Awake (Reflections Book 3)

by A. L. Woods

  Pride flickered in Rosa’s eyes, making my stomach sink like an anvil existed inside of me. “Sim,” she replied with a nod of her head, flashing me a gap-toothed smile that tragically melted my insides despite my desire to fight her. “What you are?”

  I swallowed the emotion that thickened my throat. Of course, she was fucking Portuguese. Because, apparently, moving to the other side of the country was not enough for the universe to throw me a damn bone and stop serving me reminders of the guy I left behind. I was mentally throwing God, Buddha, Baby Jesus, Holly Jane, Dad, and whoever the fuck else was purportedly up in the sky a big ol’ fuck you.

  I probed at the inside of my cheek, clearing my throat. “American.”

  There was that hmph again. “Your parents?”

  “Dad was Irish.” I pushed a grain of rice around in the container, thinking. “Ma is a hodgepodge of shit.” A mutt, really. Although that felt discriminatory to dogs, didn’t it?

  Rosa’s nose scrunched up, then a lightbulb illuminated in her eyes. Her change of subject was far from smooth. “You see paper?” She kicked her chin to the pack of bond paper. “You use.”

  I saw it when I got out of the bathroom and opted to ignore it. I should have known that wouldn’t be an option. “Where did you get this?” I asked, eyeing the sealed package. “The only paper I thought cleaning people toted around on their carts was of the toilet variety.”

  She gave me a knowing smile. I didn’t flinch when she approached me, resigning myself to this pint-sized tyrant’s exploitation. “If you’re going to hit me again, at least let me get decent first.” The request seemed fair.

  Rosa didn’t hit me. On the contrary, the cleaning lady pulled the towel I’d coiled around my head free and smoothed my hair behind my ears. I froze in my seat when she placed a kiss on the crown of my head. “I come back later with your dinner.”

  My insides heaved as emotion flooded me, my bottom lip trembling. “I don’t need you to do that; I can feed myself.” I said the words, but I didn’t mean them, and I hoped she realized that. There was an unspoken part of me that craved her affection with an unbecoming desperation.

  Either Rosa didn’t care, she hadn’t heard me, or she responded to whatever she found in my eyes, because at five p.m. on the nose, she came back with another meal.

  And every day after that, too.

  “You can’t just tell me what to do, Rosa.” I fought against her as she pulled me closer to the desk with a Herculean effort. Carpet burn set off in my heels, but that bowling ball of a woman ignored me, her grip tightening on my wrist in a manner that guaranteed a bruise.

  Stubborn pain in the ass.

  With a deft shove, I windmilled, my hands bracing against the lip of the desk to catch myself from falling into it. I slammed her with a glare served to her from over my shoulder. “You don’t get to throw me around like a doll every time I don’t do what you want, you know.”

  “Then you should do what I say.” She nodded, her hands pitching a tent on her hips. “When you listen, we have no problems. You no listen, then…” Her voice trailed off, the threat not escaping my observation.

  I didn’t need to ask her what would happen otherwise, because I knew what that entailed. I hadn’t had a foray with the handle of that feather duster for weeks now, but she wasn’t above remedial efforts in the form of flicking my ear or chastising me.

  I couldn’t believe I was allowing myself to get my ass kicked by a fifty-seven-year-old, five-foot nothing Portuguese woman armed with nothing but a feather duster and a very short temper.

  “Raquel, sentar.”

  “We already went over this; I don’t understand you when you speak Portuguese.”

  She provided me with a pointed look, sighing. “You learn.”

  “Not that simple, lady,” I grunted, my legs giving way to her. Listen, I know what you’re thinking. How is it I’m being bullied by this shrimp-sized woman? I don’t have an answer for you. Not a good one, anyway. Maybe it was the fact that since she had brought me food that day, I stopped throwing up. The room didn’t stink anymore, and I made bathing part of my daily repertoire.

  And she hugged me. Every single day.

