My life was barely holding together as it was, and some guy coming along and getting into my business was the last thing I wanted.
Even if he was cute.
***
I wore the suede boots to work on Saturday, and Bruce stared down at them as he pushed a bulky envelope toward me on his desk.
“Am I in trouble?”
We were in the tiny office at the back of the pub, and he was eating minestrone soup straight from the can. He paused, one gelatinous spoonful near his lips.
“Guilty conscience?” he said.
“No,” I snapped.
“Are you okay, though? You don’t have to be here today. Sawyer came back last night and said you got home and seemed okay, but what happened was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t your fault. I should have been more aware, but I was thinking about that hundred bucks. So stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. And I’m serious about you taking some time off. And I’ve been thinking about safety for you servers, in general. I’ve got someone coming by first thing Monday to put a big mirror across from that corner, so there won’t be a blind spot there anymore.”
“Those guys said they weren’t from around here, so I don’t think they’ll be back.”
Bruce grinned. “No, I think Sawyer taught them a lesson.”
With his smile, the mood lifted, and I felt confident I could put the previous night behind me.
“Is Sawyer a friend of yours?” I asked.
“No, he’s too cool to be friends with an old guy like me.” He nudged the envelope at me again, making me take it. “Here, this is for you.”
“Coupons?”
He laughed. “You have such a weird, dark sense of humor. Seriously, we should do an open mike night here and you can do your act.”
“How do you do that? How do you always take everything like it’s a joke?”
“I’m always drunk.”
“No, you’re not.” I picked up his coffee and sniffed it to be sure.
He turned back to his computer screen, shoveling the rest of the cold soup down quickly.
I opened the envelope to find a wad of cash, more than a hundred dollars. I’d left in a rush the night before, but this was way more than any possible tips I’d left behind.
“You’re paying me under the table?”
“No, you’ll get your paycheck from the bookkeeper when she’s here. That’s a gift for you.”
My vision blurred as I fought back hot tears. “This must be a couple hundred dollars.”
“Is it? Time for you to get that tooth fixed up. I know it’s bugging you, but maybe after you get it yanked out or filled in or drilled out, maybe then you’ll be more inclined to smile.”
“Thank you, Uncle Bruce. I swear I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”
“It’s a gift, not a loan. But I insist you get that tooth fixed. No more pointless suffering. You always put Bell’s needs ahead of yours, but you need to take care of yourself.”
I folded the money and tucked half in one front pocket and half in the other. I always split my money in half like that because I hated the idea of reaching for my money and finding an empty pocket.
“Thank you.”
He scraped around in his cold can of soup. “Fix the tooth.”
“Of course.” I backed out of the office, my head spinning.
Because it was Saturday, we had two other servers helping, not that we needed three people serving when the nice weather had most people doing yard work at home. Barely a dozen patrons were scattered around the bar, and half of them turned to stare at me. I traced the outline of the cash in my pockets to make sure it was still there.
A familiar dark-haired guy with tattoos walked in, blinking around as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine to our windowless space. He gave me a shy wave and lumbered over to his favorite table. He was tall enough he had to nudge the table away from the wall to make room for his elbow.
I headed straight for him, meaning to thank him for the night before.
He spoke first, saying, “Those are great suede boots. I can see why you were thinking about them on the walk home last night.”
The unexpected compliment broke over me like a wave, and I searched my mind for something nice to say in return.
“I like your arms,” I said.
He raised one thick, dark brown eyebrow and gave me an amused look with those bottom-of-the-sea green eyes.
“Not your arms,” I stammered. “Your tattoos. I meant to ask you the other day, but did you draw them yourself?”
He glanced behind me, in the direction of where the fight had happened the night before. He rubbed his one hand over the knuckles of the other, as if remembering.
“Tell me about your drawings I saw you doing.”
He flipped open his sketch book and flipped past pages of seascapes drawn in bold black lines. “For my sleeves, I sketched the basic concept, and this friend of mine actually did the ink. If you want any work done, let me know and I’ll take you to see him.”
“You’ll take me?”
He grinned, flashing those perfect teeth my way. “You can’t go all by yourself.”
“Says who?”
He tilted his head to the side, studying me. “You’re argumentative, and tough like a microwaved steak, but I don’t think you’re a sad girl through and through. I bet you get deliriously happy doing something other people find stupid, like playing mini-golf.”
“Is mini-golf still a real thing? I thought they tore all those places down, like drive-in theaters.”
He stared at me for a moment without speaking, then shook his head. “Sorry, I blanked out there. I was just imagining what sort of tattoo you might get. Probably black roses, with long thorns.”
“No.”
His eyes shifted, moving down my body and across my folded arms. His gaze was palpable, like hands caressing me, his flesh burning against mine like a fever.
He tried again. “Barbed wire?”
“No.”
“Lemme think. Your tattoo wouldn’t be something cute and girlie, like a cartoon character. That wouldn’t be you.”
I shook my head. No, a cartoon wouldn’t be me at all.
He leafed through his sketch book and stopped on a drawing of jellyfish, round and luminous even in rough black ink.
