by Piper Lennox
Also not for the first time, I find myself thinking of Mel. I saw her this morning, at the funeral. I’m sure she thinks I didn’t.
But how could I not? I was looking for her the entire time, searching every face in that crowd for the only one I wanted to see.
“Blake, something’s happening....”
“You’re gonna come, Mellie.”
I have lots of sex under my belt by now, plenty of other memories to turn to in times like this. But that night is the one I think about most.
I close my eyes and pretend Caitlin-Anne is Mel. That I’ve got her bent over this chair instead, making love to her in broad daylight. Even those annoying squeaks start turning me on, when I pretend they’re Mel’s.
“Rub your clit,” I order, because I want to feel her finish and pretend it’s Mel’s orgasm I’m feeling. Then, because I’ve got nothing to lose, I add, “Act like you don’t understand what’s happening, when you get close.”
Caitlin-Anne laughs. “What?”
My face is right behind her head. I lean down and bite her shoulder, a warning. “Did I stutter?”
Eager to please, she does as I tell her. But her moans are still too exaggerated, and when she whimpers, “Oh, God, what’s happening? Am I about to come? Are you about to make me come?” all I can think about is Mel on my couch that day, laughing at the porn and asking, “Is the acting always this bad?”
“Okay,” I breathe, my tone harsher than it probably should be; after all, she is trying, “you can stop.”
She shuts up. I ignore her normal noises and focus on the feeling. She looks nothing like Mel, acts nothing like her, but with my eyes shut and the memory of that rainy afternoon in my head, I can pretend.
“Blake,” Caitlin-Anne moans, the muscles in her back stiffening, “I’m coming, baby! Oh, God....”
“It—it’s happening, I think, it’s....”
I pump faster, even after Caitlin-Anne’s orgasm is finished and she grimaces, ready for it to be over. I can’t blame her: I’m not being gentle.
“I’m yours. I...I like that.”
My orgasm rolls through me so fast and so hard, it almost knocks me off-balance. My breath shudders out across her back as I release. I close my eyes and moan.
But I don’t just moan. I say something. A name.
And Caitlin-Anne is obedient in the bedroom, but even she’s got her limits.
So I’m not surprised when, just as I realize what I’ve said, a blast of pain arcs through my nose; she’s bucked her head back against my face, forcing me off her. When she turns around, unfazed by the blood now pouring across my mouth, she’s seething.
“Who the fuck is Mellie?”
Mel
“An estate sale, apparently. Yes, all of it, from what Sylvie told me....”
I pretend I’m not listening to my mom, who’s gossiping on the phone with a woman from church. It’s obvious she’s talking about Blake, because she lowers her voice whenever I get up for something: coffee, juice, butter. I don’t need any of it, but no way am I going to leave this kitchen.
“Oh, absolutely, the poor thing.” Mom clucks, running the curled wire of our old landline through her fingers like a rosary. “I imagine he just wants all the memories gone as fast as possible. What? Oh...no, I don’t think I will. I know it’s open to the public, but it just seems in bad taste, doesn’t it? Since we knew Patrick and all?”
Now I wonder if she actually wants me to hear. Her volume’s rising, and she’s stopped talking in code. Josh, a medical textbook open on the table in front of him, gives me a look that says he thinks so, too.
“Who was that?” he asks, when she hangs up. His reading glasses are perched on the end of his nose, just like Dad. I’d make fun of him if I weren’t trying so hard not to ask Mom any questions of my own.
“Bea Jacobs,” Mom says. She flips through some mail on the island.
“Talking about Patrick and Blake?”
“Mm-hmm.” I feel her look at me, but I keep eating my toast, even though I’m full. “Word is Blake’s inherited the entire estate, but plans to auction just about all of it off.”
Josh kicks me under the table. “When?”
She cocks her head at him, ready to scold. “Why?”
“Maybe I want to go. Patrick had some cool stuff, and if Blake doesn’t want it—”
“That’s a little inappropriate, Joshua, don’t you think?” Mom sighs and fluffs her hairsprayed coif with her fingers, using the tin plates on our wall as a mirror. “Now, if you want to go to support him emotionally, that’s different.”
I know she’s really talking about me. Josh does, too, because he kicks me again.
“Fine,” he tells Mom, “I’ll go, but I won’t buy. So? Where and when?”
Mom stares at him so long, I’m sure she’s actually checking her peripheral vision for my reaction. “Tomorrow. Eight in the morning, at Patrick’s place. He’s auctioning off the house, too, from what I hear.”
This, for some reason, gets to me. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised I’m affected by it. I grew up in that house, as much as Blake grew up in mine.
More so, actually. A lot more.
I think of the dates I brought to his backyard gazebo during my parents’ stricter days, pretending the house was mine. How, as kids, we’d slide down the banister of his stairs like we’d seen in movies. We cracked two spindles the last time we did it, finally too heavy.
And, as always, I think of that afternoon on his couch. The storm slacking as we made our way upstairs, to the bedroom I’d been in a thousand times before, everything suddenly strange and new, yet still familiar.
Mom kisses us goodbye and heads to work, running the preschool at the church. As soon as the backdoor shuts, I look at Josh.
