by Lynn Red
“Shit,” I said. “If only. No, I just have some stuff to do before I go to bed. And if I’m going to pick you three up tomorrow I gotta get some sleep. By the way, when is one of you getting a car? I hope you’re not going to use me as a chauffeur for the rest of the year.”
Dezzy was just sitting there shaking her head. “You just talked me in a circle that made me so dizzy I kinda think I’m going to fall over. The car, uh, yeah no it should be mostly fine. Winter’s going to borrow her parent’s pedal car starting next week, so we’ll take that instead.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, ignoring the rest. I hopped up off the bed and grabbed my purse, my keys, and yanked the bandana out of my back pocket in a quick pirouette. “See ya!”
“Yeah,” I heard her saying in a confused voice as I trotted down the stairs. “See ya.”
I was halfway to the car by the time I realized my phone buzzed a second time, and halfway home before I bothered to check the message.
Sitting at a red light at the intersection of Maple and Bluff, across the street from the courthouse, I was a little afraid the number – which I didn’t recognize – was going to be Cooper or someone asking me to come in to work.
It... wasn’t.
“This you?” the message read.
No clue who it was, but somehow, deep down in my stomach, I knew. At least, my stomach knew, because I felt like I was going to either throw up or do a dance.
“Where can I meet you? Or... stop me if this is too much or too weird or too soon. I’m not like this normally.”
Still, coulda been anyone. Sure, that’s what I told myself. Wasn’t definitely Rex.
“I owe you for those burgers though, and a Lee always pays his debts.”
“Freaking out,” I announced to the inside of my Hyundai. “Freaking the hell out right now.”
Diane Rehm kept talking about California fiscal policy like she hadn’t even heard me through the radio.
“Freaking out, freaking out,” I repeated like it was a mantra. “What... how... how did he get my number? I can’t...”
“If you say stop,” the next text came in. “I’ll stop now. I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I want to see you so badly, but... it’s up to you.”
And just like that, they stopped.
My heart didn’t though. It was pounding a thousand miles an hour, like I’d been doing a nine-hill run on the treadmill for the last hour and a half. Sweat beaded up on the sides of my face. It was completely ridiculous, completely stupid, and... completely me.
The light had turned green and red again about four times since I bothered to look up again. My mouth hung open in a very undignified gawking sort of way.
Despite my best effort, I was pushing the buttons to reply.
“No,” I typed. “I was hoping you’d call.”
Three seconds later, I typed, “I mean text. Or, you know, whatever.”
I spent a week and a half hoping he’d call me so I wouldn’t have to brave my own feelings. And here he was, saving me from myself.
“Can I see you again? Or is it too soon?” his words appeared on the screen and I could hear his voice.
“No,” I texted. “I mean about it being too soon. Yes to the other part. Give me a few, I’ll text soon.”
Yep, looking down at the string of half-coherent messages I’d sent, it was plain as day, as clear as the sky.
I hadn’t just fallen for this guy, I’d gone completely stupid.
Sitting in the front seat of my Hyundai, I started to tap out my next message. “Meet me in thirty?”
I gulped, trying to force myself not to panic. Hastily, I added: “I mean if that’s okay. I don’t want to... do you want to go somewhere besides my house? I’m not all that great at this.”
*
Home and alone, I threw on the old shirt and the pair of jeans I always wore when I painted. If I was going to have to wait for Rex to say something back to my string of awkward, badly worded text messages that meant I wasn’t going to sleep.
If I wasn’t going to bed, I thought, I may as well get some work done. Dezzy’s joke about my sexual release being akin to an exploding factory reverberated in my mind as I swirled brown, yellow and a dab of white together. I wasn’t even sure what I was making, but I didn’t bother to think about it much, either.
