The Start of Us: Book 1 in the No Regrets series

by Blakely, Lauren

  * * *

  A breeze blows through Michelle’s open window, and it feels like a crime that there’s a gentle, warm wind right now. It should be sleeting, hailing, lashing cold, cruel rain at me, like a punishment.

  “He died in my arms. My little brother. He died in my arms. How do I tell her that? How do I say that?”

  “Like that,” Michelle says in a kind, calm voice. “Just like that.”

  I drop my head into my hands. “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t fucking relive it,” I mutter. I don’t look up. I don’t want to look up. She’s the only person I’ve told, and it’s hard enough to look at my shrink when I talk about them. But I had to see her. I called in late to work and tracked down Michelle for an emergency appointment. “It was so awful. Knowing he wasn’t going to live. My parents letting me hold him. And it wasn’t the first time it happened.”

  “I know,” she says quietly. “It’s incredibly hard.”

  “And I could never say that to her,” I mumble into my hands because they still cover my face.

  “But you’re saying it to me. You’ve told me. You can do this, Trey.”

  I raise my face. I bet I look like hell right now. “Because you don’t know me. Because I pay you. Because you have to listen.”

  “I want to listen. That’s why I’m a therapist. I want to help.”

  “You probably think I’m a loser,” I say, and I don’t know why I’m egging her on or fishing badly for compliments, but maybe it’s because my compass is off, the needle all skittish, pointing this way and that, and I desperately need to right myself. I need an anchor. I need her to be that right now.

  “I don’t. I would never think that. I think you are a bright, sensitive, caring young man, and I want to help you believe in yourself and feel better about all the possibilities. And I know you want that too. That’s why you called in late to work. That’s why you asked to come in. Because you aren’t willing to settle for less from yourself. You want to grow and learn. And the possibility I want you to consider is what would happen if you told Harley?”

  I shake my head, narrow my eyes, and run my hand roughly over my chin. I need to shave. I need to get my act together. “I’d fucking break down and cry. Because I would feel it all over again.” I stab my chest with two fingers, knocking them hard against my sternum. Watching him die, after my other baby brothers had died, it was like two giant hands cracking open my chest, reaching in, and hunting for my heart. “It would be like it’s happening again. And I have done everything I can to move on.”

  “You have,” she says, nodding. “You’ve also turned to women and to sex and to conquests to move on. And that hasn’t entirely helped, has it?”

  The question is an arrow piercing me, cutting through my flesh and blood, exposing nerves and guts and the frightening truth of the last few years of my life. When sex became a numbing agent for the pain.

  “No,” I whisper, my voice broken shards of glass.

  “Maybe it’s what you need, then. To feel it again. To go through that pain. To know you can say the words and survive.”

  But she’s wrong. When I leave, I walk along the park, certain I won’t survive.

  33

  Harley

  The house is quiet when I unlock the door. My mom is nowhere to be seen or heard. She usually calls out to me when I come home, but if the house is silent, she must be at the office.

  Thank God.

  That’s exactly where I need her to be. She’s out on assignment a lot, or meeting sources, or visiting with her editor—my chests tightens when I think of her editor, the woman my mom reveres, the woman who mentored her. And while she often writes her books and articles from home, she spends time at the office too. She says she likes the discipline, the sound of other voices, the clickety-clack of colleagues tapping away on keyboards. The camaraderie helps fuel her. No surprise—my mom is a social beast.

  I say a silent prayer of thanks for her office mates, and now all I have to do is wait thirty more minutes. Miranda said the package—her marked-up pages of edits—would be here around three thirty. I’ll grab it when it arrives, tuck it under my arm, and, like a quarterback with the ball, keep my head down and run like hell out of here.

  I leave my purse on the marble table by the door. My stomach rumbles. I never ate lunch. All I had was coffee and toast at the diner this morning. Then I picked up the bagels for Trey.

