Pieces of Eight

by Whitney Barbetti

  16

  I didn’t know what I expected, but I knew for sure that it wasn’t for him to turn around and look at me that Six way. The way that made me a little breathless, a little weak. “I loved you when I pushed you away. I loved you the night you caught me in your yard.”

  “Our yard,” he quietly corrected. “The night you eviscerated the realtor’s sign.”

  “Yes. And I ran because I couldn’t handle that love. I was grieving the two biggest fucking losses in my life. I didn’t have the understanding that I do now.” The understanding that had just come to me, in looking at him in this dark alleyway.

  “What understanding is that?”

  “That I didn’t fight. For you, for us. In that hospital room, I didn’t do the one thing you asked me to do; I gave up.”

  I curled my hand around my collar and pulled my shirt down just enough so he could see the backwards letters of my tattoo. But in the dark, with the moon at my back, I knew they were hard to see, so I came closer, close enough that I could feel his warm breath on my skin, blowing across the letters he’d inspired.

  I could almost feel it, the way he’d loved me well and completely. Like a blanket of comfort overtaking me. I longed for it, for him, so deeply I would’ve been surprised if he couldn’t see it reflected in my eyes.

  “Fight,” he said, meeting my eyes.

  “I got it a few days after we separated.”

  “It’s backwards.”

  It was also over my heart. “Because it’s for me. So, when I look in the mirror, I see it as clearly as I see myself.”

  Briefly, all too briefly, he touched the tattoo. When he pulled his hand away, it was as if he had taken something from me too.

  It had been three years since I’d left him, but he’d never really left me.

  “What are we doing, Mira?” he asked. His voice was quiet even though we were alone.

  “I don’t know. I just know that I can’t stop thinking about you. Even when you hurt me, even when I found out you’d been keeping this secret from me for more than a decade, I still couldn’t stop thinking about you.” I pressed my hands over my eyes, stifling whatever tears could come. “I hate you and I love you in the same breath, and I’m not sure what to do about that.”

  “There’s nothing to do about it,” he said softly.

  “Because of Victoria.”

  “Because of us.” He pulled my hands from my face and I didn’t resist, wanting to soak it in as long as I could, his hold on me. That hold had been emotional for the last three years, and having it physical now revived the part of me that hurt the most. “I loved you, Mira. God, I loved you. But I worry that I caused you more pain than necessary.”

  “You helped me heal, Six. Where my mother broke me, you’d filled. When I saw my mom again, I didn’t think about how she’d lacked as a mother, I didn’t dwell on it like I dwell on everything else. You told me once that the deeper one hurts, the deeper they love. I get that now.”

  He let go of my wrists, but didn’t move away from me.

  I whispered the fear I often had, the fear that was even more present with the inclusion of Six’s fiancée in my life. “I just wanted to be enough for you. And I know that I couldn’t be.”

  “You always were.”

  I swore I could’ve heard a pin drop from a mile away in the ensuing silence after his admission. “I don’t know if I’ll ever believe that.”

  “Look, I lied to you about the night we met. Yes, I went to that bar to check on you. Yes, you were a job. And then you puked on my shoes after snorting bad blow and wouldn’t take a cigarette from me because you didn’t trust me.” His smile spread in the dark. “But then you got into my car without knowing my name—that’s where you and I started. Over greasy breakfasts,” he lowered his voice and his eyes flicked to my mouth, “and when you tried to kiss me at your door.”

  “But you had me help you on the job with my mom’s husband. Clay.” It was hard still, to reconcile that he was my stepdad. But considering my lack of relationship with my mother, I couldn’t think of him in a fatherly way anyway.

  “That was a mistake. I needed help, yes, but I was mistaken in thinking you might’ve liked knowing you’d nailed your mom’s cheating husband. I didn’t know, Mira, about the depth of your issues with your mom. I never would’ve had you help me otherwise.”

  “She’s still with him, so I guess what we did wasn’t enough to push her away from him anyway.”

