An Artificial Sun

by Shafer, Gina

  I shrug with a lazy smile. I haven’t any more idea than he does. I’m not sitting here, going through the roster and comparing this experience with anything else I’ve had, that’s for sure. Because I’ve never experienced anything like what just happened. I’ve never been so connected with someone that it was almost like I could feel their orgasm along with mine.

  I’ve never bared all that I am to someone the first time we had sex either. And yet, my own words are proven to me again and again. Because with Nick, we don’t hug, kiss, or fuck like we’ve done it a hundred times before in our lives. Even though it feels like I’ve been with him so many times that he’s left an imprint inside me. We don’t struggle with how to please each other. The buttons are just there, in plain sight, so easily pressed.

  There are no hidden levels. No thoughts or wishes that the other person would just touch you in that one spot, or say that one thing that sets you off.

  Nick knows them all without being told.

  So what the fuck was that? I have no idea. But more importantly, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?

  He caresses my cheek and asks, “Do you want some water?”

  I don’t, and I tell him so. He pulls on his black shorts and disappears, shutting the door behind him. And I fall back against his pillows, and my heart soars.

  I just had the greatest sexual experience of my life with a man I could easily fall in love with. One more experience like this and I’m afraid I may be done for.

  This is real. I roll onto my side and stare at the door as I hear him moving through the kitchen, getting a glass of water.

  I can’t help but have that embarrassing but inevitable thought that I’ve been too loud. I don’t think Rose heard us. She was asleep before we showered. I stress about it a little.

  He appears again with water in one hand and a cigar box in the other.

  “Are we having a celebratory, after-sex smoke?”

  He drinks half of the water and sets the glass on the nightstand. “You’re a regular comedian,” He deadpans.

  He gets under the covers and scoots all the way up against the headboard. He holds the box in one hand and holds his arm open for me.

  I eagerly accept his invitation curl up next to him. He chuckles and I pinch his side with cold fingers, which not only startles him, but makes him laugh even harder. He moves us both, performing a dangerous feat, reaching across the space between the bed and his dresser, using one hand to pull open the drawer and the other hand to balance himself.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I’m smacked in the face with thick gray fabric.

  “Oh shit, sorry, baby. I tossed it without looking.” He plants tiny kisses all over me. I snort, pushing him away and snatching up what I see is a comfy fleece jacket.

  I pull it on over my head, and he ruffles my messy hair.

  “You’re so pretty,” he says.

  I stick my tongue out and point to the box. “What’s that?”

  He throws me an uneasy look. “I’m not sure why I brought that in here. I don’t know. After seeing those pictures of you when you were younger, I wanted to share this with you. With you rubbing up against me, all sexy and mostly naked, I’m kind of doubting my tactics.”

  I roll my eyes teasingly. I reach for the box. He doesn’t object. We assume our earlier position.

  I open it. It’s full of photos: older black and white mixed with glossy, full-color. I pick one out and study it, and Nick is quiet.

  I turn it over and see almost faded writing on the back. It was penciled in and looks like a woman’s cursive. The Adler’s Christmas 2000, it says.

  I flip it back over. Nick’s parents stare out from the photo, and I’m stunned I didn’t see the resemblance before. He’s the spitting image of his mother. Rose resembles them both equally. “They are lovely.”

  Nick says, “Keep going.”

  I look at another photo and stifle a giggle. Rose is just a baby, maybe a year old and sitting in a diaper on the carpet. What makes it funny is Nick’s expression in the background. He’s pouting because Rose is drooling all over his PlayStation controller.

  Nick complains, “The buttons never worked properly after that. Totally fried by baby drool.” I laugh, and he hands me another. It looks like sometime around Christmas again; there’s a decorated tree in the background. Nick is a teenager. Probably sixteen or seventeen. He’s posing with his mom but looks like he wants to shed his skin.

  “What’s with the sour face?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I had a date, and my mom forced me to cancel because her favorite restaurant was hosting a mother/son dinner. I gave her so much shit,” he says guiltily.

  He shouldn’t feel that way. People don’t usually appreciate our parents until we grow up and realize the full extent of their love. Myself included.

  “When I was twelve, I wanted to go to the movie theater with Maggie. We knew a group of boys from our school were planning to go, so we got all dolled up. I mean full-on lip smackers and butterfly hairclips. Better than your Sunday best stuff.” I laugh, remembering we crimped Maggie’s hair and ending up frying her bangs.

  “When we were all set to go, Mom refused to drive us. She had gotten an email from my teacher, saying I had failed my spelling test. My teacher didn’t rat out the fact that I was actually forced to sit with the assistant principal while everyone else finished their tests because I refused to quit talking in class, but I was embarrassed and mortified, and I remember vividly thinking I hated my mother. And I told her so. I looked her right in the eyes, and I spit that venom like it didn’t matter. ‘I hate you,.’ She let me act like a fool while she waited for me to finish.”

  “What did she end up doing?” he asks.

