by L. B. Dunbar
“Actually, my undergrad was in humanities,” I said, sitting straighter in my seat. “I suppose I don’t sound terribly exciting. I’m not ex-military. I’m not artistic. And I hardly drink.” I paused, surprised at the information-dumping outburst. This wasn’t a job interview, and certainly what I spewed was nothing appropriate for employment. It sounded like a dating-site response.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, lowering my face again and gripping my forehead. A soft chuckle snapped my head upward. No longer able to contain his laughter, his expression softened as he gazed at me.
“Can we just scratch all that?”
“Sure,” he chuckled again. “What should I say instead?”
“Just say I’m from a small town. It’s probably obvious, anyway.”
Suddenly, his expression fell. His cheeks literally drooped lower, edgier, and his eyes narrowed. The melty, dark chocolate hardened to a cold, black haze.
“Any particular small town?” Struggling with the question, he sat up straighter, and his jaw clenched, enhancing his features, losing the soft lines of his round face.
“Oh, one you’ve probably never heard of.” I dismissed it with a wave, knowing the next statement would confirm or deny him remembering me. “It’s a small dot of a town in northern Michigan named Elk Rapids.”
Levi
Elk Rapids? Was she fucking kidding me? Had I heard of it? I’d done everything I could to forget it. Everything I could to run as far away from that shithole, dot of a town, as she called it, and all its memories. Yeah, I’d heard of it and I wanted nothing to remind me of it, not even the saucer-sized, blue eyes staring at me like perfect sapphire gems set against pretty, little lashes and a smattering of freckles. No, I definitely did not want her to remind me of that town which I swore I would erase from all memory. Nor did I want her to remember me.
Katie Carter. I closed my eyes for a second, blocking out the blaze of blue innocently beaming back at me. Memories warred within me. Dark places fought for attention I refused to offer. I would not let this ray of sunshine brighten the cobwebbed corners of my mind with her sweet voice and pink lips, lips I vaguely remember as untouched and innocent.
Are you going to be a hero?
The question haunted me, in the same voice questioning me moments before. Why, I cursed heaven, why couldn’t the universe just leave me alone? Why did I select this class in the first place? Oh, right, because my advisor demanded I take something light-hearted and interesting.
After two tours of duty, a medical discharge sent me home near death. Once I regained my health, I decided to cash in on the college degree the United States government promised me. It was the least they could do, all things considered. Here I sat in an elective course, obtaining a graduate degree in history when photography was my real passion. On Wikipedia, under lost soul, sat an image of me. Relief washed over me that she hadn’t recognized me. I wasn’t anyone Katie Carter needed to remember. Thankfully, before I knew it, class ended, and I headed for the shared office of the English and History departments.
“There’s Daddy,” Jeanine cooed as she handed me AJ. I wasn’t an asshole, but I knew how to smile at a woman to get my way. Holding AJ added to the allure. Buff ex-military holding a baby—I had it in spades, and I needed all the help I could get lately.
“Levi, is that a baby in my office?”
Shit.
Dr. Anne Johnson, a perky middle-aged woman with short, dark hair and blue eyes that pierced you with kindness while she insulted your work, stood behind me. She was tough as an educator, sympathetic as an advisor, and supportive as a friend. Her position as my graduate advisor came from a connection between the history and English departments.
“Levi, I love AJ, but you can’t bring him into the office. This isn’t a daycare center. Jeanine has work to complete for the incoming freshman. What’s going on here?”
“Alicia couldn’t watch AJ today, and I just hadn’t lined up reliable babysitting.” Close enough to the truth, it wasn’t exactly a lie. I wasn’t ready to share what happened with Alicia yet.
“Well, get some better daycare,” Anne demanded and then shifted gears. “Have you filled out that application yet?” I shook my head in response and her eyes narrowed on me again. Anne knew I wanted a job with Geographic Digest, an internationally-recognized, photojournalist magazine.
