by L. B. Dunbar
“A long time,” she parrots with another one of her snorts, this one gentle and dismissive, and it’s my turn to take a heavy pull from my drink. Damn, this tastes good. As good as sitting next to her even if I don’t know her sounds or their meanings. I amend, sitting this close to her tops any taste, any flavor, any anything.
“So, besides Because Cupcakes, what else have you been up to?” My eyes close the second I ask, wincing as I feel the weight of the weak question. I open to find her looking at me, her brows pinching in question. “I know about the bake—”
“Are we really going to do this?” She cuts me off.
“Sure, why not?” I shrug. See? Idiot. Her head twists away, and I decide now is the time, like it or not, to spill my long overdue apology.
“I’m sorry.”
Her head pivots back in my direction, and her eyes open wide. “What are you sorry for?”
“Everything.” There’s no denying what I mean. I don’t think I need to lay out all the details, and an unspoken name falls between us like a cement wall. The air shifts from summer breeze to winter blizzard. She nods a few times, turning her head away from me again, and my gut twists. “I never meant to—”
“You didn’t do anything,” she interjects again.
“The fuck I didn’t.” It’s my turn to snort, sharp and disgruntled. I did everything to ruin our relationship without ever intending to kill it.
“Fuck is what you did.” The statement takes my breath, knocking the wind out of me until she giggles, and I chuckle with mild relief. We shouldn’t be laughing, but the weight on my shoulders gets a chip lighter.
“I never meant to,” I say again, and I didn’t.
One night.
A few too many drinks.
And the wrong sister.
It was the biggest mistake of my life. Epic. Colossal. Unthinkable. I’ve hated myself ever since, but eventually, I had to forgive myself because it gave me Chopper. That’s right, adding insult to injury, the result of my misguided indiscretion gave me a child. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—trade him; I just wish I could forget the circumstances of it happening.
“I never blamed you, not directly at least, but I won’t lie and say it didn’t break my heart.” She shrugs as if it was no big deal, as if hurting her didn’t kill me inside.
Our relationship was…complicated. We were only fooling around. I guess you could say she was a booty call before those were a thing, but that belittles how I felt about her. We snuck around because I didn’t want to get caught with her, or rather, I didn’t want her to get caught with me. She didn’t want her family to know she was with me. Garage mechanic. Struggling student. Dad a known alcoholic. Those were good enough reasons. Plus, she was still a kid in my head at nineteen. I couldn’t even take her to a bar. We didn’t go out on dates. We were each other’s dirty little secret.
I didn’t want to be the one to steal her innocence—well, not all of it at least—but my feelings for her were strong, stronger than I wanted to admit at twenty-three. My life was in chaos then. Pop. The shop. Classes. Lily was fun for me in a world lacking anything remotely funny. Still, I could have had her virginity. Another man eventually took her, I suspect, and I cringe at the thought. I could have had everything from her, and I threw it away.
Guilt wracked me for weeks after what happened with Lauren. Being old enough myself to know right from wrong, I chose stupid instead, so stupid, and then kept the truth from Lily until I had no choice. Fuzzy memories swirl at the edges of my brain. I’ll never have back all the facts of that night, but I just know it coincided with my life falling apart. Lost my scholarship. Pop too sick to work. Debt for the garage.
“Remember Rick Begerton?” Lily blurts, interrupting my memories. Rick Begerton was a guy from my class in high school. He was trouble—car racing, drugs, minor thievery. “Lauren was in love with him. Well, as much as you can be in love with someone at eighteen.” Lauren is two years older than Lily, which means when said love happened, Lily was sixteen. Rick would have been twenty.
Lily swallows, eyes staring out at the rolling ocean. She’s lost in her head for a moment, and my fingers itch to touch her and pull her back from the memory. My skin tingles like an insect with ten thousand legs crawling over my bare feet. Something bad is coming with the mention of Rick.
“He was into me, instead,” she clarifies. If she said she killed someone, I wouldn’t have felt as sick as I did.