  I didn’t want to, but I needed it. I needed that human connection, that reminder I was still alive, that the broken heart I possessed still beat inside of my chest, blood still flowed through me and the reminder that I was still alive.

  Periodically, I allowed Rosa to drag me from beyond the safety of my cave. She took me shopping at a local outdoor outlet to get clothes that fit. A waste of three hundred dollars, but she convinced me I needed it. She made me go on a walk with her after dinner every night. The feather duster came along too in case I got surly—as if I was twelve, not six months shy of my twenty-ninth birthday. When the weather was shit, we watched a telenovela on one of the twenty channels that the television had. Her comprehension of Spanish was way better than mine, and sometimes, she tried to explain what was going on to me in her fractured English.

  Most of the time, though, I was just happy to be near her, because being with someone felt good. Talking to someone who didn’t pretend they didn’t hate me every single day was a salve on my soul.

  Penelope and I still weren’t talking, but not from a lack of trying. I called her daily. Sometimes, she sat on the line while I talked in circles, other times, she yelled at me and I listened. But lately, we sat on the line in silence, waffling on what to say or do next until she inevitably hung up after muttering something about a doctor’s appointment or needing to feed her fish. Pen didn’t have a fish, but I didn’t question it. Rosa seemed to have a radar for when this was going to happen, because that was her cue to jump into action and try to pull me toward the typewriter.

  “Why you have this if you no use?”

  Simple explanation, really. One of your compatriots gave it to me as a gift, then ran my heart over with his Jeep. The end. That’s the story.

  No, I never told her that. She knew, though. Or at least, I felt as if she did. That was the only explanation for her metaphorical hard-on the size of the island she’d left to see me and this typewriter coexisting. Or it was just Rosa being Rosa.

  “Someone gave it to me.”

  “Who?”

  “You ask too many questions,” I said, clenching my teeth until the ache set off. “You wanna go for a walk?”

  “Later,” she replied, waving me off. She neared the desk, picked up a sheet of eight-and-a-half by eleven and fed it through the platen. Then she turned the roller knob on the right side. “You type now.”

  I wouldn’t know what to type if I was still being paid for it. “No, suh.”

  Rosa frowned. When she had asked why I talked funny—as if she didn’t have an accent herself—I told her I was from Massachusetts. She returned the next day with a printed copy of MapQuest that delineated the drive, sporting an expression that I couldn’t discern meant she was impressed or horrified.

  That made two of us.

  “You type, or you tell me why you drive here.”

  I’d worked pretty damn hard to keep Sean off my mind, and I wouldn’t change that now. I didn’t trust myself to not relapse into fail-safe habits that were toxic but took the edge off of the pain that still existed beyond all of Rosa’s hard work. Yep, suddenly typing didn’t sound like the worst thing in the world.

  My fingers brushed the tops of the keys, the reverie releasing a barrage on my mind. Being in that antique store, swept up in the warmth of that day. The memories we created together. The life we wished to build.

  Why did he have to lie to me? Why had he pretended that it was kismet or destiny or any of that crap? More importantly, why did I naively allow myself to get swept up in that? Hadn’t Southie taught me everything that I needed to know about real life? I knew better. There was no such thing as happily ever after; it didn’t exist for women like me.

  It was stupid to feed into the naivete that wanted to experience love, the authentic kind. Back then, I
wanted to be with him, despite my fear and apprehension. I’d let myself fall, and I’d gotten what I deserved. Not a soft, pillowy landing, but a landing so brutal, it felt as though every bone in my body had broken upon impact.

  Love was a lie, a fairytale we told ourselves existed so we would never give up the pursuit. I wasn’t chasing it anymore.

  Rosa didn’t speak when I pressed my first key, but I heard the muffled shudder of her drawn breath. Neither of us uttered a word to one another as I fed sheet after sheet of paper into the typewriter. I wrote my name as many times as I could the first time. The repetitive motion and din of the typewriter moving was meditative, an awakening of sorts for the parts of my brain that had been hibernating. It was when I fed the fifth sheet of paper into the typewriter that I attempted to write something of substance.

