No Less Days

by Amanda G. Stevens

  Chris’s fists balled.

  “You’re not a stupid person, or you’d have called me an obscene name instead of an accurate one. I’m meddling indeed.”

  “I’ll take you apart.”

  “If you try, I’ll break your arm, Chris. That’s the only warning you get.”

  Chris took a step toward him but then went still. He swallowed hard. “And now you’ll warn me to stay away from her? She’s my woman.”

  “As you lock her out of your home and crowd her into corners, you’re not her man.”

  “So you are warning me.” Chris crossed his arms.

  David mimicked the gesture. If posturing was what the man responded to, so be it. “I’m guessing Jayde will be setting her own boundaries in the future without help from me.”

  Chris’s glare maintained bravado for a few seconds. Then he ducked David’s gaze and growled at the floor. “Get out.”

  “Whose name is on the title of her car?”

  He looked up, startled into the truth. “Hers.”

  “Then go get me the keys.”

  “Not a chance in—”

  “Now.”

  It was indeed a chance, that Chris’s courage would be even scanter than he’d shown so far. David couldn’t force his way into the apartment, and if he let Chris retreat, the man might stay inside and lock the door. Chris disappeared, and David ground his teeth while he waited, sure that was the end of it. But no, Chris came back. He shoved a set of keys at David—keys bearing a bronze key chain engraved with the words I Read Dead People.

  “Now get out.”

  The demand held even less power the second time. David left Chris with arms still folded, staring at his own feet.

  Jayde sat in the passenger seat of Tiana’s car. David lifted the keys as he approached, and she burst out of the car to grab them.

  “Thank you.” Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away. “I didn’t know what I’d do.”

  “Would you like to ride with Tiana?”

  “Well … I’d rather drive. If that’s okay.”

  “It’s your car, Jayde.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, it is.”

  As Tiana drove north, Jayde following, David fought a wave of fatigue. Might be a good thing he wasn’t behind the wheel. “Where to now?” he said to stay awake.

  “My place.”

  “You’re set up for a guest?” Tiana’s descriptions of her apartment had always sounded more like a studio.

  “I own an air mattress. She can have my bed until something else …” The shrug admitted more than she realized. She and Jayde had no other plan. “We’ll have to get her some clothes, but for tomorrow at work she can wear some of mine. She’ll just have to roll the pant legs under.”

  “What about a hotel?”

  “Definitely not in the budget.”

  “Hmm.”

  She glanced at him. “David.”

  “Would she consider it an overstep to offer?”

  “I guess you’ll have to ask her.”

  But she knew Jayde better. “If you think she’d feel affronted in some way, please say so.”

  “I …” She shook her head. “I think even if she turns you down, she’ll be touched by the offer.”

  Fine, but touched didn’t accomplish anything practical. He sighed. “Does she have no one but you?”

  Tiana didn’t answer. He glanced over. Her mouth had turned down.

  “I mean that a fresh start will be easier, the more support she has.”

  “Honestly? I think we’ll be doing well if she accepts help from me. There’s some things in her family … make it hard to be interdependent, you know? Sometimes she thinks alone is easier.”

  “We’ll have to persuade her otherwise.”

  “Should I start calling you pot and Jayde kettle?”

  “Tiana.”

  “Don’t you ‘Tiana’ me all Scottish and—and—”

  She was mad? How had that happened? “Perhaps we should discuss—”

  “You need to be in church.”

  Wait, that’s what this was about?

  “For the longest time I assumed you were. Then about six months ago, something you said gave it away. I figured it wasn’t my place.”

  “And it is now?”

  “Do you want to date me or not?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Don’t make this about that.”

  “I don’t want to.” She signaled for a turn.

  “It isn’t a thing I can do. Surely you see why.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I might have to lie to the federal government and the corner grocer about who I am, but I won’t lie to fellow believers.”

  “And your solution is to keep away forever?”

  He sighed.

  “David, you can’t honestly think God wants you to live this way.”

  “It’s part of … what I am.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” Her voice was gentler now, but she wasn’t going to back off. Not Tiana.

  “We were human, but it’s been a long time since then.”

  The memory of the voice was so clear, Colm might have been in the back seat, leaning forward to speak his piece. David shook his head. He wasn’t Colm. He would never be Colm.

  She must have taken his head shake as a refusal to explain. She reached across the gear shift and set her hand on his arm. “You need to be in church.”

  “For five years? Seven? By ten, they start to notice themselves looking older.”

  All the things Tiana had helped him see, helped him feel again, but this was different. He’d been wrong about some things, but he wasn’t wrong about this.

  “They?” she whispered.

  “Mortals.” He didn’t mean to bite the word.

  “Surely five or seven years is better than nothing.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Not just to serve others. To be challenged by good teaching, to be supported and kept accountable. Everyone needs that.”

  She wasn’t listening. She’d said she would listen. His face grew hot as he pulled his arm away from her, and Tiana put her hand on the wheel again.

  “You need them. And they need you.”

  “That can’t matter.”

