Love and Vandalism

by Laurie Boyle Crompton

It only takes a moment for us to reach the changing shed at the back edge of the graveled clearing, but it’s long enough for the rain to completely drench us both.

  Rivulets of water are running down Scott’s face, and he blows at the stream running from the tip of his nose. The spray hits me in my wet face, and I grimace and give a light laugh.

  It feels really good to laugh.

  Reaching up, I wipe the water from Scott’s face with both my hands. I’m on automatic pilot, but when his expression shifts to obvious lust, it sparks a warmth in my cold, dank chest. He slowly reaches up with both thumbs and swipes the water dripping from my cheeks.

  The moment feels so familiar. So separate from all the emotions I’ve been feeling. Like I’m finally back in control.

  I turn away and pull my towel from my bag, burying my face in it a moment before flinging it over my head to pat my dreads.

  When I’ve finished, I swing the damp towel around my shoulders and look at Scott. He’s still watching me. Waiting for me to decide what’s next.

  Ignoring the water dripping from his hair into his wild eyes as they track me, it’s clear he wants me.

  And it feels so good to be wanted.

  The lions are awake and hungry, and they’re crying out with their need to be fed.

  I jerk toward him, and in one smooth motion, the two of us come together and start kissing.

  Scott tastes like rain and the trees with the slightest hint of minty salt. Or maybe it’s more like salty mint. I’m distracted for a moment as I try to decide.

  The forcefulness of his lips draws my attention back. A touch too eager.

  Scott forges a trail of kisses down my neck and across my cleavage, and the sensations that ripple through me are helping me forget everything.

  The lions are slowing their prowl.

  Reaching up, I slide both straps of my bathing suit off my shoulders.

  Scott draws back, looking at my chest as if he is dying of lust. He looks up at my face. “Are you sure?”

  I don’t speak, only nod, and with a smile, Scott bows his head.

  I close my eyes and lose myself in the feeling of his hands sliding down my wet body.

  I breathe in, but instead of the waft of cologne I expect, there is only the woodsy scent of pine. I’m picturing slicked-back, black hair, but when I reach up to grasp the back of his head, the texture is all wrong, and when I open my eyes, I’m surprised by Scott’s wet, blond waves.

  Scott continues kissing me, but I stop kissing him back.

  I lift my chin, trying to get back into that bliss zone, but now every touch makes me think not-Hayes-not-Hayes-not-Hayes.

  Angry at my mind for the way it is betraying me, I remind myself that he rejected me.

  But it’s as if I can feel Hayes’s eyes watching sadly. This isn’t what I want.

  Scott has already partially disrobed and is easing me down onto the changing bench when I finally accept what I need to do. I need to stop this right now because I don’t want to be with anyone who isn’t Hayes.

  I go rigid so suddenly Scott stops kissing my neck and looks up at my face.

  When I shake my head at him slightly, he whimpers, “Are you seriously saying no now?”

  I close my eyes and nod, and he groans like an agonized animal.

  “Sorry.” I shove a wet dreadlock back out of my eyes. “I’m just not into this.”

  His nostrils flare for a moment before he releases me. I move to the other side of the changing shed, and he weaves his hands together, placing them on top of his head. “Fuck, Rory. I never pegged you for a dick tease.”

  “I’m not a fucking tease, Scott. This just isn’t right for me.”

  “Seriously? Unbelievable. You know you want it. It was just a matter of time before the two of us hooked up.”

  I’ve pulled one side of my bathing suit top back up and stop to look at him with one breast still out. “I was acting impulsive, Scott.” I tuck myself away. “I’m trying to do better.”

  “So you’re just shutting everything down right now? This is so not cool, Rory.”

  I feel ashamed for a minute. This doesn’t seem fair to Scott. “I get the fact that my timing is, er, less than ideal.” I gesture in the direction of his obvious expectation. “It’s nothing personal. I’ve just been going through some stuff lately.”

  “‘Lately’ as in between the time we ran into this shack and started kissing and right now? What the hell changed, Rory?”

  I launch across the small space to look Scott in the eye. My finger pokes hard into his chest, and he backs against the wall as I tell him, “The only thing that had to change, Scott. My. Mind.”

  With that, I grab my bag and towel and fling the door open wide.

  It’s still raining outside—except for in one small circle about five feet away where a red umbrella is blocking the downpour.

  Underneath the arched red canopy, holding the curved handle in one hand, stands Hayes.

  Scott moves in behind me, calling, “Rory, come on. I’m sorry.”

  He catches me around the waist at the door. The two of us are both still flushed and breathing heavy, and I watch the comprehension wash over Hayes’s face. Coming to all the wrong conclusions about what just went on inside this shed.

  I want to tell him this isn’t what it looks like, that what he thinks happened never happened, but I’m speechless.

  Scott peers out at him and asks, “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Hayes just continues standing under his red umbrella, watching me as the rain falls like a wall between us. Finally, he moves his eyes from me to Scott. “I was just asking myself that exact same thing.”

  He turns and starts walking toward the path that leads into the woods. I call, “Hayes, wait,” and he pauses, lowers his shoulders, and walks back toward us.

