Make It Right

by Megan Erickson

  Nick sat on the couch, casted arm in his lap, wearing sweatpants, thick socks, and a thin white undershirt. “Hey you,” Lea said walking over to ruffle his hair. He looked up at her and she was pleased to see the bruises had faded so they weren’t as angry anymore.

  She held up the bag. “Got you a treat.”

  His eyes brightened and a smile flashed. “What am I, a dog?”

  “Have you been a good boy?”

  “I chased the mail truck and got hit by a car.”

  Trish sank down beside him and nudged his shoulder gently. “That’s not funny.”

  He nudged back. “Really? I thought it was. Lea’s the tiebreaker.”

  She scrunched her nose. “Not funny.”

  Nick huffed in exasperation. “I need a more diverse sample size.”

  Lea rolled her eyes. “Do you want your ice-cream sandwiches?”

  He stuck out his tongue and panted like a dog.

  Lea laughed and dropped the bag on his lap. “Here ya go, Rover.”

  He grinned as he dug into the box and ripped open a wrapper. He took a huge bite and moaned, his head falling onto the back of the couch. “So if I get beat up, it means ice cream delivery service.”

  “It’s not worth it,” Lea said.

  He wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, you’re right. Arm itches like a bitch.”

  “Bitches itch?” Trish said. “I never understood that saying.”

  “Well female dogs are bitches and—”

  “Enough with the dog stuff, Nick,” Lea threatened. “Or I take the sandwiches.”

  He glared at her as he took another bite and hunched over his box. But he stopped talking.

  “You need anything else?” Lea asked Trish. “I should have called before I left the store, but I saw these ice-cream sandwiches and grabbed them because they made me think of Nick.”

  “Nah, we’re good.” Trish smiled.

  “So you’re healing all right?” Lea asked.

  Nick shrugged. “I guess so. I got this cast for another month or so and it’s awkward as hell.”

  She hated to see him in pain and irritated. They’d been best friends as kids, playing cops and robbers in his parents’ treehouse.

  “I wish there was something I could do,” Lea said.

  Nick tapped his fingers on his knee. “You know, I was thinking about that, actually.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “What if you called Jackie and asked her to help you with some sort of self-defense class on campus?”

  Jackie Banner was Lea’s karate instructor. Lea had been a martial student of hers since she was five. She loved everything about it—the discipline, the feel of the crisp fabric of the gi on her skin, the firm commands of her instructor.

  And it was the one activity she could maintain after her injury. It focused her and she was able to participate and block out the pain in her leg with the moves, which were like instinct. Jackie also taught her how to alter them to relieve the muscles in her leg.

  She hadn’t been able to attend a class in years but she kept in contact with Jackie and visited her at the dojo sometimes.

  Lea hummed. “I guess it’s worth a shot. I’m sure once she hears about the assaults, she’d be willing to volunteer her time.”

  “I think it’s a unique situation. I mean, these are guys but they aren’t attacking just women. I think only one was a woman, right?”

  Trish nodded. “Yep, mid–thirties, in town.”

  “Right,” Nick said. “So these are a group of guys, attacking men and woman and, so far, this isn’t a sexual-assault situation. This is an I’m-going-to-beat-the-shit-out-of-you-and-steal-your-shit situation.”

  Lea’s mind whirled as she thought of all the ways she and Jackie could teach this class. “That’s a good point. We’ll have to make sure the class reflects this specific situation.”

  Nick picked at a loose thread in the couch cushion. “I mean, this is no joke. And I’m worried they’re gonna . . . take it too far and really hurt someone.”

  “You were really hurt—”

  Nick’s eyes shot up at Lea, his brow furrowed, blue eyes flashing. “Yeah, and I got away. What if someone else doesn’t get away?”

  Lea sucked her lips between her teeth because yes, she did know what he meant. She just didn’t want to think about it. Especially when she thought about that person being Nick.

  She didn’t talk about how much worse it could have been and Nick didn’t either, but she knew they were both thinking it. And she knew Trish was, too, because she practically trembled on the couch right now, looking at Nick with red, wet eyes.

