Licks

by Kelly Siskind

  Arms locked around my waist, I squinted at the park bench, trying to piece together his statement. That bench was the reason we were here. I’d almost searched it when I’d arrived, desperate to learn if my father’s last name had been scratched into the wood, but I hadn’t wanted to do it alone. Telling August I’d booked my flight had been the larger thing in the moment, my need to tell him what I’d done.

  Now it felt like a swarm of wasps had invaded my belly. “You searched the bench already?”

  “No.” Again with the swallowing. “I knew before. I wanted to tell you yesterday, when I came by the house. It’s why I was there, then that suitcase showed up and the energy between us…” He tugged at the back of his hair, eyes pleading with me to understand.

  I didn’t understand. Not by a long shot.

  He knew my father’s name? Pre-crazy scavenger hunt? “Are you saying you knew before I found the journal? Before we traipsed around the city looking for clues?” Before I’d made love to him on my apartment floor.

  My knees weakened, and I landed hard on the bench. The wasps in my stomach turned vicious, stinging at will.

  He crouched in front of me, hands on my knees. “I knew, and I had every intention of telling you, but then there was that spark between us, which I never expected, and I delayed. Just…to be with you, Gwen, like that, like old times but better—I couldn’t give that up. Then you started learning things about your mother. You were seeing her in a different light. Right or wrong, stupid or smart, I didn’t want to steal that from you. If I told you, you’d have stopped reading her diary. I know you. I know you’d have tossed it aside, and you needed the closure. You still need it. It’s why you cried last night, why you finally let it out. I couldn’t tell you yet.”

  I was in no state to unpack his comments about my mother, but the desperation in his voice tamed the angry wasps. He had shown up at my mother’s to tell me something. It had gotten brushed aside with everything else: the suitcase, the journal, our intense attraction. He couldn’t have planned for any of that.

  It still explained nothing.

  “How long have you known? How’d you even find out?”

  “I know this’ll sound bad, and I feel like shit about it….” He was still in his uncomfortable squat, clutching my knees. He inched closer. “I got a letter from your mother. She gave me his name and wanted me to be the one to tell you.”

  “My mother told you? Why the hell would she tell you and not me?” I’d only asked her a million and one times.

  “I don’t know why. I can only guess it was to bring us together.”

  My confusion amplified. My mother had actively distanced herself from me. Choosing this stealthy way to finally show she cared made no sense. How had she even known I’d had feelings for August? Unless she hadn’t been as oblivious about me and my life as I’d believed. I tried piecing through her possible motivations, but stopped abruptly. “She died thirty days ago, August. When did you get this letter?”

  His brow crumpled. “A couple months ago. February.”

  “Excuse me?” I flinched, the ripcord tethering me to him shredding apart.

  Two months. He’d known two months, and he’d said nothing. No. Scratch that. He’d said plenty, lying to my face, pretending he didn’t know this one, crucial fact.

  I pushed him away, and he nearly fell on his ass. I needed space. More air. The city sounds around me muted, like I was under water. I hunched forward and dropped my head to my hands.

  Breathe in, breathe out. It should be a simple action, second nature, but each inhale serrated my throat.

  The past twenty-four hours he’d let me follow that stupid diary, never letting on what he knew. Wasting my time. All because he thought I should discover my mother? I lifted my head. The thing weighed a thousand pounds. “You had no right to keep that from me.”

  “I know.”

  “You stole that time, and I feel like a fool. I dragged you around the city, for Christ’s sake, chasing after someone whose name you already knew. All because you thought I needed to know my mother fucked my father at a fucking lookout point?”

  I recoiled at my own harshness. It wasn’t the truth. Not based on the diary. My mother had lost her virginity to a caring man, and I’d just turned it into something ugly. “You should have told me.” My fight drained, leaving my voice weak and shaky.

  “I should have, but that letter hit me like a stack of bricks, brought a lot of hurt and issues back. It took me a while to gather the courage to see you, then this craziness happened. But we found each other during that time, Gwen, like your mother must have wanted. If I told you first thing at her house, where would we be now?”

