Every Other Weekend

by Jaxson Kidman

“But,” I said, lifting a hand, “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll only call you Sammy when it’s just you and me. It’ll be our secret.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. He slowly smiled. “Thank you.”

  I reached for his small hand and squeezed it. “But, hey. Don’t ever let anyone change your mind because of what they think.”

  “Even Dad?” he asked.

  I swallowed hard. What I felt like calling Keith was on the tip of my tongue.

  “Let me carry your stuff downstairs,” I said.

  I felt more toys than clothes in the bag, which was expected for Sam. He could entertain himself for days, which I appreciated. I knew that Keith really had nothing for him to do at his place, so a bag full of toys with a few clothes was always how the bag was packed.

  Downstairs, I left his bag and pillow at the door.

  We still had about ten minutes together.

  “Want some ice cream?” I asked, almost feeling desperate to have every second with him.

  Funny how the day Keith dropped him off early I was a little annoyed because I wanted to go out with Norah, and now I was all but holding myself together as though I wouldn’t see him for weeks.

  “Ice cream?” Sam asked.

  “A little treat before you leave.”

  “No thanks,” he said. “Dad gets me ice cream on Friday night. After we get pizza.”

  “Wow. Pizza and ice cream. I’m jealous of your night.”

  “You can come with us,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

  I smiled. “Ah, that’s sweet of you to say. But Dad likes his time alone with you.”

  “Not really. Marcy will be there.”

  “Who’s Marcy?”

  “His girlfriend.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “When did you meet Marcy?”

  “I dunno,” Sam said.

  More questions attacked my mind, but again I held back.

  I sat with Sam on the couch and watched some mindless cartoon, waiting to hear Keith pull up and beep the horn.

  When he did, I jumped up first. “Sam, stay here for a minute.”

  Sam was glued to the cartoon.

  I left the house and saw Keith getting out of his car. It was some dark blue, muscle car. Or something like it since it had four doors. I didn’t know a thing about cars. What I did know was that the car was too loud and went too fast. But I had to trust that he didn’t do anything stupid in the car with my - our - son in it.

  Keith walked around to the back passenger door and opened it.

  “Got his seat all ready to go,” he said.

  “Who’s Marcy?”

  The way I said it, I sounded like a petty and jealous girlfriend.

  Keith sighed. “Jesus…”

  “Just curious. I thought you were spending your weekends with our son.”

  “I am,” he said. “And I ran into a friend.”

  “Girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend,” he said. “It’s my business.”

  “Our business when it involves our son.”

  “Jordyn, I would never do anything to harm our son.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” I said, knowing I was letting the bitch attitude cut deep.

  Keith curled his lip. The wickedly good-looking bad boy, who used to smoke in school, was now a struggling-to-stay-sober man who played the role of father every other weekend.

  “I’m not talking about it,” he said.

  “Fair enough then,” I said. “I got his hair cut this week, finally.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “He was getting a little bit of a mop up there.”

  “Yeah.”

  Keith crossed his arms and leaned against his car. “What?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You came out here alone to attack me about Marcy. I didn’t mean for Sam to meet her. It’s not really a new thing, so it’s not a big deal to me.”

  “Must be nice to have that kind of free time, huh?”

  “There it is,” Keith said. “This is about the every-other-weekend thing, right?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “You’re busy though. I get it.”

  “I’m here right now. This is what we agreed upon, Jordyn. Remember that? When we went to court? I remember it. I signed what you wanted me to sign. I pay what I’m supposed to pay. I show up and pick the kid up. I drop him off. I stay sober. That’s my end of the deal. What I do besides that… that’s none of your fucking business.”

  I almost forgot how vile Keith could sound. To go from looking like a jerk to spitting venom in my face.

  “We’re supposed to do this together,” I said.

  “We are.”

  “You were having problems when this all started, Keith,” I said. “That’s why things happened…”

  He stepped toward me. “Don’t remind me of my past, Jordyn. Don’t make me bring up your past.”

  “My past? What did I do that was so wrong?”

  Oh, Jordyn, why are you doing this?

  Keith chuckled. “You’re the same as always. Forever a victim. You think I’m going to apologize for anything anymore? You’re out of your damn mind. Now go get my son or else I’ll go get him myself.”

  “Don’t you dare take a step toward my house,” I said.

  “You don’t own that. You don’t own anything, Jordyn. If it wasn’t for me sending you a check each month, you’d have nothing.”

  “Fuck you,” I spat.

  “Nah. That ride’s over, baby. You couldn’t handle it anyway.”

  I felt my hand twitching, begging to slap him across the face.

  This was just proof of why Keith and I weren’t together.

  Even still, standing next to his car on my street and fighting with him over stupid stuff did nothing good for anyone. I saw the look in his eyes and knew I was pushing him toward his breaking point. He always blamed me for his drinking and other actions. So not being near me was the catalyst to get sober. Whether it was true or not, it was another piece of guilt to rest on my shoulders.

  “I’ll go get Sam,” I said as I turned away.

  I touched the corners of my eyes, knowing that I couldn’t cry.

