by Lila Felix
“I just told my psychologist off. I’m done with all that.”
Silence is my answer until she decides what to say. “Is that a good thing?”
“Hell, yes. I hate that woman.”
“Well, I don’t hate Knox, but he’s dismissed me in counseling as well. I’m just a regular old friend now.”
I’m not an idiot. I know this is just the beginning for us.
“I’ve decided something.” I announce it like I’ve given it a lot of thought, which I haven’t.
“Do tell.”
“I want to have fun with you. I feel like we missed all of the fun, awkward dating stuff. We need that. I know you said you wouldn’t date me, but I think we have to.”
Aysa giggles over the line and I’ve won a tiny battle.
“This is not really the fun I had in mind.”
I choke on my milkshake. “I’m sorry?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter. I thought we’d go to the movies or something.”
If she knew how she looked, swinging on that faithful swing with a milkshake in her hand, sipping away, the perfect blend of vixen and innocent, she would understand.
If she could see herself from my point of view, she’d see heaven. The sun made her hair radiant. When it blows in her face, it teases me, making me want to reach out and tame it. There is a drop of chocolate on the corner of her mouth. I hope she doesn’t notice and lick it off.
Because I have every intention of doing that myself.
“I can’t see you or talk to you in the movies.”
“If you’re not going to swing, at least come push me. You’re just sitting there.”
This is what I want with her—easy, calm, and complete joy.
It’s what she deserves.
It’s what I deserve.
I think that’s the first time I admit that I deserve something other than pain and punishment.
Take that devil woman.
“I have to go home soon. Ariel is coming over. She said she bought some clothes for me.”
“Why is she buying clothes for you?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s the only way she knows to have a relationship with me. And I don’t mind. Do you—do you want to meet her?”
“Do you want me to meet her?”
“Yeah, that’s part of this, don’t you think? If you’re going to be in my life, you have to meet my family.”
I suppose that’s was what normal men do. They are brave enough to meet the family of the girl they love.
“Of course. I’ll go home and change and meet you at your apartment. Is that okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
I stop her swinging with my hands on the chains. “Don’t thank me for doing the things I need to. I’ll get a big head.”
“Oh please. I’m surprised you can get that thing through a door.”
“I am pretty hot.”
Tingles run the length of my spine when she laughs at that one. The sound is déjà vu at its finest. I remember the first time I heard her really laugh. I may have fallen in love with her at that point. Truth be told, I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t in love with her.
I think a little bit of me was in love with her the first time she spoke to me.
I could wake up to that voice for the rest of my life.
I want to wake up to that voice for the rest of my life.
“I love your laugh.”
She bows her head, still uncomfortable with my admiration.
“Let’s go. Ariel gets antsy when I’m late.”
I drop her off at her apartment and go home to shower and change. Roman leaves me a note, telling me that he’s taking overtime at work.
That’s what guys do, I suppose. When we are upset, we work harder, run more, whatever it takes to relieve our minds of the pain.
I don’t even get the chance to knock on the door. A girl that looks similar to Aysa, only in stature and grace, flings the door open and stares at me.
“You’re him? Good Lord, she didn’t do you justice. Come in. She’s trying on a dress that she hates.”
I go in and shut the door behind me. “Why is she trying on a dress that she hates?”
“Because I always bring one thing that I think she’s too scared to actually wear. It’s our deal.” She knocks on the door to Aysa’s bedroom, but doesn’t make a move to go in. “Aysa, sister of mine, if this is the guy you were talking about, you were right. He is gorgeous and a half.” Even through the space between us, I know, instinctively, that Aysa is blushing. “I’d wait seven years for him.”
She refers to the seven months we’d been apart.
I never once can escape being a jackass for very long.
“Shut up, Ariel.”
“I’m going to keep on going until you come out with that dress on.”
“It’s too tight!”
“No it’s not.”
“It’s too—red. I look like I’m scouting for business of the red light district kind.”
“Oh come on, don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s the perfect red. Ezra agrees with me.”
I do no such thing, but I want to see the dress, so I don’t refute it.
The door to Aysa’s bedroom flies open and everything about her posture reads ‘please don’t look at me’.
All I can do is look.
I don’t think I can look away, even if I try.
“Stop twisting your feet like that and take your hands off of your face.”
Twisting her feet and shielding her face was the only hiding she was capable of in that dress. Two wide straps came down from her shoulders and barely covered what needed to be, leaving the space along her sternum exposed. And the color—it is blood red and rightfully so.
She is in my very veins.
I feel myself revolve around her—always have.
I don’t bother speaking to her from across the room. She’s already embarrassed. I stalk over to her and she relents to my touch, pulling her hands down and weaving my fingers with hers. I speak to her with my cheek against hers, my mouth moving against the rim of her ear.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and that dress just proves it to everyone. It’s just me and your sister. There’s no hiding allowed here.”