I’ve always been a planner; often to the point of making myself a little crazy with my minutely detailed schedules and routines. It used to drive my parents crazy, which is funny when a cop doesn’t want a strict routine. It drove Dezzy crazy too, but then, she’s always been the free spirit between the two of us – again, which is funny, as I’m the one who could never stop painting or drawing or doing origami for long enough to study math lessons, and she’s the one who’s going to end up an engineer.
The bandana I had stuck in my pocket was just perfect to dab accidental blobs of paint off the canvas when dipped in a little cleaner. It was also good for getting really cool smears. I plopped a dollop of my golden-tan mixture down, and then used the corner of my bandana to work it into a circle. On top of that, I added a drop of black.
It struck me that he hadn’t ever responded to my last message, but then again, there really wasn’t much to say. I guess it was kind of up to me to do the inviting.
My phone buzzed, and my heart skipped a beat. I only bothered to look at it long enough to see it wasn’t a certain bear, and then I went back to my canvas.
Gliding along the canvas, apparently on its own accord, my brush left a loping line, and then another on the other side.
For a time, I was lost in my own head. I get into this kind of spaced-out Zen state when I paint, and that’s exactly why I paint. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing, what my soul wants me to do. Some people account, some people doctor, some people police. Me? I paint.
I took a deep breath and then dabbed another line, smudging it to blend two colors into one. Finally, I stepped back from the easel and set my paint board down. I grabbed the cup of wine I poured when I walked in the front door and then promptly forgot in the heat of the moment.
The sour, sweet liquid worked down my tongue and then spread warmth as it ran down my throat. “God I needed that,” I told my fake Van Gogh wall hanging. The second drink was longer, and had a couple of swallows involved.
As soon as I realized that an entire glass of wine had magically vanished – don’t ask me how – my phone buzzed again, startling me.
I swabbed my paint-covered index finger on my pocket bandana and swiped the screen, then almost choked on the drink I hadn’t yet swallowed.
“Wait, where IS there” he texted. I sent him my address before I really got it into my head what was happening.
My throat pretty much turned into a vice. I hardly even knew who I had turned into. I’m normally not like a pent-up prude, or a weird celibate or something – although my sister wasn’t exactly wrong about my recent dry streak.
I stumbled over one of my easel’s legs as I tried to get a grip on myself. Without even thinking about it, I shot a hand out to balance myself. Only, there wasn’t anything to balance on.
My feet went over my head, somehow, and then my feet hit the ground – only my head was between them. And then, somehow I managed to flop myself over in mid-air, catch myself on a hand I forgot I stuck out.
But then, just as I thought my micro-crisis was over, I happened to look toward my couch. The paint board. It was teetering, then tottering, and I did not want to pay that clean-up bill.
Lunging, I got my hand underneath the circular plate with about a third of a second to spare. My hand was covered in a gorgeous smear of all sorts of colors rolled into one, but at least I saved the carpet – and my wallet – from all that mess.
“Whew,” I gasped, taking a breath to steady myself and then standing up. “That was... stupid.”
I adjusted my shirt, making sure everything was in place. Luckily I remembered not to do anything with my hair until all the wet paint was off my
hands. Just about then, I finally looked at what I’d painted from more than a couple feet away. Looking at it all at once, I was surprised, to say the very least.
“I painted you?” I asked the painting.
Unsurprisingly, the brooding, dark-eyed image I’d painted of Rex just stared back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone at a painting with such single-minded ferocity.
Then again, I I’m not sure if I ever knew such intense desire, such unquenchable longing, as I had the first time I laid eyes on Rex.
I had to see him. I had to get over my own ridiculous fear and angst and whatever else it was.
And then I realized there was something else behind my nervousness. Hope, call it, or maybe anxious excitement. Whatever it was, the only cure was Rex Lee.
-10-
Rex
Steeling his own nerves, Rex was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cold pot of coffee. He picked it up, opened the lid, took a swig, and put it back on the hot pad.
Except for him, the whole house – and the entire Lee family compound – was silent.
