Shiver

by Deborah Bladon

  "Grandpa might call me," I interject. "I am his son after all. You haven't forgotten that, have you?"

  Max laughs. It's like warm sunshine as it bounces off the walls of the kitchen.

  "What's so funny?" I crouch next to him, burying my index finger in his side.

  It brings up an even bigger giggle as the yogurt that was in his mouth seeps out the sides. "Grandpa always calls me on Mommy's phone. You know he does."

  I do know that. I know that my father talks to Max on an almost daily basis and I couldn’t be more grateful that he's as committed to spending as much time with the kids as he is.

  "I'll call him this morning and tell him to come to New York next week," I offer not only for Max but also for myself. I miss my dad.

  When I stopped taking nude photographs of women, he lost his job as my manager, which meant he was officially retired. He now spends his time golfing, jetting around the country to visit friends and spending time with his grandchildren. He's been on his own since my mom died. He's dated a few women but not one of those relationships has gone very far. He says he's happy being alone. I have no reason to doubt him.

  "Tell him to hurry, Daddy." Max brushes his hand over the tattoos on my arm. "I need to tell him something very important."

  ***

  "Did you sell your place in Boston yet?" My brother tilts his chin towards an empty table in the hospital's cafeteria. "I'm thinking of listing the condo I've got there. I may wait for the market to swing back up."

  I settle onto one of the extremely uncomfortable plastic chairs that litter the space. It's mid-afternoon so the lunch crowd has thinned enough that a person can actually move. I meet Ben during his breaks whenever I can, but he knows not to ask me here between eleven and two. I've made that mistake before and I won't again.

  "It hasn't sold." I take a sip of the bitter coffee. "How's Kayla? Tell me about Emerson."

  When Ben and his wife first told me they were naming their daughter after our mother I had to bite down the urge to cry. I had imagined doing the same thing after her death, but when I saw Emerson Foster for the first time, I knew the name belonged to only her. She's a perfect mix of my brother and his wife.

  "She's great. They're both great." He leans back on the chair, crossing his legs. "What's going on with you?"

  "Nothing," I lie. "Working hard, hanging with my kids, chasing my wife. You know how it is."

  He raises his hand to wave at someone behind me before his gaze falls back on my face. "You've got something going on. I can see it in your eyes. I heard it in your voice when you called me this morning."

  "Bullshit." I chuckle. "I've got nothing going on."

  The expected laugh doesn't come. Instead, he pulls his teeth across his bottom lip. "You've been thinking about mom, haven't you?"

  Some people would call that twin intuition but that's not what this is. He's not using a special sibling power to read my mind. He's fishing and I know exactly why. "You're asking me that because it's her birthday in two weeks."

  "It would have been her birthday in two weeks," he corrects me. "I've been thinking about that too."

  I pick up the paper cup of coffee and bring it up to my lips. It takes like shit but it's worth it if I can avoid discussing this subject with him today. I don't want to delve into an emotional conversation about our mom in the middle of the cafeteria.

  "We should hang out that day." He taps the toe of his shoe against my leg under the table. "We can have some beers, shoot some pool. We should do something to commemorate the day."

  "Take the day off, Ben. Meet me in Boston."

  He doesn't say anything at first. He stares at me, his eyes widening as if some realization has suddenly washed over him. "Done. I'll fly out that morning."

  I smoothly shift the topic to the weather. The details of what we're going to do that day don't matter one bit. My twin brother and I are going to honor our mother on what would have been her 60th birthday.

  CHAPTER 6

  "Part of me hates when you do that, Noah." She tosses those words over her shoulder at me without even a backward glance. "You come in here and look like the hero."

  "I am the hero." I cross my legs at the ankles as I rest against the edge of her desk. "Your students fucking love me, Alexa."

  She turns towards me, her hands darting to her ears. "Don't talk like that here. I teach eight-year-olds, Noah. No swearing."

  I wave both my arms in front of me in a grand gesture. "Your students were dismissed thirty minutes ago. The only one who can hear me swear is you."

  "That's not the point."

  I love when she's like this. She's in full-on teacher mode including her outfit. She's wearing a red pencil skirt and a white blouse, buttoned right up to her neck. She's the definition of prim and proper to anyone looking at her. I know the woman beneath the clothing though.

  "What's the point?" I ask through a grin. "You like when I talk like that to you."

  "Noah, please," she does her best to sound exasperated because it comes out all kinds of sexy instead. "Don't say fuck in my classroom."

  I've learned, through much painful and aching trial and error, to control my body around my gorgeous wife. That's not to say that the constant ache inside of me to be close to her is any less now. I've just matured to the point that I can hold off until we're alone together in a place that preferably isn't in the middle of a school.

  "You're tempting me, Alexa," I growl. "You're teasing me now."

  "Am I?" Her hands leap to her hips. "Is that what I'm doing?"

  I'm a millisecond away from grabbing her and bending her over her desk when we both turn towards the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A woman scurries past the open door, her arms loaded with books.

  "You best behave." I warn my wife with a wag of my finger in the air. "You don't want to get sent to detention."

