Hot & Heavy

by Tracy Wolff

  “Home?” Everything inside of me freezes. “I thought we were going to talk.”

  She sighs, shoves a hand through her windswept hair and looks for all the world like standing here with me is the absolute last place she wants to be. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t get my back up.

  The silence stretches between us, taut as a circus wire.

  “I’m not sure there’s anything to talk about,” she finally says when it reaches the breaking point.

  “Are you serious?” Panic is a living, breathing monster inside of me, dragging me under. Making me want to do something, anything, as long as it means I don’t have to feel this. “You get mad because you think I did something stupid and that’s it? We’re over?”

  “I’m not mad, Shawn. I’m done. There’s a difference.”

  “You’re done, just like that? Because I went free diving?”

  “Not just because you went free diving, but because you didn’t even think about doing it. It was just second nature to you. ‘Just, oh, that’d be fun, let me do it and to hell with the consequences.’

  “I wasn’t the only one out there who was worried, you know. All of us were. Tanner and Hunter may accept your bullshit behavior because they’re your friends and they’re used to it from you. But I can’t do that. I’m not used to it, and I don’t want to get used to it. I sure as hell don’t want to spend the next months or years—however long we’re together—waiting for the phone call that tells me that this time, you didn’t make it.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “You don’t know that, and I’m not going to wait around for the time your luck runs out. It’s one thing to take risks on the football field, because that’s your job. I understand that. But it’s another thing altogether to skydive and free dive and free climb and do all the other insane things that you do.

  “I know you’ve got demons—that’s very obvious to me. But I have demons, too, and mine are telling me to get the hell out of here as fast as I can. Because I’m worth more than that mountain you have to climb, and I’m sure as hell worth more than that phone call that will eventually come.”

  “In other words, I’m not worth the risk.”

  She smiles sadly, reaches a hand up to cup my cheek. “I think you’re worth everything. But not the small amount of peace I’ve managed to make for myself in this world. I can’t give that up, for you or for anybody.”

  She pulls my face down, presses one long, soft kiss to my lips before stepping back. “Goodbye, Shawn Wilson. You’ve been a hell of a ride.”

  And then she’s gone.

  I watch as she walks to her car. As she climbs inside. As she never once looks back.

  And realize—not for the first time in my life but maybe the most momentous—what it means to be truly alone.

  Chapter 22

  Sage

  A knock on my front door pulls me reluctantly from my ice cream and wine induced coma. I contemplate answering it, but the truth is I don’t actually care who’s on the other side. Not to mention the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m too drunk to actually make it to the door without falling flat on my ass—or my face.

  The admission should slow me down, but fuck it. I reach for the bottle of wine on my coffee table and pour the dregs into my nearly empty glass. Then I down it in one swallow, cursing myself for not having the foresight to bring another bottle over to the couch with me.

  The kitchen is even farther away than the front door.

  I’m the first to admit that eating two gallons of ice cream and drinking four bottles of wine in the space of two days is not the healthiest way to deal with a breakup. And neither is languishing on the couch instead of putting my big girl panties on and going into work.

  But this wasn’t any ordinary breakup. Just because it was quiet didn’t mean it didn’t matter. Because it did. It really, really did.

  Part of me still can’t believe I did it. Not when I’d gone and fallen for Shawn as completely as I had. Not when I’d let myself be charmed, and then more than charmed, by him.

  But how could I not be? Shawn is one hell of a guy. Smart, funny and so, so kind. Too bad his issues bring out the worst of mine. If they didn’t, we might actually have had a better than decent chance.

  Might have, could have, would have—none of those phrases mean anything since I walked away from him in the marina parking lot two days ago. It was the right thing to do. I know it was the right thing to do. I just didn’t know how hard it was going to be, didn’t know how much a part of my life Shawn had become in such a short time.

  He texted me Sunday night after I got home from the marina and again around midnight. I didn’t answer and he hasn’t texted again. Which is good. It’s what I wanted. But it still feels really, really shitty.

  The knock comes again, and this time it sounds way more impatient. Too bad I don’t give a damn. Emerson has a key to my place, and none of my other friends would be banging down my door at ten p.m. on a Tuesday night. Which means whoever it is has the wrong address.

  Or it’s Shawn. The thought comes unbidden, and though I tell myself he’s the last one I want to see—the last one I need to see—I find myself stumbling over to the door.

  Not because I want to see him, because I don’t. But because it would be rude to leave him out there knocking.

  Except when I throw open the door, it’s not Shawn standing there. It’s my mother, dressed head to toe in traditional Indian clothes—a lehenga, a choli, even a pavadai in bright pink.

  “I was beginning to think you weren’t home, darling! I texted you to come get me from the airport, but I didn’t get an answer.”

  Because my phone is off and currently buried in my nightstand so I won’t be tempted to text Shawn. Or search social media for his name to see if he’s in some bar somewhere drowning his sorrows with a groupie or three.

