by Alexa Davis
“I like you here, too. Sorry for making things weird again.” I knew she was asking for an out, to pretend she didn’t want the same release I did. I’d spent months giving her an out. I’d left them alone and it had felt like a black hole in the center of my chest, sucking the light out of everything. I wasn’t going back there by choice.
“Well, O seems to have had enough of me, but she’s got a real soft touch with rejection.” I chuckled.
“Kids are funny that way. They just tell you the truth, the way they see things. When you left, she climbed up in my lap and told me she was going to stay with Shaunte and the kids for a little bit, and I should come talk to you.”
“God almighty. She’s something, isn’t she?” I didn’t tell Libby I’d been sent to the hot tub, but made a mental note that O could have whatever she wanted, the next time she asked.
“She sure is,” Libby sighed, pushing her hair back, the way she did when she was tired. “I have to get her in the bath and to bed. You sticking around?” she asked so causally, I almost missed the color in her cheeks, and the way she avoided my eyes.
“Actually, I think I will. I’ve been meaning to look at your, you know, graphic design portfolio. See if there’s anything I can think of to help with marketing. You know, adulting, but more fun.” She smiled her thanks and let me take her hand to help her out of the water.
Olivia fought the decision to return home, until I reminded her that I had brought soda, and Kennedy might be missing her. At the puppy’s name, her eyes lit up and she begged her mom to carry her, “because her legs couldn’t get there fast enough”. I offered to do the carrying, and O promptly scrambled out of my arms and up to my shoulders, monkey-quick, while I gaped at Libby.
We said our goodbyes to Shaunte and Dale, and headed back to the house, Libby chatting away about her business ideas, and me trying not to get caught looking around the complex, wondering which townhouse was Sam’s, and what other men might be watching my girls.
8. Libby
I offered Tucker the master bathroom to shower and dress, while Olivia took her bath in the main bath and I got her ready for bed. I was still in my bathing suit when he stuck his head into the bathroom and offered to read to Olivia so I could shower and change. His voice hitched at the last, and I glanced up to see his gaze trained on my backside. I glared at him until he grinned and ducked his head, and Olivia made him carry her to her room, to pick out three books, before he carted his burden into the living room, to bundle up on the sofa and read to her from The Jungle Book.
I undressed and started the shower, feeling more naked in my bathroom than I had since my wedding night. There was still a faint scent of the cologne and deodorant Tucker wore, and as I breathed in the smell that was so much a part of him, I felt my thighs liquefy and my body heat, just as it had when he’d touched me.
That I could do something so brazen, so unlike me, as to openly tease a man with sex, was inexplicable. If Tucker had been any other man, I would have run in that very same moment. But Tucker was the only man other than my husband who had ever touched me.
I stepped into the shower, still thinking about the night he’d spent holding me, first as I cried for the wasted life and the unanswered questions that would haunt me forever, now that Andrew was gone. But when I ran out of tears, he stayed, and chased questions and coherent thought out of my head as he used his hands and mouth on me in a way I’d never imagined. My fingers ran over my body in the shower, still remembering perfectly the path he’d taken, from my forehead and cheeks, to my lips, my throat, down my arms and up under my clothes, to my breasts. I shuddered as my body clenched around the echo of the raging ocean of pleasure I’d nearly drowned in that night, and I gasped in shock, that I could still conjure him so completely.
How could I ever be with a man who so easily occupied my every thought and desire? I finished quickly and dressed without applying makeup or doing my hair. There was no point in being pretty for Tucker. I couldn’t afford to entice him. Andrew had made me almost invisible as his wife. If I let Tucker have me, there was a chance that I might completely disappear, buried in my own desire to please him. The thought made my blood run cold, sobering me and chasing away the remnants of his touch that clung to my thoughts.