“You’re going to be there on Friday night, aren’t you?” The stare leveled at me wasn’t punctuated with a question mark. It was a demand. Anne planned to introduce me to a major photographer from one of the top newspapers in Chicago who had old ties to the magazine. She suggested a casual affair at a local bar watching a Cubs game. As she turned to enter her office, she yelled back to me. “Fill out that application and get a babysitter. Ask another graduate student. They’re always looking for money and most are pretty reliable.”
* * *
A babysitter? Where would I find one of those? Thoughts of the person who should have been caring for my son surrounded me when I returned to my second story walk-up two miles from campus. As I looked around the sparsely furnished room, now cluttered with baby things, the memory returned, stinging just as it had during the summer.
“Hmmm, Alicia,” I moaned into her neck, moist from her shower.
“Levi, we can’t.” Her hand pushed me back, the firm pressure on my chest a signal all too familiar to me. I stepped back, raising my hands in surrender, but my shoulders sagged in frustration. It had been weeks. Before that, it had been a sporadic six months.
“Alicia,” I groaned, roaming her face for any sign of attraction. The gorgeous girl before me, with her dark hair and darker eyes, ignored my plea, just like she’d been ignoring me since our friends-with-benefits-arrangement took a turn to friends-expecting-a-baby. Alicia wanted an abortion, but I’d witnessed too much death. I begged her to give us a chance. I’d never been in a relationship, and the idea of a baby changed everything.
“It’s too soon,” she whined, giving me her standard answer, sidestepping around me in the small confines of our bathroom and heading for our bedroom. My bedroom, she would remind me, as she moved into my place after she told me we were pregnant.
I watched her dress, admiring the change in her body, but wondering when she would return to the woman she was: the woman who wanted me. The woman who couldn’t get enough of me. It was the perfect arrangement. Sex, and only sex. I only had one rule: don’t abandon me. If she wanted to leave, she just needed to let me know, but the baby changed everything. I wanted to make it work, whatever “it” was, but nearly a year without steady sex was a little extreme.
“Too soon. It’s been too long,” I tried to tease, coming up behind her and pressing my slowly growing length against her ripe behind. She stepped forward, practically dancing around me. I spun with her, reaching for her arm, ready to demand some attention when AJ began to cry. Her shoulders fell and her eyes shut tight. I walked around her and crossed the short distance to the squawking baby’s room.
Cupping his dark head, I scooped him up and cooed into his ear. I wasn’t good at fathering. I relied on Alicia to tell me what to do to care for such a tiny human, but when I held him up against me, my heart calmed. Peace filled me. Nothing ever felt so right as holding him. I spun to return to our bedroom and found an open suitcase on the unmade bed. My eyes flicked up to Alicia, her back to me as she scooped out the contents of a dresser drawer.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t take this anymore.” She turned, dropping the handful of lingerie into the case without looking up at me. She spun away and started for a second drawer.
“Can’t do what anymore, Alicia?” My heart knew the answer, and my hold on AJ tightened. He squeaked and Alicia shuddered. Her eyes closed momentarily again when she turned and spilled a handful of T-shirts over the lacy delicates I once enjoyed on her and equally enjoyed taking off of her.
“This. Us. Him.” As if on cue, AJ cried, sensing the negative tone from the woman who s
hould have loved him unconditionally. As I jiggled him, his cries grew louder.
“Alicia, please. What are you saying?” AJ squeaked, and I recognized the growing squawk. He was one of three things: wet, tired or hungry. I couldn’t help him with option three.
“I think he’s hungry.” Alicia stilled and stared at me.
“Then feed him, Levi. There’s milk in the freezer.” I stared back at her in disbelief. She had to be kidding me. She was nursing him, and she hadn’t answered my question. What was I missing?
“I…”
“You need to make a bottle and feed him. Simple.” She threw up her hands and briskly walked around me, heading for the closet. Her arms spread to grab a thick pile of clothes, still on hangers. Throwing them over the open case, she folded the two halves, zipping up the side with a sharp tug. The sound lingered, echoing softly in competition with AJ’s shrieking.
“Alicia.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know how to ask her to stay. She couldn’t leave. She promised me, but then again, I wore a sign that said: Leave Levi behind.
“Levi.” She finally looked up at me and dragged the case off the bed. “I’m done.”