  A few minutes later, I leaned back in the chair, my eyes running over the characters I had keyed in. It wasn’t the worst piece of prose I’d penned, but it was clear that my skills had gotten rusty. Focus was a muscle, though, and writing relied on said muscle memory. If I could find my balls and write every day, things might get better.

  They had to, because as much as it pained me, I might just learn to write Sean out of my memory forever.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I lost myself in the back and forth sweeping motion of Dougie’s windshield wipers. Neither of us had spoken a word since he picked me up from my house a little after six this morning. I’d packed a single duffel bag; I didn’t want to have to check in any luggage or wait at baggage claim once I landed. The March snow fell from the sky in soft flakes and landed on the glass, the heat from the interior turning the edges into droplets of water before the wipers smoothed them away. Winter was hanging on despite spring being hot on its heels. I admired its resilience. Thankfully, the snow wasn’t sticking to the ground—but it didn’t change that its appearance altered how people drove. The air smelled like new beginnings when I stepped outside this morning, but I knew we were still weeks away from experiencing a consistent thaw. The temperatures were still up and down.

  I ditched my leather jacket for a denim one over top of a Patriots hoodie. Maria had called twice to make sure I made it to the barber for a cut and shave, as if I would ever try to plead my case by showing up in California looking haggard.

  Dougie shifted in his seat, his fingers drumming against the leather steering wheel as we inched forward in stop-and-go traffic. “Are you going to tell me why you’re shifting around like you’ve got a stick wedged up your ass?” I quipped with a forced grin.

  He grunted in response, not looking at me.

  My grin dropped. “Are you giving me the silent treatment for a reason?”

  Nothing.

  “Do you wanna grab some Dunks?” Maybe he was under-caffeinated.

  More of that radio silence greeted me.

  I tugged down on the bill of the black ball cap I was wearing. “Did I bang your girl in a nightmare or something? What’s with you?”

  Dougie peeled his eyes from the sea of brake lights in front of us to meet my glare, my words forming a visual he hadn’t wanted. Just as quickly as he stared back, he averted his gaze once more.

  His knuckles whitened as he strangled the steering wheel. “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” he said thinly.

  “Talking about the affair I didn’t have with Penelope?”

  “No, asshole,” Dougie spat. “You going to California.”

  I tensed in my seat, trying to control the whiplash that crashed into me as the words permeated. What the fuck? This was the first time he’d mentioned this to me. I thought he had supported it; why else would he agree to take me to the airport?

  “She’s starting to get her shit together, Sean,” he said, staring straight ahead. “I don’t want you going out there and ruining it.”

  My insides lurched as if he had just rear-ended the car in front of us, his words slamming into me hard. “Ruining it?” I sagged in my seat. “I’m not ruining anything by trying to talk to her. I’m trying to fix things.”

  “Maybe things don’t need to be fixed. What if they already are fixed?”

  “They’re not, though,” I spat, clenching my fists. “Do I look okay to you?”

  Dougie scratched at the scruff that peppered his chin. “You’ll be okay if you give yourself some time and try to figure your shit out, too.”

  I scraped a palm over my face, pressing my thumb and forefinger into my closed eyelids. “Where is this coming from, anyway?” I demanded.

  He rolled his shoulders, exhaling in a loud huff. “I can’t afford to have you going AWOL, too. Penelope’s a damn handful on a good day lately, and Raquel is finally starting to show signs of normalcy. You going out there…I don’t think it’s going to do either of you any good.”

  My hand dropped into my lap, my right foot bouncing with a nervous tic. “You’re telling me this now?” Now that we were in traffic, on the way to the airport, my plane set to depart in a couple of hours—and now was the right time for him to tell me he thinks this is a bad idea? “Why not three days ago?” I pressed.

  “Because I didn’t want to be a fucking buzzkill,” he said, his voice growing eerily thin. “I kept hoping Maria would talk some sense into you…not give you this iota of hope that you could fix this.” He spat out my sister’s name like it was a curse.