I had to send him away—and ask him, this time, to not return. I took a deep breath and descended the stairs to the living room, where Tucker was still reading. I rounded the sofa and saw a pile of read books on the floor, from Dr. Seuss to Goodnight Moon, and everything in between. Olivia was almost asleep in his arms, and his chin rested on her crown as he softly read “The Velveteen Rabbit” and rocked her in his arms. I watched her blink, slower and slower, her eyes staying closed longer each time, until she gave in to sleep with a sigh. I signaled that she was out, and he read one last page before letting me take the book from him and lift her out of his arms.
He winked and took her back once he was on his feet, and I walked behind him a stack of books in my hands. He laid her in her little four-post bed without waking her, and waited outside as I kissed her warm forehead and tucked her in.
“Do you have anything left for work tonight?” I folded my arms and gestured him downstairs with a nod.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty tired, and I don’t want you to be stuck here with me looking at my CAD program when you could be home, relaxing.” He arched an eyebrow at me, his jaw set.
“If you want me to go, say it. But I offered to help you, and I meant it. Don’t be disingenuous with me like you need an excuse to get rid of me, or it’ll force my hand.” He stalked off toward the back to collect Kennedy, who’d been sleeping when we got back from the pool, worn out from playing hard with Olivia. I watched him shove his things into the backpack he’d brought with him and groaned inwardly at a pang of guilt. I was the one turning tonight into a sex fantasy, not him. He had been a gentleman and a good friend, and I really, really, needed someone to help me get ahead of my ideas and make myself marketable.
“Tucker, I don’t want you to go. I don’t like asking for help. I especially don’t want to ask for help when what I’m trying to do is probably a terrible idea and going to be a failure.” I took a deep breath as he scowled at me.
“Are you the first graphic design genius that’s ever tried to start a business?” He asked, folding his arms across his chest.
“I wouldn’t call myself a ‘genius,’ but no. I’m obviously not the first person to go into business for themselves.”
“So, how could your idea be a terrible failure?” He jumped out of the way as Kennedy pushed past his legs and ran to me, wriggling her side against my legs as she begged for love. “I’m not Andrew, Libby. I don’t expect you to be anything other than you are.” I choked on my response, and as tears stung my eyelids, I felt his hand under my arm. “Hey, you need to sit. I just watched the color drain right out of your face.” I sat and he touched my cheek. “I wasn’t trying to be that on the money. Sorry, Darlin’.”
A glass of water was pressed into my hand and I sipped it, grateful for a reason to not speak. I heard Tucker moving around in the kitchen, and when I felt like I could stand again, I went looking for him. He had cleaned the kitchen and made a plate of food, fruits, and cheeses, and had his head in the pantry. Before I could ask him what he was looking for, he turned around with a bag of almonds in his hand.
He smiled and dumped a small handful of the nuts on the plate, and squeezed some honey out of the plastic bear I kept by the stove for my tea. With one hand on my shoulder, he steered us back into the living room, and set the plate at my elbow. Leaning forward, he kissed my forehead.
“I will still help you, with whatever you need, whenever you’re ready. I’m sorry I didn’t see everything that you had to live with, Libby. I should’ve been a better friend to you, and to Olivia. We never want to see the worst of the people we love.” He stroked my cheek and, hooking the leash to his little Kennedy, he left before I could find the words for an apology.
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sp; He couldn’t know that it was me I blamed for the life I’d lived. Every simple act of integrity, or kindness, or honor that Tucker performed, reminded me of how shallow and stupid I’d been, letting myself buy the excuses and judgment and blame that filled my head even now. I didn’t know how to tell him that I was haunted by the ghost of his best friend, and every time I looked at him, I not only saw Andrew and the good things that we’d had, but every way that my husband had failed me and our family, and every disappointing moment where I had stayed because I thought the things he provided us would make up for his failings.
No longer able to sleep for a while, I took the plate of food Tucker had made for me, and my laptop, and worked at my dining room table until my eyes burned and my sentences no longer made sense to me when I tried to read them over. Soon, I was going to need Tucker to help me for any chance at success. I’d thought I knew all about corporate law, and business laws, taxation, the kind of law my husband and Tuck practiced, but I’d soon realized that the lack of interest I’d had when Andrew was talking about his work, had left me with only a shallow, surface-level understanding of how anything in the real world worked.
