by CL Walters
I turn away from her, sit on the edge of the bed, and run a hand through my hair. It flops back into place, and I sigh before saying, “It wouldn’t be because of you, though.” I glance at her over my shoulder to see if she understands.
She’s working her bottom lip between her teeth, staring at me, but not seeing me, thinking.
“Remember that night at the Quarry?”
Her eyes waltz to mine, and she nods.
“Most of the shit I told you about the douchey guy, everything you heard from those girls in the bathroom. It was true. I’ve told lies to get what I wanted. I’ve gotten so drunk I couldn’t stand up. I’ve used drugs. I’ve used girls. I’ve used my friends. I pushed my best friends away. I didn’t want to listen to them. You see?” I look away because I don’t want to see the regret on her face if it’s there. “It’s me.”
I feel her shift on the bed until she’s sitting next to me. Her thigh presses against mine. Then she’s folding my hand in hers and laying her head on my shoulder. “You act like I didn’t know all that beforehand. You told me, remember?”
I shrug.
“I still choose you.”
I don’t say anything. What’s to say. The realization humbles me.
“I don’t remember my mom walking away when I was five. But her return and the truth of it is really clear now.”
I look at her. “She’s missing out on the best thing.”
“You think I did something to make her leave?”
I shake my head. “Fuck no. That was all her.”
“I think you’ve forgotten something important.”
“What’s that?” I look at our joined hands.
“Your dad, your brother—you didn’t cause them to leave.”
I look down at her profile, and my throat tightens. She’s right. I can see the truth of it even if the emotions of it don’t register accurately. But them leaving doesn’t change what I’ve done, who I am. Tanner still left. Danny still dropped me off and drove away. But I did that. The problem has always been me.
“And–” she continues as if reading my mind– “you aren’t being that other guy anymore.”
“You sound so sure.”
She slides her head on my shoulder until she can meet my gaze. “I have a really good feeling about you.” She smiles.
I offer her a tight grin in return.
She stands and keeps a hold of my hand.
I twirl her so I can look at her before drawing her in between my legs. Then I press my face in the warmth of her belly and hold onto her as if she’s a buoy in a stormy sea. “I don’t deserve you.”
She leans down and places a kiss on my head. “We deserve what we believe we deserve,” she says. “Until we can both see it, we should keep things simple.”
I look up at her. “Simple? I’m not sure what we just did was simple.”
She moves her fingers through my hair.
I’m getting hard again.
“I just mean, we probably shouldn’t have the baby-making kind of sex.”
“You’re the boss,” I tell her.
“But I’m afraid that if I leave you to go take a shower, I’m going to miss you too much.”
“Are you suggesting that I follow you into the shower and make sure you’re extra clean?”
“Yes.”
“Girl, I can’t promise that I won’t have a raging boner seeing you naked. If you’re ready to see that, okay, but I’m not sure that’s simple.”
She laughs and then drags me toward the bathroom. “Sounds simple enough to me.”
After an education in showering with a girl without actual sex, we get dressed, turn off the light and climb into her bed. This time, instead of sleeping with my back to her, she curls into my arms. And for the gazillionth time, I’m realizing how good it feels to have her there, how fortunate I feel. I’m floating with it, happy in a way that I can’t ever remember feeling before. Excited because in a little over a week she’ll be home. And I’ll get to see her, touch her–
My optimism stalls like a car and slides over onto the shoulder smoking and in need to repair. Fuck. I’d forgotten.
Cal.
It isn’t like I can just kiss Max in front of him. He’d freak out, even if he didn’t say anything, inside, he’d be blindsided. I owe Cal more than that.
“I’m going to talk to your dad,” I tell her.
“What? That’s–no. He doesn’t get a say in who I date.”
“Not for that reason,” I tell her. Of course, I know she has every right to date who she wants without permission from anyone. “He’s my boss. You see how that’s like a complication, right?”