  I would save that for when Sam was gone.

  2

  It’s All Old

  Ramsey

  I gave the wrench one last hard pull and the pipe was tight. There was no way water would leak from it ever again. I eased my way out from under the sink, wrench in hand, the smell of turkey and bacon lingering in the air.

  “Watch your head, Rams,” Aunt Millie called out from the counter.

  “I’m fine,” I said as I stood up.

  “Knock your head on that sink and it’ll put you out for a day or two.”

  I smiled. No use in arguing with Aunt Millie. She was the shortest woman I’d ever met, but damn was she the toughest. She knew when to use words to cut into your soul. And she knew when to get a wooden spoon and give you a crack across the ass to calm you down.

  I put the wrench on the counter and washed my hands, double-checking my work to make sure I didn’t leave her with a bigger mess than what I found. Uncle Tom had set up a system of buckets and rags to keep collecting the water from the leaky sink. Aunt Millie gave him her usual two-week grace period before finally calling for help.

  “Have some lunch,” Aunt Millie said. “I’m making your uncle a sandwich. You have one too.”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “You’re skinny.”

  That made me laugh. There was no way any person in the world could think I was skinny. Maybe twenty years ago, sure, but not now. Not since I found an old dusty weight set in the basement of the house and started working out, right after a girl named Janelle broke my heart in the eighth grade. I never looked back from there. And from the second I could do so, I worked for Uncle Tom’s construction company. The old timers at the company used to just call me Bull because of my size and strength. Then they figured out my name was Ramsey and started calling me Rams, which worked bet
ter. I also got that name because I wasn’t afraid to put my head down and go to war with anyone who pissed me off.

  That attitude came right from Aunt Millie. She took no shit from no one. Uncle Tom was a bit calmer and willing to talk things out. But not Aunt Millie.

  Which was why when she jammed a plate with a turkey and bacon sandwich on it into my hands, I took it and thanked her.

  “Uncle Tom is going to be pissed that I touched the sink,” I said.

  Aunt Millie tossed a towel over the wrench on the counter. “There. He knows nothing.”

  “He’s going to check.”

  “I’ll deal with him later,” she said. “You eat and then go back to work. Or go home.”

  “I’m good right here, Aunt Mill,” I said with a wink.

  “Oh, stop it. You grew up here. You’ve had enough of here.”

  “I have a house guest again.”

  “Animal?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Let me guess… Matt?”

  “Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I think I’d rather an animal.”

  “Sleeping on your couch again?”

  “His favorite spot,” I said.

  “You know, some people just don’t understand how a relationship works.”

  I nodded, knowing exactly what that meant. Matt had a complicated marriage to Mary. One that was fast and wild, and probably should have been axed a month after they got married. But they were determined to make it work. Even if that meant Matt spending a lot of time on my couch. I stayed out of it, other than enjoying having a buddy to drink with during rough nights.

  “Yeah, that kind of stuff is hard,” I said.

  I turned and put my plate on the counter. I lifted my sandwich and took a bite. Over the plate, of course. Leaky sinks were one thing, but crumbs? They were Aunt Millie’s greatest enemy.

  The island in the kitchen always had a spread of food on it. Right on cue, each day, Aunt Millie would have breakfast out. Snacks out. Lunch out. More snacks. Appetizers before dinner. For as rough as my youth had been, one thing that always went right was coming here and having food.

  Uncle Tom came through the kitchen door as I rinsed off my plate.

  He froze when he saw me. “Did you touch the sink?”

  “I ate a sandwich,” I said, knowing how to masterfully lie without actually telling one.

  He looked at Aunt Millie. “You called him?”

  “I made lunch,” Aunt Millie said. “I can’t feed my own nephew?”

  “You’re supposed to be over at the Johnson house,” Uncle Tom said.

  “I was there,” I said. “Drywall’s up. Looking at the flooring next.”

  “Can’t do that from here,” he said.

  “I’m on my way out the door,” I said.

  “Not without seconds,” Aunt Millie said.

  She tried handing me another sandwich. Uncle Tom reached for it and she swatted his hand away.

  “Ouch,” he yelled. “Thought that was for me.”

  “He eats first,” she ordered.

  “Can’t argue with the boss,” I said.

  “I’m the boss,” Uncle Tom said.

  “Not in this house,” Aunt Millie said without missing a beat.

  I took the sandwich and gave a wave. “I’d better get back to work.”

  “You’d better,” Uncle Tom said.

  “Thanks for the lunch,” I said to Aunt Millie and winked.

  “You earned it after fixing the sink,” she said with a grin.

  “Hey!” Uncle Tom bellowed.

  “I’d better go,” I said.

  “That floor had better be in or your ass is fired,” Uncle Tom called out as I shut the door.

  I put the sandwich into my mouth as I wrestled for my keys in my pocket.

  I got in my truck and sat there, staring at the old house. Through the kitchen window I saw my aunt and uncle standing there, talking to each other. They could never get mad at each other and stay that way. Even during the worst of times, like when they found out that they would never have kids. Or when they took me in off the street to raise me. And I fucking fought that as hard as a rebellious teenager could fight it.

