Finally, Tyler touched my arm, his tear-filled eyes meeting mine. “Let’s get out of here.”
On shaking legs, we stood up and ambled toward the door, but when I saw the picture of Rosalyn with my folks, I lost it. I snatched up the photo. “I never got the chance to explain!” I screamed. “I never got the chance to tell them I love them.” My stomach churned, and a sharp pain doubled me over, my hands clutching my abdomen, the photo crushed in my fist. “I never had the chance …” My face grew hot. I straightened. “I am the biggest screw up! I never had the chance to make things right.” Heat pulsed through my body as blood pounded through my ears. My reflection stared at me in the mirror over my parents’ dresser, and when I saw my sorry form, I swung back and punched with violence, sending glass shards raining over my mother’s perfume bottles and framed photos.
“Jax! Stop.” Tyler grabbed me in a bear hug. “Look at you! You’re bleeding.” He sprinted into the bathroom and returned with a towel. The two of us shrank to the floor, our bodies crouched over, heads touching, my hand hurting like a motherfucker as blood dripped onto my mother’s white towel.
My shoulders shook as Tyler’s arms surrounded me. My voice quaked when I spoke, the words barely intelligible. “Mom never knew … how much I loved her.” I thought of all those times that all she wanted was for me to sit next to her on the sofa, watch a dumb TV show, and tell her about my day. “I never got to tell her that everything was okay, that I was … in love. Really in love.” Tyler glanced at me not commenting, his eyes vacant. I sprang up and paced the room, holding my bleeding hand, the blood throbbing through my knuckles, all the way up my arm. “Will she ever forgive me?”
Tyler sat on the floor, his arms over his folded legs, and looked at me. “I know she’d have forgiven you. Mom and Dad loved you.” But would she have? I was overcome with sadness at the realization that the last time I saw my mother was when she was livid with me.
The next few days were spent making phone calls to the few family members we had. Mom’s folks lived in a small town in Costa Rica where they could pretty much drop out of society and live on a dollar a day. We’d found their phone number in my mom’s red leather address book she kept in her nightstand. Tyler and I made the long distance call, a shitload of numbers punched into the phone before a long bleating sound, followed by my granddad answering the phone. When he heard the terrible news, the phone was passed back and forth between him, my grandmother, Tyler and me. “No. It can’t be. What happened? Are you sure? There’s got to be a mistake.” When they calmed down, our grandparents promised to fly out and help Tyler and me, but neither one of us wanted strangers—that’s what they were to us—around. We were of legal age, and it didn’t take too much to convince them we didn’t need their help.
Then we called our dad’s only remaining parent, his father, who lived in Springfield, Vermont and worked for a small newspaper. “I’d come out and help you boys, but with the deadlines and all …”
Tyler and I were on our own, which was just fine with us.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but a hard protective shell was forming, a barrier that would allow only a very few people through. My brother was one. Rosalyn was the other.
I needed Rosalyn more than ever. Those first few days, I had to wake up to the deep grief that would be my constant companion for the next several months, heck, for the next several years, but mixed in with that was the overwhelming desire to connect with the woman I loved. But Rosalyn wasn’t easy to reach emotionally. At first, we talked on the phone, brief conversations which included mostly mumbling and Rosalyn’s tears. Finally, I started spending time with her again.
I swallowed hard as I knocked on her door, and she answered, wearing a wrinkled T-shirt that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week. Over the next few weeks, we fell into a pathetic routine of me trying to console her when I hurt really bad myself. I wanted to be the man in the relationship and soothe her, but Rosalyn was inconsolable.
“Come on,” I said as Rosalyn sat on her sofa, her feet up on the coffee table, and the TV remote control in her hand. “You need to eat something. How about we go to that vegetarian restaurant you like?” She sank farther down into the sofa.
“Don’t you need to go surfing or do your homework or something?” She leaned away from me.
I shook my head. “All that stuff can wait.”
She looked at me, her gaze unfocused as tears filled her eyes again.