“I don’t understand,” I say although I did in some strange way. Who wouldn’t be into Lily? But Rick? “Son of a bitch. Did he touch you? Did he hurt you?” I don’t know why the words blurt from my lips, but I shiver as I recall Rick was eventually arrested for domestic abuse.
“No.” She shakes her head. “But he was persistent, and it drove Lauren mad. She was willing to be with him, and I wanted nothing to do with him. Anyway, Lauren was jealous because she wasn’t the one Rick wanted, and I was.” She pauses, her eyes drifting to the bottle in her hand. “She was convinced I encouraged him. Said I led him on and I was a tease. But I would have never done that to her.” Sadness fills Lily’s voice. We didn’t discuss her family much when we were younger. Her home life wasn’t good, despite her living in a nicer part of Pasadena at the time. I thought the reason she didn’t want her family to know about us was because of me, who I was. Slowly, hindsight sees there might have been more to her keeping me a secret.
Her older sister’s voice haunts me. So the little tease got to you, too? Jet black hair and heavy makeup hinted at her sinister, reckless side. Lauren Warren was a known flirt, a vicious tease, and an easy lay by the time I met her. She was twenty-one, new to the bar scene, and knew how to make a scene. Somehow, I think that’s how I ended up in the corner with her. It also might have been how her eyes matched her sister’s. Those damn blue eyes got me in trouble. I can prove I’m better than her.
I shiver in disgust at myself. I want to kill someone as the truth hits harder.
“Lauren found out about you. She knew how I felt. And she went after you because of me.” How did she feel about me? I want to ask, but I don’t. The revelation weighs between us. There isn’t forgiveness of her sister but an understanding of motive. Lauren’s jealousy was so malicious it destroyed her younger sister and me.
What was my excuse?
Lily exhales deeply, and my mouth clogs like the murky seaweed spit out of the ocean. My stomach feels nauseous, and my beer suddenly tastes sour although I take another sip for something to do. My arms tremble with the need to wrap them around Lily and hold her to me. How did I fall into Lauren’s trap?
Oh, right. My dick. My head. And too much alcohol.
“I mention all this as a way to explain why Lauren did what she did. Not defend it but understand it,” Lily clarifies, pausing as she wipes sand off her toes by rubbing each foot with the other. Two things strike me. One, Lily is too good of a person. She isn’t forgiving her sister, but she understands her, and that’s more than her sister deserves. It’s more than I deserve because I don’t even understand myself why I did what I did. Why I didn’t go to Lily with my problems. The second thing I question is this: She knew how I felt about you. How did Lily feel? We never shared emotions. No declarations of love. Maybe an occasional I love when you touch me like this, but nothing deeper. We were having fun, but my heart knows I’m lying to myself. Did she feel something more for me?
“When I was young, I was looking for love, and marriage, and a baby in a baby carriage. Any means to escape my family. Make a better family. I wanted someone who would dance with me in the rain, build dreams of what-if someday, and make love to me under the moonlight.” She scoffs a dismissive laugh, and I add it to my catalog of her noises. “Romantic dreams, I guess.” She brushes sand off her shins, and it distracts me for a moment. Does she still want these things?
“Anyway, after you, I lived with the next guy. We were together for five years until I realized it was never going to happen. Not marriage, not babies. We w
ere playing house, and I was holding out for something that would never be. He’s the one who hurt me.” My head rattles with all I’m learning. I’m about to ask if she still wants all those things when something else hits me. She speaks before me. “Annnnnd I have no idea why I told you this.”
“Hold on. What do you mean he’s the one who hurt you?” My heart rate skyrockets in my chest. Lily doesn’t look at me, keeping her eyes trained on the ocean. I have my answer, but I still want to hear it from her.
“Lily?” I question.
She huffs, a nervous dismissal of things as she lifts her lemonade bottle and drinks heartily. Again, I watch the roll of her throat as she momentarily drowns herself in the drink.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she says, her voice quieting. “A little grabbing and a few slaps. A fist was the final straw.”
“Don’t excuse him,” I snap. “Don’t excuse any man for laying a hand on you.” My voice rises, my anger matching it. I’m ready to punch something myself, but it sure as fuck wouldn’t ever be a woman. And I’m pissed as hell that someone touched her like this—in anger, with his fists.
