Amber Stigmatized

by Viktor Redreich

  Amber pouted and crossed her arms. “Just go.”

  He laughed and ducked out the door, hurrying away down the hall quickly so no one would catch him being where he didn’t belong. Amber watched his butt because she knew she was supposed to, though she didn’t really see anything special about it.

  Amber shut her door and hurried through her shower, paying close attention to the state of her hair. Hopping out, she dried off and used the blowdryer on her hair, until it was soft and full and beautiful. She was proud of her long black hair and how it went all the way down to her waist. She hadn’t had it cut since she was a little girl. However, people tended to stare at her and make lots of comments about how long her hair was and she didn’t really like that. She wrapped most of it into a tight coil and tucked it up under a pretty pink headscarf, leaving out only her bangs and a little bit hanging down at the back of her neck. She paired her scarf with a coral long-sleeved top, doing the buttons all the way up to hide her boobies so no one would stare at them. She pulled on a pair of dark blue jeans and checked the time while searching for a nice belt to go with it.

  Dismay swept through her as she saw she was already five minutes late to meet up with Lawrence, and it would take her even longer to get there. She could text him, but she didn’t want to waste the time. She threw on a pair of shoes and ran out of her dorm room. Halfway down the hall she realized she only had one sock on. It was too late at that point, though. She would only waste more time turning back.

  Running, stumbling in her mismatched footwear, she made record time to the parking lot and spun around, trying to see Lawrence.

  A rusty old pickup trick -what she liked to call a pick-‘em-up truck- trundled around the corner and rolled up to her. She gasped in relief. It was Lawrence’s truck. He unlocked the door for her and she sprang in. “I’m sorry I’m late!” she burst out.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal. I don’t ever expect girls to be on time.” He laughed and started driving again. “I was just driving Lassie here in circles to get her warmed up.”

  “Lassie?”

  “I guess I never told you. That’s the name of my truck.”

  “Oh. Why? Because it’s loyal?”

  “Because she’s really old,” he said, and laughed again.

  Amber laughed too, although she didn’t really get the joke. All she knew was that Lassie was a pretend collie dog from a book or something. Maybe a TV show. She shifted around in her seat, growing nervous. She never really cared about pop culture or anything and even less so when Daddy came into her life. She had to be careful or else Lawrence would see how little she knew.

  Lawrence turned up the radio. They listened to mumble rap and country while on their way to the Olive Garden. It was a weird time of day, past lunch but before dinner, so they were able to be seated right away. Pretty much no one else was in the restaurant. The soft music playing through the speakers wasn’t quite enough to drown out the laughter and clatter of dishes coming from the kitchen.

  “Do you want some wine?” Lawrence asked.

  Amber hadn’t drank before outside of the communion wine at church when she was very young and her mom was dating this religious guy. Now that she thought about it, she had probably been given grape juice since she was a little kid. Still, she didn’t want to look lame in front of Lawrence so she said yes.

  “Can I see your ID?” the waiter asked Lawrence.

  Lawrence showed his license and that seemed to be good enough for the waiter, even though Amber hadn’t shown hers. “We’ll have the Moscato,” he said.

  Their wine came and Lawrence lifted his glass to Amber. “Cheers. To us.”

  “To us,” she murmured, and then took her very first sip of alcohol. It tasted like fizzy juice, with an astringent kick she wasn’t sure she liked. It made her tummy feel warm though so she drank some more, and then a little more, and by the time their meals came, she had downed her whole glass. The waiter brought her more and she drank that too. Her thoughts started to feel like bubbles, drifting and popping on the wind.

  “I’m amazed we’re even friends,” she said.

  Lawrence gave her a weird look. He’d been in the middle of talking when she interrupted. Oops. Oh, well. “Why is that?” he asked, smiling. “You think we should have gone on a date sooner?”

  “No. I’m just emotionally stunted. I’ve never had a real human connection before.”

  Am I drunk? I feel like I shouldn’t have said that.

