by Sorbe, Lisa
Drink up, buttercup. Drink up.
“I don’t think I should have anymore.” She sighs, drawing the glass closer, and peers down into the amber liquid.
I wave away her concern. “Whatever. You deserve a break.”
She laughs, though it trails off quickly. “Yeah, I guess. But I promised my husband I wouldn’t be gone long. He needs peace and quiet to work and, well, there’s usually none of that when you’re watching a toddler. Know what I mean?”
I grit my teeth, hiding them behind a close-lipped smile. No, Marla, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t have kids. I’ll never have kids. I fucked up any chance to have kids a long fucking time ago.
But if I told her about that experience, well…I’d blow my cover.
Or, maybe not. I don’t have to mention Hollis’s part in the whole ordeal.
Still, I have no desire to go into all that. After all, she doesn’t need to know about me. This social hour is all about getting to know her – her demons, her cracks, her flaws and weaknesses.
So I nod. “Yeah, kids can be a handful.”
She rolls her eyes as if to say tell me about it.
“What does your husband do?” I take a sip of my drink while I wait for her response, doing my best to appear casual. Inside, though, my heart is pounding, my blood racing. I feel like I’m some supernatural creature who moves with lightning-fast speed, and I’ve got to deliberately slow my movements in order to blend in or risk giving myself away.
The glass weighs heavy in my hand, feels like a ten-pound dumbbell in my hand, and the muscles in my arm strain as I lower it to the table.
Smooth, steady, deliberate.
“Hollis? He’s a writer. Well, author now.”
Crossing my arms, I prop them on the table and lean forward. “Oh?”
Interested and engaged, Becky Beckett is nothing if not a good listener.
Marla nods and, despite her earlier protest, takes a big swig of her beer. “Yeah. His first book was just released a few months ago.”
“Wow.” I widen my eyes, attempting to look appropriately impressed. “That’s so cool. What kind of book is it?”
As if I don’t know.
“It’s got a little bit of everything – suspense, romance, sci-fi, horror. But technically, it’s listed as a supernatural thriller.”
“I adore supernatural thrillers. What’s the title? I’ll have to check it out.”
“November’s Night. And don’t buy it. We have, like, a million copies just sitting in our storage locker.” She huffs and takes another big swig. When she speaks again, the hard edges have been sanded from her words. “I’ll grab you one from the stash, have Hollis sign it.”
“That’s so generous. Do you think he’d mind, though?”
“Pft. Not at all.” She downs the rest of her drink and pushes the empty glass away. Scooting back her chair, she sighs. “I really wish I could stay longer. But Hollis…” She doesn’t finish her thought, just shakes her head and grins a self-conscious grin.
Ignoring the rest of my drink, I rise too, grabbing her elbow to steady her so she doesn’t biff it right here in the bar. Fortunately, after a few steps, she seems to stabilize, and we’re able to make it out the door without incident.
Marla is obviously a lightweight.
Which just makes my job easier.
The direction of her building is the same as Ford’s, where I’m heading now. So we walk together, chatting as we go. The beer has loosened her tongue, and she tells me that she and Hollis have been in their apartment for four years, that it’s small but cozy, and what she really dreams of is a house in the suburbs. “It was so hit and miss before Hollis sold his book,” she says. “After expenses, my income barely amounted to anything. A house seemed like a dream we’d never achieve. But now? I get to quit my job and be a stay-at-home mom…in an actual home.” She giggles drunkenly, giddy at the prospect.
I know the feeling. Or knew it. It was one of the reasons I left. Back then, with Hollis, I would have been one of those moms who was always working, always missing out.
Or so I thought.
Marla, for her part, stuck around. Now she’s more than ready to reap the results.
I hate her so much.
Glancing sideways, I note her flushed face, her shiny eyes. Strands of hair have fallen loose from her ponytail and are stuck to her cheeks, which are pinched up in a floopy sort of smile.