  “I was grounded for a month, but I didn’t care because I expected worse. What really stuck with me is what she said that night before bed. She said, ‘Whitley, hate is the opposite of love. Hating someone means you don’t love them. And while it is your choice to love who you love and who you don’t, I want you to know that I will never stop loving you. No matter what you do, or what trouble you get into. You’re my daughter. And you’re better than vicious words and lashing phrases. You’re my Whitley. I don’t want you to forget that, ever.’” I say. “Then she kissed my cheek and told me next time I said something like that, I’d be washing my mouth out with soap.”

  This makes him laugh.

  “Your mom knows you loved her.” I tell him, rising to my knees. I take his face in my hands and make him look at me. “Your parents raised two wonderful children, and they did it because they wanted to. Not because they were obligated to. They would be so proud of you.”

  “I see how you are with your mom and I regret not doing more.”

  “I wasn’t always like this. I avoided visiting my parents for years. Deep down I wasn’t happy or fulfilled in my life, and somehow I felt they knew that. I chose to stay away because it was easier than letting them down even more.”

  “But you ended up causing more hurt,” he says.

  “You’re not wrong. I wasn’t just hurting them with my distance, I was hurting myself with my own bullshit. I didn’t know how far Mama’s disease had progressed until I came for a visit I couldn’t avoid. I put everything off until it was too late, and I’m just trying to make up for all the times I put my feelings before theirs.”

  “So what made you change your mind?”

  I think for a moment. “I didn’t change my mind. I just realized how horribly ignorant I had been, leaving them on their own through this. I thought I was doing what was best, furthering my career and setting myself up for success. But what good is success when it’s wrapped in something you don’t care about? I can’t share a single ounce of that success with the two people who raised me, and I’m not proud of that. I couldn’t spend another day pretending I was okay with how things ended up.”

  Nick sets the photo box on the side table and returns quickly so we can cuddle.

  “Fo
r what it’s worth, I’m glad you ended up here,” he says before kissing me softly.

  “I bet you are,” I say, waggling my brows at him suggestively.

  He laughs. “Well, that too. I’m not just glad for me though. I’m happy for you too. This may be a truth that’s hard to swallow, but losing a parent is a pivotal moment in life. I would hate for you to look back and regret not being here.”

  “Do you?” I ask. “Regret how you handled things in the end, I mean.”

  “I still don’t know. I didn’t have the time you do. My parents were here one moment and gone the next.” His jaw ticks. I can see the pain he’s in. I come to the sobering realization that Nick is probably always hiding his pain. He’s just gotten extremely good at it.

  “I regret how I dealt with their passing,” he says, looking at me from his pillow. “I plunged into work and left Rose behind. I drank when I felt lonely. I buried myself in women I didn’t know on nights I felt utterly alone.”

  I swallow that hard truth like a bitter pill.

  “I wasn’t a good person for a while, “ he says.

  “I don’t believe that, Nick. You can make shitty choices and still be a good person. You’re human and imperfect. We are genetically designed to make emotional decisions that lead to mistakes.”

  “But it can’t be that easy. I see the guilt you carry too, Whitley. You can’t explain away someone’s hurt by chalking every bad decision to a simple slip-up,” he says, gritting his teeth.

  “Collateral damage,” I say, cupping his cheek and pulling him toward me. Our foreheads connect, and Nick closes his eyes. “The only thing that takes a human error from a simple event to a moment that defines you is the amount of collateral damage it creates. You didn’t hurt anyone, Nick. You were just a boy forced to grow up when he lost his parents too soon. You were alone. You’re not anymore.” I end that with a quick kiss to his lips.

  “God, Whitley, where did you come from?. Every night I’d lie here, wondering where the hell my life was going. Suddenly you popped up like something I dreamed up and now I can’t imagine not knowing you.” He kisses me again, deeper this time and I stir against him.

  He moves on top of me, and somehow, after everything, I’m able to set down the weight I carry and exist in a space where everything is good and no one ever gets hurt.

  When reality shows her ugly face in the morning, at least I’ll have this. I’ll have tonight.

  This is the first moment in my life when I can say I feel real fear. The idea of losing my mama is closer than ever. I’m terrified, overflowing with it. Real gut-wrenching fear.

  It’s almost like her death is an entity looming over me. I can graze it but never hold it. And that not only panics me, it wakes me from my numbness.

  What will it be like when she’s gone? Will she slowly fade from my memory until I can’t recall the curve of her top lip or the bend at the end of her nose? Will I see similarities to her in myself when I look in the mirror? I have the same two freckles running vertically down my left cheek, about half an inch apart. When she’s gone, can I bear looking at those freckles? Will I want to take a knife to my skin and cut them off? Or will I weep when I see them and make extra trips to the mirror to make sure they’re still there?

  This is the near paralyzing uncertainty and fear I’ve been grappling with since I laid down for bed tonight. The moonlight streams in through the window, reflecting off the ocean, and if I close my eyes, I can imagine the waves crashing against the sand. It’s so quiet, I can almost hear it.

  I haven’t spoken to Maggie in a while. Lately, between Nick and helping with Mom, it slips my mind. I feel bad, but I hope she understands.

  It was a long day yesterday. Mom was lost inside the house. She opened and closed the same door over and over, forgetting she had looked there only seconds before. I tried redirection, dad tried distraction. She kept looking, for what I don’t know.