My mouth fell open, stunned. I’d been stabbed in the side, literally. I’d had my leg sliced in two. I’d slept in unbearable heat and known unquenchable thirst, but this, of all things, hurt the most.
The door to the apartment slammed shut, and AJ sensed the finality. He let out a sharp finale to his fit and then stopped, just like my heart. Everyone left me. My mother. My brother. My father. My…I didn’t even know how to quantify Alicia. In that moment, it didn’t matter. I resolved not to feel again.
Katie
“Do you remember Levi Walker?” I asked Penelope as she sat slumped on our lumpy couch with her bare feet propped up on the coffee table. Nail polish jars and a polish remover bottle, along with a variety of pedicure instruments, covered the wood surface. Her toes were held apart with a bright green separator. She’d given herself a pedicure as a means to save money. She’d had trouble finding her first “real” job also, so she was working as a daily office temp. Filling in for absentee receptionists and administrative assistants, she liked the non-commitment. It also meant a lack of consistent income.
“Levi Walker?” Her brow scrunched in thought, or maybe it was concentration on her pinky toe as she touched up a bright red nail.
“Do you remember him?” I sighed, plopping down next to her with a bag of popcorn. Stress eating was something I did often when I reached nervous wreck status. I’d embarrassed myself to no end with all the uncontrollable blushing and the boring answers, and I planned to eat myself into food-coma oblivion.
“Did I sleep with him?”
I laughed, then choked on a kernel. My first thought was: I hope not. My second was: maybe, but I still hope not.
“I…”
“Don’t answer that,” she said seriously, holding up her palm while she fanned her other hand in the direction of her feet. “I think I’d remember someone named after a pair of jeans.”
Ah, my wayward friend, how much I loved her while I didn’t understand her. Opposites, like I said. I’d only ever been with my high school sweetheart. Paranoid I’d get pregnant too young and end up like my father and my first mother, I feared intercourse again until college. Then I didn’t find the right kind of men, only boys lacking romance. I wasn’t a sex-only girl, which was where most boys lost interest.
“The Levi Walker from Elk Rapids. I'm positive, it's him.”
Penelope’s head swung to face me. “Didn’t he go into the military?” Her brows pinched, questioning me. Recognition dawned slowly. I nodded, chomping on another handful of popcorn hoping her memory wasn’t as weak as Levi’s appeared to be.
“There would only be one way to truly identify that frog. Did you kiss him?” she teased, breaking into a fit of laughter, her memory fully restored, and turning one of my darkest moments into a joke. My responding scowl softened her giggles.
“Aw, Katie Kat, I'm kidding. I think I vaguely recall a Levi Walker in a history class or something, but that fine specimen was not the scrawny Levi Walker of our hometown.” Her eyebrows wiggled up and down, reminding me of a boy celebrated at my aunt’s home before he went off to protect our country. Thin in stature, the man who sat in the desk behind me was completely contradictory to the boy from home. Penelope hadn’t ever known there had been more than one encounter. After mistakenly sharing the first embarrassing secret, I vaulted away the second to protect my heart and my pride.
“He isn't.” There was definitely something different about the Levi Walker in my class, something edgier. His smile could still be sweet, when he didn’t have that clenching thing happening, reminding me of my father. His eyes lied, however. Deep brown, they looked hollow at moments. There was something locked inside him. Something I recognized in me. I’d always had a strong connection to the man I hardly knew.
“Katie, you can’t possibly still be fantasizing about him. Wanting him to be a hero? You don’t need a hero. You have me,” she joked. But I strongly believed in them. Not the save-me-from-distress and fire-breathing-dragon kind, although that would be fantastic, but the everyday kind. I believed heroes came in many forms. My adoptive mother, Emily, was the best example. She saved me. She saved my father. She brought him comfort, love, and stability, and I often wondered who would bring those things to me. Who was my hero? While my life appeared stable from Emily marrying my father and adopting me, I still felt incomplete. It wasn’t a matter of saving me, but finding the counterpart to my divergent-femme fantasies.
“Is he married?” Penelope asked.
“Don't know. He doesn't wear a ring.”
