by L. D. Davis
I froze where I was and listened hard with my heart pounding in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clearly distressed.
I had not heard her voice in person in years, and hearing it there where it should not have been struck a sour chord with me.
“You have to leave,” I heard Leo, his tone angry, yet also distressed as I had never heard it before.
“I’m trying!” Leslie yelled, but I could hear the tears in her voice. “I’m trying to find my shoes!”
A pair of Jimmy Choos, an exact replica of my own, were on the living room floor several feet away from me. Leslie and I always did have a common shoe fetish.
Breathtaking, even with her wavy blond hair in a tangled mess, her shirt buttoned all wrong, her skirt on sideways, and her face blotchy and red from crying, Leslie stumbled out of the hallway into the living room, searching for her elusive shoes. She didn’t see me at first, distraught, crying ugly, and looking for her Choos. When she bent over to pick them up, it was like a scene from a movie, another movie moment in my life, but this one I had no control over. No pause, no stop, no rewind, there was only play.
As she hesitantly straightened up, her eyes slowly crept across the hardwood floor. Slowly, slowly, she saw me in frames. My shoes, my calves, my hands balled at my sides, my chest, and finally my stunned and furious face. By the time her eyes met mine, she was standing erect again.
“Did you find your shoes?” Leo bellowed angrily from the bedroom. I knew it was the bedroom by how distant his voice was. Our bedroom, the bedroom we shared, the same bedroom he once shared with Leslie.
Les was too stunned and scared to answer him. She trembled as she stared at me with wide, beautiful blue eyes.
“Damn it, Leslie!” Leo said, his voice closer. He appeared a second later, pulling on a T-shirt. He didn’t see me right away, either, because he was buttoning and zipping his jeans. “You have to leave. I love Tabitha too much for you to...” He stopped talking when he saw the look on her pretty face. The movie played on as his eyes slowly followed her line of sight and landed on me.
“Shit.”
I really wanted to beat both of them to a pulp and feed their remains to sharks. I didn’t really feel like being diplomatic and reasonable. After all, what they were doing was totally unreasonable, especially Leslie. That bitch didn’t answer my phone calls, text messages, or emails, but she found the time to make an appearance in Miami to use her body to try to take back what she thought was rightfully hers. And Leo wasn’t any better, spinning his crap about loving me for so long and then throwing it away for one last romp with Leslie.
“I don’t even know what to fucking say.” The words ran smoothly but quickly through my lips.
“This looks really bad,” Leo admitted, holding his hands up as if I was pointing a gun at him. “But it’s not what you think, dolcezza.”
“I don’t understand what the fuck that means, Leo,” I said, opening and closing my fists at my sides.
He ran his hand across his short, dark hair. His forehead creased as he searched for the right words.
“Let’s just calm down and talk this through,” Leslie said, trying to look and sound confident, but she wasn’t pulling it off.
“I am calm.” My voice was so low and steady; it didn’t really fit the situation. They both looked at me as if they expected a meltdown at any second. “Fix yourself,” I said disgustedly to Leslie. “You look ridiculous.”
Leslie stared at me with her mouth hanging open for a few seconds before slowly letting her eyes fall on her disheveled self. She turned away, embarrassed and tearful as she began to readjust her clothes.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Leo said, taking careful steps toward me.
“Oh no? Why did she come out of our bedroom looking like a roughed up truck stop whore? Why didn’t you have your fucking shirt on, Leo? Why were you buttoning your jeans?”
Leo stopped a few feet away from me, wisely, because if he tried to touch me, I was sure that I would’ve screamed and pull a Single White Female on him and put my shoe through his eyeball.
“You know that tomorrow is the anniversary of Nicola’s death,” he said carefully. I nodded and glanced at Leslie, who was watching us curiously and nervously. “Leslie called me this morning and said she was in the area and asked me if I wanted to go to the gravesite with her tomorrow. She was upset and I told her to come over because she shouldn’t have to be alone with her grief.”
