by Strong, Mimi
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.
And then… and then I'd be tangled up in his life. His worldviews. His rules.
We'd be together, though, and he'd pull off his shirt and show me where his tattoos went. I would trace the lines with my fingers, and kiss his inked skin. That would be the good part, and if I could stay there forever, in that moment in time, it might be worth losing myself. Maybe for once I'd feel warm and safe.
I was supposed to start work on Wednesday at noon, but I was late because the school called. I immediately thought the worst—that she'd gotten hurt. To my relief, she'd just had a tantrum.
Bell was prone to these epic meltdowns, usually when she was hungry, but sometimes they just happened. I thought she'd outgrown them, as things had been relatively calm since the move to Surrey.
The woman from the school's office explained that I needed to bring her a change of clothes.
“Shouldn't I come take her home?” I asked.
“We feel it's in the child's best interest to have fewer disruptions. We try to carry on and keep things relatively normal, despite these incidents. It's like getting back on the horse.”
“Back on the horse,” I repeated, dumbfounded. Did everyone around here say that?
I asked for more details, and the woman explained what had happened. Another child had taken one of the classroom's hand-held video games from her, and she'd screamed and thrashed and worked herself up to the point of vomiting on herself.
Ah, the vomit tantrum. I was familiar with that one, unfortunately.
Poor Bell got the same bad temper as me and our mother.
Four of us sat in the nurse's room: Bell, me, her teacher, and the school nurse.
The teacher, a dark-skinned woman with brown lips and big eyes, said, “Mrs. Braun, you seem so young to have a seven-year-old daughter.”
I shrugged and twisted my lie of a wedding band. “My makeup hides the crow's feet.”
Bell was sitting at my side, listening in while pretending to be fascinated by a picture book on her lap.
The teacher pursed her brown lips, her judging eyes raking over my clothes. “Have there been any disruptions to Bell's home life recently?”
“Disruptions? Well, you tell me. We just moved here. She's only been at this school for three and a half weeks, dropped in from outer space, not knowing a single person.”
Bell looked up from her picture book. “Aubrey! We're not from outer space.”
The teacher looked at me sideways. “She calls you by your first name?”
“We're very modern that way.”
“I have some concerns.”
“Me too.” I grabbed Bell's hand. “Sweetie, do you want to stay here for school, or do you want to spend the afternoon with grandma?”
She kept looking at her picture book. “School.”
The nurse and teacher exchanged a look, and then the nurse nodded.
“She seems calm enough now,” the teacher said. “Before her outburst, she was telling the other students that her grandparents were ghosts. That they returned from the dead. Any idea why she'd say something like that?”
I looked down at her pudgy cheeks, her innocent face. She wasn't wrong. We'd been raised thinking our grandparents were dead, and now they were back. Alive again. I thought I'd smoothed it over with a story about how she'd misunderstood the stories our mother had told, but Bell had a good memory. A disturbingly good memory. Just not quite good
enough to remember to call me Mom around other people like she was supposed to.
“She must have been telling one of her stories,” I said.
The nurse patted my hand, which I jerked away.
“Sorry,” she said. “I was just going to say that being a single parent is difficult. We have some programs through the school board, for single parents.”
I glared down at Bell. So, she'd also told people she had no father at home. What else had she told everyone? My ring seemed more pathetic than ever.
We talked a little more about bed times and getting Bell to get more sleep so she'd be less agitated during the day. The nurse wrote down a specific brand of vitamins they wanted me to pick up, and she tried not to insinuate I was a shitty parent, but I picked up on it loud and clear.
My cheeks burned with anger at being judged. They didn't know the sacrifices I made, and how I always put Bell's needs ahead of mine. To them, I was just some trashy single mother who'd be popping out another kid by a different father any day now.
The teacher kept staring at my stomach area, like she was checking for a baby bump.
I thought our “little talk” would never end, but finally it did.
With Bell in her new clean clothes, I hugged her and left her for the rest of the day.
Her grandmother would be picking her up after school, and I knew she would be in good hands, but as I walked away from the school, I felt like a failure. An utter failure.
Vitamins. I'd never given her vitamins, which made me a failure as a caregiver. And sleep. I'd been thinking that as long as she got a few hours' more sleep than I did, she'd be fine, but apparently kids that age need way more rest than she'd been getting.
Here I'd been thinking my mother was Parent of the Year, and it turned out I wasn't much better.
When I finally walked into the bar, I was half an hour late and full of apologies.
Bruce said, “Hey kid, if your face gets any longer, you're going to trip on your lower lip.”
“Not funny,” I said.
“Start drinking until I get funny. That's what I do.”
“I never see you drinking.”
He held his finger to his lips. “Shh, don't ruin my reputation as an unrepentant lush.”
I put on a barmaid apron and got to work filling the trays with citrus slices as he transferred ice cubes into pans from the big machine that cranked them out.
Bruce looked up at someone coming in the door and said, “Here on a Wednesday? You working on becoming a regular?”
Sawyer paused in his stride. “Are there any perks to being a regular?”
“A big chocolate cake on your birthday.”
“Really?”
Bruce grinned his crooked smile, his knobbed scar on his upper lip splitting that section of his dark beard. “Naw, not really.”
They both laughed their easy, masculine laughs. You never hear women laugh like that, and I don't just mean the voice. I mean the easiness. A big laugh over a dumb joke.
I grabbed a bar cloth and started making my way around the bar. “I should give your table an extra wipe, so your sketch book doesn't get sticky.”
Bruce called after me, “Hey, did you get that tooth yanked out or what?”
A couple of grizzled old-timers looked up from their spots at the bar.
