IMAGINE US: by:

by Kidman, Jaxson

  “Erin and Elena,” she said. “That won’t confuse anyone.”

  “Only if we plan on causing trouble,” I said.

  “My days of trouble are over,” Erin said. “So far over. I’m ready to settle on a couch with a crossword puzzle and watch the news. At six.”

  “That sounds like heaven,” I said.

  “No it doesn’t,” she said. “Are we staying or leaving?”

  I looked at the table and then at her. “Well, I found a few apartments we can look at. I know when we first talked, you made it sound urgent. I was just wondering if there was anything you were looking for specifically?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “A place I can afford and doesn’t have my ex there.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Erin sighed and touched her forehead. “Sorry. You don’t need to hear about that part.”

  Of course I don’t.

  But I did.

  “You can tell me anything you want,” I said. “As far as price goes, I’m sure you know there are good parts and bad parts.”

  “I have a three-year-old daughter,” Erin said. “So I need somewhere…”

  She froze and looked ready to cry.

  “Why don’t you sit?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. Look at me. About to cry in front of a complete stranger. My real estate agent. Oh, I’m more of a mess than I thought.”

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I said to Erin.

  “Sure.”

  “Everyone is a mess…”

  * * *

  “Obviously, this is the bathroom,” I said. “So, it’s got a nice open floor plan. Defined rooms. Kitchen’s small, but it’s perfect for your price and what you need right now. Lease is one year and then month to month. I know the person who owns the building. Jeff is a decent guy.”

  I watched Erin walk with empty eyes as she looked around the bare apartment.

  I bit my lip, holding back the questions that burned inside me. It wasn’t easy to just turn my mind off and not look at the world as a writer.

  “I guess I have to take it,” Erin said.

  “I can show you others,” I said. “There are-”

  “No,” she said. “There’s nothing else out there. It’s pointless. I know what I need to do here. I have to get out and get away. I have to start over. I have to do it alone. I have to do it without crying in front of my daughter.”

  I closed my folder and swallowed hard. “Off the record here, just as one woman talking to another… I can’t imagine how scary it must be. Whatever you’re going through.”

  Erin laughed. “I fell in love with the wrong guy. It was the right time. But when the right time passed, I didn’t. Now I’m forever stuck with him because of our daughter. Even if he doesn’t want to be a father right now.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But look at what you said. You get to start over. This is your place now, Erin. Your decorations. Furniture. Traditions.”

  “Traditions?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” I said. I walked to the wide archway between the living room and the dining room. “Here. When you move in, mark your daughter’s height right here. And do it each month.”

  “Damage the apartment?” Erin asked.

  “Use a pen. Then paint over it when you move.” I hurried into the kitchen. “And here. Look at this counter. Imagine you standing here. Your daughter on a chair here. And you’re rolling out cookie dough to make sugar cookies for Christmas.”

  I looked back, smiling.

  Erin was laughing. “Wow. You put a lot of thought into this, huh?”

  “I’m a writer,” I said. “So I can’t help it.”

  “Well, it makes you good at your job,” she said. “I want this place. And I want everything you just said.”

  “Consider it done,” I said. “I’ll talk to Jeff. You can sign the paperwork right now. Then you can move in the first of the month.”

  “Not sooner?” Erin asked. “I really want to get out of where I am.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll tell Jeff you need the place right now. I’ll make something up.”

  “You’re really a writer?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “At least that’s what I tell myself.”

  “But you do this.”

  “Yeah. Have to pay the bills somehow, right?”

  “I hear that,” she said. “Well, you’ve sold me on the place. I’m not keen on the second floor, but we’ll manage.”

  “Your window here faces east,” I said. “Meaning you get a second floor view of the sunrise.”

  Erin laughed again. “You don’t have to keep selling it to me, Elena. Just let me sign the paperwork and pick up the pieces of my life.”

  I put my bag on the kitchen counter and dug out some papers.

  My phone buzzed with a text message from Chad.

  Wondering where I was. I rolled my eyes. He always pictured me sitting in a coffeeshop with bedhead and a stack of coffee cups as I tried to write a book.

  I quickly replied that I was showing apartments.

  After signing the papers, I walked Erin out of the apartment building. She left and I called Jeff to arrange a meeting to get the actual lease figured out and signed.

  I stood on the stoop and looked around.

  It was quiet.

  I had somehow stayed in the exact same town I said I would never stay in. This part of town we never came to though. It was too close to the border of the next town over, where the baseball teams and players all hated each other with a passion. Anyone who lived in an apartment like this was considered poor or scummy, which now was an unfair judgement on anyone because you never knew their walk of life. I watched my mother kill herself working endless hours to keep a small two bedroom house. In some way, I almost wished we lived in a place like this. Smaller. Cheaper. We could have had an actual relationship. Instead of her trying to party like a teenager during the nights and then spending the days yelling at me as an overbearing mother.

