by Jay McLean
The next morning, I’m waiting for her outside her store with a coffee (cream and sugar). She says, “Thank you.”
And I say, “You’re welcome.”
By lunchtime the same day, I’m about ready to rip off my ears because all I’ve heard all damn day is Will complaining about not getting his girlfriend Bree’s one-year anniversary present on time. “She’s going to kill me,” he repeats, over and over.
“Just get her something local and tell her the real present was delayed,” says Dumb Name. “It’s not like you’re lying to her.”
And I say, because it’s the truth, “If she’s gonna be mad that you don’t have a good gift, then she’s fickle as fuck.” Not that I really know Bree all that well. The only link I have to her is Bella with the Boobies, and she’s batshit fucking crazy.
“There’s nothing good around here,” Will whines. “It has to be amazing.”
“Flowers?” Dumb Name suggests.
“Flowers won’t cut it.”
I roll my eyes.
“What about…”
I tune out and focus on my work, like they should be doing. A half hour passes, and they’ve gone through every single store on Main Street, and apparently, nothing is good enough for Bree. Then I look up, see Aubrey in her store, chin on her palm, elbow resting on the counter. She looks like she’s daydreaming. “Does Bree like stationery?”
Aubrey stands taller when all three of us walk in, her eyes wide. “Red,” I greet, holding the door open for the other two.
“Perv,” she counters.
“Wow,” Will laughs out. “Is there any girl in this town you’ve left untouched?”
“Shut up.”
“This is new, right?” Will asks, looking around the shop.
“I’ve been here a while,” Aubrey says. “Can I help you boys with something?”
Garray chokes on air, and when I turn to him, his face is red, his eyes on Aubrey. “You okay?” I ask, and he swallows, nods.
Will looks around the store while Aubrey trails behind him. Today, she’s in all black, which does nothing to take away from her pale tone and scarlet, scarlet, scarlet. Garray nudges me with his elbow. “Dude,” he says. “Is she—”
“Unavailable,” I interrupt. It was supposed to be a whisper, but it comes out harsh, and both Will and Aubrey turn to us. Aubrey eyes me suspiciously, and I widen my eyes at her, like what?
Dumb Name nudges me again.
Aubrey turns to Will. “I take it this is a gift?”
Will nods. “For my girlfriend.”
“How long has she been here?” Garray asks me. “She’s fucking fire.”
Me: “Fuck off.”
Aubrey to me: “What?”
Me to Aubrey: “Nothing.”
Will to Aubrey: “It’s our one-year anniversary.”
Aubrey to Will: “That’s sweet. Congrats.”
Garray to me: “Is this that Aubrey girl?”
Will to Aubrey: “Yeah, so I need to get her something good. I was expecting the real present to come, but it’s been delayed, and…” Blah. Blah. Blah.
Garray to me: “It is, isn’t it??”
Me: “Shut up.”
Aubrey to Will: “Well, I don’t know if I have anything that will suffice. One year is a big deal.”
Will turns to Aubrey. “I didn’t think so, but it was worth a try, right?”
Garray to me: “I think I’ll ask her out.”
Me: “No!”
Aubrey and Will: “What?”
Me: “Nothing.”
Garray laughs. “Message received, bruh.”
Aubrey: “What message?”
Me: “Nothing!”
Aubrey touches Will’s arm, and I want to yank it from its socket and smash him over the head with it. Repeatedly. “You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of you two together, would you?” she asks him.
“Like, a million on my phone,” he says.
“I have an idea, but you have to trust me, and you’ll have to leave it with me. What time do you finish work?”
“Four,” he tells her.
She smiles at him, and I want to gouge out his eyes for being the receiver of it. “Perfect.”
I go with Will back to Aubrey’s shop after work. Of course, Dumb Name does, too, because he’s a shit, and he knows what’s up, and I don’t have it in me to deny it.
“Just in time,” Aubrey says, and the first thing I notice is that her hair’s changed. It’s tied up now, away from her face. She’s also wearing an apron, or a smock of some kind with paint splatters all over the front, all different colors. Her sleeves are rolled up, pale, porcelain skin a contrast against the black fabric. Her fingers and forearms look just like the apron. There’s paint on her cheekbone, on her forehead, her temple. All on her arms, her fingers.
“Did you get into a fight with some paint?” Will jokes, and Aubrey giggles.
“Kind of.” She jerks her head toward her office, down a short, narrow hallway. We form a line, Will first, then me, then Dumb Name, and follow her.
Will freezes in the doorway and squeals like a girl, and I’m lucky to be tall enough to see over him. In the small room is a canvas set on an easel with a painting of Will and Bree. It’s… it’s enough to make my breath catch and for Dumb Name to say out loud what I’m thinking. “Jesus shit. That’s amazing! Did you just do that?”
“Is it okay?” Aubrey asks.
“Oh, my God,” Will mumbles, stepping forward to take a closer look. Dumb Name pushes me aside and does the same thing. And I stand, my feet rooted to the floor, my entire world tilting on its axis, because I had no fucking idea.