I tilted my head to the side in an unconscious maybe.
He kept leafing through the book, one page at a time, watching my expression. The drawings were mostly of things under the sea, but then there was a section of other creatures, including crickets and dragonflies under trumpet-shaped flowers.
Everything else around me disappeared as I was swept away into the images. Even as these rough drawings, the plants had a life to them, like they might continue growing off the page after Sawyer closed the book. The man wasn’t just good at throwing his fists at people’s faces. With a pen in hand, he also had access to the kind of creativity and dexterity people dream of having.
He slowly turned the page to a frog, and he stopped.
I murmured, “What else have you got?”
“That’s you.” He pointed to the frog, partially hidden by the sweeping curl of a leaf.
“I don’t think so.” A frog? I shook my head.
“Your eyes lit up when you saw the frog. That’s you.”
I looked around to make sure other people weren’t overhearing me being compared to a frog. The bar wasn’t very big, and during moments like this when the HVAC system wasn’t blowing and the stereo wasn’t turned up for the evening rush, you could hear way too much.
Sawyer took the cap off his pen and started adding fine lines of shading to the image, hiding and revealing the frog at the same time, creating magic in a way I didn’t understand. In art classes back in school, I’d been able to copy another image very easily, transferring it up and down in scale, but when I went to make anything original, the page stayed blank until I scribbled across it in frustration. I didn’t kn
ow what it was artists saw when they looked at unfinished work, but it wasn’t what I saw.
He ripped the page right out of the book and held it up toward me.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t take your art. I’m not going to get a tattoo, either. Not even your frog.”
“You could put it on your fridge, if your husband doesn’t mind.”
“Who?”
He smirked at my hand, reminding me of the pawn-shop wedding band I wore.
His beautiful green eyes did that thing again, where they urged me to confess. Confess my sins. And my lies. And my dark desires.
I stared at his lips, wondering what they tasted like. He shook out his pen hand, flexing his fingers along with his muscles under his smooth, tattooed skin. My mother always said to stay away from boys with tattoos. She also warned against fingertips yellowed by smoking, and anyone in the wrong type of shoes—too worn-down or too fancy.
She had a lot of advice for me, mostly in the form of what she would do if she were me. Before she disappeared, she’d say these things out of the blue, like they’d been on her mind all day. We’d be making dinner and she’d stare wistfully out the window at the back pasture and say, “If I got pregnant again, I wouldn’t have the baby. I’d get rid of it. I only wanted two kids, and I’m happy with what I’ve got.”
Then she’d pet my hair, like that was a normal thing for a parent to say.
She said it once when Bell was in the kitchen, and my little sister had burst into tears, pleading for a little brother or sister. When I came home on the school bus that afternoon, there was a basket of baby rabbits and Bell playing with them in the grass at the front of the trailer. We named them all, and kept them in the old chicken coop, until they were slaughtered for dinner.
As we ate the rabbit stew the first night, Derek saw fit to teach us one of his many life lessons.
“Humans are the king of the jungle,” he said to Bell, who was barely three at the time and thought the sun rose and set on Derek.
“Wowie, wowie,” she said, which was her response to everything. She’d first said it when I showed her my favorite tree, with a branch wide enough for sitting and reading, completely hidden in the canopy of leaves. Wowie wowie could mean anything, from “tell me more” to “gimme that.”
She also called him Daddy, which made me sick to my stomach. Derek didn’t deserve that title.
“Might makes right,” Derek said, flexing one muscular arm. Not only did he have tattoos—awful ones with demonic faces swirling around naked women—but the fingertips on his right hand were yellowed from nicotine. My mother broke more rules than she made.
I ate my stew and tried not to think of how the bunnies had been slaughtered. I hoped it was at least quick, and they didn’t understand what was happening.
Derek continued his lesson, “If you see something, you take it.” He banged his fist on the table, making Bell scream in a mix of fear and delight. “Take it!”
My mother kicked me under the table. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes when Derek is speaking. This is his house, and you’ll show him respect, young lady.”
Derek grinned at me, then held two fingers up to his mouth and darted his tongue between them suggestively. Even without laying a hand on me, he did everything he could to make me uncomfortable, including walking into my bedroom in the morning and yanking the blankets off me. “Caught you touchin’ yerself didn’t I? Let me smell your fingers,” he’d say, laughing.
***
Shivering.
Couldn’t get warm.
“Hey?”
Sawyer was still holding the drawing out to me. We were in the bar, and I’d just blanked out, lost in a past I was running away from. What was the point of moving if I packed it up with me in my mind?
I took the paper gingerly.
“Thanks.”
“I’m not going to ask for a smile, because I don’t like rejection, but maybe you could look at something I’m working on and give me your honest feedback.”
“Sure.” I nodded at his book.
“Oh, not in here. It’s bigger than this. Six feet by nine feet. Do you know anything about art?”
“I’m really busy.”
He leaned back, resting one arm across the back of the empty chair next to him. “Did I ever tell you I’m a great pool player?”