I split my time between school, the beach, my part-time job at a local surf shop, and Rosalyn’s apartment. Every morning when I woke up, the world seemed dull and lifeless. I spent as much time with Tyler as possible, but I wanted to somehow make things right between Rosalyn and me. I tried making love to her, and sometimes we would even go through the motions, but it was filled with sadness, almost like those times we made love would be our last together.
Sometimes I’d go to Rosalyn’s after surfing and find her standing in her living room, holding Leo and staring out the window. She’d turn to face me, and I could tell that she’d been crying because her eyes were swollen, and her face was streaked with red. “Hi, sweetie,” she’d say in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
I would have done anything to make things better, but I didn’t know how to fix what was wrong.
A few weeks after my parents died, I finally decided to talk to her. I was on my way home from my job, and I pulled into her driveway feeling like shit. When I entered her apartment, it looked like she’d been doing spring-cleaning because clothes were out of her drawers and the trash cans were full like she was getting rid of things she didn’t need. She sat on her meditation pillow and whirled around when I walked in.
“Jax. I thought you had work today.”
“We need to talk.”
She stood up, walked into the kitchen, and poured herself a glass of water. “Okay, Jax, I’ll start. I think it’s time that you get on with your life. You’ve been working part time and surfing, your parents are gone … you need to make them proud.” She choked down the water and kept blinking like she was trying to hold back tears.
“What is it you’re really trying to say?” My heart was pounding.
“Just that you need to move forward with your life, and so do I.”
Both of us stood there staring at each other, an emotionally charged silence filling the room. We didn’t speak for what seemed like hours, and finally I said, “I know exactly what I want to do with my future. I want to be with you. Rosalyn, I love you.”
She shook her head sadly and said, “You can’t know that. You’ve been through a shock and—”
“And what?”
“And you’re only nineteen. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. A life with somebody more your age.” She looked down at the floor.
I rushed up to her and held her by both shoulders. “Rosalyn. Look at me. I don’t want to be with anyone else. I want you. And so what if I’m nineteen?” Adrenaline surged through my system and my heartbeat sped up. “I’m old enough to make my own decisions. Don’t treat me like a kid because I’m not a goddamn kid anymore!”
She shrugged out of my grasp and ran into the bathroom where I could hear her crying. When I knocked on the door, she said, “Come back later. Maybe we can talk then.”
When I lay in bed that night, I stared at the ceiling unable to sleep. How had things changed so rapidly? I finally rolled over and fell into a fitful sleep with nightmares of wiping out in sixty-foot waves.
Rosalyn
Jax thought that he was truly in love with me, but there was no way he could have rational thoughts after losing his parents. I really did try to talk to him the day he came over. But as usual, I ran away.
It had been almost a month since Lydia and Troy were killed. On my last day in Southern California, I drove Ol’ Betsy to the Self Realization Fellowship overlooking the Pacific Ocean where I sat on a bench in the meditation garden, inhaling the invigorating scent of the salty ocean air. The cra
shing of the waves mingled with the sound of a gently babbling water fountain, the scent of blooming garden flowers perfuming the air. My hand gently caressed my abdomen, where new life grew. My thoughts turned to the nightmare of what had happened. Nausea filled my stomach, my throat tight. Lydia and Troy gone. Jax a daddy to a child he’ll never know. Tyler and Jax orphans. I closed my eyes and sent a prayer up to the Universe. Please help me do the right thing for this child.
I didn’t want to admit to myself that I’d fallen in love with Jax. But there it was. I had fallen in love. In the year we had been together, Jax was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a romantic partner. He was caring, loving, eager to please, and he was my best friend. I thought about all the times he had put whatever was happening in his life aside, even surfing, to be with me when I needed help around the house or needed something from the market or wanted him to rub my feet after a long day.
And Jax had become quite the lover. I shivered thinking about the feel of his warm, masculine hands running over my body, the feel of his sensuous mouth on mine. When I was in his arms, it felt like the world shrunk down to just the two of us. I was ecstatic in those moments, and I finally knew what the big deal about love and relationships was.