I shifted from one foot to the other and crossed my arms across my chest.
“I made us some lunch, but Leslie wanted a few drinks to take the edge off a bit, but she did more drinking than eating.” Leo looked over his shoulder at Leslie, shaking his head disapprovingly before turning back to me. “She was about ready to pass out so I made her go lay down in the guest bedroom. I tried calling you, Tabitha, but the calls never went through. Now I know it was probably because you were in the air, but you can check my phone if you don’t believe me.”
“That doesn’t explain how the two of you ended up undressed in the fucking bedroom,” I snapped.
“I’m getting to that,” he said with thin patience.
That only further infuriated me, because I was the one who should’ve been pissed off, not him. I had a right to be pissed off.
I glanced at Leslie again. She was remarkably silent and I don’t know why that got under my skin, but I felt like she should have been explaining herself and apologizing.
“I went out and did a little surfing to clear my head,” Leo said, and for the first time, I did notice that his hair looked a little damp. “I came back in, took a shower, and when I came out of the bathroom, Leslie was in there. She had stripped out of her clothes and she was lying on the bed.” He looked like he was embarrassed for her to have to relay the story.
“I asked him to make me feel better,” Leslie whispered, and I was surprised that I heard her at all. Her gaze was on the floor, her cheeks pink with shame and humiliation. “I didn’t know…I suspected, but…I didn’t know you two were…”
“The hell you didn’t know!” I shouted, losing some of my composure. “You’re really good at closing your ears and eyes when the fuck you want to.”
“Ro said you had gone back to New Jersey,” she said, her brow furrowed. “She said Leo was upset, so I thought…”
“Did you bother to call and ask?” I demanded. I turned my sharp gaze on Leo. “And why didn’t you tell her? Why would you not tell her? After all the damn reasons, you knew I ran away, why wouldn’t you tell her?”
“It wasn’t exactly the best time to tell her,” Leo snapped at me. “I didn’t want to have to deal with that—with us—” He gestured to the three of us. “—on the anniversary of our child’s death.”
Grudgingly, I understood that, and I agreed with that. I wasn’t heartless, and in my heart, I was very sympathetic to their loss, but I couldn’t shake my anger and distrust.
“I didn’t know you two were…serious,” Leslie said.
“I call bullshit,” I countered.
Leslie’s weepy, meek demeanor changed in a flash. She glared at me through narrowed eyes.
“You broke the fucking code, Tabitha!” she screeched, pointing at me. Her face was bright red and a vein popped in her forehead. “How dare you speak to me as if I wronged you! Six months after our baby died you practically move in!”
“I didn’t even know Nicola existed until Gil and Leah’s wedding!” I argued, and belatedly realized my poor choice of words.
Breathing heavily through her nose, Leslie said, “She doesn’t exist anymore. She’s gone. She’s buried.”
“Les,” Leo whispered her name softly and approached her carefully.
Her thin body heaved with her heavy breathing as she tried to keep herself from either breaking down or completely losing her shit. When Leo gingerly wrapped a comforting arm around her, I turned away. I understood why, I really did, but it was painful to see anyway.
I couldn’t have this fight with them, not on this day or the next. Their wounds were wide open and very sensitive. Despite my anger and jealousy, I knew it wasn’t the right time to do this, like Leo said. I didn’t know what was going to happen next. I wanted to believe that Leslie would go on her way after a couple of days and Leo and I could get back to our new lives, but the insecure girl in me worried that the following days would end with me moving my shit back to Jersey, out of their home.
Leslie was crying quietly and Leo was murmuring words I couldn’t quite hear to her. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t watch it and I couldn’t participate in trying to soothe her or soothe him. I had no place in that room, in that house at that moment.
I straightened my back and started toward the front door.
“Tabitha!” Leo said my name sharply. I halted, but I didn’t turn fully around. I tilted my head in their general direction so that I only saw them in my peripheral. “Where the hell are you going?” he demanded.