  When he reaches the open door of the shed, he holds out a package wrapped in a plastic bag. He says, “I finished my ninth step. Got you something to celebrate.”

  He looks up at me as if daring me to take the small, flat rectangle from his hand.

  My breathing has slowed, but I can feel my heart still beating in my cheeks. My face is so warm, I imagine the raindrops that land on it turning into instant steam. I tell my cheeks to calm the hell down and stop acting so guilty.

  I say to Hayes, “Nothing happened.”

  He just tightens his mouth and shakes the package at me in response.

  I cross my arms, and with a sigh, he reaches forward and tucks what is obviously a small, wrapped book into the crook of my elbow.

  His eyes flick to Scott standing behind me and back to me for a moment before he turns on his heel so fast the rain on his umbrella runs off the back, drenching me.

  “Hayes,” I call, stepping out into the downpour.

  But he just keeps walking away. Away from the beach. Away from me.

  Needles of rain sting my eyes as I try to hold back the tears of regret. But they’re determined, and within moments, my face is wet with a combination of tears and raindrops.

  Scott is behind me. “Is that guy the reason why you stopped…what you were doing with me?”

  I nod and start sobbing in earnest as he puts a consoling hand on my back.

  Looking up at Scott, my breath hitches as I ask, “Are you sure you’re not still trying to get into my bathing suit?”

  “Your bathing suit would look terrible on me.” He gives a small grin, and I can’t help but to smile through my tears.

  I look out into the rain and glimpse a red flash of Hayes’s umbrella just before it disappears into the distant trees.

  He’s gone.

  • • •

  I’m shoving Hayes’s gift into my backpack when my phone rings with a text from Kat. She’s asking if I can take the last two hours of her shift at Dan
ny’s tonight.

  That favor I owe her for kissing Ken must have been burning a hole in her Blue Q bag.

  I tell her of course, even though it’s fairly short notice and I really should be trying to find the loose shards of my life so I can glue them back together. Unfortunately, the Hayes-shaped fragment is lost forever now, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to leave a noticeable empty space in the finished piece.

  At least Scott realizes that a weeping girl doesn’t want to be hit on, and he gives me the perfect blend of light attention and space for the rest of our shift. We play cards without comment for the next hour, while the rain gets softer and then harder and then softer again.

  Likewise, I ride waves of regret as I picture that look of hurt on Hayes’s face. How did things end up so wrecked?

  Finally, Scott and I hear the laughter of small humans making their way toward the beach and emerge from the shed to find the sun has come out.

  And just like that, it’s a lovely beach day after all.

  I turn the sign around, announcing the lake is open for swimming, and can’t help but marvel at how quickly everything can shift. For worse or for better.

  I just made a decision to listen to my inner voice, turned down sex midstream, and surprisingly, nobody’s balls exploded. Anonymous intimacy wasn’t really working as an escape for me anyway, and I can make choices that are not based on pure impulse.

  I found that Scott is not a very good kisser, but he might be a better friend than I thought. And I discovered that ignoring my feelings turns them into ravenous beasts that demand my attention. I cannot ignore my grief forever.

  Oh yes. And only moments after realizing that I’m fully in love with Hayes, I managed to annihilate any chances of us ever being together. Huzzah.

  • • •

  “I’m so mad at myself for screwing things up in such an epic, Rory-like way.”

  I came in extra early to whine to Kat for a while before she leaves the store for the night.

  As she moves about, getting ready, I notice for the first time that she’s wearing a short, black skirt and her thick purple-and-turquoise Fluevog heels. “Wait a second.”

  She stands up straight and looks utterly guilt ridden for a moment before raising one of her artfully arched brows at me. “What?”

  “Don’t you use that fake-innocent voice with me. You’re wearing your lucky Fluevogs. You have a date, don’t you?”

  Kat puts her hands on her hips. “It’s not a big deal, Rory. It’s just a late dinner and maybe a drink or two.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve been over here going on and on about my nonrelationship with Hayes, and meanwhile, you’re all dolled up, about to go out on an actual date. Who’s the blessed guy?”

  “First of all, you don’t need to act as if me going out on a date is like some rare solar-eclipse event that only happens once every twenty years. I date. I just don’t, you know, do it all that often. Or successfully.”

  “Do I know him?” My eyes grow wide. “Wait a minute, is it that guy who came in last week for neon poster board for his yard sale?”

  “No, it’s not neon-poster-board guy.” Kat turns away from me.

  “So then, who is it? Have I met him? Why are you acting so evasive?”

  “I’m not acting evasive. I’m just trying to get this place straightened up before he shows up.”

  “Why on earth would your date give a crap about the way the store—” And I get it. “No. Way. You’re going out with Ken?”

  “Don’t look at me that way. He’s cute, okay?”

  “You just called him an intergalactic freak last week.”

  “I meant he was acting like a freak. He’s got that awkward, self-conscious thing happening that you know I find attractive.”

  I take her by the shoulders. “You are so much better than he is.”

  She grins at me. “I know that. And you know that. But most importantly, he knows that too.”

