Her legs are propped up, and Finn’s leaned back on them like she’s a recliner. They both look over at me. “Are you eating his toes?” I ask.
She wiggles her head a little like a dog with a bone. “He thinks it’s funny.” Finn starts laughing so loudly his little belly shakes. “Besides, we’re in the tub. He’s clean,” she teases.
“Umm,” I say, pointing for her to look down, a trickle of pee currently filling the tub.
“Finn,” she screeches, jerking up slightly, the bubbles cascading down her skin. “Boys!”
She reaches out in search of a towel, but there’s not one close enough, so I grab one for her, then grab another. Reaching in and lifting Finn from her arms, I take care to wrap him up tight. Paige has stepped out of the tub and has the towel around herself by the time I’ve got him wrapped up. Dammit.
She tucks the towel into itself, making what looks like a strapless mini dress, only it’s made of terry cloth. Grabbing her ass, I pull her to me, causing her to squeal a little. “When do I get to take a bath with you?”
“Next time.” She laughs, taking Finn from me and walking into the bedroom. She lays him down on the bed next to a diaper and the clothes she has waiting there. I wouldn’t have thought to have all that waiting. She keeps the towel covering most of his body, keeping him warm while she makes quick work of the diaper.
“Got to be quick,” she says in a baby voice. “So we don’t pee-pee on Slade’s bed. I don’t want to have to wash bed linens.”
“You have a good mommy,” I say to Finn, taking his little hand.
Paige flashes me a smile. I wonder if anyone’s ever said that to her. She has to know. She’s raised him all alone. And while they never had much, Finn has known an abundance of love. You can see it in how happy he is.
She grabs his little pajamas, the kind that are footed. These have little frogs all over them. “Getting a little tight,” she says, zipping them up. “Time for some new ones. We better go shopping.”
“We can go tomorrow,” I say, leaving out that I intend to pay. I watch her pick him up, looking around for the bag of clothes she brought over last night. “Top drawer,” I say, pointing at my dresser. “Finn and I unpacked for you earlier.”
“You unpacked my underwear?” she asks, raising an eyebrow at me.
“That’s the funny thing,” I say. “No underwear. Not a panty in sight.” She shakes her head, rummaging through the drawer to double-check. “Guess you’ll have to go without.”
“You highjacked my panties,” she says, coming over and playfully swatting me.
“No,” I say, “you didn’t pack any. Your subconscious must have . . .” She’s laughing so loud I can’t finish my thought. Pulling her and Finn into my lap, I say, “I’m really glad you’re here.” I give Finn a little kiss on top of his bald head. “Both of you.”
“You kissed him,” she whispers.
Suddenly, I wonder if that’s not okay. When her eyes start to water, I know it was more than okay. “I know you’re a package deal,” I say, stroking her cheek. “I’m in. You and Finn don’t scare me.”
She nods, then quickly wipes her eyes. “I should get dressed.”
They might not scare me, but it’s clear that I scare Paige. She’s fiercely independent and treats help like it’s a trap, so I’ve got my work cut out for me. Good thing I’ve never been afraid of hard work. “I’ll take Finn. Get dressed,” I say, picking up Finn and getting to my feet. I head out of the room before she has time to argue with me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
PAIGE
AGE 13
The mattress shifts under me, waking me. I don’t want to open my eyes and find my mother slumped over my bed, doped up, needing my help again. Doesn’t she know or care that I have school tomorrow?
I reach for my sheet, if you can even call it that. It’s so thin it’s basically see-through. Still, I want to cover up and roll over, giving her the message that I’m not available for her crap tonight. But my hand only finds the air. On instinct, my eyes open to search for it.
Two eyes stare back at me. Not my mother’s eyes.
I dart up, knocking my head against the wall, but I don’t cry out. He’s just sitting there, staring at me. My mom’s pimp was watching me sleep. Uncontrollably, my body starts trembling, but he just stares like he’s waiting for something. I want to tell him to get out. I want to scream for my mom, but I’m frozen, staring back at him, waiting for whatever is coming.
Then, he gets to his feet without a word, picks up my sheet, lays it over me, and walks out.
*
My hand coils around the handle, my finger on the button. Most girls my age have stopped sleeping with their favorite teddy bear from childhood. I never had a teddy bear, but if I did, he’d have been replaced by my new security blanket—a switchblade knife.
No man will ever come in this room again uninvited. I’ll be ready this time.
They say you should never bring your work home with you. My mom missed that memo. Sometimes she brings her work home with her. Sometimes her “work colleagues” have inquired if I’m part of the deal.
I stopped sleeping.
A man’s voice nears my door, and I increase the pressure on the button that will pop out the blade. I’ve spent hours practicing how to open the blade and collapse it back down.
These men make a deal with my mother, not me. But that hasn’t stopped them from making comments, undressing me with their eyes, or “accidentally” touching me. A knee to the groin or spitting in their face tends to let them know that I’m not for sale. But secretly, I wonder if my mother would allow it. I wonder if she’d even be sober enough to care.
Those men are gross, disgusting pieces of crap, but there’s only one man who scares me. Her pimp.
Taking a deep breath, I hear the front door close. He’s gone. I hope she is, too.
