by Adriana Law
“I’ll let you rest,” my father says. “There’s left-overs in the refrigerator…if you’re hungry.”
“Thanks. I don’t think I can eat.”
“I understand.” Do you? Understand? “Well, let us know if you need anything.” He pauses in pulling the door shut and leaving, adding a stiff, “I’m glad you are here.”
I can hear them after Casey goes to bed:
“Did you see the way Casey looked at her? She ADMIRES her!” my step-mother snarled. “What are you going to do about that?”
“Belinda, I’m sure it’s harmless. What are you doing?”
“I’m hiding whatever that girl might steal from us.”
“Don’t you think you’re over-reacting? She hasn’t been here no more than a couple of hours. Give her a chance. She’s had a rough time. She needs me. What do you expect me to do…throw her out on the street?”
“I expect you to tell your ex-wife to come pick up her trashy daughter. She raised her to be that way…let her be the one to deal with it.”
“If I send her back over there…I can’t…I won’t.”
“So you’re willing to jeopardize Casey’s safety for a girl you barely know?”
“SHE IS MY DAUGHTER!”
“By blood only. YOU didn’t even mention you had a daughter the first year we were together. YOU only said you had a wife…had I known—”
“You wouldn’t have had an affair with me? Is that what you were going to say? You know…we were both married. You have your past and I have mine.”
“Yeah, but MY past hasn’t come back to haunt us. She is a PROSITUTE! What if one of her low-life acquaintances come here looking for her…how are you going to live with yourself if they hurt Casey?”
Bitch. I would never let anything happen to Casey. Really. Not when she is the only one in this effing house that I some-what like. I shove up a bedroom window. The window won’t go up high enough for me to sit in it. Instead I crouch by it, holding onto the window casing; I flick my ashes out the window, making damn sure the clouds of smoke go out. One whiff and cigarette smoke and I do believe Belinda’s head would explode. I can see inside the window of the house next door. I looks exactly the same as this house, and the other dozen crammed into the neighborhood. There are no sounds. No horns. No emissions coming from traffic. No familiarity. My chest tightens. I clutch at it. There is nowhere to run here. The stuffiness of my father’s home smoothers me. I can’t do this. I can’t do Pepto-Bismol-pink.
***
The door opens, and my breath catches at the sight of Sawyer standing in the doorway in nothing but a pair of faded jeans. He is still in the process of zipping the jeans making me wonder if I interrupted something.
“You caught me stepping out of the shower,” he explains. “What’s up?”
It’s my turn, but the words get stuck in my throat. The jeans hang low on Sawyer’s hips. His chest is bare. It makes me uncomfortable in the sense that I don’t know where to cast my gaze. As if he knows where my eyes keep wandering, Sawyers leans into the apartment and produces a shirt that he pulls on over his damp hair. His brown eyes drop to my bag sitting by his door.
“I have nowhere else to go,” I tell him. “My father...it doesn’t work.”
Sawyer leans in the doorway. “Your father seems like a decent enough guy. He cared enough to come find you.”
“No.” My eyes lock with his. “You did.”
“He paid me,” he returns.
“And my father sat at home comfy with his new family, while you risked everything. For what Sawyer? Money? I’ve been thinkin’…you don’t need money. That is one thing your family has never lacked.”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I’m not stupid.
Enough said. I move on. “I can feel the tension whenever I’m there. Belinda can’t stand me.” I focus on Sawyer’s feet, unable to look him directly in the eyes. “Please, don’t make me beg.”
I hear him sigh and lift my eyes to see him scrub his face with his hands. “You can’t stay here, Mya.” He glances over a shoulder back into the apartment. The toilet flushes. My heartbeat picks up speed. Shit. “Oh.” I reach for my bag and go to turn.
His hand on my arm stops me. He pulls me into the apartment and shuts the door. I protest, not anxious to bump into another female. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have gone someplace else. There is no other place. It’s here. Or with a family that is already comfortable with the way things have always been.
“Are you using?” Sawyer asks, removing the hand from my arm and raking that same hand through his hair.
I swallow hard. “Not today.”
“You can’t. Use. Not while you’re here.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I’m seldom home.”
“That’s perfect.”
“This is City Slicker,” he says gesturing at the huge Saint Bernard. The dog beats my leg with his bushy tail, and I rub him. “You won’t even notice he’s here,” Sawyer says apologizing for the dog shedding all over my leg. There’s some drool involved too. It sure as hell beats gingerbread houses that all look identical and bitter, hateful Step-mothers. Sawyer keeps going, “He sleeps most of the time. I got him thinking he would be company—”
“It’s fine,” I tell him. “I love dogs.”
“They seem to love you too.”
“Is he not usually this friendly,” I ask.
“He’s getting better. It’s taken him a little while to come around.” I can tell Sawyer is wrestling with the idea of me staying at his place. He doesn’t move. Just stands there as if he doesn’t know which direction to go in. How about us moving away from the door. That’s a start. “I’ll only be staying a couple of nights,” I tell him to ease his worry. There is the movement in the bathroom. The shower comes on. “You know what, I think...I should go.” I bolt before he has a chance to convince me otherwise. I’m halfway down the hallway when I hear feet behind.
