by Serena Bell
“Liv. Liv!”
I’m struggling. I’m crying.
“It’s me. It’s Chase. You’re okay. You were dreaming.”
I’m panting, sobbing, but I recognize his voice, the comfort of his arms, the tent around us, the woods beyond. We’re camping, and I had a nightmare, and he’s here.
“What were you dreaming?”
“A house. One I know but don’t know, made up of all the places I’ve lived. There are rooms from all my foster homes, and kids from all my foster homes. And then the police come and take me away. I don’t know why; I just know I can’t stay. And it’s important to stay.”
His voice is quiet in the deep dark and stillness. “Do you have it over and over?”
“Mmm-hmm. I have other nightmares, too. But this is the recurrent one.”
It happens, also, to be the one I was having the night Zeke asked me to move in with him. Which adds an extra layer of choking sensation to the panic that always wraps me like a spider’s thread when I wake from the dream.
But I don’t want to think about that. I want to shut out the unwanted images, the bad memories. I want to drown them in my good feelings for Chase. So I turn into his embrace and raise my face. It’s too dark to see, but I can feel his breath moving across my face.
“Liv,” he whispers.
“Make it go away,” I say, and he does.
Chapter 39
Liv
On the way home from our camping trip, Chase teaches me another dumb camping song he learned from his uncle as a kid, and we sing it at the top of our lungs.
Black socks, they never get dirty
The longer you wear them the blacker they get
Sometimes, I think I should wash them
But something inside me keeps saying NOT YET…NOT YET…NOT YET.
We’ve just fallen silent when we emerge into the parking lot, slaphappy, ridiculous, and smelly.
Sometime on Sunday, I stopped caring about the pains in my body or the sad shape of my personal hygiene. By Sunday night, I was so happy to eat the strange brew of rice and beans that Chase fed me that I waxed rhapsodic about it all the way through the meal. And later that night, I was so ecstatic to be horizontal on the ground and headed toward dreamland that I couldn’t have cared less that my little rectangle of territory was hard and rocky.
I sleep all the way back to Chase’s house in the car, and wake only when he pulls into the driveway. It feel like I’m surfacing from ten feet under.
“The only thing better than camping is the first shower afterward,” Chase declares, as he shoulders his pack—and mine—into the house. All I can do is stagger behind him and feel grateful that I don’t have to carry the pack even ten feet more.
“Do you want to go first?” I ask, not because I am being gracious but because I know I will take waaaay longer than he does.
“We can both go,” he says suggestively, but I roll my eyes at him. Sex is not compatible with my current physical state.
Which is not to say it’s not on my mind.
Katie is with her grandmother until tomorrow morning, so it’s only the two of us in the house. I’m grateful for that, because there are only three more nights before I drive to Denver. And even though we had really amazing sex on Saturday night and even more phenomenal sex Sunday night after a romp through a waterfall, I am still wanting more.
I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d miss sex with Chase.
Still, I’m in no condition to share a small space—yet. “You go first,” I say, and he doesn’t try to argue with my assertion that it would be sexier for us to get clean first and have happy naked times after, which I take as a sign that I stink as bad as I think I do.
So, after he goes, I have a blissful, steamy, solo experience of sloughing off two days of dirt and, um, scent. I spend quality time with my flat iron and even put on a little bit of mascara and lip gloss because I can. Then I stand in front of the mirror and feel like myself for the first time in three days.
Except the truth is, I felt surprisingly much like myself hiking those trails with Chase, sleeping out with him at night.
Not that I won’t really enjoy making him come with me to a schmoofy restaurant where he will have to put his napkin on his lap and order in either French or Italian.
The thought makes me smile.
I head downstairs and find him slouched on the couch, watching something on his iPad.
“Did you have a blissful reunion with your personal grooming products?” Chase looks up. “Oh, wow. Yeah, you did.” He runs his gaze over me and gives an appreciative wolf whistle. “You clean up really nice.” He holds out both hands, takes mine, and tugs me toward him.
The doorbell rings.
“Who the f—? On a Monday night? At dinnertime?”
All of a sudden I remember. “Oh, shit.”
“Liv?”
“It’s—I forgot to tell you to put it in the calendar. And I didn’t either. I totally spaced. It’s the nanny candidate I told you about. Remember? My replacement.”
He’s staring at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
“I’m so sorry, Chase! I can’t believe both of us spaced. Gah! At least we’re showered and dressed! We could have stood her up completely, or greeted her in our smelly camping stuff.”
I can’t read the expression on his face at all.
“You should get the door. Or I can.”
He hasn’t moved, so I get up and cross to the door. I open it, and Gillian is standing there, wearing a pencil skirt and silk blouse. She’s tall and slim, with jet-black hair and beautiful green eyes, rimmed with smoky makeup.
“I thought I might have the wrong day!” she says, stepping forward to hug me.
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry! I never put it my calendar, but we’re fine! We’re both here, and it’s Chase you really need to talk to, anyway.”