  "Enough with the kinky school talk." She giggles. "It was actually very kind of you to bring the students those photo books, Noah. You know how much they love seeing you."

  "I love seeing them too."

  It's the truth. I've tried to stay semi-involved with each class that Alexa's taught since we became engaged. She goes out of her way to give her students a full experience including buying supplies out of her own pay check. I stop by at least a couple of times each semester with a gift in hand. Sometimes, I get them new coloring markers or sketch pads. Today it was a photo book that a friend of mine published last year for kids. I bought every copy the store had in stock. Tomorrow I'll deliver the ten I have left to the community center I used to volunteer at.

  "I heard that you're going to Boston with Ben on your mom's birthday."

  Awkward news travels fast. I left the hospital less than two hours ago. My brother must have my wife on speed dial.

  "Ben called you?" Clarification isn't necessary. It's a simple stall technique. As much as Alexa hates dealing with anything death related, I know it's got to sting that I'm spending a day like that with anyone but her.

  "Kayla." She busies herself with straightening a pile of papers on her desk. "Your mom would have been sixty-years-old that day."

  It's a foreign concept to me. I remember my mom as a vibrant woman who loved working in her garden and volunteering. It's hard to imagine her as a grandmother in her sixth decade of life.

  "I'll only be gone for the day, Alexa. I'll be back first thing the next day."

  She crosses the room quickly until her hands are resting on my chest. She fiddles with one of the buttons on my blue dress shirt. "You take all the time you need. I want you and Ben to spend that time together. I know it's important for you both."

  I married the most perfect woman in the world. How the fuck did that happen?

  "We're still going to Boston this weekend, right?" I ask as I scoop her hands into mine. "You haven't forgotten about our trip, have you?"

  She studies my face, her eyes resting on my scar. "The world's most handsome man invited me away for a weekend. I wouldn't m
iss that for the world."

  ***

  "We should have picked up a sandwich at Axel Boston on our way over." She's literally doubled over in laughter from her own joke. "How funny would that have been?"

  I rest both of our overnight bags on the floor just inside the door of the penthouse before I close it behind me. "You know how much I hate sandwiches, Alexa. What the fuck?"

  That brings up a snort. A very loud, very sexy, snort. Tears flood her eyes. "Do...do you...Noah, you remember..."

  "What?" I grab hold of her waist. "Do I remember that I had a raging hard-on when you brought me a sandwich the first time?"

  "Oh, my God." She slaps my stomach. "No. I wasn't going to say that."

  "You couldn't keep your eyes off my dick." I tilt my chin towards my groin. "If memory serves me, you drooled all over this floor. It was right here. You may have ruined the finish of the floor there was so much drool."

  Tears stream down her face now. "No. I wasn't. I didn't drool."

  "Oh, you drooled." I pull the scarf that's around her neck free before I slip her wool coat off her shoulders. "You were panting too. I remember the panting."

  The giggles have taken over now and there's no end in sight. She holds tightly to the arms of my coat. "You never...you didn't...you had no clothes on."

  "No clothes?" I arch both brows. "Good idea."

  She straightens and the laughing comes to an abrupt halt as I push my coat off, pull the sweater I'm wearing over my head and lose my shoes, jeans, socks and boxer briefs in twenty seconds flat.

  Her eyes flash over my legs, across my cock and up my firm stomach before they settle on the tattoos that cover my chest and arms.

  "Noah," she whispers as her right hand darts to my forearm and then up my shoulder. She silently traces the outline of my tattoos with her fingers, lovingly stroking the lines. Her fingers float over the scars that are hidden beneath the colorful canvas of my skin. "You're so beautiful."

  I've never told her how much those words mean to me. Alexa has never looked at my body or my face with anything other than love and desire.

  The scar that transcends my cheek draws stares on a daily basis but it's all muted the moment I step into our apartment and her eyes lock with mine. I see myself the way she does now. I'm everything to her. It's more than I ever thought I could be.

  "You're the beautiful one." I yank on the hem of the sweater she's wearing. It's bulky and does nothing to highlight her body but she wanted something warm to wear since it's freezing outside. "Even in this sweater you're still the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen."

  That reignites her laughter. "You bought me this sweater."

  "Bullshit," I say as I pull it over her head. "I wouldn't buy you something that looks like this."

  "Technically," she begins before I unbuckle her jeans. "The kids picked it out for my birthday and you paid for it."

  "Their fashion sense is crap." I shake my head. "Doesn't look like either of them is going to work for my cousins running the fashion empire they've built."

  She laughs even harder at that. "Maybe they'll be photographers."

  "Max is going to be president." I push her jeans down slowly. "Chloe has some options. She'd make a great lawyer. She's got the composure for it."

  "Maybe Chloe will be president." Her hands rest on my shoulders as I kneel down to help her take off her boots. "I want them to be whatever they want to be."

  I look up and into her face. "They'll be exactly who they're meant to be. We'll both make sure of that."

  "You're the best dad in the world, Noah." Her bottom lip trembles slightly. I can't tell if it's from the chill in the apartment or her emotions. "I'm glad you're my children's father."

  "I'm honored to be their father." I kiss her knee. "I'm grateful to be your husband."

