by Ashley Love
“People will be saying that about me soon, you know.” I pout a little and her smile gives to a laugh.
“Well, it’s kinda hard to get married without a groom, don’t ya think? You’re only one half of that equation.”
I groan at her suggestion, my head tipping back with a frustrated sigh. “I just don’t even know how I can start to drag someone into this mess.”
She laughs at my exaggeration. “Well, I can’t exactly tell you how to do that. But I can tell you to stop worrying about it so damn much and just take care of you for a while.” She lifts an eyebrow at me and I give her a rueful smile. “Easier said than done, I know, but I think it’s the best option for the time being, yeah?”
I fucking hate when she’s right. Still to this day she’s goddamn right.
“No, I know. It’s just…it’s hard when everything changes at once. It’s like, where are my baby steps, you know?” I explain, waving my hands about. “It’s like I was thrust into sobriety and it’s like ‘here, here’s your life back, don’t fuck it up again!’” I push my hands out to her dramatically and she laughs.
“Well, too, it’s kinda like…this is where you have to sit back and say okay, there’s only so much you can do at once, you know? You gotta take the lead here for a while, until things start to fall back into place where you want them. You can still have all the things that you want, whatever they are now.”
I sigh mostly in relief and nod as she continues, resting my chin on my hands as I lean against the table.
“And you have time to figure that out, too. No one said you have to have all the answers tomorrow. Life’s cruel, but not that cruel.” She laughs. She’s so goddamn sensible and I envy her. I mean, when I was at the center things started making sense like this but all I really thought about the whole process was, okay, this is their job, to make sense out of my nonsense. But when I hear Sam say it, it’s like…dammit, why didn’t I think of that!?
“It’s just nice to talk to someone with some fucking sense in their head, you know?”
“And you can talk to me, I promise. I know we went through some shit or whatever, but it’s over.” She shrugs and it makes me smile, it makes me smile so hard it fucking hurts. I have my friend back. “Just don’t expect me to always say what you want to hear. I’m going to kick you in the ass sometimes if I know it’s what you need.”
“Fair,” I laugh. And it is, after all. There are many ass kickings over the years that I needed and never got. I figure I’ve got some coming to me somewhere.
8
Lex’s hands make quick work of his laundry, his fingers nimbly folding white t-shirts and boxers, stacking them in neat piles inside the plastic bin atop his bed. His workbook lays open on his nightstand, taunting him with the blank page, which is supposed to contain a journal entry before tomorrow afternoon’s group meeting. He looks at the clock. He still has an hour and a half before lights out at eleven.
“So how many kids you got?” he asks over his shoulder, pairing up two socks and turning them inside one another. Mike sits across the room on his bed, his bottom lip drawn between his teeth as he works diligently in one of his many brainteaser books. Lex never says much about it, but if Mike’s not playing cards he’s solving puzzles or number games in activity books and Lex isn’t sure if the guy is just that bored or if there’s something going on.
“Two. Twins, a boy and a girl.” He looks up for a moment. “You want kids?”
Lex laughs unamused. “Me? Ah, fuck no. I’d probably be the worst dad in the fucking world.”
“I dunno, man,” Mike says with a lilt of disbelief. “It’ll change most guys, you know, having a baby and shit.”
“Well…I don’t really wanna find out, you know what I mean?” Lex gives him a sly smile, expecting Mike to just chuckle and side with him. Boys will be boys.
So when he asks, “So you’re not that serious with her?” it kind of throws him.
“Huh?” He turns to face him.
“That girl…you don’t really wanna be with her, like some day down the road or something?”
Lex tightens his hands around the shirt he's holding, wringing them slightly, nervously. “Fuck, I dunno. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do tomorrow.”
“Yeah, but how long have y’all been together? You know, if you can see yourself with her or not.”
“I told you she’s not really my girlfriend.” He turns back to the bed. “We’re…shit’s just different with us.”
