“Let me walk with you,” I say. “At least to the train. You’re upset.”
She shakes her head. “I’m going to the office.”
“Then I’ll walk you there—”
“I’m fine. Really. I’ll get a cab.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “Are we good? Can I call you tonight?”
She hesitates and then nods, smiling. “Yes. Of course. Once I’ve gotten some work done, I’ll feel better. I’m always anxious when boxes on my to-do list go unchecked for more than a day.”
I don’t tell her I understand because I’m not sure I do. There are times, when my mood is dark, that burying myself under a hood feels like the only thing I can do. It got me through a lot with Shana and that’s possibly the reason the garage is doing so well today. I guess that’s how Amelia feels, so I can’t really begrudge her that, even though I think she works too hard.
She turns away.
“Hey, whoa,” I say. “Can a boyfriend get a kiss?”
She stops and turns back slowly. Her expression is passive. I can’t tell how she feels about my new title, and it makes me a little uneasy. She takes a few steps toward me, rises onto the balls of her feet, and kisses my cheek. Before I can grasp her, keep her there, show her how to really kiss her boyfriend goodbye, she’s hurrying off, slinking between the barricades that block off the street. Clutching her purse to her side, she steps into the street. Within seconds of raising an arm, she’s hailed a cab that scoops her away.
TWENTY-THREE
At times, occasionally, I’ve been accused of exaggerating when it comes to Bell.
But evidence doesn’t lie.
As soon as Bell walks into gymnastics, her friends perk up and yell for her to join them. Her coaches wave. Parents smile. She brightens up any room she’s in, including one as large and well-lit as this gymnasium. She takes off for the group of girls gathered in the center, and I start to call her back but stop myself. I’m not into this new thing where she forgets I’m around as soon as she sees someone else, but that’s what I’m supposed to want for her. She should be excited about what’s ahead of her rather than too anxious to leave my side. Still, my gut sinks watching her skip off.
But then, she skids to a halt and turns around. She sprints back to me, and I ooph as she jumps into my arms. “Promise me you’ll stay and watch,” she says.
“When have I ever not?” I kiss her forehead before removing her shoes and putting her down. “I’ll be right over there in the bleachers.”
I sling Bell’s hot pink, rainbow-glittered duffel bag over my shoulder and find a seat. I didn’t use to ooph when I caught her. Either I’m getting older, or she’s getting bigger. I prefer to pretend it’s neither of the two.
Kiki Brown spots me and shuffles her daughter in my direction. “Andrew,” she says, fixing the collar of her white blouse. “How are you?”
“Fine.” I nod at her daughter. “Hi, Brynn.”
“Where’s Bell?” she asks.
“Don’t be rude,” Kiki says with a nervous laugh. “Say hello first.”
“Hello. Where’s Bell?”
“Brynn. Try again.”
Jesus Christ, I want to say. Let the girl go see her fucking friends. Brynn scowls but says, “Hello, Mr. Beckwith.” Then, she goes quiet since she can’t ask the only thing she wants to know. “Um. How are you?”
I point to the group. “She’s with the girls, warming up.”
Brynn drops her things and hurries away.
“Sorry about that,” Kiki says, her bracelets jingling as she picks up Brynn’s bag. “We’re working on her manners.”
“Fuck—manners? Was I supposed to be working on those?”
She hesitates as if she’s not sure I’m joking and then gives in to a smile. “It’s never too early. How was your Friday night? Have some fun?”
She asks me something along these lines every time I see her, as if my life is one big bundle of fun and oh yeah—I have a daughter too. This Friday, it happens to be true, but that’s not what she wants to hear. She’s just keeping tabs on my love life.
“It was fine. Yours?”
She rolls her eyes. “Ron had some bullshit in the city that apparently prevented him from making it home.” She glances toward the girls and stretches her hands toward the ceiling, arching her back, showing off a sliver of her flat stomach. “We were up late arguing. I could use a coffee.”
“Yeah,” is all I can think to say. I was up late too. There could’ve been some arguing, I was with Amelia after all, but I couldn’t tell you who won. I smile to myself.
“My treat?” she suggests.
“Nah. I stay for the practices.”
She widens her eyes. “Always? Don’t you get bored?”
“Not really. I don’t have anything better to do.”
“Nothing at all?” she asks, half-smiling. “We should work on that. Find you something better to do.”
I look past her at Bell, who’s directing the girls into a circle for their stretches as the coach stands back and lets her. Give the kid an inch, I swear. Her coach should know that by now. “What I mean is, I really can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that.” She plays with the strap of Brynn’s bag, sliding her hand up and down the polyester. “There must be at least one thing you’d rather be doing than sitting here.”
I’d rather she just came out and said what she wanted. This suggestive flirting annoys me, especially when Bell is a few feet away.
It’s not just the fact that she’s married that gets to me. It’s that she and her friends think I’d have no problem taking an hour to give her what she isn’t getting from her husband because I’ve got tattoos, a bike, and a bastard child by my wild ex-girlfriend. As if I have no principles or standards.
