by M. J. Fields
“Downs?”
“Pray for a miracle.”
“Keeka’s baby?”
He smiles. “She’s adorable. Her name’s Leddie, and they’re heading to Logan’s new pad now.”
I look down.
“She assured me nothing happened, but I was fucked up and needed to know. Did a test, and she’s not mine.”
I look up at him quickly, probably too quickly, and he smiles.
“Makes you feel better, too, huh?”
“I mean …” I shrug.
He wraps his arms around. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I nod.
“This has to stay between us.”
“Always has, Mitch.”
“Kid’s my old roommate’s. They dated for a while. She’s young, and kind of didn’t mention that. They split. She came to the house to pass on a message from Logan because Trucker was … um … well, fucking around and not answering his phone.”
“Trucker Cohen? Just left to play for the Giants?” I ask.
“Yeah. She insisted on waiting and ended up crashing in what she thought was Logan’s room but was mine, for him to be”—he shakes his head—“well, done. I was shit-faced and passed out in my bed. He came in, flipped out, and I knew nothing had happened, but I was really fucked up. Anniversary of a bad day, so yeah …” He looks up. “I was fucked up.”
I take his hand and turn toward him.
“Lots of things I wanna tell you, nothing we can’t get past, so we can move on like you wanted, with no secrets, nothing holding us back. Hell, maybe I’ll start going to church with you, so your folks will let me drive you home on breaks.” He smiles, and I stiffen. “Oh.” He nods once. “I see.” He looks hurt for a moment as he runs his hand over his now much shorter hair.
“We’re not on great terms right now,” I admit for the first time, and my eyes immediately tear up.
“Okay.” He pulls me back into him and hugs me. “Tell me what I can do, and I will make it better.”
Christy walks out with a duffle bag. “I’m ready.”
After Tank and Schooler hug the hell out of us, and we get settled in Mitch’s room, we both sit on his bed and look at each other silently.
“You okay?” I finally ask.
Christy covers her face.
“Christy, talk to me?” I ask and pull her hands away. She’s grinning. “What is so—”
“Just wondering if he cleans his sheets after you and he—”
“Sheets are clean, and dinner’s ready,” Mitch says from the doorway. “Let’s eat, ladies.”
She starts giggling, which causes me to do the same as we stand up. “You’re awful.”
“I’m jealous,” she admits.
I shake my head. “Why?”
“Because he is in love with you, has been since day one, and you’re both actually letting it happen. As you should. I’m happy for you, Jamie. So happy. But, right now, I’d love to find that, as well.”
I hug her tightly. “He and I have a long road ahead of us.”
She pulls back, takes my face between her hands, and leans in. I think she’s going to whisper something to me, but no, she licks up the side of my face. “Like the kitten meme says: just let it happen.”
“Girl, what the hell is wrong with you?” I ask, serious as a heart attack.
When we hear one of the guys outside the room whisper, “You wouldn’t believe what I just saw. Hell, I’m not even sure I just saw what I think I did,” we both suck in our lips and try not to laugh.
The table is set for six, but there are five of us. I look at Mitch, who shrugs. The sadness in his eyes makes my heart ache.
I grab the wooden salad bowl and carry it to the table. He follows with what looks like restaurant-quality chicken parmesan on pasta.
I sit between Christy and Mitch and listen to the guys talk about JJ and Downs.
Mitch
“Where are the guys?” I hear her say and look back from the sink where I’m doing dishes. I smile when I see her in a onesie covered in white horses.
“Sent them to bed.” I grab the dishtowel and wipe my hands. “None of us have slept for shit.”
She walks over to stand next to me. “Can I help?”
I grab her and set her on the counter next to the sink. “Sit and talk while I finish these up?”
She pulls her legs up and sits cross-legged. “What would you like to talk about?”
“What happened with the rents?” I open the dishwasher beneath her and start loading it.
She shrugs.
“No judgment.”
She shakes her head. “What a very Christian like thing to say.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“Did I tell you, while growing up, anything I did wrong, even things I didn’t, got brought to them as a concern from one person or another in the congregation?”
I stop loading the dishwasher and lean against the sink.
“No one wanted to hang out with me, because I was Bible Girl, and they all thought I’d tell on them for half the crap they did. I never did. Eventually, people started making things up, so I just focused on my music and avoided pretty much everyone.”
“That sucks, Jamie.”
“When I wanted to experience more, I did some community theatre in neighboring towns just to be able to experience some semblance of normal teenage life, cushioning my resumé for college applications in the process.”
I nod my understanding.
“My father and mother don’t make a lot, and what they do, they tithe, because they feel they should give back to those who support our family of three, plus the additional five or so people who live with us at any given time. So, never a plane ticket or vacation. They don’t own a vehicle, because we have always lived in the parsonage next to the church and have access to public transportation. Things were tight, so bus tickets were viewed as a luxury, and so the theatre that required bus fare was no more.”
“Understood.”
She pulls her legs up and hugs her knees. “I babysat, made enough to pay my own bus fare to do some shows and, well, Kitty, a girl whose parents were church members, who was always getting in trouble, always went up against me at auditions—”
“Gonna guess she lost?”
