Skygods (Hydraulic #2)

by Sarah Latchaw

  Aspen does, not without an exaggerated sigh that says “I will tolerate this but so help me I’ll be in cargo pants before the weekend is over.” If it were up to her, she’d hijack Caulfield for the weekend and they’d drive to the guitar shop in Boulder, mess with the equipment, then find a quiet spot for some horny teenager time in his car. She hates watching the back of him as he leaves for college after his weekend visits.

  Gusts of wind skip over the rooftop and rattle the old windows of her mother’s farm house. This spring is a cold one. Even so, she smells the cusp of summer, and with it comes freedom. She counts the days until she and Caulfield pack their cars and escape—together this time—to college.

  It’s hard, watching her classmates do the high school thing. Hold hands in hallways, kiss outside classrooms, hit the diner after evening practices. Caulfield comes home when he can, but she wants him around full time. Breaking up is out of the question—she’d rather suffer through her last years of high school in a long distance relationship than be without him entirely. High school is a bust. So what? She’s ready for graduation, ready for college, and ready for carefree days when it doesn’t feel like half her heart is missing.

  “Ow! Flailing beefeaters, Maria!” Aspen’s shriek floats down the stairs and into the living room, where Caulfield sits on the sofa, awkwardly bouncing his knees while her mother watches a gardening program. “Leave me some hair!”

  “For crying out loud, you’d think someone who wants their own apartment would at least know how to use a brush!” Caulfield hears Maria fires back.

  He glances at Aspen’s mother, who pays no mind to the apartment revelation, but leans in when the televised gardener demonstrates a bulb transplant.

  Caulfield is also ready for his girlfriend to join him in Boulder. Afternoons spent hovering over the photo album Aspen made for him…late nights in the computer lab, exchanging emails until the building closed…his dorm room long distance service suspended each month because he reaches his max limit…It’s ironic that he’ll finally have Internet and unlimited long distance in his apartment next semester. Aside from his parents, he has no one in particular he wants to email or call once Aspen is with him.

  Aspen’s mother clears her throat, piercing Caulfield with a look that absolutely tells him she can read his mind.

  “Are you going to shack up with my baby girl?”

  Two points of red spread across the young man’s cheeks. “No, ma’am.”

  Her lips twitch once, then she turns back to the television. Caulfield flips the corsage box between his fingers.

  That was another point of contention—the apartment. Aspen hints that she wants Caulfield to ask her to live with him. He’d side-stepped her hopeful looks and implications. She should spend at least a year in a dorm or she’ll never have any close girlfriends in college. He knows from experience what the consequences of shutting out other students are—a slew of casual acquaintances and no real friends.

  It’s what she claims to need, anyway. A chance to be a kid after stressing over her parents’ messes for so long. Parents who, after seventeen years, finally decide to be parents and insist she live in the dorm, no arguments, which only makes headstrong Aspen fight harder. The woman is a mess of dichotomies. One minute, bouncing on the heels of her feet in a mad rush to grow up. The next, lamenting the passing of childhood. Caulfield runs an aggravated hand through his somewhat tamed hair. Right now, he just needs to give Aspen the best last prom he can.

  And Aspen. All she focuses on is keeping Caulfield from slipping through her fingers. But the moment she descends the stairs, gauzy plum fabric trailing behind her, neither Aspen nor Caulfield believe there is any danger of the other slipping away. Because they are Caulfield and Aspen. They are in love.

  Caulfield meets her halfway up the stairs. She is gorgeous. Not a poofy, pastel prom queen sort of gorgeous, but elegant, unassuming, all Aspen. Taking her pale hand, he pulls her to eye level. “You are.” He tenderly kisses the tip of her nose. “Lovely.”

  Aspen rolls her eyes and smooths his black lapel with her pretty fingers—fingers Maria tortured into submission with files and nail polish. “You’re pretty sexy yourself.” She winks, ignoring her mother’s throat clearing. Leaning against her chest, she whispers into his ear. “Thank you for this. Not every college guy would escort his high school girlfriend to prom.”

