by Tracey Ward
“It’s not sad, dumbass, it’s brilliant. Think of all the drunk, excited ass to grab.”
“One man’s brilliant is another man’s pathetic.”
“Are you calling me pathetic?”
“Are you going to that party?”
He paused and I worried for one microsecond that I’d hurt his feelings. I didn’t have a lot of friends, I never had, and I should have been more careful with the ones that were still with me. It wasn’t until Laney and I broke up this time around that I realized that all of ‘our’ friends were really ‘her’ friends. I hadn’t bothered making many of my own up here at Cal and with Callum down at USC and Jenna still going to school in Orange County, I was pretty isolated.
“Is this about me being an idiot,” Callum asked seriously, “or about Laney being at the party with some other guy?”
I laughed. “It’s not about Laney, I promise. She can date whoever she wants. We’re on a break.”
“Broken up or on a break?”
“I don’t think I know the difference,” I admitted grudgingly.
“You’ll be back together next month when she turns eighteen.”
“I wouldn’t bet against you.”
“Do you want her back?”
“Not right now.”
“Wow,” he deadpanned. “That’s a touching response. Very moving.”
I laughed, unzipping my bag and smiling down at my gear. “Go talk to Zack Effron if you want emotional. I’m not that guy.”
“No, you’re the guy who dates a girl for years because the sex is good.”
“No. I stick around because the sex is great,” I joked.
Truth was, that wasn’t all that kept me coming back to Laney. The real reason was that she was solid. I knew what I was going to get with her, even if what I got pissed me off most of the time. And, yeah, if I really dug deep – something I rarely ever did – I could admit that part of me tried to make it work because she was Dan’s daughter and I thought I owed it to him to try as hard as I could for her, even if I knew it was useless.
“Are you sure the sex is great?” Callum challenged. “Can you even remember?”
“There are days where I wonder, yeah. It’s been years. I might have glorified it in my mind.”
“I’m gonna be honest, bro, even a glorified version doesn’t seem worth it to me to put up with everything that girl puts you through.”
“She’s not that bad. It’s a lot of drama. Eventually you go numb to it and it’s pretty tolerable.”
“Oh God,” he said, disgusted.
“What?”
“Stay up at Cal. Don’t come down to hang out. I’d rather listen to my parents scream and yell at each other than hear any more of this.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not,” he replied seriously. “You’re bummin’ me out, you damn cyborg.”
“Stop.”
“Find a girl who you actually like!”
“I like Laney,” I said, not even sounding convincing to my own ears.
“No, you don’t. You said you tolerate her. And you tolerate her for sex. What happens when that’s over? You just sit around and stare at each other, basking in the glow of how good looking you both are? That’s depressing as shit! And I’ll tell you what else – she doesn’t like you either. No girl that gives a rat’s ass about you would be sleeping through the senior class whenever she got the chance, then bragging to all the girls that she was dating you again the next week.”
“Where is this coming from?” I demanded. “Since when do you have so many opinions on my love life?”
“Ever since it started bringing me down to talk to you. And it’s not a love life. It’s a damn catastrophe.”
“Ouch.”
“Think about it. All I ever hear from you is that you’re pushing yourself too hard at school, you and Laney are fighting, or you’re at the gym. You ever go see the doctor about the stomach shit you had going on?”
I sighed heavily. “No.”
“It still happening?”
I didn’t answer him, though my stomach twisted and knotted in silent response.
“Yeah. See?” he asked irritably. “I’m worried about you, bro.”
“Yeah,” I answered quietly.
“I don’t know if it’s Laney or school, but whatever it is that’s doing this to you, you need to fix it. I got enough to worry about. Sort it out.”
“Okay,” I agreed seriously. “I will.”
***
One month later, Laney showed up at my apartment. I let her in to talk. She knelt between my legs and gave me head that made my toes go numb.
Just like that, we were back together and neither of us had said a word.
She turned eighteen three days later.
On a side note, I was convinced suits were manufactured in Hell on the east side of the Devil’s asshole. I hated them that much.
I didn’t know exactly how those two things were related, but in my mind they were.
I had only been forced to wear suits to dances and the occasional fancy dinner party with the Monroes on nights like tonight, so maybe that was it. No matter the reason, every single time I stepped into a suit, I hated it and part of me blamed Laney. They were too confining. I was an athlete who liked his range of motion and a fitted suit jacket destroyed that. It held me, pinched me, and made me feel like I was suffocating.
That didn’t bode well for me and my future as an attorney.
I still hadn’t told anyone in the family but Laney that I was applying to law school. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but every time I came close to telling Dan or Jenna about it, my stomach flipped violently and I felt sick. The words never made it out of my mouth.
“You clean up nice,” Jenna told me as I tugged on my suit sleeves for the fiftieth time.
We were waiting in the driveway for the rest of the family to come out so we could head to dinner for Laney’s birthday. Jenna and I were always ready first. We were always waiting.
