Secondhand Heart

by Kristen Strassel

  The women’s bathroom was practically a toxic waste dump at this stage of a Saturday night. Why were women so gross when they didn’t have to clean up after themselves? One of the stalls totally clogged up, the counter was wet, and crowds of drunk bimbos blocked the sinks. My equilibrium was still off, and once the crowd realized this, they parted ways for me.

  “Did you see Cam’s wife?” I heard one of the girls asking her friends. “She’s so beautiful.”

  I looked at her in the reflection of the mirror and dry heaved.

  Shauna had been looking out for me, I was indeed one hot mess. Most of the time, there was only one of me. My mascara had run under my eyes from sweat and sickness tears. Thank God I didn’t get anything on my shirt. My credibility would be immediately discounted if I barged in to the office covered in barf stains. I finger combed my hair, Cam had pulled it out of place earlier, brought it over one shoulder then the other, and deemed myself presentable for the battle royale. Once I left the bathroom, I gulped clean air and headed back to the office. I’d lost some of my bravado, it was probably running down a storm drain in the parking lot now.

  Cam wanted people to knock, so I did. “Come in,” he called out right away.

  I shut the door behind me firmly, then leaned against it, just like I’d done a couple of hours before. This time, he didn’t order me to undress, because his wife was sitting in the seat I’d been in while giving Cam a blow job, looking at me with her mouth open.

  “You’d rather fuck a fat chick than me?” She looked back at Cam, then to me again, not exactly sounding like Cam made her as sick as he claimed. “Oh, this is ridiculous.”

  “No. This is childish.” I tried not to slur. Seriously, this broad couldn’t even weigh a hundred pounds. I could snap her upper arms like a dry twig, and I was picturing myself doing it. Not that I was down on skinny people, I was the first person to tell you I was way hotter fifty pounds ago, but I probably had seventy-five on her. Being that skinny just wasn’t cute.

  “Daisy, this isn’t any of your business.” Cam sounded too tired to try to reason. He needed to find that energy someplace. I really needed him to put up a fight right now.

  “How is it not my business? You just asked me to move in with you!” I shrieked, making sure I got a reaction out of Ashley. “After you fucked me against that desk.”

  Ashley gasped, like it was the most offensive thing she’d ever heard.

  “And I sat in that seat,” I pointed at her. “And sucked him off. Was it you who walked in on us?”

  Just like that, I’d gone from not wanting anyone to know what we’d done to telling the whole world myself.

  Ashley’s face didn’t move as freely as it would have had she not had considerable enhancements done. Up close, the exaggerated cheekbones and puffy lips were jarring. She looked like wax puppet. Or maybe my vision was still messed up. “What the hell is the matter with her?” she wouldn’t address me, she asked Cam. “That’s disgusting.”

  Cam ignored her question. “Daisy, stop it. Ashley is just here to talk about the divorce agreement.”

  “Like hell I am!” She jumped up out of the chair, charging Cam to wave her finger in his face. Her ankles wobbled on top of stilettos, her knees were the largest part of her legs. “I’m here because you called me.”

  “About the divorce agreement.” Cam’s tone didn’t waver. Outbursts like this must have been normal for Ashley. “That’s all.”

  “Bullshit.” Ashley put her hands on his chest and then pushed herself away from him. “Change your story all you want in front of what’s-her-face. But we both know what you want.”

  She stormed out of the office, bumping her shoulder against mine. For a little thing, she had some balls.

  I opened my mouth and blinked rapidly once the door slammed shut, not knowing what to make of anything that had happened tonight. “I’m going home.”

  “Daisy, no! Come on. I called her to make her sign that paperwork. That’s all.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” even though I wasn’t really sure what to believe any more. “But I just need to think about everything that’s happened tonight, sober, and not under your spell.”

  Cam stood between me and the door, and he leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “I don’t want to lose you. I’m just starting to get my life back together, and I want you in it.”

