by Leanne Davis
“You’re the one who said you didn’t like labels.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was trying to deflect you and your questions. There’s no one else. I don’t sleep around.”
“Just with married men and me?”
Her lips tightened. “My mother. You had sex with my mother. Really, you can’t cast stones at me about who I’ve slept with before you.”
He backed off.
He finally let his shoulders relax, he sat down on the bench, she eventually did too as the heat of the argument started to wane.
“What’s next?”
“I’m not sure. Scott and Sarah said they’d help me. But I don’t know, really. I came here to figure that out, work all this out. Until you happened and it all got more complicated, more confusing, and far less worked out.”
“You’re keeping it? No question this time?”
“No. No question this time.”
He shook his head. Didn’t he know that? How fiercely Angie still longed for Amy. How she still wanted another chance with Amy. Sometimes he thought if she could she’d take Amy to raise.
“You see the irony, don’t you? You and me together now, you pregnant with someone else’s baby, while the child we had together is raised ten miles away by other people.”
“It’s not irony for me, it’s something I grieve.”
“I know. We’ll never agree on that.”
“We don’t agree on a lot of things.”
“I know. But—”
“Still, here we are. Never quite friends, never quite enemies.”
She was near him, looking up at him, her eyes big and blue, sad and pretty. He always felt like he was drowning in them. He didn’t think, but lowered his head to hers, his lips to hers, his hand to her waist. She kissed him back.
“We don’t know anything more than when we started, do we?”
“Do you forgive me Vanessa?”
“No. Do you think you can handle me being pregnant?”
“No.”
“So, what then?”
“What then? I guess we keep talking. You don’t run, I quit getting angry.”
“Are we together?”
“We’re not with anyone else. Let’s start there.”
Chapter 17
The door swung open, Vanessa stood there her expression caught in genuine surprise to see Angie. Weariness settled over her features and Vanessa Peters’ mask of rude indifference was back in place.
“When I was in seventh grade, three boys snuck into the girl’s locker room while I was changing and took pictures of me, in my tidy white panties and nothing else. I looked so stupid with my big long legs and itty, bitty, barely-there breasts. I was devastated. I came home crying because I didn’t know what they were going to do with the pictures. Do you remember that, Vanessa? Do you remember what you told me?”
Vanessa didn’t answer. She tilted her head, the only indication she was listening.
“You told me I should wear better underwear, stuff my bra, and maybe I wouldn’t look so much like a giraffe instead of a girl. You advised me to not to tell Scott because Scott would make a scene with the school, probably get those boys expelled, and that would just make it all worse. Make a stink and people might just want to see the pictures then. As it was, no one knew me, so who the hell was going to look at them? So I didn’t tell Scott. Because I was so embarrassed about how I looked. That was your motherly advice to me. I was twelve years old. I was so unhappy. I hated myself. How tall I was. How thin I was. I never stood a chance, not against you. You were a horrible mother. You made me feel horrible about myself. I barely escaped you. And only because of Scott did I with some self-esteem. Enough to know I’ll never be like you.”
“Sean told you, I see?”
“Sean told me. How could you sleep with the boy, for he was a boy, the very boy I’d had a baby with? What kind of mother does that? Even you. Even you shouldn’t be that bad. You should love me just enough not to do that.”
“Get off yourself. It wasn’t about you.”
“But that’s what’s so evil with you. It should have been about me. Something, somewhere should have been about me. I am better than you. I go to college to be better than you. I do everything to not be you. But you know what I finally realized? I’m better than you because I know I would never do something like that to my daughter.”
“I kept my daughter at least.”
“I did the right thing giving up my daughter at sixteen because what if I’d been selfish enough to destroy her like you did me.”
“I didn’t destroy you.”
“You would have. If it weren’t for Scott, then Sarah, you totally would have.”
“Is this where you warn me to stay away from Sean?”
“No. No, Vanessa. You don’t have to. I trust Sean and he loves me. Not you. He never did. So you know what? This is goodbye from me, and if I see you around, I guess I see you. It doesn’t matter to me. Either way. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
With that Angie spun around on her heel, and walked down the outdoor walk that was Vanessa’s third floor apartment. She quickly clipped down the steps, to her car, and finally left the parking lot smiling. She’d succeeded in what years and years away hadn’t succeeded in doing; she quit being afraid she was going to turn into Vanessa. She might hate what Sean did. But it had also freed her from the shadow of her mother. Of Vanessa. Of failure. She wasn’t Vanessa. Sarah was right, it was time to let it go, bury it, and move toward people who weren’t toxic to her sense of self. Sean might have hurt her, but he wasn’t her mother. He hadn’t betrayed her quite as catastrophically as she felt the betrayal from her own mother.
Her mother who hadn’t even been sorry.
Angie knew it was time to get her life in order. Making her break from Vanessa was a start. One she’d never officially made. She had tried avoiding Vanessa, but she had never outright broken the ties with her. There were just some people a person couldn’t make peace with. Some relationships so toxic they were better cut from your life, than trying to deal with them.