She’s silent for a moment. “And how do you picture that going?”
“Probably shitty.” I pause and suppress a shudder thinking about doing it. Cal is awesome, and he’s been a rock these last few months but coming out and telling him I want to date Max feels like crossing a line he isn’t going to like. He’s a guy. He knows how guys think. He’ll know what I’m thinking about Max, like all the time. “I don’t want to sneak around, and he deserves to hear it from me.”
She’s silent a while. I figure she’s thinking, but then wonder if maybe she’s fallen asleep until she says, “No. He deserves to hear it from us.” She presses closer to me. “Okay?”
I kiss her head. “Okay. From us.”
I lay there with Max in my arms, and sleep creeps up on me. I fall asleep imagining that door I’ve opened, how wide it is and how much light there is outside of it, wondering what if I can’t keep all this light safe from the dark insecurities locked up inside of me?
2
The guilt I’m carrying around while working with Cal is like heavy planks of drywall. In the whole of my nineteen years, I don’t often recall that feeling as a driver. Anger, annoyance, rage, irritation, disengagement are the norms. Guilt and concern, not so much. The fact that I’m messing around with his daughter is a bucket of mixed concrete in my body that needs to be poured before it solidifies. Except my lungs feel like that concrete is setting. I’m finding it harder to breath around him. I think it’s because I like and respect him, so sneaking around feels like past Griff, and I’m not supposed to be him anymore. Yet, here I am, being him. And if I can’t shut down old Griff with something like this, how will I ever be able to do it?
We are putting the final touches on the kitchen. The room looks amazing. The painted cabinets, the matching tilework backsplash, the new appliances, the new flooring throughout the downstairs. That newness stretches from the kitchen though the dining room and entry out into the living room and the study and a half bath we ripped apart and redid. The new windows and the refurbished fireplace, the painted walls—a muted gray that Max picked out when she’d been home for Thanksgiving and painted with her dad—all speak to a house becoming a home. There’s still a lot of work to be done on the second floor.
“I got a project next week, so you’ll be working alone for a few days. Well, Max will be home. She’ll help.”
I swallow the confession. “Okay.” I let the silence linger and then because it feels like he’s watching me and reading my mind, I rush to cover up the insecurity and say, “Plans for Christmas?” and smear some grout over the tiles to avoid looking at him.
I hear Cal finish screwing on a new handle on a drawer. “Max and I keep it quiet. Always just the two of us. You?”
“Yeah. My mom. Brother.” I don’t say Bill will probably be a part of things or that my dad has asked Phoenix and me to come to his apartment. I’m still deciding.
Cal hums a response, reminding me of Max. I smile at the wall, thinking about her, and smear more grout. “It will be nice to have Max home. I’ve missed her chatter.”
I don’t say anything. What’s there to say? Yeah, sir. I’ve missed her too. So much so I went up to see her last weekend and we did stuff which made her chatter more. Yeah. Probably not that.
“I’m going up to get her on Thursday, so I’ll leave you a plan.
”
“Sounds good.”
We continue working, finishing off the tile, the hardware. By that afternoon, we’ve finished the downstairs punch list except the back porch, so we start on the upstairs.
A couple of days later, with the stairwell and hallways ripped down to the studs, the flooring removed to the subfloor and Cal talking with the electrician, I’m busy contemplating Phoenix’s badgering about going to our dad’s while tearing up the bathroom.
Phoenix’s sales pitch is that we haven’t given Dad a chance yet. “Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?” he asked me the night before as we’d demolished one another in the video game.
It made me think of Max’s relationships rules. Annoying, because if I was determined to follow them with her, then it should probably translate to other relationships. It had with Phoenix, but I wasn’t convinced my dad deserved my forgiveness even if ten years is a long time to carry the hurt of his abandonment.
