by Ashley Love
“Yeah,” I nod and it’s awkward for a moment. Well, it’s been awkward the whole time but the subject of Lex seems to make everyone so goddamn tense. Plus, she just referenced her fiancé and compared her long relationship with my relationship with Lex and well, that’s just…weird.
“So…everything’s alright with you?”
It’s amazing how we’re adults and we still can’t manage to just say what we want to say.
“Yeah.” I wonder if I should elaborate, tell her that he’s doing better, or that I assume that he is. I hope he is. “Yeah, we’re just…yeah.” I can’t bring myself to do it.
She changes the subject at the first chance she gets. “You look good. You really do.” She looks me over and smiles, a genuine smile, and I almost forget for a moment how comparatively she can say anything about my appearance at all, and then I remember that day.
I was headed back with Lex from Jason Laurence’s house, a guy he used to run product to out on the coast, a guy with a lot of money. We were five months into the dealer lifestyle and Lex was just starting to highroll, though you couldn’t tell it by looking at us, other than the fact that his Escalade truck was brand-fucking-new. Both of us looked like the burnouts that we were. It was spring break and we’d stopped to fill up at a station in Malibu. The freeways were packed with traffic and he didn’t want to risk going empty before we got back to “our” side of town. Lifestyles of the rich and famous still made him nervous, and what made him more nervous than that were the cops in that part of town.
“Fill me up. I’m gonna grab some shit from inside,” he said before sliding out of the driver’s seat and pushing the door closed.
I rolled my eyes and climbed out, putting the nozzle in the tank and squeezing the handle, leaning against the side of the truck. I watched as cars, trucks, vans full of college kids pulled in and sped out, surf boards strapped to the tops of their vehicles, university stickers shining bright on the back windows. The click of the gas handle snapped me out of my daze and I pulled back on it, placing it on the pump and closing the tank.
“Guess who I just fucking saw inside.”
I hadn’t even noticed Lex walking back toward me, and before he could even tell me I saw her over his shoulder walking out of the store.
“Is that Sam?” I asked him and he turned to look over his own shoulder at her. She glanced at us briefly and looked away again. “Sam!” I called out to her, stepping around Lex and the front of the truck. She turned her head again and looked at me and I started to wave but she didn’t stop walking and I looked at Lex, confused. “I should go talk to her.”
“She doesn’t wanna fucking talk, Leala. Look at her.”
I watched her walk to the pump furthest from where we stood, in her college t-shirt and rhinestoned sandals, the ties of her bathing suit hanging out the neck of her shirt and below the hem. She didn’t even come over to talk. She was different now. She was someone else.
“I should go talk to her,” I said again, and felt his arm slip around my waist before I could take another step, holding me back against him, holding me back from her.
“Leala, stop,” he said against my ear, and it hurt. It hurt to watch her walk away. She gave me one more look before opening her car door and just as soon as I had seen her she sped away.
I looked at Lex, really looked at him in his basketball shorts that hung past his knees and his white undershirt, the neck stretched and worn, the hem fraying at the bottom. I stood there beside him in his wifebeater and a pair of shorts that hadn’t fit me in two years without a belt cinching them up. I’d made my choice. I wasn’t like Sam anymore.
She had the life that I wanted, and she still has it now, standing in front of me.
“You look good,” she says it again and I want to cry.
“Thanks.” I smile at her weakly, taking her all in. Her peacoat cinched around her waist and her tailored jeans; it fits her. The engagement ring, it fits her. I want it all. I want to feel normal.
I want us to be best friends again and go for coffee midweek to catch up and maybe have Sunday brunches and discuss wedding plans and talk about our careers and be grownups but still feel twelve years old when we’re together, still giggle the way we used to when we were still dreamers waiting to see how our lives would unfold. I, however, never dreamed this up. But here we are.
