by LJ Evans
You threw a mushroom at him.
“We always celebrate there. It’s tradition,” you told him.
“That’s really all you want?” Justice asked with a frown. As if he didn’t want to disappoint you.
“Really. I don’t want to make a big deal of it. It’s not like I’ve got big plans or anything.” You said it with a load of self-deprecation in your voice.
I didn’t understand it, but it only made me want to show you all the more why you were worth more than you let yourself believe.
As we left that night, I heard Justice’s comment to you about not moving in with me. You didn’t think I had, but when you told him that moving in with me was the right thing, my heart filled again with the same happiness I’d felt that morning. As you walked toward me with the sunset glinting off your hair, I was overcome with more images that I wanted to bang out in glass and steel.
But I also knew it would have to wait because when you reached me with that heart-stopping smile, I knew all I was going to be able to do that night was touch you until you moaned and smiled at me with that contented smile that was mine alone.
♫ ♫ ♫
The next morning, I woke up with that sunset vision of you still in my head, and I knew I needed a few things I didn’t have in my studio to make it come to life. So I took you to the junkyard for the first time.
It was also the first time you rode my motorcycle, and I couldn’t help but think of the first time I’d gone to the junkyard with Cam. That wasn’t comparing you to Cam, it was just a memory coming back of another time at another junkyard with another girl. She’d ridden on the back of my bike too. And she’d come back to the studio in my grandparents’ barn and seen the waterfall and been impressed.
You didn’t seem all that impressed by the junkyard. And you didn’t take to an assignment for finding things like Cam had.
“I’m going to look for an old radio to take out of a car. Can you go look for some kind of orange ceramic or glass?” I said and tried to walk away, but you grabbed my hand.
I looked down, and I was surprised to see wariness on your face. “Bella?”
You eyeballed the grease monkeys working in the yard, and the other rough-and-tumble men looking for parts like me. I realized you were way out of your element.
“Hey. It’s okay. You can just stick with me.” But then your independence emerged.
“Nah. Just had to get my bearings for a moment. Any place you suggest?”
I looked around and realized that I didn’t want you anywhere that I couldn’t see you either. I gripped your hand tighter and all but dragged you with me. We found an old Buick that I tore the radio out of while you helped me by handing me tools. We shoved it into my duffle and headed off to another section of the yard. I’d pick up random pieces, and you’d watch with curiosity in your eyes.
After about an hour, I was done for the day. As we left, you noticed an old Tiffany-style lamp that had several panels cracked.
“This is so sad,” you said with true emotion in your voice. “This was probably in somebody’s house for several generations.”
I took a closer look. “Nah, it’s a knock off. You don’t have to feel bad.”
You looked shocked. “Wait, what?”
I shrugged. “I went to art school too.”
I picked up the lamp and carried it with me toward the front office.
“I’m sorry,” you started as if you’d offended me. You hadn’t. “I keep forgetting you went to college. I think it’s because the idea of you sitting in a class seems so contradictory to everything else about you.”
“There were times I wanted to give up.” That was the truth. I was never good at doing what other people wanted me to do. With art, I’d always had more leeway than with regular classes.
“What made you stay?”
“Mac. My grandparents.”
“Who’s Mac?”
I stopped and looked down into your gorgeous face. I’d never told anyone in L.A. about Mac. I doubted Locke even knew. Mac and Marisella were why I’d survived that last year in New York. Especially after my mom.
“Mac is a gang prevention officer in the NYPD.”
You looked a little startled. You swallowed. “Were you in jail?”
I traced your cheek with my finger. “Would it matter?”
“No.” You said it so instantaneously that I believed you.
“It would to your family,” I said, watching you, and saw the flicker of acknowledgement in your eyes that you would never admit. “But no, I’ve never been arrested.”
“So, how’d you meet Mac?”
“My dad was a low-level drug dealer for a gang, and Mac was tasked with intervening with known gang kids.”
“I bet he doesn’t meet with much success.”
I didn’t comment.
“So, Mac?”
I cringed inwardly.
“CPS was called when I turned sixteen. Between my social worker and Mac, I got sent to live with my grandparents while they arranged for me to have an audition at LaGuardia.”
“Wow.”
We stopped at the office, I paid some cash, and then we made it back to the bike. We had to strap the lamp onto the seat with some bungee cords. I shoved the duffle over my shoulder, pulling it to the front so that you could climb on and still wrap your arms around my waist. When we were settled and almost ready to take off, you let me know you were still taking in everything I’d said.
“Why was CPS called?”
My body tensed. Uncomfortable with the direction you were going but wanting to be honest with you. You deserved that much. “Broken ribs, after there’d been too many visible bruises.”
You squeezed me tight, your strong arms reaching all the way around me as if you could make the pain inside me go away. But there wasn’t really any pain there from my dad. Not until it reached my mom. And I didn’t want you to feel any goddamn pity for me. I didn’t deserve it. I’d been a prick to many of the same people who’d been good to me.
