by Sasha Dawn
When I’m far enough away to breathe more deeply, I let out a scream of rage and pound a fist against the roof of the Explorer, against the headrest on the passenger seat, on the dashboard.
I think about that slimeball, Novak, trying to weasel in on Chatham, thinking that because I left, he could have a crack at her, and maybe even assuming that I left because he intimidated me.
I think about Damien’s smug smile, when he must have realized I was leaving only because he was there.
Then I think about Damien’s assuming I’d left for whatever reason Novak’s spewing, about Damien’s taking it as confirmation that I am a pussy, and it fueling his urges to come over and prove it to me.
I think back to my twelfth year:
I’m not doing a god-damned thing. Just sitting on the back patio with a game of Solitaire laid out on the table in front of me, when a fist comes flying at my head.
A flash of silver.
A twinkling of stars at the periphery of my vision.
And I’m on the concrete, and this monster is on top of me, pounding on me. Jabbing me in the kidneys. Calling me a pussy. Daring me to hit back.
But I take it. I take it so Rosie doesn’t have to. So he won’t even think about shaking the babies, which he threatens to do on a daily basis.
I hear it over and over again, echoing in the dark closets of my memories: Hit back, you fucking pussy! What? Not man enough to defend yourself? Fucking hit me back!
I pull into the driveway and cough over tears. I lean my head against the steering wheel for a few seconds so I can catch my breath.
My hand hurts from all the pounding on my car. Maybe I’ve even dented the roof, but it’s not like I could notice a new dent in the midst of all the old ones.
After a few more deep breaths, I pull myself together.
The house is quiet when I enter. The twins are whispering to each other in the living room. Once I close the door, Margaret peers at me through the rungs of the railing. “Joshy,” she whispers.
“Hi.”
The sound of a broom whisking against the floor meets my ears.
Rosie looks up then, and pauses in the midst of her sweeping. She’s wearing her usual expression—one that says she’s utterly disappointed in me, in life, in the world in general—but the second she really looks at me, she softens. Maybe she can sense I’m upset. Or maybe it shows I’ve let a few tears slip. “You’re home early.” Usually, she’d be in her scrubs already, but she’s wearing a pair of yoga pants and a sweatshirt.
“Yeah. Damien was at the Tiny Elvis, so . . .”
She nods. “Okay.”
I go to take off my shoes.
“Leave them on if you’re coming up. I was wiping the table, and the cloth caught the hoof of the unicorn.”
I look down at the sparkly purple shards in the dustpan. She’s stepping a little gingerly as she moves, and there’s a slight tremor in her voice.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, Josh.”
I take the broom from her hands.
“Josh.” She grips the back of a chair and takes a step closer.
I narrow my glance and take a step back, so she has to follow me.
Yep. She’s sort of limping. But not like something’s wrong with a foot. Like she’s hurt. I’ve seen this sort of walk before.
“Was he here?” I ask.
“Josh, I’m fine.”
I raise my voice: “What happened?”
Margaret and Caroline shut up.
“It was an accident. We were joking, all right? And I lost my footing.” Her glance toward the stairs tells me she fell down them. On its own, the incident is semi-believable. But toss in the broken unicorn, and it doesn’t make sense.
“It doesn’t have to be this way.” I’m practically whispering, so the girls don’t hear. I sit at the table. “You can call the cops and tell them the truth for once.”
“He didn’t do anything this time.” She joins me, sitting across from me.
“He’s seeing someone else, you know.”
Her eyes widen for a split second, but she quickly controls her reaction. “He wouldn’t dare—”
“I saw him come out of the Churchill. She’s young, super thin. Rough around the edges.”
My phone buzzes with a text alert. I glance at my phone and see it’s a message from Jensen. He’s probably just wondering why I left.