  And then Nick broke eye contact with Lea and looked at his girlfriend. He smiled weakly. “Quit looking at me like that. Eat an ice-cream sandwich.”

  “But Nick—”

  “I’m here and you’re here and Lea’s here and it’s all okay.”

  Trish blinked rapidly.

  “Okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” Then she stood. “I’m going to run and grab a soda from the machine. You two want anything?”

  Lea and Nick shook their heads.

  When Trish left, Nick crumpled his wrapper. “Thanks again, for the treats.”

  “You did the same for me after . . . the accident.”

  Nick smiled and she did the same, remembering when he brought her packs of Starburst and she picked out the orange and pink, so he had to eat the yellow and red.

  His smile dimmed. “So, I want to talk to you about something. About Max.”

  His name sent a shiver down her spine and warmed her limbs. She’d never flirted like that in her life, joking about a cucumber’s girth. And the man was making treats for his cat. It warmed her inner cat-lady’s heart. Lea exhaled and focused on her cousin. “Look, Nick, he just offered me a ride—“

  Nick held up his hand, silencing her. “I know. I actually want to apologize for getting on your case about him. I . . . he’s not a bad guy. He gave you a ride to the hospital to see me and I have to give him credit for that. And I know you can handle yourself. In fact, if anyone can handle Max Payton, it’s probably you.”

  She pursed her lips, and thought about Max’s soothing voice, his blanket, his hand on the small of her back. The way he rambled on about making cat treats. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “Whatever, we’re just friends . . . I guess.”

  Nick nodded. “Okay, but I’m sorry. Because you’re right, people can change. Or they might not really be who we think they are.”

  LEA HADN’T BEEN home for five minutes from Nick’s place when her doorbell rang. She peered through the peephole and then laughed when staring back at her was the close-up of one big, dark eyeball.

  She opened the door. “Hey, Dad.”

  “La-la,” he said in greeting, leaning in to give her a wet kiss on the cheek, his ever-present stubble scratching her skin. His familiar aftershave conjured up sleepy nights in front of their fireplace, a half-finished blanket over her father’s knees as his crotchet hook flipped and twisted in a blur.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and soaked him in, love and comfort and safety in a five-foot-ten pudgy package. His nickname, bestowed on her when she called herself La-la as a toddler because she couldn’t pronounce Lea, settled her.

  He ran a hand down the sheet of hair on her back. “How’s my girl?” he said, his lips moving at her temple.

  She leaned back in his embrace. “Great, now that you decided to surprise me.”

  He hiked the nylon straps of his bulging cloth bag higher on his shoulder, then grabbed a grocery bag she hadn’t noticed from off her stoop. “Well, let me in, then. We’re letting the cold in.”

  She moved out of the way as he walked past her and shut the door of her townhome behind him. “So what’s the occasion?”

  “Just in the neighborhood. Thought I’d drop off some things. And I wanted to see your smiling face.”

  Lea ducked her head to hide her blush. There’d been years when sh
e was a teenager that she hadn’t smiled much. Answered her parents with grunts or rude answers. But thankfully, she’d outgrown the insecurities that came with her new body and mended her relationship with her parents. Her father never let her forget how grateful he was they were close again. “You don’t have to buy me groceries. I just went to the grocery store.”

  He dropped the bag on her island counter. “I know, but I worry my La-la doesn’t keep herself fed well. Look at you. So skinny.”

  “I’m not that skinny.”

  He sniffed and pulled out a pie. An entire shoofly pie. Her favorite.

  “Dad . . .”

  “Your mother said the ingredients were on sale.”

  “Oh really? Imagine that, just the ingredients for shoofly pie on sale.”

  His lips twitched.

  “You’re such a liar,” she said, opening up her flatware drawer to pull out utensils. She cut them each a generous slice, then she sat down on a stool at her island to eat. Her dad stood with his back to the counter, plate below his chin.

