As I made small cuts on her ribs, she whispered, her stomach quivering when I licked up her blood. “Tell me a dream.”
I lifted my eyes up and looked at her flushed cheeks. I would forever remember her dark, dark hair, her round cheeks, and her silky skin.
“You and me.”
She frowned. “We’re a dream?”
I swallowed. “We are.”
Sifting her fingers through my hair, she asked, “Do your dreams ever come true?”
I wished I could say yes. I wished I could say that this was not the end. Maybe one day we could be together. One day I would erase all my past mistakes and come back to her. One day I could forgo this miserable guilt and my addiction to it and be the man that she deserved. One day I would look at her and not imagine what Scott had done to her. I would not be so scared of touching her even when not touching her felt like dying.
“No.”
We stared at each other; the pain of separation made everything heavy, suffocating.
“Promise me something,” she said, finally.
“Anything.”
“You’ll never stop dreaming.”
“I promise.”
She smiled and then tugged on my hair so I would keep cutting.
We did not sleep at all that night. I realized this was the first time Madison had spent a night with me. First and last. When the dawn came, we looked out the window. We imagined ourselves out in the open, beside the bench, in our own universe. We smelled the imaginary grass, the scent of water, and we felt the phantom breeze brushing our naked bodies.
Before leaving, Madison said goodbye to Katie. I drank the scene in front of me. Disheveled Madison bending down to kiss Katie, who wiggled and sighed. I knew Katie would miss her.
As I watched Madison walk away, I realized I would never see her again. At least not out in the world. I wanted to shout and stop her. I wanted to tell her that we could make this work. I would come back for her or she could go with me. Everything would be okay. But I would not lie. Not to her. Not anymore. For the first time in my life, I would do the right thing, even if it killed me.
So this was the end of Madison and me.
This was the end of our war.
But as I promised her, I would forever see her in my dreams.
Epilogue
Two years later…
Madison
“Hey, you okay to close up?” Lily asked me, standing behind the oak reception desk as she flipped the hardbound appointment register shut. I didn’t even know how she could handle it, how anyone could handle that thing.
But Alana was big on traditional things. She repelled anything related to technology. Well, I couldn’t complain. I was the same way. It was one of the things we had in common. Another thing we had in common? We hated dogs, cats, and anything resembling a pet, and get this, we both hated ramen noodles. I mean, what were the odds?
“Yeah, I’m good. Go home, have fun, have a life.” I slurped the black iced coffee, and Lily cringed at the sound.
“Do you have to do that?”
I slurped once again.
“Grow up, Madison. One toddler is enough in my life,” she grumbled, flicking her blonde hair aside.
Smirking, I blew in the straw, and the coffee gurgled. At the sight of her frown, I cackled in my head. I loved annoying her. I’d been so glad when she decided to come back a year ago. Her divorce had gone through, and she’d taken out a restraining order against Josh. Her parents didn’t want her to be alone, but she said Hedge Lake was her home and she wanted to move forward.
The cackling in my head stopped, because she chucked the bottom of my coffee mug and the straw slipped out of my lips; coffee drooled around my mouth.
We narrowed our eyes at each other until she burst out laughing. “You so deserved that.”
I wiped the coffee off with the back of my hand. “I know how to punch.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
I arched my eyebrows at her and before she could react, I bent over the desk, grabbed the back of her head and placed a hard kiss on her lips. She squealed.
“Oh my fucking God! You…bitch.”
This time I did cackle at her reaction. “Oh please! You liked it. I know how sexy you find me. It’s okay. No need to thank me.”
“You’re crazy,” she snapped, her cheeks coloring with a furious blush and her voice echoing in the empty salon. “Absolutely fucking crazy. Ugh.” She kept wiping her lips with her fingers.
“Excuse me.” Someone coughed, and we both turned toward the sound. A tall middle-aged man with dirty blonde shaggy hair stood at the glass front door, along with a little girl.
“H…hello,” Lily greeted him.