She takes me with her now, to the seedy bars, to the street corners. She dresses me up, making me look older. I’m the bait. Then we switch.
Now I have a switchblade.
I need to sleep. I never sleep.
My bedroom door doesn’t have a lock. That will be my next purchase.
My stomach starts to knot. Hunger?
Probably not. My stomach grew accustomed to the pangs of hunger long ago.
Exhausted, I sit up, flicking on the lamp.
First, I feel it, then I see it. No! The bright red spot means one thing.
I’m a woman.
My period means one thing. The end of a childhood I never had—Period.
*
I stop at the receptionist’s counter, and an elderly woman smiles at me. I’ve had my period for less than a day, but I know what I need to do. Or should I say what I don’t need to do. Have a baby.
So while I have yet to figure the whole tampon thing out, I’m here for the birth control pill.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist with the friendly face asks.
Clearing my throat, I say, “I’m here for . . . the pill.”
She looks up at me, her face now looking more judgy than friendly. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen,” I say, cocking my chin up.
She can look at me like I’m trash all she wants. This is what responsible looks like. I don’t expect her to understand.
“Since you are under the age of sixteen, you need to have a parent with you,” she says.
My eyes start to well up. She stands up, reaching out to me, but I step back. “Why don’t we get someone for you to talk to?”
“No,” I snap, knowing that no one will understand. No one can help. “Please. I’m sixteen. I am.”
She shakes her head. “I need proof of age.”
Three years? Can my switchblade hold him off that long? As tears stream down my face, I run out the door. The receptionist cries for me to stop, but I just run—down the sidewalk, dodging people, not caring who yells at me. No one’s ever cared about me before. Why care now? Because my fit doesn
’t suit them.
I run until my legs feel heavy, my chest is heaving, and my soul is screaming for me to stop. There’s no escape, anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SLADE
“Where should I take your mommy?” I ask Finn, sitting on my lap in front of my computer.
Paige and I went from denying our feelings, our pent-up sexual tension, to her moving in with me in one swoop. I’m not complaining, but there are milestones you don’t want to jump over—like the first date.
We’ve never had one. I’m not going to miss that, not going to let Paige miss that. So Finn and I are planning the perfect first date, and it’s not going to be line dancing at one of the local honky-tonks on Broadway. We can ride horses anytime, so that’s out. We cook together at home all the time. A romantic dinner? Is that out of style?
“What do you think, buddy?”
He starts banging on my desk. “Dadadadadada.”
What did he just say? I’m not sure if I’m more shocked that he said something other than gibberish or what he said. Picking him up, I turn him around, sitting him on my desk so I can look at his face. “Finn?”
“Dadadadadada.”
“Holy shit!”
Louder this time. “Dadadadadada.”
“Shh!” I say, looking back over my shoulder at the doorway.
This time he fucking screams it. Clearly, this kid is mocking me.
“Mama,” I say.
Blank stare.
“Ma Ma,” I say again, making sure to stretch out the syllables. Drool starts down his chin. Wiping it, I repeat, “Ma Ma.”
There is no way in hell this kid’s first word should be Dada. Plus, Paige missed it. The best course of action is deniability. “This never happened,” I say to him. “Got it?”
“What never happened?” Paige asks from the doorway. “What are you boys up to?”
I give Finn a warning look before picking him up. “Just swearing him to secrecy about where I plan to take you for our first date.”
The look in her eye tells me she doesn’t totally buy that. Finn yawns, sticking his hand in his mouth, and rests his head on my shoulder. “Like dinner and a movie?” she asks.
“Well, I was thinking of something a little more . . .”
“I’d really love dinner and a movie,” she says, wrapping her arms around me. “I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie at the theater.”
I should’ve known I was overthinking it. Paige appreciates simple things. “In that case, I’ll get you the big bucket of popcorn.”
Leaning up on her tiptoes, she presses her lips to mine softly. “That sounds really nice,” she whispers. I love Finn, but I can’t wait for him to go to sleep.
“Dadadadadada.”
“Oh my God,” Paige cries, leaping from my arms. “Finn talked. Did you hear that?”
This is the exact reason I didn’t tell her before. I wanted her to have this moment. She’s missed so much in her life. I didn’t want her to realize she’d missed something else.
Finn starts clapping. “Dadadadadada.”
It’s not until this second time that it dawns on Paige what he’s saying. Her eyes wide, she studies my face for a reaction. All she’s going to get is a smile. “At this age, he doesn’t really know what he’s saying. It’s not like he’s identifying you as his father. Besides, D is one of the easier sounds to make,” she says. “That’s why babies always say Dada first. I read a whole article about it. It’s in all the baby books. It doesn’t mean anything.”
She continues to give me a dissertation on the anatomy of the mouth, tongue position, the importance of teeth in developing language. Playfully, I whisper to Finn, “She’s jealous you didn’t say Mommy.”
“No, I’m . . .” She takes his little hand and kisses it. “We don’t need to encourage this,” she says with quiet determination.
I hand him to her. “Do you not want him to call me Daddy?”
Her forehead wrinkles up. “Do you want him to?”