I feel her deflate with a long breath.
I’ve freed her with just my voice.
Now I’m sure my head will never fit through the door again.
“Thank you.”
With her fists in my shirt, she holds me to her for a few minutes. It’s a heady thing for the woman I love to still need me after everything I’ve done to her.
“It’s okay to let go. You know I’ll be right back if you need me.”
She nods.
And let go.
Because she knows that I’ll never be far away—ever again.
“It’s a keeper.” Ariel determines after the hiding is over and I wholeheartedly agree.
The parade goes on for hours. Ariel demands she try things on and she opens the door, we praise her, and she changes again.
The girl can put on a burlap coffee sack and look good.
“This is the last one.” Knowing it is the last outfit she has to model gives Aysa a little bit of confidence. She strides into the living room and puts on a show. It’s too bad it took ten or so outfits to get comfortable.
“Okay, time for me to go. Keep those outfits and the red dress and all of the shoes.”
They hug and thank each other, promising next time not to have me around for girl time.
“Ezra, it was nice meeting you. I hope one day someone looks at me the way you look at her.”
And with that, we are alone again.
She chooses to wear the last dress. I hear her in the kitchen, putting a kettle on to boil.
“What are you thinking?”
“She said she likes you.”
“That’s a good thing, I hope.”
“It is.”
It is all
I could do not to approach her and kiss the hell out of her pouty lips. I will wait for her this time. Everything has to be about her.
“Ezra?”
“Yeah?”
“What would you say if I told you I needed some time to myself?”
“You need me to leave?”
I don’t really want to, but I understand. Everyone needs time to themselves every once in a while.
“No. Not right now. I was just…”
Then I get it. It hits me. I’d heard Roman on the phone with someone, complaining that Aysa needed time to herself and he said the words in a condescending tone. He didn’t understand it.
I do.
And she is testing me.
Seeing if I was like him.
I deserve to be tested.
“Sweetheart, if you need to be alone or just want some time to do whatever you do, let me know. We all need downtime. Though, I’d rather you spent your downtime with me.”
That should do it.
“You can do the same, you know. I don’t want you to think you’ll hurt my feelings.”
“Deal.”
“Anything else you need to know?”
“Tell me about Gray.”
Shit. Shit. Double shit and fuck.
That one I don’t see coming. She doesn’t say anything else. I intend to do this right and tell her everything. But I have to be able to look at her face while I do.
I can tell everything by looking at that girl’s face.
She comes in a few minutes later, stirring her tea.
“I forgot how to do this.” She smiles, while ticking her eyes back and forth from the couch to her chair.
“Just make it a rule to sit as close to me as possible.”
“That sounds like a good rule.”
The air around us carries a tone of understanding. I take it as a push to go ahead and lay it all out for her.
Because the truth sometimes hurts, but lies slit your throat and leave you to bleed alone.
“Gray moved out. You know that. She was, is so messed up. I don’t keep up with her. She texts and calls all the time, but I don’t respond—not even a word. I thought about changing my number, but I thought if you called and couldn’t get me. Anyway, Roman says she’s living in Shreveport and getting some help.”
I see her jaw grind through the information. She plays with the bag in her tea cup and then puts her feet in my lap.
“I’m glad she’s getting help. And I’m even happier that she’s away from you.”
“Did I ever apologize for that?”
“You didn’t need to. It wasn’t your fault.”
“But you knew something was up and you didn’t tell me.” Her silence says it all. But this is our chance, our chance to seal in the cracks, to fill in the holes. “I need to know where it all went wrong.”
She braces her cup in her hands a little tighter. “I knew something was up that time she took me shopping.”
“Why? What did she say?”
“She asked me—she wanted to know—if we’d slept together. But then I remembered that I hadn’t ever really had good girlfriends, and I thought maybe that’s what girls talk about. But, of course we hadn’t, so there wasn’t much to tell her. I thought that was the end of it. And then there was the night you brought home the drums.”
My breath catches in my throat. That was the night I spent in Aysa’s bed. That was the night I knew that no matter what, I had to be who Aysa needed me to be.
That was the night before I lost her.
“You asked me to spend the night.”
“I thought it might be the last night I would ever get to spend with you. Hell, the way Gray got in my face, I questioned whether or not I would be breathing in the weeks to come.”
I don’t try to hide my cringe at her cussing, light of a word as it was.
Plus, hell is a legitimate place. I’ve been there. Gotten all the post cards.
“I wish you would’ve told me.”
She cracks her neck back and forth. “I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I did in the beginning.” She wants to go on. Something stops her. Just as I’m about to inquire, she forms her lips into a perfect o and blows out the gentlest of cleansing breaths.
It is as though everything she did was angelic.
Except the cussing.
That has to go.