  “I think she just wanted to know, one way or another. The paranoia was killing her.”

  I could relate. My mother had given me a healthy dose of mental issues when she’d decided to give birth to me.

  “I want you to know, she tried to hire me later on, in the future, to seek you out. Especially when you went more than a year without speaking to her.”

  I blinked, remembering when he’d told me the police were looking for me, thanks to mommy dearest. And he hadn’t taken her job offer, so she’d resorted to seeking out the police for me.

  There were a million other questions I had for him, but the heavy air had been sucked from us. Things weren’t so hard anymore.

  “What are you doing on this side of town, anyway?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You live on the other side of the city.” He gestured south with his neck.

  I kicked some dirt by my Nike’s, keeping my face obscured from his view. “How do you know?”

  “I didn’t; you just confirmed my suspicion.”

  I lifted my head. “Yeah, well I guess I should get back to it.” I tucked my hands in my sweater and turned.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  I stalled, the words bringing me back to when he’d first asked this, while I stood under a streetlamp and smoked. I was so different from that woman, in so many ways, but I was also still the same.

  My answer came just as quickly as the first time he’d asked me. “Sure.”

  I followed him in silence. I was struck by how different and how very similar this was from the first time I’d followed him to his car. In thirteen years, I’d gone from an addict to a sober woman, my clothing had gone from crazy to … well, less crazy.

  And Six still wore leather, but what was under the leather was different. Before it’d been casual, and now it was business. I wondered what was under the cotton and leather, under skin and bone. Was he still the same person at his core? He’d said he loved me in past tense. I’d said I loved him in the present. And yet, it hadn’t changed anything. He was still with Victoria. And he was taking me to a home that didn’t belong to him.

  The walk back took longer and was heavy with silence. I wanted a peek inside his head, to see what he was thinking. Was he falling back to the moment thirteen years ago, as I was? Did he see me the way he had then?

  When we made it back to the street Victoria’s apartment was on, I spotted his black Camaro immediately. I paused a second, looking at that car. A hundred memories flitted through my brain, and I shoved them all back. I lifted my head to see Six staring at me over the hood. He didn’t open the door for me this time.

  “Are you going to get in?” he bit off. It was like he’d offered a ride but hadn’t actually expected me to take him up on it. Something was swirling behind his mossy irises, a storm that would soon flatten us both.

  I pulled the door open and plopped onto the seat, tugging the seatbelt on a second later. “Do you know where Brooke’s house is?”

  Instead of answering, Six pulled the car out onto the road and revved his engine. Okay, so talking wasn’t going to happen—he was clearly too frustrated to engage in talking.

  I relaxed into the leather and watched his hand maneuver the gear shift, watched as he turned the steering wheel with the flat side of his palm. What was it about watching a man operate something meant for two hands with just one that made a woman feel desire thick and heavy? And why couldn’t I shut it the fuck off?

  “What have you been doing with your life?”
I asked, breaking the silence between us.

  His eyes slid across the dark interior of the car to glance at me. “Are you for real?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Sure. What’s new?”

  He reached forward and turned up the volume. Where I’d felt some kind of relief after our little alleyway revelation, he seemed to feel conflicted.

  I surprised us both by slapping the volume button, thrusting us into silence. “It’s been three years, Six.”

  “I don’t really go by that name anymore,” he murmured. He switched lanes and sped up.

  “You don’t really expect me to call you William, do you?” I’d said it at the gallery, but I hadn’t meant it. He’d never be William to me.

  “I don’t expect you to call me anything.” He reached to turn up the music and I slapped his hand away. Whipping his head to face me, he glared. “I didn’t follow you, I didn’t interrupt your life to wreak havoc. I didn’t give my number to your fiancé.”

  “Because I don’t have a fiancé.” I placed my hands in my lap, my fingers clasped together. “I’m alone.”