  “It does matter.”

  “Not any longer.”

  The words were snapping between them, sharp and metallic, and someone was about to be wounded because she wouldn’t leave it alone. Tiana looked from the road to him.

  “You think God doesn’t care that you’ve isolated yourself from His church? I promise you He does.”

  “Then you tell me how to do it.”

  She threw her hands up, grazing one finger along the ceiling—at a red light, thank the fates. “What does that even mean? You do church the way anyone else does church.”

  “Tell me how to bear it.”

  Words he hadn’t meant to say. His eyes burned, but he would not succumb to emotion in front of her, not twice in a single week. No. He pinched hard between his eyes and ducked his head, turned his face away from her.

  “David,” she said. Quietly this time. Gentle again. “How to bear what?”

  “The leaving.”

  She touched his arm. He kept his face hidden. Had to.

  “Okay,” she said, “I get it. But you know you’re not the only person who has to move away from people. Think about military families and … and … well, anybody whose job moves around a lot. They have to start over all the time, just like you.”

  “I know.” Ach, he wasn’t after her pity or her comfort. “I know that.”

  Tiana drove for a while. Soon they’d be at her place, and then this discussion could end.

  Not soon enough. “This is why you’re not in church. It has nothing to do with deception, not really.”

  “I … I don’t know.” He’d thought it had. “Perhaps what Jesus said to Peter, about John—perhaps it’s true of me. Perhaps I’m to remain until He comes for all the saint
s.”

  “If John were still here, would he be isolating himself from the church?”

  “I …” He swallowed around a hard lump, petrified tears. They would not fall today. “Perhaps I’m supposed to continue bearing it. But I can’t.”

  She set her hand on his. “I’m not saying there’s an easy fix, or you just need to toughen up and deal. Or anything like that.”

  He ducked his head.

  “But the church is supposed to help you bear it, David. And there are burdens on them that you could be helping to bear too. And when it’s time to leave, He’ll carry you through the leaving.”

  He closed his eyes. A single tear fell. He kept his hands at his sides, let it slide down his cheek unseen.

  She sighed. “I’m sorry. We’re both worn out. This could have waited.”

  “Well, it had to be said sometime.”

  “It did.”

  Right then, she’d said it. He would mull it another time, when exhaustion didn’t push emotion so close to the surface.

  They both let the conversation stall as Tiana drove the last few minutes. They had to stop at her place for clothes, whether Jayde accepted his offer or not. He saw the women inside and stood at the threshold.

  His mental image of Tiana’s place had been near enough—bedroom, bathroom, tiny kitchen, and an open living room with a dining table in one corner. It was a spruce little place, hardwood floor and a wide window over the kitchen sink, but it was too small for two people. The women would be taking turns and stepping over each other endlessly.

  Jayde set her purse on the table and turned with hands on hips. At work that was her get-it-done pose. “Are the spare sheets clean?”

  “Yeah,” Tiana said. “But before we start rearranging the place, you should hear David out.”

  One eyebrow made a fine arc as Jayde turned to him. “About what?”

  His spread hands encompassed the whole apartment. “This is fine for overnight.”

  “But?”

  “But would you prefer a hotel room for a few days while you get a plan together?”

  She blinked. “In a perfect world, sure.”

  “Then I’d like to put you up at the Best Western, if you’re agreeable.”

  Jayde crossed the living room slowly, approaching him with a wisp of suspicion he’d never seen in her before. “Why would you do that?”

  He shrugged. “You need a place to stay.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “You let me keep my job, you get my car keys back, and now you want to gift me a hotel room?”

  He pulled out one of the dining table’s two chairs and dropped into it. “I let you keep your job because you’re excellent at it. I got your car keys back without much trouble; the man was easily backed down.”

  “And a hotel room in Harbor Vale is only a hundred dollars a night.” Jayde bit the words. “No big deal.”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  The irritation in the lines of her face morphed into confusion.

  “The fact is, I’m wealthier than the average person. Your accepting my offer wouldn’t be putting me out in any way.”

  “And is that also why you paid us that day the store was closed?” A hint of skepticism lingered in Jayde’s voice.

  “Again, I wasn’t put out by it.”

  “When you say wealthier than the average person, you’re understating your case.”

  “A bit.”

  “Are you a mob boss incognito or something?”

  She wasn’t kidding, but a chuckle escaped him. “No criminal enterprises. Money passed down, that’s all. Invested well over a good deal of time.”

  “The bookstore doesn’t make your living.”

  “The bookstore is a hobby.”

  Now she gaped at him. “That’s …” She swung her gaze to Tiana. “This isn’t news to you.”

  Tiana shook her head.

  Jayde looked from one of them to the other, pulled her purse to her side, drew herself up straight, and faced David squarely. “I want a copy of the receipt so I can pay you back.”

  He would never trample her dignity by telling her it wasn’t necessary. He nodded instead.

  “And … thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure, Jayde.”

  “I think you’re telling the truth,” she said.

  “He always does,” Tiana said.