I shrugged. It was a question that only had one right answer. I couldn’t exactly say “no.” If I did, it meant I didn’t deserve a second chance, that Phoenix didn’t either, but a “yes” meant that my dad did too. Everyone who I’d written off would deserve a chance. It meant I couldn’t stay sitting in my self-righteousness, even if I wanted to.
“Fine,” I’d said. “I’ll go.”
Phoenix had slapped me on the back, grateful, but now I’m in a state of perpetual irritation working up my brain to prepare for it. I’m glad we’re ripping apart a bathroom today.
My last memory of my father was the police coming to arrest him. They’d knocked at the front door. He’d run. I’d been sitting in the living room playing with a Lego set he’d given me for my birthday, knocked in the head as he’d jumped over me to get out the back. He’d run through the dining room and crashed out the sliding door, the police moving around me as they chased him. They caught him, guns out, smashed his body into the yard at the back of the house filled with a collection of rocks and overgrown weeds no one had ever taken care of. When they’d hauled him back through the house handcuffed, I’d been crying.
“It’s okay, little man,” he’d growled. “Big boys don’t cry.”
Even the policemen had said it. “There’s no reason to cry, son.”
Seemed like a pretty good reason at the time.
“Griffin?”
I look up from the tile I’m scraping from the floor. Cal is standing in the doorway.
“You okay? I’ve been talking to you for a bit.”
I nod.
His eyebrows shift around on his face. “You sure?”
“Just thinking.”
“I’m a pretty good listener.”
Which I knew to be true even if I wasn’t one to share. “My dad invited me and my brother to Christmas Eve at his place.”
Cal gives me a nod; it isn’t like he’s agreeing but more to indicate he’s listening. “You haven’t talked much about your dad.”
“He was in prison. He’s supposedly got this set up in the city and wants us to come spend the day with him. I haven’t spent any time with him since I was eight.”
Cal takes a hammer and punches holes into the pink tile of the bathtub walls with the flat part of the tool. It leaves cracks and spots for him to grab hold and yank the wall out with his gloved hands. It crumbles into the reservoir of the old pink tub. “You don’t want to go?”
“Not really. But my brother wants me to.” I push the scraper again to dredge up some of the tile glue I missed on the floor. “I think he needs me to.” I push the scraper again, and the loosened tiles clank one against another as I push them into the pile.
“Your brother?”
I nod.
Cal steps out of the tub and leans against the wall where the vanity used to be. He slips his hammer into his belt. He hums again, thinking, measuring what he wants to say. “You want some thoughts from an old man?”
“You aren’t old.”
“Older.” He smiles, which makes the corners of his eyes curl.
“Sure.”
“When I was your age, my dad and I struggled something fierce. Shit, the guy was always riding my ass to be better, to try harder, to do more, be more. Couldn’t make him happy, or so it seemed. We didn’t get along so great. I think the biggest disappointment of his life was when I didn’t go into the military. All the men in our family had. I didn’t join up partly as a rebellion at eighteen but mostly because when I looked at my grandpop, my dad, my uncles, my cousins who had, all I could see were these men, hard and angry, miserable, and hateful. They drank too much, talked about the good ‘ole days and threw around insults as if they were trophies. I mean, I didn’t know any better, really, but I just felt like I didn’t want that for myself.”
He rubs his palms together as if to wipe away whatever story he’s telling. “I moved out after I turned eighteen and started apprenticing with Dell, the carpenter I told you about. Didn’t talk to my dad and he didn’t talk to me, either. Just went our own ways and heard about one another’s lives through my mom.”
He stops, and I think the story’s over, but he crosses his hands over his chest and says, “But then, after I turned twenty, my dad had a heart attack. One of those nasty ones. Gone before he knew what happened, which is probably a blessing in a way, for him, but it left me reeling.”
He looks down at his feet, pushes some loose grout and tile with his boots. “All those feelings I had stored up for my dad didn’t go away. They just sat in the boxes I built for them here.” He points at his heart and then his head. “And storing them didn’t make me better. Didn’t help me when I was struggling with Indigo. It certainly didn’t make me better when he passed away, because now I had them stored up and didn’t have a way to unpack them. You get what I’m saying?”
