by Dannika Dark
The door swung open and little Maizy came dashing out of the house in a bright yellow dress that was three shades darker than her hair. “Lexi! Lexi!”
As soon as she made it to me, her exuberant face tightened with all kinds of excitement. Her blue eyes widened with anticipation when she saw my right arm curved behind my back.
I bent over and whispered in her ear, “Don’t tell Mom.” As soon as I brought my hand around, she grabbed the bag of assorted candy, giggled, gave me a kiss on the cheek, and stuffed it inside the top of her dress. I snorted, following close behind as she ran back inside.
Maizy was the result of my brother’s passing. Sometimes good things come out of tragic events, and she reminded us of that every day. I’d never seen a child so full of life and happiness as my Maze. Our parents weren’t very sprightly to be dealing with a new baby, but they’d had Weston when mom was sixteen, so they weren’t that old. The pregnancy came not long after his death, and Mom called Maizy her little miracle baby because five months later, she had a medical scare and underwent a hysterectomy.
“Mom,” I called out, “I’m here.”
“Yes, I just saw my well-endowed six-year-old dash into her bedroom and thought as much,” she said, coming out of the kitchen. “I’m going to assume that’s a bag of candy tucked in her dress and not an early growth spurt.”
She was wearing a dark blue dress with a black belt and a silver necklace I gave her two years ago on her birthday. Mom had been lightening her shoulder-length hair since it started going grey and put it in rollers at night so it would hold a curl. We were close to the same height but looked nothing alike. I hadn’t inherited her generous cup size or her Montana-blue eyes.
“You really need to stop bringing that girl candy. I’m too old to be chasing after her when she’s all sugared up.”
I kissed her cheek and breezed into the kitchen. “Oh come on, Mom. She just turned six. Who else is going to spoil her if not her big sis?”
Her kitchen had pale blue tile on the floor and a matching backsplash behind the sink. The cabinets were red oak and lined the wall above the counter all the way to the window on the left. Mom loved blue and the kitchen looked like a bluebird’s nest. Tiny vines branched out across the wallpaper like an enchanted forest, but everything else was accented in blue, including the knitted toaster cover she’d bought at a craft fair. I reached in the fridge and grabbed a bottle of cold water.
“Lexi, it’s just going to be us today.”
I stared at the counter. “Why?”
“Your grandparents put their foot down.” Mom sighed deeply, painfully. “I had a long talk with your grandma and she said it’s too difficult and they don’t want to relive this every year.”
I whirled around. “Relive the fact they had a grandson?” I said in a hurt voice.
She calmly placed her hands on my shoulders. The dinner had become a tradition, although I was usually upset by the end of the party.
“We’re his family, Lexi. That’s all that matters. If your father were here, he might have agreed with them. I called off the dinner, so no one will be coming. It’s just going to be a quiet day with us three girls.”
I should have been happy because dinner always consisted of a few aunts and uncles, not to mention dysfunctional cousins I saw only at funerals or weddings, and several neighbors my parents had known for years. My biggest complaint was that no one talked about Weston at the party. It was just a casual get-together and then a sorrowful “damn shame that happened” goodbye at the door. Now it felt like this was evidence that no one really cared about remembering him but us.
Which was a lie. At some point, people had to move on from grief and tragedy. I knew this, and yet I struggled more than anyone with accepting his death. Over the years, my mom had acquired a coping mechanism I just didn’t have when it came to Wes. He’d been more than a brother—he’d been my protector, my friend, and someone who would be there for me long after our parents left this earth. Wes and I had been as close as siblings could be. I’d confided to him that he was going to walk me down the aisle because our dad would probably pick his butt and then give some embarrassingly long speech about how I’d never amount to anything but a barefoot and pregnant wife. Dad had never been the most encouraging man, and maybe that’s why Wes took over that role in looking out for me.
Three years after Wes died, my dad left us. All of us, including Maizy—who would never grow up with a father. Maybe it was for the better, all things considered, but it stung. Mom was in constant denial, and it showed in the way she talked about him like he was deceased and not living in Florida. At least, that’s where we last heard he was. I tried thirty-six times to contact him via phone and mail, but never got through.
Sometimes I wondered if Wes would have liked the idea that Dad split. I should have been upset, but we girls made a great team. Mom was much too young to retire, so she held a part-time job in order to take care of Maizy. I’d helped as often as I could in the beginning because daycare was too expensive. Now that Maizy was in school, life was a little easier.
Aside from our family tragedies, we led normal lives. I talked to Wes in my head a lot and didn’t pine over his death, except on this day, because it had always been made into a big production. It was the only time I visited his grave, because seeing it made his absence too real.
Maizy’s white shoes clicked on the blue tile and I lifted her up onto the cabinet, twirling my fingers in her blond hair. It wasn’t bright like April’s—more like the color of sunshine smeared across the floor at sunrise.
“You look garjus today. Like a little diva fashion model.”
She squealed out a giggle. “Mommy bought me a pretty ring. See?”