“What do kids usually call the man who loves their mother?” I ask.
One hand flies over her mouth, her head is shaking a little. If she wasn’t holding Finn, I think she’d collapse. “You can’t love me,” she says, the disbelief in her voice as real as the floor under her feet. “No one loves me.”
I’ve never seen her so shaken before. Not even during the tornado. “Finn loves you,” I say, trying to calm her.
“I guess, but he doesn’t say it.”
I take a step back, reality hitting me hard. “No one’s ever told you they loved you.” It’s not a question because I know the answer. Fuck me. Even my fucked-up father has said those words to me, and in his own screwed-up way, I know he does.
Taking Finn from her, I place him on the floor and hand him my keys and phone. There aren’t any toys around. I take both of Paige’s hands in mine and sit down on the sofa in my office. “Paige,” I say, but she barely looks at me. It’s as if I’ve shaken her to the core. Maybe that’s what’s happened. We each have core beliefs about the world and ourselves. Maybe one of hers is that she’s unlovable. If you’ve spent your whole life with no one caring for you, showing you love, or saying those words to you, it’s not hard to imagine that you’d start to believe something about you is inherently unlovable or undeserving of love.
Briefly, I glance at Finn, then back to Paige. “Look at me.” She can’t look in my eyes for more than a second, searching the ground like she’s trying to steady herself. “I want Finn to call me Daddy.” I hope she can hear how sure I am about this. I have no reservations about her or Finn. None.
That does it. Her eyes find mine. “I love you, Paige.” She looks so confused, like I’m speaking Chinese to her. “I love you.”
“I’m sure you’ve loved a lot of women,” she says, letting go of my hands.
I grab them back. “I’ve never said those words to a woman except my mother,” I say. “I love you. You are the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
“But I’m so . . .”
“Beautiful,” I say. “Yeah, I do love that about you.”
“Slade,” she says, cracking a smile.
“And sexy.”
This time, she swats my shoulder. “I am not.”
“Those knee socks you wear to bed drive me crazy.” She starts laughing, and I capture her in my arms. “And stubborn. God, you are so strong-willed.”
“You hate that about me,” she says, looking up at me.
“You’re wrong. It drives me fucking crazy, but I love how you aren’t afraid of anything. How you take care of Finn, of me. Hell, of my damn horses. I love how strong you are.” She looks into my eyes.
“I don’t deserve your love,” she sobs quietly. “There are things. Things you don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t,” she says, falling apart, and I pull her into my arms.
Of course, I want to know everything about her, but I also know what I feel. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Because nothing will change how I feel about you.” She looks up at me, her face wet with tears. I can tell she doesn’t believe that, but I can also tell that she wants to believe. Taking a deep breath, I know I’m about to risk it all. “Do you love me, Paige?” Her mouth opens, but I stop her. “Before you answer that. I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” she says.
My chest suddenly feels tight, the secrets I’ve held bursting at the seams to get out. “Maybe you should put Finn to sleep first,” I say. “He shouldn’t hear this.”
I know he’s only six months old and can’t comprehend what I’m about to tell Paige, but he can pick up on our emotions; therefore, it’s best done out of his presence. For once, she doesn’t argue, picking up Finn and taking him to his room.
As soon as she leaves, my mind begins creating scenarios of how to get out of this. I opened this bag of worms. I know Paige has her own secrets, and that’s why she’s never pressed me for mine. It’s an unspoke
n agreement between us, but I just volunteered to tell her the worst of it. The worst thing I’ve ever done.
Opening a closet door, I reach for the portrait of my mother and me that Paige saved from the house. This picture hung in my room for as long as I can remember. On the day of her funeral, my father took it down and threw it in the garbage. I snuck out in the middle of the night to rescue it. It’s been hidden in some part of every house I’ve lived in since then.
Hidden.
Holding my shame.
“You saved it?” Paige asks, stepping inside the office.
“You saved it,” I say, not turning around to look at her.
“Your mom was beautiful,” she says.
“My dad always used to say he had no idea how he got so lucky to be the man who got to walk into the room with her. Swore he married up.” I turn and look at Paige. “He loved her. I wish you would’ve known him then. God, how much they loved each other. They used to embarrass me all the time. It wasn’t even on purpose. I’d score a goal in soccer, and they’d kiss. They thought nothing of it.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was,” I say. “And my dad and I were close. We did all kinds of things together—sporting events, concerts, trips.”
“What changed?”
“My mom died,” I say. “She was the glue. He didn’t know how to be that guy without her.”
“How’d she die?” Paige asks.
“One night, my dad picked me up to go to a concert. I had just turned fifteen. We were running late. So I just ran out of the house and hopped in his car. He didn’t even come inside. While we were gone, someone broke in. The police think it was a robbery attempt. They killed my mom.”
I’m not lying to her, but I’m not telling her everything either. The truth is funny that way. It has many versions. But this is the only way I can tell her the truth, bit by bit. If I tried to tell the whole story all at once, I’d choke on the words, the guilt.
“Slade, I’m so sorry. I had no idea,” Paige says, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Did they ever find the person?” she asks. “The one who broke in?”
The Right Side of Wrong Page 14
