Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  Then she leans forward and says, “Don’t think Gus and Anna would like you bringing her home all liquored up. You can bring her out back to sleep it off in the cabin if you need to.”

  Cabin? Jake’s cabin? Whose cabin?

  I suck down the new beer in this state of panic. Am I really that drunk? It’s true I haven’t had more than a couple beers at a party at home. I never liked the taste much and besides, at home I always felt like I had to be the good girl. Keep a watch out for Ty, who was always the bad boy. I had to be the responsible one.

  But here with Jake I feel safe enough to scoot out of my comfort zone if only for a little while. He’ll take care of me so I can relax and breathe for more than a moment.

  “She hasn’t had that much,” he says, glancing at me. “But thanks, I’ll keep the offer in mind. Maybe we can get some burgers?”

  Food is a good idea.

  Our hamburgers arrive, and we eat them in silence. Well, as silent as a bar blasting country music gets. I’m aware of sauce running down my chin and wiping it away with my napkin. I’m hyper aware of my chewing. Swallow. Chew. Dip French fry in ketchup. Eat. Wipe lips with napkin. Repeat. Hot damn, this burger is delicious. When I’m done, I feel way better. The alcohol buzz is still there but not as all encompassing.

  “Yum,” I say to Jake.

  “Hmm?”

  He leans closer to me to hear but now our body language is more like two buds eating burgers. I feel full and sort of groggy.

  Jake excuses himself for a second to use the restroom and when the woman next to me turns away from the counter to talk to her friend, I grab her shot glass and pour it down my throat. Burns like fire. The second Jake gets back I stand up. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I grab his hand and he doesn’t resist as I pull us through the crowd. I elbow the swinging door and leave the steamy bar air, pressing into the cool mountain night.

  Jake’s truck is parked in the first row, tires pressed against a log. Nobody else is out there.

  “You feeling okay?” he says.

  “I’m feeling fine. I want to talk to you about something,” I say.

  But he looks so cute standing there with his head cocked and his eyes slightly red and suddenly I know what I need to do first. After I tell him about Ty, after I confess everything, he may not want me anymore, so I do what I wanted to do since I first saw him sitting in that Jeep with the hat over his eyes.

  I slam him against the passenger door and kiss him for real. Like I mean it. Like I’m in it all the way. I kiss him like I’ll never let him go.

  He kisses me back, long and deep and so melty and perfect I feel like I’m going to float right off that dirt and into the black speckled sky. His hands are on my hips, pressing into the fabric of my skirt, grounding the soles of my sandals into the earth.

  Before either of us can second-guess what we’re doing, I open the truck door and jump up onto the fabric seat. I scoot backwards into the cab, pulling him along with me, and I can feel that he wants me. Wants me like I want him. It’s so different. So different than what I’ve experienced before. We’re like this for a long time. Touching. Tasting. Feeling. Then he pulls away and wraps his arm around me. “So what do you want to tell me?”

  “It’s…remember the guy back home I told you about? The bad relationship?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well,” I start to say when my cell phone rings. My ring tone is the song I practiced to, “Mama’s Don’t Let Their Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys.”

  Jake laughs. “It’s Anna. You better get that.”

  “No. I’ll call her back later. I really want to talk to you about—”

  “Anna? It’s Jake.”

  I sigh. Cowboy Jake, always the responsible one.

  “What’s that? I can’t hear you; it’s a bad connection.” He pauses, a frown creasing his brow. “I can’t hear you, but I’m sorry I kept her out so late if that’s what you want to know.” Another pause. “I’ll call you back when we’re in range. I can’t hear a damn thing you’re saying.”

  He hangs up, still frowning.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “I assume so, but I couldn’t hear her. She’s likely checking up on you, making sure I get you back to the house in one piece. We should probably go.”

  He starts the engine. My opportunity to confess slips through the cracks of the window, and I’m equal parts relieved and disappointed.