  I feel so stupid just hearing his name in my head. I can’t believe I thought everything he said last night was real and true. Then he point-blank lied to me this morning. Maybe that’s the reminder I need to apply the brakes, because I was starting to think there was hope.

  But capitalistic love and sex and kisses are better. Safer. At least they’re honest. No one’s pretending they feel. The money is on the table, and no one gets hurt.

  Without an exchange, you can be played a fool.

  With money, everyone is safe.

  Cash can be recouped. It can be made and multiplied. Feelings can’t. They are loaned and borrowed and you can never pay them off.

  I head to the kitchen.

  There’s a Tupperware container on the counter and a Post-it note bearing my name. For Harley only. Your favorite cookies in the whole world.

  Inside are chocolate chip cookies with walnuts. I run a finger along the edge of the container, feeling wistful for a moment, longing for more of the cookies, more of the homework help, more of the bedtime stories.

  More of my mom.

  These treats from her are a reminder that she can play that part too.

  But first I need more sustenance, so I open the fridge and find a Tupperware container full of African stew from the other night. I have no interest in the food my mom makes for her latest lover. I spot a container of pasta primavera, but I bet that was last night’s culinary offering to Neil, so I pass on that too. I grab some carrots and hummus, set them on the counter, and open a drawer to get a napkin.

  Then I see a shadow in the living room. Only it’s not a shadow—it’s a man. It’s Neil, and he’s about to walk into the kitchen.

  In. His. Birthday. Suit.

  “Oh crap.” He is tall, lanky, and furry, and his parts are swinging around.

  I jerk my head away, because I want desperately to wipe the image of his limp dick from my brain. But the whole situation is like an ambulance siren, screaming at me. It’s happening, again.

  “I’m so sorry!”

  I drop the hummus container onto the floor, and it explodes on the tiles.

  He jumps back, making sure the hummus doesn’t hit his toes. I stare at him—above the neck only, I will not look down—my eyes wide with shock. “Seriously? You are walking around the house naked and you’re worried about hummus on your feet?”

  “No. No. No. I was just surprised.”

  I roll my eyes. “Obviously. Now get the hell out of here,” I say, and I don’t care that I don’t live here anymore. I don’t care that he probably has every reasonable right to have engaged in an afternoon delight with my mom on a Friday. But he is naked and gross and in my house where I grew up, and I have had enough of my mother’s lovers.

  “Barb went back to work, and I was taking a nap after—”

  I hold up my hand in a firm stop sign, shaking my head forcefully. “No. Don’t go there. I don’t want to hear the story,” I say sharply, because I don’t need to know he was taking an after-sex nap.

  “I’ll just go.”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  I bend down to pick up the hummus, and I want to throw it at him. But then I’d have to lay eyes on his naked body and there isn’t enough bleach in the world to white out what I just saw. I grab a towel and wipe up all the hummus, then toss the towel and the container in the trash.

  Tears well up, but I don’t let them out. Because they’re mixed with far too much anger. Too much frustration. And way too many foul memories. Even though my mom’s at work, I can smell h
er. My nostrils are filled with a scent I want to erase from the entire universe, and I can recall other encounters like this, when I’d bump into her after she’d had a roll in the hay while I was home. She’d be wearing a red silk dressing gown, mid-thigh length, her scent the scent of her bedroom, her sexuality that she shared freely with me. I wrinkle my nose and try to hold my breath as the olfactory memory floods my senses.

  I grab the bag of carrots from the counter and crunch into one, biting down hard. Chewing as if I can rid my mind of these images if I bite hard enough. Drilling into another carrot, I bear down, my teeth now a lethal weapon, slicing the carrot in half. I imagine it shrieking. Wishing it could.

  Screw this.

  I leave the carrots on the counter. Let her clean up the bag when she returns to her den of iniquity. Maybe they’ll be dried out and inedible when she sees them. I leave behind the cookies too, my small act of defiance.