I took a small step back, craning my neck around for an excuse to leave but finding none.
He continued, “You keep looking over at that pool table. After what happened, do you think you’ll ever play pool again?”
“I don’t know.”
“You could hustle people for a little extra cash. I can’t make you a champion, but I can bring your skill up so you don’t embarrass yourself.”
My whole body felt tense, prickling with an all-over sweat.
“Thanks, but I’m going to stay away from pool. And guys who play it.”
“You have to get back on the horse.” He frowned down at his hand, which I could see now had some lacerations on the knuckles. “That’s a bad expression, but I mean you should play a game with someone you trust, so it doesn’t become a traumatic block.”
“I’m fine. I swear.”
“Maybe you should play a game just for fun, then.”
“Listen, I thanked you last night. I’ll buy you a beer today. Can you do me a huge favor and never mention what happened again?”
“Deal. But only if you still look at my art.”
Looking over my shoulder, I muttered, “Not this week.”
“I’m surprisingly patient,” he said. “I can stare at something beautiful for hours and hours.”
Rolling my eyes, I walked away from his table.
Chapter Three
At the bar, I poured Sawyer his pint and handed it off to one of the other servers to bring out, excusing myself to the washroom. My nerves were on edge and I needed a few minutes without other people looking at me.
Sawyer was really sexy, which was why I didn’t want to be friendly. When everyone you’ve ever counted on eventually lets you down or betrays you, you learn to protect yourself by keeping a safe distance. The distance doesn’t need to be a chain link fence and razor wire. Even a white picket fence will send a message. The boundary line is here. I’m on this side, you’re over there.
Good fences made good neighbors, and the wedding band was supposed to be my picket fence, except lately it wasn’t working so well.
In the staff washroom, I pulled the gold band off my ring finger and gave it a scrubbing with the nail brush and hand soap. The ring still looked dull.
I usually avoid the mirror, because for a long time seeing my reflection made me angry. No matter what expression I made, my mother’s eyes stared back at me. She didn’t even leave a note. I could understand her haste, given the hellish situation, but she could have gotten in touch if she’d wanted to. She could have at least apologized.
Tucking my long, wavy brown hair behind one ear, I leaned in to examine the chronic light acne at the edge of my scalp. Yet another reason not to look in the mirror. My purple-haired coworker Lana said the bumps looked like more of a chemical reaction than acne, and gave me a bottle of the shampoo she used. I couldn’t be sure, but the rash seemed less noticeable now.
I pulled back and looked at myself as though we’d just met. Average height, scrawny build. Brown wavy hair that looked decent if I bothered to straighten it, which I never did. Dull blue eyes, on the small side and made smaller by thick lines of black eyeliner. No lipstick, ever. Not even tinted lip gloss. Too sexual, like an invitation I didn’t want to give. Sometimes I applied concealer around the edge of my lips to make them small like my eyes.
The pain from my memories was a dull ache, making the overhead light uglier and the edge of the counter sharper. My tooth was bothering me again. The rot hadn’t stopped or receded on its own, but was digging its way deeper into the nerve. With money in my pockets, I had no excuse now to not get my tooth taken care of.
Seeing
someone who was going to look into my mouth and see how bad I’d let things get was the last thing I wanted to do on my day off, but I was ready to let go of the pain.
I couldn’t remember a time I didn’t have pain and fear.
***
When I left the dentist’s office and walked out into the late afternoon sun, my head was light from the freezing, and my chin and tip of my nose felt strange. I’d never had Novocaine before, and the sensation was fascinating.
The dentist had been terrifying. But now the all-day ordeal of waiting for an appointment at the teaching college and then getting a root canal was over. The dentist and staff had been very understanding, making me feel like everything was going to be better now.
I’d not been looking after myself these last few years, which was bad. It broke my heart how little I valued myself, but only when other people noticed.
But I had taken a step forward.
My jaw still hurt, but it was a different type of pain, not as big as the whole world. My pain was now small enough to fit in my hand.
As I rode the bus back to my neighborhood and then walked up the steep hill home, I heard birds chirping in the trees overhead. Had they been there the whole time and I just hadn’t noticed?
When I got back to the apartment, it was empty. My grandmother had picked Bell up from school, and she’d left a note that they’d eaten dinner already and gone for ice cream and the park.
I sat down at the table and opened my purse to pull out the frog drawing Sawyer had given me.
Where would you put a frog tattoo? Nowhere. The idea was ridiculous. Maybe on my shoulder blade, or just inside my hip bone. No. Ridiculous.
I got up and pushed around Bell’s colorful artwork on the fridge, then added the frog drawing to our collection. Putting a drawing on the fridge seemed like such a normal thing to do—something regular people did, living their regular lives, with outings for ice cream, and groceries in the cupboard.
As I admired the fine lines on the drawing, I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged my shoulders. Sawyer Jones. First I’d agree to look at his art, and then there’d be some other thing—getting a bite to eat together. And he’d put his arms around me, and then he’d lean down, his breath hot on my face. I’d tilt my chin up and let him kiss me.
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