  He pulls the delicate orchid from its box and slips it over her wrist. “He’d be a fool, then, to let such a chance pass him by.”

  All right, Kaye, let me have it. I reworked the dual thoughts with your suggestions. Despite your insistence, I’m maintaining that you were in a hurry to grow up because of your parents, not just to catch up with me. All you talked about (aside from your utter hatred of “MmmBop”) was getting away from your mom and dad. ~Sam

  Dr. Phil—Fine, I’ll give you that. I wanted to get the heck out of Lyons because I was sick of my dad gushing about his girlfriend like he was a fifteen-year-old perv, while my mother was just down the street, pretending I didn’t even exist during planting season. I will, however, forgive your shrink-like ways because you remembered my thanking you for prom. It was important to me, even though I acted like a brat. ~Kaye

  You weren’t a brat—you were seventeen. And having a moody, self-involved boyfriend didn’t help. ~Sam

  Thanks, cliff-hucker. Hey. Is chili okay for dinner? After getting half-drowned in our tent last night, something warm sounds good. ~Kaye

  Kaye, I’m sitting next to you. You can just ask. ~Sam

  You didn’t answer my question. ~Kaye

  Chili is…(kissing the tip of your nose)…Lovely. ~Sam

  For someone who claims to hate The Creek with the fire of a thousand suns, that was a very “Dawson” thing you wrote there. Just say—

  A quartet of groans echoed around our measly campfire circle as several more raindrops splattered our foreheads, half-eaten hot dogs, and s’mores, then plunked woodenly on Samuel’s discarded Gibson guitar. We needed to keep an eye on this storm. We were surrounded by a massive alpine forest, and if the wind and rain were bad, falling tree limbs and wash-outs could be a problem.

  Kevin, our caving guide, had retreated to his canvas sanctuary the instant his girlfriend, Kiki, arrived. She was a buxom, black-haired woman who breathed too heavily and vaguely resembled Elvira, minus the whole vampy cleavage thing. She had a fixation with Water Sirens, and when Kevin let it slip that one of his clients was Samuel Cabral, he couldn’t keep her away. Luckily, her libido was stronger than her star-struck curiosity. Kevin whisked her off for a “spiritual reconnection.” Or, as Molly crassly put it, the exploration of her foreboding cave.

  The minute Samuel left the fire to take his guitar back to the car, Molly pounced.

  “Okay, Kaye, you’ve obviously kept some big secrets and I’ve waited all day. Are you and Samuel officially back together?”

  “I…I don’t know. We’re friends.”

  Even Cassady shot me a dubious look from across the campfire.

  She twisted her ginger hair into a bun. “Right. Friends don’t kiss necks and caress hands and accidentally brush each other’s thighs. No offense, Kaye, but if you ever tried that on me, I’d freak.”

  Cassady’s face was a study. “Uh, yeah. Hold off on that convo for a sec and give me a chance to clear out.” Jumping up from his log, he gathered the gear at superhero speed and followed Samuel down the wooded trail to the car.

  I grinned apologetically. “Well, perhaps Samuel and I are too affectionate to be friends. Honestly, I don’t know what we are. With our history, I don’t think there’s a label for it.”

  She nodded. “That’s fine. But you need to decide soon, because if you two are going public with ‘whatever,’ there will be questions.” I knew she wasn’t just talking about our friends and family. Samuel Cabral was well-known and once our relationship became more visible, our clients would ask if I planned to leave the business and move to New York, that sort of thing.


  The dark gray sky opened, and Molly grabbed my hand. We darted around the fizzling fire and half-rotted tree stumps, toward one of three red dome tents staked in the clearing.

  “It’s way too early for bed. Let’s chat in Cassady’s and my tent,” she said.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Oh really? Since when has Cassady replaced me as your tent mate?”

  She zipped open the tent. “Since I’ve seen how well you and Samuel get along. There’s no way I’m passing up a chance to have Cassady all to myself for an entire night. I moved your junk into the other tent.”

