by A. R. Rivera
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Jake showed up twenty-five minutes after he got off work—a whopping nine minutes after the Foster left for her graveyard shift at the confection factory.
When I opened the front door, he was just climbing out of the van. I stepped out onto the porch wearing a bright yellow sundress. It wasn’t really my style, but Jake liked that the straps tied up on my shoulders. He was freshly showered and carrying two forty-ounce bottles of beer.
“Contributing to a minor?” I teased taking the sweating bottles from him when he reached the porch.
“That’s nothing new.” He tugged at the ties on my shoulders with his newly freed hands and smirked. “So, Austen’s home?”
Both of us turned to the curb out in front of the trailer, where Austen’s faded gold Mustang was so obviously parked. “Yup.”
“Damn.”
I put the beer in the fridge and stirred the sauce that was warming on the stove. As I plunked the spaghetti noodles into the pot of boiling water, the echoing riff of Rush’s Dreamline began drifting from the living room. I glanced back to see Jake moving from the Fosters stereo cabinet. My heart thundered at the sultry way he strolled towards me. It was slow and deliberately provocative the way he lifted the front of his shirt to touch his stomach.
“Honey, you cooked?” His dark grin made my insides melt.
“Oh yeah. You know me.” My sarcasm was obvious. I couldn’t do much beyond boiling water.
The Foster made the sauce after she got up that afternoon. I had already eaten with her and Austen, but I guessed that Jake would be hungry when he came over.
Jake crept up behind me, taking me by the waist, and kissing my neck and shoulders while I tried to prepare a plate for him.
“This foods gonna end up on the floor.” I sighed, leaning into his chest. The plate teetered.
Jake stepped back and eased into a dining chair at the small table in the kitchen. He said nothing, but slowly looked me up and down. I tried to focus on the food, but the heat he exuded had my blood blazing.
“Hey, man.” Austen greeted, appearing from the hallway.
Jake halted his visual groping, releasing me from the spell, and turned to greet my foster brother. I took advantage of the clarity and drizzled a little olive oil over the noodles, followed by a sprinkling of salt and pepper before hitting them with the sauce. It was the way his mom served it when I went over for dinner once. I remembered because it was odd to me that she kept the noodles separate. I’d never had it like that before.
Jake got a very goofy smile as I set the plate in front of him. Like his face was made of taffy, it softened and pulled further than I had ever seen.
I poured some beer in a glass and grabbed a napkin before setting them in front of him and taking my seat.
“You know how I like my spaghetti.” He set his napkin in his lap and started twirling his fork. “Thank you, baby.”
“You’re welcome.”
Austen was on the couch, folded over to tie his shoes.
“You want some beer?” Jake offered, nudging my arm.
“Nah, man. I’m leaving.” Austen got up and walked back towards his room. A minute later, he was back, standing in the mouth of the hallway, staring into the open kitchen at Jake and me. His car keys jingled in his hand.
Jake waived—his mouth full of food. Austen waived back and locked his stare on me. “I’ll be back in a while.” He turned towards the door then paused. “My mom’s not off until seven.”
Jakes eyes widened. “Seven in the morning?”
Austen kept his eyes on the door in front of him as he explained. “They got everybody pulling overtime for the next couple weeks.” With that, he stepped out the door.
“He’s still with that girl?”
“Sheila. Yeah.”
“Good for him.” Jake took his empty plate over to the sink and set it inside. “Come here,” Jake commanded, using that sexy, stern voice of his as he leaned against the counter.
I walked over, but not fast enough. Hooking the tie of my dress strap with his hand, Jake pulled me closer. When I leaned into him, he widened his stance, making his tall frame shorter than usual. I got up on my toes to kiss him as he set his arms around me. I felt every ridge and ripple of his lean body through his Ozzy t-shirt and sank my nose into the smooth cotton and inhaled. He always smelled so good.
“Did you tell Deanna?”
I almost laughed. “No.”
“Why not?”
I pulled back to look, alarmed by his suddenly wounded tone. Sure enough, his forehead was creased.
“What if she tries to stop me?”
He shook his head. “It’s not right. She’s been good to you, Angel. She’ll be worried. You need to tell her.”
All the air left my body. “What am I supposed to say? My boyfriend wants me to skip out on my graduation to follow him across state lines?”
“That’s a start, but you might also mention that I love you and how we’re in a committed relationship.” He slipped his hands into my hair, cradling my head. “I have every intention of taking care of you. I’ll be there with you, if you want. We can tell her together.”
“She’s going to say no. She doesn’t like me going to see you play. How do you think she’s going to react when I tell her I’m moving away with you?”
Jake sighed. “Angel. Think about it. What she says doesn’t matter. It’s the principle. If you and me are doing this, we’re doing it right. You have to give her the respect she deserves as the woman who took you in. You may not like what she thinks, but you have to let her voice it. Besides, she’s a reasonable person. She didn’t try to stop you from seeing me, did she?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Even though she doesn’t approve, because she understands she can’t control you like that.”
“But what if she doesn’t understand this time?”
