"Not like you're thinking," I say. The heat of a blush scales my neck and makes the wind burn twice as harsh on my cheeks. My eyes scramble away from his. "Desmond has always been a little kinky, but it's gotten worse in the past few years."
"Beating is beating, Lydia, and if he's doing it under the guise of sex, than he's a really sick bastard."
"Maybe."
"Not maybe," he says, tugging me to a halt. Aidan catches my gaze and his is too intense for me to break away from it. "Definitely."
The blush turns my cheeks into a stove top.
"You don't agree?" he asks. The simmer of his tone makes me uneasy.
"At first I didn't like it, but..."
"What does he do to you?" His brows steeple. "I know about the mirror, but what else does he do to you?"
I shrug. The words don't come out. Desmond and I have such a huge history together that talking like this makes me feel disloyal. It doesn't matter that Des has done me wrong in about a dozen different ways--it's not something that I want to discuss with Aidan. What can come of it but another judgment?
What I want is for Des's injustices to boil inside my skin, so I can throw them on Des like hot oil when I need to. And I'm going to need to, when Claudia finds out.
"Alright, we'll talk about this another time," Aidan says when I don't answer. He takes my hand, pointing up the street. "Right now, we need to get you a Christmas tree."
<<<<>>>>
We don't get a regular tree. It's not full or beautiful or even so big that I couldn't have carried it home myself, by the top, center branch. It's more like a fluffy twig, but it's the only one on the lot that I'll agree to.
"This won't hold more than a couple of your ornaments," Aidan complains.
"I don't care."
"But you can get a real tree!" He steps back, doing his best showcase hands, with his bulky man hands, in front of a Douglas Fir.
"I didn't want any tree."
"Well," he grins, "then this one is perfect."
"That's what I thought."
He insists on buying the tree, since I didn't want it anyway. We leave the lot and head for our apartment house, the tiny tree over one of Aidan's shoulders. The breeze of passing cars charges up the sidewalk and makes us both curl into our coats a little more.
We pass a convenience store and when I glance up at it, all that pops out are the liquor ads, adhered to the window. I look away quickly. Aidan makes a soft, understanding grunt.
"Makes you feel guilty to even look, doesn't it?" Aidan asks. A tinge of heat warms my face as the embarrassment shrinks my laugh.
"Yeah," I say.
"I know," he says. That's all he needs to say. We are both people who can't walk past a liquor store without feeling as if the neon signs are illuminating our shame. We are people that walk by, fantasizing about locking ourselves inside. I don't need to tell him that the desire burns my throat like a desert thirst. Aidan takes my hand with his free one.
"Is it ever going to get easier?" I croak. My voice is parched.
"Yes," he says, squeezing my knuckles.
"I hope you're right."
"I am," he says. I cling to the words, as I squeeze his fingers back.
<<<<>>>>
We decorate the tree so the branches droop. If they were sturdy, they'd snap, but they're flimsy, so they just sag beneath the mini lights and tinsel and three of my sober-dough ornaments.
We eat take out and we take barf-free showers together and we talk about Christmas. We attend meetings at night and I listen sometimes. But, almost every other second of my life, I'm thinking of how much more perfect this would all be with a sip of some cognac or a glass of red or even a gulp of a foamy beer. I'm still too ashamed to admit any of it when we share struggles around the meeting tables.
"What are you thinking of?" Aidan asks one night. We just got out of the shower and even though he's already wearing a t-shirt and some plaid pajama bottoms, I sit on the edge of the bed, naked, squeezing the water out of my dreads. I guess I was staring into space too long again. Or he's checking to make sure I'm not silently stroking out. I still tip my head up at him with a blush at being caught, as if my face is a movie screen, playing my guilty thoughts. He stands in front of me, tracing my collar bone with a light finger. "You can tell me anything, you know."
I pause, biting my tongue against telling him the truth, but this is Aidan. If anyone understands what I'm thinking, it's him.
"I was thinking about drinking." I frown.
"That's what I thought," he says with a faint smile.
"I can't stop thinking about it."