“I know you better than anyone on this planet,” I say. “You go from man to miserable-fucking man, but you know who’s been here for you every time they drop you on your fucking head? Me. They come and go. Breeze in, shake us up, and leave our lives after a few months, a few years, maybe. Guess who’s been here the longest?” I point my thumb at my heart. “Me. I’ve been with you longer than any man, and I’m the only man you’ve ever been able to count on.”
She opens her mouth to reply, but I don’t give her the chance.
“And I know Damien’s back because you think you can’t make it on your own. But Rosie, you’ve been on your own since you were knocked up at seventeen. You’ve been doing this on your own our whole lives. I can’t do this anymore. It’s him or me.”
“God, Josh, don’t make me choose. I’m the mother. I get to say who stays and who goes, and you’re staying. Can’t you just—”
“The funny thing is that you think I have any choice in the matter. That you think I’m making you choose. There is no choice, Rosie.”
She lets out a sigh. “The ring.”
“What?”
“Damien said he brought a ring. Remember, he threw a box up the stairs.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have it? I want to wear it.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know where it is.” I look her right in the eye when I lie to her.
“Oh, God.” She hides her face in her hands. “God, what am I going to do?”
Her voice catches, like she’s about to cry, and I’m suddenly sorry I lied. I’m about to come clean when she says, “It’s fine.” She wipes a knuckle under her eyes and pushes back from the table and stands. “I’m fine. I’m sure it’ll turn up.” She cups a cold hand at the back of my neck and kisses the top of my head.
A rush of warm emotion courses through me. I haven’t felt this sense of warmth between my mother and me since I was about nine or ten.
“Go out. See Aiden. Go be sixteen.”
It’s funny: I’ve been waiting a lifetime to hear her say those words, but now that she’s spoken them, I don’t feel right leaving. I’m worried about her, about the girls.
My phone buzzes again.
I glance at it. Chatham.
J e r s e y
“He threw his jersey at me,” Chatham says. “I mean, who does that?”
It’s so like Novak to push his luck with Chatham, even though he knows she’s with me. “Novak’s an ass.”
“Obviously.”
“So, what’d you do? With his jersey?”
She’s sitting in my passenger seat, sucking on one of those striped pink candy sticks they sell for a quarter at the Churchill General, and I’m driving aimlessly through Sugar Creek.
We can’t go to my house, and Chatham’s place isn’t more than a bed, so going there would be sort of presumptuous. Aiden’s got another date with Kai, so I’m steering clear of his house.
Chatham’s feet are propped on my dashboard. She’s wearing skinny jeans with the left knee blown out, and the cuffs rolled to a few inches above her ankle. Some kind of canvas kicks cover her feet, and she’s wearing that sweater she bought at the Northgate bazaar. It’s more clothes than her usual cutoffs and tank tops, but it’s about forty-five degrees right now. She’s still got to be cold, so the heat’s not only on, but blasting.
“Nothing. I think he took it with him when he left.”
I weigh what his reaction must have been against what it might have been had she torched the thing in front of him. Either way, it had to have been a blow to his ego.
Maybe I’m just irritable this evening because of my mother, but suddenly, it’s not enough to assume Chatham’s wearing my jersey for the reasons I want her to wear it—not because we’ve kissed a few times, and not because we’re working through family messes, both hers and mine, but because we don’t want to see other people. I want her to be my girlfriend, officially, and it’s killing me that I’m afraid to say it.
I glance at her. “Can I ask you something?”
She raises a brow, and pops that sugary stick back into her mouth.
I take that as an invitation: “I know we’re just starting to know each other, but there’s something about you.” It wasn’t a question, I know. “I want to know you . . . I want you to know me better than anyone.”
She presses her lips into this thrilling smile.
Deep breath. “What I mean is . . .” I glance away, but she’s so magnetic that I return my glance to her within a breath. “I mean, I think about you. All. The. Time.”