“Uh, hello,” he said, looking weirdly at us. “Are you, uh, guys open? I just needed a quick trim.”
“Yeah, we’re open. But I was just leaving,” Lily said, blushing. “Not that it matters. I’m not, you know, a hairdresser. I’m just the receptionist, and I, uh, as I said, I was just leaving.”
I nudged her with my shoulder. “I think he got that.”
Still pissed, Lily picked up her purse from the desk and hissed, “Later.”
“Okay.”
As she rounded the corner, she bumped me with her shoulder. “I’m gonna go home and watch a James Dean movie. And if you didn’t already guess, you’re not invited.”
With a tight smile at the man and his daughter, she left.
It was silly how the name itself sent my heart into a frenzy—fluttering, pulsing, flipping for no reason. No reason at all. It was just a fucking name. And it wasn’t his real name either.
My eyes swiveled over to the man, and his confused gaze clashed with mine. His daughter danced around him, picking up magazines from the rack adjacent to the door and flipping the pages like a hand fan.
“You want to come in the back with me?” I asked, hopefully with a smile.
Over the past two years, I’d mellowed down a little when it came to men. I didn’t feel anger toward them or the urge to punch them at sight. But hey, that didn’t mean I was friends with them either. I was at a point where I could, finally, acknowledge the fact that men were the same species as women. And that was progress enough if you asked me.
“Sure.” He ushered his daughter inside.
I tightened the apron around my waist as he instructed his daughter to sit tight on the leather couch, opposite the reception desk.
She refused, stomping her feet. A pang in my chest alerted me to the fact that she reminded me of someone. Someone just as feisty and just as cute. I walked around the desk and fished out candies from a bottom drawer.
“Hey, sweet girl, would you like candies?”
Turned out, I was pretty good with kids. They tended to like me, which was kind of a surprise in itself. No one liked me. Well, not except Lily and Alana. And Alana didn’t even live here anymore.
The little girl immediately stopped arguing and waddled over to me. Her chubby hands splayed as she tried to gather all of them from my outstretched hands.
“No, Kira, not all of them,” her father admonished. “Just take two, and what’s the magic word?”
Kira smiled a toothy grin. “Thank you. But can I take three?”
“Let’s ask your dad, okay?”
The man smiled and nodded. “Fine. Take three, but we’re keeping it a secret from Mommy.”
“Okay.” She chortled, taking the candies and plopping down on the couch.
“Now stay put, okay? I’ll be back in a sec.”
Kira nodded as she got down to chomping her candies.
“Thank you for that.” He smiled. “My wife’s out of town for the night, and we’ve been spending father-daughter time all day. Not a very strong suit of mine.”
I studied his face, trying to figure out if he was lying. But then I took a deep breath, stopping myself. Not everyone was a liar. Not everyone was him—crazy, insane, beautiful and so very lost to me. Yes, if you hadn’t guessed already, ther
e were still some unresolved feelings there. But I was handling it.
“I think you’re doing fine,” I told him.
“I’m Nick, by the way.”
“Hello, Nick.”
His smile wavered when I didn’t give him my name. I know I should’ve been polite, but I was still the bad guy, regardless of all the progress I’d made. Let me have some fun, too.
Giving him a tight smile, I turned and wound my way across the room, passing red leather chairs with stray hair stuck to them. The tiled floor shone under the overhead bright lights, and the bundles of strewn-about hair rustled against my sneaked feet. Yup, clean-up was going to be a bitch. And somehow I ended up being the clean-up lady.
I stopped at my station—yes, my station—in the back and gestured for Nick to take a seat. In the last two years, I’d progressed in life. I wasn’t the maid or the receptionist anymore. I’d done the training, gotten the certificate, and all that jazz so I could become a hairstylist. Not only that, but I was the head hairstylist here. It still felt so fucking unreal.
“So how do you want it?” I ran my fingers through his hair, letting them linger. I massaged his scalp all the while wishing that the golden strands were darker, blacker.