“We can explain it to her. Baby, I can’t risk cops chasing me across the state. It’s bad PR.”
As soon as he said it, something clicked. “You talked to Pierce about me?”
He tightened his hold on my waist. “Of course I did. He’s trying hard to sign us and . . .”
I waited for him to finish. When he didn’t, I asked, “And?”
“And that scares the shit out of me.”
I looked up, touched his chin. “Scares? I thought you wanted it?”
“I shouldn’t be concerned about someone offering me fame and fortune on a silver platter?”
What he said caught up to me. “He tried to sign you already!’ I swatted at his arm, “Didn’t he?” Jake shrugged, as if the answer was obvious. “Did you turn him down?”
“No, but I haven’t agreed. I need to know more: what he’s about, what he can offer us. I’d be stupid to take him at his word.”
“So he’s pushing?”
“Kind of.” He took a hand from my hair and set it on the back of his neck, rubbing the stress. “I’m not comfortable with the contract. The way some of its’ worded. And it’s fucking huge, Angel. Pages and pages of legal bullshit. How am I supposed to understand what I’m signing? I told Pierce, I want to keep doing what I’m doing—I have to maintain our sound. I can’t sign something that will make me change. I can’t have a team of people putting their stamp on my music to dissect and sell. I have to do it my own way and they want me to sign it all away.”
I thought for a second. “So Max and Andrew . . . ?”
“He talked to them before me. I’m the hold-out.”
“Wow.” I thought over what that meant. He was living with two anxious, persistent, musicians who wanted exactly what Jake wanted. “He talked to them. Before you? And he knows you write the songs?”
“Of course.”
“Jake, there has gotta be other labels sniffing around.”
“I haven’t heard anything.”
“Well, there is a reason he’s pressuring you. You’re smart to wait. You need someone who understands contract law to mak
e sure you’re protected. How much does it cost to get someone to explain something like that?”
He sighed, setting his forehead on mine. “If it’s this much weight just being approached . . .” Tucking me into his chest, he breathed in my hair. “You’re the only one who gets it.”
I looked into his eyes and felt the words bubble up from the truest part of me. “I love you, Jake. I want what’s best for you. And I’m so happy that you asked me to go with you.” My hands stretched around his back.
“Are you kidding?” His hazel eyes smoldered like coals over his black t-shirt. “I can’t believe I had to ask.”
“What?”
His lips stretched a little, like he was trying to hold back a laugh. “Naturally, I assumed you were coming. I mean, why the hell would I go without you? But you never said anything and you started getting more headaches and acting weird. I wondered if it was because I didn’t come right out and say what I thought was obvious. Then, when you came by my job, I figured better to be safe than sorry.”
He dropped his hands, his forehead crinkled. “You were surprised, I could tell. Angel, why didn’t you know?” My lips trembled as he cupped my face. “Because you should know by now, baby.”
“Know what?”
“That I’d never leave you behind.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Hearing those words, watching them form on his lips, it was like being born again—they made everything new. I wasn’t being left behind. Jake considered my part in his life such a permanent thing, that my leaving with him was never in question. The two torturous words he fumbled were quieted and the threat of that guitar playing girl seemed ridiculous. His assumptions, the feelings that put them there in the first place, were the only thing that mattered.
My chest expanded, filling with a sensational high.
“I told you from the get-go.” He moved closer, touching the bridge of his nose to mine. “I won’t go anywhere you don’t want me to. Even if it breaks up my band,” Sweeping his lips gently over my mouth, he whispered. “Even if it breaks my heart, baby. You are more important to me than any of that shit.”
He covered my lips with his and picked me up, setting me on the kitchen counter. I stretched both arms around his neck and held him to me, deepening the kiss. My legs snaked around his waist.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered when his mouth moved to my neck. “I shouldn’t be so insecure. It’s just you said ‘Not—”
“No.” he pulled back, staring me in the eyes. “You shouldn’t be insecure. Because I want you.”
“I want you, too.”
A groan echoed from Jakes throat as I pressed closer; a wonderful humming that drove me crazy. Our mouths collided and the wonderful heat coursed through me. Little explosions of excitement rippled over my body as I wiggled to the edge of the counter top.
Jake picked me up and waltzed into the living room where he laid me on the carpeted floor and hovered above me. With a light tug, he untied a shoulder strap on my sundress. Promising, “I’m gonna give you rug burns.”
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23
—Avery
No one will ever sit me down and ask me questions the way they do with Angel. It’s her accounting of that night that everyone cares about. Like she’s the only one that can offer anything of substance.
I should be used to this by now. It shouldn’t matter.
But see, this time we’re serving has never been about just that one night. It’s about everything: every single second that has been wrapped up into what is my whole life. The tragedy of each and every preceding night that led up to the only one the system cares about.
No. It shouldn’t matter to me, but it does.
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“Just leave,” I screamed, slamming the passenger door. There were people all up and down the sidewalk staring at me, but I didn’t care.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to go alone.” He ran a hand over his short blonde hair, staring at the rearview mirror.
“I don’t need you, Troy.” Screw him and his pity.