"It seemed like those thoughts would never end for me either," he says, "but they did."
"What am I supposed to do until then?" I say as he squats down before me. "I think I'm going insane."
"You're not," he says, his finger running up my neck to my lips. He smoothes his thumb over my bottom lip and wipes the errant tear that streams a single path down my cheek. He smiles up at me. "What helped me was to think of something better."
"I can't." A bubble expands in my chest, sucking up my air. It forces out more tears. Aidan slides his hand beneath my ear, his thumb fluttering over my cheekbone, disturbing the path of a second tear.
"Christmas presents," he whispers.
"I...don't...care...about...that..." The sob I'm holding in crimps each word. Aidan's touch remains constant, smoothing over my cheek.
"No, no," he admonishes softly. "Just close your eyes and listen to what I'm saying. We're going to go Christmas shopping together, Lydia. We're going to buy Christmas stockings to hang on the wall and we're going to get something for our crazy neighbor. Maybe we'll get Mrs. Lowt a naughty fireman calendar. Or a good pair of binoculars, so she can spy on the apartment house across the street."
I laugh at that, but I'm still gasping in tiny, hiccupping breaths. Aidan's voice remains mellow, soft.
"When we're tired of shopping, you'll make me carry all the bags. We'll still stop at a few shops, even though you said you were done. We'll walk around downtown and look at all the lights. I'll get us hot chocolate and if there are carolers singing for money, I'll pay them to sing Baby, It's Cold Outside. And I'll kiss you as they're singing. People will stop and smile at us. Afterward, I'll take you to dinner at Rinaldi's and I'll feed you ravioli across the table. It will be so sexy, all the tables around us will start whispering and they'll eventually kick us out for public indecency."
I blink, swallow. My lungs fill all the way to the bottom and I exhale one long, smooth breath.
"There," he says. He leans in, planting a soft kiss on my forehead. "Better?"
"Thank you," I say. I mean it in deeper, heavier, and more meaningful ways than I can express it.
"I told you there were better things to think about," he says with a grin.
<<<<>>>>
We don't exactly go shopping first, because I decide I need to violate the no-changes-for-a-year suggestion again. Leonard couldn't have meant hair. But then, even if he did, I'm breaking that no-change rule all over the place anyway.
I choke down the eggs Aidan insists I eat for breakfast and leave him in my apartment so I can head down to Jan's salon.
"I want to get my dreads out," I tell Jan the second I'm sitting in his chair. His lips slant to the side of his cheek.
"You sure about this? You've got some of the best dreads around."
"I need a change," I say. Then, after darting a cautious look around the room, I whisper, "I filed."
"Filed, filed?" Jan says.
I nod, catching my bottom lip in my teeth as I smile.
"Well, alright then," he says, reaching for a comb. "Change it is! There's no way I'm cutting them out, though. You better have some juicy gossip about that neighbor of yours, because this is going to take a while and taking out all the snarls is going to hurt."
<<<<>>>>
Aidan picks me up afterward. My hair feels so...small...but it's silky and still reaches past my sh
oulders.
"Wow," he whispers. There's no smile accompanying it; there's no excited incline to the word. I try not to scowl. Aidan reaches out and takes some of my hair in his hand. "I thought it was going to be short."
He lets the strands slip through his fingers, so they spill over my shoulders. He picks them up again, his focus intense and gentle, all at once, as he lets the hair slide over his palms.
Oh.
He's mesmerized.
I smile so hard, my ears pull back with it, as if they're trying to give my joy more room.
"The real me," I say. His gaze slams into mine. I blink at the impact.
"I love it," he says. Since Des left, I've made a point to never allow the praise of men to feed me, but Aidan's compliment is so genuine that it warms my stomach more than a shot of tequila. He gives me his elbow like a gentleman from the 50's. "You ready to go Christmas shopping?"
I'm ready to go anywhere he wants to take me. We take the bus down to the sprawling, outdoor mall and enter the thrall of Christmas chaos. There are carols playing from shops, the smell of sweets, the colorful splashes of scarves and the constant rustle of shopping bags as people bustle by us.
