Author: Cassia Leo

She continues to mutter in between her shrieking cries of grief and suddenly I can taste the sharp smoke and the stale sweetness of the beer in my mouth. I can feel the warm air coming from the vent above me. The floor beneath me is solid as gravity seems to shift and suddenly I’m heavy, grounded, resolved.

“I’ll be there,” I say. “Don’t do anything. I’ll be there soon.”

I rush out of the bathroom and into the living room. Lena is sitting on Yuri’s lap and laughing as he blows air onto her stomach.

“Hey, I need a ride.”

Yuri looks up. “You leaving already, old man?”

“I need a fucking ride.”

“There are nicer ways to ask,” Lena says as she slides off Yuri’s lap.

I pull my keys out of my pocket and toss them to Yuri. “I’m too fucked up to drive and I need a ride, right now, please.”

Yuri jumps up from the sofa. “I’m on it, bro.”

It feels weird sitting in the passenger seat of my truck, but I don’t need a DUI on top of the bomb Lindsay just dropped. It takes Yuri a moment to figure out how to adjust the seat. As he pulls away from the curb in front of his apartment building in Durham, I silently wish that I’m hallucinating this shit.

“Where are we going, Miss Daisy?” he says as the truck slows to a stop at the first intersection.

“Lafayette Street. Lindsay’s house.”

The movement of the truck combined with the beer sloshing around inside my belly and the THC tickling my brainwaves is making me dizzy. Top it off with the dread I’m feeling about what Nathan’s death will do to Lindsay and Kaia and I’m about ready to vomit. I roll down the window and close my eyes as the freezing night air blasts me in the face.

“It’s fucking freezing. Are you crazy?” Yuri complains.

“I’m high as fuck,” I mutter, attempting to hold down the vomit stinging the back of my throat.

“That’s what you get for quitting for a girl. Lena would never make me quit.”

“I don’t want to fucking talk about it.”

I give Yuri the address number and we arrive at Lindsay’s duplex five minutes later.

“I’m going to call Lena to pick me up. You okay for now?” Yuri says as he hands me the keys.

“Yeah, I’m cool.”

I stumble out of the truck and try not to step on any of the cracks in the concrete driveway leading to the rear unit of the duplex. The porch light is on. It’s always on. Lindsay swears it deters burglars from trying to pick her lock. She has what I see as an irrational fear of home invasion robberies brought on by watching too many TV shows about unsolved crimes. When we lived together, she would often interrupt in the middle of having sex to ask if I remembered to lock the front door.

I knock on the door and she opens the door immediately. Her face is red and raw and the look of utter shock on her face kills me. I step inside and close the door softly behind me, trying not to let her see that I’m still swaying a little.

“I’ve been sitting here for weeks thinking he was fucking some other girl; hatching my plans to sue him for child support.”

“This isn’t your fault. Don’t let this fuck with your head.”

She clutches at her hair as she shakes her head. “Why? Is this because I fucked everything up with you? Is this what I deserve?”

“Don’t say that. No one deserves this shit.”

And in that instant, I don’t know if it’s the weed, but I have an epiphany I’ve been waiting on for six years.

“We don’t deserve this,” I continue. “We can’t keep blaming ourselves for the moments that get away from us; those moments where nothing makes sense. This isn’t our fault.”

She narrows her eyes at me as the tears roll down her cheeks. “Are you stoned?”

Fuck.

“A little.”

Her face contorts with excruciating anguish and she falls to her knees. “His dad called me.” I kneel down so I can hold her hand as she continues. “They’re not having a funeral. They’re scattering his ashes in the Pacific because that was his favorite place to surf. But I know the truth because the fucking guy at the county called me first. They had to identify him with dental records because there wasn’t enough of him left.”

I think of Nathan’s gold tooth and how they probably used it to identify his body. I cringe inwardly. He only had that tooth because I beat the shit out of him eight months ago.

“I may be a little stoned, but I know you didn’t do anything to deserve this. Because most days I wake up thinking I’m a monster for what happened to Myles. And for a long time I thought you were a complete bitch for cheating on me. But I realized something right now that I wish I would have realized six years ago.” I place my index finger under her chin to lift her face and her chin is sticky with tears. “It’s not our mistakes that define us. It’s the lessons we learn that show our true character.”

Her blue eyes are dark with doubt. “What did I learn? To suspect Nathan of cheating on me instead of worrying he might be hurt, or dead?”

Her hands grasp the edge of her T-shirt, wringing it, as she awaits my response. I haven’t seen Lindsay this desperate since the last time we argued about getting engaged and she conceded defeat after a four-hour argument. She said she’d just wait for me to ask rather than trying to pressure me. That was almost a year ago, last Christmas, approximately one month before she got pregnant with Kaia.

“I think you learned who you can count on.”

I think we both learned that.

She whimpers as I take her hand and pull her into my arms. She weeps silently on my shoulder, wiping her face every now and again. Within minutes, we’re breathing in unison and she begins to relax.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“For what?”