And now she had to figure out the rest of her life. This baby, a job, where to live, where to work, and... Sean. She’d at some point have to figure out Sean.
Although, if she was the one deciding things or him, she had no idea. Neither one of them seemed to know what to do with all this. It was all so much, so big, so deep for a relationship that was only weeks old, but a relationship that had already suffered dramatic, deep hurt and confusion. They had so much between them.
She had spent eight years trying to move past Amy and what had happened the summer leading into her junior year of high school. She never expected the leading role from that tragedy would enter her life again. Nor did she understand how she could want Sean whose take on the worst experience of her life was so drastically different than hers.
But here she was in Seaclusion with Sean Langston.
The one thing she did know, Seaclusion was never, and could never be the place she lived. Vanessa was here. Amy was here. Her past was here. She couldn’t move forward with all that staring her in the face.
Besides she really hated the beach.
And Sean?
Really, she didn’t know. But she couldn’t make decisions based on a relationship only weeks old. A relationship she doubted would last once she started showing with another man’s baby. Sean could deal now, but it was early. It wasn’t real yet. It wasn’t interfering now. But it would.
There was no way he could accept it. She knew that. She was trying to come to peace with that.
They had formed a kind of truce, a stay on everything. They didn’t talk about her pregnancy, about Vanessa, about tomorrow even. They talked about now, about what they did that day, about their past, their likes and dislikes, their passions. He goaded her, she let loose trying to educate him to think bigger. He tried to remind her reality was a lot more simple and complicated than her causes.
It was another month of finding
Sean to be everything she never knew she wanted, never thought she’d find with him. He was fast becoming a huge part of her life, who she wanted to talk to, who she wanted to see. Who she wanted period.
But there were so many things that were off limits. They didn’t comment on Angie’s strange twinges, her sudden exhaustion, or her breasts growing nearly a cup size and so sensitive he couldn’t touch them.
They didn’t discuss her sudden emancipation from Vanessa. When she yet again went to the doctor, it was Sarah who took her. It was nice having people know this time. To have Sarah to compare notes with and having someone to ask if that sudden sore back, her heartburn, her strange movements in her stomach were normal. It was nice to share her discomfort, her worry, her excitement. It was nice to not be stressed about hiding something that was so hard to hide.
Sean got his loan. He started spending a lot of time out at Seclusion. First thing he did was start clearing out decades’ worth of disuse, strange flotsam left behind by the family that once lived their lives there. He spent hours cleaning off graffiti, physically picking up pieces of the house that had fallen apart. He brought in a dumpster that was filled twice over before he began to see the end of his cleanup work.
Angie found herself going there. She worked on her thesis all day, then most evenings went to Seclusion, and dawning a pair of gloves she would pick a room and start clearing away the disuse, left by decades of sitting there.
She marveled at the stuff she found. Here a broken dining room chair, a broken music box, a dusty, water damaged bible. Weird stuff floated around the house in the oddest rooms. She wondered how an entire family could just leave a house like this. When was the last time any of them saw the house? What was the last day? How did they feel the last time the house disappeared as they pulled out of the driveway? And why did they leave so much stuff behind?
She shouldn’t have been so surprised how much the house interested her. She’d never had extended family. She didn’t understand generations of a family. She didn’t know about grandparents, siblings, cousins or even fathers. So it was fascinating to pick through the attic. It was mostly junk; water damaged, and covered in thick dust and cobwebs. But it was someone’s junk, someone’s life. And at some point it was left here, forgotten. Why? Angie was surprised at the curiosity it evoked in her. At the connection she felt. At how good it felt to physically work, clear a room, sweep it, mop it, and dust it. When she was done it looked cared for. She’d never had much thought to caring for a physical place.
And once again, delving into the history of this one place on earth, reminded her why she’d dedicated such a huge portion of her life studying history. World history, local history, now this house’s history made her feel connected, rooted, involved. To a girl who’d never had much of her own history, exploring those around her, made her feel part of something bigger, better than her small pathetic childhood. And it reminded her, though she might be impractical, what she knew was important. Her knowledge, her study of history had to matter. It had to mean something. She just wasn’t quite sure yet how it would all tie together.
She felt muscles in her arms getting tired of lifting. But for days on end she kept on working, finding the exercise exhilarating, and the results of her hard work more satisfying than any grade she’d ever received. She found as she did the mindless work she made breakthroughs on her thesis that she would then write the next day.
One Saturday, as the sun was setting, the beach was visible from the porch. Most people probably would find the view breathtaking gazing at the sinking sun, the pretty colored sky, the flash of surf to sand. But she more enjoyed the feel of the fresh air on her skin. The scent of nature and the stretch of her muscles from lifting through old books on the third floor.
Sean was hammering away on the porch. He’d bought new cedar decking and was in process of taking up the rotten old pieces and slowly working his way to the steps with shiny new, perfectly even and perpendicular boards. He swung the hammer with surprising ease and skill. He’d told her he’d worked construction for several summers before working for Scott. He knew his way around saws, measuring, cutting wood, hammering, air guns, things that she watched with fascination.
