Hold On

by Kristen Ashley

The sad part about this was seeing a man, any man, much less one I’d once loved and thought I had a future with, brought to heel.

  “What do you want me to think about?” I asked when he didn’t share any more.

  He took another sip of coffee, then put the mug to the counter, his body straightening. Mine straightened with it, automatically bracing.

  “We wanna see more of Ethan,” he announced.

  Fuck.

  He lifted a hand. “I know we live in Indy, but Peg and me think Ethan’s at a time in his life where he needs more time with his dad.”

  “Trent—” I tried to get in, but he kept speaking.

  “So we want you to consider shared custody. One week with you. One week with us. We won’t change his school or anything. We’ll get up early, get him to school, arrange for him to be picked up so he can get home. We don’t have it all worked out now, but we’re closin’ in on it.”

  There were so many things wrong with this idea, my head clogged with them all.

  Even in my state, I managed to focus on one.

  “You gettin’ up early to get Ethan to school means Ethan’s gotta get up early,” I pointed out.

  Trent nodded. “It might be hard in the beginning for him to adjust, but he likes bein’ at Peg’s and my place. Bein’ with his brother and sister. He’ll get used to it because he’ll dig what he gets out of it. And Peg and me are already lookin’ for places on the west side so we’ll be closer to the ’burg and can shave off ten, fifteen minutes of the school commute.”

  Okay.

  Right.

  No way I could do this now.

  Truthfully, I didn’t want to do it ever, but there was no way I could do it now.

  So I shook my head. “Now’s not a good time to talk about this. We’ll talk later.”

  “I figure, you had him all to yourself for so long, never would be a good time. But it still has to get done. He’s ten, almost eleven. He’s gonna stop bein’ a boy soon and needs to find his way to bein’ a man. And you can’t help him with that.”

  Okay.

  Right.

  Trent was going to teach him how to be a man? Trent, on Peg’s leash, could do a better job with that than Colt? Morrie? Jack?

  Merry?

  No fucking way.

  Now he was pissing me off.

  I didn’t let on.

  I said, “Trent, like I said, now’s not a good time to talk about this. I gotta get to the store. I got laundry to put in. And I want to clean the house before Ethan gets home from his friend’s.”

  “I just want you to tell me you’ll think about it,” he pushed.

  “I’ll think about it,” I lied.

  I wouldn’t think about it. I might eventually discuss it with my kid, because it was an offer he needed to accept or refuse. But I wouldn’t ever think about it because I already knew what I thought about it.

  I hated it.

  Trent studied me.

  He knew I was lying and his tone became wheedling. “Cheryl, this is the best thing for Ethan.”

  “Just sayin’, you’re talkin’ about it when I just told you that I got shit to do.”

  He took a step toward me and stopped.

  “Think about it,” he urged. “A house in a not-so-great neighborhood, just you and him—and most the time you’re workin’, so he isn’t even with you—when every other week he can be with us at our place. A decent pad that’s bigger. A brother and sister he can watch grow up. A mom and dad to look out for him, there all the time.”

  He was right. My neighborhood was not so great.

  It didn’t suck either.

  Most of my neighbors were old folk whose kids were assholes and forgot they existed. Some of them were new couples or new families trying to make a go at life. Good folk, all of them.

  But there were a couple of rentals that had renters who were sketchy. However, outside the occasional loud party (which got shut down real quick because my kid needed his sleep and I knew every cop in the department, so I didn’t hesitate to make a call) or a loud fight, they kept to themselves.

  But it wasn’t about me feeling defensive about the home I gave my son.

  It was his “mom and dad, there all the time” bullshit.

  Ethan had a mom.

  Me.

  In other words, he was no longer pissing me off.

  I was there.

  “You need to stop,” I warned.

  Stupidly, something they didn’t have a program for, so Trent had not in all his years stopped being, he kept pushing. “You think on this, you’ll know it’s the right thing for Ethan.”

