by JD Hawkins
“She left when I was nine—haven’t seen her since.”
“Really? She just abandoned you? Didn’t even try to take you with her?”
“Yeah. I guess I looked a bit too much like my dad. To be honest, I don’t blame her. He was a mess after he lost it all.”
“How so?”
“You name it…alcohol, gambling debts… He did a bunch of odd jobs wherever he could…whenever he was sober enough to earn booze money. But he was a good-looking guy, women always chased him, and ultimately he just found it easier to shack up with them for as long as they’d tolerate him.
“That’s how I grew up, moving from place to place with him—tagging along, more like. Took care of myself pretty much, and he didn’t really notice me until I was twelve, and even then, only because he thought I could help him make rent and gambling money.”
“Oh gosh…that sounds so hard. I’m sorry you went through that.”
I shrug and finally put the glass down to grab my fork.
“He died when I was twenty-five. I hadn’t seen him for about seven years at that point. The only other people at his funeral was a woman I didn’t know who he’d met only two weeks prior, and a landlord who only came to ask me for his back rent.”
“Wow…” Hazel whispers, frozen, staring at me with a piece of baked brie puff pastry precariously balanced on her fork. “So much makes sense now…”
I laugh harder than I have at anything all night. “What do you mean?”
“You know… Is that why you’re so obsessed with that big-shot job? You feel like you’ve got something to prove because you grew up like that? No security, no permanence…”
“Maybe,” I say, then look away a little shamefully. “I know it’s not as honorable a reason as why you chose to become a nurse.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, either,” Hazel says, gently. “Wanting something solid in your life.”
I look at her for a moment, but have to look away again to think properly.
“All I know,” I say firmly, “is that if I ever have kids, I don’t want them to go through anything even remotely like what I went through growing up.”
“Kids?” Hazel says with a playful smile, meeting my seriousness with humor.
“What?” I ask, a little confused.
“Nothing,” Hazel says, turning to her food but still wearing that amused smile. “It’s just interesting to hear a guy talk about having children. Usually it’s like, taboo.”
I laugh and shrug. “Yeah…maybe. Forget that, it’s dumb.”
“No! It’s really not. It’s sweet. I think you’d make a great dad,” she says, and the look on her face is so honest and easy I can’t even try to be anything but honest in return.
“You know what I’d like?” I say, feeling loose and open. “To have a whole bunch of kids and just spoil them. Let them do whatever makes them happy, and always be there to pick up the pieces, to encourage them along. Give them room to fail, to make mistakes, to follow something that’s never going to amount to anything… Drop whatever I’m doing to do something with them whenever they want, make them grow up with smiles on their faces.”
The words come out without thought, lubricated by alcohol and Hazel’s gentle, deep brown eyes.
“I like that,” she says sweetly. “Though I don’t know if spoiling your kids and giving them everything they want is the best parenting.”
“It’s an extreme, sure,” I say, matching her playfulness, “but it’s better than the alternative. Trust me. Anyway, it’s not something I think will happen soon…if ever. Just…in the back of my mind, I guess I always assumed I’d have kids eventually. But who knows?”
She hums her acknowledgement and returns to her appetizer, both of us eating a while before lingering thoughts form into a question.
“What about you?” I ask.
“What?”
“Kids. Do you like kids?”
“I love kids—I mean, I work a lot with children at the hospital, so I have plenty of experience, and I always have a great time with them.”
“But what about having your own?”
Hazel hesitates a moment, twisting her lips like the answer is too complicated to say otherwise.
“I can’t even figure out dating right now, so I’m not even trying to think about children. You wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve dated…and how often it crashes and burns before we even hit the three-month mark. I mean, I try to keep an open mind, give things a real shot, let the vibe flow, you know? But it’s like I’m cursed or something.”
We return to eating a few more forkfuls, and then I add, “I don’t think you’re cursed. I think you just haven’t met the right person yet. Honestly, I think you’d make a great mom.”
Hazel laughs gently—a dismissive one though, as if my sincere comment is a little ridiculous, something she doesn’t agree with.
“Why not?” I ask.
“I’m...I dunno. I’m too much of a big kid myself sometimes.”
“That’s my favorite thing about you.”
“Sure, maybe it’s fun to be around, but am I responsible enough to be a parent? I don’t know…”
“I’m not sure I get what you mean.”
Hazel stops eating, and once again I get a glimpse of something more serious than usual in her expression.
“I…it’s just…all my friends a similar age to me seem so much more mature. Mia—you met her—she’s got a house, a husband, a little girl. Her brother Toby just got married, and he has his own business. Meanwhile I’m still dyeing my hair and dancing alone in my apartment and saying yes to every silly thing I’m invited to like I’m still sixteen years old and…ugh. Forget it. I’m just being silly.”
“You’re not. You can say it. Hey, I just told you I wanted to have a bunch of kids, and I wouldn’t say that out loud even when I’m alone.”
Hazel laughs. “I guess we’re in an ‘opening everything up’ kinda place, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling like even the joke is dangerous, but exciting.
