Shotgun

by Marie Sexton

  Lamar smiled shyly at me, the color rising slowly on his cheeks, and I knew he was remembering that night too. The ghost of it was too strong to miss. Even the way he bit his lip was the same, the tiniest bit of flirtation hidden beneath a mountain of nerves. And then, like a slow-motion replay, he leaned across the seat. He put his hand on my cheek and touched his lips to mine.

  Only a second of contact, but it felt like I’d found my way home.

  “Thank you,” he said, exactly as he had then.

  He turned to go, and I was hit by a sudden and inexplicable certainty that I had to stop him. If I let him leave, he’d disappear like he had last time. Another fifteen years would pass, and I’d be left wondering what might have been.

  “Wait.”

  He froze, one hand already on the lever to open the door. He turned to me, just enough that the moonlight falling through the windshield highlighted the curve of his cheek and the curious lift of his eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “Can I see you tomorrow?”

  He blinked but otherwise didn’t move. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head, the wave of shadow coming back into his eyes. I knew that look. I knew how loneliness could become its own vicious cycle. He was trying to figure out how to say no, not because he didn’t want to see me, but because the job of climbing out of the hole he’d been living in was more than he could face.

  But he didn’t need to face it. Not alone at any rate. That was what I needed him to realize.

  “Somebody else will be driving the shuttle in the morning, so I won’t see you then, but I’ll pick you up from work, no matter what,” I said before he had a chance to tell me no. “And we’ll kill a few more hours, okay? Maybe finish the Falcon?”

  He bit his lip again, debating, but finally he sighed. “Okay.”

  He climbed slowly from my car, and I watched as he went down the walk, then up the porch steps. He unlocked the door, glancing back once to wave before he disappeared.

  Still, I waited, replaying that simple kiss in my mind, wondering if he’d come back out, if he’d invite me inside. Wondering if he was watching from behind the curtain, weighing the possibilities. Wondering if he was wondering too, about everything that might have been, and everything we might now put right, if we dared try.

  I smiled to myself as I put the car in drive.

  Clothes stay on. We’d been specific. We each had our reasons for keeping things casual.

  At the moment, I couldn’t remember a single one.

  I ARRIVED at work early the next morning, since I planned to leave before four for the second day in a row. I spent the day trying not to think about Lamar. I halfway regretted promising to pick him up. I’d let the memory of our single night together cloud my judgment. I’d had some stupid idea in my head that we could make up for lost time, but we couldn’t. No matter how many times I may have dreamed of him over the years, a relationship with him now simply wasn’t an option. Maybe if he’d moved to Coda back then—before my marriage to Elena—things might have been different. But whether I liked it or not, that ship had sailed.

  But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends, and if Naomi was right about him being depressed—and I suspected she was—then Lamar probably needed a friend more than he needed a lover.

  But the thought made me wince.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” I told myself, staring at my reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror at the garage. “Anyway, you barely know him.”

  My reflection wasn’t convinced.

  I thought of Lamar’s downcast expression through much of the night before. I thought about the slow, shy smile he’d given me in the car when I’d dropped him off. I remembered the way it had felt when he kissed me.

  It was very simple, and yet more complicated than I could imagine: I wanted him. I couldn’t have him.

  So what the fuck was I going to do?

  “We’ll be friends,” I told the skeptical man in the mirror. “Clothes stay on.” He looked disappointed, but he’d get over it.

  When my phone rang at two o’clock, I thought it might be Lamar, but it wasn’t. It was Elena.

  “I need your help.”

  “I’m at work.”

  “It’ll only take a few minutes.”

  Elena and I had split years ago, but we’d been best friends since seventh grade. I suspected I’d have still been on her speed dial even if it weren’t for Naomi. “It has to be quick,” I told her. Because even though I’d told myself a hundred times seeing Lamar tonight was a bad idea, I was still counting the minutes.

  “Five minutes max. I promise.”

  It was a bit before three o’clock when I pulled up in front of the house Elena shared with her boyfriend, Greg. I’d been apprehensive about a man moving in—not because of Elena, but because of Naomi—but once I’d met Greg, I quit worrying. He struck me as a decent enough guy. His daughter, Brooke, was three or four years younger than Naomi, and although she only came up from Longmont for visits every other weekend, he clearly adored her.

  Still, I had to wonder why Elena needed my help as opposed to Greg’s.

  “Hey,” Elena said, opening the door before I could knock. She was still in her pajamas—sweatpants and a faded Black Eyed Peas T-shirt—and I could tell by the ponytail she hadn’t showered yet. “It’s in here.”

  I followed her into the bathroom, where she pointed into the corner of the ceiling above the tub. “Right there.”

  “A spider? You called me over here for a spider?”

  “Not just any spider, Dom. Look at him! He’s horrifying.”

  I silently agreed with her. This wasn’t a daddy-longlegs or a pale little sac spider, ready to scurry off and hide in a corner. This was a jumping spider, and although I knew it wasn’t dangerous, I had to agree with Elena. It was creepy as hell—far bigger and hairier than most Colorado spiders—and the whole “jumping” thing was downright disturbing. I moved to get a better look at it, and the damned thing rotated with me, watching me with all its beady little eyes. I suppressed a shudder.