I smiled at her, trying not to stare. “So do you. Did you get to pick the dress?”
She looked down at the red knee-length dress with a whole lot of black lace or netting underneath it, making it flare out dramatically from her lean frame. Everything about her screamed classic. Old school. From her hair set in waves to the shiny black stilettos that I was pretty sure made her taller than I was, she was a vintage movie star made real. Her dark, smoky eye shadow and the shock of red lipstick on her face drove it home for me in painful Technicolor clarity that Jenna was a full grown woman.
And she was fucking gorgeous.
“Yeah, I did,” she answered, swishing the skirt back and forth lightly. “Do you like it?”
“You look beautiful. It’s very you.”
“How is it me?” she chuckled. “Because it’s out of style?”
“No, because it’s unique. Laney couldn’t pull this off. She’s too vanilla. You’re darker. Edgier.” I grinned. “More noir.”
“And thanks to you, I know what that word means.”
“How are you doing in school?”
Her face immediately fell. She looked away, groaning. “You had to bring that up.”
“That good, huh?”
“It’s fine. My new tutor is a douche but it’s fine.”
“How is he a douche?” I laughed.
“He’s in the same program you were in at Weston.”
“Higher Focus?”
“Yeah, so he’s super smart and that’s great but he’s also this car obsessed, street racing tool bag. It’s all he talks about. He has these tribal tattoos and he thinks it makes him bad but he’s not. He’s all talk,” she said disdainfully.
“Has he asked you out?”
She didn’t answer me, which was a yes.
It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. It annoyed me the way Devon did.
“Oh!” she cried out of nowhere, her face lighting up. “I have a present for you. Wait right here.”
As she ran into the house, her heels clicking hard and fast on the pavement, I felt my heart sink. I wasn’t good at accepting presents. She’d never given me one before because I thought she knew that.
When she came walking back out with a canvas pressed to her chest, I couldn’t clear the scowl on my face. “Jenna, you know I don’t do well with gifts.”
“But I didn’t buy it,” she clarified, nailing my biggest insecurity about accepting anything from her family. “I made it. I painted it for you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Here.” She turned the canvas for me to see.
The instant I saw it, I was floored.
It was me in the ring. Me and the animal. It was us and the lights and the gloves and the bell. It was the smell of the gym and the feel of the air, humid and thick with sweat and resolve. It was pure motion. She’d captured my body in a blur of movement that made little sense but still had so much purpose. So much drive and power. It was me when I let the animal have its day. It was me on autopilot when I wasn’t worried about anything. When my walls came down and I wasn’t expected to be anything on this earth other than me.
She’d seen it. She’d seen us both and she’d painted us together; the animal and I.
And we weren’t half as ugly as I thought we would be.
In her eyes, we were beautiful.
“You don’t like it,” she said quietly, sounding sad.
I shook my head, but I couldn’t look away from the painting. “No, Jenna,” I answered roughly, “I do. I love it. It’s… it’s incredible.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her smile proudly. “Really?”
“Yeah, really. You are so talented it’s ridiculous. And this… this is me? This is how you see me?”
“Yeah,” she replied, as though it were obvious. As though everyone, including me, must see me that way. “When you’re fighting, Kellen, it’s so… I don’t know. Powerful. It’s like me in this dress, I guess. It’s so you.”
“Wow,” I muttered inadequately. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied happily.
Jenna wound up mailing it to me since I’d come into town on my bike. I didn’t trust myself to get it home safely and completely undamaged on the motorcycle, but once it arrived, I hung it on the wall in my bedroom so that every morning I would wake up and see it.
It was a reminder of who I was. Of who I could be. It gave me a strange confidence and strength to replenish something I hadn’t known I’d lost.
That night Laney and I had sex for the first time in two years. I barely remembered what it had been like before, but when it happened now it reminded me of something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what, but the sense of déjà vu was overwhelming. The rhythm of her body against mine, the sound of her breathing in my ear, her voice saying over and over how much she’d missed this, missed me, loved me, wanted only me. She asked me if I missed it, if I missed her, if I wanted only her.
She never asked if I loved her. She knew better.
It all felt and sounded so rehearsed, like she’d been thinking of that moment, imaging what it would be like, and now that it was here she was saying her lines. Playing her part.
When it was over, she rolled off of me and immediately fell asleep. I stared at her face in the moonlight, cut in half by white light and black shadow, and she looked like a stranger. This girl I’d explored every inch of for the last two years was an unknown and when I reached out to thread my fingers through her blond hair, another image of blond strands wrapped around my hand slammed into me. I realized what having sex with her reminded me of.
Chelsea.
Chapter Fourteen
Five Months Later
“You don’t have ulcers.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
Dr. Pratt stared at me blankly. “Yes.”
My mouth pulled down at the corners but I kept my opinions on his bedside manner to myself. He was only a year or two older than me at most. Maybe tact was a skill that came with time. “The symptoms fit.”