Later that night, when we were lying tangled in each other’s arms, you began a slow trail of your fingers up the scar on my left side. I could tell your brain was back to what I’d said earlier about Mac and CPS.
“Tell me,” you said quietly. I wasn’t sure I could do what you were asking of me. You were asking so much more than I’d ever given. Did you realize that?
“Seth?” you prodded quietly.
“Hmm.”
“Tell me.”
I pulled away and sat at the end of the bed, head in my hands. “It’s not worth talking about.”
“How can you say that?”
I stood up facing you, anger flooding me. “Don’t. Don’t even pity me.”
You sat up on the bed, your own anger flaring, eyes flashing. “Is that what you think?”
You moved across the bed so that you were kneeling in front of me with your hands on my chest. The t-shirt you wore clinging to your naked bits underneath. You looked ravishing with those stormy eyes and rosy cheeks. And I realized, as I had before, that whatever you demanded, I would always give to you.
“I just want to know what happened to you. Not so I can pity you, but so I can understand you.”
“Do you want to talk about your parents?”
“If you want to hear about them, I’d be happy to tell you. But right now…right now, I want to hear about you.”
I groaned.
“Tell me,” you insisted, searching my face with eyes still storming, but storming now with emotions I wasn’t sure I wanted to read.
But I was still angry at you for making me say it, so it came out like I was yelling. I’m sorry. “I went to pay the rent for my mom. My grandparents would send it to me so that it didn’t get spent on drugs. I’d always stop in to see her while I was there. This time, when I got there, Mom wasn’t breathing. My shit-for-brains dad was in the chair next to her, high as a kite. I called 911, which
somehow woke his crazy ass up, and he tried to get me to hang up because he had a couple bricks of drugs laid out on the counter and didn’t want anyone in the place. I picked up my mom, and I knew…”
I stopped, trying to disassociate from that feeling of my mom’s dead weight in my arms. Of my dad trying to grab at me. At her. I took a deep breath and moved on, calmer this time.
“I made it to the hallway and he followed…with a cracked Jack Daniels bottle that he used on my side.” I looked up at the ceiling. “I barely touched him, but he hit the floor, and I got her to the street.”
“Jesus!”
I looked into your eyes and saw tears there. I hated it. Didn’t want you to feel sad or pity or anything like that for me.
“That’s how your mom died?” When I didn’t respond, you went on. “How long were you in the hospital?”
“Couple days.”
“What happened after?”
“Funeral. Finished at LaGuardia. Moved to L.A. when Otis accepted me.”
You took my face into your hands so that I was forced to look at you, and you rubbed your fingers along the scruff that had appeared even though I’d shaved that morning, your thumb rubbing my chin before hovering over my lips.
“I’m sorry your life was shitty,” you said. There was no pity in your tone. Sorrow. But no pity.
I took your lips into mine and kissed you savagely. But you met my roughness with your own. And as I covered you with my lips and my tongue, I felt for the first time in a long time—maybe for the first time ever—that the ugly life I’d lived had actually led me to something good. To you.
We were connected in some way. A pair of those crazy figure eights spinning away and toward each other. Like Abuela had said: I’d found someone in my life who was meant to be there. I know that Cam was supposed to be part of my life too. She saved me from becoming my father, but you…you saved me from myself.
PJ After Letter Six
BAD MEDICINE
“Now I’m addicted and your kiss is the drug.”
-Bon Jovi, Sambora, & Child
Reading Seth’s letter about his parents and that awful moment makes PJ hurt all over again for him. How could any father do that to his son? Her father had been loving and kind and told dumb jokes like all embarrassing dads did. Even at thirteen, he’d already started teasing her about the shotgun he’d have at the ready when she first brought a boy home. When she’d remind him that he didn’t have a shotgun, he said he planned on buying one just for that purpose.
If only he’d been around to stop her from the carousel of boys she’d let in her life. Of course, she wouldn’t have been looking to fill the void in her heart if her parents hadn’t died.
She realized soon after Seth had told her his story that his possessiveness was rooted in the belief that she would leave him like everyone else had. And she had, and that twists her gut with guilt.
♫ ♫ ♫
Seth said that he’d been patient while waiting for her to move in. He was. But he also wasn’t. It ended with a month that was full of moments that bound them together tighter than she’d ever been tied to someone before; and yet was also full of moments that would pull at those same bindings causing them to unravel around them.
There were moments when his need to see her was so sweet that it hurt. One evening, in a week when she’d had very little time for him, Seth showed up at her apartment. When she answered the door and saw him, she was about to scold him. But then he leaned in and kissed her like he hadn’t seen her in a month, when it really had only been a few days, and there was nothing left to scold. Because she’d missed him too.
She pulled back from his lips, but didn’t push him away.
“I’m in the middle of writing a paper. Doctor Gellar is completely over-the-top with this comparison of Byzantine and Medieval statues he wants us to do. I need to concentrate.”
“I think I might be able to help with that.”