Nick’s head tilted back a fraction as if he was enjoying this—my unplanned act of seduction or whatever on a customer. People went to jail for this, by the way. And for the record, it did feel wrong but exciting at the same time. Like if I turned around I’d see gray eyes, filled with anger and that strange light of arousal. Maybe that was why I touched Nick more than I needed to, just so I could imagine him, watching me.
“So?” I bit my lower lip and stared at him in the mirror.
Clearing his throat, he straightened. “A little longer in the back than on the sides.”
I nodded and fished out my scissors. Before long, sounds of snipping filled the empty salon, apart from the muted mutterings of Kira. The act of it soothing somehow.
It wasn’t my plan to end up as a hairdresser at Alana’s salon. I took it, because if I hadn’t, I’d be homeless and maybe even dead by now. I wasn’t with Julia anymore, hadn’t been with her in two years, since he left. So this was the only option.
Alana had been happy for me to come back. I’d always treated her with hate and contempt, but she didn’t even hesitate when I asked her for the job. There was a hug involved somewhere, too.
These days we talked at least once every week. She was still on the tour, calling me whenever she had time. And believe it or not, I was happy for her. Since he left, I hadn’t had the energy to hate her anymore so I just let go. Besides, she was one talkative woman, and as it turned out, I was, too.
We talked about everything and nothing at all. She told me all the places she visited, and through her words, I saw them, too. For the first time in my life, I wanted to get out of here, go somewhere, be something. Though I hadn’t figured out what. It would come with time, I guessed.
“You’re all set.” I ran my fingers through his hair once more, but this time I didn’t linger.
He took a look at himself in the mirror and smiled. “Thanks. It looks really good.”
I studied his high cheekbones and prominent jaw. His light and carefree eyes had flecks of gold in them. They weren’t sad or troubled or startling as his had been. To be honest, I thought I’d exaggerated the beauty of them in my mind. Maybe they weren’t so beautiful and stunning after all. And maybe this time around, we’d have snow in summer.
“You’re welcome,” I murmured.
A little while later, I closed up the door of the salon and took the adjacent stairs up to my, or rather Alana’s, apartment. I ran up the rickety stairs, and sometimes, I thought in my haste I’d break them, and then go tumbling down to my death. And sometimes, I thought dying wasn’t so bad after all.
I reached the apartment on the second floor and pushed open the brown door. The wooden floor creaked as I threw my bag on it and walked farther in. Now that I was here in the cozy little one-bedroom apartment, I felt it, the itching on my skin. It happened every time I came back from work. This mini freak-out, the rush to do what I’d been pretending not to think about all day.
Pressing a hand on my ribs, I tried to calm the fuck down. I flicked the kitchen light on and left a trail of my clothes on the way to the bedroom—my white blouse landed on the floral couch; my denim shorts found a home somewhere by the bohemian dining table. Don’t ask. Alana was the decorator. I wouldn’t be caught dead buying a floral couch.
Now in white cotton bra and panties, my feverish skin finally breathed but not enough to give me the relief I wanted. Inside the bathroom, my warm feet cringed at the coolness of the tile. Turning on the hot water, I began filling the white ceramic tub. I took off the rest of my clothes and piled up my hair on the top of my head before getting into the stinging hot water.
With trembling hands, I unwrapped the sharp, new blade sitting on the rim of the tub and made a fresh cut under my right breast. Broken white slashes marked the skin over my ribs and I sighed at the sight of the thick red drops.
My eyes fluttered shut as I propped myself up against the cool ceramic. The water mounted around my naked body and soon it would wash over my new wound, drowning my blood and burning the skin. I almost looked forward to it. It reminded me of him, you see. It reminded me of his madness, his perfection. In my defense, I only did it when I was hungry for him. Too hungry. Starving.
And I could think of a hundred things worse than sitting here, cutting and pretending to drown in the name of love. Not seeing the man you loved for the past two years took the top spot. It was right up there with his fading voice and blurring face.
