by V. L. Brock
Defeated, he sighed, “Let me shower and I’ll take you.”
When I peeked over my shoulder, his was rising from the bed; his thumbs hooked under the waistband of his shorts and tugged them down his legs in one fluid motion. “Oh my, God,” I breathed, dropping my newly purchased skinny, torn jeans and white fitted shirt.
“What is it?”
“Stay there,” I rushed over and clambered on the bed. Telling him to sit back on the bed, Walker did as he was told. “Oh my, God,” my fingertips brushed around the lifted, swollen edges of each lash. He was jolting at the contact, but I could both see and feel his degree of restraint. I inwardly counted thirteen in total.
“It’s okay.”
“Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you––”
On my knees, I hung my head, the mattress bounced when his perfectly imperfect body twisted to face me. My gaze was coaxed up to meet his eye when he tenderly grasped my chin. “Stop, darlin’. Stop crying.” Telling me to stop made the tears come quicker and the quivering of my lip became more noticeable. “Look at me,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not bothered about these scars, these wounds. They all tell a story, remember?”
“But I…”
“No, Kady. Each one tells a story.”
“But there are thirteen screaming lashes that I did to you. I beat you, Walker. God I’m so sorry, I feel so guilty.”
“Guilt is a weakness. This,” he twisted marginally to gesture his back, “is you taking back your strength. This is you marking a new beginning––”
“No, that was me marking you––”
“And am I your new beginning, Kady?”
I simply nodded my head. Of course he was. “I love you, Walker.”
“I love you, too, darlin’. Now, you get dressed otherwise there’ll be no point in even going to work today.” As he pushed himself from the edge of the bed, the sunlight caught his canvas of silver, red and pale scars, displaying them in their entirety. I didn’t realize there were so many. So many years of frustration and anguish coated him. At that point, as he planted a chaste kiss on my lips before stalking his gloriously tensed ass out of the room, I idly contemplated that unlike ‘normal’ people, it isn’t as easy for Walker to just move past his experiences and learn from them. His scarring was a constant reminder of each hurt, each fight, and each grief…just like mine.
Memories are one thing, but living with the constant reminder of those memories and how much pain was endured during those moments, was something else entirely. That causes more hurt itself. The fact that Walker had learned to embrace that, showed how strong he truly was.
“Are you sure about this?” Walker’s stubborn voice came from behind the wheel of the truck.
I glanced out of the window toward my right, seeing the baby pink awning and golden script writing. It seemed like years since the last time I had been anywhere near Bricksdale Square. In real time, it was a week.
“Yes, I’m sure. I need to do this now otherwise I never will.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll pick you up at three?”
With a nod, I released the belt buckle with a pop, slipped over the bench seat to give him a quick kiss and set out on my way, telling him to have a good time at the gym, which prompted a rolling of his eyes, before the piecing bell above the door sounded as I pushed it open and stepped inside.
“Hey, girlie,” the buoyant brunette burst through the metal streamers with a flourish, both hands hidden beneath a large box. “Thank God you’re here. I’ve got another six out back, mind giving me a hand?” she asked, setting the box of delights on the coffee table in front of the sofa. With a brisk kick of the doorstop under the bottom of the door, the box was retrieved and loaded into the back of the pink delivery truck parked out front.
The smell of cooling cakes wafted from the cooling racks on the metal decorating table in the center of the kitchen, as I fetched a pink box with Ent-Icing scripted on the lid and took it out to the truck. “So you’re leaving me on my own on my first day back?”
“Stop whining,” she ribbed. “I’ll be gone for about an hour, maybe two depending on traffic. I’ve done the cupcakes, they’re almost ready for decorating––”
“Decorating?”
Her eyebrows rose as she licked her lips and cocked her head with a disapproving drop of her hip. “Yes.”
“Okay…” I drew out warily, when her hands were set firmly on my shoulders. She peeked up at me from under the lip of her ball cap.
“You can do this, Kady.” I barely managed to nod. “Let me hear it?”
“I can do this?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” she quizzed, a ghost of a cheeky grin set in place.
“Telling you?” I winced.
“You can do this, it’s just a sponge cake.”
“It’s just a sponge cake…”
“––And frosting in a pipe. Can you do this?”
“I can do this.”
“Tell me again, can you do this?”
“I can do this,” I answered with conviction.
“Damn fucking right you can.” Lifting onto her toes, she pressed a kiss to my cheek. I repaid her for her desertion with a flick of her ball-cap lip, which earned me a mock pout and a swat on my ass, before she clambered into the truck.
Arms crossed over my chest, I leaned against the overly large window of the shop, watching her until she pulled away. “You’ll be amazing, don’t overthink,” she called across the console through the open passenger side window.
“’Aye, now go…”
“’Aye, ‘aye,” she called, saluting.
“He’s Irish, not a freaking pirate.”
Waving her arm out of the window, she shouted, “Whatever,” as she pulled out of the square leaving me, quite nervously, to my own devices.
I was standing in the center of the shop, a soft groan coming from the flooring beneath my feet. Everywhere I looked, I could feel and hear Liam and his mocking: the walls, the counter, display cabinet. I was surrounded by everything that was procured with his money, so technically I was still surrounded by him.