She nods. “Well, she was a hateful trollop and made up stories about me. Had pictures of me at parties”—she holds up three fingers—“all three I attended and made it sound like I’d been drinking a lot because each picture I had a beer in my hand. I used to carry the same beer bottle around for an entire party.”
I smile as I think, That’s my girl.
“Is that funny?” she asks.
“If they knew you, they’d know your tolerance is shit and would believe that story. I sure as hell do.”
“Yeah, well, it was disgraceful. They were worried about my father losing his position because, if they couldn’t control their daughter, how could he control a congregation?”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
“Well …” she sighs, visibly deflating right in front of me. “Kitty is a fucking snatch.”
Shocked, I simply nod.
“She showed them both a video of me falling back off the stage when you caught me and the one that was from our duet.”
I suck in a quick breath. “Damn, Jamie.”
“I told them I was sick of not living my life and experiencing normal, everyday things that every American teenager does, and my mom said that what I had done was sinful. Then I told her that she should know.”
“Holy shit, Jamie.”
She slaps her hands over her face. “She didn’t talk to me for the last three days I was home. My father took me to the bus station and asked me to go easy on her, give her time, and I told him I would, plenty of it, and while I was doing so, I was going to find myself.”
When she starts to cry, I scoop her up and walk to the couch, where I hold her while she breaks down.
“Nothing wrong with doing you
, Jamie. Nothing at all.”
“I could have died the other day.”
“I know, baby, I fucking know.”
“And when Tessa called the house, she asked if I was okay but didn’t want to speak to me.”
“You fucking kidding me?”
“Do you know how, not only heartbreaking that was, as well as embarrassing?”
“Did Tessa—”
“She pulled me aside, Mitch, and held me when I cried, but still …”
I pull her head against my chest and let her cry. “We’ll fix this.”
“We’ll?” She sits up. “What are you going to do? They think you’re just as bad as me.”
I nod. “Prove ’em wrong and let them know an angel saved the damned.”
She shakes her head.
I wipe her tears and nod. “True story, Jamie.”
“I won’t do that to you. After what just happened, I won’t do it to me, either.”
I smooth her hair back. “Your call.”
When she stops crying, I hold her for a few more minutes and decide now is a good a time as any to tell her everything.
“I want to tell you some more secrets, Jamie.”
She looks at me sweetly, and nods.
“I had a shit life, junkie mom, drunk father, drunken’ grandmother—”
“Carla?”
I shake my head. “She was around until Mom left us. Then she was an absentee grandmother. Drunk grandmother is my old man’s mom. Lives on the ranch in the big house. Royal bitch, too.”
She looks at me sympathetically, a look I despise, which is why I don’t share my shit with anyone, why I keep secrets. For the first time in my adult life, though, it doesn’t piss me off, and it’s because she loves me. Even though she’s yet to say it, I feel it. And I feel it deeper than I ever have. Ever.
I tell her a little about the struggles we faced and how we, Cara and I, got through it. I told her about my best friend, JT, and how he taught me how to throw a ball, about his batshit, crazy-eyed sister, and all the trouble she got into, and then about the day I fell for her crazy ass.
Lily.
“You’re favorite flower?”
I shrug. “Always was, not anymore.”
I skimmed over all the firsts but did tell her about what Lily had learned in juvie. She looked horrified.
“She did what she had to in order to survive. Kind of like you did.”
“Like I did?”
“What got you through.” Doesn’t seem to make it any better for my Bible Girl, and I laugh. “Without the tongue.”
She laughs, too. “I see where you’re going with that. Just …” She shakes her head. “My heart hurts for her.”
I tell her about how she was different, so much different, with me. She was sweet and loyal.
“Loyalty’s a big thing with you,” she acknowledges.
“It’s everything, Jamie. Those who get it from me deserve it. Those who don’t deserve it, but still get some semblance of it are fucking lucky.”
“Your team.”
“That’s team. Some are loyal all the time, some just on the field. That’s not true loyalty in my book. Lily taught me that. But she also taught me that it can be skewed.”
“How?”
A week ago today, I stood outside the door, trying to get him to chill the fuck out because Lily was an emotional mess, talking about wanting my kid—our kid—but saying she couldn’t, that she needed to get an abortion. In one of her sobbing fits, she said she couldn’t do it to JT. Had nothing to do with that motherfucker, and he and I went toe-to-toe. He hasn’t come out of our room since.
I pound on our bedroom door because he’s only been letting Lily in once in a while.
“She’s pregnant, JT. It’s not fucking cancer, for Christ’s sake. She’s sixteen, I’m seventeen, and we’ll make it fucking work.”
But when she was in the room yesterday, I heard her cry. I threatened to kick down the door if she wasn’t out in 5-4-3-2-1.
She came out, head down, and ran past me. I’d fucking had it and told him to walk out and face me like a man, not a pussy-ass bitch.
“You come in, I’m ending it.”
Him threatening to take his life, as his mother did, would crush my girl, and me, too.
