“’Nough talking,” Mama said. “Let’s eat.”
They brought the pots to the table, and I had to restrain myself not to jump over them and yell, “My precious.” How could I have forgotten how much I loved Mama’s food?
During lunch we talked some more. About Grandma, Cleveland, college. Lindsey told me about high school. She was going to start her senior year in the fall and was nervous about it. She was also nervous she wouldn’t get a good date for prom, which was still a year away!
“Did you go to prom?” Lindsey asked. “With whom?”
“With some guy from my school. After graduation, I never saw him again.”
Her face fell. I could feel she liked a guy, and she was daydreaming about being with him forever. I had been seventeen. I knew the feeling.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked.
“Nope.” I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about Gavin. Besides, he wasn’t my boyfriend, and whatever we had, it was over now.
Aunt Cadence stood. “All right.” She pushed us toward the back door. “I don’t like extra hands in the kitchen, especially ones that don’t work my way. Shoo.”
Well, if she didn’t want help, I wouldn’t be the one complaining. Lindsey and I walked out the door, and Luna, our Golden Retriever, came running to me.
“Gosh, Luna,” I whispered, kneeling in front of her. Jeez, how could I have forgotten about her? I made the calculations in my head. She was probably six or seven years old already. “You look so pretty, girl.”
And she did. Her golden coat shone against the early afternoon sun, her honey-colored eyes sparkled, and her tail twitched as if she had drank coffee.
She licked my cheek and I laughed. “I missed you too.”
With Luna at our feet, Lindsey and I sat on the swing on the porch. I took off my shoes and caressed Luna’s ears with my toes.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon, reminding me of Cleveland too much.
After a few quiet minutes, Lindsey asked, “Did you miss it here?”
I could lie. I could pretend I never cared. I wanted to. “I missed it.”
“How did you cope with it?”
I sighed. “I was hurt. I was enraged. My pride had been squashed. I guess that forgetting wasn’t so difficult.”
“If you could go back in time, would you do things differently?”
“For a long time, I wished I could. I wished I could do everything differently. Now, I’m glad I live in Cleveland. Grandma is an awesome roommate. I love college. I have Kristin, my best friend. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Again, we fell into silence.
I let my head hang backward while Lindsey moved the swing. I could fall asleep like this. The surrounding was familiar, the cooking scents were welcoming, the day looked nice, Luna was great company, and being with Lindsey was almost like old times. Suddenly, I didn’t feel nervous anymore.
But that all went down the drain when Luke showed up on the back porch.
“Hey, cousin,” he said with a tentative smile.
My heart froze, and I felt like my life was being sucked away through my bare skin.
He still looked the same—tall, golden hair like Lindsey’s, round, dark brown eyes—but he was wider, like he had been working out, and now he had stubble over his chin as if he was growing a goatee.
He came closer. “Won’t you say hi?”
I shot up, pumping adrenaline into my veins. “How dare you come here?”
He raised his palms. “I came to say hi.”
Luna barked at him.
“And I want you out of here.” My cheeks were on fire. Pure anger. “While I’m in town, you’re not welcomed here.” I ran into the house and he came after me. “Mama!” I found her in the living room with Aunt Cadence. “Tell him he is not welcomed here. Not while I’m here.”
“Son,” Aunt Cadence started, disappointment washing over her words. “We’ve talked about this.”
“I had to try,” he said.
I pointed to the door. “Out!”
“Please, Luke,” Mama said, low but firm.
For a couple of tense seconds, Luke stood his ground, and Luna, who had followed us inside, growled at him. Then, his wide shoulders slumped, and he dragged his feet out of my house.
“I don’t want him here,” I said, my breathing loud and rapid.
“He’s family, honey. You won’t be able to avoid him,” Mama said.
“If you want me to stay here, he has to stay away.”
“Jess,” Aunt Cadence called me, her voice gentle and careful. I was already shaking my head. “Luke is sorry about the past. I wish you two could talk about it. I wish you could forgive him.”
Blood pumped through my veins. I would explode at any second. “He helped that … that jerk.” My knees gave out, and I leaned against the wall. Mama darted toward me, but I raised my hand to keep her from touching me. I didn’t want her pity. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. “Luke was there. Luke helped him.”
“Honey.” Mama tried holding me, but I slapped her hands away. “Ryan is not—”
“Don’t say his name!” I interrupted her. “Don’t ever say his name again.”
Aunt Cadence held Mama’s hand. “Give the girl some time, Corrine,” she said, pulling Mama back. She gestured to me. “Let her be. It’s her problem. It’s her way of solving things.”
Solving things? Was she really talking about solving things? I wanted everything to explode. Jesus, I shouldn’t have come. I really shouldn’t. How the hell was I supposed to support Mama if everything around me was messed up?
I ran upstairs and entered my room. Without meaning to, I slammed the door on Luna’s face, and she whined.
My heart squeezed and I fell on my knees.
While trying to run away from the problems downstairs, I had encountered another. My bedroom.