  I took a deep breath and decided to go home. I had no more appointments and I promised myself I would get at least a couple of pages written on my book. My agent Lucy was all over me to send her something. Anything.

  The only problem was that I didn’t want to tell the story.

  Even if it was fiction…

  It felt so real to me.

  * * *

  I typed words, but they weren’t the words that should have been typed. I forced my brain to think of something else. So I just started typing something else. Anything else. A story about a single mother looking at an apartment, ready to start over. The fear of starting over, especially while you’re holding the tiny hand of a three-year-old girl who has no idea what’s going on or why.

  When I took a break, I knew it wasn’t something I could send to Lucy. It wasn’t what she wanted from me.

  I walked to the kitchen and made more coffee.

  Behind me, the front door opened and shut.

  There was always a small sense of comfort when Chad came home. But it was a passing sense of comfort, lasting only a few seconds before reality set in.

  “You here?” his voice boomed through the hallway into the kitchen.

  “Right here,” I called out.

  Chad stepped into the kitchen with his tie untied, the top few buttons undone on his shirt. His hair looked like a sloppy mess too. His eyes were buzzed and when he reached for a chair, he missed it for a split second and then snorted with a laugh.

  “You started early, huh?” I asked.

  “Celebrating,” he said.

  “Good day?”

  “Another day,” Chad said.

  He was tall, and what used to be my tanned, lean high school sweetheart was now a man with a well-kept thin beard on his face, and he’d filled out in places that used to be tight with muscle. The high school jerk who used to shotgun beer after beer in my mother’s basement now drank the hard stuff, thinking it would keep him from gett
ing a beer belly. I wasn’t one to judge because everyone changed throughout the years. There was no stopping time and age and their collision course. I remembered a time when my chest was the biggest curve on my body. Wearing a two-piece bathing suit and not thinking about it.

  Now, with nice weather almost every day and the so-called beach season just around the corner, I looked back over the fall and winter, almost cursing myself for everything I ate and drank. Not that I was the kind of person to live on a beach, forever demanding the sun to tan my skin. I was happy with a beach umbrella, a book, and my laptop.

  “How was your day?” Chad asked me.

  “Fine,” I said. “Came home early to get some writing done.”

  My eyes met his.

  He frowned. “Right.”

  “I met with someone about an apartment today,” I said. I put my hands up in defense. “So don’t think I just sat around doing nothing.”

  “I didn’t say that, Elena. Jesus Christ.”

  “You were thinking it. You realize I have an agent, right? And I did sell a book before?”

  “Yeah. And I used to hit home runs,” Chad said. “I was told by top prospects I would be drafted. I was going to be rich. I was going to go pro.”

  “I remember it,” I said. “I was there for everything.”

  “And I’m here for everything now,” he said.

  “I don’t want to have this conversation right now,” I said. “You just walked in the door. Half drunk. I’m not even going to ask how you got home. Please don’t pick a fight with me. I’m sorry if you had a bad day.”

  “Like you’d know what that is,” he said.

  He reached into his pocket and took out his keys and phone.

  To my surprise he put two phones on the table.

  Then he turned and ripped his tie off his neck and threw it onto the table.

  “I need to take a piss,” he said. “What’s for dinner?”

  I looked at the kitchen table. “Uh, we can order out. I don’t feel like cooking.”

  “You never feel like cooking,” Chad said. “You’re just like your mother.”

  I let the comment slide as I walked to the table.

  I didn’t know Chad had two phones.

  I figured one was a work phone. But that didn’t make sense. I’d seen him so many times use his phone to make calls, send emails, like everyone else did.

  As I reached for his tie, to go hang it up so it didn’t get lost or damaged, the screen on his second phone lit up. My eyes couldn’t help themselves as I looked. As though I knew what to expect. As though I wanted to see something I shouldn’t have.

  It was an emoji of a face kissing. That was followed by a red heart.

  The sender was someone named Kaitlyn.

  I slowly lifted the tie to my nose as I heard the toilet flush.

  By the time Chad walked back into the kitchen, my mind was already racing a mile a minute.

  “Your tie smells like perfume,” I said. “And someone named Kaitlyn texted you. On your secret phone.”

  I tossed the tie to Chad and tried to look tough.

  “What the fuck?” Chad growled. “Are you going through my shit?”

  I laughed. “You put your shit on the table.”

  “And you smelled my tie?”

  “I was going to hang it up for you in the closet,” I said. “Then your second phone went off.”

  “That’s not my phone,” he said, his lip curling like it did when he didn’t get his way.

  “Oh, okay,” I said.

  “It’s Terrence’s,” he said. “He left it at the office. I told him I’d bring it home.”

  “You told him?” I asked. “How? You call him?”

  “He called me,” Chad said. He shook his head. “From his house phone. You know?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The phone buzzed again. Then again.

  Chad jumped toward the table and flipped the phone over. His hands were then flat on the table as he took a few deep breaths.