  With those words, she lowers herself to her knees, wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me deeply.

  CHAPTER 7

  She woke up before me. That's exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I'd picked her up after I finished undressing her and I'd carried her to the bed we first made love in. We spent the next few hours wrapped in each other's arms, fucking, talking, sharing.

  The last time Alexa and I were here together, I was afraid to leave this place. Now, as I wake to the bright sunlight pouring in through the open curtains, I realize it's not the place I'm afraid of letting go of, it's the memories.

  I swing my long legs over the side of the bed. I don't even consider finding something to put over my naked body. I need to find my wife. I need to explain what I've been working on.

  I'm too late. I realize it as soon as I walk into the hallway and see the door to my office wide open. I used to lock it when I left here, as if the gesture itself would somehow secure the moments that were captured in the images inside the room.

  I pad across the hallway. I see her back as soon as I walk over the threshold and into the room. She's wearing the sweater I had on last night. It dips below her ass. Her legs are bare, her hair a mess around her shoulders.

  "Noah." Her voice is soft.

  I doubt that she heard me approaching. I sense when she's in a room as much as she senses when I'm close. We feel each other's energy. We feed off of it.

  "I wanted to show you this last night." I walk up behind her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. "This is why I keep coming back."

  She nods. The movement slight as I rest my chin on the top of her head. "Your mom was so beautiful. I had no idea. You look a lot like her."

  Ben looks more like my mom than I do. He was gifted with her long lashes. His jawline has the same curve as hers. I hated him for that after she died. I despised the fact that he could look in the mirror whenever he wanted and see parts of her reflected back at him. I always had to pull out the folded picture I kept in my wallet when I wanted to see my mom's face.

  "When was that one taken?" She holds a half empty glass of water in her hand as she gestures towards a framed picture on an easel near the window. "Is that you or Ben with your back to the camera?"

  "That's Ben." I hug her. "We were twelve. She was teaching him about roses. She was always teaching us about roses."

  "She loved roses." The words aren't a question. She's repeating the fact to herself as if she's going to store it somewhere away inside of her. "What about that one?"

  I assume she's talking about the one next to it. "My parents were going to a charity dinner the night I took that. I tried at least ten times to get them both to smile at the same time."

  "Neither of them is smiling," she points out.

  "I know." I chuckle faintly. "They were arguing about what time the event started. I don't know why. They were never on time for anything."

  "That's the day you graduated." Her head tilts to the right. "She was sick then."

  It was the only picture that had brought tears to my eyes when I found it in a box in the closet of the spare bedroom here. My brother and I are both dressed in our caps and gowns. I'm smiling brightly as if I don't have a fucking care in the world. Ben is barely able to grin. My mom is sitting between us in a wheelchair. She's frail and thin. The oxygen hose in her nose an everlasting reminder of the day she died.

  I'd stared at that picture for hours after I found it. It encapsulated everything that had torn my brother and me apart for years. I'd blamed him for her death, certain that he'd been purposefully negligent when he failed to hook up her oxygen properly the day she died. He made a mistake and when I first saw this picture I realized that her will to live had already disappeared.

  The joy in her eyes wasn't there anymore. The color of her skin was ashen and the infection that had brought her to death's door would have pushed her over the threshold if she wouldn’t have died the day she did. My mother knew her time was limited. I see that when I look at the way she's clinging to our hands in the picture. She held on so she could watch us graduate from high school.

  "She looks peaceful." Her left hand jumps up to my forearm. "I thin
k she was happy for you and Ben. She was happy that you were on the cusp of your futures."

  "My mom was a lot like you." It's something I've always wanted to say but the words have never made it onto my tongue, and past my lips. Each time I've been ready to say it, I've stopped myself. I always thought it was because I'd break down remembering what a great mother I had. Now I know I've been holding the words inside because it means I'm looking to the future, instead of clinging to the past.

  Her breathing slows as she absorbs what I just said. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. All I want is to be a good mom, and a good wife."

  "You're a fucking amazing mom, Alexa." I kiss the top of her head. "You're the perfect wife. You're my every dream come true."

  I hear the hushed sobs as she tries to hold them inside. I know my wife. I know the tears aren't just from my words. I know she's crying because of what I lost, and what we've gained together. This is why I brought her to Boston with me. I wanted her to see and feel the emotion in these images the same way that I do when I look at them.

  "You're going to show these in a gallery, aren't you?" She brings my hand to her lips and kisses the palm. "They're framed like this because you're going to display them."

  "That's the plan." My hold on her tightens as I push my chest into her back. "I want the world to see my mom the way I did before I let her go forever."

  "I understand." She tilts her head back so she can look up at me. "You never have to completely let her go, Noah. We'll tell the kids about her. We'll show them these pictures. We'll both make certain they know who their grandmother was."

  It may be the greatest gift she's ever given to me. Alexa's kind understanding is exactly what I need to finally let my mom rest in peace.

  CHAPTER 8

  "Why are you dressed?" Her eyes rake over the faded jeans and light blue t-shirt I'm wearing. I'd found them in the closet this morning, along with all the other clothes I left behind when I moved to New York.