  “Where’s Greg?” I asked. “Can’t he do this?”

  “He’s out of town until Sunday. At a funeral in Ohio.”

  “That’s only two days away.”

  “You’re suggesting I not shower for the next two days?”

  I shrugged, trying to casually take a step back and put her between me and the spider. “You can shower. Just make it fast. He’s on the ceiling. It’s not like you can’t keep your eye on him.”

  “Oh, really?” She crossed her arms and scowled at me. “Let’s see you do it, then. Go ahead. Get undressed and stand naked underneath that hairy thing for ten minutes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Let’s see how long you last with that monster lurking over your head.”

  “Are you challenging my manhood?”

  “If that’s what it takes to get rid of the spider, then yes.”

  I sighed. “Can’t you hit it with a broom and wash it down the drain?”

  She looked appalled, as I’d known she would. “He wouldn’t even fit down the drain! Besides, I don’t want to kill it. I just don’t want it in my bathroom.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to set it free in your bedroom once I catch him.”

  She handed me a pint glass she had ready on the bathroom counter. She took a magazine off the back of the toilet. We didn’t have to discuss the plan. We’d done this before. Once I had the offending arachnid trapped, she’d slide the magazine between the rim of the glass and the ceiling, knocking the spider into the glass and providing a lid so we could carry the damned thing outside. “You ready?” she asked.

  I eyed the makeshift trap, then the spider. I was pretty sure the latter had grown while we talked. The glass seemed way too small. I imagined trying to trap the creature and accidentally squishing his fat little body under the rim. I suppressed another shudder. “You have anything bigger? Like a mixing bowl?”

  She rolled her eyes, looking
so much like Naomi, I had to smile. “Just catch it, you big baby.”

  “Fine.”

  I stepped into the tub, holding the glass in front of me like a weapon. Next to me, Elena stood ready with her magazine. I moved closer.

  The spider tensed, crouching low on its hairy legs like it was about to pounce.

  Elena and I both shrieked. I backed away so fast, I conked the back of my head on her showerhead. I tried to tell myself my yell had been one of manly alarm, not cowardice, but who was I kidding? All I could think about was the possibility of that thing flying toward my face.

  “I’ll find a bigger glass,” Elena said, running for the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later, we finally turned the spider loose in her front yard, and I tried to assure myself my masculinity hadn’t suffered any kind of massive blow, although I was grateful Elena was the only person who’d witnessed the Great Spider Incident.

  “You have time for a beer?” she asked, once we were back in the house. “I have to work at five, so none for me, but you can help yourself.”

  I checked my watch. I still had twenty-five minutes before I had to pick up Lamar. “I can stay for a bit,” I told her. “But I’ll pass on the beer.”

  “What are you doing tonight, anyway?” she asked, sinking onto her couch. “Why the rush?”

  I hadn’t planned anything specific beyond picking Lamar up from the middle school. We’d have dinner—I figured takeout Chinese instead of pizza tonight. Drinks. Legos. Maybe Naomi would even help us finish the Falcon. I felt Elena’s gaze on me and shrugged, biting back a smile, because I knew she’d pounce on it like a… well, like a jumping spider throwing itself at a naked, shrieking man in the shower.

  Too late.

  “Oh my God! Do you have a date?”

  “No. Not a date.”

  “Then what’s got you all flustered and grinning?”

  “It’s more like, um, a playdate than an actual date.”

  “Ha! If anybody but you said that, I’d assume they meant a booty call.”

  “No!” Although the implication was enough to raise erotic mental images I wasn’t about to dwell on, lest I raise something else in front of her. My cheeks began to burn.

  “Holy shit!” she said in surprise. “It is a date!”

  “It’s not!”

  “Who is it?” she asked, smiling. “Guy or girl?”

  It was useless to resist her. Besides, Elena knew me better than anyone else on the planet. She knew things about me I’d never told anybody else, like the fact that dating a guy was a possibility. I sat down on the cushion next to hers, just as we’d done a thousand times over the years, both of us sitting sideways, one leg curled in front of us so we could face each other. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning like an idiot. “You’re never going to believe this.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s Lamar.”

  For a moment, she only blinked at me. I couldn’t tell if she was amused or alarmed. Then she shook her head, making a clucking noise with her tongue. “It’s finally happened, hasn’t it? You’ve completely cracked and started a relationship with an imaginary man.”

  “Don’t be an ass. I’m telling you, it’s him.”

  “Lamar? As in the Lamar? The guy you were obsessed with for, what? Five years?”

  “Not five years!”

  “Four.”

  “For a couple of weeks.”

  She laughed. “A couple of weeks? Are you kidding? You talked about him nonstop our entire senior year.”

  “Okay. Fine. One year. I was obsessed with him for one year, but—”

  “And the whole time you were dating my cousin, Dave—”

  “I never dated Dave!”

  She grinned mischievously at me. “Then how would you put it?”

  “We… fooled around a few times. That’s it.”