Maizy held up her little fingers so I could admire the pink stone. I winked at my mom. “Mommy has good taste.”
“Someday, I’m going to marry a prince and he’s going to give me one just like this.”
I softly kissed her cheek. “Yes, you will. Now why don’t we… race to the car!” I splayed my fingers across her belly, tickling until she screamed, jumped down, and went flying across the house.
“I’m going to beat you!” she called out.
“Lexi!” my mom scolded. “The whole neighborhood can hear that child when she screams.”
“Well, guess that means you don’t need the tornado sirens. Just give her a bullhorn and we can put her on the roof—”
Mom popped me on the butt with her hand and I chuckled. I might have been in my late twenties, but that woman still saw me as the smart-mouthed little girl who once stood up on a counter at a department store, folded my arms, and announced to everyone that perfume made you smell like a stinky pig. It was a protest because my mom wanted to buy me a bottle of the little girl’s stuff that smelled like overripe bananas.
Ever since then, I’ve despised bananas.
“Let’s go before it gets hot,” I decided. “Do you want to eat at Dairy Queen or come home and make sandwiches?”
Mom grabbed her purse and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. I reached out and hugged her tight.
“Let’s eat out.” She sniffled against my hair. “Maizy can get a chocolate-dipped cone. She likes those. I don’t ever want her to go through life not having the things she wants. Sometimes I still feel guilty for not buying Wes a skateboard when he was nine. I should have given him everything,” she said in a broken voice.
Tears welled in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. “It’s okay, Mom. I know. You gave him love, and that was all he needed.”
We sniffed, sighed, and laughed at each other.
“My makeup is ruined,” she said, sliding a finger beneath her lashes to wipe away the mascara.
“That’s okay, Halloween is only four months away.”
“You’re never too old to be grounded, young lady.”
***
We made a brief stop at the cemetery to lay down a bouquet of beautiful white lilies. Maizy climbed on the statues for a while
and then we watched her pluck tiny yellow flowers (which were really weeds) from an open patch of grass and place them on Wes’s grave, arranged in the shape of a heart. She’d never met her big bro, but he would have loved her to pieces.
Afterward, we swung by Dairy Queen. It was a new location that had opened earlier that year, and we stopped in once in a while to pick up a sack of burgers and fries, and of course a hot dog for Maizy.
We were sitting at a table by the window, watching Maizy color with a green crayon, when my mom gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh my God, is that who I think it is?”
I swiveled my head around in the direction she was looking. Sunlight reflected off the glass as the door opened and made me squint. Stepping through the front door of Dairy Queen… was Austin Cole.
Also known as my brother’s “best friend for life.” They’d met in the first grade and had been inseparable ever since. He and Wes had run with the same crowd, sometimes dated the same girls, and could finish each other’s sentences. Austin used to spend the night at our house and we’d treated him like a member of the family. In fact, when I was thirteen, I secretly decided we were going to get married. I had doodled Alexia Cole inside my notebook where no one would find it.
As kids, Austin used to pick on me without provocation. He once plucked off all the eyes on my stuffed animals and would dip his finger in my juice glass at the breakfast table and flick the drops at me. He didn’t have a sister, so he probably didn’t know how to deal with girls. Austin wasn’t doing it to be cruel—he just enjoyed getting a rise out of me. I was a dramatic little girl.
“He’s changed,” Mom said in a quiet voice.
Her sullen expression at his unexpected appearance told the story. The last time we had seen him was seven years ago at the funeral. He’d left town that week without any explanation. No phone call, no letter, and that hurt. We’d been like his second family.
The visual of his body standing in front of the door burned into my retinas. His swagger in those loose jeans, the way his tight T-shirt had come untucked on the right side, the black leather Oxfords, and most notably, the ropes of muscle in his arms. Austin no longer resembled the boyish young man I had last seen seven years ago. He had filled out in all the right places. While I couldn’t see his eyes behind those mirrored shades, I knew they were still crystal blue and the most remarkable feature he possessed, although the slight cleft in his chin came in a close second. Something about those pale eyes against his brown hair and thick brows could make a woman forget her own name.
He was dangerously handsome and held the attention of every woman of age in the room.
“Is she pretty?” Maizy asked, holding up her picture.
I blinked.
Princess in a green dress with an orange face. “She’s beautiful, Maze.”
My heart pounded against my chest and Mom stabbed the ice cubes in her cup with a clear straw. When her eyes lifted and locked, I knew right then and there he’d spotted her and they were engaged in a staring match. I waited expectantly for him to come up from behind and say an awkward hello.
Instead, I glanced out the window and saw Austin walking briskly to the adjacent parking lot where he had parked his classic Dodge Challenger. It was a badass model with black paint and tinted windows.
“Mom?”
I didn’t even know what I was going to ask. I just felt like something had to be said to deaden the moment.
He had been a second son to her, and maybe having him around after Wes’s death might have helped her get through it. I knew that thought crossed her mind, so I shot up to my feet. “I’m going to get some ice cream.”