“I. Am. Leaving,” I bit out.
“You made a promise to me,” he said angrily. “Don’t you fucking dare walk out that door.”
“I’m not breaking my promise, Leo,” I snapped but gave no further explanation before continuing toward the door.
I heard Leo’s footsteps behind me. He reached me just before I reached for the door and knocked my arm away before putting himself between me and the exit.
“You’re not leaving. I know you, Tabs. You’re going to walk out the door and ignore me for the next few weeks until I come find you again.”
“If she wants to go, let her go!” Leslie cried out in exasperation.
I turned to the side and said “Oh, you would just love that, wouldn’t you? Then you can have him all to yourself. What are you going to do next, Les, huh? Slip him a roofie?”
“Fuck you,” she spat out.
“Well, why not? You’ve already tried to fuck my fiancé today!”
Her eyes widened and she gaped at both of us. “You’re engaged?” she shrilled.
I held up my hand. “Boom, bitch.”
Leslie marched toward us. I didn’t know if she was going to slap the shit out of me for being so obnoxious or storm out of the house.
“Real mature,” Leo muttered to me just before Leslie reached me.
She grabbed my hand and held it up to look at the ring.
“I didn’t get a ring!” she yelled, glaring at Leo for a moment before turning her eyes back to my ring. “And it’s fucking beautiful!”
I rolled my eyes and pulled my hand out of hers. They were both standing entirely too close to me and Leo was still blocking my exit.
“I need to get the hell out of this house,” I said, throwing my arms up. I looked at Leo and said, “I’m not running, okay? I just…I can’t deal with this right now. You were right. This isn’t a good time to talk about…us.”
Leo eyed me. “If I let you go, where will you go and for how long?”
“I’m going home, I guess,” I sighed.
“You are home,” Leo said firmly.
“This doesn’t feel like home right now,” I said quickly and softly.
Leo’s face fell, and for the first time since I walked into that cluster-fuck, he looked worried. He reached for me, and this time I let him cup my neck in his hand.
“Tabitha,” he whispered, frowning.
“I should go,” Leslie said suddenly from behind me. I didn’t see her, but I heard her sniffling as she walked back into the living room, probably to fetch her purse.
I closed my eyes for a long moment and then spoke up.
“No, you stay,” I said firmly as I opened my eyes and met Leo’s. “You two need to…” I sighed and then carefully removed Leo’s hand from my neck. I stepped in close to him and gently placed a kiss against his lips. “I trust you,” I said. I gave him a firm push out of my way and walked out the door.
Codes were meant to be broken sometimes. Pull up your big girl panties and get over it.
~MJ F., Hingham, Massachusetts, United States~
Chapter Twenty-Four
I put my big girl panties on, to some degree anyway. I checked in to a hotel for the night and booked a flight back to Philly for the following morning. Before I closed my laptop down, and after pondering on it for several minutes, I ordered a large bouquet of white lilies to be delivered to Leo’s for both him and Leslie in the morning. I didn’t include a note, just my name.
When Leo called me later that night, I didn’t ignore his call. I answered, and I kindly declined his command to return back to the house and told him I was flying up the coast. I was tired from all my traveling and then the confrontation at his house, so I didn’t stay on the phone long, much to his irritation.
The next morning, I returned the car and caught my flight. I did the responsible thing and called Leo to let him know I had arrived safely. By the time I got to my apartment, he and Leslie had received the flowers. Les texted me with a simple thank you and Leo called me to tell me how beautiful and perfect I was before he and Leslie headed to the cemetery.
I didn’t feel beautiful, or perfect. I was still mad as hell, though I wasn’t really sure where to direct my anger. At Leo? At Leslie? At myself? At the freakin’ universe?
That night I went to my parents’ for a rare family dinner. The dinner was rare because, well, it’s my parents. Togetherness wasn’t their brand, at least where I was concerned, and it was also rare because Tack was lucid. He looked sickly, old, and used up, and his hands tremored with need, but he wasn’t high and he wasn’t bullying the household with rage.