I turned and gave Bruce a dirty look. “Root canal. It was awesome. So much fun. I highly recommend it.”
Bruce made a surprised expression. “Sarcasm? It's the lowest form of humor, but it's still humor. Aubrey, don't tell me you're developing a sense of humor.”
I shook my head and followed Sawyer to his table, where I gave the top a good scrub, and the edges as well. The table probably didn't need another cleaning, but I wanted to do something. Sawyer had been good to me, first caring about my safety and then giving me the frog drawing I'd admired. I felt the desire to make some gesture in return.
His boots and jeans drew my attention. They looked expensive, like the kind of designer clothes that come with some holes rubbed into the jeans and scuffing on the boots so they look broken-in, but they're brand new. Something told me Sawyer wasn't the starving artist he appeared to be.
“How've you been?” I asked.
“Not so great. I think I bit off more than I can chew.” He reached for his phone and turned the display to me. The image was a tangle of dark lines, nothing recognizable.
“Your giant art project?”
He seemed pleased I remembered, his gorgeous, full lips twisting up in a smile that made his green eyes even more captivating. “As I mentioned, though, I'm stuck for inspiration. They say smaller pieces of art are just as hard as large ones, but they're wrong. The big ones are way, way more difficult.”
“Do you actually earn a living doing this?” I handed his fancy phone back. “I'm sorry. That was so rude. I don't know why I said that.”
“You asked because you're curious. I'm flattered that you're curious.”
I bit my lower lip, only realizing what I was doing when his eyes went to my mouth. I released the lip immediately. What was next? Twirling my hair? Giggling? Kill me now.
His voice sexy and husky, he said, “What's on your mind?”
“I put your frog up on my fridge at home.”
“Yeah? Does it bring the room together? I could color it in to match the sofa.” He grinned. “That's a joke, by the way.”
“As you heard my uncle say, I don't have a sense of humor.”
He clapped his hand to his forehead. “That's why you look so familiar. You're Bruce's niece. I couldn't figure out why you looked so much like someone I had ...” He held two hands over his heart. “Such warm feelings about. Your uncle's a cool guy. Decent.”
“He is. So much decency in one person is refreshing.”
Sawyer frowned and turned in his chair so his body was squarely facing mine. My eyes traveled down his shirt and below his belt, to where his jeans wrinkled and creased over a good-sized package. I jerked my gaze away, a flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck.
“The way you say his decency is refreshing, you make me wonder,” he said, his voice still low and gritty, pushing up under my skin. “Do you usually assume people are rotten until they prove otherwise?”
“Some people trust their first impressions. I'm not one of those people.”
“Tell me your first impression of me.”
My first impression had been… dangerously cute. And his beautiful moss-green eyes had made me want to confess and confide in him. That was the truth, but I sure as hell wasn't spilling my guts.
“Messy tattoos,” I said. “Because of the coloring job your nephew had done. That's all I remember. Just a guy with brown hair and messed-up tattoos. You weren't drunk or complaining, so I thought you were okay.”
“How about now?”
“Kinda pushy.”
“You could walk away any time this gets too intense.”
I scratched my neck. “I dunno. Talking to people helps pass the time.”
“You were a gutted, wallowing candle.”
“What?”
“That was my first impression of you, Aubrey. A wick drowning in melted wax, your flame in danger. Just one more gust of wind and you'd be lost. You'd become that lost girl, sad through and through.”
The way he spoke of me sent a chill through my body. Also, the way he was looking at me. Head tilting to one side, his gaze traveled slowly from my feet, up to my knees. I wore black stretch jeans, but felt naked.
He continued, “You might not trust your first impression of people, but I do. You look like someone who would make a good friend, but isn't able to recognize one. You treat everyone equally, but you shouldn't. You want to believe people can change, because it means you might be able to change. And if someone asked you what one thing you would do differently in your life if you had it to live all over again, you'd say everything.”
“Sounds like you have me all figured out.”
He shook his head a
nd laughed. “Sorry. That's all bullshit. Horoscope-quality bullshit. I think I have this thing, where I like the sound of my voice, and I just keep going. Long story, but I thought I had a career in that, but then I didn't.” The light danced in his eyes as he grinned up at me. “Try me again after a beer. I'll give you the full horoscope and your lucky lottery numbers as well.”
“Of course.”
I turned around and walked back to the bar, the heavy sensation of being watched all over me.
When I returned to his table and set down the pint, he was studying the image on his phone again.
“You need one big thing,” I said, pointing to a spot to the right and below the center of the image. “Everything's really busy, and that's good, but my eyes keep traveling to here, expecting something.”
“This is the focal point, though.” He tapped and zoomed in on the upper left. “See, this blossom is the focus. The dominant motif.”
“No. You start there, but your start isn't where you end up.”
He chuckled. “Your start isn't where you end up. See, you're helping me already, and all I had to do was hit on you repeatedly.”
“Hit on me? I thought you were just being friendly to the married girl.”
“What's it like? Being married?”
I winced. “Stable.”
“Is he good to you? He doesn't pick you up from work. If you were my girl I'd be down here all the time, beating guys like me away with a stick.”
“He's not the violent type.”
“Oh, and I am? Just because I can move and stop some dirtbag from hurting a girl, that doesn't mean I'm violent. It means I know right from wrong and I'm not afraid to act on my instincts.”
“But you didn't have to punch him in the face.”
Sawyer raised his eyebrows, his sparkling green eyes showing amusement. “You're the one who had murder on your face. You would have buried the eight-ball in that guy's eye socket.”
I shuddered at the memory and rubbed my arms. Bruce had installed the mirror in the corner, and we were all on alert to be more careful, but I didn't like to think about what happened.