So, I go after Lily, my sixteen-year-old, pregnant, sometimes crazy as fuck girlfriend. She isn’t hard to find. She is in the haymow, crying.
I hold her and tell her not to stress, that the kid can end up with issues like Cara. She tells me that Cara’s ADHD is nothing like the issues the baby could inherit from her mother and JT.
“Petals, nothing we can’t handle together. The shit you’ve pulled and haven’t been back in juvie since we’ve been together is proof.”
She looks dejected.
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I’m just saying.”
“Do you really think I’m crazy, Mitch?”
“I mean, you’ve done some crazy shit, but—”
“Have I? Have I really?”
“No, I mean—”
She pounds on my chest and pushes me away.
“Lily, the church, the beating the shit out of JT, the nursery?”
“Right.” She nods, throwing her hands in the air. “Crazy Lily.”
“Maybe it’s just that you didn’t give a fuck, Lily. I mean, you’ve been through some shit, so—”
She plops down in a pile of hay and starts crying.
“It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay. It’s never gonna be okay, Mitch. My God, don’t you see me?”
“Of course I see you,” I huff. “And you’r—”
“Stop. Just stop. Just look at me. Look. At. Me!”
I kneel down in front of her and do what she asked.
Her brown eyes are incredibly sad. Her tears spill in buckets.
“I’m so tired of all this.”
“Of what, Lilyanne?” I wipe away her tears.
“Of being me. Being this. Being invisible.”
“You’re not invisible,” I assure her.
“Then look at me, Mitch. Look at me and tell me you see me. Do you truly see someone who would—”
“Lily, don’t.”
I look behind me and see JT’s head poking up from the ladder to the loft.
She sobs into her lap.
I stand up and point at him. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I’m gonna call the caseworker. Get out of here.”
Lily jumps up. “No! You can’t!”
“I’m not living here anymore, Lilyanne.”
“She’s my fucking girl, JT; she’s not going anywhere.”
“Didn’t ask her to,” he snaps at me.
I step forward, pushing Lily gently behind me, protecting her.
“You stay the fuck away from me!” JT screams
It takes but a minute to recognize the familiar look in his eyes. Less time than that to put two and two together.
I look back at her and tell her, “I see you, Lily, I see you.”
She smiles, but then something catches her eye.
I look back and see JT running toward the barn doors.
“Nooooo!” she cries.
I leap toward him, grabbing his foot and pulling him back before he can jump, causing him to slam his head against the wooden floor.
“Did he die?” Jamie asks then covers her face. “Stupid question. He’s your best friend.”
I nod. “Still alive.”
“Is he okay?”
“After the three of us figured out how to get JT help, without her doing what she’d always done—taking the blame for his actions because she believed he was their best shot at someday having a good life, without any sort of guidance from an adult—things were good. Real good. Nadia was good about taking Lily to her appointments so she could get meds for JT, leaving his record clean as a whistle.”
“And what happened to Lily and the baby?”
I swallow hard and look down.
“I’m sorry. You don’t have to.”
“No, I do have to. Because, if not, it’s never gonna be right with you and me. You’re the one who told me that.”
“It might be too much at once. I mean—”
“She skipped school one day, took a bus to the doctors instead of asking me to take her because she was still considering an abortion and didn’t want me to know. I was hell-bent on taking care of our family, thought she was happy about it, too. Reality is that she’d had years of broken promises and fears that I didn’t even see. I didn’t see her.”
“So, she had an abortion?”
“No, didn’t get there. There was an accident.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see her cover her mouth, and after a few hundred thunderous heartbeats, I look up.
“I hate busses.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t know.”
She takes my hand. “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. You loved her.”
I pull her hand up and kiss the back of it. Then I let go of it and stand up, walking to the window with my back to her. There, I admit my biggest regret.
“Never told her that, though.”
Jamie
Two Months Later
I stand, looking around our new digs—an apartment. And not just any apartment, a luxury apartment. Fourth floor, floor to ceiling windows, and the windows are twelve feet tall that light the open concept living room, dining room, and kitchen area. Wood floors throughout, brick walls on the outer walls, sheetrock elsewhere. Concrete poured countertops, an industrial kitchen, three—yes, three—bathrooms, with actual soaker bathtubs, four bedrooms, parking, and apparently a rooftop garden when the weather allows.
The place was an abandoned warehouse and started as an environmental project of sorts, with a strong focus on green urban living, for Logan, a then engineer student, and his father, Lucas, a general contractor. This place now serves as his home and ours, too.
The fourth-floor houses Logan’s place and ours. The others are still under construction.
How did this come to be? Long story short, London wasn’t sleeping at all, not that any of us really were, but she was taking sleeping pills then downing energy drinks to stay awake. Between school, finding out Keeka was her half-sister—which I’m still having a hard time figuring out, but it’s true, a DNA test proved it—and wanting to spend time with her and her new niece, and Logan, she was basically out of her mind, but we love her, anyway, and will forever be loyal to her. She saved my life, so bat shit crazy for a couple weeks is definitely acceptable, and loyalty remains.