  She finally stopped, though I think it’s only because she was exhausted. She can barely move anymore, so it was surprising she was able to keep up that amount of energy for that long.

  I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It’s one of the first nights in a while I haven’t slept at Nick’s house. I have to pick up my parents from the hospital in a couple of hours. After her battle with the closet door, she complained of a stomachache, so Dad took her in for testing. Turns out she has a UTI, which can be damaging for a person with Alzheimer’s. They gave her medicine and kept her for a few hours. Dad told me to go home and get some sleep so both of us weren’t tired today.

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’ll be happening anytime soon.

  I debate texting Nick but think better of it. He shouldn’t suffer along with me. He would have offered to come with me, but the truth is I didn’t want to ask. I’ve already asked him for so much lately. Not to mention I start work at the bar later today, and I need time to prepare myself for that.

  I almost cancelled more than once. He would have understood but Dad refused to let me. “You have a life too,” he said.

  I get it, I really do. But how can anything in life mean anything if any one of us can turn out like Mom?

  There was no arguing with Dad after that, so I’ve arranged for Rose to come over and hang out while I’m away, in case he needs help. I offered to talk Nick into letting her go to the movies with a guy from school she’s been texting nonstop for the past week in exchange. Worked like a charm.

  I manage to drift off for a while, going in and out of consciousness until it’s time to go. I brush the sleep from my eyes and pick them up.

  Mama is disoriented and hasn’t slept much. The change in scenery really messes with her sometimes, causing insomnia.

  We’re stopped at a red light when she speaks. “What’s that?” She points out the car window.

  I don’t see anything. From the backseat, Dad asks, “What are you looking at?”

  “That people… there. A person.” She points again.

  A person? What does she mean? There’s only an empty field. And then it hits me like a blow to the stomach.

  “Do you mean the reflection?” I ask her. She looks at me, puzzled. “That’s your reflection in the window. It’s like a mirror.”

  “I don’t like it,” she says, turning away.

  “We’ll be home soon, Caroline,” Dad says.

  Most of the morning is quiet. Mom doesn’t feel good, and it’s making her sleep. She’s napping on the couch. Dad and I don’t have a whole lot to do. When Rose turns up, he’s happy.

  They have an interesting battle of riddles going on, and every time Dad finds a new one, he jots it down so he remembers to tell her. I haven’t the heart to tell him that she google searches the answers when he’s not paying attention. But hey, she’s only winning by two points.

  “Mr. Hadfield, you’re never going to get this one,” Rose says as she sits on a chair in the living room. Nick follows her in and asks if I’m ready to go. Would it be considered poor form to ask him to whisk me away and make love to me?

  I’m going to pretend that would be totally fine, but I’m too much of a lady to be thinking those thoughts.

  “Just let me tie my hair up,” I say, hurrying to the bathroom. I stop by my room to pick up the notes I’ve been working on. I’ve shared them with Nick already, so he’s done a little extra buying to make sure I have all the ingredients I need on hand. I return to the living room and tell Dad and Rose to call us if they need anything.

  “Whitley, hang on a second.” Rose dives into her book bag and rummages around. I look at Nick, but he only shrugs. she pulls out a lifelike baby doll with golden braids and a lavender jumpsuit.

  “I read that people who suffer from Alzheimer’s enjoy caring for and playing with baby dolls. I thought Mrs. Hadfield would like this one. It was mine when I was little. I was going to donate it, but I thought she could use it.” She holds out the doll, and I take it.

  I have heard about doll therapy but hadn’t co
nsidered it for Mom. I’d like to see how she reacts. I let Dad see the doll, and he holds it gently, gazing at it.

  “That’s very sweet of you,” I tell Rose.

  “We can give it to her tonight and see how she reacts,” Dad says.

  Rose smiles.

  “We can’t thank you enough,” I say.

  “I just wanted to help. Hopefully she likes it. You guys better get going.” She looks at Nick, embarrassed. I glance at him as he wipes the pride and amazement off his face. My heart melts.

  “We’ll be back in a bit,” I say.

  When we get to the bar, I feel a whole different set of nerves than I’m used to feeling around Nick. I’m nervous that I’ll fail or they won’t take me seriously. This will be the first time I cook in a professional setting.

  He squeezes my hand, then opens the door to the kitchen entrance. “You’re gonna do great.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to center myself. When we walk in, the excitement finally kicks in. It’s pretty low-key, and obviously not the Michelin star kitchen I built it up into my head. But it couldn’t be more perfect. He introduces me to the staff, and they seem eager to hear my ideas.

  I’m pretty sure Nick has spent the past six weeks talking me up to them. I lay my notes on the stainless steel counter and sit on a stool. I go over my initial changes.

  Nick has burgers and fries, wings, the traditional bar food on the menu. My idea is to elevate a few of those classics. Since this is predominately a bar, I thought it would be cool to mix drink themes into the food. A Bloody Mary burger, for instance. Or pineapple mojito chicken wings. I also want to play with the french fries. Maybe margarita-themed with coarse salt and citrus zest.

  We spend the next few hours perfecting three new menu additions to present to Nick. He offers suggestions and helps develop new ideas.