For You

by Strong, Mimi

  “I shouldn't have hit that guy,” he said.

  “I'm glad you did.”

  “My heart's pounding.”

  I breathed deeply and felt my own heart, slowing down now.

  We were sitting on grass next to a sidewalk, at the mid-point between two streetlights.

  He was looking so concerned and enjoying his opportunity to be Mr. Tough Guy Hero.

  “Thanks for everything, really.” I got to my feet. “I just want to go home.”

  “Fine. I'll walk you.” He shook his hand and rubbed his knuckles on his T-shirt, leaving a smear of blood on the dark brown shirt. His knuckles didn't look cut, so it must have been the other guy's blood.

  I got walking, and Sawyer skipped to catch up.

  “I don't feel like talking,” I said.

  He didn't respond to that, just walked silently alongside me.

  After a few minutes, I decided I didn't mind his presence. When he wasn't talking, I could pretend he was a pit bull. My own personal bodyguard.

  The air outside was warmer than I expected, given it was still spring. I imagined talking to Sawyer, telling him I'd lived in the country most of my life. I tried to find us places to live that were near parks and lots of trees, but a starry night sky like the one above us made me miss the country so bad. The sound of frogs around a pond was so much better than cars whizzing by on a main road.

  I stumbled over some gravel, and Sawyer looked like he was about to sweep me up in his arms. Please. Yes, I was a little shaken, but I wasn't going to shatter to pieces over one stupid thing like that. Bad things happen, and you move on. You do what you need to do to protect yourself, and you keep on living your life.

  He looked down at me, concern still on his face.

  A boy scraped by on his skateboard. Dogs barked. We walked past a run-down house with people spilling out the front door, smoking weed and talking loud over the music. Some of the guys called after us, telling us to come join the party, but I didn't even look back. Sawyer gave them a friendly wave and we kept walking.

  Before I crossed into Canada and moved here to Surrey, I used to hang out with some pretty wild girls I met at my last job. They would have marched right into that party and demanded drinks and smokes, no problem. They would have laughed and sat on the counter in the kitchen and flirted with all the guys.

  Thinking about them made me crave a cigarette for the first time in months. Everybody at that fast food restaurant smoked, it seemed, and if you wanted to actually get breaks during a shift, you had to take up the habit. At first I only smoked that bargain brand, OP—Other People's. Charlotte would find me in the kitchen, scrubbing down the fryer and say, “Hey, Aubrey. Want some OP?”

  I'd say, “You know me,” and follow her out to the back.

  We'd sit on milk crates in the alley, practicing our French inhale and blowing smoke rings.

  I would have never guessed Charlotte was stealing from me, possibly because she was so generous with the cigarettes. Even six months later, it was hard to believe the cash hadn't just wandered out of my purse on a regular basis, and the few valuables at my apartment hadn't just been misplaced.

  After my suede boots disappeared, I should have confronted her, but it was so much easier to pretend I didn't know. Sometimes when she looked at me, I thought I could see the guilt in her eyes, and I made a note to myself what guilt looked like.

  One day, she didn't show up for her shift, and I found out through the other girls she'd been hospitalized for alcohol poisoning. Then I didn't know anymore if that look I'd seen in her eyes was actually guilt, or desperation.

  She never came back to work, and one day I saw my suede boots in a thrift shop, and I bought them back for ten dollars.

  Sawyer's deep voice rumbled through my thoughts intrusively. “Whatcha thinkin' about?”

  “My suede boots. I think I'll wear them to work tomorrow.” We were still three blocks from my apartment, so I picked up the pace.

  “But what else? You've got to be thinking about more than suede boots.”

  “I'm also thinking about how people pretend to be your friends, but they're actually lowlife dirtbags, and everybody steals from everybody, and that's just how it is.”

  “Ouch.”

  We walked for a minute, nothing but the sound of some dogs barking in the distance and our feet on the sidewalk.

  He said, “Why doesn't your husband pick you up from work?”

  “That's a good point. Maybe you should ask him. Or maybe you should mind your own fucking business.”

  He took an audible breath and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I sure hope you don't live far from here, because I don't know how much more abuse I can take.”

  “Then go. I don't need you.”

  He stopped still in his tracks, and I kept walking. I knew he wanted me to look back, or apologize, and maybe I should have, but I didn't.

  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 fin
ding 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 know 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.”