by A. L. Woods
He had tried to give her the world, which in his eyes had meant stability, a roof over her head, children—tiny humans who would depend on her for the fulfillment of their every need. Someone else to love more than herself.
In my father’s one-dimensional mind when it came to the feeble matters of the heart, Ma had just needed a purpose, needed someone to believe in her, something to believe in. He was a die-hard romantic, that one, and what had that gotten him? A broken heart, two kids, a couple of stints in prison, and a poorly hatched plan to fill my mother’s acrylic-nailed, nicotine-stained fingers with Benjamins that led to an early grave.
What had I gotten out of my parents’ disastrous union?
Survival instincts I wished I didn’t possess. Reflexes that were always on high alert. More grief than I knew what to do with. An inability to form a real attachment with anyone outside of Penelope, and a brain that could have doubled as a dartboard for a psychologist who wanted to play target practice.
To make matters worse, there was the unspoken yearly obligation to spend Thanksgiving with my mother, even though I knew what awaited me beyond the beaten-in door of my parents’ triple decker was going to leave me worse for wear for days. It was a whole lot of pain and unnecessary heartache I didn’t need to subject myself to—but did out of respect for my late father…and perhaps, because in some twisted, sick way, I felt like I deserved it. The pain. The discomfort. The vitriolic ridicule. My selfishness had killed the one good thing in our family, so if for two days out of the year I had to endure even a sliver of what I had left her to deal with—then that would be my cross to bear until either the cigarettes got me or Ma finally drank herself to death.
Sliding my mouse next to the keyboard, the monitor sprung to life, casting offensive blue light at me that burned my retinas. I was surprised to find an email already in my inbox after checking it all of an hour ago before the paper’s regular Monday morning meeting. Excitement ticked through me when I read the subject line from an email address I didn’t immediately recognize.
STORY.
The noun had me buzzing at the prospect of being able to cover something else again. As incorrigible as Sean Tavares had been, writing something outside of what had been initially assigned to me had felt like a strange sort of homecoming, a reminder of a dream I had left behind.
Double clicking on the email, a separate box populated on the screen, and just as quickly as the excitement had lit up inside of me—it vanished.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sean was the last person I wanted to hear from.
My body was practically vibrating in my chair as I reread the email that sat like an unpinned grenade in my inbox. I waited for the email to detonate and wipe itself from existence, but as my luck would have it, it sat there like a dud. The actual fucking audacity of that guy to contact me after the way we had parted. Unbridled rage suffused through me as I pulled on the edges of the window that housed the email, elongating the frame while my eyes worked at expunging the blithe email from existence and into my deleted folder through telekinesis.
My jaw rocked from side to side the longer I sat and reread the message that taunted me.
TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJ:STORY
Your story was cute.
Sean
A labored breath wheezed out of me as my eyes worked back and forth across the four-word sentence over and over again, the words embedding themselves into my brain. My eyes ran over every single letter that formed the email address, a blast of heated rage slamming into me as I found myself snagging on his adjective of choice.
The logical part of me knew better than to engage, but the anger only deepened as the jab marinated in my mind. Cute? My story was cute? My hand quaked when I punched the reply button with my mouse, fingertips battering the keyboard with the fury of my response, the loud clicking carrying through the office.
TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJ:RE: STORY
Fuck. Off.
I didn’t even consider for one moment that our office Internet firewall features might catch the response upon my clicking of Send. In fact, I didn’t think of much else, my ego having forced my pert nose into the air and turning my spine into a steeled piece of rod. I hope he found my response cute. Better yet, I hope he found it endearing.
I didn’t have even two minutes to savor the joy of my juvenility because the icon on my inbox lit up, the preview of a new email dancing in the upper right corner.
My finger was on the trigger before I could process what I was doing, heart kicking in my chest, nostrils flaring.
TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJ:WRONG FOOT?
I’m an ass. Let’s start over.
I want a rewrite.
Sean
Seething, I was seething. It felt as though someone had dropped a red-tinted piece of glass before my eyes. He wanted a rewrite? Well, wasn’t that just fucking peachy. Again, I didn’t pause to consider the ramifications of my hostility, my brain pushing my body into autopilot. I hit Reply, and began to type.
TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJ:RE: (CUT OFF) YOUR FOOT.
Go play in traffic. There’s your rewrite and conclusion.
Delayed hesitation swept through me after I hit Send. Admittedly, I had perhaps been needlessly caustic. Sean just seemed to arouse the worst parts of me, slivers of myself that I didn’t like. He also brought on a host of emotions that felt familiar and new all at the same time: Anger and frustration were old acquaintances, feeling like an occasionally worn pair of jeans that pinch a bit at the waist. Attraction and vulnerability, on the other hand…those were new contenders in my repertoire of emotions, and I didn’t know where they fit.
It was as though two sides of my brain were at war with each other.