“You love her?”
“Huh?” He looks over his shoulder at him again.
“Do you love her?” he repeats, slower.
Lex waits a beat. “She loves me.”
Mike blinks dumbly at him, slightly taken by his response. “Well, that’s a bastard thing of you to say.”
“She told me she did,” Lex replies defensively.
“You ever think about loving her back?”
He sighs irritably. “Dude, you just asked me this shit the other day. I told you she’s not my girlfriend. It’s not like that.” He lays the last t-shirt in the box and snaps the lid on.
“Well, that doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with love, I can promise you that.” He studies Lex across the room for a moment, laying down his book and pen before continuing with a slightly accusing tone. “So, she’s not your girl, and you don’t love her, but you let her come visit? And bring you packages and presents and shit?” He shakes his head. “I dunno if I buy it, man. I don’t get it. I don’t get you.”
“You don’t have to fucking get it. I get it and she gets it and that’s what fucking matters.” Lex turns with the tub in his hand ready to slide it under the bed but Mike’s words make him stop.
“Does she get it?”
It’s silent in the room for a minute and Lex feels his temper rise with every accusation that Mike throws at him.
“She’s coming up here to be theree for you, man, and you’re sitting here trying to make less of the shit, like she doesn’t mean shit to you. If you’re using her, that’s fine, but quit lying to yourself about it.” He picks up his booklet and pen and begins furiously scribbling, obviously flustered, before muttering to himself lowly, “Maybe if you can’t even man the fuck up and let her be there for you, you need to let her go find someone who will.”
“Fuck you!” Lex throws the container down and the heavy plastic smacks against the linoleum. “You don’t fucking know me! Or her! Don’t sit here and tell me I don’t fucking care about her! Fuck you!” He points a trembling finger toward Mike’s face. “Fuck! You!”
And with that he tears around the edge of his bed, smacking his hip on the metal frame as a sign of his impatience to get out, to get the fuck out and away from everyone, the sound of the heavy wood of his door rapping in off the walls as it slams behind him. He breezes down the long narrow hall until he turns the corner and sees the glass double doors just ahead of him, and he breaks into a run toward them.
9
I’ll admit it, if there has ever been a time when I’ve stood next to my sister and totally felt like the ugly duckling, it’s today. And I’m not even pissed about it.
I was always “cuter,” always “thinner,” I had a boyfriend first, I had more “friends.” (Notice I used the quotes again.) She hated me. She told me to my face more than once, and even though I always told myself in my head that she was my sister and it was impossible and she didn’t mean it, sometimes I was scared she did.
But we were young, and she was painfully fucking insecure and dare I say jealous without sounding like a stupid bitch. Even though I don’t know why in the hell she would ever be jealous of me, besides all that stupid superficial shit, which I guess is important at thirteen. Truth is, even when we were younger, I was jealous of my sister more times than she would ever know, or even believe if I told her to her face. Because if she had to live in my head for even half a day, she wouldn’t want my life, then or now.
But today she looks stunning, and she deserves it. All along she’s felt like the lesser of the two of us, and she’s finally come into her own. She deserves everything she has because not a single damn thing was ever given to her because she was sweet or charming—or, for lack of a better term I’ll use that dreaded word, cute, again—and only now that we’re older am I mature enough to realize this, of course. She has a job, she’s in love, she’s getting married, she’s happy. Damn her. It makes me laugh when I think about it.
Oh how things have changed.
Her dress is ivory and beaded and just fucking gorgeous and would never look as good on me as it does on her, and I’m glad. I’m in my little puny bridesmaids dress which I have now not-so lovingly named peach disaster after my mother made the executive decision to have it sashed around the middle and tied in the back because it still didn’t fit me right in the waist. So now everyone has a bow on their ass, thanks to me. Sorry, girls.