She leans over the center console in my car and rests her head on my shoulder. “You know what’s funny.” Her hand on my knee is cold, but sends a warm dart of electric energy through my system. “We have this enormous thing in common, you and me: we can’t go home. But being with you . . . it feels like home, you know?”
God, do I ever know.
I pull into a lot at the county preserve, where I’ll take my sisters sledding, once the world’s covered in snow. The park has been closed, like all parks, since sunset, so I know we can’t stay here, but I want her to experience this place. I want to feel her bundled up and tight to my body on a toboggan. I want her to come with Margaret, Caroline, and me in a month or two. I want to taste the snow in her kisses and warm her up with cocoa and big socks and blankets in front of the electric fire in my basement.
Just when my imagination starts heating up to the possibility, it goes cold. It’s months away. A lot can happen in two months. Chatham could be shipped back to Georgia. Savannah could show up halfway to California for all we know, and Chatham could follow her there. And there’s still a niggling doubt in the back of my mind that Chatham has been utterly transparent with me. She could have plans I don’t know about.
Sometimes no matter how good your intentions may be, things just don’t always work.
“You know what?” I look at her, and decide to make it happen. Tonight. Even though there’s no snow, even though the park is closed, I want to share that toboggan slide with her.
We could sneak in over the gate, but the car in the lot will practically advertise we’re there. I have to park somewhere else. “I’ve got an idea.”
“I like ideas.”
I laugh and reverse out of the lot, drive up the road a piece, pull off on the shoulder, and turn off the engine. I’m not supposed to park here, but I can always say I’ve had car trouble if we’re caught coming back. We get out of the car, and I lead her toward the woods. I climb over the split-rail fence bordering the county property; she ducks under it.
The woods at night in October smell like a cold snap waiting to break. Like moss and wet leaves and freezing air. The scents mix with the smell of her strawberry candy, and I can’t help but think about the way she looked at the rave the moment that girl kissed her. And the way she looked beneath me, in front of the fake fire, on the floor: hair fanned out against the rug, skin reflecting the amber light from the fireplace, lips plump and rosy from kisses.
I tighten my grip on her hand and quicken my pace.
“Where are we going?” Her whisper dances up my spine.
“I want to show you something.”
“How can you even see where you’re going?”
“Just trust me.” I grew up in this place. I could weave my way through Sugar Creek in the dead of night with my eyes closed. We make our way through the woods, and emerge on the other side at the park grounds. The sledding hill is in the distance, washed only with the light from the fraction of moon in the sky.
And that’s what I want her to see.
That’s where I want to take her. I want to lay her down on the acme of that hill, the highest point in Sugar Creek, from which we can see the Northgate Lighthouse and the lake and the boardwalk . . . if it’s a clear enough night.
“What is that?” she whispers.
I’m about to tell her it’s a toboggan slide carved into a forest on a hill, but she’s heading to the left, pulling on my hand.
She starts walking a little faster. “It’s a train.”
“Oh. That.”
She’s running now, having dropped my hand, and I’m running alongside her, toward the Soo Line caboose that’s permanently planted on the grounds of the preserve. A few hundred yards later, she’s pattering over the makeshift platform, then climbing up the grated steps of the car.
She steps over the threshold to the interior of the space. “What’s it doing here?”
“It’s always been here.”
“But why?”
“The story is that it detached from a train and came to a stop here.” It’s true that’s what everyone says, but I don’t know if it’s actually what happened.
She props a hip against a built-in bench, her brow slightly wrinkled, as if in deep concentration, or just deeply affected. “This is incredible.” She sweeps her gaze around the car.
I remember playing in here as a kid, in awe that an engineer once slept in the tiny bunk, once lived in this tiny space as the car traveled cross-country, the last in a long line of cargo cars. And if it felt tiny when I was small, it’s positively cramped now.
When I was a kid, someone had carved onto the booth-like table up in the top loft:
RACHEL BACHTON WAS HERE
And it hits me, the reverence of that statement, every time I see it plastered in some unexpected place. Rachel Bachton likely was here, like every other kid in the vicinity, once upon a time.
