Like You Mean It

by Jillian Liota

  To be honest, Marcus is a big reason why I haven’t gone out of my way to invite women to our Sunday nights. Women like Lucia, or the two women that play basketball at the park with us, and even my sister Callie, would probably fit right in. But I’m not trying to subject any ladies to Marcus’ bullshit. If a woman is involved in any capacity, he has a fucking fit.

  It is things like this that just show how much easier life is when I keep things organized a certain way. I’ve got my work, my friends, my family, and my woman, none of which really overlap. I did it that way in high school when things didn’t mesh so well, and it’s been pretty much smooth sailing since then.

  Which is why I lied to Marcus when I told him that I had to cancel Second Sunday an hour before everyone was due to show up at my house.

  I sent out a group text that basically said, “Sorry guys, something came up and I have to cancel tonight, but will see everyone next month.”

  In less than a minute, Marcus was calling me up, hounding me for answers. Why was I cancelling? Why so last minute? Didn’t I know he had spent money on beers? What was he supposed to do with his Sunday evening?

  I’d rolled my eyes and lied my way through it, making up an excuse about my mom needing me to help with something urgent while my dad was out of town.

  The only reason he kept his mouth shut is because he knows moms are off limits to his bitching.

  But in reality, I was cancelling on my group of friends because of Annie.

  Annie McAllister, the new neighbor I met for the first time tonight. The very pregnant, single mom with a whole boatload of issues.

  I don’t even know what I’m doing as I splash around in my pool with her son, Jones, as Annie sits at the edge with her feet dangling in the deep end, her ratty black yoga pants with a hole on the inner thigh rolled up to the knees.

  Why did I give up my prized Sunday evening with the guys to feed my hungry and emotional neighbor and her son?

  It was her smile.

  She was standing at my door, asking for me to share food with her, and blubbering about a dead ex and not having a grill. She was crying, but she was still smiling at me.

  And I couldn’t help but wonder, when was the last time someone let her be upset about whatever shit life is throwing at her? When was the last time she didn’t feel like she had to put on a smile to make life easier for the people around her?

  Clearly she has been through something tragic recently. Someone close to her died, and if I heard her correctly, she just moved across the country to raise a kid – almost two – on her own. It’s good to see her mom was around, because relationships with parents can be a godsend during tough times. But I think that’s all she has.

  She just looked so utterly restless and alone, but she still had that smile on her face. And my heart just broke for her.

  So I cancelled Second Sunday, and packed up all of my food and took it over to her house.

  She didn’t say more than a few words. She pretty much just tried not to cry – she failed, aggressively – as she watched me smother her son with attention. I figure that right now, the best thing I can do for Annie is pay attention to Jones, and let her sit in her thoughts, wherever those may lead her.

  “Mom!” Jones shouts. “Mom! Come play with us!”

  Annie smiles from where she’s seated at the edge of the pool. When she’s just going about her day, her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It’s how she smiled at me. How she smiled at her mom. But when she looks at Jones, it’s like a switch is flipped, and a light flicks on behind her eyes that wasn’t there before.

  “I don’t have a bathing suit that fits me and the guppy,” she responds, resting one hand on her massive stomach. “But don’t worry, I’m having fun too.”

  She uses her foot to splash Jones a little bit, and he giggles.

  “How far along are you?” I ask, curious about when I can expect a screaming baby to be wailing at all hours of the night.

  “30 weeks,” she says with a smile. “The guppy is coming right around Christmas, which is just perfect. A nice little Christmas present for me.”

  “That’s the second or third time you guys have used that word,” I say. “Is the guppy the baby?”

  “When I was younger, I thought a guppy was a baby fish,” Annie says, shrugging. “When I got pregnant with Jones, it’s just the nickname I gave him. And now we use it with this little miss as well.” She absentmindedly gives her tum a little rub.

  “So baby number two is a girl?”

  “A baby sister!” Jones shouts, right into my ear. “I told mom I should get to name her.”

  “And what do you want to name your sister, Jones?” Annie asks him, her eyes staying on me.

  “Gamora!” he shouts again. “Like in Avengers, because Gamora is green and guppies are green!”

  Annie laughs.

  It’s a nice sound. She’s a sweet thing, even if she is coming apart at the seams. It’s important to be able to laugh. Hopefully, today is just a bad day.

  “Gamora is a great name,” I say to Jones. “But you know what would be a better name?”

  He smiles and giggles as I grab him and launch him into the air, shouting, “Superman!”

  «««« »»»»

  “Thanks again for letting him swim in your pool,” Annie says quietly as we walk through the house. “We basically commandeered your entire evening, but I hope you know how much we appreciate everything.”

  I smile as we come to a stop at the front door. Jones is still in his trunks, wrapped in a towel, and completely zonked out in Annie’s arms, his head resting on her shoulder. He’d gotten out of the pool and sprawled out on the warm concrete surrounding the edge. It took him about five minutes to fall asleep.

  So Annie picked him up and had him sleep-stand while she wrapped him in a towel and lifted him over her shoulder. I offered to carry him but she said she was fine, that she carries him to his bed often and the baby bump doesn’t get in the way.