  Jayde turned to her, and the drawn-up posture caved a little. “Ti, would you mind … it’s not exactly convenient, but for tonight, it would be nice …”

  Tiana crossed the wood floor in three strides and grabbed her in a hug that swallowed Jayde’s petite frame. “I was standing here hoping you’d ask. But I didn’t want to be pushy if you wanted space.”

  “You and your space.” Jayde’s laugh was the kind that put off tears.

  David waited while they packed. From the bedroom they talked in hushed voices that sometimes caught with emotion. He’d thought of financial and physical needs, but that Jayde might need companionship on a night like this never entered his head. He hoped Tiana hadn’t felt bulldozed by what he’d thought was help. Well, if she had, she’d say so. He smiled at that.

  As he ruminated, he wandered the living room’s perimeter. The walls were painted red ochre, radiating warmth. On the wall above the sofa hung a canvas oil painting, an expressionist rendering of an agave plant in arresting shades of blue that contrasted a yellow desert background. Bold strokes, bright colors. On the opposite wall, to one side of the window, hung a pale resin plaque carved with words:

  My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

  LANGSTON HUGHES

  David crossed the room and traced his thumb over the lines of the letters.

  Feet scuffed at the edge of the room. He looked up. Tiana stood with a gray duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

  “I’ve not been in your home before,” he said.

  She smiled.

  He didn’t have words for how right this space was, how easily he envisioned her in it, curled on the couch reading or watching a movie. And how dear to him that image made the room. Perhaps there would be a day to say it all.

  The women rode together in Jayde’s car, following David to the Best Western, where he booked a room for a week. The three of them went up together to the second floor, David carrying their bags. Jayde relinquished hers with a tolerant smile and eye roll, but Tiana looked purely amused.

  Less than half an hour later, warmth spread through his chest as he walked outside to his Jeep. Jayde had taken bigger steps tonight than she realized. She was safe here, and she knew it. He hoped her resolve for independence would last. He would do everything he could to help her, but from now on he’d be more careful to consider all the angles and—well, all the people.

  Habit caused him to scan the lot as he unlocked the vehicle. He froze.

  Moira. No one could miss her if they looked in her direction. She was lying on her back, on the roof of a car he didn’t recognize, squat and dark blue. Her arms were spread out to the heavens, and her hair spilled over the roof, lifting and falling in the breeze. Her boots hung down over the windshield.

  He jogged across the lot, half expecting her to be dead. A broken heart or a screaming conscience might do what age couldn’t.

  She lifted her head at his approach, startled, but didn’t move. His pulse settled back down to normal.

  “Are you drunk?” he said.

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely?” She let her head fall back to the car roof.

  “Whose car?”

  “They left it unlocked. I’ve decided to hot-wire it.”

  If she was kidding, she had a great deadpan face. “You know how to hot-wire a car?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I could figure it out if I had some time to tinker. But that’s not what you mean.”

  “I could be driving this vehicle in under a minute.”

  “Impressive.”

  She sat up, l
egs still dangling over the roof onto the windshield. She hunched her shoulders against the cold. “I have no idea how to hot-wire a car, David.”

  He laid one hand on the roof. “Good?”

  “I didn’t want to be a skilled liar. I tried to separate us—the real me from the lying me. I tried to think of her as Defense Moira.”

  “Did it work?”

  Tears sprang to her eyes but didn’t fall. “Too well.”

  He couldn’t find the right thing to say.

  “And that’s why I have to go.”

  “You think they want you to? Zac and Simon?”

  She drew up her knees and set her chin on them. “This is the end of us. We can never be whole again.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Simon and I will hash it out. He’ll do some shouting. He’ll say I’ve done something unforgivable, and then he’ll forgive me.”

  “And Zac?”

  She wrapped her arms around her legs, and her tears overflowed. “Zac.”

  He thought to stand beside her, respect her space, but since he’d met her she had known precisely when to offer him a hug. His turn to offer one. He circled her with his arms, bent knees and all. She rested her head on his forearm, and his sleeve moistened.

  “He was the closest. So I had to push him away the most often, the most … harshly. Finally, one day I went too far, and now he’s the one keeping safe distances. And he’ll keep doing it the rest of our lives, because holes in Zac … they just can’t seem to heal. And, David, I knew that. Every time I tore into him, I knew that and I had to do it anyway.”

  He didn’t know Zac well enough to contradict her. He didn’t know how to help. He stood still and let her tears soak his sleeve.

  “And it was all for nothing,” she said at last. She squeezed his shoulder and sat up, stretched her legs, and slid down from the car roof.

  “Can I convince you to stay?” At least that, if he could do nothing else.

  “You don’t need to. This is right. My going.”

  “It isn’t.”

  She bent and picked up her carry-on bag, which she’d set beside a wheel. She looked past David to his Jeep. “Want to tell me what you’re doing at a hotel at three in the morning?”

  “Assisting a friend.”

  A furrow formed between her eyes.

  “No, someone else.”

  “I see. Well, you can make your tally two.” She almost smiled.