“Not a thing, Kiki,” I say quietly in case anyone is within hearing distance. “I suggest you look elsewhere. Like at home. You might find something to do there. Do you mind?”
“Mind?” she asks, touching her collar.
I nod at her. “You’re blocking my view.”
“Oh.” She adjusts Brynn’s bag on her shoulder and mutters, “Well, I’ll just . . . coffee—”
She walks away, her heels clomping on the gym floor. I could almost feel bad about embarrassing her if I had time to wonder what drives her to come onto someone who doesn’t want her. But I can’t muster enough interest. Between Bell and Amelia, I don’t have much more attention to spare.
As if on cue, because God knows the woman has a sixth sense for bad timing, I see her. She steps out of the shadows, and the air around me evaporates. She’s worse than a sucker punch.
Nobody ever took my breath away like Shana.
Shana is the same as I remember her: jeans painted on from hip to ankle, a low-cut halter in any shade of dark, and jet-black hair that’s either slick-straight or, like today, wild and curly. She walks toward me with her hands in her back pockets, her elbows out, her hips sashaying from side to side. She has a small waist, and T&A that make men stupid. It takes her long enough to reach me that I can see the edges of new ink from the waistband of her low-rise jeans.
Neither of us speaks. As if I have a clue what to say. I used to fantasize about this moment and how I’d react. Sometimes I’d hug her as she broke down in regretful sobs. Sometimes I’d shake her good and hard, demanding to know why. Now, all I can do is stare and wait for her to evaporate in front of my eyes.
She doesn’t.
“Hey,” she says, removing one hand to wipe her palm on her jeans.
She looks the same. As if she was just out at the salon for a few hours.
“How are you?” she asks.
“That’s it? Hey, how are you?” I keep my voice low. I can see Bell, and it’s enough to remind me that I don’t want to call her attention over here. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I . . .” When she looks up, her eyes are big and watery. “I don’t know. I mean, I
do, but, like, it’s complicated. So, yeah. How are you?”
“I haven’t heard from you in nearly four years.”
“I know.” She rubs her nose. “I know I don’t have any right, but . . . it’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.”
Bell giggles. My steel-encased hard heart becomes a fist. “You can’t be here.”
“I—”
“What do you want? Tell me quick and go.”
“I don’t want anything—”
“You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something. What is it? Money? Christ, Shana.”
She balks. “Money? If I wanted money, I wouldn’t come to you. You never had any.”
I mash my molars together. Two minutes, and we’re already having the same argument. That’s got to be some kind of record. “You’re right,” I say. “I’m broke, so there’s nothing here for you. Move along.”
It’s a lie. Those first few years we had Bell, I invested any extra money I had into the garage, leaving only enough in our bank account to cover Bell’s basics. I’d worked like a dog once I had Bell to take care of, but it meant Shana and I’d had to go without. That hard work has paid off now that the garage is doing enough business to keep us busy around the clock, but Shana wouldn’t know that. Unless, of course, she can sense it, which wouldn’t surprise me.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she says. “I told myself to stay away. I had no right to come back into your life, but I just can’t help myself. I’m not the girl I used to be.”
“You can stay away,” I say, keeping an eye on Bell, who is, so far, oblivious to what’s happening over here. “You just don’t want to, and you always do what you want. You are the girl you used to be.”
“My parents died, Andrew.”
I whip my head back to her. “What?”
“First, my mom. Breast cancer.” Her voice cracks. “Six months later, my dad started to lose his mind. It happened so fast. One day, he just didn’t know me anymore. I had to put him in a home.”
“He’s alive, though.”
“Yes, but he might as well be dead. He doesn’t remember anything beyond the immediate short term.”
Shana’s parents had her late, but they’re too young to have both gone like that. Ashamedly, for a split second, I wonder if she’s lying, but not even she would stoop that low. They’re strangers to me now, but once they were Bell’s grandparents. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“I called a few times, but—” She swallows. “I didn’t know what to say.” She takes a step toward me and I automatically put my hands up. Her mouth falls open. “My parents are gone—I’m not contagious.”
“No,” I say suddenly. “You don’t get to come here and play the sympathy card. You don’t have the first clue what we’ve been through.” My voice is rising, and a couple of the moms look over at us.
“You keep looking at her,” Shana says fondly. She glances over her shoulder at the girls. “I don’t even think you realize you’re doing it. She’s really beautiful, Andrew. I can’t even believe how big—”
“Don’t—don’t look at her,” I say, panic knotting in my chest. I stand up, towering over her even more than usual since I’m on the third step of the bleachers. “Don’t even look at her.”
She turns back to me. “There’s no need to overreact. I promise, I’m not here to cause trouble.” She snorts. “And you say I’m dramatic.”
I swing an arm between us. “You don’t think this is dramatic? Ambushing me out of the blue in the middle of Bell’s gym class?”
“You didn’t know I was in town?” she asks.
“How the fuck would I?”
“The card I sent home with Bell. I thought you’d see that and understand—”
I take a step down to the first bleacher, and she shrinks. “You talked to Bell when I wasn’t around?”
“I didn’t tell her who I was. I was gently sending you a message that—”
“How fucking dare you.”