Angel didn’t an invite. She was at home with a migraine and if I couldn’t have her, then I sure as hell wasn’t having Troy.
“I’m trying to take care of my responsibility, alright? How long is this gonna take?”
Shielding myself with my arms, I stepped away. “Rosa’s waiting.”
Ticking off the seconds in my head, I didn’t even get to five before his posture relaxed. He stared out at the road as his furrowed brow smoothed out. I wanted to puke, seeing how glad he was. Not another second passed before his Honda pulled into traffic.
Troy never looked back. Not once.
Usually, night was when I had the toughest time. That was when the quiet world screamed, so loud I couldn’t sleep. But watching him drive away, it was like everything that made me who I am faded a little more. Like, my very essence was no more than the dust behind his tires. I was an obligation, an afterthought, a miserable reflection in his rearview. Just a flat shape spread across the glass; not quite human. I was a passing deviant thought he’d already forgotten about. I was the snide remark he might think, but never say out loud because anyone within hearing distance would point. Surrounding conversations would be replaced with half-cocked eyebrows and whispers at my uttering.
Raw anger boiled in my stomach as images of that cocky bastard and all the ways I could make him sorry painted my thoughts. I was on the brink and it was only nine in the morning.
I took in a deep breath, curling my hands into fists. The only way to face what I had to do was to keep my head down and move. So that’s what I did. I put one foot in front of the other until I made it through the line of picketers into the controversial downtown building. I signed in with her name and took a seat.
Barely ten minutes later, I was getting escorted to a changing room. After putting on the hospital gown, one scrub-clad worker directed me to follow the next scrub-clad worker to a desk sitting in an open hallway. I sat down and held my arm out, palm up, as directed by the next person in scrubs.
The nurse jerked the bend from my elbow, stretching it along the length of the half-desk as the hall behind me filled with passing patients. The tourniquet was too tight.
“Why are you taking my blood?”
“It’s a standard check for disease. Make a fist.”
I did. The needle plunged in, quick and stinging. I would have jerked away if I wasn’t being held. The vial filled up quickly. Warm and red.
A string around the nurses’ neck had a card with her picture beside the name of the clinic. I tried to read it, but she kept moving; withdrawing to cap the needle.
“Go on down the hall to room three. A technician will be with you in a few minutes.” She didn’t even try to look me in the eye. Not once. The nurse knew the crease of my elbow better than my face.
I grabbed my pile of clothes from the floor near my feet. It cost a dollar for a locker, but I only had one dollar and needed it for bus fare. “Can I put my sweater on?”
Now the nurse looked at the goose pimples running up and down my arms. Not my face. “After the ultrasound.” The blades of her eyes cut back to the sticker on the side of the fresh tube of blood. “Angel, is there a last name?”
“No.”
She pointed with her pen. “Down the hall, to the right. Room three.”
The corridor was filling up with blank stares, waiting to get into the tiny lab chair to have their blood taken by a nurse who won’t look at them. Half the towns’ female populace must have been in there, but I did not recognize anyone, guessing that they came from another community. That was the smart thing to do if you wanted to make sure you didn’t run into anyone that might recognize you. But I already knew what people thought of me and I didn’t care.
At the other end of the hall, more girls walked with hunched postures. No one knew how difficult it was. No one wanted to. So, no one was asking, speaking softly, or even pretendi
ng to comfort us. We were cattle, lumbering through the course laid out for us; being herded from one station to another. And no one had sympathy for cows.
The hallway was covered in thin carpet, no padding. My socks, hanging loose over my feet, had slipped down during the herding. I stepped into them, shoving my cold toes a little further back in with each step on my way to the next room.
The term ‘family planning’ seemed ironic. Most the girls looked school age. Maybe some were drop-outs, but all of us were there. Together and alone. There were a couple of boyfriends in the waiting room, a mom or two, but none of them were in the back to witness the herding. They didn’t want to know how the meat got to the market.
I wondered what it was like to work in a place like that. To be that woman, the one who took the blood. She probably hit the snooze on her alarm a few times every morning because she didn’t want to get up—probably because she didn’t like her job.
I didn’t like her job, either.
I’d bet good money that Blood Lady would’ve preferred working in a cancer clinic—a ‘health planning’ clinic. I knew that the nurses in a place like that would be nicer than the ones I was seeing. The doctors, too. That’s why no one was smiling: none of us had cancer. We were going to keep living, wondering how we became the confused little shits who didn’t know we were choosing to be there the second we said yes to the Troy Bleechers’ of the world.
Such an asshole.
When I woke up afterward, I felt sick—misshapen—like they gave me the flu by tearing my insides out. The nearest nurse assured me that it was normal. She told me not to sit up, that I had to wait for at least twenty minutes. But that was not going to happen. I had to get up. I had to leave.
I made the nurse carry my clothes while I hung onto the wall, steadying myself along the corridor that led back to the dressing rooms, ignoring her protests. Once I was there, an old lady with an icy gaze handed me a huge pad: a giant diaper to catch the rest of my insides.
“Second stall,” the icy nurse pointed towards a swinging door.