“You’re welcome,” he says. I give him the finger and kick his shin.
Eight
Blake
“Are we waiting for anyone?” Harrison, Dad’s lawyer, looks behind me. It’s early, both of us still finishing our fast food coffees, but he looks completely alert and ready to go. Excited, even.
I, on the other hand, look like I didn’t get to sleep until dawn, then woke up twenty times before my alarm. Which I did.
“The girlfriend,” I tell him, “ is no longer in the picture. If that’s what you mean.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear it.”
I shrug and straighten my tie.
After moaning another woman’s name, I endured quite a few slaps and choice words from Caitlin-Anne, all deserved. She was kind of a crappy girlfriend, but I was definitely a bad boyfriend. At least she kind of liked me. I didn’t care about her at all.
Not that I told her that, of course. Not even when she tore my apartment to shreds, collecting the things she’d slowly moved in against my will. Bad boyfriend or not, I wasn’t heartless. There’s nothing worse than realizing you care about someone more than they care about you.
“Bigger crowd than I expected,” Harrison says, as he peers outside. A line of about twenty people snakes down the driveway, each holding a ticket with their number. There are at least thirty more in their cars, AC blasting.
“Is that good?”
“Of course. More people, more money.”
I recognize some nosey old ladies in line from Mel’s church, where I spent most of my Sundays, growing up. They always smelled like the bottom of a purse: powder and mint and aqua-coated pennies. I have a feeling they’re just here to gawk. Now they’re even older and nosier.
Harrison checks his watch and heads for the door. “Let’s go have an auction!”
“Great,” I sigh. I step outside into the sun, and the crowd goes silent.
Mel
Josh and I sit in his car at the end of the cul-de-sac. It’s bright, but I left my sunglasses at home on purpose. Unlike the funeral, I don’t plan on hiding this time.
“Thirty,” Josh says, reading his ticket. “They’re letting...what, twenty in now? So I’m guessing we’ll
be in the next group.”
“When does that happen?”
“Whenever the first group leaves. Estate sales are a first-come, first-serve kind of deal. Told you we should’ve gotten here sooner.”
I’m not listening anymore; the front door opens, and my chest has a strange, achy burn when Blake steps outside with another guy in a suit. They join the auction company on the lawn to welcome the first group inside.
It’s like this each time I see him: my heart jumps, my palms sweat, and my brain cranks through every conversation we ever had, every secret we ever shared. I think of the small boy, and then lanky teenager, he used to be. My brain can’t fit that with the muscle-bound, square-jawed man he is now.
“Shit,” Josh says, noticing. “When did he bulk up like that? Last I saw him, he was just a shrimpy kid.”
“I don’t know.” I watch as the line files inside, and Blake follows. He looks exhausted.
While we wait, Josh plays games on his tablet. I pick at the bagel I bought on the way here, digging out every raisin with my thumb.
“So,” he says, “you never actually told me why you guys stopped talking.”
“I didn’t? Huh.” I’m faking my surprise, because I didn’t tell anyone. It took people a while to even notice, and by then it was easily explained away. I don’t know what Blake told his dad, if anything. I just told Mom we’d grown apart.
But Josh never asked, so I never had to lie. Maybe I still would, if we weren’t about to traipse through Blake’s childhood home while strangers pick it clean like a chicken carcass. Something about the situation makes me feel like I should tell Josh the truth.
“We hooked up, the summer after graduation,” I say, finally, “and he wanted to make things official. You know—boyfriend and girlfriend. But I didn’t.”
“Really? Why not?”
This question has haunted me for years, and I still don’t have a real answer. Not one that justifies three entire years apart.
“I don’t know. It freaked me out. I mean, I never thought of him like that, until then. And I was scared we’d mess up our friendship.”
He laughs through his nose. “You still messed up your friendship.” Cutting his eyes at me, he adds, “Sorry. Just saying.”
“It’s okay. It’s true.” My eyes sting as I take a breath, the bagel now in shreds across the napkin in my lap. “But that’s why I’m here.”
Blake
“Do I even need to be here?”
Harrison watches me take off my tie. “No, not necessarily,” he says, “but are you sure you don’t want to stay?”
“It’s my dad’s stuff, not mine. What do I care?”
“It may be his stuff, but it’s your estate. And all that money coming in? That’s yours, too.” He motions to the auction company’s table, lined with lockboxes and cash drawers, the workers sorting change into buyers’ hands before they walk off with photo frames, electronics, and Dad’s taxidermy collection. One woman is hefting a moose head by the antlers. I want to tell her to grab the plaque, instead, but stop myself. I don’t care, right?
“But I can leave,” I clarify. Harrison spreads his hands, like I’ve got him over a barrel. Eventually, he nods.
Being in Dad’s house again gets to me more than I thought. By the time I make it to my car, my hands are shaking. I feel my heart kick into overdrive, its signature move when I’m stressed. Driving is probably a bad idea, but with the second group of people already heading inside, staying here seems like a worse one.
“Um...hi.”
Who I’m expecting when I turn, I’m not sure. Church ladies? Another lawyer? Caitlin-Anne or one of her bitchy friends, out for blood?