  All I ever wanted was what they had.

  I came within spitting distance of it, but it didn’t work out. There was a trail of memories and a few broken hearts that were forever stuck to the stone steps from the back door of that kitchen to the driveway.

  Hell, I had broken Aunt Millie’s poor heart more times than I could count.

  I hated thinking about it, but it was the truth.

  I put my truck into reverse and took a big bite of my sandwich.

  All I needed to do now was get through the second half of the day.

  Then I could wash it all away, trying to forget for good about the woman in the wedding dress who said that she was going to give me a shot at forever.

  I twisted the cap off a beer and threw it into a bucket that I kept at the back door. I handed the bottle off to Matt and sat down. It was the last of the decent enough nights to actually sit outside. A fire burned in the fire pit at the corner of the old and squeaky deck.

  Matt leaned forward and stoked the fire, then finally did the right thing by tossing a fresh piece of wood into the flames.

  I rubbed my jaw and let another busy week roll off my back. My phone had been buzzing all afternoon and night, but I just kept ignoring the number and swiping to delete the text messages. There was this funny thing about the past trying to step into the present and future that I did my damnedest to fight away.

  My eyes moved to Matt as he just sat there, looking like he wanted to fight the fire or something.

  “Matt and Mary,” I said with a grin. “The wild romance of our generation.”

  Matt turned his head. “Fuck you, man.”

  I held my beer bottle out. “Come on. We made it another week through life.”

  Matt hit his bottle against mine. “I don’t know what to do, Rams. I love her like crazy, but we just can’t figure it out together.”

  “I know it’s not my place, but what doesn’t work?”

  “Everything,” he said. “She gets pissed when I go out for a beer. I get pissed when she goes out.”

  “So just go out together,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

  “We don’t trust each other.”

  “From all that high school bullshit still?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Seems that way.”

  “You can’t let go that she kissed that guy at that party one time, huh? When you were sixteen?”

  “It’s more than that,” he said. He stood up and walked toward the fire.

  “Hey, if you’re going to jump into that fire, you’ll need more flames.”

  “Thanks for that,” he said.

  I laughed. “You keep crashing here, man. You two are forever fighting. Isn’t a marriage supposed to be about talking and working through that stuff?”

  “You’re one to talk,” Matt said.

  “Don’t throw knives at me, man,” I said. “I’m your only place to stay.”

  Matt shook his head. “There were a few crazy nights that we both had. During some rough times. When her grandmother was dying of Alzheimer’s, she was the one who took care of her, you know? I stood by and waited as long as I could.”

  “As long as you could… why doesn’t that have a happy ending?”

  Matt glanced back at me. “Rams, it got bad. You know that.”

  “Of course I know it got bad,” I said. “I was there for the whole damn thing. I held Mary at the funeral while you were carrying the casket out to the hearse. She collapsed into me, man. She loved that woman. It was like losing her mother.”

  “Yeah, it was,” he said. “Whatever. It was just a hard time. Then and now, I guess. Maybe I should just head home. Stop and get some flowers.”

  I laughed again. “Matt, it’s eleven at night. You’ve been drinking. You go home right now smelling
of booze and looking like you do, Mary’s going to get pissed even more. And stopping for cheap, half flowers at the corner ‘mart isn’t going to help either.”

  “I get it. Man, did you dodge a bullet, huh?”

  I forced a quick smile and decided to change the subject. “So, how about that Johnson project, huh?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “That’s coming along nicely. Just too many people involved right now.”

  “Yeah. Uncle Tom thinks that more hands means more work.”

  Matt laughed. “More hands means more people wanting to sit around and drink and spit their chew.”

  “All we need is you, me, and Lance. Maybe Doc to oversee any surprises. Even still, we could just call him.”

  “He can’t use a cellphone,” he said. “Even for talking.”

  “We should be out of there in a few more days. On to something else I guess.”

  “What about this place?” Matt asked. “You ever actually going to work on it?”

  I refused to look around. I didn’t need to look around to know what kind of work needed to be done on the old country house. I found the house on a whim during a time when I needed something distracting. The original idea had been to hide in the house, fix it up, and eventually just sell the damn thing. Instead, I made the house livable and let everything else remain the same. Standing tall and strong but broken.

  Who does that sound like?

  “Don’t worry about my house,” I said. “That’s my problem, not yours.”

  “I’m just saying,” Matt said. “We could start working on it tomorrow. Might be good for both of us. Stay distracted from the bullshit.”

  “What do I need to be distracted from?”

  “Come on, Rams,” he said. “You and Sarah were getting a little serious there. Then… it just ended. What happened?”

  I gripped the right arm of the chair, feeling like I wanted to rip the fucking thing apart and throw it at Matt.

  Instead, I stood up.

  I pointed to the fire. “You can let that burn out if you want.”

  “You’re out?”

  “I’m out,” I said.

  “It’s early, man.”

  “Too much sappy, bullshit talk for me,” I said.

  “Right.”

  Matt raised an eyebrow.