  I head for the front steps as Neil reemerges. He’s wearing jeans, cuffed once at the ankles, and a striped button-down.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, as if a double apology alleviates his trespass. But I will never see him as anything other than unwelcome.

  I don’t answer him. I walk toward the door.

  “Wait. Harley. Something came for you a few minutes ago.”

  My ears prick, and I spin around.

  I spy a package on the coffee table. “Barb had left for work, and a few minutes later, a courier knocked on the door.”

  My lips quirk up into a traitorous smile. I want to jump up and cheer. He intercepted the package! He unknowingly intercepted it from my mom.

  I race to the table and lunge for the manila envelope. Thick and padded, it already has the well-worn look of an envelope that’s been manhandled on its route across town. I clutch the package tightly to my chest. “Thank you.”

  Then I want to smack myself. Why am I thanking him? He has nothing to do with the good fortune of my mom missing the early delivery.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He casts his eyes to the package momentarily, then back to me. He notices the logo.

  “Of course,” I say quickly. Does this half-baked lover of hers think he can catch me in a trap, since he’s seen Miranda’s name on the return address? I can lie with the best of them. I can dance circles around the truth.

  “Because I saw the name on it,” he adds, gesturing to the package I’m clutching like a newborn baby. “Just curious.”

  My heart races in my chest, but the wheels turn quickly, and the lie is already fully formed. “Oh. Yeah. Of course. Because it’s a gift we’re working on for Barb.” Then I press a finger to my lips. “Shh... Don’t say anything.”

  “Ah,” he says with a knowing wink and a smile, since it’s natural that Miranda and I would pair up to give my mom a gift. Now Neil and I are co-conspirators. Or so he thinks. He grabs his phone and wallet, and says goodbye.

  Good riddance.

  I peer out the window, making sure he’s gone, waiting until I see him raise a hand and hail a yellow cab on Central Park West. Then he’s off in a sea of New Yorkers fanning out from clandestine encounters, the city hiding all their secrets. The anonymity, the size, the surreptitiousness of Manhattan a cloak we all wrap ourselves in.

  I sink down on the royal-blue couch, rip open the package, and pull out the pages I’ve written in the last few weeks. Maybe fifty or so, full of Post-it notes and penciled-in marks, instructions to me. Notes that say things like More salacious, More details, Is this how it really happened, or are you leaving out key parts?

  On and on, they’re all the same: more, more, more.

  Shame, shame, shame.

  I find one more note. I read it, and it’s a shovel digging through my innards, scooping them out, serving them bruised and battered on a platter for me. This story about Pierre and the carnival? I don’t care that your mommy taught you to kiss. You should have some more respect for your mother. After all she’s done for everyone. I don’t need you psychoanalyzing yourself and why you did what you did. You did it because you’re a whore. Your mother is not to be dragged through the mud. Even anonymously. Shame on you.

  I toss the pages on the table, make two fists, dig my fingernails into my palms, then scream. A loud, shrill, sharp sound like a train whistle tearing through the cold, quiet midnight of a lonely town. It knocks picture frames from the walls. It rattles vases off of tables. It reaches all the way to the top of the building and out into the afternoon sky. Neighbors drop their afternoon coffee cups. Curious. Concerned. Terrified. Is everyone okay?

  But none of that happens.

  Because no one notices, nothing changes, my father leaves, my mother reinvents herself as my friend, and so when a tree falls in the forest and no one can hear it, it doesn’t make a goddamn sound.

  I reach for the pages and pull at the ends, wishing I could tear them apart.

  If Miranda only knew how much my mother had done. If she only knew the full truth of why I’m writing these awful, horrid memoirs. I push up the sleeve of my shirt, gripping my shoulder, as if the red ribbon will give me the strength to finish, the courage to get this monkey off my back. To leave Miranda behind me, say goodbye to this debt, and move into a new life.

  I jam the pages into the envelope and tuck the envelope in my purse.