Bears tend to sleep a lot, especially during the late part of winter going into spring. It was a groggy time of year. They didn’t really hibernate, not exactly, but the bears in Jamesburg did get sleepy and drowsy when the sun was up less than ten hours a day. Especially out in the secluded, almost hauntingly silent forest where they lived, it was easy to sleep.
But, Rex wasn’t having any of that. Too much on his mind, especially with the Edgewood bears making a move on his pop’s still. And then, there were always the vague longings to go back out into the world and pretend the homestead didn’t exist.
Then again, with his pop so old he could barely lift a hammer, much less defend himself from the Edgewoods, there really wasn’t a lot of choice. Not if he wanted to be able to wake up and face himself in the mirror when he shaved every morning. Or when he shaved around three, or then again at eight or nine – bears will be bears after all.
Rex lifted the coffee pot again, took another swig, and realized that if he’d just kept running, especially after Fiona...
He shook his head. There wasn’t time to think about that. Rex shot a glance out of the little kitchen of his tiny three room house.
Leena was all curled up, safe and sound on the couch where she’d passed out in front of a “Mary Tyler Moore Show” marathon. She looked almost exactly like Fiona had when they first met. There had been good times and bad, of course, but they were mostly good. That was years ago, though.
Four long, painful years that he and Leena had been alone. He’d known it was time to come home, even before his pop’s troubles started, but Rex fought it as long as he could.
Then again, if he’d never come home, he wouldn’t be staring at his phone like a lovelorn teenager waiting for a girl to call.
He’d been working on that same pot of coffee since about three hours before. There wasn’t much in the way of nervousness left in Rex Lee’s body, not since the three tours in Iraq and the three years he spent getting back to normal, nerves just weren’t a part of his normal mental makeup.
Then again, neither was drinking an entire pot of coffee because he was nervous about calling a woman.
Rex looked down at his phone and shook his big, shaggy-haired head. “What am I doing?” he asked himself with a laugh. “This is—”
When it finally happened – when it finally buzzed – he grabbed the phone so fast he could have snatched it from under running water without any water hitting his hand. He lifted the handset to his ear and started talking before he remembered that it was a text.
He wished Leena would have seen that, because she would have laughed at him like a banshee.
“I’m glad you called,” the first one read.
Seconds later, another one came. “Er, texted, I mean. Or whatever.”
Somehow, knowing she was nervous too made Rex breathe a sigh of relief. He couldn’t stand the idea that machine guns and roadside bombs didn’t make him flinch, but a woman giving him a little kindness made his heart skip a beat.
After he sent that flurry of texts a bit before, he was worried that he came on too strong, or maybe not strong enough. It had been so long since he tried to talk to someone that he’d almost forgotten how.
“Meet me in thirty?” the message that made him realize everything was okay said. He had to wait a few minutes for the next part to appear. “I mean if that’s okay. I don’t want to... do you want to go somewhere besides my house? I’m not all that great at this.”
“You have no idea how glad I am for that,” Rex said, tapping his fingertip on the table.
Leena stirred.
“I’ll be there,” he responded. “Wait, where IS there?”
He imagined her laughing when she read that. He didn’t really plan to be funny, but when he read it back, he was pretty satisfied with himself. First he thought about her eyes sparkling – the one a soft lavender and the other light brown – and then the way her lips curled when she smiled.
What in the world had gotten into him? Those soft, lightly-shaded pink lips that shock of white... that’s what had gotten into him. The way she read to Leena and looked so peaceful, so happy while she was doing it. That got into him too.
A moment later, jolting him out of his nostalgic fantasy, his phone buzzed and an address appeared. The numbers and the street were all foreign to him – totally foreign. But he’d figure it out.
He’d never moved so fast in his civilian life, especially after nine at night. But, in a flash, he’d managed to pull on a shirt, put his coffee pot-slash-mug into the sink and grab Leena’s blanket.