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  “I didn’t drink half as much as you. And I definitely didn’t sneak a shot out from under a tourist.” He laughs as he backs up the truck, and I put on my seatbelt.

  “You saw that?”

  “You think I miss a beat, Cowgirl?”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  He doesn’t say anything after he turns off the ignition in his cabin’s dirt driveway.

  “I don’t want to go home,” I whisper.

  “So don’t.”

  He turns the headlights off, and it’s just the two of us under the wide black sky sprinkled with stars, so many spinning stars.

  “Jake.”

  “Yeah?”

  Maybe he sees it in my eyes. This black hole so deep that even something like this, something so perfect, can’t pull me out of it.

  “If you don’t miss a beat, do you know why I’m here?”

  My fingers weaving into one another on my lap are blurry. I hold my breath while I wait.

  “I know a bit.”

  “What do you know?”

  “I know some kids killed themselves.”

  “Which kids?”

  “A few.”

  “Okay.” I hesitate. It’s so much more than that. “Do you know anything else?”

  He shrugs.

  He wasn’t helping. Shit. Shit shit shit.

  “Well, things were crazy then. You know how I tell you how alive I feel here?”

  He nods.

  “There, I felt numb. And sometimes when you’re numb, you do things you regret just to feel alive, do you get that?”

  I’m still a little tipsy. This is good and bad, but at least it’s getting me talking.

  “Yeah, I get that. I felt like that after my dad died. And I was like that for a long time after. I think that’s how my mom felt, too, why she used the bottle to wake up or numb out.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t work, though. Eventually you just have to face what’s bothering you.”

  “I bet you never did what I did.”

  “Maybe,” he says. “I did a lot I’m not proud of.”

  I look at him dead-on. Jake. Perfect Jake. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  He cocks an eyebrow. “That bartender back there? The one you were giving the stink eye to? Well, I slept with her.”

  “I figured.”

  “No.” He chews on his lip, like he’s embarrassed. “I slept with her while she was married.”

  “Oh.”

  “And had a kid at home.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  I look at my hands. “What happened?”

  “What happened was her old man found out and threatened to shoot me if he ever saw me again.”

  I gasp. “But you were talking to her tonight!”

  “Yeah, well, he’s not around anymore.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Jail.”

  “For what?”

  He smiles, and it’s the wicked one I love. “Doing some awful things.”

  I duck my head and jump out of the truck. The stars spin and spin above me like a crazy crown of light. Maybe I’m more than a little tipsy. Suddenly Jake is in front of me. He’s holding onto my elbows, grounding me into the earth so I don’t float away.

  “I feel like I know you so completely, Jake. You make so much sense. Your life makes so much sense. How do you do that? How do you make everything make sense?”

  “I don’t. And I’m not as perfect as you think.” He cups my face in his palms. “Truth is, Paige—you’re hol
ding Jackson up on a high pedestal right now because things are crappy back at home, but we’re not perfect. We make mistakes. We drink too much. Most of us are uneducated. There’s no one place that holds all the good things in life and another place that holds the bad stuff. We’re all human, and humans fuck up. I do. You did. Whatever you did at home, no matter how tragic or bad you think it was, I believe you, but you aren’t alone in this.” He smoothes the hair from my face, keeping my cheek cupped in one of his palms. “You aren’t alone now.”

  His last line is a whisper. It’s a promise. If I hold on to Jake, if he lets me, I might not crumble away all together. He looks me in the eyes and scoops me up. My arms are around his neck, and my face is buried in the soft sweetness of his neck. His kisses are snowflakes and I dissolve like the softest first breath of snow.

  I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m done talking. In fact, I can’t even form words anymore. His kisses are so soft and his skin wonderfully hot. As he carries me inside, I see a fireplace and bookshelves and a comfy looking couch. There’s a hallway, and then there’s a bed in the middle of the room. On it rests a worn patchwork quilt and a white pillow. A square window that looks out to so many stars.