“I’m glad you told me,” I add, after a moment of seething rage and feeling helpless for a number of reasons. “I never knew.” Not about Rick. Not Lauren’s motives. Not Lily’s romantic dreams. Certainly not some asshole’s abuse.
Her shoulder lifts, and her head tilts. Finally looking at me, she smiles weakly. “How would you?”
My chest pinches, heart aching for Lily—the one I didn’t know at sixteen, whose sister’s vengeance held until she was nineteen. For nineteen-year-old Lily, who I lost because I was stupid. I should have taken better care in how I handled her then. Should have slowed her down when she wound me up. It’s almost laughable in hindsight how slow we went, and I’d chuckle if the sourness of what she just revealed wasn’t so unsettling. Because I also ache for the twenty-something Lily, who struggled to find dreams of happiness in an unhappy situation. It wasn’t fair, and it was all my fault.
“Anywho,” she exaggerates, trying to sound more cheerful. “You have Chopper, and he grew into a great kid, right?”
I’m startled at her mention of my son. He wasn’t born with that name. I had it legally changed once his mother abandoned him to me. Lily and I grew up in the same part of Pasadena, and I suppose we know circles that circle each other. Still, it’s strange she knows his name.
“He has. He’s full of trouble like his old man.” I chuckle with a hint of pride, still troubled by what I’ve just learned but letting it pass for the moment. “Not certain what he wants to do with his life, though.” The irony strikes me. Chopper grows closer and closer to the age when I fucked up. I’ve pressed the issue of higher education, and his concession was community college. He says he wants something in the music industry, but he isn’t musically inclined like his uncle Hank. Me, I don’t hold a musical note in my body.
“He’ll figure it out,” she assures me. “You did.” Her added smile is meant to comfort, but she’s wrong.
“Did I? I held Pop’s shop together by a thread for a long while after he drank and gambled away the profits. I did it out of necessity, but I never became who I wanted to be.” My words are harsh, bitter even. It’s been a long, rough road to keep the shop afloat until recent years.
“But I thought…” Her voice drifts. When we met, I worked for my dad, restoring cars, but it wasn’t my first love. I wanted to be a teacher, and I was taking classes to be one. I liked history; only I’m better at making it repeat itself. I got the wrong girl pregnant, just like my old man, and raised my son as a single father, just like Pop. Only Pop had two boys. The comparison brings me little solace.
“It doesn’t really matter now,” I say, shrugging like her, dismissing my past and finishing my beer. The sun sets slowly, but the sky has turned cloudy off in the distance, so it’s not as stunning as I would have hoped. The light filters around the hazy clouds, but the golden globe hides behind gray darkness. Lily remains silent as we stare forward, each lost in our own thoughts. Mine are a jumble crashing into each other like the growing irritation of the ocean before us.
“Want another?” she asks, and I peer down at the empty green bottle.
“Sure. I’ll get ’em. I owe you.” My knees creak as I stand. After brushing the sand from my shorts, I reach for her empty.
“Brut,” she voices my name with a serious edge. “You don’t owe me anything.”
8
Frolic in the sand
[Lily]
I don’t know why I went all serious on him or spewed the history of my life. Good Lawd, Lily, way to strike up a conversation. Maybe it was his abrupt apology. Maybe I wanted him to know I was a messed-up kid with crazy, romantic dreams. I can’t say I understand why he did what he did with my sister, but I get it. I mean, I don’t really, but I also kind of do. We were so young and foolish—stupid even. Well, maybe he was more stupid than I was, but then again, he probably didn’t want the things I did when I was nineteen and he was twenty-three. Maybe that’s why he went for Lauren one night.
Brut returns with another round. He seemed rather surprised about the Heineken, his face morphing to pleasure when I said I remembered. Funny how your memory tricks you and takes you on a damn roller coaster ride. One minute, I’m reminiscing about drinking his favorite beer in the office of his dad’s garage, and the next, I’m rattling off about Brad. I shiver with the recall, but I’m also good at repressing it, and as soon as I released the information to Brut, I’m ready to block it once again.