Her smile fades a little when she goes back to thinking about it, and then she says, “Well, the thing is, I’m happy. Grateful. I have a job I love—a job I’m good at. Great friends. I’m independent. But sometimes…it feels like that’s it.”
“I don’t understand.”
She takes another deep breath before explaining.
“I’ve been a nurse for twelve years…my life has been the same for twelve years. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like I’ve just been treading water all that time. I’m still single. I’m still in L.A. I’m still renting crappy apartments. I still don’t have a cat like I always wanted because I rent crappy apartments. It kinda feels like I’m waiting for the next chapter of my life to start…but maybe this is just the end of the book.”
This time I don’t say anything because I don’t even know what to say. Years of not caring about other people has made me an amateur at it. Long before I could ever think of something sensitive and tactful enough to say, Hazel continues.
“You want me to be really honest, Nate?”
“Of course.”
“I’m starting to wonder if I just can’t do it.”
“Do what?”
Hazel’s eyes glisten as they look up, searching for words, catching the light from the chandeliers. I can pick out the flecks of gold in them, and I’m mesmerized while I wait for her to speak.
“Be a proper person. I don’t…I don’t know if that’s the right way to say it—I don’t know if there’s even words for what I’m trying to say… It’s like I told you, I’m grateful for what I have, who I am. But I just can’t imagine myself as anything more than the ‘great friend’ or the ‘nurse every patient likes,’ you know?
“And it’s not all about relationships, or getting married and having kids…but that kinda typifies all of it. With Theo, for instance, I saw the signs early on. I always see the signs. But I still stayed, and tried, because I figured that noth
ing’s perfect, and you always have to work at it. And like every other time, I just couldn’t make anything stick, it just fell apart in my hands, and I’m starting to think maybe I’m the problem. Maybe I’m just incapable of being anything more than I am, than I have been for years.”
Hazel turns back to her starter, but it’s mostly gone now, and once again I find myself flailing mentally. Thoughts tripping over themselves as I search my mind for the right thing to say, the words that might lift that heaviness from her brow, that might soothe her pain the way she soothes mine just being near me.
“Theo was a fucking idiot though.”
Hazel laughs, and looks back up at me. “Thanks,” she says easily. “Nice of you to say, even though you didn’t know him.”
“I know he’s dumb enough to marry a woman he can’t have known longer than three months,” I reply quickly, seriously. “I know he’s mean enough to send an invitation to the woman he left for her. And hopefully he’s sane enough to realize what a mistake he made when he sees you in that red dress tomorrow.”
She laughs gently at my clumsy attempt to flatter her, then says, “Thanks. But to be honest, Theo was one of the better ones even. Turns out being ‘fun’ and ‘lively’ and ‘free-spirited’ doesn’t attract the kind of guys who actually take you seriously.”
“I’d take you in a second.”
The words drop between us like a bunch of rocks on the table, heavy and sudden and more than a little dangerous.
I immediately wonder what the hell’s gotten into me, oscillating between struggling to find the right words, and blurting out the wrong ones without even thinking. They seem to echo in the silent seconds after, the space between us. I hear how firmly and with how much conviction I said it, and realize I won’t be able to cover them up, to take them back.
Hazel looks at me with a smile more curious than pleased, surprise and confusion in her eyes—or at least, so it seems until she speaks, and her words are full of natural confidence. “You know you’re just saying that because it can never happen, right?”
“Why not?” I say, doubling down instinctively at the challenge, rather than letting her give me the out.
“Did you forget about being on the verge of a big job you’ve been struggling to get in Chicago? The job that will ‘break you’ if you don’t get it?” she answers, wryly. “Are you going to tell me you’d give all that up to date a girl you’ve spent about four full days with?”
She leaves a pause for me to double down again, but I can’t meet the challenge—not even hypothetically.
“And I’m certainly not going to give up being a nurse in Los Angeles. And as for long-distance…I won’t do that again, as much as I like you. I won’t.”
Hazel turns back to her food, mercifully pulling her eyes from me, and I grab my glass, looking elsewhere, feeling like an utter fool for even going down this path.
She’s right. I know she is. But she’s smart enough to kill off the idea, while I’m clown dumb enough to even bring it up and wreck everything. These precious moments together, the chemistry between us. Believing a miracle could happen was nice, knowing it can’t is terrible, and me mistaking one for the other was absolutely stupid.
“Was everything all right with the appetizer? Are you finished?” the waiter says, suddenly appearing beside us.
We look at each other, a shared look that’s painful for how much more distance there seems there.
Reluctantly, we both mumble, “Yes.”
The silence between us as the entrees are brought is tough, and we break it by making a few comments about the food. The usual small talk, the kind I sleepwalk through during business dinners. The words and the reactions between us seem to be coming from two different people, two stand-ins. The real versions of us elsewhere, trapped deep in our own minds, our own bodies.
I’m three bites into my steak when I actually speak again, feeling like for the first time during the whole evening I have the right words.
“I’m sorry.”