  Jake’s face is swimming over mine. His eyes bright blue pools I want to jump up into. But the alcohol feels like it’s souring in my stomach, and I feel a little sick.

  I pray this cabin has a toilet.

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you going to sleep with me?”

  He cocks his head. “Do you want me to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” With typical Jake efficiency, he whips off his hat, pulls off his boots and my sandals, hops into the bed next to me, and tucks me under his strong arm.

  “Jake?” I mumble.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Stop thanking me.”

  I kiss his flannel-covered chest, and the last thing I remember is nestling my cheek against its comfort.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Then

  I woke up in my California bedroom with a chest full of dread.

  It wasn’t from a nightmare. I always remember those. As a little girl I often remembered my dreams in such vivid detail that my mom asked a professional about it. The doctor told Mom that the more creative a child is, the more of the dream she remembers. At the time, I remember her saying it was a good thing.

  Mom looked at me a little differently after that. She’d say things like, “Oh, Paige, head in the clouds, so creative!” She was always one to like an official, professional opinion on something to validate (or create) her own.

  I loved remembering acute sensory details like flying above the sea, stars above dreaming-me bursting through the darkness like my old Lite-Brite peg colors found only in a six-year-old’s imagination—mauves and lavenders and starburst orange.

  Downside? Recalling my nightmares just as acutely.

  Most often, they’d start with something real: a concrete memory of Dad holding a glass of “stinky drink” (what I called his hard alcohol), the ice cubes rattling as he yelled at Mom and she yelled back, exchanging ugly threats and cruel insults. In real life, I’d run down the hall and flop on my bed holding hands over ears until they quieted and moped in separate rooms. But in my nightmares, the yelling turned monstrous. Dad sprouted horns and grew hooves. Mom’s eyes projected unnatural, horror-movie eye colors, and, as they argued, the ranch house crumbled around us until all that was left were piles of dust and dry wall rot and me, curled up as small as I could get on the last thing standing in our house—my bedspread, stained with tears that pooled to a flood and carried me away from the yelling and the rubble on its black river, like in Alice In Wonderland.

  That night in California, I remembered nothing. So this sense of dread wasn’t from a nightmare, it was real. Aside from the dim red light shining from a chili pepper shaped nightlight, my room was dark. The house was quiet. Not even the hum of the dishwasher that Mom ritualistically turned on as she was heading to bed every night, so I knew it was late. A glance at my phone on the bedside table told me I was right. 2 a.m.. If everyone was sleeping, what could be wrong?

  Pushing aside the lump of dread squashing my insides, I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face, hoping to wash away the gnawing feeling, but it lingered like the stench of spoiled food.

  Just check his room, a voice inside me insisted.

  No.

  I didn’t want to.

  You have to.

  No.

  With shaky hands, I turned Ty’s doorknob and gently pushed the door open.

  His room was so dark, all I could make out was ruffled sheets and blankets and his scent. But it wasn’t the noxious smell that disquieted me—it was the dark. Since the suicides, he’d insisted on sleeping with his lights on. I paused in his doorway, my pulse pounding. What to do? After what happened between the two of us earlier, I didn’t want to move closer to his bed. At this point in our relationship, just a small gesture of touching his shoulder to see if he was okay could give him the wrong idea, and I knew what happened when Ty had the wrong idea.

  I shuddered, hugging my arms over my chest, instinctively covering up and protecting myself. Swallowing, I moved closer on tiptoe, my steps so light I almost glided across the wood floor like in those long-ago dreams when my toes skimmed across the starlit sea.

  Ty wasn’t in his bed.

  I ran back to my room, grabbed my cell phone out of my drawer, and flipped it on. The message I saw made my blood run cold.

  Missed call

  TY

  Chapter Sixty

  Now

  The smell of bacon frying normally fills me with joyful breakfast bliss. Not today. Not after that nightmare. I leap out of bed, flinging covers onto the ground, and yank open the first door. But instead of finding a toilet, I find a row of plaid shirts, blue jeans, and on the floor, four pairs of cowboy boots.