  “I thought you were staying in India for a while.” Not the warmest of greetings, but bluntness is pretty much all I’m capable of right now considering how much wine is sloshing around in my stomach. And considering the way she stole all the yoga studio’s money right out from under me. If she hadn’t, I never would have said yes to Shawn and then I wouldn’t be in this mess.

  The thought has me narrowing my eyes at her. My mother really does have a lot to answer for.

  She, of course, doesn’t even notice as she breezes right past me. “I had a dream two nights ago that you needed me, so I spoke with my teacher. He agreed that I should come home right away.”

  “I’m pretty sure a phone call would have sufficed.” Still, I don’t try to stop her as she moves deeper into my home. Of course, she leaves her bags outside, because she’s my mother and that’s what she does. If it doesn’t involve a yoga pose, my mom isn’t interested in expending any more energy than is absolutely necessary.

  I pull the bags inside, then close and lock the door. My mom takes one look at the coffee table—with its empty wine bottle and crumpled-up ice cream container—and makes a beeline for the kitchen.

  “I don’t want coffee,” I say, and I’m woman enough to admit that I sound like a petulant child.

  “Who said anything about coffee?” she asks and I enter the kitchen just in time to see her opening the next bottle of wine I have lined up on the counter.

  She pours herself a glass, then carries the bottle back into the living room where she finds my glass and pours a healthy amount into it as well. Then she settles herself on the couch, kicks her feet onto the coffee table and says, “So, who is he?”

  I’m starting to sober up, the warm buzz that had blocked (almost) all of my feelings dissipating a little more with each second my mother is in my apartment. As the pain of walking away from Shawn starts to creep back, I reach for my glass and drain it in a couple of long swallows.

  “How do you know there’s a he
?” I ask just as carelessly.

  “There’s always a guy.” She pours me another glass without so much as a raised eyebrow.

  “It’s no big deal. He’s no big deal.” I take another sip.

  “The way you’re throwing back that wine says otherwise.”

  “Maybe I’m celebrating. Did you ever think of that?”

  She casts a pointed look at the ice cream tub, then follows it with a critical once-over of my dirty sweatshirt and holey yoga pants then ends with a glance at my flat, greasy hair.

  “Point taken.” I sigh. “But seriously, it’s not a big deal. I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will be, but you aren’t now. That’s why I’m here.”

  The bitter bitch inside of me wants to ask what makes this time so special, considering she’s missed pretty much every important moment in my life for as long as I can remember. But I don’t have the energy to fight with her right now. I’m too sad.

  We sit in silence for several long minutes, drinking wine and waiting for the other one to break first. It’s a pattern I remember well from my adolescence—just because we haven’t done it in years doesn’t mean it’s not familiar.

  Usually, I’m the master at this game but there’s something about the sadness rolling around inside me, something about having my mother in the same room with me for the first time in months, that loosens my tongue.

  “He’s a football player that I was doing some therapeutic yoga with. He’s actually the reason I managed to keep the yoga studio’s doors open after you took all the money—he wrote a really big check to be able to work with us.”

  “Then I guess I owe him a double thank-you,” she says, eyeing me over the rim of her wineglass.

  “A double thank-you?” Considering the state I’m in, I think a fuck-you would be more appropriate on her part.

  “For helping the studio and for helping you.”

  “No offense, but I don’t feel very helped.”

  She sighs. “I know, darling. But just look at you.”

  I run a hand through my greasy hair. “I’d rather not.”

  She rolls her eyes. “That’s not what I mean. You’ve been locked up inside of yourself for so long, refusing to do more than dip a toe in the water. But you meet this guy, and it’s pretty obvious you let yourself jump. That’s impressive.”

  “Not so impressive considering I did a big freaking belly flop.”

  She gives me her I-just-got-out-of-an-ashram smile. “Belly flops are my favorite dive.”

  “If you’re going to get all philosophical on me, I’m going to need more wine.” I hold out my glass.

  She fills it up, waits for me to take a sip. Then says, “So you belly flopped with this football player?”

  “I don’t know what I did with this football player.”

  “Seems to me you fell in love with him.”

  My laugh is bitter. “Sure seems like it, doesn’t it?”

  “So what happened? He doesn’t love you back?”

  I think of the pleading look on Shawn’s face when I walked away from him two days ago. Of the messages telling me he didn’t want it to end like this and if we could please just talk. Then I remember the minutes I spent terrified that he was dead, the anguish that came with just the idea of something happening to him.

  “I don’t know how he feels about me.”

  “Did you ask him?”

  I don’t answer, but then I don’t have to.

  She reaches for the wine bottle, pours herself a second glass of wine.

  Takes a sip.

  Then says, “I really messed you up, didn’t I?”

  I nearly choke on my own wine. “When you took the money?” I ask cautiously. But it’s not like mea culpas are exactly her thing.

  “When I taught you that you couldn’t depend on anyone. I’m sorry for that.”

  Sorrys are even less her thing. “What exactly did they do to you in India?” I demand.