  Just then, the bell rings over the door and Ken pokes his pointy head inside. He usually strolls into the store with all the confidence of a douche-bag manager looking to bust some lady balls, but right now, he drums his twitching fingers against his khakis as his eyes dart around.

  “Be ready in a minute,” Kat tells him. “Just let me punch out.”

  Ken seems newly breakable as he watches her walk back to the stockroom. I hear him chastise himself under his breath, “I could’ve offered to just sign her out.” He flinches as if he’s completely blowing it, and the date hasn’t even started yet.

  This is not the douche-bag manager I’ve come to know and loathe.

  I say, “Hey, Ken,” and he recoils. I’m hit with a wave of sympathy and mean it when I tell him, “I hope you guys have a really good time tonight.”

  He takes a deep breath and seems to relax a moment. When Kat reappears, his face lights up, and his fingers start twitching again.

  She moves back behind the counter to grab her purse, and I whisper, “I’m actually kind of rooting for you guys.”

  Kat smiles and mouths the words, Me too, before heading out the door with her twitchy date.

  • • •

  Things are usually slow at Danny’s at night, especially this time of year, before the college reopens, but being alone in an art store is hardly what I’d call a travesty for someone like me.

  As I wander up and down the aisles, I run my fingers over the delicious supplies. Charcoals and clay and wood and Mod Podge. Like old friends. Over the years, I’ve worked with nearly every medium represented here. I stop at the oil paints and can’t block an image that rises to the surface of my memory.

  It’s a happy one, which is sometimes worse.

  My mother is here, and I have all her focus. She’s pointing to the small, white tubes of paint and explaining about color mixing.

  I’m trying to concentrate on what she’s saying, but my mind continually breaks away so it can marvel at how brilliant she is. I feel so lucky to have her for a mother.

  I bask in the waves of intensity emanating from her gray eyes. Mom’s tutorial on paints is interrupted when a clerk comes over to ask if she needs any help—an older woman who no longer works here.

  Mom is dismissive and rude toward the woman, and I am glad. Can’t she see that the two of us are sharing a moment here? Right here.

  My mother gifting me with her love for making art. Projecting her creative essence into a fresh vessel, her daughter.

  A part of me has an urge to start wrecking the display of paints right now. I picture myself dumping boxes of tubes on the floor and knocking down the shelves. Reminding myself I’d be the one stuck cleaning everything up, I continue down the aisle.

  For the thousandth time I wonder, Why, Mom? Why?

  Making my way to the counter, I reach underneath and pull Hayes’s gift out of my backpack.

  I drop the package on the counter with a solid thunk and stand, watching it. I picture his expression when he saw me with Scott. The way his happiness at seeing me shifted when he saw I wasn’t alone. And his look of hurt confusion as he put together the pieces of the puzzle all wrong.

  I should’ve stopped him. Run after him. Explained everything and kissed him in the rain underneath his red umbrella.

  But he was the one who was done with me after that Turp fiasco. He was afraid I was going to make him start drinking again, and so he rejected me. And I didn’t want to be the reason he stopped trying to get better. I wanted us to be better together, but he acted like that was impossible.

  Why wasn’t he answering my texts? How was I supposed to know he’d show up at the lake? With a gift for me on top of it all?

  Pulling off the plastic bag, I see that Hayes has actually gone to the trouble of wrapping my present properly. It’s not a perfect wrap job, so it wasn’t just done professionally wherever he ordered t
he book. He wrapped this himself.

  I tear back the paper, expecting a book on loss or grieving or some version of 87 Steps of Bullshit Help for Messed-Up People. Instead, it has a tan cover with a drawing of two girls riding on the back of a running lion. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I look at the inside flap. Ages 8 and up. Of course.

  He’s written an inscription on the inside cover:

  Rory,

  Thank you for teaching me how to skip rocks. Skimming the surface seems to suit you. But now, I’m hoping you’ll come deeper with me. As this story of Narnia shows, there is always more happening beneath the surface. All we need to do is keep our eyes open. I’ve been keeping my eyes open, and now they can’t seem to stop looking toward you. Everything has been leading up to this. Rory, I see the depth in you.

  As the book you are holding illustrates, “If things are real, they’re there all the time.”

  I want us to be real together.

  Love,

  Hayes

  Okay, so the boy can write.

  I turn to the first page and find a picture of the lion dancing with the two girls as the birds look on from the trees. The lion is wearing a ring of flowers around his neck, and I quickly close the book, trying to shake that disturbing image from my mind. Lions should never wear flowers.

  Picking up the clipboard that holds Ken’s task list for the shift, I see Kat has already drawn a line through each item. A glance beside the register tells me she’s even restocked the pen collection. Going out with the manager has clearly improved my girl’s work habits.

  The rain outside starts up again and unless someone gets a sudden flash of inspiration requiring immediate art supplies, there probably won’t be any more customers for the night.

  I pause a moment, reopen the book from Hayes, and begin to read.

  Turning the pages, I follow four young children across a spare room, through a wardrobe, and into the land of Narnia.

  Before I know it, closing time has long passed, and so I lock up, drive home, and mumble to Dad I’m turning in early.

  And then I read a children’s storybook long into the night.

  Chapter Fifteen