I think of how I was here last year by myself, shopping for something incredible that I hoped would blow Des's mind. I wanted to impress him, enchant him, I wanted him to leave Claudia and come back to me. I came home with leather lingerie and a fifth of Jack Daniels. Des didn't call. And didn't call. Finally, on Christmas Day, I watched It's a Wonderful Life and drank until I passed out. Des called the next morning, but I was too hung over to answer. He was furious.
That alone should make booze undesirable, but here I am looking in the windows of the restaurants we pass by, wishing I was any one of the people inside, lifting a wine glass to my lips without worry. Sipping that warm, liquid heaven without wondering how much more I could hold before I threw up, or ran out of money.
Aidan adjusts his hold on my hand and I catch him following my gaze. I shoot him an embarrassed grin from behind my sober masquerade mask. I wish there was some kind of plastic surgery that could make my happiness real, make this mask permanent.
"It's gets easier," Aidan says, lifting my knuckles to kiss them softly.
"You keep saying that."
"It's the truth. Just hang in there."
"I am," I say, but it feels a little shaky and my own lack of confidence sends quivers of anxiety arrowing through me.
"You're doing great," Aidan says and with his second kiss on my knuckles, watching the smooth line of his jaw dip over my skin and the silk of his hair as it falls forward, I almost believe him. He's pumping my life full of a whole new addiction.
We walk through stores, buying Mrs. Lowt a coffee mug with the torso of a ripped guy on it. It looks a lot like Aidan. We also get her a Hot, Nude Jocks calendar with bonus months that will take her into the middle of next year. Aidan gets himself a pair of gloves and some techie thing for his computer; I get a day planner.
"Interesting," Aidan says when he peeks in my bag. There's no polite way to ask me what I'd need a planner for when I don't work and don't go anywhere, but I don't offer my reason for the purchase either. He drops it. Maybe he thinks it's for him.
We sample colognes at a perfume counter. I spray them all over Aidan and the sales girl blushes when I take too long smelling his neck, but it's the one he buys. I catch sight of the lingerie store, but as I head toward it, Aidan pulls me off the path, toward a jewelry store window instead.
"These," he says, pointing to a pair of crescent moon earrings. Glittery stones are embedded from one tip to the other and are so sparkly that they leave white specs in my vision when I look away.
"No, this," I say, moving his finger over the glass case until it rests on a black dragon ear wrap. He shakes his head, pulling his finger away.
"Too dark," he says. He studies the rows of earrings, looks at me, and then points to another pair. "Those."
I follow his fingertip to a pair of salt water pearls, misshapen and gorgeous and suspended like baby-pink pears on a silver scrolling vine. They are nothing I would have picked for myself, but maybe that's why I like them.
He reaches for the door of the shop, but I stop him.
"What?" Aidan asks. "You don't like them?"
Any other man, any other time, and I would've let buy me the earrings and probably mentioned that a matching necklace would be lovely. But this is Aidan and I am a brand new, soon-to-be divorced woman. I look down at my ring finger and frown. Des's last name, in its bold black print, glares up at me. A part of me is always going to belong to Des. He's branded me, so I can't escape him. The joy goes out of the moment.
"I have something else I want instead," I say.
"Yeah? What is it?"
"It's at the tattoo shop, at the very end. The mall's dirty little secret."
"You want another tattoo?"
I lift my ring finger so it separates our gaze. "I want to modify this one. It doesn't apply anymore."
"What do you want to do to it?"
"I'm going to change it to something accurate," I say.
"Okay then, let's go," he says.
We move down the sidewalk and I feel like I'm dragging my feet until Aidan opens the door of the shop. A tiny, metal bell rings over my head.
"An angel just got her wings! That you, Lydia?" a man hoots from the back. He steps out from the office, located behind the register and separated from the lobby by a wall with a two-way mirror in it. Of course, I know him. He's done all my tattoos, save the coloring of my lotus flower and the Des's surname on my ring finger.