“Of course not,” she sighed. A smirk returned to her plump lips. My best friend was a beauty, and men always noticed her, while I stood in her shadow. I didn’t compare to Penelope’s acorn-colored hair and buxom curves with my slim figure and straw-blonde hair, but I wasn’t jealous of her. I thought back to her earlier question about sleeping with Levi. Penelope had a rich past. Momentarily, I worried she did know Levi Walker, sexually, and I didn’t like it.
“Have you slept with him?” The question ate at me, escaping with popcorn from my teeth. Being with Levi was a strong possibility. I couldn’t keep up with all her supposed conquests.
“No,” she choked. “Wasn’t he older than us? I don’t do the old ones.”
“Yes, you do,” I scoffed, reminding her of her own dark past, but laughing to myself. Levi was roughly six years older than us, but at twenty-four that didn’t matter as much as it had at thirteen. Penelope ignored my comment and shivered.
“You know who else is in my class?” I offered to change the subject once again. “Nate Reynolds.”
Penelope’s brow shot upward. “Now there’s a man I’d allow to do me.”
I broke into laughter. From the moment we met in high school, Penelope had been my soul-sister. The irony of her name alone was not lost on me. It matched one of my favorite modern fairy tales, about a cursed girl searching for the love of a man, only to discover the love to break her curse was inside her. Loving herself was all she needed. Like that fictional character, Penelope had that self-love, and she protected me while she pushed my limits.
“Speaking of do-me, you should see the new assignment I have. He’s hot.” Her brows danced, addressing her latest temp position. She’d make trouble with a glance, if she could. As a continual rebel-with-a-cause, she attempted to piss off her parents who hardly paid her any mind. She sought attention by making mischief. I couldn’t believe what we’d been through together. It was part of the reason I didn’t complain when she was late with the rent. It was also the reason I suggested another roommate because we weren’t going to make it in our new place without financial help.
There had been so many changes to the various warehouse buildings near campus, and our loft-like apartment was a great find. It was spacious and open. I loved the atmosphere of being c
lose to the university, in a neighborhood bustling with small businesses and lively restaurants. It seemed trendy, in theory, but I wouldn’t know as I lacked the social life to enjoy the energy.
Speaking of energy, our latest interviewee arrived like a burst of hot air through a sunroof. She was the last one on our list of potential roommates. Kentucky Weber was bleach-blonde with big boobs, a soft Southern accent, and the brightest smile I’d ever seen. She was everything I wasn’t—loud in tone, but soft in demeanor. I instantly liked her laughter and her confidence. She chuckled heartily and contagiously. As former NEU alum, although a year or two ahead of us, she was telling us stories of fellow classmates when Levi’s name jumped out at me.
“Do you know Levi Walker?” I blurted before anxiety hit me and I realized I was too obvious with my intrigue.
“Sexy Walker, you mean?” She winked. “I had an English class with him as a freshman. Honey, the rumors that followed that sexy man on a stick.” Penelope broke into giggles as Kentucky fanned herself.
“Gossip says, he had a different woman every night. Sometimes even two. Most of them were older than him as he was a non-traditional student. Some military thing, I think.” Instantly, she assured us she had not been on his calendar.
“I don’t do the book types,” she said. “Too smart for me. I’m dumb jocks all the way to the bank. The bigger the jock, the better.” She winked, but the gleam in her soft brown eyes told me not to believe her. She actually seemed rather smart under the blonde hair but used that bright yellow color to fool people. I liked her, and I could tell Penelope adored her. Their personalities were more alike. I’d be the odd person out, but I was used to it.
“Book types,” Penelope interjected, narrowing her eyes on me. “I forgot to ask. Did you hear yet?” Our newest roommate looked at me. Not many others beside Penelope knew my secret dream to publish my supernatural fantasies. My kick-ass tales of girls with superpowers were a well-contained secret. One of my heroes in writing had been an undergrad biology major turned famous writer. She considered her writing a stress relief. Lucky for her, at twenty-three, her first book was published and she was an instant success. I wished to follow her lead, but it wasn’t as easy going for me.