  She smiles almost sadly. “Not India. I just did a lot of thinking on the plane ride home. And I’m sorry you can’t trust. Even sorrier that I played a part in making you that way.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. Just silently drink my wine and wonder if I need to batten down the hatches since the apocalypse is obviously on its way.

  I really hope there won’t be zombies.

  More silence stretches between us, and I can’t help wondering if she’s waiting for me to tell her it’s not her fault. But I’m just drunk enough to be truthful and I can’t do that.

  “He’s the kindest person I know.” The words come out of nowhere. “And I still can’t trust him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s also the most capricious person I know, and that’s saying something.”

  “Yeah, it is,” she tells me with a rueful laugh. “So what’s wrong with capricious?”

  There are a million things I want to say, a million things I’ve swallowed down with her a million times through the years. What’s the use of saying them? I always tell myself. It won’t change anything because she won’t change.

  But maybe her changing isn’t really the point. Maybe it’s enough to just tell her how I feel for once. Maybe…

  “I can’t live every day wondering if he’s ever going to walk through my door again—or if watching him walk away to climb a mountain or jump off a cliff is going to be the last thing I see of him. I spent my whole childhood like that, I can’t—I won’t—spend the rest of my life like that, too.”

  My mom looks stricken. “Did you really feel like that? Like every time I left something was going to happen to me?”

  “No,” I tell her as the wine turns sour in my stomach. “I wasn’t afraid something would happen to you. But I was afraid you wouldn’t come back for me.”

  I don’t even know I’m going to say the words before they come out of my mouth, but then they’re there, hanging between us. And for the first time, I realize just how true they are. How many times she took off and left me when I was a kid—for a weekend or a week, sometimes even a month.

  It wasn’t just that she took me away from everything I cared about over and over again, packing us up in the middle of the night and running away from whatever problem she’d created that time. It’s that sometimes she didn’t pack me up. Sometimes she just left, with a friend or a “friend” and only remembered to come get me when the excitement of her latest adventure wore off.

  The words hang in the air between us as my stomach roils and pitches. I wait for her to say something—to disagree with me, to agree with me, to apologize. Something. But she just sits there watching me, a thoughtful look on her face.

  It’s the last straw in days of last straws, the last straw in weeks of having to cover for her, to fix her mistakes, to make miracles happen where there are none.

  Except Shawn, a little voice whispers in the back of my head. In his own way, he was a miracle and I just let him walk away.

  My stomach revolts, and I make a wild dash for the bathroom. I barely get there in time.

  I don’t know how long I stay there on my knees, vomiting into the toilet. But when I’m finally done, I barely have the energy to push back from it and half-sit, half-lay, slumped against the wall.

  My mom doesn’t follow me—she’s never been that kind of mom—and I’m grateful for that fact. Grateful for the fact that I have a few minutes to get myself, and my head, together before I have to face her again. Before I have to listen to her excuses.

  When I finally make it out of the bathroom, she’s not sitting on the couch where I left her. Instead, she’s in the kitchen, scrambling eggs. It’s a bit of an alarming sight, considering I started cooking for us at seven, after she nearly burned the house down when she got distracted.

  “I know what yo
u’re thinking,” she says without turning around. “But even I can scramble a couple eggs without causing a disaster.”

  History has proven otherwise, but once again I don’t have it in me to argue.

  Eventually, I do what she says, sitting because I no longer have the energy to stand.

  As soon as I do, she slides a plate of eggs and toast in front of me. “Eat,” she urges. “It’ll settle the mess in your stomach.”

  I’m not so sure, but two days of wine and ice cream haven’t done me any good, and my now empty stomach is twisting in on itself. Worst-case scenario I end up back in the bathroom on my knees.

  “I’m not going to apologize,” she says as I take my first careful bite of toast.

  I make a noise in the back of my throat. Like that’s a surprise? She’s never apologized to me in her life. For anything.

  “I lived my life the way I wanted to live it. Maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong, probably it was somewhere in between. But it was my life and I grabbed on to it with both hands. Probably because I was terrified I’d end up like my mother, married at eighteen to a man who didn’t understand me, stuck in a town as suffocating as it was small.”

  It’s the first time she’s spoken about my grandparents in years, and I can’t help listening, can’t help wanting her to say more about them.

  But she just shakes her head as she sits down across the table from me with her own plate. “Here’s the thing, though,” she tells me quietly. “And you probably don’t want to hear it, but I’m going to say it anyway. You’ve spent your whole life doing the same thing as me. It may look different, with your accounting degree and your townhouse and your determination to keep your feet on the ground.

  “That doesn’t mean you aren’t running, Sage. Because you are. You’ve spent your whole life running from your feelings, running from your fears. Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like if you ever stopped?”

  Chapter 23

  Shawn

  “You’re an idiot.”

  I ignore Tanner, concentrating on the four hundred pounds I’m currently squatting instead of his annoying voice. Or the fact that it’s been three days since I’ve seen or spoken to Sage. Or the fact that I currently feel like someone broke me in half and didn’t bother to even try to sew me back together.