We make more small talk and she finally says she has to run, that she left Michael to browse a few stores down and she couldn’t begin to guess where he’d wandered to. She wants to go to him, she cares about him, he cares about her. She looks down at her watch when she says it and the light glints off of the delicate silver and it catches my eye. She has places to go, things to do, schedules. I look at my own watch briefly, a fleeting moment to pretend that I am just as busy, but then I tug my sleeve back down to hide it. I wonder if she feels normal. I wonder if I’ll ever feel that way.
I tell her it was great to see her, and she says the same. I want to hug her but I know it would feel awkward, so she just gives me a polite smile. Just as she starts to turn she looks at me again and says that we should get together again, to catch up. I agree wholeheartedly and smile the first real smile that I’ve managed to muster up in what seems like years. We exchange numbers and part of me wonders if we’ll really catch up or if she’s just being polite; if she’s moved on with her life or if she is really that same Sam; if we will ever giggle again like twelve-year-olds.
She turns to walk away and when I realize we’re going the same direction, I turn quickly because saying a goodbye and then walking in the same direction totally defeats the purpose. I take the long way around to the door leading to the parking lot, and when I open it the sun is bright enough to blind me. It’s like coming out of hibernation and seeing spring for the first time, and in a lot of ways it’s very fitting, but I push aside all of my analytical bullshit for the moment. There’s plenty of time for that on the drive home. I just enjoy the sunshine and fresh air, warming me even with the cold wind blowing around me.
I imagine Sam and Michael carrying on through their afternoon together, and I wonder if they’re one of those couples who have fallen into a routine of sorts, something familiar, something comfortable, and somehow my mind can’t help but wander to Lex. It’s been eight days since he went into detox and I miss him. I miss him a lot. I wonder if he feels alone, if he is in a new place with new people who are all normal and he wants to feel that way…to just be normal. I wonder if we’ll ever have that together, if we’ll ever be able to put all of this behind us and just feel the way that everyone else feels. I wonder if no matter how much I want it for us, if it’s even possible. Because the truth is we both have to want it enough to fight for it, and then still fight like hell just to make it happen.
Wanting it is only half the battle.
4
“I…26…B…44…N…7…B…21...”
“C’mon,” Lex grumbles, tapping his heel anxiously against the floor.
“O…16…I…32…”
Saturday afternoons at East Del Mar Recovery usually consist of lunch and then a few blocked hours of group activities, and today’s group activity is…bingo. Lex is less than thrilled considering it’s his first Saturday here. He was released from detox just three days ago and is already bored out of his mind, looking at his card that only needs one more number for a diagonal win. Problem is he’s waited at least twenty minutes for that number.
“G 6, you dirty cunt,” he mutters under his breath. John sniggers next to him.
John James is one of Lex’s four suitemates, his room connecting just through the shared bathroom. Lex had sort of felt like an idiot when he shook his hand for the first time and asked, “John James what?” and he’d replied, “Just John James.” For the most part he strikes Lex as a nice guy, but a little strange with his long black hair braided half way down his back and his little round glasses. He’s not particularly short or tall, about 5’8, and he wears the same bla
ck Converse sneakers everyday. They look like he’s worn them for years.
“N…10…I…2…”
“C’mon, G 6…”
“G…5”
His face falls. “Shit.”
“G…7”
His head shoots up in disbelief. “What the fuck?”
“N…18”
“BINGO!” Someone shouts across the room.
“Goddammit!” He bangs his fist on the table, making his markers jump off his card. People at the winners table clap and cheer.
“Lex…” a warning voice comes from down the row of chairs. Alan, his assigned one-on-one counselor, gives him a look from the head of his table.
“I just needed one stupid number!” He stands abruptly, the back of his knees hitting his chair and sending it sliding backward across the floor.
“If you get up, you better just walk out of here,” Alan demands. After a few short days he’s already familiar with Lex’s temper, and he knows it’s better to have him turn his attention elsewhere for the time being than to cause a scene for nothing.