  As a kid, she’d fallen in love with the sweet, sugary Amish concoction when they visited relatives in Pennsylvania. The thick, wet molasses filler coated her tongue and the dry sugar topping clung to her lips. This pie was laughing cousins and napping under a maple tree and playing tag with two normal legs.

  And that’s when she realized the date.

  “Thank you for the pie, but you didn’t have to do this,” she said, the mass of calories now lying in her gut like sludge.

  He placed his plate on the counter. The fork clattered on the blue ceramic. “I know,” he said quietly. “But I also wanted to ask about Nick.”

  Her aunt and uncle had visited yesterday and wanted to take Nick home, but he’d refused, worried about getting behind on assignments.

  Lea cringed. “You guys are going to smother him.”

  “I know, but I told your aunt and uncle I’d at least check in.”

  Lea sighed. “I just left there, actually. He’s okay. In good spirits. And probably sick from eating all the ice-cream sandwiches I bought.”

  Her dad laughed. “He probably thinks they have magical healing powers.”

  Lea smiled.

  “So how are you with everything that happened?”

  Lea bit her lip and chasing a crumb around her plate. “I’m okay, I guess. It hurt to see him like that. And I’m just thankful it wasn’t worse.”

  She looked at her father, pleading silently to change the subject. She wanted to talk about something else. Because she wanted a reprieve before she was alone again, worrying over Nick.

  And as always, her dad understood her silence. He bent to his bag sitting at his feet and pulled out a blue-and-brown blanket, crocheted in a chevron pattern. “Here, this is to match your couch pillows.”

  She and Danica had had a great time shopping at Pier 1 to decorate their apartment, because they didn’t want it to look like just any college crash pad. Although Danica had tried to buy a pillow with a pattern that looked like a giant vulva.

  “Oh Dad,” she said, reaching out her hand to feel the worsted-weight yarn he always used, a mix of merino wool, mohair and silk. “I have like twenty blankets already.”

  “I know, but one can always use more blankets.”

  She laughed softly, cradling the softness and rubbing her chin over it. “True. This one is beautiful. I love the colors and pattern.” She hopped over her stool, landing none too gracefully on her bad leg, before walking to her couch and laying it over the back. She ran her fingers over the ridges as her father’s scent closed in behind her.

  “How do you feel?”

  That meant—how’s your leg? What’s your pain level? She should have known her father would make an unexpected visit on the anniversary of the day her body became less than perfect. But for years, he hadn’t been able to mention it, or get close to her, or give her blankets. She’d been an angry teenager. And she knew that he was grateful every day she’d come back from that and learned a little self-acceptance.

  But not happier than she.

  “I feel okay,” she answered noncommittally, knowing he’d let it go. “You want something to drink? Coffee?”

  He shook his head. “No, I want to sit down and talk with my daughter.”

  She sighed.

  “Oh, don’t act like it’s torture to talk to your father.”

  She rolled her eyes and rounded the couch to sit. Her father claimed a recliner nearby, rocking gently, each forward motion a squeak.

  “Your mother sends her love.”

  “Please tell her the same.”

  He paused. “So you were okay, going to the hospital?”

  He knew the sight of Nick injured would slay her.

  “It was okay. A friend offered me a ride, and he was really sweet about it.”

  Her father’s face cleared. “Oh?”

  “He lives with Kat’s boyfriend.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Lea hesitated. “Max Payton.”

  He furrowed his brow and tapped his chin, like he was searching his internal Rolodex.

  “Dad—”

  “Is he nice?”

  “I don’t—”

  “What’s his major?”

  “Um—”

  “I want to look out for you, especially after that”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“asshole Jason.”

  Lea rolled her eyes. First, because her father still couldn’t swear like a normal adult, and second, because he acted like a young man offering a ride was some form of courting. At least the name Jason barely made her wince anymore. Her dad opened his mouth again and as much as she loved her dad, she didn’t want to hear what he said next, so she held up a hand to cut him off.

  “He gave me a ride, Dad. That’s it. We’re not getting married or even dating. And I’m a big girl now. So even if I did decide to date him in some alternate universe, that’s my decision.”