We’re lined up at the altar, me and the other two bridesmaids and the maid of honor. Yeah, yeah, I’m not the maid of honor, boo-hoo for me. Not that I could’ve exactly filled the roll anyway, but it still stings if I think about it in the right way.
Anyhow, I’m first in line behind her and still got to hold the bouquet, a small victory, and this ballroom is just gorgeous. Again everything is just ridiculously gorgeous. It almost makes me sick. Is this really what I used to dream about? I guess things really do change. I mean, I’m happy for her, but at this point in my life if I were standing up there in her place, in this room with silk panels draped across the ceiling and tents waiting outside with twinkle lights and smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres…well, clearly I would be standing in someone else’s dream. But this is her day, and it’s just right.
Normally country clubs like to set up these ceremonies outside, but because of this weird ass cold and long winter we’re having, even now in early February we still couldn’t do this whole vows thing outdoors without everyone freezing to death. So instead there are tents out on the lawn with paper lanters and decorative standing heaters ready to be filled for the reception later.
Okay, so it’s not my ideal wedding, but it still might be making me a little jealous, dammit. Little ol me, with no intention of settling down until God knows when, is standing here thinking about love and marriage and while my mind tries and tries its damnedest to keep Lex’s face from popping up, as I listen to the reading of Corinthians about how love is patient and kind and not rude or self-seeking and all that…they might as well say love is everything that Lex isn’t. And I would be a liar if I said that didn’t scare me slightly. Not that I’m standing here thinking about marrying him. Crap.
* * *
His big hazel eyes are staring at me knowingly from their oversized sockets.
“I mean, sometimes you just know, you know? It’s like…like I can’t even sleep without him there…” I hear my cousin, Jessie, say somewhere in the back of my mind, but I can’t turn my attention away from the toddler in her arms. She sways lightly and his large tweety bird head bobbles, eyes wide and rarely blinking, focused on me intently, mesmerized.
At twenty-one, Jessie’s had two kids by two different guys—the newest of those two boys, Brent, is on her hip—and she’s in love again. Of course she was elated to come to Aimee’s wedding and exchange love stories, which has been taking place for the last ten minutes as I stand by awkwardly, being sized up by her nine-month-old. Chocolate-tinted drool drips from his tongue as it reaches to touch his chin.
“I mean, six months with the right person can feel like a lifetime, right? It just feels like forever. Like, I know everything about him.”
Brent's wet lips purse in a silent “oh” and Jessie shifts him on her hip. His teethless gums bump together.
“So what about you, Leala? I guess this means you’re next, huh?” I feel her elbow against my side and when I look at her she’s smiling at me, amused.
“Huh?” I’m sort of dazed. “No…no, I mean I’m not in a rush.” I laugh nervously. “I just have a lot going on. I wanna finish school…I just need to think about me for a while. And lately I just feel like, I dunno, I need to get myself together before I try and find somebody…who’s also together, you know?”
It sounds perfectly logical coming from my mouth, and as I carry on telling lie after lie about finding someone who’s right for me, I wonder if she knows, if she knows everything about what happened and is being polite and not asking.
I stammer on through dating advice regurgitated from afternoon talk shows to sound like something I made up all on my own, my gaze flicking nervously to Brent whose head is still bobbling heavily like he might spit up, my hands waving about gesturing casually to really drive my points home. Does everyone here know? No one has dared to say a word.
“…so I figure it will happen when it’s supposed to.” I shrug, opening my mouth to laugh casually and something closes around my hand. Brent’s five sticky, chubby digits wrap around my middle and first finger and it paralyzes me and no one notices. No one is saying anything about it. No one says anything.
I can’t breathe. His slimy little hand pulls mine in an effort to shake it and he coughs out a single indistinguishable syllable and then another, vowel sounds that drown out other conversations and I feel lightheaded from lack of oxygen.
“Sounds like you’re next anyway, Jess,” Aimee laughs, deflecting the attention. Jessie goes back to gushing about her man, and Brent lets go of my finger, pulling the fake rose from his jacket lapel and he watches it flutter to the ground and I exhale.