  “You and Jones are always welcome to use the pool,” I say with a smile. “And I’m glad you took over my evening. We live in a world where we don’t introduce ourselves to our neighbors anymore. Now I can say that I know my neighbors.”

  She smiles at me, and it looks so much more genuine than it did earlier today. I don’t know if she’s actually happier, or if I’ve just helped her take her mind off of things for a while. But either way, I’m glad I had a part in making her smile.

  “Thanks, Cole. I’ll see you around.”

  She walks out the front and down the steps, and I watch to make sure she gets to her door okay. We don’t live in the worst part of LA, by any means, but there are plenty of families that still have bars on their windows on this street, and for good reason. So I allow myself the satisfaction of seeing her walk safely across the fifty-or-so feet that separate our front doors.

  She gives me a little wave when she gets their safety gate and front door open, then goes inside. I follow suit and walk back into my house and close the door behind me.

  Finally, it’s Sunday beer time. Heading back into the kitchen, I grab a beer and wander through the house to my bedroom and into the master bathroom.

  White subway tile, double light sconces, his and hers sinks, black and white floors. It was the first room in the house I completed, so it should be a room that elicits a sense of pride. Unfortunately, most of the design elements were my ex’s ideas. I figured doing it up the way she wanted would at least result in some hot shower sex in the massive walk-in.

  I just never anticipated that it would be her having hot shower sex with someone else.

  I had never been so happy and so sad to return home early from visiting Callie in San Francisco.

  I turn on the shower and set my beer on the ledge next to my shampoo. Tonight is a night that calls for a shower beer. Stripping out of my wet swim trunks and chucking them into the hamper, I take a moment to examine myself in the mirror.

  I’ve always been a big guy. I
’m 6’3” and 230 pounds, and most people assume I played football in high school or maybe even college. But growing up in my family, playing sports was never really an option. It’s not that my parents looked down on it or anything. But the fun sports can be pretty violent, and pretty expensive.

  When I was a junior, I saw the movie Rudy for the first time and got it in my head that I could be a famous college athlete. I told my mom I wanted to play football, and she said I could try out for the team my senior year if I was able to cover the cost of uniforms and trips on my own. So I got what I thought would be a throw away job working at an auto shop as a paid bitch – my sister’s term, not mine.

  About a month into the job, one of the older guys invited me to a fight night. I assumed I was going to his house to watch something on Pay-Per-View. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was taken to a live, underground, fight night.

  It was amazing.

  I still remember that feeling of walking into the arena like it was yesterday. There was something about MMA that just spoke to me. The sweat, the blood, the crowd.

  So I asked around and found a gym a few miles away – in Rosemead - that did MMA-style workouts and training. I was really lucky to find a place like that nearby, since MMA wasn’t as big during the Y2K craze. I was so taken by this new sport that I completely forgot about football and used the money I was making working at The Garage to pay for my membership and training.

  Not only did I love what it did for my body, which started to look toned and muscular in a very different way than it ever had before, but I appreciated having a different way to deal with my personal bullshit. Growing up in a family that encourages talking about your problems is really helpful, and I feel like I have a pretty good connection to my feelings.

  But sometimes, I just wanted to hit something.

  And fighting gave me that. And sometimes, I didn’t hit something. I got to hit someone. And that was even better.

  When I turned 18, I started doing small, paid fights, much to my parents’ disappointment. I lost a few in the beginning, but I eventually started winning over and over again. I went from a fairly poor hippie teen to having money to burn. Luckily, my parents helped me keep a level head about all that cash.

  Mostly.

  But you can be levelheaded about money and still flash shit around for attention, and doing so definitely attracts the ladies. Because the fighting might have worked me out, but hooking up with the many women that came and went during my twenties worked me out.

  Needless to say, I enjoyed my twenties.

  After a while, the fighting stopped feeding me the way it had, so I decided to take a gamble on my future and purchased the auto shop from Hector when he said he was ready to retire and move back to Peru to take care of his mother.

  And then, when I was 29, I met Maxine. She was… even now, I can still say she’s the hottest woman I’ve ever seen. A 26-year-old aspiring model and regular at the gym, she pranced around in the tiniest shorts and a sports bra, showing off her lithe and toned physique. Every guy at the gym was drooling over her, and for some reason, she set her sites on me.

  She was my first actual relationship, if you can call it that. Really, it was just lots and lots of fucking. The dirty kind. In the alley behind bars, in the backseat of her Jetta, on my kitchen counter. Which is great, until you realize that the person you’re fucking regularly is loyal only to herself.

  We’d been together for about a year – or at least, I thought we were together – when I came home from San Fran to her in the shower with another guy from the gym. She’d acted like it was no big deal, like it was normal.

  I don’t know what world she was living in, but I considered it important that my live-in girlfriend was fucking only me. But I guess she saw us more as friends with benefits who had become roommates with benefits.

  I was more upset about finding out I’d been dipping into the community pool than the dissolution of the relationship.

  What does that tell you?