  Lawrence reached across the table and put his warm hand over hers. “We have a connection.” He smiled, his bright eyes twinkling.

  His hand on hers felt so nice. She didn’t pull away. Lawrence must have been encouraged, because he started stroking the back of her hand, trailing his fingers over her knuckles and to the underside of her wrist. She caught her breath at the tingles he made her feel. She couldn’t even remember what they were doing or where they were. All she was aware of was her warm stomach and the fizzing in her veins.

  “We have a connection, don’t we?” Lawrence implored.

  Amber nodded. His eyes caught hers, held her gaze in place. The blue of them seemed as big as the whole world. “Is it okay?” she whispered.

  “Of course, it’s okay!” He clasped her hand between both of his now, holding on so tight she couldn’t have pulled away even if she wanted to. “Where’s this coming from? Are you a sad drunk?”

  She was sad and she was potentially drunk, but she didn’t know if that was what he meant.

  He shook his head. “Sorry. I forgot that you were already said. We were having a pretty good time. I thought you might be feeling better.”

  “I was!” she cried, not wanting him to feel bad. “It’s just… I told you I’d never been on a date before?”

  “Yeah.”

  She looked at his hands on hers and felt tears starting. “It’s because I was, well, talking with someone else this whole past year.”

  “Talking, but not dating?” Lawrence smiled again, though he looked confused, too. “You were taking things really slow? Or was it some kind of star-crossed lovers thing?”

  Star-crossed lovers, like Romeo and Juliet. She’d never read that play, not even when it was required in high school; it had just been too sad to bear.

  “It’s really hard to explain,” she admitted.

  “Try.”

  Daddy had never told her she couldn’t talk about him. She just never had because it was a special thing to have a Daddy all to yourself. Now that he had abandoned her, nothing held her back, and Lawrence really was the one person in her life she could talk to like this. And Lawrence always talked about girls he had been with when they went on their hikes, so that made it even more okay.

  “There was this man. This wonderful, amazing man I loved so much. The thing is I only knew him through text. I only knew him as… Daddy.” Amber used her free hand to pick up her wine and drained the last drops from the current glass. “He texted me out of nowhere one morning.”

  The text had said Good morning teacup. It’s time to brush your teeth. She didn’t tell Lawrence that, though.

  “I didn’t reply to it right away, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t help but reply. And that’s how I met the most amazing, sweetest man. My Daddy.”

  “Was it like a roleplay thing?” Lawrence interrupted. “I’m not kink-shaming or anything. Just asking.”

  Amber shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that. That’s just what he is. What he was. I don’t know what I did, but he stopped talking to me and that’s what made me so sad. We were so close that I didn’t really think about anything except him. I didn’t want anything but him. Without him, I felt so lonely and empty. It made me realize that being with him maybe wasn’t as good as it felt like it was. I don’t know. I’ve had so much time to think about it, but it never makes more sense. It just hurts worse.”

  She had been too shy in high school for any guy to really pay much attention to her. Having Daddy to hers
elf, being the center of attention for him, was like a dream come true. She had depended upon him, given him her body and soul and mind at the expense of everything else -because everything else had been so insignificant compared to the mysterious man who could give her everything she needed.

  Now she wondered how much love could be given over a phone. She had been so wrapped up in all the good things that she’d been blind to how hollow her relationship really was. She couldn’t see his face. She had never looked into his eyes or felt his lips on hers or the warmth of his body.

  Even knowing all that, she would have given anything to have her Daddy back. Even with all the pain and heartbreak, even knowing it wasn’t the best thing for her, she would still do it, because it had felt so good. Even wrong, it had felt good.

  She was so confused, so conflicted.

  Lawrence sat back in his chair and lifted his hand in the air to get the attention of their waiter. “Can I get the check, please?”

  “Of course. I’ll go get that for you right now.”

  Amber shrank down in her seat. “I’m sorry. I’m too weird for you, right?”