I should know who it is, though, before I even look. Maybe I do.
“Hey,” I say, as Mel shields her eyes from the sun and steps closer.
Nine
Mel
Josh waves to us before he heads inside with his ticket. “He, uh...he really wants that convertible air-hockey and Ping-Pong table in your basement,” I explain to Blake, embarrassed. Horrified is probably a better word for it, actually. But Blake, to my surprise, just chuckles.
“Yeah, it’s still down there. I hope he gets it.”
We stand and stare at each other for a while. At least, I think (hope?) he’s looking at me. He has sunglasses on, so I can’t tell. I regret leaving mine at home.
“I’m sorry.” My throat is baking in this heat. “Um...about your dad, I mean. I cried when I heard.”
Behind his glasses, his eyebrows lift. “Really?”
“Of course.” I’m a little hurt he finds this hard to believe, but I guess I don’t have a right to be.
“So.” He tosses his keys from one hand to the other. “Why are you here?”
This hurts even more, but I know I deserve it. “I wanted to see you.” The truth feels like I’m handing him a gift he doesn’t want, but I have to do it, just the same.
“Me,” he repeats, shifting his jaw. He wipes a smudge off the hood of his car, or pretends to. “That why you were at the funeral?”
“You saw me?”
“I figured you’d be there, so I was kind of looking. You could’ve said hi then.” He pauses. “Or, you know, any time in the last three years.”
As much as I deserve and prepared myself for it, his anger shocks me. Blake isn’t the type to show his anger. At least, he didn’t used to be.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. I want to say more, maybe try and explain myself, but the words get tangled together in my brain. I close my mouth and wait for him to either accept my apology, or throw it back in my face.
Blake looks at the house, then me. “You hungry?”
Blake
“Wow, your car is...clean.”
I watch as Mel runs her hands along the dash, which I keep spotless. Her shoes, I notice, have tracked some bits of asphalt from the road onto my floor mats, but I try not to let it bother me.
“Yep.” I start the engine and go before she’s even done buckling.
“Your old car was pretty clean too, though,” she says. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“But you are.” I shift into a higher gear as we get to the main road. I’m actually asking a question: why is she surprised?
Mel is quiet for a moment. “I guess I’m just thinking about how weird it is, that some things stay the same, even when everything else...changes.”
I glance at her. She’s eyeing my wrist and forearm, finally freed from my suit jacket. I rolled my sleeves up to cool down, but now I wonder if there was a different reason. Something subconscious.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet.” My heart is still racing. It hurts more than usual, but I will my hands to stay on the wheel and shifter. “What do you want?”
She thinks again, clicking her tongue. “I’m not sure. You pick.”
I laugh. It startles us both.
“You’re right,” I tell her, as the car glides onto the highway. “Some things stay exactly the same.”
Mel
Okay, I think, this is good. He’s joking. He invited me to lunch. The fact he’s even talking to me—all good signs, right?
Still, something seems off.
“Are you all right?” I ask, and immediately feel dumb as hell, because of course he isn’t all right. As we speak, his father’s earthly possessions are being rifled through and haggled over by strangers, people who don’t care about the history or memories. They just want a good deal.
“Tired,” he says. “I kept thinking about the auction and didn’t sleep well.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t sleep well, myself. All night I drifted in and out from different dreams, each an alternate reality of how today might go. Somehow, my brain didn’t conjure up this scenario.
“Can I ask....” I look at him again. How can I feel so comfortable with him, after all this time—but still get tongue-tied, like I’ve never seen him in my life? “What made you want to sell everything?�
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“Are you kidding? You’ve seen what’s in there. It’s all junk. I have no use for it.”
“No, I get that part. But...what about the house itself? You don’t have memories you want to keep, or—or even just to have a place to live for a while—”
“I have a place to live,” he corrects, pretty much snapping at me. “And the memories are why I’m selling it in the first place, if you really want to know.”
“Jesus,” I breathe, letting my head fall against the headrest. Through my window, the landscape turns gray and flat; a storm is on its way, the sky filmed over with clouds. “Just asking.”
“Well, don’t.” The next turn is sharp. He’s driving too fast, and I have to brace myself on the console to keep from leaning into him. “You don’t get to ‘just ask’ anymore.”
“You’re right.” I sit straight again. “I apologize.”
This seems to confuse him, but it softens him, too, because his hands ease their grip on the wheel. The speedometer drops back to the limit. “I, uh...I shouldn’t have yelled about it. It’s just been a tough few months.”
The clouds finally erupt, rain hitting the windshield in fat, off-rhythm drops.
“I think about that day a lot,” he says, after a silence so long my ears start to ring. “The last time we talked. It was raining.”
“I remember. I biked over in the storm and had to wear your clothes.”
“Yeah. Those black sweatpants.” A smile flutters at the corners of his mouth. “They’re in my closet, actually.”
“No way they still fit you,” I say, and can’t help but give him a full once-over, now that the topic’s moved in this direction. He’s huge, built like his dad, but barely an ounce of fat on him. All muscle.
“Oh, they don’t. I just kept them because....” His eyes cut to me. “I don’t know. Sentimental value, probably.”