“Fine. Fuck this game!” He tosses the rest of his markers onto the table and Alan shakes his head as they scatter and Lex makes his way toward the narrow hall leading away from the activity lounge, toward his room.
* * *
“Do you think it needs another pin in the back? I mean, just taken in a little?”
“Do we have time to do one more alteration before the wedding?”
Aimee and my mother look at each other with worried glances, my mother pinching the fabric at the waist of my peach-colored bridesmaid’s dress, pulling at least an inch between her fingers, letting it go and smoothing her hand over the sateen, noting how it gapes and wrinkles slightly from the excess.
Today was yet another afternoon of wedding chaos hosted by my mother, who had been dragging Aimee and I along since early this morning. Well, not dragging Aimee so much because it was her wedding after all, but dragging would definitely be a word to describe my level of willingness to cooperate.
The dress shop had been the last stop of the afternoon, to pick up Aimee’s dress after her final fitting. A week from now she would be walking down the aisle in it, and I could feel her excitement as she’d reached under the bag to run her hand over the fabric. My mother started to make a scene, urging her to try it on, but Aimee insisted it was bad luck and she would not so much as take it out of the bag before the day of the wedding. They’d gone back and forth and only when Aimee was almost in tears had my mother backed off with profuse apologies. She’s a lot like Lex in that way.
“I think it’s pushing it. Unless you’re going to lose five more pounds before next weekend I say leave it.”
The woman working the fitting room seems to be the only one who is calm here, besides me who would rather be anywhere else than standing on the dressing pedestal with four angled mirrors around me as my mother and sister poke and prod. Aimee had taken the opportunity while we were already at the shop to have me try on my dress one more time, just to make sure of the fit, since I’d only had one alteration to the other bridesmaids’ two.
“Well, it couldn’t take long to do one small tuck. It just looks so much nicer.” She pinches the fabric in the back and watches it form-fit around my waist in the mirror
“Mom…” Aimee sighs.
“Fine, fine, we’ll leave it.” She throws her hands up. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and as I step off the stand she grabs me by the elbow, lowering her voice. “Leala, are you eating right? You can’t drop another dress size before the wedding. I thought you weren’t supposed to be dropping weight at all anymo—”
“I’m just stressed, Mom. It’ll be fine,” I cut her off and she eyes me hard. She opens her mouth but a phone ringing cuts her off. I recognize it as mine, thank fuck. Aimee looks at me from where she’s sitting along the wall, our purses tucked under the chairs. “Will you hand me that?”
She rummages in my purse and my mother helps me unzip the dress. I catch my phone when Aimee tosses it and open it just before it stops ringing.
“Hello?” I start back toward the dressing room where my clothes are, drawing the curtain closed once I’m inside.
“Hey.”
It’s Lex. My back straightens slightly when I hear his voice, a little surprised and still not used to the sound of it. He’d called three days prior, his first day out of detox, to tell me he’d moved to a room and that visitation was on Sundays and that I could come whenever I was ready. He’d sounded like he was on his death bed. Today he sounds better. But despite everything, I think this is probably the most he’s called me in a week in the five years I’ve known him.
I shift the phone between my ear and shoulder as I shimmy out of the dress, wiggling it over my hips. “Hey…what are, ugh…what are you doing?”
“You okay?”
I breathe a sigh of relief once I get it off. “Yeah, just…just doing stuff for the wedding; trying on this dress…again.” I roll my eyes as I situate it on the hanger before sitting down on the little padded stool in the corner in just my underwear.
“A dress?” He sounds amused. I think about him smiling and I smile a little.
“Yes, don’t be cute. What’s up?”
“Nothing. Sitting here.” He sighs dejectedly and my brow furrows.
“You okay? You sound upset.”
“This just…this place is so fucking gay,” he whines and I roll my eyes. He’s like a five year old, I swear to God. I knew he would do this. I can already tell he’s going to do nothing but complain about that place.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” he concedes after waiting a moment. I sigh, becoming impatient with him. He’ll talk me in circles forever as long as he keeps me interested.