  I ditched my sneaks and followed her in, an uncomfortableness settling in my gut that had everything to do with whether I could keep my hands off of my ex-husband and whether the deepest recesses of my heart recognized him as my ex in the first place. Perhaps Samuel would take the decision out of my hands and hightail it to the nearest town for his own hotel room.

  For a long time, I believed Samuel’s values to be a product of Alonso and Sofia’s influence, as well as years of Sunday School—something my parents never had any interest in (except during my dad’s two-month stint as a born-again Christian). But now I questioned if those values hadn’t taken root as a way for Samuel to distance himself from a mother who seemed positively immoral. The more I paid attention to Samuel’s subtle winces and cryptic words whenever his life in Boston was brought up, the more I realized he was desperate to be the polar opposite of Rachel Cabral.

  Molly tossed items out of her duffle bag until she came across a Ziploc baggie full of homemade “puppy chow”—a chocolate and peanut butter confection. I grabbed a handful and grinned at her in thanks.

  “So whatever happened to Samuel’s hot-shot Manhattan publicist?”

  “Caroline,” I answered through a mouthful of crunchy chocolate goodness. “As far as I know, she’s in New York City.”

  “But she still works for Samuel. She’s his agent-slash-publicist?”

  “Kind of. She’s his agent, and her firm collaborates with his publishing house for book publicity. But for movie publicity, I guess she outsources to some Hollywood PR machine.”

  “And she edits his books?”

  I licked powdered sugar from my fingertips and brushed the rest onto my flannel pajama bottoms. “Yeah, before they go to the publishing house. From what Samuel says, editing was her first passion.”

  Molly’s brow furrowed. “She’s wearing too many hats, Kaye-bear. If she and Samuel have a serious falling out, she could really screw him over. She would, too—woman was a pain.”

  I sighed. Samuel and I’d already had this conversation. “I know, Molly. But he trusts her implicitly and there’s nothing I can do about that. At least he’s not dating her anymore.”

  “I guess if they had a falling out, she’d be royally screwed, too, losing her firm’s biggest client.”

  Before long, Cassady and Samuel tracked us down in the tent and we had to share the puppy chow. We lit a battery-powered lantern and settled around its cold white light. Samuel dropped behind me onto a sleeping bag roll. I draped my arms over his knees and reclined against him. The rain had dampened his shirt and flannel sleep pants but he was rumpled and happy, and soon his cool chest warmed against my back. As we quietly talked with Molly and Cassady, his hand drifted across my collarbone. I knew he was only half paying attention to Cassady’s animated description of the psychedelic Iron Butterfly poster he’d won on eBay.

  “Cassady, you spend enough money on junk for your campervan to feed a small African country,” Molly teased. “Ever think of doing something useful with your salary?”

  Cassady scowled. “I tried, but your bone-headed brother-in-law wouldn’t let me.”

  The tent fell silent as his stinging words brought reality crashing down. Molly’s face crumpled, and Cassady immediately pulled her into his embrace.

  “Uff-da, I’m sorry. That was really thoughtless.”

  Molly sniffed into his shoulder. “Did you just say ‘uff-da’?” I knew he was from Minnesota. “It’s okay. I’m just really frustrated.” She looked at me and Samuel. “Holly won’t take her antidepressants—that’s why she’s getting worse. And Derek still doesn’t want to admit how serious this is.”

  “Why won’t she take them?” I asked, a little too angrily. “Doesn’t she want to get better?” Samuel squeezed my shoulder in a reminder to calm down.

  “She says they make her nauseous and foggy all the time. And she’s scared of gaining weight, especially after having a baby.”

  “And severe depression and suicide are preferable?”

  Samuel pulled me closer. Despite his efforts to calm me, I couldn’t comprehend the mentality of someone who would risk her life and her family’s well-being, just because she hated the side effects of medication.

  Molly wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I know.”

  “Kaye,” Samuel said, “try to understand. Sometimes it’s hard for people to admit they need the meds. And there’s such a horrible stigma attached to mental illnesses, almost like it’s shameful to be diagnosed as such. She’s probably really scared, even thinking she’s a failure because she has to depend on medication to be normal.”

