Licks

by Kelly Siskind

  I’d never thought I’d see tenderness on his face again, but it had been there. A semblance of it, at least. There’d been anger, too, at first. That man had every right to spit in my eye and launch a flaming shit-bomb at my door. But the hint of longing under his tight features, the way his gaze had dipped down my body, skimming my curves, had been wholly unexpected.

  And likely nonexistent.

  I for sure imagined the heat in his perusal, the way I’d imagined every love song he’d ever written had been about me. Because I was certifiable. Crazy for August Cruz, always had been, always would be. Lovesick until the day I die.

  A breather was in order. Space to remind myself this man had actually written hate songs about me. “Don’t go anywhere,” I said, terrified he and his tractor-beam eyes would disappear from my life again.

  He offered a stiff nod.

  I had no clue why he’d come, but I didn’t care. August was in my childhood home, joking with me, offering me forgiveness. I hadn’t felt this giddy since I’d forced Rachel and Ainsley into Playworld’s bumper cars. (I’d cracked up while ramming them. Margaritas had been involved.) This wasn’t a giddy buzz, though, the tingling in my limbs more dizzying than cackle-inducing. Facing your worst mistake and greatest love in one fell swoop came with a bevy of side effects.

  Functioning in a daze, I managed to open the front door. The Girl Scout I’d hoped for earlier still hadn’t appeared. In her place was an Asian man with a clipboard in front of his face and a battered red suitcase at his feet. He peered over his notes. “Ms. Hamilton?”

  I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes. “Depends which Hamilton you’re after.”

  He checked his notes and motioned to the suitcase. “Mary Hamilton. On behalf of Greyhound bus lines, I’m returning her lost luggage.”

  I raised a skeptical eyebrow at the roughed-up suitcase, one of those hard-shell types with dents and skid marks, the outside covered in band stickers. I snickered. “You must have the wrong Mary Hamilton.”

  But I’d have paid money to see her at a Billy Idol concert. The bold stickers splashed across the suitcase would have horrified her.

  He frowned at his papers and prattled off our address and the name again, scratching at his neck until a red mark bloomed.

  “Look,” I said, cutting him off. “Mary Hamilton was my mother. She was a forty-five-year-old dental office receptionist who died last month, not a teenage band groupie. There must be a mistake.”

  Again with the neck scratching. “Sorry…I should have explained fully.” He blinked as though he had a loose contact and nudged the bag forward. “This is from a batch of luggage we recently found, that went missing in 2001. They had been locked in an unused storage facility. We’re returning the lost items.”

  Luggage from 2001? Was this guy for real? “My mother didn’t travel. I’d never even seen her pack an overnight bag. She barely—”

  “Was she related to a Doris Hamilton?”

  I stumbled back and braced myself against the door. “What did you say?” Doris was my grandmother. Linked by DNA, not any form of relationship, but still…I’d have fallen on my ass if it weren’t for the strong presence behind me. A large body. August with his hand on my lower back.

  “Doris Hamilton,” the man repeated. “Her name was also listed on the luggage tag, but Mary Hamilton’s was the main contact.”

  My mother.

  Lost luggage.

  Billy Idol.

  2001.

  Breathing became an effort. “And you’re saying this was hers? From seventeen years ago?” I would have been ten or eleven back then. I’d have remembered having a band groupie for a mother.

  “Mary Hamilton,” he said again, slowly, loudly, as though I was hard of hearing. “From 2001.”

  If it weren’t for August looping his arm around my waist, I’d be eating pavement right now: face first, teeth chipped, bloody nose. Balance eluded me.

  “Do you need us to sign something?” August took over, showing me where to write my name, behaving like a coherent adult. He led me inside afterward, just him and me and this shocking suitcase.

  He gripped my hips and turned me to face him. “This is pretty nuts.”

  “This isn’t nuts. This is like digging up the time capsule from your yard, only to discover the Barbie you disfigured by swapping her legs with Spider-Man’s had come to life to take over the globe.”

  He smirked. “Barbie-Man was awesome.”