“Don’t do this. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
“I got kicked out of bingo,” he grumbles.
I try and choke down my laugh as I ask, “Bingo?”
“Yes, fucking bingo, don’t mock me,” he snaps and I press my lips together to keep from laughing more. Something about the thought of him playing fucking bingo…it’s priceless. “Anyway I’m just checking in about tomorrow.”
I’d told him I would come visit the last time we talked. I know how important those first few visitations are; how lonely it can feel to have no one there.
“You think my memory is that bad?” I tease him.
“Well fuck, I dunno. I know there’s a lot going on,” he stammers, as if he’s now embarrassed. “I just don’t wanna be sitting here waitingon you if you’re not coming…wasting my day. I can do other shit, you know.”
I roll my eyes. “Would you calm the f—” I stop myself, knowing my mother is probably right outside the goddamn room and the curtain isn’t exactly soundproof. I sigh, lowering my voice. “Give me a break, okay? I’ll be there.”
“Fine,” he sighs. I get up and start putting on my jeans. “So you’re getting along now…like, with your sister and mom and shit?” His voice tells me he isn’t really thrilled about the prospect of this. My hands stop at the button and I think about a way to explain exactly how it’s been having them around again.
“It’s been…weird.” I know it hasn’t been wine and roses but I don’t want to lie just to make him feel better. “We’re getting there.”
“I’m sure they’re thrilled you’re still talking to me.”
This is his brilliant way of asking me if I’ve told them.
“They don’t know.”
“Shocking.” He’s sarcastic but he sounds a little hurt and it throws me.
“Well, what do you expect? You act like you don’t want them to know and when I tell you they don’t you get all upset. Do you care or not?” My voice raises and I see Aimee’s feet appear underneath the curtain. I turn toward the corner so my voice carries less.
“You need to chill the fuck out. I didn’t even say anything.”
I sigh
, letting my forehead thump against the soft padding of the wall. Why in the fuck the walls of the dressing room are padded is beyond me, but it saves me from more of a headache than the one Lex gives me. “Whatever.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he mocks me. “Shit, I gotta go—okay, I’m getting off. Yes, I hear you—Leala, I gotta go.”
“Wait, what’s—”
“I have to get off the phone—yes, I’m hanging up, right now—seriously I have to go, bye.”
I open my mouth again but his voice is gone.
“You’re seeing him again, aren’t you?” It’s Aimee’s voice that now makes me turn around.
“Aimee—”
She cuts me off before I even get started. “Just tell me the truth. Please. Please, just…stop lying to me.” It hurts when she says it. It hurts to think that I’m now a liar to my own sister. That’s what she sees when she looks at me.
“I was never not seeing him,” I answer quietly, reaching for my shirt.
“Jesus, Leala…” She sighs exhaustedly, shaking her head, looking away as I put my shirt on, not because of modesty but because she can’t even bear to look at me. “I mean, what’s it going to take?” She shrugs, and I wish she was still not looking at me because the disappointment in her eyes when she turns to me makes me want to look away.
“It’s different—” I plead.
“It’s never different. It’s you, and it’s him, and it’s just…what it is,” she insists, her hands falling to her sides. “And it’s always going to be what it is, and that’s never going to be enough.”
“Aimee…”
“What?” she snaps, making an effort to keep her voice down because I’m sure she’s as well aware as I am of the likelihood of our mother standing outside listening to all of this. “What could you possibly say that’s going to make it different? Go ahead, try me, please.” She takes her stance obstinately, crossing her arms over her chest.
“He’s in rehab,” I answer, waiting for some sort of recognition in her eyes, some change of heart, but her face doesn’t change. She shifts her hands to her hips and waits for me to continue. “I just wanna be there for him.” I look at her pleadingly, and there’s no way in hell she could love someone as much as she loves Kevin and not understand that. She’s just choosing not to.