  His question depleted my reserves. My breath shuddered. Where would we be? Not planning a future together, buying nonrefundable plane tickets, and booking vacation time. I wouldn’t have seen him play my revised hate song. We wouldn’t have had a ketchup and mustard fight. Sex might not have happened.

  The possibility was unthinkable.

  His issues and hurt—the reason for his delay—had been my doing, not his. My WTF was why he’d waited to tell me, and he had intended to tell me yesterday, at my mother’s. He was telling me now, twenty-four hours after barreling back into my life. Not days or weeks. The omission still stung, but there was no denying how overwhelming our reunion had been for both of us.

  I curled my toes in my boots, tried to unsnarl the clutter in my head. All I was doing was wasting more time. “What’s his name?”

  “Ted Mercer.” He searched my eyes, the way a lost sailor searched for land, unsure he’d find his way home.

  I wanted to be that for him. Home. A haven. The center of his world. There was too much to absorb. “Ted Mercer,” I repeated. That I could focus on. The name I’d longed to find.

  He was the Tom or Ted Uncle Rex had mentioned. The man who’d wooed my mother with hot dogs and Long Island Iced Teas and romantic gestures under the stars. “Do you know his address? Is he still in San Francisco?” As the reality of the news sank in, hope replaced my shock. “I’d like to go now. Look him up first, obviously. But we should go.”

  No matter August’s deceit, I still used the word we. I didn’t want to do this alone.

  “Gwen.”

  I stood and waved him off, antsy to get moving. “Save the apologizing. I’m still upset with you and not sure where we go from here, but I need someone with me for this, and I’d like that someone to be you. We’ll sort through the rest later. I just need to find him, before—”

  “Gwen.” He stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  “Honestly, August, I don’t want to deal with this now. My birthday wish is up at midnight. As much as we need to talk this out, finding my father is more important. I want to meet him today. With you. It’s supposed to happen today.” I shook out my hands, one rushed-out sentence away from hyperventilating.

  August gripped my hips. “He’s dead, honey.”

  I jerked backward. Thickness clawed at my throat. “What?” The syllable barely choked out.

  Devastation rang clear in his pained eyes. “I went to see him when I arrived in San Francisco, to make sure he wasn’t someone who’d hurt you. The woman who answered told me he’d passed away.”

  “What?” I’d heard him. The words had registered, but their meaning hadn’t. I was supposed to meet my father. Today. It was going to happen today. “I don’t understand.”

  I didn’t want to.

  “He had a heart attack.”

  I sank back to the bench. I was surprised it didn’t cave under the weight of this crushing news. I’d wondered when I was younger, had considered that he might be dead, but it didn’t jive with my mother’s vehemence to keep the information from me. There would have been no harm sharing a deceased man’s name.

  I pressed my hand to my breastbone. The pressure didn’t ease the pain.

  “Gwen, honey?”

  I didn’t glance up at August. My father was gone. I’d never meet
him and ask if he was an adrenaline junkie, like me. Find out if he hated mayonnaise. Ask why he’d left my mother. Why he’d never wanted to meet me.

  If he’d even known I existed.

  “I was sure I’d meet him today,” I whispered. August crouched again, held my knees tight. His face blurred through my watery gaze. “When did he die, did she say?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I wiped my building tears, needing to see August clearly, the security in his tender gaze. It was the wrong move. Tension tugged a sharp line between his brows. A muscle in his temple bunched. “There’s more I need to say. I’m sick about it, wish I could go back, do things differently, but…”

  He trailed off, and I shrank smaller.

  I didn’t ask him to spit it out this time. I sat immobile, my legs too numb to stand. Instinctively, I leaned away from him.

  He gripped my knees like they were a lifeline. “He died two weeks ago.”

  “Sorry, what?” The same question I’d asked this entire conversation. The only one that came easily.

  “It was a couple weeks ago. A heart attack, she said.”

  “Two weeks?”

  He nodded.