It negates everything about her.
“Roman started updating me about how you were doing. And then I realized that even if I never saw you again, that maybe in some small way, I helped you.”
Help.
Such a small word for the life-changing tilt Aysa’s presence had on my life.
“Sweetheart, you changed me. Not just my life and the way I was living it. Something shifted the moment you whispered your name to me. Like you reached in and set my gears back in motion.”
She fiddles with the necklace hanging down just above the cusp of her breasts. There are several jewels in it that glimmer green to match her eyes.
“You like it?” I nod in the direction of the box.
“It was my vice for so long and now I can’t remember what it felt like before I wore it.”
“Your vice?”
The last thing I wanted her Christmas present to be was a vice for her.
I am a vice enough without adding to it.
I look at the tiny silver prayer box being caressed in her hands now and whatever flecks of vice it had are long gone.
“Did you read the prayer?”
“Of course. I added some of my own.”
I smirk. “It took me about ten minutes to get the damned thing folded small enough.”
“I had to take yours out to get mine in.”
My lack of response makes her laugh. She gets up and tiptoes to the next room. It is then I realize that this is one of her new habits.
Tiptoeing, like one of those babies just learning to walk.
She’s too adorable for her own good.
“Here.”
She hands me a frame. Inside it is my pitiful writing, scribbled on a miniscule piece of paper whose folds would make anyone think it was in an origami competition.
I pray for your joy.
Seeing it in a frame made me feel like such a loser.
“I keep it by my bed. That way I see it first thing in the morning.”
I’m so damned cool.
I try to subside the feeling that’s bellowing in my chest. But it’s a monster of its own and it can only be sated in one way.
One delicious, sinful way.
“Ezra, are you going to kiss me? Come on, I thought the framing thing was going to get me at least a kiss.”
“I was trying to wait.”
She ticks her head to the side in such a way that her aggravating hair falls in a curtain, hiding her from me—which was exactly her intention. Still hiding, just not so obvious about it.
“What did you have in mind?”
“A real date. No ghosts, mine, yours, or those belonging to anyone else. I pick you up. I make you laugh and blush. And you get to decide when it’s time to kiss me.”
“Are you going to make me wear the red dress?”
“I spent enough time making you do things you didn’t want to do. This is all you.”
“It’s a little bit you.”
“From now on, it’s us.”
Aysa
I don’t hear from Ezra for the next three days. Before he’d left my apartment, we decided to go out on Thursday night. Friday nights still belonged to Knox, which he thought was funny.
He can’t take me out on Fridays because his brother, the priest, has a standing date with me.
Sitting in the kitchen of the women’s college, logging visitors, I scrunch up my nose at the peace I feel.
I am a different person now. It sounds stupid, but it wasn’t until Ezra came back that I allowed myself to know it for sure.
I miss him—there was no doubt.
But that unholy obsession w
ith him clinging to my every thought is gone.
That preoccupation with what he is doing and who he is doing it with is forgotten.
I don’t have to ask him if he misses me—he does.
I don’t have to ask him if he loves me—he does.
It’s just a known.
Looking back down at the log book, I sigh. Mansfield was not a very big town and every school-aged kid and their parents have seen the house and everything it holds. Our profits are not keeping us in the black. Just the cost of the upkeep and minor expenses of the home I’d once wished was my own is three times the amount of the money it brought in.
The property taxes on the place are more than my rent for a year.
“Any change?”
My aunt managed to come into the house and sit next to me without my noticing. I’m that worried about this place.
“Not really. We had one high school group, but they cancelled last minute. All of that advertising and nothing.”
I took money out of my own account and had flyers made up. I’d put the damned things everywhere.
“I think they’re going to auction this place off now. I donated it to them and now they’re going to make a profit off of giving it to a stranger.”
As she speaks, she runs her hand across the battered table, home to many a greasy breakfast and hurried lunch.
“What can we do?”
A lone tears runs down her wrinkled face. “Nothing. Watch our history be taken over by some city people who don’t think it’s half as beautiful as we do. I’ve tried talking to them. I almost begged the mayor to do something. They’re hell bent on selling this place.”
I reach out, trying to soothe her with a holding hand. “I tried to take out a mortgage on it. They laughed at me. Especially since my employment is based on me not owning this place.”
We giggle together at the irony.
“How about a fundraiser? A party, right here at the college.”
“That would just delay the inevitable, Aysa, my dear.”
“Delay is better than finality, sometimes.”
“Sometimes. I will talk to the mayor, but I’m not sure if the town council will approve.”
“It’s the least we can do for Peg Leg.” I joke.
“He would be so angry with new tenants. They wouldn’t last a week. We have to try.”
“Yes. We do.”
~~
My phone rings at the stroke of midnight and I fumble around the side table, eyes still closed, wondering what emergency warrants a call.