But I was filled with remorse over what I’d done. I had taken advantage of an impressionable young man. Much as I tried to meditate my unhappiness away, the truth was, that anything that went wrong in my life served me right as punishment. How could I have done that to Jax? The weight of my actions pressed in on me like a vise tightening on me. I had to somehow make things right and that meant giving Jax a chance at a decent life without me.
I left the meditation gardens, Ol’ Betsy making the trek south on the 5 toward Point Loma for the last time. I entered my apartment, looking around at the shambles of my life; the few boxes packed for moving. As I bent to pet Leo, the phone rang shrilly.
“Hey Rosalyn.” Carissa’s voice was serious. I sat on the sofa, my feet up on the ottoman. “I’ve been thinking. You’re not really leaving Point Loma are you?”
My gaze trailed over the packed items in the room. “Yes.”
“It’s just that … well, I know I was against this whole affair with …” She stopped speaking.
“With Jax.”
“Yes. Jax. He’s the father of your baby. I think you should reconsider. Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel if someone took away your choice about playing a role in your child’s upbringing? Maybe think about having a life together.”
I closed my eyes tightly. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You want me to go down the list? Let’s start with his age. Then let’s move onto the fact that I ruined his mother’s last few hours of life.” I covered my mouth.
“None of that has to matter anymore. Things are different now. His parents are gone.”
Whatever peace I’d gained at the meditation garden evaporated. The vision of Lydia’s and Troy’s corpses filled my vision, and I clutched my stomach. I sat bolt upright. “I know that! Quit reminding me how disastrous this situation is.”
“All I’m saying is I think maybe it would be better this way.”
“Better? What am I supposed to tell my child? That I banged a teenager who was my friend’s son behind her back? And what are we going to do for money? Jax is barely out of high school, no career, no prospects other than maybe a part-time job doing what? Waiting tables like I’ve done all my life?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s not a life! A few quarters, nickels, and dollar bills, here and there? It’s why I left Santa Fe, and now look what’s happened.”
Both of us were silent, and finally Carissa said, “I know you didn’t mean for this whole thing to end up where it did, but are you seriously telling me you’re not going to tell Jax about the baby?”
My body felt limp, and I was exhausted from grief. “No, Carissa, I’m not telling him. Going to Santa Cruz is my chance for a life. A real life for me and the baby. I can get a job there, start new.”
“I just think—”
“Stop! It’d never work. What’s Jax supposed to do? Go to night school and get a degree while I nurse an infant all night? And let’s not forget about what life’ll be like for him when he turns thirty-five and I’m forty-eight. He’ll be in his prime and I’ll be ready for menopause.” Anxiety crept up my spine. “He’ll leave me. He’ll find somebody else. He’ll never forgive me for saddling him with this.”
“Listen to me. Do you care about him?”
All the air left the room. Maybe Carissa was right. I did care about Jax. And I cared about this baby. Was there any way we could make it work? My voice was tentative. “He’d be so happy if he knew he was going to be a father.”
Carissa pounced on the opportunity. “I know it’s not going to be easy. Heck, if any of us planned our life out step by step, we’d never make one move. I know you didn’t mean to get pregnant, but I think you’ll regret it if you run away.”
“You think we could somehow be a family?” I said.
“Yes. I’ll come out and help if you want. I can’t stand the thought of you all alone trying to make this work. And Jax deserves to know.”
My blood pressure rose so fast that I heard blood whooshing through my ears. The reality of Jax a daddy at age nineteen? The two of us with a baby? No. I stammered. “I … just … I can’t do this to him. He’s too young.”
She sighed. “I’m going to ask you something. Rosalyn, do you love him?”
“That doesn’t matter. Love doesn’t conquer all.” Then I got angry. “I can’t believe I did this.” My vision tunneled. “What exactly am I supposed to say when someone asks how we met? My voice took on a sing-song quality. “Oh, I just decided it would be a good idea to start screwing my good friend’s son when he was eighteen. You’d have done the same when you saw how hot he was. Oh, and by the way, his parents are dead now, so he really had his head turned around when I told him he was going to be a father.” My breath came in ragged gulps, anxious sweat breaking out on my forehead and neck.