  It did not sit great with me that he was not letting this go, mostly because it shared how bad Peg wanted it and I didn’t get good vibes from that. She was an okay woman and she was also a woman made to be a mom. Not just because she had a lot of love to give, which I figured she did, but also so she could have as many people in her life that she could boss around as she could get.

  I tried one more time.

  “Back off, Trent.”

  He pointed at the envelope before looking back at me. “We’re tryin’ to take care of you too.”

  “Think I’ve proved over the last ten years I been lookin’ out for Ethan on my own that I don’t need someone takin’ care of me,” I pointed out.

  He lifted his chin. “We’re doin’ right by you.”

  “Woulda helped, you did right by me when I needed it, not shovin’ it down my throat when I don’t.”

  I could see right away that pissed him off.

  “Knew you’d throw that in my face,” he bit out.

  “Trent, for fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “I’m tellin’ you to back off. I told you I’d think about it. And I told you I got shit to do.”

  “Nice mouth, Cheryl. You talk like that to our son?”

  That was when I lost it, and, honest to God, it was a wonder I’d held on for so long.

  Leaning toward him, I hissed, “I can talk any way I want to my son because I earned that privilege by bein’ there for him every day his whole fucking life.”

  “So you do,” he returned.

  I leaned back, shaking my head. “Of course I don’t, you moron.”

  “Name calling. Nice,” he clipped. “You teach our son that too?”

  “I’ll ask again, can we not do this now?” I requested sharply.

  His face changed. It was not a good change.

  It was a stubborn, nasty change.

  That part of Trent I knew.

  “I didn’t want it to get to this, but I think it’s fair that you know, you don’t do what’s best for Ethan, Peggy and me are prepared to take you to court. And, just a heads up, she feels Ethan should be with his dad full-time. The shared custody idea was what I talked her into. You push it, she’s gonna get pissed and we’re gonna go for it all.”

  At the barest thought of losing my son, I stood in my kitchen while the world collapsed all around me. At the edge of my vision, the walls and cabinets and counters and houses and the town beyond all crumbled to the earth, a cloud of dust rising, obliterating everything but me and Trent staring at each other.

  He must have read that on my face because he quieted his voice when he said, “And you know that won’t go too good for you, Cheryl.”

  It happened to me then, and I got it. I got how normal folk got pushed into corners, their loved ones threatened, and the urge came to them, overwhelming them, turning them from humans to animals focused solely on their need to protect. I got how they lost control and lost their minds and viciously attacked their attackers with nothing but annihilation in mind to void the threat.

  I got it because that happened to me.

  But I’d been kicked when I was down so often, I had just enough in me that morning to hold it in check.

  “It won’t?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. “It won’t go too good for me?”

  Trent looked like he didn’t want to say it.

  Still, he said it.
<
br />   “Dennis Lowe.”

  I nodded my head. “Yeah. You’re right. I fucked a serial killer. He told me he was a cop. He told me he loved me. He took care of me. He took care of Ethan. I was taken in by that shit. Then again, so was his boss. His co-workers. His neighbors. His wife of a gazillion years.”

  “You were a stripper, Cheryl,” he carried on.

  “I was because, you see, my methhead, pothead, crackhead boyfriend bailed on me the second he found out he’d knocked me up, and he left me and my boy to go it alone for seven years before his wife forced him to do the right thing.”

  “I’m clean,” he bit back.

  “And I’ve never been not clean,” I returned.

  “And I’ve never given a lap dance,” he sneered.

  I took two steps toward him, edging his space but not getting into it and also not losing eye contact.

  “I did,” I said softly. “I gave hundreds of them. And I’d do it again. And again. I’d do it for the rest of my fucking life if that money put food in my kid’s stomach. If it put a roof over his head. Clothes on his back. If it gave me the opportunity to give him what he needed and as much of what he wanted that I could give him. If it made certain he didn’t feel like we were hurting, he was hurting, I was hurting, or him bein’ in this world was hurting me.”

  I got closer and gave him my stripper voice, all coy and tempting, giving the impression he was getting something at the same time giving nothing.