Just like Lachy with his drawing, I had no clue that Aubrey could paint or that she owned the fucking shop we’re all currently standing in. I stay silent, my hands in my pockets, while Will praises her work, offers her money, to which she declines, and Dumb Name…
Dumb Name asks her out.
And she says…
She says…
“Maybe.”
And then we’re all leaving the office, and Aubrey’s walking us out, and we’re exiting the store, but not before she tugs on my arm—not my hand—and asks, “Are you okay?”
I’m so lost in confusion and in my own self-destruction that I ask her, “How the fuck did I not know this about you?”
And she answers with the words that have me questioning who I am and what my life is: “Because you never asked, Logan.”
It’s Friday night, and it’s my first date with Mary since before what my dad likes to call an “episode.” She’s so deep in my lungs, in my blood, in my thoughts, in my mind, that I can feel myself losing to her, giving in to her touch, to the way her fingertips stroke against my flesh. She’s whispering words in my ears, from all angles, all spaces. Because you never asked, Logan.
I’ve been to Aubrey’s house, been to her shop, been inside and around and over her, and she’s right; I never asked, but she’s wrong, because she never told me. Never hinted. And that’s what Mary’s so good at; this mind space, these circles, and I can’t get enough, because I inhale and inhale and chop, lick and roll, chop, lick and roll just so I can inhale and inhale and inhale some more.
Because you never asked, Logan.
“No,” I say aloud.
Mary calls to me again, warns me of what’s to come: You’re nine years old, and the leather cracks beneath your weight…
“No!”
Your selfish and conceited and you only ever wanted one thing from her— sex—and it’s the one thing I can’t give you, and that’s why you had her and that’s why you miss her and that’s why you think it’s a good idea to get in your car right now and see her…
Aubrey
I’d be insane to open the door to someone at almost midnight. It could be a rapist, a murderer—I look through the peep hole—a Logan Preston.
I can’t see his face, just his shoulder. A shoulder I clearly recognize… which may make me more insane than opening th
e door to someone at midnight.
I open the door.
He’s leaning against the brick of the alcove, his hands in his pockets. His cap is pulled low, and I can’t make out his eyes, but he smells like he’s smoked enough weed to kill a small horse. “Do you have any more?” he mumbles.
“What?” I huff, sleepy and annoyed, and wrap my robe tighter around me.
“Paintings, Red,” he says, head tilting back, red, raw eyes meeting mine. Worn and wary, he asks, “Do you have more?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Can I see them?”
I open the door wider, because loneliness and need are the cause of my insanity. So is the boy stepping through the threshold. I lead him down the hallway, past the living room, the kitchen, and my bedroom. “I mainly paint in my sunroom,” I tell him over my shoulder.
“I didn’t even know you had a sunroom.”
“You’ve never been past my bedroom.”
He doesn’t respond. And for the first few minutes of being in the sunroom, he doesn’t speak. He touches. Not me, but everything around him. Paint brushes and paint droplets, the blank canvas sitting on the old easel. “What…” He clears his throat. “What do you do with them? Where are they all?”
“I have some around the house—”
“You do?” he says. “I’ve never…”
“Paid attention?” I try to smile, but it hurts to lie to him. “It’s okay. It’s not like I’m passionate about it or anything. It’s just something I do in my spare time, Besides, I’m no Lachlan. I don’t have his talent.”
Logan blows out a breath, leans against the wall. “I don’t know, Red. From what I saw today…” he trails off, as he slides down the wall until his butt hits the floor. It’s as if he’d been struggling to stand since the moment I saw him.
I stand on the opposite side of the room, my back to the wall so there’s as much space between us as possible. “You don’t look too good, Logan. Are you—I mean… are you okay?”
He rolls his head back and forth. “I’m not okay, Red. I’m so far from okay and so fucking high that okay seems like a myth, like a lie. Am I…” His eyes squint at nothing in particular. “Am I self-centered? Because I didn’t think I was, but lately… it’s like I’ve been living in a bubble and I don’t know shit about shit. Like with Lachlan or my mom or you. I know nothing about you.”
“You know more about me than anyone else here.”
“Here, maybe, and that’s because I took away the only friend you had.”
“No one put a gun to my head and told me to sleep with you, Logan. I’m a big girl. I make my own choices.”
“Still.”
“Does it matter?”
“I feel like I should know at least some things about you.”
“Like what?” I ask, moving to a sitting position, my legs crossed, hidden beneath my robe.
“Like… what’s your last name?”
“O’Sullivan.”
His lips tilt up. “Irish?”
“Yes. What’s your middle name?”
“I don’t have one. What’s your favorite color?”
“I don’t have one. You?”
“Scar—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. Then he asks, “Do you have any other family besides your mom?”
“Just my grandma on my mother’s side.”
“Why stationery?”
“Because I used to work in a store back home part-time, after school and on weekends. I thought I knew enough about it to open my own, but… but I was wrong. I don’t. And I wasted all the money I’d inherited on it, so…” I shrug. “So, there’s that.”
Logan sighs. “Why here of all places?”
“Why not?”
“Has your mom come to visit you since you got here?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t… I don’t really know why.”
“Do you talk to her?”