  Yes, Samuel would see this in Holly. After all, his birth mother had been plagued by mental illness.

  Molly’s eyes went wide. “You’re exactly right. I can totally see Holly thinking that. She’s always wanted a big family, to be supermom to a dozen kids. I’m sure the idea of something being out of her control is really scary.”

  “So how do you convince her to stay on her meds?” Cassady asked.

  Samuel scratched at the ground, in thought. “Her family, especially Derek, can go a long way in that. Her doctor too, or maybe someone who’s been in her shoes. But Holly has to understand for herself what could happen if she doesn’t take her meds, what losing her would do to the people who love her. She has to make the choice.” I felt a small shiver run through his torso, though his eyes never wavered from the spot on the ground.

  No, this wasn’t just about his mother. I peered up at him again. His eyes were dark, unfathomable. “How do you know so much about this sort of thing?” I asked.

  Familiar red streaks burned up his neck and in his cheeks. “Caro’s agency has a client who published an eye-opening book about his wife’s depression. Since then, I’ve taken an interest in the issue.” He shrugged and hastily rubbed circles on my shoulder with his thumb.

  Hmm. I studied his face, uneasy with his blatant lie. But Cassady and Molly seemed swayed by his answer.

  Cassady nodded. “I don’t think any of us really get what Holly and Derek are going through, not without it happening to us.”

  “I know,” I said, letting Samuel’s eyes go. “I can’t imagine dealing with those sorts of struggles. Waking up each morning and wondering if it’s a ‘walking on eggshells’ day. Holding my breath coming home from work, always terrified of what I’d find. I don’t think I’d be strong enough.”

  Samuel went rigid behind me. His hand tightened on my shoulder, almost painfully.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, his voice shaky. “Of course you’re strong, Kaye.”

  Then it clicked. As soon as I felt his trembling hands and quickening breath on my neck—the same thing that happened at Danita’s wedding when he made a mad dash for the bathroom—I got it. My comments hit too close to home and I realized, too late, why Samuel seemed to be slipping into some sort of controlled panic. He’d been on meds at some point, maybe still was. And why would he be on meds?

  I remembered the weeks before he left for New York, the death knell of our marriage. The sleeping, the seemingly apathetic laziness for most anything except his music reviews and running off what I now knew were cocaine highs. His mother had almost certainly been mentally ill. Depression? The more I thought about those months before Samuel left me, the more I realized cocaine had masked the real problem. I’d seen it seven years ago in Boulder. Then in New York, in the possessed
lines of his half-naked body and that dingy, filthy room. I began to see it now.

  “Go home to Colorado, and don’t you ever come back here again, Aspen Kaye. I fucking mean it. You think this is a joke?”

  Smothering the terrible memories churning in the pit of me, I pulled his shaking hand between my two hands. Running my thumbs up and down his skin, I slowly traced his ligaments, veins, fingernails, dulling the edge of panic until and his shaking ceased. I admittedly knew next to nothing about depression, but his being on meds was certainly a good thing. Because it meant what happened seven years ago wouldn’t happen again as long as he took his medicine, right? Gradually, his breath slowed and he began to relax. His soft lips kissed the skin beneath my ear in a silent thank you.

  Cassady and Molly exchanged a look. They’d noticed Samuel’s odd little panic attack, but said nothing.

  “May I ask what, exactly, Derek is struggling with?” Samuel said after a while, his voice still shaky.

  “He thinks Holly just needs a vacation away from the kids for a week or two, not therapy and meds,” Cassady answered. “He doesn’t want charity—”

  “That’s not it,” Molly cut in. “I think he’s scared, too. Like he somehow failed Holly, or he’s not strong enough to cope with her scary thoughts and her tears. So he’d rather deny she needs help.”

  “And he’s refusing financial assistance from you,” Samuel concluded.

  Molly nodded. “And Kaye.”

  “The alimony,” I answered and he smiled, albeit unsteadily.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re finally spending it, guinea pigs aside.”

  “I very well wasn’t going to spend that much money on myself.”

  “You should have. That’s what I intended in our settlement.”