  “Me too, Cam. And I need to protect myself.”

  He wouldn’t budge. “I’m not perfect Daisy. I make mistakes. My career is a disaster and my marriage was a joke. I don’t want to mess this up with you.”

  “You don’t even know me,” I said for second time tonight. Just like that, I was trying to push him away again.

  He looked down at me, his eyes stormy and sad. “That’s not true. I might not know every detail about your life, but the important things, that’s no secret.”

  “Just let me go home, Cam.” My voice shook. I tried to push past him. “I can’t do this right now. I’m tired, I drank too much, and I can’t make any decisions right now.”

  “You can’t drive yourself home like this.” He steadied his hand on the door. “I’ll drive you.”

  “No. If you drive me home, you know what will happen.”

  “You’ll get home safe.” He opened the door and followed me out. “And that’s all.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, all right?” Cam squeezed my hand when I already had one foot out of the truck. I wouldn’t let him kiss me goodnight. It was for the best, anyway. My mouth still tasted like puke.

  What a fucking day. From Ev’s baby and her stupid fiancé, to me acting stupid and Cam’s stupid ex, my head would have been spinning even if I stayed sober. I was really looking forward to crawling into bed and putting a fork in Saturday.

  “Oh, good, you’re home.” I ran smack into my mom on my way in. “Can you help me bring in some boxes?”

  “Sure.” I mean, was I going to say? I followed her back out to the car and almost fell over when she loaded two boxes in to arms.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked, sounding surprised. “How’d you get here?”

  “At the bar. Cam drove me.”

  “You smell like death.” Mom looked disgusted, even in the light of her trunk. “What have you been doing?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” I raised an eyebrow.

  “No, probably not,” she sighed. “I know you just turned twenty-one, but you need to cool it with the drinking. You don’t want your celebration to turn into a problem.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. I knew I’d been drinking a lot lately, but I wouldn’t exactly consider it a problem. Of course, that’s what everything said when they had a problem. “I’m not missing school or letting it interfere with my life.”

  Now that we were in the house, she could see me in all my drunken slut glory. She raised an eyebrow at me and put her hands on her hips once she put the boxes down in the corner of the dining room. “I just don’t want to see you go down the wrong path.”

  “Why do you have to make this a bigger thing than it is?” I was probably freaking out more than I needed to, because I was drunk. “Sorry to disappoint you. As usual. I’m going to bed.”

  I ran up the stairs in a huff like a drunken toddler. What a perfect ending to the night. My room was just as it had always been, ever since we’d last done it over when I was in the eighth grade. I hadn’t cared enough to change things around when I moved back. Tonight, it laughed in my face.

  If I lived with Cam, I wouldn’t be sitting here sulking in my childhood bedroom, trapped unless I wanted to continue arguing with my mom. I wouldn’t have seen Ashley, either. And whatever room I was in probably wouldn’t be rocking lightly back and forth as if I was floating away on the open sea.

  But it wasn’t going to answer any of the questions I had about myself.

  My pajamas had never felt as good as they did tonight. I hugged my knees to my chest, not calm enough to sleep. Tonight wa
s not the night to think about anything, my brain in theory knew that, but nothing I could do would stop it from racing. Leaning over my bed and almost losing the rest of my dinner, I pulled out my scrapbook.

  When I started this project, I didn’t know how special it was going to be to me so soon. I started it because I simply liked grouping the pictures, and all the paper and stickers you could get to go with it. My mom had been selling scrapbooking supplies, at parties of course, and I was far more taken with it than she ever was. To this day, any time I needed more supplies, I didn’t have to go farther than the basement.