Chase rises from the couch and steps forward, hand extended. “This is Gillian Hollis. Chase Crayton.”
They shake politely.
“I’ll leave you guys to talk,” I say. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of…”
“Stay,” Chase says.
It’s more a command than an offer. And when I turn to look at him, there’s an expression on his face I never expected to see there.
Hurt.
Chapter 40
Chase
Gillian seems great. She is polite and professional. She asks questions about Katie—about her eating habits, her preferences, her health—and about me, and what I want for Katie. She talks enthusiastically about how she loves outdoor activities and crafts and introducing kids to music, theater, sports, dance, and whatever else they’re interested in.
I haven’t seen her with Katie yet, of course, but I can imagine that Gillian will be great with her. Katie will love that Gillian knows how to do twelve different kinds of French braids and has memorized the lyrics to all the Frozen songs.
So why don’t I feel any enthusiasm at all about the possibility of hiring her?
It’s a rhetorical question. I know exactly why. It’s because I don’t want to hire a new nanny at all.
I want Liv to stay.
“Katie really loves crafts,” Liv says to Gillian. She’s leaned in chummily, hands on knees, all smiles. “I’ve been teaching her to make friendship bracelets and lanyards and a bunch of other relatively simple thread-craft. I think she might be ready for some sewing, even. She’s got very good hand-eye coordination.”
She says it with pride.
“And I’ve been teaching her some simple cooking and baking, too, and she loves that. We even separated eggs and beat the whites the other day and she only broke one yolk.”
“That’s amazing for five!” Gillian says.
“I know, right? The only thing we re
ally haven’t talked much about is sleep.” She hesitates, turning to me. “Do you want to tell Gillian about the nightmares?”
No.
No, I don’t want to tell her about Katie’s nightmares.
Liv’s so lighthearted, as if leaving Katie, turning her over to someone else’s care, were no big deal. As if leaving, period, were no big deal. But I have no right to be petulant. I knew from the very, very beginning that Liv wasn’t staying.
Still, it doesn’t make this feel any better.
“I don’t know if Liv mentioned, but Katie lost her mother about two months ago.”
“Oh,” Gillian says, stricken. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I say. “We weren’t married, or particularly close, but you can imagine how hard it’s been for Katie. She still occasionally has nightmares. But if you go in and comfort her, she settles down fast. She’ll just go back to sleep. Otherwise she’s a really good sleeper. No night terrors or waking up and wanting to be out of her bed or any of that. No bed-wetting.”
“And I’d be fine if there were,” Gillian says, beaming reassuringly. “I’ve dealt with that before. I actually did the bed-wetting alarm with the previous family I worked with, and I got up with the kids at night and everything. Two weeks, and no more bed-wetting.”
She smiles at both of us. She really is very competent.
I will be lucky to have her.
I repeat it to myself, for reinforcement: I will be lucky to have her.
Liv and Gillian are chatting away again, about dress-up chests and making magic wands with dowels and card stock and glitter…
My mind wanders back to that day when Liv and Katie and I played make-believe together. How hard I laughed when Liv insisted frogs didn’t talk. The expression on Liv’s face when Katie informed her that she was the ugly, ugly frog. Liv’s mini-lecture on inner beauty. The moment Liv and I locked eyes and pretended to fall madly in love.
“Chase? Do we have any more questions for Gillian?”
I wrench my attention back to the present moment.
“Um, no, I think we’re all set.”
Liv shoots me a puzzled glance. “Okay, then,” she says. “Guess that’s it for now. We’ll be in touch about asking you to come meet Katie, right, Chase?”
“Um, yeah. We’ll—I’ll—be in touch about next steps. Thanks for coming by, Gillian. We’re—I’m—very impressed by what you bring professionally.”
We walk her to the door.
As soon as she’s gone, Liv turns on me, face screwed up with confusion. “What was that about? You sounded like a robot. Don’t you like her?”
“I like her fine.”
“So why were you such a dick to her?”
“I wasn’t a dick. I just—”
I don’t want you to go.
Don’t go.
“I can’t believe you’re so cavalier about leaving her.”
That wasn’t what I meant to say. Not at all. But the words kind of popped out. I know I meant, I can’t believe you’re so cavalier about leaving us.
I know I really meant, I can’t believe you’re so cavalier about leaving me.
She gets a look on her face like she’s been slapped. “You think this is easy for me? No way. It’s really hard. I love Katie. I don’t want to leave her. But you knew all along that’s what was going to happen. Don’t make me feel guilty about it now. I’m trying to make it as easy for you guys as possible. And I don’t owe you anything here, Chase. I did this as a favor to you. You wanted me to watch her. You could have hired someone else and eliminated this whole transition, but you asked me to step in. So cut the crap.”
She’s mad. Really mad. And of course, she’s 100 percent right. I have no right to be mad at her this way. Especially not when I know who I’m really mad at, and what I’m really mad about.