“Whoa, whoa, hold up for a second,” he says taking hold of my arm and pulling me to a halt.
“It’s obvious you have company,” I tell him.
Sawyer shoves both hands into the pockets of his jeans, asking, “Are you crying?”
“No.” You would be crying too if you had a serious drug problem, an even bigger parent problem, and no place to live. I haven’t even hit thirty yet and I’m exhausted from life. I don’t know how to get back there, back to the girl I used to be.
“Come back inside.” Sawyer reaches for the bag giving me no choice but to follow him inside the apartment. He drops the bag nosily by the counter.
I’ve been in this apartment countless times when Sterling lived here. It looks different. Nowhere near as clean, but Sterling can be anal. Instead of a home, it now looks like a temporary stopping place until something better comes along. There're unpacked boxes everywhere. The piano has been replaced by a pool table. Dirty dishes clutter the granite countertop. Piles of clothes on the floor. Exactly what you would expect to find in the apartment of guy that is busy saving the world.
Sawyer notices where my eyes are and immediately starts collecting dishes and sitting them in the sink.
The walls are plain—bare—except for one painting. It’s one of Sterling’s. The one of the child playing in the water flooding out of a sewer drain. I never noticed how much the boy in the painting resembles Sawyer. I notice it now.
Metal pet dishes are on the floor by the bar. They are decorated with painted paw prints. The St. Bernard laps up water from one. He moves to the other bowl, nudging dry pellets of dog food over the side of it. He makes a mess. I love it!
“How long have you lived here?” I ask.
“I wasn’t expecting guest.”
“I can tell.” Surprisingly, there is a sofa with a sheet already covering its cushions. A blanket is wadded up on the floor. I glance from the already made sofa to Sawyer, confused. “Don’t you have a bed?”
He appears nervous. Sawyer Bentley is
never nervous. “Yea,” he answers, scratching the back his skull before nodding at the French doors leading to what use to serve as his brothers art room. “In there.”
The door to the bathroom opens and out steps the bastard that offered his eldest money to abort his grandchild. He is a mixture of his two sons; rough and hard underneath but on the surface spoiled and pampered.
“Who’s this?” he comes forward wearing a white towel.
“This is Mya,” says Sawyer.
I’ve seen this man from across a parking lot. Never once did Sterling introduce me to him, but I know enough about him to know if he is staying here, I would rather stay someplace else. Anywhere else.
“Wait a minute,” Sawyer’s father says. He continues on in disgust, “I know you.”
“I would hope so.”
He does this arrogant chuckle before telling me, “Your meal ticket moved to Colorado and is getting married. Thank God he came to his senses and pursued a decent girl.” He gestures at the door. “So you can go now. We won’t be buying any Girl Scout cookies today.”
Samuel Bentley is not going to bully me. I will leave this apartment with my head held high, just to spite him. “You know what…YOU can kiss my ass. I wouldn’t sell you anything.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
I head for the door. “Wait,” Sawyer calls out.
“YOU TOLD HIM?!”
“What?! NO. I didn’t tell him shit. I don’t know what in the hell he’s talking about. He’s talking out of his ass. Ignore him.”
“I try.”
“Well, try harder.”
“Regardless,” I say, “it looks like you have more than you can handle.”
“He’s fighting with his new wife.”
“Imagine that.”
“He’s only crashing here for a few nights until they make up.”
“I’m sorry. I cannot stand your father. I am not staying under the same roof with that man. I don’t care how desperate I am.”
Sawyer rubs his eyes. “Come back inside.”
“I know he is your father, and I’m not knocking your being there for him. It’s admirable. Especially since I have experience with how mean the man can be.”
“Come back inside and promise I won’t let him eat you.” Sawyer reaches for the bag.
I feel it’s only fair to warn him. “It’s going to be a disaster,” I say.
“I don’t care.”
Sawyer needs to know I can be just as mean as his father. “You can’t change me,” I say.
“I don’t want to.”
“My past is still my past. I was involved with your brother, and there is no changing it. If your father uses it against me, if he pisses me off…I’m going to defend myself.”
“I expect you to,” he says. We go back into the apartment. Sawyer’s father gives me the cold shoulder. One thing is certain: he doesn’t like me having anything to do with either of his sons, especially his baby. The death stares I get from him as Sawyer walks me through to his bedroom makes me wonder: what girl is good enough. I bet he would complain about every single one. Samuel Bentley doesn’t want anyone happy, because he is miserable.
Sawyer pauses, showing me the bathroom. Seen it. When Sterling lived here, although I don’t tell Sawyer this. But I do cock my head at the words that are written across the mirror in black marker:
1) Practice Persistence
2) Take Calculated Risk
3) Find Her
Her: is her me?
“I make a list, my goals for the next day,” Sawyer clumsily explains. I do my best not to smile, but it is damn cute. He rushes on, tripping over his words, “It’s ok. You can laugh. It helps keep me focused and on track.”
“Nah, I get it,” I tell him. He hits the light switch and we move on.
We both stare at the one bed.
“Look,” Sawyer says. “I’m just offering you a place to stay for a couple of nights.”