  He was angry.

  Why?

  “Chad…”

  “Fuck,” he growled. “I can’t do it anymore, Elena.”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  He turned his head. “This. Us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Chad lifted his right hand and touched his forehead. He reached for the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

  “The phone is mine,” he said. “Both phones.”

  “You have a secret phone,” I said. “What am I supposed to think?”

  “Exactly what you are, Elena. You probably have an entire book ready to write already about it. Maybe this story you’ll finish.”

  Chad tried to walk away but I darted around him and blocked his way.

  He put his head back and growled again. “Fuck, Elena. Don’t.”

  “You’re cheating on me,” I said. I didn’t bother asking. I didn’t need to ask.

  “It’s been rough at work,” he said. “Okay? This isn’t the life I thought I would have.”

  “So that gives you the right to do this?” I asked. “Who is she?”

  “I’m not playing that game, Elena.”

  “The fuck you aren’t,” I snapped.

  I punched at his chest. What was once hard, trained, perfect muscle was no longer there. My mind thought about the first time seeing Chad. Tall, cute, no way he’d ever like me. But he did. My mind thought about the first time seeing him shirtless. And an array of firsts came back to me as I stared up at him.

  “You’re an asshole,” I said.

  “No I’m not,” he said. “I just can’t play your fantasy life anymore. Thinking you can save me from losing my dream of going pro. Thinking you’re going to write something people actually want to read. Holding yourself back from a decent career. You never gave me the chance to stop and realize what had happened to me and my life.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You’re honestly going to blame me because you’re fucking another woman?”

  His phone buzzed in his pocket, hitting some lose change.

  My heart sped up even more. The wave of anger crested into crushing pain.

  “You heard what I said,” he said. “I’m going to take a shower and leave.”

  “Why bother washing her off you then?” I asked. “You’re going to run right back to her. Tell her all your stupid baseball stories, right? Make yourself look so cool.”

  Chad laughed. “What did you think was going to happen here, Elena?”

  I opened my mouth but had nothing to say.

  All that did was play into Chad.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  “Fuck you, I’m leaving,” I blurted out as he walked toward the steps.

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving. Not you. Fuck you, Chad.”

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “I guess it’s none of your business.”

  “You’re right. It’s not. I’ll be in the shower.”

  I watched him walk up the stairs as it all sank into me.

  I was in a state of shock, that was for sure.

  Chad had come home half drunk and accidentally put his secret phone on the table. If he hadn't done that…

  How long had he been cheating?

  The words ripped through the already tattered edges of my heart. I tried to think when the last time was that he and I were together. If he had been with someone else - Kaitlyn - and then came home to me. Touching me. Kissing me. Me kissing him. His body… my body…

  I groaned and turned, running toward the sink.

  I leaned over the kitchen sink and felt my stomach do a front flip. I gasped for a breath as I readied myself to get sick.

  The moment passed and for some reason I thought about Erin.

  So afraid to start over.

  Me convincing her it was going to be okay.

  And now I felt like I was full of shit over it.

  I had a full coffeepot ne
xt to me. My laptop on a used desk in the corner of a spare room on the first floor. And this was going to be the place I wrote the book that mattered.

  Except now I had to leave.

  I had a million questions for Chad, but each seemed less important than punching him in the nose or kicking him in the balls.

  I collected myself, turned off the coffeepot, and packed up my laptop and one bag of clothes and personal items.

  The sound of the shower water running hurt me with each passing second.

  When I got into my car, I started to drive, just to get away from the house.

  And truthfully, there was only one place I could go.

  3

  Sort of Home

  ADAM

  (now)

  I twisted the cap off a cold beer and took my time walking through the house. There was a part of me that was still convinced I’d find the front porch empty. And if that were the case, then I’d need some serious help. Thinking about Elena was one thing. But to actually see her. See her car. Smell the tangy odor of the smoke drifting off her dying cigarette. Her green eyes still finding their way through the black armor of my heart to make me almost jittery like an awkward teenage boy.

  In my other hand was a bottle of water.

  I opened the door with the hand holding the bottle of water and Elena was actually there. Now sitting sideways on my front porch, her legs stretched out, head slightly turned, staring off into space.

  This was almost too much to handle.

  “Brought you a water,” I said.

  She looked at me. Then at the beer.

  “Or you could have the beer,” I said. “Wasn’t sure what you… whatever.”

  “Water’s fine,” she said. “I didn’t know where else to go, Adam.”

  I gave her the water and I stood there, staring down at her.

  There were years between us. Years that could have made oceans look like puddles. Some of the deepest and darkest secrets were exchanged between our lips, yet we had only ever had one kiss together.

  She took a drink of the water and put the bottle down next to her. It tilted and fell, bouncing off the steps until it was on the ground.

  “Of fucking course,” she said.

  She put her head back and tears leaked from her eyes.