When I was ready for help, it would not be because I was too stupid and vain to bother learning or “do my due diligence,” as Andrew had reminded me repeatedly. No, my husband wasn’t the only reason our marriage had been so easy to tear apart when temptation walked by in a short skirt. Andrew hadn’t understood what it meant to be a man of honor. He’d clung to Tucker because he thought he could learn what it was that made Tucker a better man. I’d let my husband drift away, because I believed that loving someone was enough to make a marriage. I was young and stupid and never bothered to learn how to do the work.
I heard Olivia shift in her bed at the top of the stairs, and went to check on her. Her sweet face framed by auburn curls, lay on a pillow designed to look like a panda. Her lips were parted, and her breaths were soft and even when I held my fingers in front of her mouth, just like I had when she was a newborn, and I was afraid to let her sleep for fear that she wouldn’t wake.
I pulled her Disney comforter up around her chin and smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her temple. She would wake up disappointed that Kennedy had left without saying goodbye. She’d want to see the puppy, and her uncle Tuck, and I didn’t have a good answer for her. I swept my fingers over her soft cheek one last time before pulling the door to, so the light barely shone around the edges and bled softly into her room without waking her.
Back in the dining room, I looked through old photos of Tucker and Andrew. Physically, they were nothing alike. Tucker was long and lean, his muscles tight cords that felt like taut springs. Andrew had been husky, bulky enough that he’d done well as a defensive end in high school and even as an undergrad student.
Tucker was patient and soft spoken, his voice deep and gravelly, the kind that made women turn around as they walked by to give him a second look. His best friend had been explosive and loud, the first to tell a joke, and the last to realize the party was over.
It was unfair to compare the two, yet I couldn’t stop trying to find the link between them. Tucker seemed like a good man, someone to trust, or to allow to protect the most important parts of my life. But I’d been fooled before. Tucker was a good friend, but I didn’t know if I could be friends with the man who made my stomach clench with need and the raw heat of need that was burning me up, even after he was gone. I didn’t trust Tucker not to break my heart. I couldn’t trust that I would keep my distance and remember that he was only supposed to be a friend, when the moment he was near me, I wanted to devour him whole.
I closed the album, after choosing a picture of Tuck and Olivia together for a new screen saver. He was tan and lean and wet from our old backyard pool, dozing on a deck chair. Olivia was snuggled in his arms, in a sound sleep reserved for the very young. They had both blocked out the world for a moment of peace. I couldn’t wait to show her the next morning that Tucker had always doted on her. It made me feel that much worse that I couldn’t afford to let him continue, hurting my daughter once again, because of a choice I had to make about a man.
9. Tucker
If anyone had asked me as I walked out of Libby’s house, if it wasn’t the hardest thing I’d ever done, I would’ve concurred heartily, and with language fit for the back pastures and the cattle drive. I wanted that woman so damn bad it was just about killing me, but I wasn’t going to force her to let me in. I was sure that every time she looked at me, she saw me as her husband’s best friend. When he was alive, and they were still married, I would never have even harbored the thought of Libby’s naked body under me, her long legs wrapped around my waist as she clenched around me with her legs, her arms, and with that wet heat I had sheathed myself in, so tight that even wet it had been a pleasant torture to push my way in and find my rhythm.
I swore at myself as I slammed on my brakes to avoid running a red light. The last thing I needed was to accidentally kill myself because I was too stupid to stop at an intersection, busy focusing on how the skin on the inside of Libby’s thighs had tasted. The driver of the car behind me honked his horn and I flipped him off for good measure, before changing lanes and turning into the first parking lot that had lights on. It was a business I’d ignored until now, but I knew I needed a break before I hurt someone.