  “No way. I’m a guy. It’s pretty hard to be too weird for a guy.” Lawrence tilted his head. “I think I understand everything you said. You had this long-distance relationship with this guy and you got really wrapped up in it. Then he broke your heart. Right?”

  She nodded and rubbed her eyes on the back of her hand. “Or maybe I broke his. I don’t know. This relationship stuff is hard.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Lawrence fished out his wallet and rummaged in the flaps until he found a credit card. “I think you’re right. You’ve been alone for way too long. You need to vent. Let’s go for a drive, maybe a walk. You can talk all you want, about anything you want.”

  She lifted her head and stared at him. “You’d do something like that for me?”

  “I would, Amber. I really like you.”

  “I really like you, too.”

  Lawrence grinned at her, not taking his eyes off her even while handing the receipt and credit card over to their waiter. Amber smiled back at him, though she couldn’t help but think that she might be getting in over her head with him.

  She liked him, but she thought he might like her a little more than she was ready for.

  He’s the only friend you’ve got, she told herself. You don’t want to lose him, too.

  When Lawrence held out his hand for her to hold on the way out of the restaurant, she didn’t think twice about taking it.

  Chapter 5

  Secret piece of candy

  Lawrence put on his music as soon as they got into the truck, preventing any sort of conversation. Amber leaned her cheek on the window, trying to figure out what she was going to say, what she would talk about. There was so much, nearly all of it things she’d never told another person.

  For everything she could think of, there was another event that had led up to it. She chased the train of thought all the way back to the very beginning. At least, what she remembered as the beginning.

  Lawrence reached to the radio and twisted the volume knob, providing a modicum of relief from the racket. “There’s a park over here. The leaves should be all pretty since it’s fall. Up for some walking?”

  Amber nodded. She’d eaten a lot at the restaurant. Some exercise would be nice. She might have lost weight over the past month, but she didn’t want to let herself go and gain back even more. “Fine with me. It won’t be too cold, will it?”

  “I have a jacket in the back if we end up needing it,” he told her.

  Amber smiled at him, even though he wasn’t looking at her or paying attention to her anymore. She hadn’t realized how nice it would be to have someone who could do actual, physical things for her, even such little things as lending her a jacket.

  The park came into view like a blaze of fire, a sunset, rimmed with trees whose leaves had gone all shades of gold and crimson and turmeric. Fallen leaves blanketed the winding concrete paths, the benches, the stretches of grass. Pale glimpses of the cloudy sky peeked through the canopy of branches.

  Amber got out of the truck as soon as Lawrence parked and went to stand under the trees, peering up at the fragments of sky. A chilly wind blew, tugging at her clothes and nearly yanking her headscarf right off. “Oh!” she cried out, clamping a hand to the top of her head to keep the scarf in place.

  “Here,” Lawrence said, coming up behind her. “Hold still.” He pressed his warm body to hers. “That thing is so thin. It won’t keep you warm, you know.”

  “It’s not to keep me warm,” she whimpered, desperately fiddling with the scarf. The wind kept blowing, untucking all the folds she had been so careful to make. Leaves smacked into her legs, her cheeks.

  A sudden heaviness over her head pinned her scarf -and her hair- into place. She blinked and felt around. It was the hood of a jacket.

  “Hold out your arms,” Lawrence instructed.

  Amber obeyed and he helped slide the jacket over her shoulders. He came around in front of her and leaned in close while pulling her zipper up, all the way to her chin. “Better?”

  The jacket was so big she felt like she was swimming in it, but it was warm and the hood was keeping her hair where she wanted it. It smelled nice too, like some sort of spice. Cinnamon, maybe. Amber swung her arms, waving around the sleeves that fell over her hands. “Better.”

  “Cool. Let’s walk.” Lawrence struck out, his stride long and lazy-fast. “I think there should be a fountain somewhere. Let’s see if we can find it.”