  * * *

  Now that the package is safe and sound, thoughts of the unsettling way Trey and I left things this morning bombard my mind. I pace. My heart thunders so hard it hurts. It feels wild. I feel wild. Like the world is converging on me, a tornado of lies, blackmail, and complete and utter avoidance.

  My mother avoids the truth. She doesn’t care about the truth.

  And what about Trey?

  Is he the same? Is he just like her?

  I’m a lion in a cage now, pacing back and forth. My shoes click loudly on my mother’s polished floor, each sound punctuating the silence, each slap taking me one step closer.

  To a choice.

  I run my fingers across my phone. They itch to reach out to Trey. To force him to tell me the truth.

  I could text him, but I want to catch him unguarded.

  So I grab my phone and call.

  He answers, his choked “Hey there” soundtracked by the honking of a horn, the squeal of a bus.

  “Hi,” I say, my tone clipped. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah?” he asks, gulping, sounding guilty.

  I don’t pull any punches. “I need to understand what you said. I need to know what’s going on.”

  He scoffs. “Nothing. I told you. I was drinking or dreaming or some shit.”

  Some shit.

  Last night was the best I’ve felt in ages. The most real. The most honest. And to him it was some shit?

  I grit my teeth, but press on. I need answers. I need truth. “Trey? Is this for real? Is it true? What you said?”

  “We were drinking. There were all sorts of things said and done. Then the next morning, you realize they were just…”

  He trails off, and my throat hitches around the silence between us. It squeezes. Because I hear what he’s not saying. I hear what he meant to say.

  They were just mistakes.

  Meaning I was a mistake.

  What we did was a mistake. How he touched me. How we connected. How we felt together.

  The sweet words, the kisses, the connection.

  They were all mistakes to him.

  So was his confession.

  I put on my armor. I wield my sword. I protect myself. “Yeah, I get it,” I say, forcing out a laugh.

  He sighs, relieved. “Good. Because that was some crazy night.”

  A laugh. It sounds forced. And I understand completely what it means.

  But I won’t force him to tell me. I won’t force him to feel.

  Besides, his feelings are clear.

  And so are my choices.

  I stare out the window in the direction of a skyscraper I know well, feeling the fresh pull of a
choice.

  “We’re all good though?” he asks.

  “All good,” I say, lying, but when my other line rings, it’s not a lie when I say, “But I have to go.”

  I end the call with the man who won’t tell me the truth, the man who thinks we’re a mistake, and I click over to my mother.

  She goes first.

  “It’s your mother. Neil just called me. Darling, I’m so sorry.”

  “Hi,” I say, trying to collect myself, to let go of the rage, of the sadness, to say goodbye to the way I felt for Trey. Besides, I need to focus on my mom so I can make her happy as she has always needed me to do. To be her best friend.

  “I want to apologize. I feel terrible that you ran into Neil.”

  “It’s nothing,” I mumble into the phone. I want to get out of here. I want to go. I want to finish this damn book. I want to rid my body and my mind of all these memories. And Miranda is wrong—it’s not the memories of the men that hurt so much.

  It’s the other ones. The memories of her. Of us.

  I want to move on, and I think I finally know how.

  “Oh good. I’m so glad it didn’t bother you,” she says, and I can hear her clapping once, happily. I roll my eyes. Seriously? She believes me? But I guess that’s what you get from spending your life pretending that you’re fine with your mom’s parade of lovers.

  “So,” she says in a flirty voice. “What did you think? He’s not too shabby in the downstairs department, right?”

  My eyes go so wide they practically pop out of my head like a cartoon character’s, pupils bobbing on the end of their coiled wire springs. “What did you just say, Mom?”

  “Well, you know. He’s got it going on, right? He’s no Phil, of course,” she adds wistfully. “But not everyone can be Phil.”

  “Uh….” My jaw is hanging open. I can’t believe we are discussing the size of Neil’s penis, or Phil’s for that matter, like we’re a couple of girlfriends having cosmos and discussing our conquests.