I shouldn't be surprised that Angus is still here or that the guy remembers me. Des always bought the guy a few bottles of Jack to enjoy, and Angus never failed to enjoy it, even while he was tattooing. It's proof that Holy intervention exists, that Angus's work is as good as it is, even when his brains are pickled.
Angus opens his arms and I accept the hug. Considering he did my whole arm sleeve for me, it's reasonable to say that the aging tattoo artist has spent more time with me than my own father.
"Desmond, you sure have changed," Angus says, looking Aidan over. "You got a lot more muscle on you these days."
"This is Aidan," I say. "He's a friend of mine."
"Oh, I thought something was different about him," Angus says, but I notice how he glances again at the bags in Aidan's hands, searching for the usual gift of a few bottles. With the right sized bottle of Jack, Aidan could be a barking monkey and I'm sure Angus would approve. However, the old man's gaze comes up empty, so he slaps his hands together, rubbing them as if maybe something more than air will end up in them before the night is through.
"So what brings you in tonight?" he asks. I hold up my ring finger.
"I want to mod this," I say. Angus squints, takes my hand.
"I don't remember this one...that's not my work, is it?" he asks.
"No."
"Good, because it's damn awful."
"I agree. Do you think you can cover it up somehow?"
"What are you looking for? Butterflies or daisies or some shit like that?" He turns my hand over, inspecting the print. He winces with a small hiss. "That's some bold black lettering and there's no room to do much with it. It would be a bitch to cover it and it'd be a bigger bitch to try and remove it, considering where it is."
Aidan adds, "But you can cover it?"
Angus winces again, before shaking his head. "I don't think so. Best I can do is make the whole thing black--one solid ring."
I groan. Angus rubs his neck with his free hand, still hanging onto my tattooed hand in the other.
"You could always cover it up with a real ring," he suggests. I could kill Des for doing this to me. I need more than a cover up. I've filed to leave Des's name behind at the court and I'm not leaving this tattoo shop until I've gotten Des's name off of my skin.
"What about adding onto it?" I ask.
"Adding what?"
"An er," I say, "C
an you make it say Stronger?"
"Nice," Aidan says with a nod. Angus flips my hand over again, licking his lips at the challenge.
"Here's what we could do," he says. "It goes in almost a full circle, but there's a little opening here, see it? You're lucky whoever did this was kind of a hack. I can give the whole thing the illusion of curling up and we can continue the word up your finger."
"That might look out of place, two letters climbing up your finger by themselves," Aidan says. I nod, looking back to Angus.
"Can we add a couple words?"
"Maybe," Angus shrugs. "You only got so much room though, even if we go all the way up the finger. What are you thinking?"
"Stronger Than That."
"Than what?" Angus asks with an amused puff.
"Stronger than whatever that will ever be," I say.
<<<<>>>>
Aidan holds my other hand as Angus goes to work. I chew my lower lip and squeeze Aidan's hand a few times, just so he doesn't feel like he's not helping. And just so he doesn't let go.
"I think we got it," Angus final says, rolling away from me on his castered stool. My finger stings like it's soaking in a battery acid, but Angus has done an incredible job. Stronger Than That flows up my finger with the addition of some girly swirls and curls that change Des's name into a fresh, new talisman.
Inspecting it, I get the first real crashing wave of reality.
Des and I are over. I've broken ties in every way that I know how, even though Des doesn't know yet. When the papers are delivered, the storm will begin. Claudia's lawyers will pig pile in order to sort out this new snarl. Claudia will probably divorce him, we might both go to jail.
As I consider it, the depth of the horrible possibilities occur to me and I sway as I slip on my coat.
"You okay?" Aidan asks, a hand at my back. He opens the door leading out of the tattoo shop as Angus shouts a goodbye. "Don't get woozy on me, now."
I step outside, the winter chill hitting me in the forehead with a splash of ice cold clarity. What if Des manages to blame all of this on me somehow? I accepted every penny he gave me and he's always told me he wouldn't go down alone. I've kept my mouth shut because I was still stupid-in-love, but what if he actually makes good on his threat? What if Claudia is so crazy about him that she would be happy with sticking it to me as the scapegoat?
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