“Yes, but they also fit other things as well. One of them being a very mild case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.” He lifted his pen and loudly clicked it open. “Nausea?”
“Yes.”
“Headaches?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“Muscle tension?”
“Yes.”
“Trembling in the hands?”
My palms itched irritably. “Yes,” I admitted.
“Trouble sleeping?”
“No,” I lied, not liking how closely this was matching up.
“Well,” he said decidedly, dropping the page. “You meet enough of the criteria to consider it a very real possibility that GAD is what you’re suffering from. Not ulcers.”
“What causes it?”
“Life,” he answered simply. “A lot of people develop it simply because life is stressful and they compound their problems until it all becomes too overwhelming to handle.”
“That’s not me.”
“Alright,” he sighed, “other causes can be traumatic triggers such as abuse, neglect, chaotic environments, the death of a loved one, divorce, changing of jobs or schools. How about now? Is any of that you?”
I stared at him calmly but inside I was raging from his attitude, also from how close he was hitting to home on so many of those triggers. My blood was on overdrive through my veins and I wanted to take his clipboard and toss it through the window out into the parking lot. Then I wanted to piss in his potted plant and leave that office forever.
Instead, I took two deep breaths.
“One or two of those are accurate, yes,” I told him coldly.
He scooted back on his little rolly stool in response to my tone. He had good instincts, I’d give him that. Judging by his fresh-from-med-school-I-know-everything attitude, I knew I wasn’t the first patient who thought about throttling him with his salmon pink tie.
“What do I do about it?” I asked.
He cleared his throat, taking me in from across the room. He was half my size and he seemed suddenly very aware of it. I watched him impassively as he stood to look down at me where I sat in a hard orange chair. “Find coping mechanisms,” he suggested. “You can seek therapy, which is what a lot of people do. A therapist can help you come up with ways to manage the anxiety. Getting to the root of it may help. Talking about it and getting it out in the open.”
I was on my feet before I realized what I was doing. My coat was clenched tightly in my right hand as I looked him square in the eye. “What else?”
“What else what?” he asked irritably, holding his ground.
“What are my other options?”
“Drugs.”
“Anti-depressants?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Stress management techniques then. Breathing exercises. Take up yoga. Start mediating. Burn incense. Find ways to detox and expel those feelings.”
“Got it,” I said, my words clipped and hard. I headed for the door. “Thanks for your time.”
“What are you going to do?” he called after me. “What should I write in your file as your preferred treatment?”
I threw the door open and burst into the hallway.
“Self-medication!” I called back to him.
I left his office and drove straight to the gym where I worked the bag so hard and so long my limbs didn’t have the strength to tremble. I was too tired to think, to feel, to worry.
I was empty.
I was cured.
Chapter Fifteen
Seven Months Later
“I miss your cooking, Karen,” I moaned, taking another bite of lasagna and stifling a groan of satisfaction as the warm gooey cheese coated my mouth, followed by the tender, sauce coated noodles. It was pure heaven.
She smiled with satisfaction. “I’ll send you home with leftovers.”
“They’ll never make it back to my apartment. I’ll
pull over and eat them before I make it halfway home.”
“I’ll send them just the same,” she chuckled.
“He’s already packing some home on his shirt,” Jenna pointed out, grinning at me.
I looked down and frowned. I’d gotten sauce on my T-shirt. Not a little sauce. A lot.
“We’ll wash it tonight,” Karen promised.
Laney scowled at me as I brought another forkful to my mouth. “Did you pack another shirt?’
I paused. “Yeah, of course. I’m here all weekend. Why?”
“Are any of them not T-shirts?”
“Like what? A polo shirt?”
“Or a sweater. Something nicer.”
“Are we going to church?” I laughed.
Laney’s scowl deepened. “You have to be going to see God to dress nice?”
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing? Aren’t we going to a party at someone’s house?”
“Yes, and it’s fancy dress.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I shouldn’t have to. We’re adults. Parties don’t mean beer bongs and BBQs anymore.”
“If you’d told me it was fancy dress I wouldn’t have agreed to go.”
“Well you can’t go looking like that.” She waved me away dismissively, taking a bite of her salad. “You’ll borrow one of dad’s ties and jacket.”
I put my fork down with a heavy clink. “Did you hear me, Lane?” I asked her. “I said I wouldn’t have agreed to go. I’m not going.”
She glared at me. “You already said you would!”
“Yeah, and you lied to me about it.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you every little detail about it.”
“Lying by omission is still lying.”
“So, what? You’re not going now because you have to look nice? You poor baby.”
“I’m not going because I’ve told you before that I hate those parties with your boring friends.”
Laney scoffed. “Boring? Why? Because they’re not all tatted up athletes with drinking problems and no social skills. That makes them boring?”
“No, they’re boring because there is absolutely nothing interesting about them. I know what will happen. We’ll be forced to circle around an iPad and watch more slides of their trip to the wine country set to Coldplay songs.”