Hazel looks up at me, and I see the veneer of politeness wipe from her face, the warmth of her real self returning in a gentle smile, soft eyes. “What are you sorry for, Nate? It is what it is.”
“I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”
“It’s fine. Do you think I haven’t thought about it? Besides, it’s my fault for going on about Theo, and feeling sorry for myself, and making you pity me.”
“I don’t pity you.”
Hazel laughs, and I already feel like I missed not hearing it for the past five minutes. “You’re getting very good at lying, Nate.”
“I don’t. I—if I pity you, it’s the same kind of pity I direct at myself. Because I kinda feel like we’re the same.”
When Hazel hears this, she leans back into her chair with a big smile like she’s being entertained. “The same?”
“Yeah.”
“Go on. Explain. This should be fun,” she says gleefully.
I match her smile and lean over the table before speaking.
“Okay… Think about it, we both had these…interesting childhoods that affected our choices in life. You for the better, and me…not so much. We both just got out of relationships with absolute assholes.” She laughs at this, and it encourages me to keep going. “We both think dyed hair looks great on you.”
Hazel laughs and leans forward suddenly, eager to play along.
“We both very much appreciate the value of you doing morning push-ups,” she says, eyes flickering down to indicate my chest.
“We both like sausages.”
“Both work too hard.”
“Both hate Theo,” I add.
“And Nicole.”
I raise a glass and Hazel instinctively grabs hers to clink against mine before we drink, trying not to laugh as we sip. Satisfied sighs and looks once we put the glasses back down, a warmth through me that I know she can feel, so that the distance between us feels irrelevant now. Only once we’ve drained all of the satisfaction from the silence do I feel like speaking again.
“That thing you said, about not knowing how to ‘be a real person,’” I remind her, Hazel casually eating her food while I take a break from mine, “I get it. I really get it.”
“Do you?” she asks, not in a challenging way, but as if she’s genuinely surprised.
“Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, not the way you do probably. Different. But…the same thing. I could find a girl to marry. Walk into another job with a good salary and make good money. But when it comes to people…connecting with them…living a normal life in the present moment, without a ton of baggage and obsessions and stupid fixations that you can’t even explain... I dunno.”
“I remember you saying you had to get your GED. Did you change schools a lot, growing up?” Hazel asks, the question surprising—but only for a second, until I realize how perceptive she’s being.
“Kinda. When I went to school at all, that is. Moving around that much, school became kind of an afterthought. Friends, too, I guess. I ended up hitting the books myself a lot of the time. Only went to college because I knew I needed a degree to earn the big bucks, so I could take care of myself, be independent. And I guess because I figured it was the only way to escape the same kind of life my dad lived.”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. I know she’s listening, considering me, and I hope she knows it’s mutual. The silence feels conclusive a little, satisfying. As if we’ve reached some new kind of understanding, a deeper connection. Our secrets and truths and confessions settling against each other like bricks in a house, solid and protected by one another now.
We focus on our food a while, but I struggle to raise an appetite, as if I’m satisfied already. I steal looks at her instead. Dim light glistening across the colors in her hair, delicate mouth carefully picking food from her fork, bare shoulders against the straps of her dress, still a deep gold from the tan she got at the hotel.
Suddenly everything else seems suffocati
ng and pointless—the restaurant, the hum of chatter, the food, the drink. All I want is her, to immerse myself in her. She makes me want to go wild, and this is the kind of place where that could never happen.
“You know what,” I say, draining my glass of wine and putting it down on the table decisively, “forget this. I’m done with dinner. Let’s go do something.”
She looks up at me, the typical amusement on her face when she’s presented with something new—a million miles from Nicole’s skepticism.
“Do something? Like what?” she says, her tone sounding open to the idea.
“I don’t know,” I reply, flailing again, but not caring that I have an impulse without a plan. “Let’s just ditch this place and…wing it.”
She lets out a little laugh, and it takes her only seconds to think about it. Then she wipes her lips with a napkin, tosses it onto her plate, and shrugs happily.
“Sure. Let’s wing it.”
15
Hazel
When we exit the restaurant, the street is as dark as it was inside.
I turn toward the valet, but before I can take a step, Nate takes my hand and starts leading me through the Friday night crowds. With his long strides and my high heels I can barely keep up, and there’s a sense of manic glee in him as he pulls me through the drunk laughter and milling crowds, across the neon-lit sidewalks and blaring music from the bars.
Down alleyways and through parking lots, across sidewalks and crosswalks; the sound of catcalls and car horns trailing behind us. Adrenaline mixing with the alcohol in our bodies, the city seeming more alive around us for the capricious way we move through it. When I catch sight of Nate’s face as he occasionally looks back at me, it’s boyishly alive, purposefully impulsive. An entirely different kind of handsome from the stoic, aloof statue I know him as, but maybe even more wildly attractive.
In between laughter and giggles, finding ourselves on a pedestrian bridge over rushing traffic on the 10 freeway, I call out to him. “Where the hell are you taking me, Nate?”
“I don’t know,” he calls back over his shoulder.