The white and lilac wallpaper, the purple comforter and pillows, the notebooks, the sketches on the corkboards on the wall, the photos in the picture frames. Everything was filled with memories, a few good ones, a lot of bad ones.
I crawled to the bookshelf, picked up all the portraits, and shoved them inside a drawer. Then I took down all the sketches of people and friends, balled them in my fist, and threw them in the trash can beside my desk. Next, I ripped down the photos without frames. I hated portraits. I hated pictures. I hated photo albums.
Exhausted, I inched to my bed and lay down, hugging my pillow.
Impossible. It still smelled of him. I buried my nose in it and took a deep breath. Very faint, but it was still there. His scent on my bed.
His scent …
I remembered him opening the window in the middle of the night and crawling in bed with me. The first time he did it, I screamed, thinking it was a burglar or something. He had to hide under my bed when Papa and Jason barged in my bedroom. I lied I had a nightmare, but it was all okay now. As soon as they closed the door behind them, he slipped under my covers and pressed his warm body against mine.
“Sorry,” I whispered, burying my face in his neck and savoring his intoxicating scent.
“That’s okay.” He chuckled. “At least I had time to hide before they got here.”
I laughed, a hand pressed over my mouth to contain the sound. “Sorry.”
He rolled over me, positioning his wonderfully heavy body over mine, pressing against me in the right places. I gasped. “Stop apologizing and kiss me.”
Somehow, I found the strength to pull myself out of that memory. Like I had done on the plane, I pushed it to the back of my mind, but I knew, I just knew, it was going to be harder and harder to keep them away.
I threw the pillow to the floor, hugged my knees to my chest, and cried.
Chapter Four
Jessica
My eyelids would need surgery of some kind to shrink back to their normal size. After crying in the afternoon, I cried again before sleeping.
I washed my face several times with cold water, hoping it would do th
e trick. Then I put on gray yoga pants, a white tank top, white running shoes, pulled my hair into a tight ponytail, and descended the stairs.
Mama was in the kitchen, baking two cakes and some butter cookies, Luna at her feet.
I leaned in the doorway. “Did you open a bakery again?”
Luna ran to me and circled my legs.
“Hi, honey.” Mama turned, wearing a sweet smile, with her hand filled with dough. “Good morning. I hope you don’t mind preparing your own breakfast. I’m busy.”
I caressed Luna’s ears and walked in.
“I can see that.” I grabbed milk from the fridge and a slice of the sweet homemade bread, then sat on the chair at the table in the center of the kitchen. “You didn’t answer. Did you open a bakery again?”
Mama had sold her bakery when I was twelve because she was stressing over it more than enjoying cooking, which was her primary purpose. But Mama never stopped cooking or baking cakes for close friends and family. It was what she liked to do and what she was good at.
“No, but I’ve been accepting more orders than usual.” She pushed hard against the dough. Cakes didn’t need that kind of beating. Perhaps Mama was making more bread. “It helps keep me busy.” I thought I heard a sob coming from her direction. “And I need to do something. I’ll have too much time on my own after …”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to.
I stood, approached Mama, turned her around, and embraced her tightly.
Mama resisted crying at first, and then she let it go and sobbed like a child on my shoulder. Luna whined beside us.
“I’m not ready for this,” she whispered. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to your father.” Gently, I pulled away. I empathized with Mama, but not with my father. Not anymore. Not for the last four years. “I’m sorry. I know you resent him, but I honestly hope you can forgive him.” She put her hand over her mouth. “You can’t let him die without forgiving him.”
“Mama,” I started. I didn’t really know what to say. “I can’t forgive someone who doesn’t want to be forgiven.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Did he ever tell you otherwise?”
“No—”
“See.”
“But you know your father. He never says too much.”
“Oh, he does. He said a lot that night.”
Mama washed her hands under the sink faucet. “Oh, honey. If we could go back in time, things would have been different.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think they would.” Because I knew I wouldn’t have acted differently. And one thing led to another, ending with me moving away to live with my grandma in Cleveland and never speaking to my family again. Until now.
“Well.” Mama wiped the tears from her eyes. “We have time. Your classes start again in three months. Until then, you can stay here. I won’t give up hope.”
That made one of us.
***
Ryan
I was late for my community service. Again.
At this rate, I would end up before the judge much earlier than expected. Damn it.
I accelerated my Mustang through the streets, careful with the spots I knew cops could be hiding, just waiting for the opportunity to jump on careless drivers. When I was younger, I had been caught once or twice … or ten times. Jason and Luke had been with me most of those times. Then later Ethan joined the gang.
Thinking of them, I remembered Luke’s call yesterday morning.
“She’s here,” Luke told me.
The first thing on my mind was if she was still beautiful, but I pushed her image away. “And?”
Luke tsked. “She kicked me out of her house. Said I should stay away while she’s in town.”
“Sorry, man.” It was the only thing I could say.
Furious with myself, I punched the wheel. I entered West Main Street and slowed down considerably. This place was the cops preferred hangout.