Unsettled, I minimized the screen and got up for a cigarette break. I dug through my messenger bag on the end of my desk for the crinkled packet of Pall Malls. Would he reply? Did it matter? My central nervous system was out of control, my palms were sweating and my heart racing; it was the rational side of my schema that assured me that when you treated people this way, they backed off.
It would probably be best for both of us if he didn’t reply.
Several minutes later, I returned from the blustery cold of outdoors, cheeks reddened with the dissipating sting of frigid temperatures, and knuckles that were splitting from the lack of gloves. A warm hum consoled my soul from the nicotine, a forced spring in my step for the oh-so-endearing “coming soon” story I would write about the Eaton Theatre Group’s rendition of A Christmas Carol for next week’s issue. When I sat in front of my computer, another email waited, the little red icon taunting me.
And like a crack addict, I jumped for the next hit.
TO:[email protected]
FROM:[email protected]
SUBJ:HEMINGWAY
Here’s a quote for you.
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them.”
I know you’re scared, but give me a chance, Hemingway.
Sean
My breaths were ragged as they raked out of me, the words entrenching themselves into a part of my brain that felt alien. Trust? How did you trust someone you didn’t know? What was I to trust him with? The statement was too broad, too forward, to come from someone I barely knew. Trust was earned, not given. Especially for someone who had made a point of humiliating me, and then manipulating me when I made the mistake of showing him that he had my attention.
Held my attention…
My desk phone jangled, the ringtone intrusive in the otherwise quiet office, nothing but the photocopier and barely perceptible murmurs acting as background noise. Suspicion swept through me, my eyes narrowing at it, an awareness coursing through my veins as I moved to lif
t the phone from the receiver, pressing it against my ear.
“Eaton Advocate, Raquel speaking.”
My thighs involuntarily clenched together at the dull thumping of hammers in the background and a bedlam of other sounds that belonged on a construction site filled my ears.
Silence seemed to stretch on between us for what felt like an eternity until I heard him draw in air through his lips, impatience forcing his hand.
“You were taking too long to reply, so I thought I’d take my shot.”
Whether I wanted it or not, my ears were greedy for the sound of his voice, my lids dropping shut, absorbing the intoxicating baritone sound with his Bristol County pronunciation.
For some reason, at that exact moment I recalled my dad’s words:
“Take your shot, kid, ya never know when you’re gonna get another one.”
“What do you want?” I said in a clipped tone, straightening my shoulders.
“Well, since we’re cutting straight to the chase, I want you.”
Time seemed to stop, his words bouncing in my mind in a room that suddenly went quiet, ricocheting off walls, bumping into stilled bodies, colliding into furniture, and landing at my feet. The proverbial ball in my court, demanding I take my shot, too.
My gaze dropped to the discarded newspaper, his arresting stare matching my own with a smug self-possession that pissed me off. I flipped the paper over, getting his mug out of sight. I didn’t need to feel the intensity of his imposing presence right now; let him grin at the surface of my desk.
“That’s too bad.” I countered, my voice unnaturally even despite the anxiety with a smattering of exhilaration that clawed at my insides.
His laugh was deeply masculine, a rich rumble in his chest. I felt the corners of my mouth lifting with an unconscious smile that upon realization of its appearance, I struggled to force it off, wanting to stow it away for someone who deserved it.
“I’m real busy, so if we’re done here, I’m hanging up now.”
“I’m sorry if I upset you last week, Hemingway. Penelope caught me off guard with the interview, and you weren’t what I was expecting to come barreling through the door.”
My heart galloped forward, the errant muscle having developed a mind of its own in the last eight days, to the point where I wasn’t even sure I was myself anymore. “And what were you expecting?” Not that I cared, but for curiosity’s sake, I wanted to know. I was a writer, after all.
“Someone a little more like Penelope.”
I caught my features tightening in the reflection of my monitor—those iMac G3’s are notorious for glare—that had darkened with its unemployment.
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Disappoint?” He chuckled. “Hemingway, if I had known it was you coming through the door, I would have shaved.”
Shave? But I liked his beard. I had found myself wondering what the scruff of it might feel like on the inside of my thighs after a long day at work, what the calluses of his hands that trailed alongside his mouth would do to me when they finally reached their destination.
“I really do have to go,” I murmured, a dampness forming between my legs that was humiliating.
“Have dinner with me,” he pressed, as if the inevitability of my departure was irrelevant.
“No.” I winced as my mind unleashed another inward diatribe that was so vitriolic in nature, it was on par with that of my mother’s tirades.
“Dinner,” he repeated. “And if you still hate me afterward, I’ll get outta your hair.”
A challenge. “Somehow I don’t think that’s true,” I mumbled, just clearly enough for him to make out my words.