She crosses her arms. “You knew I was going to leave.”
She’s fired up—cheeks pink, eyes sparkling, breath coming fast. And I shouldn’t be thinking about the other times when she looks like that, but she’s reprogrammed my brain and body to want her. Need her. All the time. I can’t ignore those feelings.
I won’t ignore those feelings.
“I did. But things have changed.” I take a deep breath. “I want you to stay.”
Chapter 41
Liv
He wants me to stay.
He wants me to stay.
“You want me to stay…” I ask cautiously, “…for Katie’s sake?”
He shakes his head. “For my sake. Because of this thing between us. That neither of us was planning on or counting on, but Liv, you know it’s happening, right? I mean, this is real. I don’t know what it is yet, but I don’t want you to walk away.”
I don’t want you to walk away.
There’s a swelling sensation dead center of my chest, a buoyancy, and for a moment I ride it.
I don’t want to walk away.
I want to stay.
It’s an old, almost forgotten feeling.
Stay here.
Home.
Where my people are. Where my things are. Where my life is.
Unpack the contents of the turtle shell. Move them into shelves and drawers. Let myself fill the corners of a place.
Until—
Until someone screws up.
Until someone changes his mind.
Until someone more important, younger, cuter, better…
I can see myself as a child, standing in the foyer of one of my foster houses. The third, I think. I stood with one hand on the pull of my suitcase. Everything I owned was in that suitcase. I waited inside the door for the car that was going to come, pick me up, and take me away. Again.
And suddenly the pressure in my chest isn’t buoyant, it’s suffocating. Like I’ve taken a deep breath but it’s turned out to be seawater.
An anchor can keep you in place or drown you. That was what my foster sister, the one who taught me about carrying my shell on my back, used to say.
I’m shaking my head. Almost violently.
“I have a job, Chase. In Denver.”
“But why Denver, Liv? When you could have a job here? There have to be marketing jobs here.”
I open my mouth to try to explain, but the truth is, I can’t explain. Even I don’t fully understand the impulse that led me away from every job that would have kept me in Seattle and made me click on options in San Francisco, Denver, New York, Boston…
I only know that it had felt right to keep moving.
It had felt safer to keep moving.
I’d been in Seattle too long.
Long enough to make friends.
Long enough to make mistakes, like this one I am in the middle of.
“It’s where this job was.”
It sounds so lame.
“I could give you a job.”
I shake my head, hard. “I can’t stay here and be your nanny—I’d hate myself for that, and resent you.”
He’s shaking his head, too, his face bright, excited, hopeful, an awful contrast to the dark weight pressing me down. “You don’t have to be my nanny. Gillian could do that. Or anyone. I could—listen, what about this. This is what I’m thinking. I could buy the store. And hire you to do marketing and programs. We could do all the weekend teaser programs you were talking about, and more. You could do the admin and I could lead the programs, and—”
“No. I can’t.”
He exhales sharply.
“I can’t—I can’t stay. I can’t let you do what you’re saying. I can’t let you buy the store for me. You’d be claustrophobic—you said it yourself.”
He looks away. I’ve hit the target dead center.
He takes a breath, squares his shoulders, finds my gaze again. “So forget the part abou
t the store. We’ll figure it out. You’ll find something. Just don’t go to Denver. Liv, I don’t want you to go.”
“You think that now.”
“I know that now.”
“But you said yourself, being tied down terrifies you. We’re both that way, for our own reasons. You’d hate yourself for tying yourself to that place, and to me, and then in the end you’d hate me, too. And the thing is, Chase, I never want you to hate me.”
As I’m saying it, I know I’m right. It will be so hard to walk away from Katie and Chase now. But if I stick around and then it doesn’t work out, it will be so much harder. Because then I would be walking away from everything. A family. A job. A home. Belonging.
I can’t do it again.
“I wouldn’t. This is different. You’re different. To me.”
I shake my head. “Chase, I know you think it is, but people don’t change that much. They think they will, they think they want to, but they don’t. You’re the guy you are, and I don’t want you to have to change that for me.”
Chase’s face has gone blank, like the stillness in the world after an ice storm.
The house is so quiet. The refrigerator humming. Rain begins to fall, gently, outside. I can hear my own heartbeat.
“No,” he says, at last. “You’re right. People don’t change. Not in the way you mean.”
They’re the words I wanted to hear, but as soon as they’re out of his mouth, I realize that I was hoping against hope that he’d say something else.
I’ll change. For you.
Stay, and I promise I will love you forever.
But that’s not what he said.
He doesn’t seem angry. Sad, maybe, like me. Because it’s been so good. Because if we were different people, in a different situation, this might be the answer.
As if he can read my mind, he says, “Are we still friends?”
“Of course. We will always be friends.”
“And—”
I recognize the shift in his voice, in his breathing, and my body is so tuned to his now that it follows along, my pulse kicking up.