Two summers came and went, and still he never came back. I wasn’t a fool. I knew he wouldn’t. He had bigger fish to fry, so to speak. Leaving me was the right thing to do, and that night, two summers ago, I was oddly content in the knowledge that he was doing the right thing. I hadn’t felt abandoned or cheated or even devastated. I wanted him to choose Katie, to sacrifice everything for the love he had for his daughter. No one had done that for me. No one had been my champion when I was a little girl. I wanted Katie to have that.
But remember what I told you about hope? It had rocks for brains and that thing was a leech. It never went away.
So yes, I’d hoped that one day he’d come back for me. Me. The girl who was hated by everyone but somehow, someway, loved by him. But sometimes, that wasn’t enough.
Time had faded him in my mind. Slowly, I was forgetting the nuances of him—his voice, his face, his smell. What had he sounded like when he was angry? Or how had his voice dipped when he confessed to me that he was leaving? When I closed my eyes at night, I saw him, but I didn’t really see him. I saw the purple bags under his eyes, the sharp angles of his face, and his unruly hair. But it looked like an old photo where I couldn’t make out the faces. And ain’t that the cruelest thing of all?
I opened my eyes and made another cut on my skin. Then another and another until blood streamed down in one thick band. Sometimes I got creative and imagined him making these cuts instead of me. I imagined him kissing me, looking at me with heat in his eyes and asking me if I was okay, if I wanted more.
I didn’t know how much time passed before I decided to call it a night. The water had cooled down and the cuts had long since stopped pulsing with a heart of their own. Without toweling myself, I went to bed to wake up in the morning and face another James-less day.
Maybe he did the same, went to bed and thought about me. I wondered if he imagined me around him or saw me when he closed his eyes. Did he still cut himself? Was his guilt too big even now? How long did it take to flush it all out of the system and be…guilt-free? I wish I were an expert on all things James.
“I love you, James,” I whispered to the empty room, like I did every night. Craziness didn’t even begin to cover it, I knew. I needed something, somewhere to channel all of this emotion.
Maybe one day I’d find a way. As I said
, there were still unresolved feelings there, and I was handling it.
****
Today was Monday, and it was my day off. I liked to roll against the tide and work on Sundays. These days I didn’t wake up at dawn and go for my crying bouts. I cried plenty without having to go to the bench.
I’d promised Lily that I’d take Lindsey to the park. It was one of my duties as the godmother. I picked her up at the salon and walked to the park with her in my arms. It took us a long time to get there, because she’d pump her fists in the air and tell me to stop.
Mommy, she’d scream—for some reason, she called me mommy, too—and then wiggle down and waddle to whatever got her attention. It was mostly flowers and abandoned toys in people’s front yards. I’d run after her when she decided to steal the object, heave her up and go on our way with her screaming and pitching a fit.
“We don’t steal stuff, Lin. Not right now,” I’d tell her. “Wait till you get older, and you grow legs to run, then you can steal whatever you want.”
Finally, after thirty of minutes of this, we reached the park.
Julia still worked here, though I hadn’t seen her in a few weeks. We ran into each other in town sometimes. It was usually awkward for both of us. I felt guilty for doing what I’d done, and maybe she missed someone to take care of. Rumor had it that she’d hooked up with quite a few women in the past two years, but it never stuck. I wasn’t surprised. Not everyone could be like me—shameless and parasitic. Oh, and in case you were wondering, she still smelled of sleeping pills.
We reached my old spot, hiding in the middle of overgrown shrubs. This place was kind of a blast from the past, brimming with his ghosts. But I liked to torture myself with it. My cuts throbbed, itched on my skin as I sat down on the rickety bench.
Lindsey squirmed in my hold, asking me to let her down. She waddled off as soon as I set her on the ground.
“Don’t go too far away, Lin. Stay close to me. Godmommy doesn’t want to run around today,” I told her.
“No far away,” she agreed, though her far came out as “faa.”
I chuckled. I watched her skip around, her curly blonde hair and yellow sundress billowing with her steps. The lake sat glimmering under the sun, never moving or even rippling. I fucking hated how much I loved the lake.
A War Like Ours Page 27