  “But you said you’ve had the letter two months?” The fragments of information slotted together in appalling clarity. Two months. Two weeks. The time in between I’d lost. If August had told me first thing, when he should have, I’d have met my father.

  “The letter came as a shock,” he repeated, desperation roughening his tone. “I was touring. It brought a lot of tough stuff back for me, like I said. And it had been years already. I figured it wasn’t a rush. I delayed, Gwen. I was so stuck on how it was messing me up, that I put it off. So the fact that you won’t meet him is my fault. I could have told you two months ago, but I didn’t. I’ve been in town a week, since I knocked on his door. It took me that long to work up the guts to tell you yesterday, then everything…”

  He dropped his head, and I stared over him, seeing nothing yet everything. Everything I missed out on because of what he’d done: meeting my father, learning about the man, discovering my history, my genealogy.

  I also really heard August, clearer this time. Louder, his words pounding in my head. He hadn’t told me because he’d been messed up. Because I’d hurt him nine years ago and hadn’t apologized, and we’d spent that time nursing our wounds. He hadn’t told me because I’d broken his heart.

  I did this. Me. Not him.

  I ruined my chance to meet my father.

  “I’m so sorry, Gwen. I wish I could change the past. Make different choices.”

  A sharp laugh rattled my seizing lungs. I was the reigning queen of shitty choices. I’d pushed August away before college, had destroyed him after by sleeping with his brother. I was responsible for this twisting in my gut now, a fierce knot of failure.

  I deserved the pain. Every agonizing twinge.

  What I didn’t deserve was August. Booking that plane ticket had been a mistake, a futile attempt to cling to what could have been. That’s all we’d been doing, really, pretending we could forget. I’d never forget now. Not when my actions led to this.

  Slowly, I stood, aware of passing crowds, but feeling separate. Alone. “I’d like you to give me my father’s address and go.” My voice sounded flat, detached.

  Panic widened his eyes. “What? No. I’m not leaving.”

  “You don’t have a choice. I need to go there, and I’m going alone.”

  “No way. You said you wanted me there and I want to be there for you.”

  I wanted him with me as much as I wanted to rewrite our past. An impossibility. I couldn’t even look at August. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to look at myself again.

  Fortifying my strength, I blinked away snapshots of the past two days: August strumming my guitar, the sexy curve of his lips, his laugh, his voice, how his body had possessed mine. I blinked away imagined images of us in Germany, our rose-colored future. I poured gasoline on it all and watched it burn, like in his hate song. “Please give me his address and go,” I repeated.

  He gripped the sides of my head, forced my focus on him. “I know you’re angry with me. I deserve it. But this is bigger than us. Please let me come.”

  “There’s no us, August.”

  He flinched. “Excuse me?”

  “This thing we’ve been doing…” I motioned aggressively between us, but he wouldn’t release his hold on me. “We’ve been playing make-believe, pretending we can forgive and forget. It’s not realistic. Too much has happened.” Tears slipped down my cheeks, countless emotions pushing them free. I wanted to hate him for his actions, but I was the only person who deserved blame. I also loved him. Irrevocably. Crushingly. Embroiled in this tangle was the loss of a father I’d never met, and a stewing self-hatred flooding my veins. My choices. My actions. My fuck-ups.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Gwen. I’ve forgiven you. I’m done with grudges and self-pity. I want to move on. I have moved on. And I’m not letting you go.”

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  The dark slash of his eyebrows softened, his hands gentling on my face. “I love you, Possum. I love you and I’ve forgiven you. So, yeah, I think we have lots of choices.”

  No, no, no, no, no. He couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. I tried to shake my head, but his hands tightened. I squeezed my eyes shut. “You can’t love me.”

  “I can and I do. I’ve loved you since you ran through my sprinklers and stuck your tongue out at me. I loved you every time you scared me when pretending to sleep, when you shoved grass down my shirt, and fought me for my comic books. The past nine years, even. I loved you when I hated you, Gwen. So I need you to tell me what you need, how I can earn your forgiveness.”