“I’m moving to Miami,” I said soon after dinner was put on the table. I almost added, “I think,” considering the circumstances.
Tack was only picking at his food, but he stopped picking and stared at me. My dad put his fork down, and my mom sipped her wine and looked at me blankly.
“To be with Pesciano?” Tack asked.
“Yes.”
“Is it that serious?” Dad asked. “You two only just reunited a few months ago.”
“Yes, it’s that serious,” I said, slightly irritated. “It was six months ago, but it doesn’t matter when we reunited. He’s still him, basically, and I’m still me, basically.”
“What about Leslie?” Tack asked.
“I don’t want to talk about Leslie,” I said sharply, stabbing at my meatloaf. “This isn’t about Leslie.”
There were a couple of minutes of silence. Tack stared down at his plate. I didn’t know what was wrong with him, why he was so quiet and melancholy. My dad ate quietly but contemplatively, occasionally glancing at me and my mom just drank her wine, leaving her food untouched on her plate as she looked at anything but her family. What a fucking mess we were.
Finally, my dad broke the silence.
“Are you moving away to get away from us?” he asked. Tack looked at him. Mom looked at him. I looked at him, and we all looked with surprise. It was probably the most personal thing he had ever said to me.
“Why would you ask me that, Dad?” I asked. My irritation was growing.
He put down his fork and leaned against the back of his chair.
“When you were living at home, you stayed in your room if you stayed home at all,” he said. “You didn’t even come down for dinner anymore. Then you moved for college, which is understandable, but you weren’t that far from home, and you almost never came back. Not even during the summers and holidays. Then soon after college, when I thought we would have you back for a little while, you moved clear across the country. You finally move back and we still never see you. Now you’re leaving again.”
I snorted. “If I didn’t stay in my room, I ran the risk of either getting roughed up by my drug addict big brother, or getting slapped in the face by my mother. Neither of those was very appealing to a teenage girl.”
Tack looked at me with a shocked expression, like he had no idea who the asshole brother I was talking about was. Like he didn’t know it was
him. My mother looked at me like she was surprised that I remembered, surprised that I hadn’t forgotten.
“And why come home from college?” I continued with a cynical smile. I poured myself more wine and drank half of the glass in two gulps. “I was perfectly fine being alone during the summers and holidays. It beat being alone here with people.” I laughed darkly and drank more wine, poured more wine. “And to be blunt, I moved with Xander because I really liked Xander, but that wasn’t my biggest reason. My biggest reason was to get away from this soul-sucking family.”
“We gave you everything you could ever need or want!” my mother shouted beside me as her wine glass fell to the table. It broke into pieces and red wine pooled on the white cloth covering.
Nearly thirty years of anger and rejection and pain boiled over.
“Oh, thanks a lot for all of the clothes, the toys, the video games, the books, the televisions with cable, the stereos, the money for roller skating, and all of the god damn delicious snacks you kept in the pantry!” I shouted back at her and my dad. “Thanks a fucking lot! Because I needed and wanted all of that shit, but that’s all it was! Shit! What I needed and wanted was a father who stood up for me! Who took notice of me and took the time to talk to me and show me what I should look for in a man when it was time! What I needed and wanted was a brother who wasn’t trying to be my mother and father at the same time, who didn’t feel so pressured by his parents’ expectations that he turned to drugs to relieve some of the ache it left behind! What I needed and wanted was a mother! A mother who actually loved me and cared for me and nurtured me and talked with me about my body, my friends, my boyfriends!” With the next harried sentence, I spoke in a small, helpless voice as I tried not to break down and sob all over my plate. “A mother to hold me and kiss my hair and console me, and a father to go ballistic and try to kill the boy that almost raped his daughter in a dark room at a party.”
I sniffed, wiped at the few tears that had escaped from my eyes, and returned my gaze to my plate.
“That’s what I needed and wanted,” I whispered.