“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I already know the answer by the expression on his face. “In your bed. You expect me to sleep in your bed?”
“I would gladly offer you my couch if it weren't already taken.”
“Kick your father out.” At the drop of his jaw, I tell him, “I’m joking.”
“You’re reading way too much into this,” Sawyer says.
“Am I?”
“I’m sharing my bed with you to keep you off the street...I swear; I am not going to lay a finger on you, Mya. Regardless of what you think…I’m not a complete asshole.”
I don’t know what I think anymore.
But I do know I wouldn’t be here if I thought for one second that Sawyer was an asshole.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Awakening
I hurt. Not so much my physical body as my spirit. My emotions are all over the place. Tangled. Raw. One minute I am crying, the next, I feel nothing. Dead. Over the past week I’ve suffered terrible hot and cold sweats. No vomiting but that doesn’t mean my stomach doesn’t hurt. Sometimes the burning sensation keeps me awake for hours, feeling as if my guts are being torn in two. I imagine the devil using my intestines in demonstration to his demons as to how to make a person truly suffer. Stretching, stretching, stre-t-ch-ing… until there is a slow obvious tear. Maybe they use my intestines as a jump rope—slap, slap, slap against Hell’s bottom. Then again…maybe I’m just hallucinating or thinking up some wild shit in the midst of my heavy sleep.
Other times it feels as if I have ice running through my veins.
I’ve tried to sleep through most of it, some days I don’t even bother with getting out of bed. I don’t know if the pain is coming solely from the withdrawals, or if it’s this funk that I’m in. It’s the funk. Gotta be. Sawyer brings me food and forces me to eat. Then he pumps me full of water. I curse Dr. Rodgers forever for letting him remain in the room at the hospital. But that had been my decision, hadn’t it?
His father? Well, I think I ran the son-of-a-bitch off. He would come into my room whenever Sawyer was a work and try to get a rise out of me. He vocalized that I was “a piece of shit, milking his son’s generosity” “the lowest of women”. He was probably right about the “milking” part but my response from where I shivered underneath a mound of blankets was to force my aching arm out from under the covers, so I could flip Samuel Bentley the bird. He would huff and slam the door. Whenever the finger didn’t work, I sat up and threw a pillow at his head.
Sawyer’s father had a right to be concerned.
I wouldn’t want me around either.
After a couple of days, Sawyer’s father left to go back home to his new bride. “Good riddance!”
Shit. I force a leg out from underneath the blanket; that’s the closest I ever get to getting out of bed. The leg dangles from the side. Not touching the floor. The bedroom door opens—Sawyer bringing in a tall glass of water.
“I don’t want it,” I immediately tell him, covering my eyes with an arm. “If you got nothing better to do….you can shut the blinds.”
The mattress moves, Sawyer lowering on the side of it. I hear him sit the water on the floor by the bed and then something else Sawyer brought hits the bed on the other side of me. I don’t even bothering looking to see what it is. He continues to insist, “You need to drink.”
“I know…hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!” I jab a thumbs up “got it.”
“You need to get up,” says Sawyer.
“I don’t want to get up.”
When Sawyer doesn’t respond, I remove the arm and stare at him through watery eyes. “I’m depressed.”
“I can see that. What will get you…undepressed?”
My eyes narrow on him. “Is undepressed even a word?”
He sighs and scrubs his face with his hands. He’s in uniform. Minus the gun, although knowing Saw the gun may be concealed, like strapped to his leg…his presence in the room—tough, strong guy out to kick some criminal’s ass—has the room saturated with testosterone.
I pull the blanket up, covering my entire head with it.
“Can you go now?” I mumble. “You’re making me even more depressed.”
“How so?”
I jerk the sheet away. “Really, you have to ask?” I suddenly sit up admitting, “I have no life.”
“Then get one.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it.”
“I keep waiting,” I tell him not hiding the fact that I’m bawling now. As I said, my damn emotion are all over the place. “Waiting for the natural urge to get out of bed…some kind of motivation…but it never happens.” I look him directly in the eyes. “I am sad. Mostly because I realize that I have never loved anything.”
“Sure you have.”
“Not really. I’ve had things that I was interested in, but nothing I felt passionate about. No inner drive. No motivation. No reason to get out of fucking bed.” I collapse into my pillow again and cover my head. “I’m a damn ostrich burying its head. GO AWAY and let me wallow in my misery.”
“You’re not an ostrich.” Sawyer yanks the covers away. “Although I will admit it…self-pity isn’t attractive, Mya.”
“Great. So now you’re telling me that I’m ugly as well.”
“I’m saying stop feeling sorry for yourself and figure it out. What is it that you want to do?”
“That’s the point. I don’t know.”
“There has to be something.”
“I used to want to give massages. Real ones. Not the nasty kind like I’m sure you’re imagining. A legitimate business.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he says. “Then why don’t you? Go to school, get your license, degree or whatever it requires—”
“Because there is no way I would ever feel comfortable being alone in a room with a man now, especially if my job requires me to touch that man. Don’t you get it? I can’t even be alone with a man now without thinking he’s going to—”