The bright primary colors of the décor hurt my head and made me wish they served alcohol. Unfortunately, it was a sort of soda fountain, with flavors they added to the drinks, as well as ice cream and giant frosted cookies. I ordered myself a ridiculously large soda with fruit in it, and made a mental note to bring Olivia, or at least tell Libby about it if she ever spoke to me again.
I sat in a swing chair hanging from the ceiling in the corner, and sipped my future diabetes from a Styrofoam cup, and tried to come up with a proper penance for making the woman I wanted more than anything else in the damnable world faint from the mental anguish I caused her. As it was, all I was going to get out of trying to be a gentleman, was a sugar hangover and more guilt for being the wrong man, or the wrong man’s friend, I wasn’t sure which.
But I knew that there had to be something I could do to make her life easier, help her with O, anything that would prove that I was just me, not the ghost of a bad husband. I tossed the empty cup and bought an oatmeal cookie for my breakfast, and a white-chocolate-dipped Milk Bone for my pup, that was asleep in the car just outside the window next to me.
Kennedy scarfed down the doggie cookie and we headed home; she content and sleepy, me sugared-up and caffeinated and a lot sharper than I had been before I’d stopped. I made it home without wrecking and fell into bed, grateful, at least, that I’d showered after the pool, so even if showering had been a special kind of torture, surrounded by the scent of a woman, imagining her washing herself in the steamy shower…. Nope, it was going to be a long time before stepping in the shower didn’t automatically make me think of Libby, in that godforsaken little bikini, naked in her shower, or naked everywhere else my brain wanted to put her to make me crazy.
Her hearing still hadn’t been called up, and we’d need to start putting together an intermediate plan to help her take care of Olivia and herself if Carl managed to drag out the proceedings the way he loved to do. I changed out of my jeans and into my favorite ratty old basketball shorts and a t-shirt, and selected the first of many books from my library. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror with my pile of books and laughed. I was like the reverse Batman. My persona was an amazing and brilliant lawyer, with great hair and a flawless backswing. My secret identity was a skinny nerd in thick glasses whose super power, as it turned out, was just reading really well, really fast.
So, I read everything I could find, in my own books, and online about how to market graphic designs, and brushed up on how start an online business, what the best social networking sites were for building businesses—anything and everything that constituted the most mind-numbing, tedious, and mundane pa
rts of owning and running a business. I wasn’t an artist. I’d never create anything as an artist, but I could save Libby from the most common failings of new business owners, especially the creative ones.
Boring old Tuck saves the day, stopping the IRS from attacking. I took off the glasses and rubbed my eyes, which were burning so bad I thought they’d fall out of my head. I’d been at it for hours and the sugar and caffeine had worn off after a while, but I was through the most important parts. I typed up everything I had managed to digest into a coherent business plan, and emailed it to her, along with my thanks for the seafood and the company. I hit send, then wished I hadn’t, or at the very least, that she didn’t bother to look at when it was sent.
Kennedy whimpered from her bed, and I took her cue and headed toward mine. Fatigue made my feet lead and I dragged myself across the bed and passed out where I fell, only to dream of a blond-haired woman and redheaded little girl, dancing in the ocean.
I ate the oatmeal cookie for breakfast, though lunch might have been more accurate, since I didn’t drag myself out of bed until after eleven. The dog walker had already come by and taken Kennedy out, and I took a long, hot shower to make up the difference for the abbreviated one of the night before.
Checking my messages, I saw two from my former colleagues at Cripke, Cripke, and Stokes. One was from my ally, the other, my enemy. Once I’d listened to them both, I wasn’t sure which one was worse for Libby, or how to get around the wrench Carl was so gleefully throwing into the attempt to get Libby and Oliva what they deserved.
My stomach was full of angry wasps stinging at my insides I dialed Libby. The one thing I wasn’t going to do was leave her out of the decision-making. After all, it was her home, her memories, and the belongings that she and Andrew had collected together that were suddenly up for grabs. How it was to be handled had to be her decision.