“Here,” he offers, holding out another hard lemonade for me and squatting before he sits in the sand. He opened the bottle inside, so I don’t have any hassle with the cap. I watch his face as he takes a long pull from his beer—the hard line of his jaw sprinkled with white, the crow’s feet by his eyes, the curve of his nose. He’s so handsome; he redefines the word.
My heart flutters as I stare, and I shift to better memories. Straddling Brut. Kissing him. Moving against him like a dance. A pulse races between my thighs, and I close my eyes at the waning ache.
“You okay?”
“Mmm…” More as a yes, it sounds like a moan. Brut chuckles.
“Heavy stuff you just told me.”
I nod in response as I open my eyes. “Would you mind if we let it go?” I really don’t want to keep talking about all these things from the past. It’s out there. I’ve shared one of my deepest, darkest secrets, and it’s up to him how he interprets it. I, on the other hand, don’t want to rehash it.
“Sure.” The pause after that word feels heavy, but I’m sensing something heavier coming. “But I’d like to know more about the man. The one who didn’t marry you or give you babies.” He swallows. “The one who hurt you.”
And there it is. I laugh without humor. “You mean Brad?”
“Brad. As in the name of a car in those insurance commercials? That Brad? Sounds like a pussy name,” Brut mocks. “Give it to me, Brad,” he exaggerates as he throws his voice to sound feminine. “Nope, doesn’t work for me.”
“I didn’t sound like that,” I snap, my voice rising an octave, filling with honest laughter, and almost matching the whiny noise he made.
“Right there, Brad. Harder, Brad.” Brut continues in mocking disbelief.
“I didn’t say those things.” I chuckle. His head swings in my direction.
“You didn’t?” His eyes widen. I’m wagging my head, laughter filling my cheeks. I’m not discussing my sexual history with him, and I see what he’s doing. He’s making fun of Brad to lighten the heaviness of discussing him. He continues.
“Fuck me…Brad.”
“Okay, now you’ve gone too far,” I bellow, but I’m giggling.
“You’re kidding, right?” His eyes widen farther, the blue sparking to midnight. I don’t know what he thinks my sex life has been like, but I’m not interested in correcting him with details. Despite Brad or anyone else, I haven’t had the kind of sex which has me
begging for harder, deeper, faster, even if I’ve wanted it.
“You know you share the same beginning sound in your names,” I clarify. “As if, fuck me, Brut sounds so much better.”
His breath hitches, and I swallow what I’ve said, nearly choking on the fierceness in my tone. Fuck me, Brut, my brain repeats.
“Lily pad.” My nickname lingers on his lips. He’s the only one to ever call me that. The wind kicks up, and my hair blows in front of my face. Just as he did earlier in the day, his fingers brush it back, holding it in place behind my ear. “Actually, that does sound better.”
He’s right, and in one swift move, I’m on my back, Brut’s hand cupping my head so I don’t hit the sand and his upper body pressing over mine. He licks his lips and bites the plump curve of the lower one, peering down at me like he’s ready to attack.
“Say you forgive me, Lil.”
“I forgive you.” His eyes search my face, reading me. I speak in earnest. It was a long time ago and holding a grudge takes too much negative energy. Lauren is a perfect testament to such negativity.
“Lil,” he says, his voice soft, his dusky blue eyes softening. His eyes grow more intense as he gazes down at me, stroking my hair around my ear. I’ve seen this look on him. The one that says he wants me, but he doesn’t want to give in. We already lived this struggle when I was nineteen. I can’t go through this again. Not with this man. “I’m sorry anyone ever hurt you, especially me.”
“It’s okay,” I say from habit but not from truth. It’s not okay, and we both know it. What he did to me, to us, and all the rest of my history is not acceptable. Good thing we are adults now and can accept the past.
“It’s never going to be okay,” he says, still holding himself off my upper body, but my lower portion beats in rapid succession underneath him—a rhythm ripe for friction. My core rests under the heat of his abs, which I know are hard, but not quite the part of him that can soothe the pulsing ache.