  What he could do? After all the ways I’d failed him, he was pleading with me, wanting to shoulder my burden. As though I wasn’t the root of this disease. I gripped his wrists and removed his possessive hold of my cheeks. “You’re forgiven.”

  He exhaled roughly. “Yeah?”

  God, his hope was palpable, a warmth I’d kill to sink into. Live in. Never leave. But he had never really been mine to keep. “You’re forgiven,” I repeated, stepping back, creating space. “This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I don’t forgive myself for what I did to you and for never apologizing. I don’t forgive myself for hurting you so badly you couldn’t reach out when you got my mother’s letter. Not meeting my father is my doing, not yours.”

  “No.” He shook his head, moved toward me.

  I held up my hand. “Just give me the letter. Dragging this out will only hurt more.”

  “Dragging what out?”

  “This charade. We’re over. It’s over. We both need to move on.”

  “We’re not over, Gwen.”

  “Do I need to spell it for you? We’re done.” My harsh tone tasted like shame.

  His posture stiffened, an imperceptible hardening of his stance. His lips compressed. “Such bullshit.”

  It was my turn to flinch. I dashed at my drying tears. “What?”

  “This is your thing, Gwen. This is what you do. You push people away when it gets too real, when they start to care too much.”

  “I’m not nineteen anymore. This isn’t like then. Everything’s too intertwined.”

  “You’re telling me you can walk away from us? Just like that? Like the past twenty-four hours never happened?”

  If it were only that easy. “When I look at you, all I’ll ever see are the mistakes I’ve made. All I’ve lost. So, no…there’s no us. We’re done.”

  “We’re done?” He stood statue still, back to repeating me.

  Nothing about me was still. Not the addled thoughts spiraling through my head, or the frantic pounding of my heart. Done. August and me. Done. Finished. I choked down the sob threatening to rise. This was the right move. It had to be. It was the only one I could compute right now. He’d write more hate songs and meet a woman who wasn’t a train wreck waiting to happen. He�
��d find peace. “Yes, August. We’re done.”

  He moved so close his hot breath brushed my cheek. “Tell me you don’t love me, too. Say it and I’ll go.”

  I couldn’t. He knew it. Problem was, I didn’t love myself. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. Please. I just need the letter.”

  He scrutinized me.

  I bit down on my cheek, willing the burn in my throat to cease. I would go to my father’s house on my own, ask to see photo albums. Find out who the man had been. Learn if he’d had kids. That thought winded me anew.

  I’d daydreamed about the possibility when younger, wondered if I might have siblings, a sister or brother to commiserate with when my mother had berated me. Someone to tease and have in my corner. The prospect had taken a backseat to the more pressing issue of finding my father, but not now.

  Now they could be all I had.

  I wiped my nose with my forearm. Far from attractive. “Did my father have kids?”

  “I…” August’s brows drew together. “Shit, I didn’t ask. I was upset and took off.”

  I nodded and inhaled deeply. “Can I have the address, please?”

  He reached for me. “Gwen…”

  I angled my shoulder away from him. “I need the address and letter. I’m going there alone. We’re just not meant to be, August.”

  A boulder lodged in my throat at the brush-off. It felt like a lie. I couldn’t see the truth any longer.

  His hazel eyes were glassy. That muscle in his temple jumped incessantly. I wanted to burrow into his chest, wrap myself in his arms and scent and pretend I hadn’t ruined us.

  Neither of us moved.

  Eventually, he licked his lips and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. He held it out for me. “I love you, Gwen. I’ll always love you, and this isn’t over.”

  Trembling, I snatched the paper from him and spun on my heels. I waited for a break in traffic and bolted across the street, locking myself in my car the second I reached it. The paper was folded into a small square. The edges were soft, ripped slightly like it had been read often.

  Before I opened it, I chanced a glance back toward the bench.

  August was still standing there, his hands shoved in his front pockets, staring at me. He mouthed something I couldn’t decipher. I tore my gaze away.