  I step into the shower and take a sip of my beer, then just let myself soak under the steamy hot water.

  Amazing sex is… amazing. But it only goes so far, which is definitely not something I ever thought I would say.

  When shit with Maxine hit the fan, I realized maybe a relationship wasn’t for me. I’d been happy before, just enjoying life as it came my way, no real plans or thoughts about the future. Why force myself into another situation like that when I can just have a good time? Who needs the stress?

  So I did that for a few more years. But it slowly started to peter out. The women all felt like they were the same. The sex stopped being adventurous and different. And I don’t know if that’s just the reality of hitting your mid-30s, or if I just didn’t know how to pick ‘em. But I put an embargo on relationships with women when I turned 32. I figured it was a good year to focus on my business, on my house, on whatever came next in life.

  And then, three weeks later, Jess happened.

  I’m glad she came along when she did. Jess is… great. We have a good balance of independence and interest in each other, which feels like a healthy step away from just fucking for fun.

  I have my life, she has hers, and we enjoy our weekends together. We actually do stuff together outside of just spending the weekend in bed. We have conversations about… well, mostly about superficial stuff, but it’s more than I can say about my relationship with Maxine.

  And I’m not a really big talker with anyone other than my sister. So the fact Jess and I talk about anything remotely important says enough.

  I finish up my beer and wash off, scrubbing the chlorine off my body.

  Jessica Nadine Olson.

  We met at The Garage. She’d been dropped off with her car by a tow truck after breaking down on the 10 Freeway, a fate I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. She was so flustered and nervous, and I just remember thinking, I wonder if I can get her to flush like that in bed.

  That night, I took her out to dinner. Then I took her home and we fucked in my soaking tub, the water sloshing over the edges as I took her from behind and watched us in the mirror. I thought I’d messed it up, since my sex-ban turned into taking someone out and then immediately crawling into bed with them.

  But two years later, and we’re still seeing each other. She lives in San Diego, and even though a long-distance relationship isn’t considered ideal by most, it’s perfect for us. We see each other as often as we can. Mostly, it’s her driving up to Rosemead, since her schedule allows her full weekends off while mine only gives me Sundays.

  She doesn’t visit on Second Sunday weekend, though, and typically uses that weekend each month to spend time with her mother, who lives in Palm Springs.

  I used to wonder if she gets tired doing all that driving. But whenever we’ve talked about it, she made it sound like she enjoyed the solitude that the long drive provides. So I haven’t mentioned it in a while.

  When I hit the handle to turn off the shower, I hear my cell phone ringing.

  I slap barefoot and naked across the bathroom to where my phone sits on the counter.

  Speak of the devil.

  I swipe to accept and click speaker so I can dry off and talk at the same time.

  “Hey Jess,” I say, rubbing the towel along my legs.

  “Hey baby,” she says, her throaty voice echoing on the bathroom walls and surrounding me. Her voice alone can get me hard, and I’m suddenly wishing I’d tugged one out in the shower. “I miss you.”

  “Miss you too,” I respond automatically. “How’s your mom?”

  I finish drying off and walk back into the bedroom as Jess tells me all about her weekend at her mom’s. Apparently Mrs. Olson is fending off the advances of a gentleman caller.

  “And then she told me that she might have been a widow for 15 years but that she loved my dad so much she can’t imagine ever falling in love again,” she says, a laugh falling from her mouth and filling the room. “I mean, I know my dad’s gone and e
verything, but I don’t want her to be alone, you know?”

  “Yeah,” I respond as I finish dressing in a pair of sweats and a loose shirt. “It doesn’t sound like an easy position to be in,” I add, trying to stay neutral.

  As much as I appreciate Jess and her passionate personality, it also lends her towards being pretty emotional about her opinions. And by emotional, I mean aggressive. So it just makes life easier if, when I don’t agree with her, I just acknowledge her stance without saying what I actually think.

  “So, how was your weekend? I feel like we haven’t talked in a few days.”

  “It was good,” I reply. “Worked a bit yesterday, did my normal stuff this morning. I met my new neighbors.”

  “Oh yeah? What are they like?”

  “Nice,” I reply. “It’s a woman, Annie, and her son, Jones. She’s super pregnant.” I shrug. “I think she recently lost her husband or something.”

  “Oh my god!” she exclaims.

  I nod, even though she can’t see me.

  “She showed up at my door asking if she could have some food – you know how you hear pregnancy makes women crave weird stuff? I guess she could smell the food on my grill from her house, and she was practically in tears when she came over. So I took all the food over and ate with her and her son, and then they came over and the kid swam in my pool for a bit.”

  There’s silence on the other end. I take a look at the screen for a second to check that I didn’t drop the call.

  “Did I lose you?”

  “No, I just…” Another pause. “So what happened to Second Sunday?”

  Fuck.

  I knew it was important for me to tell Jessica about my impromptu, completely platonic dinner date with my neighbor rather than for her to find out about it some other time. You know, honesty in a relationship and all that.

  But I never stopped to consider what it might mean to her that I cancelled my plans with the guys.