  On every page, Jordan’s face smiled back at me. In every picture, we were almost always someplace different. Boston, the Cape, Newport, New Hampshire, his boot camp graduation in San Antonio, on base in Tucson, and Mexico, just for starters. Almost every page had tear stains on it, blotchy polka dots, because all I had to do was open the book and I cried like a baby. I ran my fingers along the image of Jordan’s face, since I’d never really be able to touch it again. I closed my eyes, convincing myself I could feel the dark stubble against his chin. Drenched in sunshine, wearing a shit-eating grin in every picture, Jordan belonged everywhere and to no one, but me of course. The world was his bitch. And I loved being a part of it. No matter how much I tried, things were never going to be the same without him.

  I hadn’t scrapbooked since Jordan died. Under the bed, next to the books, was a box of clippings about Jordan, his life, his work in the military, and how all of those things took him away from me. They deserved better treatment than being left in some box. I twisted Jordan’s dog tags in my hand as I closed the book. If I added those clippings to the scrapbook it was no longer a celebration of our life together. It was a memorial to his death.

  It was final.

  But would I ever be able to give myself permission to move on? Moving out of this house, this holding pattern, would be moving on. Stepping into the unknown. Was I ever going to know the right time?

  Had it been me instead of him, I would have wanted to look down at Jordan and see him taking life by the balls. Not sulking in his childhood bedroom. I chuckled all by myself, picturing him banging on the glass the separated this world from the next, screaming at me.

  I had to take a chance. If I was too chicken shit to do it for myself, I was going to do it for Jordan.

  “So Cam asked me to move in with him,” I told Bree as casually as I could manage. We’d just arrived at the beach, and Landon was in my lap, already covered in sand. Every time we came to the beach, we had to build a sand castle fortress to protect our little camp from the onslaught of the ocean. We tried to pick the same spot every time we came, and some days, we could still find some of the little plastic soldiers the boys had left behind.

  Bree’s mouth dropped open, looking back and forth from me to Lucas as she buttered him up with sunblock. Once he squirmed away from her, belly flopping into the sand, she looked at her hands and smeared the excess goo on her face and chest.

  “And I think I’m going to do it.” I snuck that in the before the shock wore off. “Rub that in some more, it looks obscene.”

  “Ugh.” She snapped back to life, giving her skin one more pass to distribute the sun block. “Don’t you think that’s a little fast? When did this happen?”

  “Last night.” Landon squirmed in my lap, grinding the sand into my skin. Cheap exfoliation. I bounced him up and down. “I knew you were going to freak out. But I think I want to give it a try.”

  “I am freaking out. I didn’t see this coming at all.” Bree turned over a pail full of sand to add to the fortress. “You sound like your mind is made up already.”

  If this was the other way around, Bree would be asking me what I thought about every aspect of the scenario. And then once I gave her my opinion, she’d ask me if I was sure about it.

  “I can’t live my life when every day starts with waking up in the same bed I slept in when I was nine years old. That’s not progress.”

  “But this isn’t just moving out of your house. This is moving in with a man. That makes him a part of your life, probably in some way forever. Is that what you want right now, Daisy?”

  I took a deep breath, and concentrating detailing my castle. The boys loved it when I drew windows and doors in the sand with my fingers. Depending on when the tide came in, sometimes I’d draw little seals and crests, so the ocean would know whose sand it was messing with when it swallowed our city. My dog tags swung against the buildings. “I could die waiting to figure out what I want. Or I could do something.”

  Bree’s eyebrows popped up over her sunglasses. From the looks of them, she got them from Ev’s designer friend. I could barely see her face. “If this is what you want.”

  “Worst case scenario, I move back in with my parents.”

  “You’ve thought this all out.” She sighed. “Lucas, get back here!”

  This wasn’t exactly the reaction I expected from Bree. Even though I was going for shock value, I at least thought she’d be excited for me. After all, she’d been trying to set me up with any man with a pulse for months now. I started with her because I figured she’d be the happiest for me. I was counting on that momentum before I told my parents.

  Before I told Cam.

  What if he reacted the same way? He could have been drunk last night, too. My confidence plummeted. His condo was visible in the distance, not much bigger on the horizon than our sand castles. Maybe that’s not what he meant at all. I could be making a giant fool out of myself. My mother was right. There’s something I hadn’t said in a long time. I needed to cut back on the beer, effective immediately.