It’s roundabout but clear enough, so I nod.
“You don’t want to haul around the what if or the if only. They are heavy boxes. Better to unpack them, empty them out.”
I nod again.
“Well,” Cal straightens and clears his throat. “Better bang out this bathroom, otherwise Max is going to be showering with water from the stove and washcloth.”
My face heats thinking about showering with her, her body, kissing her, touching her, and hearing her sounds. I look down to hide my face from Cal and push more tile up with my scraper to hide my thoughts, feeling like I might already be carting around some gigantic boxes.
By the time Max is home for break and finally agrees to share our news with her dad, I’m freaking out. I’m standing at the front door on the new porch and thinking about how different everything is since the first time I stood at the doorway of the farmhouse. When the door opens, Max is there, the warmth from inside shining around her.
She steps out onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind her.
I take a deep breath as if just being near here provides me with oxygen.
She smiles and leans forward. Her hands find their way into my hair at my neck, causing adrenalin to spike and chase my nerves down my spine.
My hands are full, so I can’t get as close as I’d like. Sneaking kisses between Cal’s comings and goings in the house has been exhilarating and terrifying, but I need this to be real. Old me wouldn’t care about sneaking about, but new me does.
She kisses me.
“What was that for?” I ask when she pulls away.
“I just couldn’t contain myself.” She smiles. “I missed you.”
This makes me heat from the inside out. “A lot different greeting than the first time I showed up on your doorstep.”
She chuckles, remembering, and opens the door, drawing me inside. “Come on. It’s cold out here.”
“Right.”
My phone pings as we’re walking into the house. I glance at it thinking it might be Phoenix, hopeful that going to our dad’s for Christmas Eve the next night will be cancelled. It isn’t. It’s a missed call from Bella. Perplexed, I ignore it. She must have misdialed
. I slide my phone back into the pocket of my coat, then take it off.
“Let me take it,” she says. “Dad’s in the living room.” She grins and hangs the coat in a closet that Cal and I built.
I walk through the cased opening into the living room. The fireplace is bright with a fire. They put up a Christmas tree, and it gleams in the low light. Cal is seated in a chair, a cup of something in his hand. He looks up at the sound of my footsteps on the wood floor and smiles one of those soul-grabbing smiles. Now, I see where Max gets hers.
“You clean up nice. Cold out there?” Cal asks from his seat near the fire.
“Freezing.” I lift the pan I’m holding. “From my mom. She’s started baking. Made you some brownies.”
“Does she have a 1950’s mixer?” Max smiles. Dimple.
“No. Who knew you could bake without one,” I say, smiling back. When I glance at Cal, he’s watching us, his face passive as he sips from his cup, but I can feel the observation like the point of a nail. He knows.
“I’ll get you some cider,” Max says and disappears from the room.
I stand, awkward and unsure even though I’ve spent the last five months working with Cal, sharing meals with him on off days. He knows. He knows. I can feel it.
“Did you decide about your Dad’s place?” Cal asks.
I nod stiffly, waiting for the ax to drop. I clear my throat to get words out. “Yes. Going tomorrow for Christmas Eve.”
He hums a noise of approval and takes another sip.
The silence blooms again.
Max walks back through the door, carrying a cup. She hands it to me, and her eyes dance between Cal and me.
I take the cup and offer her a pleading look.
She’s staring at me like I’m supposed to know what she’s saying with her eyes. I don’t, but I can guess. I can’t think of a way through this now, no graceful way anyway.
Max grasps my hand.
Cal looks at us, down at our joined hands, then his eyes rise to connect with our faces. He looks completely unruffled. It’s terrifying.
“We’re dating,” Max blurts. “I mean, I decided, we decided that…” her voice fades away.