  “Barbie-Man was a horror. Barbie-Man as an immortal bent on world domination would be catastrophic.”

  He smiled fully, the creases around his mouth and eyes filling with affection. Wooziness swept through me again, and I clasped his wrists. Scents of sweat and clove and man drifted from him, an unfamiliar cologne. As a boy he’d smelled of fresh-cut grass and his mother’s fried chicken. To this day, I couldn’t pass a lawnmower or fast-food chicken joint without sighing.

  He inched a fraction closer, his smile slipping into something darker. His warm breath skimmed my hair. I’d swear his grip on me tightened. “Barbie-Man was scary because you scalped her. You ruined what I was trying to create.”

  Was that another dig? Him reviving how I’d ruined us? He had said he’d forgiven me, but laying nine years of resentment to rest wasn’t easy, and I deserved every quip and wisecrack. Yearned for it, actually.

  His grip on me grew hot and heavy—something else I yearned for. “If I’d known you had an artistic vision in mind, I wouldn’t have acted so rashly.” I might not have slept with Finch.

  His thumb moved a fraction, a slight drag downward, and his attention fastened on my lips. “You would have defaced her one way or another. You were always impulsive like that.”

  “That doesn’t change how scary that suitcase is.” How terrifying being close to August was.

  He cast a searching glance at my face, as though reading the double-entendre in my words. “This is uncharted territory. We always fear what we don’t know.”

  I couldn’t be sure if he was talking about me or the suitcase-bomb dropped on my life, but I met his probing gaze, taking in his full physique. He really had filled out the past nine years, the sleeves of his soccer jersey cutting into his biceps. Strong veins mapped his tanned forearms and big hands. He had a bold Roman nose, thick eyelashes. Darker circles cradled his hazel eyes, but they upped his hot factor, broodiness always a turn-on for me. The hint of stubble dusting the severe cut of his jaw didn’t hurt either.

  It also didn’t hide the scar on his chin.

  I’d sat with him after he’d sliced it on the Wheelers’ broken window, the two of us having snuck into that abandoned home like we’d been FBI. Always messing around. We’d sat facing each other afterward, on my bedroom floor, our knees touching, my hand on his face as I held a wet towel to the gash. We were fifteen then, and I’d wanted to kiss him.

  I was one day from twenty-eight now, and I wanted to devour him.

  There was no way this big, gorgeous man returned the sentiment, but his hands were on my hips, the slightest tremble to his grip. What could he see before him but a betrayer?

  Disoriented, I eased away from him and knelt in front of the case. “You know what this means, right?”

  He cleared his throat. “You might learn your mother was an eighties club kid?”

  Not even close. I still couldn’t believe this was happening, that August was with me for this wild turn of events. Who got lost luggage returned after seventeen years?

  I wanted to unpack the man behind me as much as I wanted to dissect this new treasure. Find out every country and town he’d toured, what cool foods he’d eaten in Japan, if writing music felt as cathartic as it seemed, if being on the road was lonely or exhilarating. We weren’t there yet. Not close. Not friends, even. We might never get there.

  Better to stick with safer topics, like why this suitcase fascinated me.

  Hands on the hard plastic, I glanced at him over my shoulder. I was about to tell him there
could be clues about my father in here, but the hope taunted me, the hours I’d spent ransacking my mother’s room proof I was grasping at straws, wishing for the impossible.

  With August here, though, the impossible no longer seemed unattainable. Still, I latched on to his humor instead. “You nailed it, but if Mary Hamilton loved the rave scene, I’m an arachnid scientist with a penchant for mayonnaise.”

  I got off on bungee jumping and would kill to surf a fifty-foot swell, but drop an eight-legged critter near me or force mayonnaise down my throat, and I’d scream bloody murder.

  August’s good humor returned. “I ruined you, didn’t I?”

  “You were an evil mastermind.” Who’d hidden a trove of plastic spiders in my room and had snuck gross mayonnaise on my turkey sandwiches. He’d also ruined me for men, unbeknownst to him, my history littered with nothing but assholes until my dating hiatus this year. No one had ever compared to August.

