing at every opportunity. One of the perks of dating a giant dork was I could fit, or even swim, in most of his slogan t-shirts.
“You know, there are other colors besides black,” he informed me as I descended the stairs. I wore my standard uniform black leggings and an oversized black sweater. It was comfortable, as per his request, but I still had to look like myself.
No one would ever use comfortable as the one-word description of me. Melodramatic, yes, but I wasn’t comfortable in any sense of the word.
“Of course I know that,” I teased. “There’s onyx and smog and charcoal and…”
Brooks pulled me off the step and into a kiss, effectively shutting me up.
“Want me to change?” I asked after I caught my breath. The question was basically rhetorical, because I knew he’d say no, and even if he said yes, my other options were black too.
He shook his head, causing his constantly growing curls to fall in front of his eyes. “Never.”
It would’ve sounded so cheesy from anyone else, but I heard no cheese, only love.
He was wearing gray athletic pants, though I never saw him do athletic things, and a blue tee that did his body justice but soon was covered by a darker blue sweater. I loved it. I always loved what he wore and didn’t wear.
Sometimes it hurt my eyeballs because he looked so good. Like maybe he was the sun and I shouldn’t stare directly at him for fear of going blind. Sun poisoning is a very real thing, which always baffled me. The sun is life giving, its existence is essential to all living things, and when the sun burns up, it will mean the literal end of the world. How could something be so good and so bad at the same time?
I just had to hope that Brooks wasn’t my sun.
I could handle the good with the bad, but I craved, needed, yearned for, someone who wasn’t quite so self-destructive.
The smile was still plastered on my face as Brooks backed the Lincoln out of his driveway. My seat on the passenger side gave me a great view of Aaron getting into his truck across the street.
Aaron looked at me like he had no idea who I was. I hoped he didn’t anymore.
“What?” Brooks asked in reaction to my gawking while reaching over to catch my hand.
“Nothing.” I shook my head. It was hard for me not to look at him.
“Well”—he brushed a kiss across my knuckles—“I hope you have fun today.”
“I will.” I knew I would no matter what. We always managed to do the most amazing things together, like watch movies and hold hands and breathe.
We drove for about twenty minutes in comfortable silence that was only occasionally interrupted. I wasn’t exactly sure where we were and I had no idea where we were going, but it was clear we were in a well-to-do neighborhood. It wasn’t a plan with all the twists and turns and cookie cutter homes that were a sign of true upper-middle class. Instead, it had the interesting floor plans, unique building materials, and sprawling space of a true old-money neighborhood.
I took in the sights, my fingers itching for the satisfying scribbling sound only pencil on paper can make, when I noticed a rather large and looming home at the end of the block. While it was beautiful, it was also imposing with its high dark stone walls and gated driveway that screamed keep out. It would be perfect for a haunted house tat.
Brooks steered the car up to the stately gate, and a bit of a panic surged through me. It hardly seemed like the kind of place I’d want to be dressed comfortably at. It seemed more like the kind of place I’d want to be wearing Spanx and a push-up bra under my equally uncomfortable but supportive clothing.
“This is just a stop we have to make on our trip.” He offered me a sheepish smile as if admitting to some kind of guilt. It was rather unsettling.
“Where are we?” I asked, already pretty certain of the answer.
I could see right through his cool demeanor. Brooks was never anything but the picture of calm perfection, but the nervousness was rolling off of him like heat waves on the hood of a car. It was making me feel nauseated.
Brooks punched in a few numbers on a keypad that I swear just materialized outside his window. He did it without looking, with the ease of having done it several thousand times before. My heart was in my throat and I had the overwhelming urge to flee. My fingers slid over the shiny door handle while I tried to envision the consequences of my exit.
“This is my parent’s house,” he said, trying so, so, hard to show how casual it was with the sweep of his hand.
We drove through the gate far enough so it could automatically close behind us, then Brooks stopped the car again. He was staring at me and waiting for a reaction I wasn’t going to give him.
So many thoughts were swarming through my head that I really didn’t know what to say. Meeting them would make our relationship seem real and I wanted that, I did feel flattered, but why the secrecy about it?
None of that was really the issue. The real issue was something that had been plaguing me since the first night I met Brooks—inadequacy. It was easy for me to look good when I was compared to no one at his house, but this fancy mansion with his fancy parents would make comparisons comical.
“Why?” I asked, still hoping I wasn’t giving my feelings away. If he could see the terror writhing in my chest he’d realize I wasn’t the girl for him.
“We just need to stop and get a key.”
“You should’ve told me we were meeting your parents today.” I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I spoke quietly, fearing his family would see or hear me being upset before they even met me. I began picking at my stupid, ill-fitting clothes. “I should be wearing something different.”
Brooks unbuckled his seat belt and grabbed my hands. “Like what? A ball gown?” He laughed at his own joke and I turned irrationally furious because yes, I wanted to be wearing a ball gown. It worke
d out well for Cinderella.
“You lied to me.” I threw his hands down. Air became scarce and I had an overwhelming need to vomit. What if they asked about my parents? What would I say about my dad?
He picked my hands back up. “No—no, I didn’t. In fact, I was really careful not to.”
As I mulled that over, Brooks began to slowly edge the Lincoln down the cobblestone driveway, steering with his knees. Each thump of the tires below us seemed to mock me and my ignorance of the set-up.
The lawn that spanned far beyond the house was as beautifully manicured as Brooks, and when we circled back to the impressive five-car garage I wouldn’t see any oil spills on the concrete.
I sat in my seat, taking in every sight as Brooks came around to open my door. The large man and house dwarfed me in every sense of the word. When he opened my door and I didn’t immediately get out, he crouched down beside me.
“Do you want to leave?”
Yes, I did, but I couldn’t tell him that. I could see the excitement all over his face and knew he’d been wanting to do this. Also, I could see someone peeking out behind a curtained window on a door that appeared to be right off the garage.
To my dismay, I was already making a horrible impression as the whiny girlfriend.
“No.” I shook my head.
“It looks like you want to leave.”
“I wish you would’ve told me. That’s all.”
“Well,” he said as he unclicked my seatbelt and guided my hips to turn toward him, “you didn’t tell me we were meeting your mom. This only seems fair.”
My eyes widened. Was he being serious? “That’s hardly fair. I didn’t want you to meet my mom. Ever.” That was the wrong thing to say. Hurt flashed across his face and I could understand why, so I added, “You know how I feel about her. It’s not the same as you and your family.”
He nodded and said, “I understand, but you don’t know much about my parents. Or how I feel about them, for that matter.”
The comment stung like a belly-smacker in a cold pool. I spent so much time trying to avoid talking or even thinking about mine that I blocked out the fact that everyone has some kind of parents. Now that I was thinking about it, there were a lot of things I never asked Brooks about.