  A man’s closet.

  My eyes fly to the rumpled sheets and my mind whirls over last night’s events, how I ended up here. Which is…where, exactly?

  Then I remember.

  Jake’s bed. Jake’s cabin.

  “Jake?”

  Glancing down, I’m startled to discover I’m wearing a plaid button down flannel shirt that must be Jake’s. I must’ve puked on mine. I have a memory of puking.

  “Jake?”

  The tidy cabin is flooded with natural light. Framed photographs hang in rustic frames on the knotty pine walls. A wooden chair sits in the corner.

  “You finally up, lazy bones?”

  My heart and stomach compete for the biggest reaction to Jake’s playful voice.

  When I round the corner, I know I’m still passed out and dreaming because Jake’s standing in front of an antique cooking stove in an unbuttoned plaid shirt and jeans. His eyes linger on mine a second too long and grease leaps up from the pan, snapping his wrist. He flicks it off his skin and, with a spatula, flips the egg frying in another cast iron pan. “Over easy, if I remember correctly?”

  I nod. Blinking. I felt sick before, didn’t I? Now I was hungry. Starved, even. This whole scene left me wanting, wanting, wanting. I blink again, hardly able to trust my eyes. It’s too good to be—“Oh, God. Do Dad and Anna know I’m here?”

  “I’m sure they know I’m taking care of you. I couldn’t hear her on the phone last night, but I let her know I had you. Post-rodeo things tend to get a little wild.”

  Wild? I look down at my naked legs. How wild did things get with us? The last thing I remember was curling up on Jake’s arm, snuggling into his chest. I remember feeling his heartbeat pounding through his shirt. I remember starting to confess everything and then getting interrupted. Starting to tell him, and then him confessing to me. Everyone had dark secrets, even Jake. Maybe this would be okay after all, because what I’m looking at right now, how I felt like last night, were moments I never want to give up.

  “Goo
d to know there are post-rodeo expectations for drunken debauchery around these parts.”

  “Debauchery?” he asks with a sly grin, glancing back at me. “Don’t know if I’d go that far.”

  How far would you go? I glance back down at what I’m wearing. I tilt my knees in toward each other and gaze at my bare thighs. What happened between us last night?

  I remember kissing. I remember a whole lot of kissing.

  The way Jake’s looking at me tells me he remembers, too. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  I plop onto a chair and tuck my legs under the little wooden table.

  Sauntering over, he sets a mug in front of me and then, from a pot, pours the black liquid. “Careful, it’s hot,” he says. “And strong, just how you like it. Cream and sugar right here along with a couple ibuprofen.” His grin is devilish—if the devil was the most thoughtful and attractive cowboy on earth.

  “You’re a gem.”

  He narrows his eyes, his way of shoving off the compliment, but I can tell he’s pleased I think so.

  “A gem I couldn’t afford even if I won All Things Rodeo,” I add.

  “You did get third place. Maybe that’s me.”

  I grin, but it’s shaky. He’s worth more than any dollar amount, but my feelings for Jake, his feelings for me, aren’t going to save the ranch.

  “Speaking of rodeo. Where is my shirt from last night?”

  “Didn’t want you puking on it.”

  “So you…helped me out of it?” We exchange a look. “How very practical of you.”

  I catch the side of his smile as he turns back to his hot stove.

  I lock this moment away like it’s a photograph: me sitting in Jake’s kitchen watching him cook, the feel of my bare feet on his cool, chipped wood floor, wearing a shirt that smells like him.

  I scan the cabin, taking it all in. I’ve wanted to see the inside for so long, and now I’m here. How people keep their space, or what they choose to keep, tells their story: the knotty pine bookshelves look homemade—Did he build them himself? The spare kitchen where everything has a place, the thick red blanket folded neatly over the back of his worn, leather couch. “I like your place,” I say. It’s tidy and warm, like Jake himself.