  “I’d grind my crotch into a guy, shove my tits in his face, baby. I’d do it with a line forming, give it good to one asshole after another. I’d do it with a smile on my face if it gave me what I needed to give my kid what he needed. And I’d come home bein’ proud of that. I’d come home knowin’, even though not one soul would agree with me, that I should be up for ‘Mom of the Year’ every year because I’m willin’ to eat shit so my boy won’t.”

  “There were other ways to give that to our son,” he retorted.

  “There were?” I asked, stepping back. “You a bitch with a vagina who’s got nothin’ but a high school diploma and a history of waitressin’ who got herself knocked up and her man bailed, stealing four days of tips she had in her wallet and her change jar before he went?”

  He flinched, but I didn’t let up.

  “You a bitch who’s got no savings, living in a shithole apartment she can’t raise a kid in, desperate to find the cash to set up somethin’ good for her baby in a way she can keep it good? You know,” I threw out a hand and injected my voice with sarcasm, “outside of buyin’ a lottery ticket that hits or turnin’ to another profession that’s looked down on a whole helluva lot more than strippin’?”

  “There had to be ways,” he stated.

  “Name one,” I shot back.

  “There are ways, Cheryl.”

  “Name one,” I repeated.

  “A secretary,” he threw out.

  “I can’t type.”

  “Grocery store clerk.”

  “No way in fuck either of those earns more than stripping.”

  He set his teeth.

  “And, just sayin’,” I kept on, “you don’t get to stand in my kitchen passin’ judgment on what I had to do to take care of my son after you got the news you planted a kid in me, fucked me all night as your good-bye, stole my money, and took off not to be seen again until your bitch yanks your chain and makes you be a good boy.”

  “Leave Peggy outta this,” he ground out.

  At that, I threw up both hands. “The woman’s not already in this?”

  “This is about Ethan. Just Ethan.”

  He was so full of shit.

  This was all about Peggy. What she wanted. How she felt about me. It was all her.

  But I decided Trent’s current shit was over.

  “You fight me, Trent, I’ll take you down.”

  He shook his head, his upper lip curling before he spoke.

  “In your wildest dreams, you cannot imagine that a bartender who works nights, barely sees her kid, depends on her mom and friends to raise him, and puts his ass in a shitty house in a shitty ’hood is gonna convince a judge to let her keep her kid. You cannot imagine that same woman, who got paid to shove her tits in strangers’ faces and sucked a serial killer’s cock while she helped him stalk his prey, is gonna convince a judge to let her keep her kid. And you cannot imagine that a judge is not gonna look at what Peg and me can give him and not hand him right the fuck over.”

  I didn’t hesitate with my reply.

  “You push this, we get a stick-up-his-ass judge who wouldn’t see that for what it was and let me keep my son, I bet all I own that if Alexander Colton takes the stand and vouches for me, that judge’ll think again.”

  Trent’s mouth got tight.

  Direct shot.

  I didn’t let up.

  “Put Feb up there, her and Colt bein’ that prey Denny Lowe stalked, also bein’ my boss, also lettin’ me look after her kid when she needs me, that judge’ll think even more. And they’ll do that for me. They won’t blink. They’ll wanna bury you so bad for fucking with me, they’ll do anything they can. And they aren’t the only ones, Trent. My girl Violet Callahan and her husband, Cal. Jack and Jackie Owens. Morrie. Dee. Upstanding citizens. Pillars of the fucking community. I’ll have so many people’s asses tellin’ that judge what kind of mom I am, he’ll wonder what the fuck is wrong with you that you’d try to take my boy from me.”

  “You seem convinced,” he scoffed.