As he did, the dog tags around his neck jingled and then cooled his chest in two squares where each lay. He reached up and grabbed them, fishing them out of his shirt and closed his fist tight around them. After all this time, he still couldn’t put them down. The cold steel in his palm acted like a mild sedative, calming his flaring nerves.
It upset him to need a crutch like this, but for now, he decided it was best not to fight. Dropping the tags back into his shirt, he flattened them against his chest and scooped Leena up in his huge arms. Her head drooped to one side, she snorted softly and then nestled against her daddy’s chest.
He stared down at her for a moment, completely overwhelmed with a feeling of warmth that spread from his heart outward. Rex leaned down, kissed her forehead, and her eyes fluttered open a minute later.
“Why are you carrying me, daddy?” She asked in the distant, sleepy voice you have when you don’t know why you’re awake, or even if you actually are. “Is something wrong?”
“No, sweetie,” he said in his softest voice. “Nothing at all. Daddy’s just gonna go visit Miss Lilah is all, so I’m taking you over to grandpa’s house so you can sleep there. Is that all right?”
He wanted to tell her he was going to go see someone that made his stomach feel tight the way her mama had, once upon a time.
But, taking a deep breath to calm himself, he knew he couldn’t. He couldn’t do that to her, or to himself. Or, after all, to Lilah.
There was the gentlest glow from the muted television, and in it, his daughter’s eyes seemed even more blue than usual. Most of her looked just like him, but those eyes came straight from Fiona.
“Yup,” she said, yawning and stretching her long, lanky arms over her head, then letting them hang limp. She looked a little like a melted doll, just sorta draped over Rex’s arms.
“How’d you get so cute?” he asked, kissing her forehead and grabbing the blanket that he’d somehow dropped on the couch. “Must be genetic.”
“Must be,” she said with a grin. “Mommy was really, really pretty.”
Rex laughed. Sometimes, he didn’t know if she was just being a little kid, and all the funnier for it, or if she actually was as witty as she seemed. Either way, he thought, he’d always have her. No matter what, he’d have Leena.
With her tucked in and back asleep on Grandpa Lee’
s couch, Rex gave his little girl one last kiss on the forehead. He rested his hand on top of one of the hippos that covered her blanket, and left it there, letting his heartbeat match hers for just a moment as his hand rose and fell with her breath.
Back outside, the excitement washed over him again.
His thoughts were of hope, of warmth, and of happiness.
That was good enough, if not forever, at least for right then.
He let himself grin as he climbed up onto his huge motorcycle and kicked it into gear. The gentle rumbling got louder in a comforting, drowning roar that echoed through his chest. The only problem now, he realized, was figuring out where the hell apartment four, number six Pine Street was.
Rex pulled his bike to a stop where he turned onto the main road into town. He pulled his phone out and started to fire up his GPS, but then he had a second though. The bandana, the one she’d wrapped her phone number in, he fished that out instead, clenched it in his huge fist and held it to his nose.
He didn’t need satellites to find her. There was something deeper, something more intense and real and wonderful about the way she made him feel. It was something he’d never known before, not even with Fiona, as much as it pained him to say.
Rex didn’t need any GPS to find Lilah. Something much better was guiding his bike tonight.
Fate.
Just thinking something like that made Rex laugh again and shake his head. Twenty minutes ago he was fretting like a schoolboy who just asked the pretty girl in class out to prom. Now? He was fantasizing about having found his fated mate after losing the one he thought for so long was the only one he’d ever have.
Life is really, really funny sometimes, Rex thought. So much changes so quickly... but then, it seems like nothing ever changes for good.
He tied the bandana Lilah around his face to shield him from the dust he was about to kick up. Then, he turned the throttle, revved the engine, and blasted off into the night.
Behind him, a gritty, red cloud rose, obscuring Rex as he sped off toward town.
Whatever the Edgewoods are doing tonight, he thought, I’ve got more important things to think about. More important than stills or vandalism or bears picking fights for no good reason. I’ve got two hearts to think about – mine... and Leena’s.