  Just then, my phone rang. Six stilled instantly, knuckles gripping the steering wheel. I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit ignore again on my mother’s call.

  “Alone, huh?”

  “Yup.” I put the phone back in my pocket. “I’m alone.”

  “Well, good for you.” He switched lanes again and sped up. “I’m not, so your presence is completely inappropriate.”

  “Yo,” I began. “What gives? You’re the one who asked if I wanted a ride.”

  At a traffic light he slowed and closed his eyes. “I apologize,” he said stiffly. “You’re right. But don’t follow me around the city again, okay?”

  “You do realize that you telling me not to do something is practically like giving me an invitation to do it?”

  “Jesus.” His jaw clenched and I could feel the tension coming off of him in waves. “I’m asking you not to. I have a fiancée, Mira.”

  “Really?” I angled my body in the seat to face him more fully. “Don’t tell me she’s what you want. Because she isn’t, Six.” It was false bravado, fueled by the nagging fact that he’d loved me in past tense. “She’s not it for you.”

  His fist came down on his steering wheel and he pulled the car to the curb and threw the gear into park. “One, do not try to tell me what I want, or, rather, who I want. You have no right to my life, not after you so callously cut me from yours. God damn it!” His hand went to his head, brushing hair from his brow. “Three years, Mira. Three motherfucking years. You don’t know who I’ve become.” He leaned closer and held up two fingers. “Two, do not call me Six. Just don’t.”

  “The people who need you call you Six.” He’d told me himself once, in what felt like a lifetime ago.

  His eyebrows drew together. “You do not need me. You proved how little you needed me three years ago, Mira, so knock it the fuck off.” His words were crisp, but underneath roared unspent anger.

  “Does she love you as much as I do?”

  He shook his head, but it wasn’t in answer to my question, which he didn’t answer anyway. “I love Victoria.”

  Something slipped between my ribs and stabbed into my heart. “I would assume you did, since you’re marrying her.” It was bitter on my tongue, so I spat it at him.

  Understanding spread across his face, softening the wrinkles of his brow. “Are you pissed that I wouldn’t marry you?”

  This would quickly veer into dangerous territory, I knew; like throwing water on a grease fire. And my first sane thought of the night materialized then. “I think you should drive me home now, thank you.”

  After thirty minutes of silence, Six pulled up to Brooke’s house. This time, unlike the first time he’d driven me home, I climbed out as fast as he’d parked the car and hurried up the sidewalk to the front door. I heard him following behind me, so my pace quickened along with my heart rate.

  When I finally made it to the door, my shaking fingers nearly dropped my keys as I slid them into the lock, turning it counterclockwise. I ran inside, not bothering to shut the door behind me. I turned around when I heard him follow me inside and stared at Six in the doorway of Brooke’s house.

  What the hell was he doing? I’d imagined him in that doorway dozens of times, with countless reasons. There were no reasons for him to be here now, staring at me as if he couldn’t figure out what the hell to do with me.

  “Do you want something to drink?” I asked. I wanted to smack my own self in the face for asking, but surprisingly he nodded yes and walked another step in, closing the door behind him.

  I spun around, sliding into my kitchen and pulling open a cupboard. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him take a seat at the table in my tiny dining area. He stared intently at the table, running his fingers over it. It wasn’t the table he’d built. It was something else. I wondered what he thought about that. Mira having a table—okay, it was Brooke’s, but still—like a civilized human.

  “Whiskey okay?” I asked, facing him and leaning a hip against the counter.

  He turned his head to me, narrowed his eyes. In the muted light of the kitchen, all I saw were shadows in his face, hiding his eyes from view. “You’re sober,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Maybe I like to keep alcohol around to taunt myself.”

  I saw a tick in his jaw as he took that in. “That would be something you’d do, that’s for sure.” His eyes traveled the length of my body. “Water is fine.”

  “Good, because I don’t keep whiskey around.” I bit my lip to keep from smiling, flipping on the water and grabbing ice cubes from the freezer.