After torturing myself with a lengthy pep-talk, I shook the unwelcomed thoughts right out of my head, flipped the open sign on the door and headed out the back.
On the metal table in front of me sat three cooling racks. One with lemon cakes, one with chocolate and another of red velvet. Along with a note:
I’ve already made up the frosting. It’s in the refrigerator.
Piping bags are in the drawer next to the basin.
Remember, you control the piping; the piping does not control you.
LOL.
Holding the pink paper between my hands, I couldn’t help but laugh. And after everything that had happened the last few days, a good laugh was what the doctor ordered.
Doctor…
I headed for the refrigerator, pulled out three bowls of frosting in different colors, set them on the table then made my way around to the drawer for the bags, all the while thinking back to Tuesday’s appointment with Leviton.
I didn’t understand why he hadn’t questioned me on the traces in my blood work the moment I came to. I remembered him calling Liam out of the room, and obviously something must have been said to him while I was out of it. The mere fact that Liam knew the question would be broached with me, and to keep his well sullied hands spotless for his reputation, he would let me dirty mine as I clawed my way out of the metaphorical grave he’d dug for me, made my skin crawl. A metaphorical grave which could have been a very real one.
Dipping the spatula into the yellow frosting, I gave it a quick stir before scooping it into a bag. The scowl I was donning as I was catapulted back to that night in the car, feeling the heaviness of my body being drunken by the seat, turned to a small smile. Walker’s voice booming through the speaker was what I held onto. He burst into my life, was always there when I needed him, helped me and made me stronger both back then, and now…
Twisting
the top of the bag before recovering a lemon cake from the rack, I set out to work on decorating. Nonetheless, my thoughts and concentration on the task at hand remained absent, my pondering trail steering to me to the question of: what had happened when I was under?
I remembered the events of the run up to the accident and what subsequently initiated it, but what happened at the hospital? Who was at my side in the ambulance? Who found me first? What was said between Liam and Walker at the hospital when I was unconscious? Liam had known what happened between me and his employee at the time, because I refused to tarnish myself with his brush and deny it, like he had all those months with Liv.
A sharp pain shot through my head as a slow building pressure began to dwindle behind my eyes. I had to stop thinking about all that and concentrate on decorating thirty-six cupcakes before Laurie came back.
My efforts were wasted. Each time I guided the nozzle of the bag around the circumference of the cake and worked inward, something would go wrong. I had no idea what, but I’m unashamed to admit that for fleeting moments, I swear the cakes, along with the equipment, were conspiring against me.
The bell jingling from out front drew an end to my latest frustrated growl. Setting my equipment down, I snatched a hand towel from the surface and made my way to the front, cussing my attempt and muttering my very vexed defeat.
“It can’t be that bad, surely?” said the female customer, applying the break on her toddler’s stroller, while a little girl walking beside her released the side bar.
“I can assure you, it could be going much better,” I replied, forcing a smile. Got to love customer service. “What can I get you?”
“Mommy, can I have a chocolate one, pwweesssseee?”
“Choccy, choccy,” the little boy with a mass of blonde hair called from inside the stroller, reaching his arms out to the sparse display of already decorated sweets.
From beneath the counter, I took a box and, muttering my silent thanks that Laurie saved my ass, having already prepared a batch, strolled to the display counter, setting three chocolate cupcakes topped with a sprinkling of vanilla balls, into the box.
“That’ll be four dollars and fifty cents, please.”
After I rung it up on the cash register and she tendered the money, she headed for the door. I was standing behind the counter still unable to move as the woman and her children came to a pause just outside the window. I watched the little boy twist in his seat to look back at his mother, his arms reaching up as he whined while she fiddled with the box.
The boy’s eyes brightened when he finally got his tiny, kindergarten hands on the cake. He looked at it like a poor man would look at a million dollars and in that moment, although I wasn’t the one to create that little piece of heaven sitting between his tiny hands, it filled me with appreciation knowing that I could do it––knowing that those smiles could be drawn from my latent abilities.
A high-pitched shrill noise startled me when I reluctantly began heading back to tackle the thirty-odd naked cakes that still needed frosting. I turned to the source only to see the little boy pointing to the dismantled pile of crumbs on the paving slabs with tears streaming down his face.
Rushing around the counter, I tore another chocolate cake from the display and stepped into the warm sunshine.
“Hey, little man. Did you drop your cake?” I knelt down in front of him while his mother apologized from behind the stroller, her hands in her hair looking somewhat warn. “It’s alright, no need for apologies, these things happen.” I looked back at the screaming toddler and whipped my arm from behind my back. The flow of tears stopped immediately as soon as my offering came into his focus. “How about you have another one?”
“Choccy cake, choccy cake,” he laughed.
“Hold it tightly,” I told him as he took it from my hand, and instantly brought it to his face, totally uncaring of the frosting coating his little button nose and chubby cheeks.
“You must be a great mom.”
“Me? Oh, no. I don’t have children.” I reared up and lightly brushed my fingers through the boy’s hair.