  Amber hurried to catch up with him, his jacket bouncing all around her. She settled in at his side, scampering on her shorter legs to match his face. The sweet, spicy scent of the trees and drying leaves filled her lungs with every breath. It felt like a medicine going straight to her head, helping to clear her mind.

  “Lawrence, what’s your family like?”

  “My family?” He frowned, thinking. Bits of leaf litter clustered in his shaggy hair. “I guess I’d say it’s pretty normal. My parents argue a lot. I’m led to believe they love each other somehow though,” he laughed, “since they’ve been together for thirty years. I’ve got an older brother I barely ever see. He’s in the Army. I have a younger sister who I used to dislike, but I guess she’s pretty okay now that she’s older. Why? What’s your family like?”

  Amber kicked at a drift of leaves. She’d known about his sister, because he sometimes complained about her flaunting her attractive friends in front of him. Everything else was news to her. Jealousy twisted in her gut, a taste of something bitter.

  “I don’t have a normal family like that. I have my mom and that’s it. I never knew my dad. Mom never talked about him at all.”

  “So you had a single mom. That’s gotta be tough.”

  “It was,” she remembered. “She was barely ever around, always busy working. She had a lot of boyfriends. I remember we always moved from living with one guy to another, like she had them lined up and ready to go. I don’t blame her. It was probably a weight off her shoulders not to have to worry about rent. I don’t really remember any of the guys except for one, so it must not have been too bad.”

  They came to a fork in the path. Lawrence took the right path, leading them deeper into the park. Shadows grew thick all around them. Amber shivered and pressed closer to him. She didn’t like the dark.

  “That one guy, was he bad?”

  Amber shook her head with vehemence. “His name was Kristoff. Mom moved in with him when I was 8, I think. Kristoff was… the best thing to happen to me. The best thing to happen to either of us.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “He was the one guy who actually felt like he could be my father,” she said, smiling. “I remember a lot of the other guys just ignored me. They wanted Mom, not me. And when I got older, I didn’t like how they looked at me, so I ignored them. But Kristoff was different. He was so much fun to be around. He was so kind, so… so warm. Everything he did was warm.
And he was so charming.

  “I followed him everywhere he went, at first. And then he started bringing me along with him because he knew it was what I wanted. Lawrence, I’ve never known anyone like him since. I was so in love with him and how he acted. He was such a gentleman.”

  Amber knew enough about children to know they learned a lot from watching the people around them. She’d been a child, after all. She had been so surprised by how nice Kristoff acted with waiters and waitresses at restaurants, how politely he made requests; many of her mother’s other boyfriends made demands like the world owed them.

  When she watched Kristoff talking on the phone with his business partners, he was still polite, but also in command. He radiated what she would come to learn was masculinity. She hadn’t had a word for it back then but he had always reminded her of a lion, those majestic and proud creatures from another part of the world.

  “He was so great to Mom,” she said. “He treated her like he really loved her. He always complimented her and listened to her. He helped her with any problem she had and made it look easy.”

  “That’s a lot you can remember when you were practically a baby.”

  Amber laughed. “It was the best time of my life. Of course I remember.”

  The wind dropped for a moment and the sound of running water filled in the silence. Lawrence pointed through the trees. “There’s the fountain.”

  Amber stepped off the path to go see the fountain with him. “I know I felt like I was Kristoff’s pet.”

  “His pet? Like, you pretended you were a dog?” Lawrence chuckled. “Bark bark.”

  She giggled. “Not like that. I just felt like I belonged to him. I would run and jump to him when he came home from work. I wanted his attention so much. I had to be near him at all times, even when he was talking with Mom.”

  She distinctly recalled one night when they had all been watching a movie in the living room. It wasn’t a movie a little girl would be interested in, but it hadn’t been inappropriate. She was allowed to stay. She had cuddled up on the couch beside Kristoff and put her head on his leg. He patted her and fed her popcorn until she fell asleep. She’d woken up in the morning tucked in her bed, a secret piece of candy tucked under her pillow for her. Mom didn’t let her have candy, so it had to have been Kristoff.