Carissa said, “Oh, honey, I know this is a lot to consider, but promise me you’ll think about it.”
“Thing of it is, I’m leaving tonight.”
“You are?”
“Got everything packed, I’m calling Salvation Army to get the furniture, and I leave tonight.”
“Where are you planning on staying?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll find a Motel 6. I’ve got a little money. I’ll make it work.”
Carissa let out a heavy sigh. “Well, I can tell you’ve made up your mind, so I’ll meditate for your safety on the trip. But if you change your mind …”
We hung up. I tapped my fingers on the end table, sweat trickling down my back then finally picked up the phone again to call my parents.
My parents and I weren’t close, but I was their only child. Sarah and Martin lived in Lost Treasure, Oregon, on a five-acre property, their nearest neighbor far away, happily growing their crops of marijuana and living in a hallucinogenic haze. Perhaps it was the pregnancy hormones surging through my system, but I hoped that maybe we could make a connection. I punched their phone number into the phone with shaking hands.
Sarah answered. “Hi, Mom.”
“Oh hey, sugar. How you doing?”
I stuttered a reply. “Um, guess what, Mom? I’m pregnant.”
There was a pause and it sounded like she took a drag off a joint. “You are! Well, that’s great.”
I let the silence hang between us for a while before I said, “I’m moving to Santa Cruz tomorrow.”
“Where are you living now, sweetie?” she said.
“I’m back in Point Loma.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“And the thing of it is, I’m having a baby, and—”
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not married.”
“So, who’s the lucky man?�
�
I bit my cuticle. “Just a … guy I met at the beach.”
She let out a giggle. “Oh, Roz, you always were meeting guys at the beach.” I pictured my mom standing in her kitchen, overlooking her fields of green. Since the Oregon Medical Marijuana Act passed in 1998, my mom and dad were living their dream of helping people who needed marijuana for medical conditions. And, I had a feeling, they were also partaking in as much of the sacred herb as possible, along with their “healing rituals” of psilocybin mushrooms.
I cleared my throat. “I’ll be in Santa Cruz, so I’ll be a little closer to you and dad.” I don’t know what I thought, that maybe, just maybe they’d want to be a part of my life. That maybe they’d be the nurturing parents and now grandparents I’d always wanted. Not that they were so awful. They just had this idea that once little ones grew up, it was time for them to fly the coop. “Maybe we can get together? Like I can come visit? Or maybe you two can come over when the baby’s born? Maybe you guys’ll want to help out?”
She hesitated. “That’d be real nice, hon. But what about your boyfriend? Can’t he help?”
I should’ve known better. Sarah and Martin were completely wrapped up in each other and their farm with no desire to have an interruption in their lives. My voice was low when I spoke. “He doesn’t know about the baby.”
“Complications, huh?” she said. “Well, sugar, you’re all grown up now. What’re you, thirty?”
“Thirty-one.”
“And you know what’s best. You’re going to raise this baby just fine.” Another pause. Then I heard a screen door slam and a dog bark. “Honey, I gotta go. You call me when you’re all settled, okay?”
I said that I would, and we hung up the phone.
Then, I sat down at my tiny desk in the living room in Point Loma, the memories of my time with Jax flooding the space. I needed to write a letter to Jax, something that would explain my departure. I held one of my crystals for guidance, tried to center myself and pray, but nothing helped. The room spun and I felt nauseous. My shoulders slumped as I stared at the amethyst crystal in my hand. I held it so tightly that my hands ached. Then the tears came. My body convulsed, and I could barely stop sobbing as I thought about poor Tyler and Jax. Jax, my dear sweet lover boy whom I would have to abandon. He would find his way in the world. He would just have to. He had his brother, and they’d always made a good team.
Peaks of Passion: Pleasure Point Series Book One Page 17