The bitch is lit.
What I wouldn’t give to see Hollis’s face when he realizes his wife is too drunk to watch their daughter.
We approach her building with no signs of slowing, and when we pass it, I almost give her a nudge, letting her know. But I’m not supposed to know where she lives, so I do nothing, just keep my pace and pepper her with questions to keep her talking, keep her mind occupied.
Marla doesn’t get out much, despite how busy her Instagram makes her seem.
I learn that she has acquaintances, but no real friends.
She has a home in a state that she loathes.
She lives in an apartment when she’d rather live in a house.
And four beers chased one right after the other royally fucks her up.
“Why don’t you move back to Texas?” I ask, stirring the pot. If I remember correctly (and of course I do), Hollis hates the heat, hates the humidity, hates the south.
Marla huffs. “I wish. My husband refuses to even entertain the idea, though.”
“Well, it’s your life, too. How fair is it that you have to live somewhere you hate just so he can be content? I mean, you deserve to be happy, right?”
She doesn’t answer, just stares down at the sidewalk. “I don’t know… It’s complicated—” Suddenly, her head whips up. “Shit!”
I feign confusion.
“Crap, we totally passed my building. What the hell?” She snatches her phone from her pocket and checks the time. “Shit, crap, fuck, crap.”
She turns on a dime, and I scurry after her, smiling ear to ear.
“Hey, don’t sweat it. I’m sure your husband – Hollis – will understand.”
She nods vigorously, typing out a text. “Yeah. Probably. Maybe.” She sighs and slips the phone back in her pocket. “It’s just that…”
I wait, but it’s clear that Marla has no plans to continue her thought. So I push. “It’s just that…what?”
She sighs, gnaws at her lower lip, and sighs again. “Things have been kind of tense, lately. I mean, we’re fine. Fine,” she stresses. “But he has this new deadline with the book he’s working on, so I’ve been trying to keep Belle out of his hair as much as I can. His hours are so crazy, you don’t even know.”
Oh, Marla. You don’t even know.
“He has to be free to write whenever inspiration hits. So it’s, like, a guessing game. I always have to be on.” She quickens her pace. “It wasn’t so bad before we had Belle. And before he actually sold a book and everything. But now…”
She’s practically jogging, and when we come to Ford’s building, I hold out a hand, stopping her. “This is me.”
Her face falls. “God, I’m so sorry. I spent the entire day talking about all of my shit. I didn’t even ask you anything about yourself. You probably think I’m the most self-centered person in the world.”
I shake my head, though inside I’m nodding right along with her. “Oh, my God, no! I just love getting to know people, so I usually ask too many questions. You were just a victim of circumstance. Plus,” I raise a brow, “there’s always next time, right?”
Marla seems so grateful at the very thought of another meet up that I’m worried she might melt into a puddle right here on the sidewalk.
We swap numbers, and she tells me how nice it is to finally have someone her age to talk to, and yada-fucking-yada. “I started the class thinking it would be a good way to meet people. But everyone there is either, like, so much older than I am or just flat out weird.”
“True that,” I say, remembering the pe
rvert in the Hawaiian shirt who tried to cop a feel of my ass while we were dancing in a circle.
We rush through our good-byes, promising to meet up soon, and as I watch her walk away, I can hardly stifle my excitement. It’s been bubbling over all day, and I’ve had to reel it in, reel it in, reel it in. Making friends is like trying to snag a boyfriend – you can’t seem too eager.
Though, Marla is…unique.
God, this is going to be so easy!
I’m lighter than air as I dance up the stairs, humming one of the New Kids songs from this morning’s class. And when I step through the door of Ford’s apartment, it feels so right, so much like home, that when Ford waves at me from his spot on the couch, I jump, straddling him right where he sits.
A few minutes later, the entire sofa crashes beneath us.
It’s not a sign. It’s not.
Because life is perfect.
Fucking perfect.