  I kept my focus on the suitcase, grounding my wobbly hands on the cool metal, still aware of my former best friend behind me. His sneakers scuffed the floor. To leave? Walk out of my life again? I’d taken care of my mother’s funeral arrangements on my own, had dealt with her will, was packing her life into boxes.

  But this…

  I didn’t want to unearth more of her past alone. I didn’t know how to ask for August’s support. I kept talking instead. “As far as I know, my mother never left San Francisco. Never took so much as a weekend getaway. And I was eleven when this supposedly went missing. I’d remember her traveling, wouldn’t I?” It also seemed weird it turned up today. With August. The day before my birthday. “Why am I nervous to open it? This is worse than skydiving.”

  “Since when do you skydive?”

  His question proved how far we’d fallen away from each other. He didn’t know me now, the woman I’d become. When I didn’t reply, he said, “It’s just stuff, Gwen. Nothing in there can hurt you.”

  He was wrong about that. “Says the guy who grew up with a great family.”

  “It wasn’t as peachy as it seemed. Nowhere near what you went through, but we have our issues.”

  I almost turned at his bitter tone, but I didn’t want to acknowledge the part I’d played in their family discord. I also couldn’t look away from the suitcase. “Will you stay while I open it?”

  I had no right to ask August for anything. He probably came by to clear the air between us, find the closure we both clearly needed, or to reinstate his anger—fodder for his songwriting. (He could name his next gem “Girl Who Can’t Forget the Past.”) Some nerve I had, asking him for support now.

  “Of course,” came his quiet reply.

  I stayed focused on the case, couldn’t look at his expression as I faced my mother’s history. But he was here. Of course. He would let me lean on him. Of course. He’d forever be the only person who could calm me. Of course.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  I heard him move, felt the heat of his palm on my back. Magnetically, I curved forward, rounding my spine into his tender touch. I closed my eyes.

  Three extended beats later, he moved away, my serenity leaving with him. “Take your time with her stuff,” he said. “I’ll make myself at home.”

  Easier said than done in a packed-up house, but August knew these walls as well as me. He’d been the one to make pencil marks in the pantry every year I grew taller. He moved that way now, toward the kitchen, farther from me. The distance felt physically painful. I also appreciated it; he always knew what I needed.

  I examined the relic before me. Billy Idol stickers. INXS. Depeche Mode. I traced the stained graphics, beyond baffled. Maybe someone had lent my mother the case. Someone who’d enjoyed music and had let loose. Someone who hadn’t shuffled through a quiet life.

  Afraid to disturb its contents, I eased the suitcase on its side and opened it. A musty smell hit me full force. I rubbed my nose, but the stale aroma stuck to my nostrils. Seventeen years of confined clothing.

  Clothes I couldn’t believe had belonged to my mother.

  Sitting cross-legged, I pulled out one item at a time: a neon windbreaker, high-waisted jeans, a micro-mini skirt, bright tank tops that would fit Barbie-Man. She would have been twenty-eight when this went missing, not sixteen. The styles were as baffling as the concert stickers, until I noticed the Rolling Stone magazine below, from 1990.

  The year I was born.

  Could these contents and band stickers have been from then? They certainly fit the bill, but that wouldn’t explain the eleven-year gap between being packed and sent on a Greyhound bus.

  More confused than ever, I spent time with each piece, smoothed the worn fabrics, tried to picture my mother in something other than black, white, gray, or beige. She’d kept her hair short, her shoes functional and flat. Whoever this Mary Hamilton had been, she’d had questionable taste, too, but colorful.

  Two pairs of shoes were below her clothing. One was a cute set of beaded sandals. Sandals I’d actually wear. I ran my fingers over the blue beads, unsure how this miniskirt wearing, INXS-loving girl had had the color sucked from her life. Except the possible answer had my throat feeling thick. If the Rolling Stone date was the more accurate one, if these contents were from 1990, not 2001, then I was the thing that had sucked her color dry.

  I’d been the child she hadn’t wanted.