He chuckled, the sound a drunken melody in my ears that made my head spin, “True. I would just find another way to keep you till dessert.”
The natural ease of his jests spurred something inside of me, a pained longing that carried a kind of inexplicable sadness as it swam over me, soft waves kissing the surface, ebbing closer and closer to the shoreline.
“What do you know about me, Sean?”
My question was met with a pregnant pause. I heard a wisecrack that sounded muffled, yet somehow loud over the silence that filtered between us.
“Not much, but,” he stalled, his contemplation deafening, “I know you felt that…” he was searching for the word. A word that I myself had struggled to come up with. “That shift in energy when I touched you.”
My eyelids dropped.
Molten lava swept through my body, a heat so unbecoming that I felt myself oscillating between fear and exaltation of the newfound thrill that was on par with what it felt like when his skin had grazed mine. I knew what he was talking about, because I had relived it for hours. It had felt like fireworks going off…dozens of Roman candles eating up the darkness of the sky, robbing the stillness of the night with their crackle and flash. A sight so enthralling, you couldn’t look away.
But then there were the sparklers, so innocuous, a child’s delight, that wrote out a warning to me so brilliant and dazzling that it nearly robbed me of my vision.
Run.
My lids popped open, and I lengthened my spine for no one but my wounded confidence. “I didn’t feel anything.”
It wasn’t a lie, because what I had felt wasn’t anything–it was everything.
He chuckled, and for the briefest of moments, I thought he realized how pointless his efforts were with me. I was elusive, like a rogue butterfly who would never settle long enough to be strapped within the confines of his net.
“So, let me give you another demonstration.”
My body swayed in my seat, my rib cage eating the edge of my desk. One hand tangled itself into my hair, my fingers pulling on the short strands, and another tightened breath dragged itself out of me.
“Sean, do me a favor.” My hackles rose as I adjusted the sails on my boat, steering the helm toward another trajectory, one that was safe and familiar. “Stop wasting my time.”
“I will when you stop wasting mine.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not calling you, you’re calling me.” I hastily got to my feet, the phone clutched tightly in my fist, my knuckles straining, fingernails digging into the lacquered plastic.
Karen, like a gynecologist appointment you had been avoiding, chose that exact moment to stick her head into my cubicle, a smarmy smile teasing the edges of her mouth. Her hazel stare was reminiscent of that of a snake, searching for its next kill.
“Everything all right in here, Raquel?” Her saccharine tone told me everything I needed to know—she had the attention of the entire office.
Everyone always paid attention when they heard the sound of a rattlesnake approaching, you would be foolish to miss that vibration of warning.
“Everything’s just peachy, Karen.”
“You sure?” she asked, her paralyzing venom lacing the edges of her question, her gaze fixating on the phone like it was a new structure in my hand. “Did you want to forward that call to me? I do have a better head for the more difficult interviews than you do.”
I shouldn’t have taken the bait, but I did. I ran toward it headfirst, like a rogue soldier leading a charge into an open battlefield where I was outnumbered, out-weaponized, and fucked…royally, totally fucked. I was a mouse who thought she could outrun the snake because she was smaller and more nimble on her feet—forgetting that the snake had length and tactics to it.
“Get. Out,” I snapped, my molars contacting, chest rising and falling. On the other end, Sean whistled, the sound absorbing into a laugh.
I was a joke. A running gag amongst everyone around me.
Karen touched her bottom lip with the tips of her fingers, her mouth popping open as she invoked her flare for drama. “Oh dear, I’m only trying to help.”
“No, what you’re trying to be is a—”
“It’s not worth it, Raquel.” Sean’s voice was like a beacon in a darkened room, the easy-natured tone of his voice free of humor, a kin
d of safety net I hadn’t realized I needed. My mouth clamped shut, lips rolling into a line so thin and painful, I thought they would bruise.
Karen’s brow quirked. “I’m trying to be a…?”
I wanted to say, A nosey, self-righteous pain in my ass.
The office was generally quiet, but now I could hear the traffic of the town square two streets over…the hot dog vendor peddling to lunch seekers. Most importantly, I heard the sound of my heart pounding in my chest, demanding I trust Sean with it long enough for him to inevitably break it, etching another scar on it, to serve as a reminder of how close I danced on the edge of danger.
If Karen’s brows crept any higher, they would be in her hairline. In a single exhale, the thoughts I had collected left me in a rush. “You’re trying to be helpful, but I really do have it.” The words wounded my ego as they left me. My smile felt weak on my lips, but it was there, and it was enough to melt Karen’s frosty exterior.
Her jaw went slack and her hand dropped to her side, wrapping itself around her opposite wrist. My calm reaction surprised her as much as it did me.
Balance had been restored. The soundtrack of the office resumed, as if someone had hit the Play button again. Earl scolded the photocopier, Shirley started the coffeemaker, columnists brainstormed together.