I pick at a loose thread on the silk robe. “What is this? Twenty questions? You have a list in your head or something?”
“Yes.”
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
He repeats, “Do you talk to your mother?”
“Sometimes. Maybe once a week?”
“For how long?”
“Logan, why are we doing this?”
“Because… because I need to know that I’m not a complete asshole and maybe asking these questions will help me determine that. Or maybe because I want to know these things about you. Does it really matter why?”
Yes. It matters more than the answers I give. “What’s with your necklace?”
He reaches up, strums his finger along the gold chain. He doesn’t pull out the pendant, the flattened penny I noticed the first time we were together.
Logan doesn’t answer me. Instead he reaches to the corner of the room where I have a stack of smaller canvases piled high, face down. He pulls the top one down, a painting of Main Street viewed from my morning walk to work.
“Did you bring all your supplies here when you moved in?”
“No,” I tell him. “I bought everything used. I came here with a single suitcase. I told you that the first night.”
He nods, motions to the painting. “Did you set up on the street and paint this?”
I shake my head when his gaze meets mine. “No. I have it all in here,” I say, tapping my temple.
He takes the next canvas from the pile. It’s of his sex den with the four-wheelers parked next to it. His eyes widen, as much as they can when he’s this lit. “This from memory, too?”
“Yes.”
“It’s almost perfect.”
I scratch the tip of my nose with the back of my hand, wonder how much I should divulge, and if he’ll even remember it tomorrow. “My mom burned everything of my dad’s after he died. Literally, everything. I have nothing of his to remember him by. After he died, I thought I could remember parts of him, you know? Like certain facial features, but then I’d come to paint him, and it never turned out right. Never exact. So now I try to memorize everything in detail, just in case.”
He nods, as if he knows what I’m talking about. But, there’s no way he could possibly understand. His mother’s memory is a thing to be cherished, the complete opposite of my dad’s. “My therapist—” he cuts himself off.
My breath halts, my hands going to my mouth. Surprise and heartache linger in my chest, in my words, “Why do you have a therapist, Logan?”
He shakes his head, pulls down the next canvas. This one is of his lake. He doesn’t ask about it.
“What’s with your necklace?” I ask again.
He lifts his gaze.
“The penny on the end and the K stamped on it?” I push. “What’s the K for? Is it your mom?”
After a long beat, he nods. Just once. “My mom’s name is Katherine. Kathy.”
“And why the penny?”
“When’s your birthday?”
“Why the penny?”
“Because I was a shit of a kid growing up, and whenever I was, she’d pull a penny from behind my ear, tell me it was magic—that it was my lucky penny and that I should carry one around with me always to remind me of just how lucky I am.” He says all this with his voice unsteady, his eyes too low for me to see clearly. “The last time she did it was the night before she died.” He reaches into his shirt, pulls out the penny pendant. Then, his voice barely a whisper, his emotions barely contained, “There’s fuck-all lucky about it, Red.”
I swallow the pain of his admission and rest my head against the wall. “Is that why you go to therapy?”
“Part of it.”
“What are the other parts, Logan?” What’s beneath the bravado I’m breaking?
Logan exhales, long and slow. “I started therapy after Laney got shot. She was in an abusive relationship, and then she got with Lucas. I was a freshman, and I was at their senior prom, and her ex… he came and he shot her and I s
aw it all go down. And I saw the blood and I heard the screams and I… I…” He clears his throat, rubs his eyes against his sleeve, refusing to look up at me. “That therapist was the first to tell me that I had… attachment issues, that I feared getting close to someone. Not because it would hurt me, that would be too easy, but because I hated seeing the hurt it caused other people. People I care about. First with my mom and all us kids, but my dad especially… he didn’t take it too well. And then my sister and Cameron… they um… they lost a baby a few years back, before they were married, and I had to see how badly it affected them. They almost split because of it, and… God, Lucy… she was a mess. And the shit with Lane… she’s like a sister to me, and Lucas… he nearly lost her. We all did. I don’t… I don’t like feeling that, like loss is… it’s so big and so mean and so cruel and I don’t—I don’t like feeling like I can’t control it. So, I’d rather not care about anyone, and I’d rather not want for anything than lose something I want so badly, and so maybe… maybe that’s why I’m here, Aubrey. I don’t know…”
I wipe the liquid heat from my cheeks just before he looks up to see it.
He asks, his throat bobbing with his swallow, “Did meeting me ruin your time here?”
I shake my head. “No. I mean, spending those few nights with you… I don’t regret it, Logan. But it makes it hard knowing that my every day is so much less because of that time, you know?”
He nods. “Are you… are you homesick?”
I smile, but it’s sad. “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging. “Which is really hard to admit considering how badly I wanted to get away from there. But I do miss it. I miss part of my life, and I think…” I wipe another stray tear, letting the constant ache in my chest control my words. “I think I miss my mom,” I tell him, nodding at my truths. “I miss her even though our relationship was toxic by the end of it. I miss coming home to someone, and I miss just… interacting with someone. I miss feeling like I am someone.”
“You are someone, Red. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask Lachy. You’ve changed his life, and I’m grateful for that. Even if I don’t show it.”