  I clenched and unclenched my hands, unsure why my heart rate had picked up. I didn’t love my mother. Miss her? Not on your life. She was unimportant, a barely-there blip on my ancestral radar. So why was I zoning out, staring at nothing while my lungs worked double-time?

  Too much history had been unearthed today. August. My WTF. My crappy childhood. August. An unhealthy amount of time passed as I touched those sandals.

  Eventually, I shook my head and reached for the other shoes. These were odd—soft black leather with laces and small square heels. Deep creases ringed the middles as though the arches had been bent every which way. Jazz shoes? For dancing? I snorted out a laugh. This was too much. Picturing my mother taking a bong hit was easier than imagining her shaking jazz hands. These couldn’t belong to a woman who’d never listened to music.

  I turned the soft shoes over, ran my fingers along the soles and laces. Inside the heel was a scribbled name: Mary Hamilton. My breath caught.

  That tiny scrawl shot this reality home, confirming beyond a doubt these belongings had been hers. The mother I’d come to resent had lived a phantom life.

  I moved faster, going through her toiletries (red lipstick, the woman had red lipstick!), sifting through her lacy underwear, and a bible. The bible made sense. From what I knew of my grandparents, they were religious. The zealot sort whose lives revolved around church. I set the book aside, along with every other article she’d lost. Nothing pointed to any friends she’d had, or a boyfriend. I still couldn’t accurately gauge what year it was all from. It was just stuff, like August had said.

  That didn’t stop me from another exhaustive analysis, the same intense focus I used at my job.

  When couples applied for adoption, I double, triple, and quadruple checked their facts, making sure babies were matched with the right parents. If Mary Hamilton had applied for a baby from me, I wouldn’t have allowed her to adopt a Home Economics egg.

  But every day, I made families whole. I helped babies land in loving homes, with caring parents who would nurture and protect them, everything I never had.

  I applied the same extensive analysis to the artifacts before me. I turned every item of clothing inside out. I checked the edges of the suitcase. I flipped through the entire Rolling Stone issue, finding nothing but one dog-eared page: a “fancy” boombox advertising quality CD sound. Totally cool and retro, but not a clue to my father’s identity or the suitcase’s origin.

  I started again.

  Partway through my third pass, strumming teased my ears. August. I blinked at my surroundings, unsure how long I’d been searching through the case. A glance at my phone to
ld me almost two hours had passed. Two hours, and August was still here. He must have found my old guitar among the boxes. My small pile of memories I couldn’t part with.

  He played a quiet tune, familiar soft notes: America’s “Horse with No Name,” the first song he’d ever taught me. The simple melody flowed with only two chords, easy to teach. August had sat with his legs around me, my back rounded against his chest, his fingers moving mine along the strings. I’d figured it out pretty quick, but had pretended to struggle—to keep him close, to keep his hands on mine, to pretend I’d been brave enough to spin and press my lips to his.

  His choice of song pulled at me. The nostalgia in here must be getting to him, too. Forgetting the mess I’d made on the floor, I leaned on my hand to push to my feet and sneak a peek of him, only to realize my mother’s bible had gotten lost under my debris. It caved slightly when I picked it up, the middle of it denting. Odd.

  I shifted to my knees and opened the cover. “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  My pulse was back to hammering, a frantic tune drowning August’s soft song. My mother, the apparent rebel, had cut out the interior of her bible like she’d been an undercover agent. Inside her hidey hole was a journal.

  Carefully, I extricated the journal from its hiding spot and opened the cover. I grinned at the scrawled note:

  If you’re reading this, you’ve stolen my property.

  Put it back or face the consequences.

  The dates inscribed in the top right corner edged the grin from my face: 1989-1990. I reached out to touch the writing, but yanked my hand back.

  This wasn’t a coincidence. These dates matched the magazine and clothing styles. These contents must have been from that time. It didn’t explain why the bag had gone missing in 2001, but not much about this suitcase arriving at my mother’s door made sense.

  What was startlingly clear was that I held a diary. One written by mother, encompassing the times during which I’d been conceived and born.

  This could lead me to my father.