He was afraid the porch was so rotten someone would step and fall through, mainly her. So his first project, make the house passable. He wore jeans, ripped, frayed, worn. She watched him now, wondering how she used to not like the jeans ripped, worn, and frayed. There was something elemental about watching Sean sweat, his muscles ripple to swing the hammer, the nails in his mouth as he took the next one, swung the hammer and pop, in went the nail in about three whacks of the hammer. His t-shirt was drenched in sweat, and his forehead was sticky with pieces of sawdust hanging off his hair. When he noticed her, he looked up and smiled, than settled back to his work.
She wondered out, and sat cross-legged on the finished portion of the porch she was sure wouldn’t collapse under her weight. She watched him silently for a while. She looked off toward the view, and listened to the ocean. She was quiet. Quiet and happy and content in ways she never had experienced before.
Finally, Sean stopped, sat back on his heels, his thighs straining under the jeans, his hair falling over his forehead as he picked up scattered nails around him.
“Were you just looking at the beach, with something almost like appreciation on your face?”
“No, I was watching you. I hate the beach. There’s no way I could enjoy it. You know that.”
“You seem to like it well enough here.”
She shrugged. “I like getting my mind off my thesis. This place makes me feel like I fell of the earth and nothing exists but you and me.”
He regarded her. “And that’s not a terrible thought for you?”
“No. It’s not so terrible.”
He came closer to her. His arms circled her. His mouth came down on hers. This happened a lot too. They’d be working, sitting, quiet, talking, and then suddenly they’d be in each other’s arms. As natural as breathing it had become.
“I promised Jerry I’d meet him tonight at The Oyster. I haven’t exactly been around much for him lately. Want to come?”
They didn’t go out a lot. There weren’t a whole lot of places to go in Seaclusion. They lived next to each other so it wasn’t like they had to work to be together.
They just were. So, his friends, the things he did before her, had become nearly nonexistent.
“I’ll come.”
“Good. I’d rather be with you anyway.”
She watched him as he jumped to his feet, and moved toward his tools. He started cleaning up. He seemed to mean it. Always seemed glad to see her. Which was a strange occurrence for her. No one was usually exactly glad to see her. They liked her, respected her, agreed with her, but few people found her company all that much fun. But Sean, he seemed to like her. What was she going to do when he changed his mind?
Sean watched Angie across the room. He was buying another round of drinks, and she was sitting at the table, drinking her ice water, because of course, pregnant women couldn’t drink. Why was he obsessing about it tonight?
“Usual, Sean?”
“Yeah,” he said, hardly glancing at Charlene who worked the bar on Saturday nights, as he stared back at Angie.
They had been at The Oyster for several hours now. Drinking, playing pool, talking. It had been awhile since he’d spent a Saturday night here. Something he used to do weekly. His friends had surrounded him when he got there. Back slapping, giving him shit about where he’d disappeared to. He’d been surprisingly glad to be back in the thick of it. He’d been handed a beer, pulled into a pool game, and life had felt how it used to feel, months ago, before Angie came back to town. When his life hadn’t been strange. Hadn’t been stressful. Hadn’t revolved around her.
When he didn’t obsess over what to do with Angie having another baby.
He tried to let it go. To forget about it. But then, he’d catch a glimpse of her as she got out of bed, he
r profile that was changing enough to be noticeable. He’d notice how she tried to conceal herself from him. And he knew why, she was trying to somehow minimize for him, she was three months pregnant. They should talk about it. They were falling back to usual patterns. But when he thought about mentioning it, something stuck in his throat. He could feel his disgust with her starting to rise. He would feel the anger at how unfair it was to expect him to live with this, start to boil in him. Until he looked into her eyes. And then she was just Angie. And all the thoughts got all mixed up. He didn’t know what he wanted. So he said nothing.
She muddied it even more by spending so much time helping him at Seclusion. Why? Why was she doing that? It was so not Angie. Hard, menial, domestic work in a house? Work she didn’t have to do? He’d never even asked her to come to the house. She just had somehow. She’d stopped by a few times on her own, until she started coming with him.
And the thing was, she’d actually been a help. She’d made a significant difference in how far he was getting. He could measure her help in how fast the work was going.
He’d caught her a time or two looking over the beach, the water, the horizon, and she seemed to not hate it. Which all almost pissed him off more than if she’d just kept hating it, ignored his house and disdained his plans. Because if she’d done that, he could dismiss her as the snobby bitch he used to dismiss her as.
Now, all he could think about was that Angie could grow to like this. She could grow to like Seclusion, and living there with him. They could grow to like this together. They could be something more than just a good time together. Maybe, just maybe, they could be the real thing.
But then he’d remember, she was pregnant. And it ruined everything. Every thought, every fantasy, every feeling would paralyze in him. What was he supposed to do with a pregnant girlfriend?
How could he plan a future? How could he figure out where he fit into it all? She was pregnant by someone else. And he wasn’t looking for this kind of commitment. Not yet. Not at this point in his life.