  “And you know why that’s all it ever was?”

  “Because he was weird, and I wasn’t that into him.”

  “Because even when you were with Dave, you were talking about Lamar.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  I sighed and stared at where our bent knees nearly touched on her ugly flowered couch, torn between laughter and shame. I knew she was right. I’d spent way too long building a dream centered around Lamar coming back to Coda. In that dream, I hadn’t stayed in the closet. I hadn’t gotten married.

  But I’d never had Naomi either, and I wouldn’t have traded her for anything. Not even for Lamar.

  Elena leaned closer, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Is it really him?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s not a date?”

  “No. We’re going to hang out together. That’s all.”

  “But what’s he doing here? Visiting his aunt and uncle? He looked you up after all this time?”

  “He moved to Coda last month. He’s Naomi’s English teacher, actually. He couldn’t look me up, because he didn’t know my last name, but we had to tow his car in yesterday. That’s when I found out.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “And he’s single?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he still cute?”

  I laughed. “Yes.”

  “Then why in the hell is it not a date?”

  “You know why.”

  “Oh, Dom.” She put her hand over mine. “Lamar’s back, just like you always wanted, and you’re still going to do this? You’re going to keep up this stupid pretense of not needing anybody in the world? As if staying single is somehow the only noble thing you can do?”

  I leaned forward and kissed her nose. “I have to go.”

  She shook her head as I stood up. “You’re an idiot.”

  “I saved you from the world’s creepiest spider, and that’s what I get? The least you can do is say ‘thanks.’”

  “Thanks for taking care of the spider.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I still think you’re an idiot.”

  LAMAR

  I WOKE the next day feeling better than I had in ages. Even the bare floor against my toes didn’t seem as cold as usual.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the unadorned white walls of my strangely silent room, lost in thought.

  Everything about the day before felt like a dream. My car being smashed to bits, and then Dominic appearing out of nowhere, sweeping me away for an evening spent playing with toys. I’d had far less bourbon than was normal for me lately. We’d spent a few hours bonding over plastic bricks and pizza, and then he’d driven me home in the very same car we’d once made out in as if we were seventeen again, ready for a do-over of the last fifteen years.

  I shook my head.

  It had to have all been a dream, but the distinct lack of hangover argued otherwise.

  I checked my phone and was glad I’d remembered to silence it before going to bed. Three missed calls from an unidentified number. I shook my head. Apparently trashing my car wasn’t enough. Whichever students I’d annoyed were determined to harass me as much as possible. I halfway debated just giving everybody As in an effort to make it stop.

  I stumbled into my living room and received the second surprise of the day: the sun was shining. That’s why my bedroom had seemed so quiet. I’d been too distracted to notice there was no patter of rain on the shingles or against the windows. A glance out my sliding glass door showed pale blue skies.

  It seemed things were looking up, but I dared not hope too much. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. It was as if I’d fallen into a well weeks ago. Having the sun in the sky did little good when its light was blocked by cold, gray walls of depression on every side.

  A half hour later, the driver from Jacobsen’s Auto Repair and Body Shop rang my doorbell. It wasn’t the somewhat surly driver from the day before. This guy looked strangely familiar. “Are you ready to go, Mr. Franklin?”

  “Just let me grab my jacket.”

&nbs
p; He laughed, and his resemblance to Dominic hit me. I had only a vague memory of Dimitri from the night he’d taken my place in my cousin’s car, but this had to be him. He had the same lanky build as Dom. The same dark hair and teasing eyes. He even tilted his head the same way when he laughed. “You won’t need it today. Gonna be a scorcher. It’s already muggy as hell after all that rain.”

  I suspected his idea of a “scorcher” differed wildly from mine, but it was far warmer than I expected, and he wasn’t wrong about the humidity either.

  “Your car should be ready by the time you’re off work today,” he said as he flipped a U on my dead-end street. “We’ll have the van waiting for you at 3:45.”

  Dominic, I thought. Dominic will be waiting for me.

  The knowledge raised conflicting emotions in me. Delight, because I’d enjoyed my evening with him, but also trepidation, because I found it hard to be social these days. The tedium of conversational niceties felt like too much work. Going home and drinking myself into a heavy stupor sounded so much easier, even if it was unwise.

  I glanced sideways at Dimitri. He didn’t seem to recognize me. I debated asking him how things had gone with my cousin on that distant, fateful night, but in the end, I chose to remain silent, and Dimitri did the same.

  Officer Richards called during my first class of the day and left a voice mail asking that I call back. I had to wait until my third period lunch to do so. I popped my frozen entree into the microwave, then sat at the chipped break room table and returned his call.

  “I wish I had better news,” he told me, “but it was dead ends at every turn. Jonas Martin is still in Dallas, like you said. His wife and kid too, for what it’s worth. They’re definitely not involved.”

  “Oh.” Several emotions hit me in rapid succession. Relief, knowing it wasn’t him. Shame, because Officer Richards now knew the full extent of my shameful affair. And then, alarm. “Did you tell Olivia—”

  “I didn’t tell her a damn thing.”