“Thank you for treating me like the person I’m trying to be instead of the person I was.”

I pull my head back and brush her hair away from her damp cheeks. “What do you need me to do? Do you need help paying for the plane ticket?”

She shakes her head. “I just… I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

“Is Kaia asleep?”

“Yeah, she’s in her room. She’s been asleep for an hour. Are you leaving?”

Her eyes plead with me to stay and I pause for a moment to take in the curves of her face. I remember the first time I saw her working as a TA in my comparative literature class. I always teased her that her English degree wouldn’t be worth shit in the job market.

“You don’t have to look at me like that. I’m still stoned. I’m staying whether you want me to or not.”

She smiles a little, but the smile quickly disappears. She probably feels she’s not allowed to smile right now.

I stand up without wobbling then extend my hand to her. “Come on, you need to go to bed. The last thing you need is your mom bitching about your puffy eyes. ‘You should put some hemorrhoid cream under your eyes, Lindsay. Don’t look at me like that! The supermodels do it.’”

She takes my hand and lets me help her up. “Wow…. Your impression of my mom is still better than mine.”

“It’s all in the inflection,” I say as I lead her toward the hallway. “And the number of times you mention supermodels.”

Chapter Fifteen

Chris

Waking up with Claire in my bed, in my own apartment, feels like a dream. She’s curled up next to me, clutching the corner of the pillow, with her mouth slightly open—looking exactly the way I remember her before we broke up seventeen months ago. Seventeen months and countless mistakes later, we still ended up right where we began, where we were always meant to be.

I watch her for a while before she opens her eyes, squinting one eye against the light pouring in through the window behind her.

“How long have you been awake?” she mutters as she reaches for me.

She lays her head on my shoulder as she wraps her arm around me and I imagine her closing her eyes and going right back to sleep. I tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss the top of her head.

“Just a few minutes. Do you mind going to breakfast with Tristan today? You can invite Senia, if you want.”

She laughs at this suggestion then kisses my chest before she looks up at me. “Is this some ploy to get Senia and Tristan together?”

“No, but I know you’re not crazy about hanging out with Tristan. I thought Senia might keep him preoccupied while I make you squirm under the table.”

“Don’t you have something we can eat here?”

“Not unless you want to feast on Capri-Sun for breakfast.”

“So predictable.”

Grabbing her face, I pull her toward me so I can kiss her. Her breath is hot in my mouth as her hand slides down and finds my erection. I suck in a sharp breath as she curls her fingers around me to get a firm grip.

“Is that a yes?” I whisper into her mouth.

She strokes me slowly, which only gets me hotter and more frustrated. Grabbing her by the sides of her waist, I lift her on top of me so she’s straddling my stomach. She sits up and I hold my breath as I take in the beauty of her figure. She’s different, softer than when we were together. Having Abigail changed her inside and out; it made her a woman. A woman who makes me want to be a better man.

I lay my hand on her abdomen and she smiles. “You’re so fucking beautiful. I want to worship this body day and night.”

I trace the tip of my finger over the small scar above her belly button where she used to have a piercing. She got the belly button piercing the same night I got her name tattooed on my right shoulder blade, because she was too afraid to get a tattoo. The piercing ended up coming out accidentally while we were wrestling and she never put it back in.

She grabs my hand and plants a soft kiss on my palm before she pulls my hand against her chest. Her skin is like silk under my fingertips. I grab the back of her neck to pull her lips to mine and kiss her slowly, savoring the taste of her lips and the soft warmth of her breasts against my chest. Her breathing quickens as she grinds against me.

I pull her head back so I can look her in the eye. “I have to tell you something.” I wait a moment for her to get her bearings before I continue. “I got your name covered up.”

At first, she looks confused, then she sits up and tilts her head. “The tattoo of my name? On your back?”

I nod. “Everyone kept telling me to get it covered up. I was really drunk and convinced you’d moved on with someone else.”

She looks heartbroken as she dismounts my stomach and sits cross-legged on the bed next to me. “I know I should have expected this, and you do have that new tattoo on your chest for me and Abigail, but this makes me sad.”

I sit up and turn my back to her so she can see the tattoo that covers her name. It’s a blonde pinup girl in a red bikini. The girl is winking as she sits backwards on a blue motorcycle.

“I kind of hate myself for this,” I say as I turn around to face her. “But I covered your name with one of my favorite memories of you. It was my secret way of not really covering it up at all.”

I think back to the last time I took Claire stargazing on the anniversary of her mother’s death, just one month before we broke up. We rode out on my motorcycle to Poplar Point in Jordan Lake and camped out for the night. The next day, after a long swim in the lake, we found our backpacks, and all our clothes, had been stolen from the campsite. As soon as we got on the bike, Claire in her red bikini and me in my swim trunks, our skin still wet and our bodies pressed against each other…. We had sex right there on top of my bike in the shade of the trees surrounding our campsite.

Claire still looks disappointed. “I don’t like to think about what happened while we were apart.”