From a distance, I saw someone running on the shoulder of the road, a golden dog alongside her. What an odd thing. I had lived here for twenty-three years and had never seen anyone running along this road in the middle of the morning. The girl looked hot, wearing low-rise pants, a cropped white top, and her long hair in a ponytail. As I drove closer, a band tightened in my chest. I knew that dog and I knew that girl. She looked not only hot, but also incredibly beautiful.
The sun filtered through the trees over her head, and her hair shone. The natural golden highlights glittered among her dark blond mane, the same ones everyone had teased weren’t natural. But I knew they were.
I sucked in air, too warm on my lungs, and, almost without thinking, reduced my speed even more. Swallowing hard, I turned my gaze back to the traffic. That didn’t last three seconds. My eyes went back to her, and I could do nothing to stop staring at her.
Holy shit, she had grown. She had gone from hot girl to gorgeous woman. Something old, something dormant stirred in me.
Oh no, no.
A horn sounded, and I snapped out of it, pulling my car back into my lane. Shit. I had been so into her, I almost drove off the road and onto the sidewalk.
Jessica’s head snapped toward the sound, but Luna tugged on the leash, pulling her to the side and into a subdivision.
I pulled over and watched as she ran away from me. A fight against the will to go after her ensued in me, and I had to say, I was almost losing. She looked too beautiful in that bra top and those tight pants. I could tell my mind she was dead to me, but my body was reacting in a whole different way.
I inhaled deeply and let my head rest on my seat. When I grabbed the steering wheel, I saw my hands shaking. Damn it.
Besides being now super late for work, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get Jessica out of my head. Her presence here, and inside my mind, would mess with everything, with all my progress.
I punched the wheel again, as if the action would calm me down.
So much for staying out of her way.
***
Jessica
Mama’s hand slid into my own, holding tight, as we walked down the corridor. The white walls, the white furniture, the white dressed doctors, it made me dizzy, more than the antiseptic smell that clouded the air.
“Relax, honey.” Mama squeezed my hand. “It’s going to be okay.”
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one who held a locked steel box inside her heart with all the rage and frustration and disappointment Papa was part of.
As soon as we entered his room, I knew that box would explode, and I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want to deal with those feelings yet. I didn’t want to deal with those feelings at all.
I closed my eyes for a second and reminded myself why I was here. For Mama. It was because of Mama.
At the door, we stopped briefly.
Mama turned to me. “Ready?”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
She opened the door and I stepped inside. My father was sleeping in the bed in the center of the room, wires and IVs hooked up to his arms and chest. He looked vulnerable and thin. His black hair was almost gone, and his skin was pale.
My eyes filled with tears. I knew cancer patients practically faded away in the terminal stages, but I didn’t expect to see him so weak. Not yet. He had never, ever been weak. Exactly the opposite. He had raised my brother and me with a firm hand and lots of discipline.
Though I knew he loved me growing up, it wasn’t easy.
“Where do you think you’re going dressed like that, young lady?” he asked each time I wore what I had considered normal clothes: fitted jeans or short skirts or V-neck tops. To him, my clothes should be loose and the skirts had to cover my knees.
At some point, it became a game. I dressed the way he wanted me to, until I was out the door. I always had a change of clothes inside my purse or in the tree house or in my locker. I ditched the baggy shirts and dressed like other girls my age.
Another issue was boys. Oh, gosh, if Papa caught a boy staring at me
, poor guy. He would hear it for the next century, which was part of the reason Jason’s friends were wary of coming into the same room as me. When we were younger, it was okay. We were innocent kids, just playing around. But once we grew up, once I was a teenager, it all changed. Papa gave them all a hard time.
With Jason, Papa complained about the bikes, the races, the leather jackets, the bandanas, and the parties.
“Don’t you think it’s time you sold that motorcycle and grew up?” he asked Jason almost every day. It didn’t matter if he was only seventeen and still a boy. To Papa, he should already be a responsible man, like he was at his age.
Deep down, I knew Papa meant well. He wanted the best for us, even if his views and values were a little outdated. However, his views and values had gotten us in the situation we were now.
Mama put her hand on my shoulder, making me focus on the helpless man in the bed, the weak man hooked up to machines to keep him alive.
It was sad how the life of someone so energetic could change so suddenly and radically.
“He’s been sleeping more and more,” Mama said.
I opened my mouth to ask her something when a nurse stepped into the room. “Good afternoon.”
“Hi, Debbie,” Mama greeted her. Of course, she probably knew the name of every nurse and doctor and employee in the hospital. “How’s he doing?”
“Sleeping most of the time,” the nurse said, walking to my father’s bed. “He woke up only a couple of times, complained about pain and the food, and slept again.”
Mama chuckled. Even when dying, Papa complained about the food. The only food he ever ate without complaint was Mama’s. In fact, he even complimented her cooking a couple of times, which was a lot coming from him.
“We’ll stay a little, if that’s okay?”
The nurse smiled. “Sure.” She checked his monitors and whatever else and then left.
I looked around the small room, uncomfortable with the situation, uncomfortable with being here, with Papa. I sat on the worn sofa along the wall. “What do you do when you’re here?”
Captured Love Page 3