  “I’m not convinced. I’m goddamned right,” I shot back. “You’re all kinds of stupid, you don’t rethink this bullshit. I’ll stop at nothin’ to keep my boy with me. Do not doubt it. And I’m doin’ you a solid in advising you not to take that on. There’s been one constant in Ethan’s life.” I jerked my thumb to myself. “Me. No judge in his right mind will look at my history of givin’ it all that I got to give good to my kid and then take him away from me. You fight me, it’s a battle you’re gonna lose. But you fight me, you’re gonna lose Ethan, and that shit will not be about me takin’ you away from him. That shit’ll be about him knowin’ you’re fuckin’ with his mom and him not wanting one single thing to do with you.”

  Indecision flared in his eyes right before he turned, took the step he needed to nab the envelope off the counter, and shoved it in his back pocket.

  He turned back to me.

  “Seems I’m gonna need this to hire an attorney,” he declared.

  “Right, good call. Take it. Works for me. Ten years Ethan’s been breathin’ and you haven’t given me a dime to help. I’m down with that. A judge, though, he might not be.”

  “Screw you, Cheryl,” he bit out.

  “You already did that, Trent, in a lot of ways.”

  He scorched a glare at me, then walked out of my kitchen.

  I stood in it and listened to him slam the front door.

  Then I dropped my head and stared at my boots, finding myself breathing heavily.

  I was not wrong. Colt, Feb, Vi, Cal, Jack, Jackie, everyone would help me.

  Again.

  But it’d all come up.

  Again.

  The stripping.

  Lowe.

  All of it shoved down Ethan’s throat.

  It didn’t matter his name was Ethan Rivers, his mom’s Cher Rivers—that was on our rental agreement; that was on my driver’s license. It wasn’t like your old identity was washed away when you changed your name. That shit was public record. Which meant, however infrequently these days, fuckwads and freaks still found me for whatever reason they needed to do that to be close to Denny.

  If Trent and Peg took me to court, it’d all come out. It might even hit the news. And it would definitely make Ethan vulnerable.

  Fuck.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…fuck.

  I lifted my head and turned it, looking at the wall of open shelves over base cabinets, which was stuffed full of retro glasses, multi-patterned, mismatched bowls, wonky-shaped pitchers, old-fash
ioned canisters.

  I studied my things—the bowls Ethan poured his cereal into, the pitchers I grabbed to make him Kool-Aid—and I felt that thorn dig deeper.

  Because if I was a different woman, the kind of woman who could attract a man like Garrett Merrick, get him close, and make him want to stay that way, people would not fuck with me because he wouldn’t let them.

  Not Trent.

  Not Peg.

  Not my neighbors who threw wild parties.

  Not the occasional person at the bar who looked at me with fanatical eyes, asking me if I was Cheryl Sheckle, the Cheryl Sheckle, sidepiece to Denny Lowe.

  Not the assholes who phoned me thinking about a movie, a book, a TV show, and wanting me to help them “get in the mind of Dennis Lowe.”

  I didn’t mind asking my cop buddies to shut down parties.

  It would suck, but I’d do anything for Ethan, so I would buck up and ask for all the help I could get to keep my son.

  And at the bar, Darryl and Morrie dealt with the lunatics who sniffed out the Denny Lowe trail because they were fucked in the head, not only to protect me from that shit, but also to protect Feb and Colt. But that message had been sent frequently, and after all these years, those nutjobs were few and far between.

  Like Trent being back in Ethan’s life, no one knew about the phone calls. They didn’t need to worry about Trent being a part of our lives. And they definitely didn’t need the Denny Lowe shit dredged up. And last, I didn’t need yet another way for people to feel they needed to take care of me.

  I could take care of myself. I’d done it since I was eighteen, and I knew it was my lot in life to do it until I died. I might have forgotten this that morning for one crazy, stupid, hopeful moment, but then I’d been reminded.

  That didn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate a man like Merry in my life.

  I would.

  And I would more than any normal woman because I knew how precious having someone to look after you, someone to share the load, someone who gave even a single solitary shit actually was.

  Which was ironic, since I was one of those girls.

  One of those girls who would appreciate it.

  One of those girls who would take care of it.

  One of those girls who would beg, borrow, and steal in order to keep hold of it.

  And one of those girls who would never have it.