“They’re hard work but my God it’s a blessing,” she told me. Yet, I had never felt so blessed that I hadn’t had any. “Anyway, thank you so much, how much do I owe you?” she dug for her purse.
“No need. It’s on me.”
“Thank you,” she sighed.
“You’re welcome.”
A little hand came from inside the stroller and waved at me, his face covered in chocolate as he called, “Bye, choccy cake lady.”
I waved back, calling, “Bye, little man,” before heading back inside and tackling those God forsaken cakes.
Isn’t it amazing how quick time flies when you repeat one action over and over and get absolutely nowhere? I looked down at the hideous creation in front of me and growled in contempt. Stupid fucking cake… the uneven swirl of yellow frosting was stripped off the top, and shoveled into what was an empty bowl forty minutes ago. Now it held enough frosting to coat a double-tier masterpiece, of that I could be certain.
I was retracting my tongue from my lower lip, straightening my posture and examined the latest target of my trial and error with a sigh. I felt a familiar presence peeking over my shoulder. “Not bad for a first effort,” Laurie nodded.
Ripping my focus from the murder scene in front of me, I gaped at her far too bubbly expression. “First effort? I had to get a new bowl to scoop off my mistakes. If you don’t believe me, here’s the proof,” I hissed, grabbing the rim of the mixing bowl and waving it around in the air before dropping it back to the metal table with a clash. “I remember how but I can’t get it…Why do I fucking bother?” The cool steel of the table under my hands supported my hunched stance.
“Hey,” I felt her encouraging hands squeezing my shoulders, urging me to face her. I did so, and was immediately attacked by, “Stop with the dying fly bullshit. You can do it, it’s just everything up in that head of yours is a little muddled. It’s trial and error––”
“No shit,” I scoffed.
“Now, stop overthinking, and try again.” She turned me back to face my table of sponge victims, and with a deep cleansing breath, I steadied my nerves and tried again.
“Did you have any problems while I was out?”
“No, but I owe for a cupcake.”
“Huh?”
“A little boy dropped his cake outside so I gave him another one. It had me thinking actually.” I licked my lip then rested my tongue against it again.
“Oh? About what?”
“How lucky I am.” When I was answered with silence, I wrenched my attention from the task at hand and looked at Laurie. Her eyebrows arched and eyes wide. “Don’t look at me like that,” I cautioned before going back to work. “Things could have been so much worse.”
“He beat you, he controlled you, from what you know he had a yearlong affair, which God only knows how long it was truly going on behind your back, he drugged you, made you question your own sanity…please remind me again how that could have been worse.” At that moment, I was thankful that she was completely oblivious as to him being the reason I ended up in the coma. That really would have been the icing on the cake.
I stop instantly and looked up to the petite woman on the opposite side of the table solemnly. “We could have had children. Laurie, we could have brought children into this fucked up life and I know that this is going to sound selfish, but I really would have been tethered to him for life. At this point in time, the only thing tethering me to him is this place. So, I was thinking about seeing a lawyer, see where we stand.”
“Excuse me for my crudeness but, when you’re shitting that much money, mind shitting some for me, too? I could use a new TV.”
Rolling my eyes and shaking my head with a smile, my tongue hit the roof of my mouth. “Shut up. I can always ask my dad. He’s helped Brittany out a million times.”
“Have you spoken to any of them since…?”
When
you’ve been isolated from your family for so long, how do you know when the right time is to contact them? I accused them all of lying and not caring about my condition when I came to, but it was the Master of Manipulation that had set the wheels in motion. It seemed as though the entire world knew what I was going through before I did, and deep down in a place I didn’t want to admit, I knew I feared my own family saying, ‘I told you so’, or even worse: blaming me for our dissolved relationship because I never fought back.
“Nope. Anyway, enough of that. Lighter topic please.”
“What are you doing Saturday night?”
“No idea, why?”
“Well,” she drew out the word like she was about to free the secrets on how to part the sea, scheming, her fingertips were tapped together. “Carriag is organizing a small get-together at McGinty’s for Walker’s birthday.”
“His birthday? I had no idea…”
“You wouldn’t. He hasn’t celebrated it in years.”
That sounded very sad. “Why not?”
When I caught the tail-end of a barely audible sigh, I peeked up. A shadow of a wistful smile was cast across her face. “Because another year older means another year without Rosaleen. Anyway, Carriag seems to think that this year will be different––”
“How so?”
“Because he has you. So, without spilling the beans, is there any chance you could coax him out Saturday night?”
My mouth was suddenly dry. I licked my lips. “Sure. I mean, I’ll try. I have no idea what to get him though. Oh, what about that band he likes? Have they got a new CD out?”
“Kady, trust me,” I pulled my back up straight and was met by her petite form rounding the work surface. She tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and pinned me with a thoughtful gaze. “He’ll be happy waking up next to someone who he loves, and who loves him equally as fierce.”
I was nodding when she faintly motioned her head to the table with a crooked grin. I peeked down and the weight passed through my hip. “Well, look at that,” I muttered in amazement, staring at a row of eight perfectly frosted cupcakes sitting before me.