I duck away quietly, weaving in and out of the fluttering open drapes of the tents and nothing is stable enough, sturdy enough to hide me and keep me safe. My feet slowly carry me back to the clubhouse and I pull the heavy wooden door, relieved to find it unlocked. A few men in khaki janitor’s suits give me curious looks but proceed in undraping the silk panels along the aisles of seats, eventually forgetting I'm there.
I press my back to the wall, my heart pounding, and my stomach knots painfully, so much so that I press my hands there, curling into myself, nausea waving over me tauntingly. I worry if I’ll always be like this, if it will ever go away: when Aimee has kids, when Sam has kids. Will I ever get over this?
My thoughts go to Lex immediately. I think of all the mistakes we made, all the people we hurt, all the time we spent hurting ourselves. Fuck him. Fuck him for not being clean or just being fucking normal and just…for not being here. I want him here. I want him to be someone I could bring here and who would look good in a suit but keep complaining and cutely tugging at the collar of his shirt, and someone to make fun of Jessie with me, and the odds of her ever actually finding someone, to agree with me that she’s too young. I want him to be someone I can joke about weddings and marriage with, both of us trying to convince each other what a complete waste of time it is, but knowing somehow in silence that it’s in the cards for us too, that it’s not just an option but a possibility. Not just a maybe, but a probably someday.
Fuck him. Fuck him for taking that away from me, from us, for making everything the way that it is now.
It’s all his fault.
My insides turn again and my fingers curl against the fabric of my dress, pressing deeper toward the pain.
This is all his fault.
10
“For the last time, I told you, I was just going to smoke.”
Alan looks up from the report sitting in front of him, across the desk at Lex, and something in his face tells Lex that he knows better.
What Lex doesn’t know is that Alan Eisty used to be just like him, which is how he ended up working here in the first place, and which is also how he can see through every inch of Lex's bullshit. His face doesn’t tell him that, unless he’s looking very closely. The scars at the corner of his mouth and through his eyebrow don’t resemble Lex’s just by coincidence, and neither do the faded remnants of the tattoos that once decorated the backs of his han
ds. He has plenty more hidden beneath the sleeves of his dress shirt which he has yet to have removed, along with many legacies he will never live down, and many people he had to leave behind for good. There are many things that Lex doesn’t know about him.
“Sprinting toward the back doors…to go smoke?” Alan asks in disbelief after eyeing the report again.
“Jesus, everyone and their goddamn technicalities,” Lex mutters, eyeing the report menacingly as he slumps lower in his chair before looking up at Alan again. He rubs his wrists, which feel bruised to the bone from the previous night’s events which followed him being spotted making a getaway, as was reported. “I just needed to clear my head, alright?”
It was Alan who’d said he’d handle things, who’d given him another chance. “Mike says you’ve been quiet. Too quiet.”
“Well, Mike’s a little snitch. I wouldn’t take him too seriously. The guys crazy…a crazy motherfucker, always doing puzzles and flipping cards and shit. He’s got a few screws loose.”
“He’s been through a lot.”
Lex scoffs, disgusted. “Everyone here’s been through a lot. What makes him so goddamn special? What makes him think he knows shit? Like he’s got all the answers…” he trails, more to himself than to Alan, and folds his hands across his stomach, shrinking back into himself somewhat defeated.
Alan reads it all over his face. “Did he say something to you?”
“What? No.” Lex laughs, unamused, but looks at the floor as he feels Alan’s gaze become more imploring. “He fucking didn’t!” he finally snaps, and Alan raises his hands in defense, the knowing look falling from his face momentarily.
“Alright.” Alan sits back leisurely and crosses one leg over the other, propping his ankle on the opposite leg and pulling his file onto his knee, scribbling as he replies, “They’re suggesting supervision, it would just be for a few days—”