She didn’t want him to help her with her paper. She wanted to earn her grade on her own, and he seemed to understand that—or at least read the stubbornness that took over her face.
“Bring your computer down to the pool. I have dinner set up for you. That’s it. Just dinner. You need to eat,” he said, pushing at her objections.
He was right. She did need to eat, and whatever he’d brought was going to be hands down better than the microwave food that waited for her in the refrigerator. So she grabbed her computer and her books and followed him down.
When they entered the gate, PJ stopped, breath held, at the scene in front of her. He’d made up one of the glass poolside tables with a paisley tablecloth and lit candles that were blowing slightly in the breeze that had settled in. There were flowers in a white ceramic pitcher, and semi-clear aqua-colored dishes that matched both the flowers and the tablecloth.
It was a scene from a magazine that you wouldn’t be able to look away from. Seth was an artist. He loved to make everything visually pleasing, and he had done just that.
“How long did this take?” she asked, stunned.
He didn’t respond. He just pulled her over and held her chair. She stacked her schoolwork at her feet, unwilling to ruin the beautiful table he’d set.
When he uncovered the plate for her, it revealed homemade mac and cheese with garlic bread and green beans. She just stared at the simple meal, heart in her throat.
She was afraid to look at him. Afraid that if she did she’d lose the little composure she had, but eventually she breathed out, “How did you know?”
“You wrote about it,” he said casually. As if it was obvious.
She had. But it had been several years ago in a blog post that was so old she’d forgotten it herself. It had been her sophomore year. She’d been stressed about finals and a professor that was being a jerk, and she’d written the post almost like a diary page.
When she was a little kid and having a bad week, her mom would make this meal for her. It was comfort food. It was her mom’s way of saying that everything was going to be fine. In the post, she’d wished that her mom was still around to do it again because she was in need of comfort. She needed proof that everything was going to turn out fine.
But that blog post had been hundreds of posts ago. It was buried so deep on her site that she wasn’t sure how he’d found it unless he’d read them all. Which just made her heart stop in her chest all over again.
“You read all my posts?”
He shrugged and sat down at his own plate, as if his reading everything she’d ever written was just something anyone would do. Christ, Justice hadn’t even read all her posts, and he was her biggest fan.
“Thank you,” she croaked out, trying not to cry. She wasn’t sure if she was thanking him for the meal or for loving her enough to read all of her words.
Because she knew that he did love her even though he hadn’t said the words. And she loved him back even though she hadn’t said the words either. She loved him regardless of his rough edges and his possessiveness, because his soul spoke to her soul with his ability to be generous and kind when the world had been neither to him.
She turned to the meal, wanting to eat it. Wanting to make sure he knew that she loved everything he had done, that she loved him, but her throat was so tight she wasn’t sure she could do it without choking. On the food or the words that were trying to get out of her.
“It was the last meal she made me,” PJ finally told him quietly.
He looked across at her, and she could see the remorse that entered his eyes because he hadn’t known, and now he felt like he’d done something wrong. As if he wanted to take it all back.
“No, don’t! Please don’t feel bad.” She rose from her chair and went to him. She sat in his lap and he buried his head into her neck.
“It reminds me of the good things,” she continued. “I try so hard most days to forget everything about them because it hurts so much that they left. That they died befor
e they could see me graduate even eighth grade. That they won’t be here when I complete college. That they won’t be here to walk me down the aisle or make goo-goo eyes at my first child. It hurts…”
“Bella,” Seth interjected with anguish in his voice. Something you rarely heard.
“No. Listen. This. This meal. It reminds me of something good. Of how they cared about me. How they made me laugh when I was sad. How they would take me to the beach and throw kelp and seawater at me until I came out of whatever pissy mood I was in, and how I would chase them back with strings of seaweed.”
For a moment, she lost herself in the memories. They were the first happy ones she’d had of then in a long time because she’d told the truth when she’d said she tried to forget.
Seth’s fingers at her waist tightened as if he was battling for his own control, his fingers embedding into her skin, bringing her back to him and the dinner he’d made.
“So, thank you. Thank you for reminding me of them. I don’t want to forget them just because it hurts too much to remember.”
She kissed him tenderly and then ate the meal he’d made to comfort her. Like her mom would have.
When they were done, she pulled out her books, and he started cleaning up. When he’d packed everything up, she stood and dipped a hand down into the pool and splashed it at him. Because it’s what her dad would have done. He would have lightened the mood with teasing and pranks.
Seth started toward her with payback in his eyes, but she ran out the gate laughing, and surprisingly, he let her go. But PJ was sure it was only because he knew that she’d show up at his house the next night after work as she had every Friday night since they’d started dating.
And she had.
And it turned into one of their first arguments. Or at least one of the threads that started to unravel around them.
It was Saturday morning. She’d gotten ready to go to the gym and found him in the kitchen. She watched him work at the sink for a moment before dropping her rent money on the counter. It was cash because she thought it was weird to hand him a check. It was the money she normally paid for her apartment and that she needed to give to him even though they hadn’t talked about money.