  I did one of Ev’s yoga moves, inhaling deeply, then exhaling all that self-doubt stuff away. Believe or not, I felt a little better. What was happening to me today? Giving up beer, yoga, next thing you know I’d be sipping a Lifedrink.

  “What brought all of this on?” Bree broke the silence. I’d gone back to playing with the kids, because I wasn’t sure what to say any more. “Don’t get mad at me—“

  “I’m not mad.” At her, anyway.

  Bree sat up a little straighter in her chair. “Okay, you’re not mad. This is just so out of character for you. You’ve only known Cam a couple weeks. And I know it probably feels really good to get back out there, but I just don’t want to see your heart get broken.” She stopped and I looked up at her. “Again.”

  I slammed my overturned pail, hard enough to hurt my hand. “How do you if it’s out of character for me? I’ve never been in this situation before. I’ve never been single before.”

  “Exactly.” She was talking to me like she talked to the kids when she was trying really hard to explain something they didn’t want to hear. Something about it was actually soothing. “Do you really want to jump straight into another man’s bed? Don’t flip out about that. You know what I mean.”

  “I do.” My finger drew halfhearted squiggles in my sand castles. They weren’t anything special, and Landon would be sure to call me out on it when he came back from collecting rocks. “But if I don’t do something, then every night, I go to bed with Jordan, and I wake up with Jordan. He’s never going to not be a part of my life, but he wouldn’t want this for me.”

  “It hasn’t even been a year. It’s not a race.”

  “I just turned twenty-one. I should be having the time of my life. Instead, I’m sneaking into my parents’ house in the middle of the night and working on my beer gut. I’m miserable. And as much as I love you guys, Cam’s been the person to really make me see it.” He was the person to make me want something else.

  “Well, he can perform certain services for you that I can’t,” she squealed as Lucas landed on her lap, anxious to show her some of his recovered army guys.

  “You totally could.” I raised my eyebrows and stifled laughter. “If you weren’t such a prude.”

  “Oh yeah, two kids before I was twenty, wicked prude.” She laughed. “I think the only thing you and me haven’t done is each
other.”

  “I just offered, prude.” Lucas decided he wanted to sit in my lap instead, laughing along with us, which was just so wrong. Since he was two and a half, I was fairly certain we weren’t going to hell, for that anyway. “So speaking of things that haven’t been done before.”

  “Oh! Tell me tell me tell me.” Bree dropped her motherly tone completely, never able to resist gossip.

  “Cam likes an audience.” I didn’t say any more, the words sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. It wasn’t just a confession about him, but about me, too.

  “Oh my God, did you have a threesome?” Bree’s chin dropped. “Another girl or guy? And no, I’m not going to do that with you.”

  “Slow your roll, girl.” I scooped up some sand and threw it at her. “No. Just the two of us. But he likes to do it in places that we can get caught.”

  She tossed sand back at me. We were covered anyway, thanks to the boys. “Have you been?”

  “Yeah.” I stopped to see her reaction, jaw on chest, classic Bree. “At the restaurant.”

  She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Like, in the dining room? Should I not be eating there?”

  “You’re so dramatic. No, we were in the office, and the door wasn’t locked. Someone didn’t knock. Cam thought it was funny. I wanted to lock the door, but he didn’t. He wanted to get caught.”

  I clenched my thighs together at the thought of it, made even more obscene since Lucas was still in my lap.

  “That’s kind of weird, Daisy. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to see my boss doing. It’s sexual harassment.” So Bree thought it was so not hot.

  “No one seemed to care when--” I caught myself before I mentioned Cam’s wife.

  “When what?” she asked. “What were you doing?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” You know, just a blow job. Carry on. “But Ashley, his wife showed up later on. So if anyone had been talking about what they saw in the office, they forgot all about it.”