Life wasn’t perfect with Hollis.
I know that. I’m not living in some delusional fantasy world where I’m bemoaning a lost relationship, remembering it better than it really was. The grass is not, as most believe, always greener on the other side.
I know this better than anyone.
Even though I was tired of life with Hollis – the scraping to survive, the squeaking by, the living paycheck to paycheck – leaving him wasn’t easy. It hurt my heart to walk away from someone who’d held it for so long, made me ache in places I didn’t even know I had. The pain extended beyond my body, crippled my soul and crushed my spirt.
And…I also felt a bit like a fool. Nicholas removed my blinders, made me see that Hollis was using me – whether Hollis was conscious of it or not. He did nothing all day but play with words, eating food that I bought and drinking coffee that I paid for – all while living in a shitty apartment that my income barely covered. He was happy, pursuing his creative interests. Playing in the soup of life like he had no worries, no troubles.
I just…I grew so damn resentful.
I wish I’d stayed. I wish I’d waited.
Why does life always have to be one thing over the other?
Money or love.
Security or strife.
Bliss or despair.
Balance, man. It’s something I’ve never been able to find.
I often marvel at the way other people can be so happy, so content with being so small. They love, they live, they work – and they’re so damn peaceful as they go about it all. It’s like they’re a goddamn army of ants on autopilot or something. They never stop and consider their lives – much less humanity’s very existence – and think: This is it? This is all there is? What’s the point? What’s the fucking point?
I mean, we’re a floating dot in a chaotic universe where destruction reigns supreme. Doesn’t that bother anybody?
So many things about the world, about society, seem so wrong. The way husbands treat their wives (or, of course, vice versa), or the way people devote so much time to working jobs they don’t even like just so they can buy things they don’t really need. They spend time away from their families and call it “being productive”, and all the while their loved ones are sitting home, ignored and assuming personalities carved by neglect. People these days are desensitized to the point that they feel nothing, care about nothing. They’re mean, they’re so mean, to each other and to animals and to kids – holy shit and Jesus Christ! – and everything is just so damn dog-eat-dog I can barely stand it.
Some days, I think I might be going a little crazy.
Then again, I’m not the nicest person, so maybe I shouldn’t talk.
Sometimes I wonder…did the world create me, or did I create my world?
• • •
I was pregnant when I left Hollis. Six weeks along, and the new life growing inside of me pushed me over the edge. I wasn’t sure how Hollis would react.
Would he be resentful, somehow blame me for something we created together?
I was scared to tell him, so I stalled, drawing it out longer and longer, making excuse after excuse for why I was keeping the news to myself.
The fear of adding yet another person to my list of people to care for was enough to throw me into a deep depression. Deeper than the one I was already in.
Nicholas paid for the abortion. He never said it, but now that I know him better, more intimately, I can say with absolute certainty that he had no plans to raise another man’s child. He wanted every connection I had to my past cut, the ends wrapped up in a neat little bow.
So I snipped every damn tie.
A few years after we were married, though, we tried to conceive. Nicholas wanted a son, someone to which his empire could be passed. As for me, I just wanted someone to love – someone who might, just might, love me in return. Because, by then, I was starved for affection, hungry for it in a way that my husband refused to satisfy. Nicholas had already made it clear that I was his property and not, as I so naively assumed, his partner. I was lonely, and I figured as a mother, I wouldn’t be.
But the days turned into months, the months turned into years, and…nothing. Even two rounds of In vitro fertilization proved fruitless. For reasons the doctors could never pinpoint, I continued to remain barren.
But I knew why.
I knew.
After what I’d done, I didn’t deserve to have a baby.
Some forces of nature shouldn’t be fucked with.
Fortunately, the few days I needed to spend in Minneapolis with Nicholas just happened to coincide with Ford’s trip to Iceland. He wasn’t around to question my absence, and frankly, I’m getting tired of lying to him.
I should just break things off.
I need to break things off.