  I didn’t have time to fixate on that.

  “I can fix this,” I protested. I could; my determination told me so. The token of my love and commitment to fix this in my duffel bag solidified that.

  “You can’t, Sean!” he shouted. “That girl isn’t broken. She is who she is. Stop trying to make her into a housewife. That’s not her.”

  A housewife? That wasn’t what I was trying to do to her, and the comment made me see red. “You’re going to tell me who she is? You?” I yelled back, my words bouncing off the windows of the confined space. He was trying to tell me what kind of person Raquel was? After everything? “Do me a favor and go fuck yourself, Dougie.”

  If we weren’t on the highway, I would have gotten out of the car and started walking. Slamming my weight back against the seat, I rubbed a palm over my right clenched fist and reasoned with myself, fighting the urge to uppercut him.

  No, that was stupid. Socking him wouldn’t make me feel any better. I just needed to get to the airport, and I would prove him wrong.

  As though hearing my thoughts, Dougie’s posture stiffened in his seat, his arms outstretched in front of him, hands suffocating the steering wheel to the point his knuckles appeared as if they were threatening to break free. “I’m not trying to piss in your Cheerios, man.”

  I let out a derisive snort, glancing at him from the corner of my eye. “What are you doing then, huh?” I chortled dryly. “Trying to be supportive? This is your idea of having my back?”

  He kept his green-eyed stare trained on the slow traffic. “Not bullshitting you? Yeah, it is. I will not blow rose-colored smoke up your ass just because it looks different from reality.”

  My stomach turned. What was that supposed to mean? “She say something to you?” I tilted my head in his direction, ignoring the lurching of my racing heart behind the cage of my chest.

  I was aware he talked to her sometimes, but when did he become an expert? What, they had a couple of calls and suddenly they were best friends? Braiding friendship bracelets for one another? He could choke himself with it.

  A thought occurred to me that made the black thundercloud above my head crack with a warning. What if he had told her my plan, and he was skirting around it? “Better yet, did you say something to her about me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you lying to me?” I would break his nose. Maria had done it the first time. Two Tavares breaks were better than one. I had better aim than she did, and I’d make this one count.

  “No.” He leaned forward, his forearms braced on the steering wheel. “She just sounds…different.”

  “Different how?
”

  He blew out his cheeks, shaking his head with disbelief. “I don’t know. Less distraught, more alive.”

  Alive? What was that like? What was it like to take a breath that reached your lungs, to not wake up every morning feeling like you were missing something akin to phantom pains experienced by an amputee?

  “I see.”

  “I can turn the car around,” Dougie offered.

  I didn’t meet his stare, my focus fixed on the overhanging signs on the highway that sported the airport icon. Was that what he wanted? For me to give up? To move on?

  Would that be for the better?

  Hadn’t I tried? I thought I had. I’d done everything I could think of to get that woman out of my mind, out of my heart, out of my house, out of my bed.

  But she was permanent. Nothing would remove her, not even an atomic bomb.

  “Let me see it myself.”

  He huffed. “What good is that going to do you?”

  “I need to see it.”

  He tensed, his molars gnashing loud enough on contact that I heard it. “You’re going to fuck her up again.”

  “Then I’ll fuck myself up, too.”

  “Sean, if you love her, you will let her go and move on with your life,” he bluntly said. “It’s over between you two.”

  I was going to upchuck all over the interior of his clean F150 in a minute if he didn’t put a cork in it. Violent thoughts ran through my head as the fear of never getting her back settled inside of me. My heart kicked off a storm in my chest, my blood boiling. “Stop talking,” I warned.

  He jerked his head back toward traffic. “You know I’m right,” he muttered.

  “And there’ve been plenty of things you’ve been fucking wrong about, too.” I turned up the volume on the radio.

  This conversation was over.

  I just hoped like hell my chance to make things right with Raquel wasn’t, too.

  Los Angeles, California