And I want to see the carving again.
I grab hold of the bars on the bunk ledge, and get a foothold in. Up I go, and in no time, I’m in the loft of the train car, a tiny box, with windows on either side and a booth-like table and bench, where the engineer used to sit. Chatham’s head pops up a moment after, which makes me like her even more. I just love an adventurous girl.
I slide onto the booth bench, my ass on the back, my feet resting on the seat. She squeezes in past me, leans against the table. And right there, near her hip, carved into the table, layered in coats of dull gray paint, it is:
RACHEL BACHTON WAS HERE
Seeing it gives my heart a jolt.
“God.” I say it like it’s a prayer, as I trace the words with my fingers, feel the concave of the etching with my fingertips.
It’s like an X on an old treasure map. The only difference is, of course, that finding this marking in no way denotes that Rachel Bachton is anywhere near. It’s not like we could crack open the floor of the caboose and pull out the treasure of a girl gone so long she’s become legend. Rachel isn’t here.
But Chatham’s here with me now, and suddenly, I’m ultra aware of the rhythm of her breath at my side.
Simultaneously, we look up from the carving.
The light from distant lampposts in the parking lot reflects off the window and illuminates her in a soft glow.
She licks her bottom lip, and the way she’s looking at me . . . it’s like she wants to lick me.
I imagine she tastes as sugary as the pink-striped stick she must have dropped in the midst of her sprint to the caboose.
I can see down the front of her v-neck tee, the curve of her breasts plunging dangerously into the depths of a lace-trimmed bra, but I keep the view in my periphery, try like hell to hold her gaze.
She smiles.
I think I’ve been smiling all along.
She hooks a finger into the waistband of my Adidas track pants, and yanks me closer.
My lips fall onto hers, and I reciprocate when her tongue flickers against mine like a flame.
But I don’t close my eyes b
ecause she doesn’t close hers.
“You’re beautiful,” she says against my lips, and kisses me again before I can tell her I’m nothing close.
I’m leaning over her now, conscious of the confines of this loft—how crazy would it be if one of us fell off?—and she’s slowly edging her way onto her back on the table, and our bodies are so close that her chest squashes against me. Her knee grazes me at my thigh.
Before I even know I’m doing it, I palm a breast. My breath catches in my throat, and my every muscle tenses.
Every.
Muscle.
“Okay?” I whisper.
“Mmmhmm.” And for a few seconds, I damn near imagine the way it might feel inside her—hot and wet and tight—but I don’t want to start thinking about it.
I mean, I do, but I don’t.
Because even if we were ready to take the step, we can’t very well do it here. In an abandoned—“God.”
Her hands are at my fly, fingers tucked into the elastic waistband.
Well, maybe we could.
I shift, anticipating she’s going to yank on the drawstring of my pants any second now. She’s pressing a hand against me, and as much as I want her to keep her hand there, I want even more to navigate my way over her body, feel her, experience every inch of her. I feather a few fingers under her T-shirt, over her stomach, and suddenly, I can’t stop thinking about kissing her belly button.
But once I’m kissing a circle around it, I’m craving the flesh of her hips. God, I have to know how that scar feels under my tongue!
I pull on the button of her jeans and tug them down a few inches, and . . . intimate. That’s how it feels. Uncharted. As if she doesn’t trust—hasn’t trusted in a long while—anyone else to roam there.
I weave a trail of kisses up her torso, and maneuver the cup of a bra over the heaven it contains. I circle a pretty, pink nipple with my tongue for only a brief moment. I’ve really gotten out of hand now that I’ve slipped a few fingers beyond the waistband of her jeans, and even dipped them into her panties—she’s slick and warm—so I want to check back in with her lips, gauge her reaction to what I’m doing. Because I’m haphazardly taking charge of her body . . . as if I own it, and I don’t.