  Her father blinked, wrinkled eyelids closing over wet eyes. Then he nodded. “You’re right as always, La-la. When did you get so wise?”

  “I’m not wise.”

  “Could have fooled me with all that talk, telling your old man what’s what.”

  “Your influence, Dad.”

  “Phsaw,” he said, waving her away, but his grin and red cheeks told her he was flattered.

  LEA SAT IN bed later that night, reading over her e-mail to Bruce Shaw. After talking with her dad about Nick, he’d agreed that volunteering to teach self defense classes was a great idea. So she’d called Jackie and they discussed the situation. Jackie was understandably angry and concerned about the assaults. She said she had some ideas on the best way to teach the class, and she’d be happy to do it as long as the school provided a room.

  So Lea composed an e-mail to the recreation-center director, proposing the class and asking to use a room. She hoped he’d be on board. She’d already designed some quick flyer examples to print out and paste around campus.

  Satisfied with the e-mail to Bruce, she clicked SEND. Hopefully, she and Jackie could help students be more aware of their surroundings and confident in the wake of these assaults.

  She asked for an assistant, though, someone she could practice on. She hoped Bruce had someone in mind.

  After she sent the e-mail, she leaned back on her pillows and stared at her ceiling. Her thoughts drifted to Max. The blanket he’d placed over her legs. The light in his eyes. The openness of his face as he gave her advice, no matter how misguided.

  The situation was so incongruous with what she thought of Max. He was just some arrogant jock who saw girls as disposable, right? The type of guy she stayed away from.

  She pulled up her pajama leg and ran her fingers over the scars on her left leg. There were several, which arched from mid-calf over her knee to mid-thigh. Glass and metal from a scrunched-up car don’t care about the soft tissue and blood and bones of the passengers inside.

  The scars and often-gnawing pain reminded h
er what happened when she let her trust override her sense.

  When she was thirteen, she’d been playing with Nick at his neighbor’s house. They’d gone over to the play with the neighbor kid—same age as Nick—several times a week that summer. She’d grown to love and trust the mom, who fed them homemade snacks and peanut butter and jelly with the crusts cut off.

  Lea had noticed the too-bright eyes, the trembling hands, the slurred words. But at thirteen years old, they hadn’t meant anything to her.

  She’d been told by her parents and Nick’s parents never to get in the car with anyone but them. Ever.

  One day, the mom piled them in the car, telling them she had to run an errand. Lea knew the rules and was responsible for the ten-year-old Nick. But she trusted the mom and buckled herself in the backseat, ignoring the uneasy feeling in her gut.

  That was the day she became familiar with hospitals, pain, and the sick feeling of seeing Nick injured.

  And that’s when she learned what happened when you trusted others. When she didn’t keep her guard up.

  There were plenty of times she cursed her injury. Tried to hide it under baggy clothes. Cried about the bullying and mocking from her peers about the scars and her limp. Went through bouts of depression that put her in months of therapy as a sullen teen. When she wore all black. Lied about her age to get piercings and tattoos. The pressure to be a beautiful woman in society was too much, so she made the rest of herself unique to match the leg.

  But all she’d managed to do was look like every other angsty teen, rebelling against their parents’ rules, whining about how hard life was. So in the end, she still looked like everyone else except with a scarred leg and a limp.

  So that was teenage bullshit. By the time she entered college, she’d come to terms with her appearance, became comfortable in her imperfect skin. She grew out the crazy colors she dyed her hair. She bought clothes that made her feel comfortable. Wasn’t much to be done about the tattoos and piercings. She still liked most of them anyway.

  And she didn’t put herself in a position to be scorned. She didn’t give anyone the power to make her feel less confident about herself, particularly men. Sure, she’d had relationships, but finding a man who was okay with her from the mid-thigh down was hard. She’d been asked to leave the lights off and the covers on when things began to get intimate. Well, screw that. Everyone had scars once they were naked. Hers were just a little more noticeable.