  Six got up and walked into the kitchen as I filled his cup. I didn’t meet his eyes, just handed him the glass and backed away with my own.

  He peered at the fish bowl above my sink. “Henry?”

  I nodded. “The Fourteenth.”

  Six glanced at me. “Only the Fourteenth?”

  I held up a hand, my palm up like I was a gameshow model showing off a brand new car. “I feed him when I feed myself now.”

  Six turned fully, leaning against the sink. “And is that more often now?”

  Sipping my water, I shrugged. “I wouldn’t call it three square meals a day, but I do okay.”

  “You look better,” he said, his voice quiet. His eyes were warm, but his lips were clamped shut.

  “People change,” was all I replied.

  “Hm.” He sipped his water, leaning his head back and exposing his chin. I watched his Adam’s apple bob in his neck and felt the air around me warm by ten degrees. I moved away from him and to the table.

  “And Griffin?”

  “She’s probably asleep on the back porch.” I leaned back in the chair, tipping so I was on its back legs. “She’s passed out.”

  He stepped over to the door, looking out at the lug of black fur that was curled up in a corner. “She still good?” he asked.

  “She’s getting older,” I said. “She doesn’t go on too many walks now.”

  He looked around, taking in the oddball things that had defined the life I lived here with Brooke and Norah. Brooke’s paint kits on the kitchen counter, Norah’s homework on the fridge. “Where are they?” he asked.

  “They’re gone for the weekend, visiting her boyfriend’s family.”

  Six set his glass in the sink. I read a lot into that, assuming he’d be leaving soon. Instead, he walked into the living area and stood in front of my painting. It was a life preserver, something I’d drawn and painted after thinking of Six. All my paintings were inspired in some way by him, the bastard.

  I hadn’t added words to it yet, but I knew I would soon.

  “Do you sail now?”

  The question threw me off guard. “What?”

  “I’m wondering about the life preserver.”

  I fidgeted in my seat. “You’re looking at it wrong.”

  He looked at me over his shoulder. “And how should
I be looking at it?”

  I debated with myself for a full ten seconds before I told him. “When someone is drowning, you throw them a life preserver.” Six didn’t turn, still looking at me over his shoulder. I swallowed a sip of water. “But it’s up to them to reach for rescue.”

  His eyes weren’t as guarded now, and I saw in them what I expected. Six had been my life preserver. And I’d pushed him away a hundred times.

  “Is that what your tattoo is about?”

  “Which one?”

  “‘No one saves us but ourselves.’ That one.”

  I’d told Victoria it was from a song when she’d asked. But Six must have known the truth. “I guess so.”

  He was quiet a moment before turning around. “So you’re no longer ruled by emotion?”

  I laughed then, long and hard. “I’m hardly perfect. But I try to apply more logic than emotion when I make decisions.”

  He seemed to take that in, nodding his head slowly. “It’s hard to reconcile the Mira I knew: impulsive, explosive, passionate, unruly, unpredictable with…” he gestured his hand to me, “this Mira. A Mira who feeds herself, her fish, who has a steady job. You have furniture, and nothing looks broken.”

  As his words slid over me, my knuckles clenched on the table. Nothing looked broken? He didn’t see me then. Six wasn’t the Six who saw me before, the Six of my memories, the Six who’d made me hurt and love and who’d loved me. My scars may have healed, but that didn’t make me any less broken, any less fucked up. My heart clenched.

  I’m still passionate.

  And impulsive.

  And unpredictable.

  “Most of the furniture is Brooke’s, though.”

  “Do you still have the table?”

  Instinctively, I looked upstairs and he followed my gaze. I didn’t have to answer that one in words.

  He touched the bottom of the life preserver, feeling the different texture of the paint.

  I’d spent three years without him. Three years rebuilding my life, three years of heartache and now here he was, in the flesh, touching things I’d touched with him in mind, breathing the air that had seemed to grow stale in his absence.