I’m pondering this very thought when Marla texts me, asking if I’d like to grab a coffee, maybe catch a bite to eat. It’s been a little over a week since I’ve seen her, though we did exchange a few messages when I was back home. We even talked on the phone, which I found to be oddly unsettling. Marla is a loser, obviously, and doesn’t think twice about spending hours on the phone chatting it up like some high schooler from the 90s. But as I had nothing to do (Nicholas only returned home to attend a client dinner for which he needed a date and, aside for a quick ten minutes together in the sack, devoted the rest of his time to work) I answered her call, pretended to be over the moon happy to hear from her. Of course, by the time she rang, I was well into a bottle of red and feeling so damn lonely I would have answered a call from Satan himself, bargained my soul for my deepest desires.
Being back home, completely and utterly alone for the first time in so long, felt…wrong. Nicholas’s distant presence only served to magnify the rapt attention I’ve been receiving from Ford these past weeks, and the contrast between my life in Minneapolis and the one I’m leading in Duluth was so jarring I felt like a woman split in two, coming apart at the seams.
Now, back at our lake house, I feel like I’m off my game.
I watch Gus tromp through the water, skittering this way and that, his black coat wet and gleaming under the late July sun. Like me, he’s happier here.
Nicholas didn’t respond warmly when I told him I’d adopted a dog, nor did he seem to appreciate my new hairstyle all that much. Not that his reaction bothered me, however. Frankly, I was just surprised he noticed at all.
And when I went so far as to remind him that this is how I looked when we met, he regarded me with blank stare buttered ever-so-slightly by disbelief.
Sometimes I question myself.
I don’t know who I am anymore. I mean, I try to remember. Try to generate a feeling of…something. Nostalgia, maybe. Or just the random, run-of-the-mill feeling of joy. But there’s nothing there. It’s like I’m empty, hollow, as if my insides have all dried up and withered away.
But Hollis remembers. I’m sure of it. He knows me, the real me, the truth of who I am. And I need that. I need to be seen, goddammit. Because I’m not invisible.
I’m not, I’
m not, I’m not.
When I’m with Ford, I have substance. Though I’m still not real, not real at all, because he only knows a fabricated version of me. Around him, I’m nothing more than a flimsy apparition, a shadow in danger of dissolving entirely when exposed to the light.
So even if I wanted my relationship with Ford to last, it couldn’t.
Not that I want it to.
I don’t.
My phone buzzes with a text from Marla, letting me know that, yes, the place I suggested to meet would be just find and she’ll see me in an hour.
With so much time to spare, I might as well put it to good use.
Sliding my hand over my stomach, I slip my fingers into my bikini bottoms. Then, settling back on the chaise, I turn my cheek, rest it against the smooth fabric, and stare at the fence. When I see movement between the slats, I smile, lick my lips.
Showtime.
Ford returns from Iceland a hungry man.
So I feed him.
Me.
It feels so good to be wrapped up in his arms after two long weeks of cold nights spent alone, with nothing but a stuffed panda to keep me company. The bear’s smell is fading, overtaken by my scent…and a little bit of Gus’s, who happened to think it was a chew toy and stole it from my bed when I wasn’t looking. I had to chase that damn dog around the house for thirty whole minutes to get the thing back. The game only ended after he tired of it, and when I scolded him, the jerk practically laughed in my face.
I swear, some days I have half a mind to dump him in the next yard (with a fence, of course) that I see.
But for now, we’re at Ford’s, finally back at Ford’s, and all is right with the world.
Gus is quiet, curled up on the end of the bed, sound asleep. Ford’s arm is loose around my waist, his bare chest flush against my naked back, and my body feels mushy and warm from his attention.
He’s only been home for four hours, and already I’ve had him three times.
“I missed you.”
His voice is lazy, drowsy with sleep. But he squeezes me tighter as he says this, and I snuggle deeper into his embrace, delighting in his words.