“I’m her mother.”
“No you’re not. You’re nothing to her. She doesn’t even know about you. She never asks. Never.”
She gapes at me. “Oh my God, Andrew. That’s so mean. And it’s a lie.”
“No it isn’t,” I say, and almost unbelievably, it’s true. Bell has yet to come to me and ask why all her friends have moms and she doesn’t. “I’m enough for her. Because I’ve taught her to be smart. Independent. That way she’ll never get fucked over again.”
“Andrew—”
Bell looks over at us, tilting her head, and I snap in the most contained way I can manage so I don’t alarm her. I shove my hands in my pockets and school my expression and my tone. “Get out of my face,” I say slowly. “Right now, or I swear to God, if you ever come near her again, I’ll file a restraining order. If you ever come near her again while I’m not around? I’ll make your life a living hell.”
Her nostrils flare. “Jesus. When did you get to be such an asshole? You were always trying to control me, but you were never mean. Not like this.”
She turns and stomps out, making no secret of her discontent. The few moms in the crowd look either at me or her, because fuck this small town, of course they know who she is. They know my situation.
I plaster on a smile and Bell waves emphatically at me. “Watch me,” she yells. She starts her floor routine, then stops abruptly and says “No, wait, watch,” and starts over, even though I have no clue what she did wrong. I grin as my heart pounds right up against my chest. When I’ve lost her attention to tumbling, I scrub my hands over my face.
Fuck shit fuck. For a long time, I wished Shana would come back, just so I could tell her to fuck off. Now, though, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want her here at all. Bell and I have figured it out without her. We have balance. We’re happy. I don’t need revenge. I don’t need to prove anything. I just want Shana to leave us alone.
My head throbs with an avalanche of thoughts. Will she come back? What does she really want? I won’t give her anything. Not money. Not access.
She has some nerve accusing me of being controlling. Anything I ever did, anything anyone does, is a reaction to her. She cares about no one but herself and the rest of us have to cope. I can’t get ahold of my thoughts. I only have half an hour before Bell’s finished and I have to get it together.
I take out my cell phone and dial Sadie’s number. She picks up on the first ring. “Forget something?” she asks since we were just at her place.
“No.” I train my eyes on Bell. Her complete obliviousness is the only thing keeping me sane right now. “Shana just showed up at gymnastics.”
“What?” Sadie asks. “The Shana?”
“Yes of course the Shana. Do you know another one?”
“Oh, she has some massive balls,” Sadie says. “I knew it. We should’ve seen this coming.”
“Yeah?” I agree and then pause. “No. Why?”
“Because she’ll never do better than you and Bell. I just hoped she’d never realize it. What does she want?”
“I don’t know. Money, I hope.”
“Money? Really?”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Sadie grows quiet as that sinks in. If Shana isn’t here for money, she’s here for Bell. “She can’t,” she says. “She can’t just show up here, and expect . . . anything.” Sadie launches into a rant, and it’s a relief to hear outrage as passionate as my own.
And then I get tired, having slept very little the night before, and my shoulders feel a thousand pounds, as if I’ve been carrying a heavy load and only just realized it. “I gotta go,” I say. “Bell’s almost done.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“Obviously nothing.”
“I don’t know, Andrew. You can’t protect her forever. She needs to know about Shana. Maybe it’s time—”
“It’s not time,” I say through a thick throat. I am Bell’s parent. Her only parent. There’s no room left for Shana.
“Now is definitely not time.”
“Call me later,” Sadie says with a sigh.
Ten minutes until practice ends, and I’m both weary and amped. I have the sudden urge to talk to Amelia, who will understand how this feels. Not in the fuming-mad way Sadie does, but in the knockout-punch to the gut that Amelia’s experienced. She’s dealing with her own boxing match and maybe, just maybe, hearing each other’s voices will help.
I pull up her number, lean my elbows onto my knees, and let it ring. And ring and ring. I get her voicemail. “Hey,” I say after the beep. “It’s me. Call when you get this. Any time. Even if it’s late.”
I hang up and watch the wind-down of the class until Bell cartwheel-skips back to me.
“Did you see me?” she asks.
“Yes, baby,” I say as she climbs over the seats to me like a monkey. “You were great.”
“You say that every time.”
“Well, you’re great every time.”
She gets on my lap and puts her arms around my neck. “The coach thinks I’m ready to try a backflip next class.”
Moms filter into the gym to pick up their daughters, some waving in our direction. There are no men in here. “Backflip?” I ask, focusing on what she’s saying. “Backflip—really? It’s not too advanced?” I cringe as I say it. I might as well have just dared her to try.
“No,” she says. “It’s not that hard. I could probably do it right now—”
“Not so fast,” I say. “I’ve told you. No gymnastics off the floor.” I don’t even like her doing them at home or in the backyard without a coach’s supervision. I pat her knee. “Get your stuff. Let’s go home.”
“Why were you talking to that lady?” Bell asks. “She’s the teacher who gave me the card.”
I shake my head because my throat is suddenly thick. “No reason.”
“Was it about me?”
The First Taste (Slip of the Tongue Book 2) Page 25