“Yay!” Maizy cheered.
I marched over to the counter and right out the door, staring at his tinted windows with my hands on my hips. The tires spun, throwing gravel across the parking lot as he tore off.
But I knew Austin had seen me.
A boy named after the city he was born and raised in. A kid who ate dinner at our house three nights a week. A man who now sped off like a bona fide chickenshit when faced with the option of talking to his dead friend’s sister.
A man who’d kissed me passionately the night my brother was killed.
Chapter 3
By ten o’clock that evening, we’d eaten pork chops, watched a movie, and I’d left the house with a bottle of Mom’s whiskey. It wasn’t a favorite drink of mine, but she never touched the stuff and I needed something to help me sleep through the night. My wine collection at home was reserved for good times, and I didn’t want to taint my favorite beverage with sorrow.
This anniversary was never officially over until I was rip-roaring drunk.
On the way home, I made an unplanned visit to the cemetery. It was closed, but no one ever locks up a cemetery so tight that you can’t get in; it’s the getting out part that proves the most difficult.
Wes had a flat grave marker and I hated it. I tried to talk my mom into getting one of the raised ones to replace it, but she’d refused. Maybe that selfish part of me wanted something at eye-level to look at and talk to, or maybe even hug.
“God, Wes. You should see how much Maze has grown,” I said, sitting Indian style over his grave. It was dark as sin, and the only light illuminating the grounds shone from a tall lamp near a marble statue of an angel. “She’s so sweet, not like me. I was a little terror and you,” I said, waving my unsteady finger at the ground, “should have never let me go out with Josh Holden when I was fifteen. What were you thinking?”
I hiccupped and screwed the cap back on the bottle.
“Just because he was on the football team, you thought he was cool and he passed whatever test you had for the guys who called me up. Josh thought he was going to score a touchdown that night.” I snorted. “That was the first time I’d ever been to second base and when he started to slide into third, I slapped his face and walked home. Josh works at the gas station now. But then, who am I to talk?” I yelled up at the trees. “I’m just a candy girl.”
The grass met with my back and I gazed up at an infinite blanket of stars. Smog dimmed their usual brightness because I wasn’t far enough out of the city. Plus, I was three sheets to the wind.
“Guess who I saw today, Wes? Your best friend.”
I quietly lay there, thinking about how it made me feel.
“And?” a voice asked.
“And what? He pussied out and drove off in his tough-guy car.” My fingers yanked on the grass angrily and then it dawned on me—the voice I’d just heard wasn’t my imagination.
I rolled over and saw Austin leaning on his left shoulder against an aging tree. Austin always liked to do an ankle-cross while scoping out his surroundings. I used to think it was sexy as hell when he wore his leather jacket and fingerless gloves.
It took years before I realized that most girls probably had a crush on their brother’s best friend at some point in time. No big deal—just a childhood thing.
But damn, that lean was hot.
My eyes blinked a few times, as if I could make him disappear.
“Only time I ever saw you drunk, Lexi Knight, was the time we drove to San Antonio to a concert. Not even old enough to order a drink. Do you remember?” Austin pushed off the tree and stepped forward a few paces, arms crossed. “Wes was pissed when he found out those guys were buying you beers and he pulled you out of their truck before they decided to take the party to a new location. Good thing we found you when we did.”
“Oh? And where were you? I don’t even remember you being there.”
I emphasized the last bit and by the look on his face, he got my meaning.
“Kicking the shit out of every last man in that truck, that’s where I was. Got my nose broke in the process.”
The air stilled.
The only thing about that night I remembered was going to the concert, some guys giving me drinks from their cooler, and then hanging out in the parking lot cracking jokes. The next day, I woke up sick as a dog and Austin hadn’t re
turned to the hotel room. Wes drove my hung-over ass home and told our parents I had caught the flu. Since Austin had taken a separate car, I just assumed he left without us or was banging some girl all night.
“That’s right,” he said, carefully watching my stunned expression with shadowy eyes I couldn’t see in the darkness. “Bruised my knuckles knocking out the third guy, but he deserved it.”
“Why?”
“Because it was his lap you were sitting on,” he said in a low and dangerous voice.
A muscle flexed in his jaw and he lifted the bottle of whiskey, taking a slow swallow as a lightning bug flashed beside his shoulder. Austin screwed the cap on and I closed my eyes. I could have slept right there, sitting up in a graveyard with a ghost of my past in front of me.
“I’ll take you home.”
“No.”
“I’m not letting you drive in this condition.”
“What are you even doing here?” I finally snapped my eyes open. “Seven years, not a word, and you just show up and think everything is okay? Get away from me, and get off Wes’s grave.”
He flicked his eyes down and stepped to the side, shoving his fingers through his hair in a frustrated manner. “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”
I fell back and curled to my side, mumbling myself to sleep. “I don’t care what you think anymore. Leave me and Wes alone.”
***
When I opened my eyes, it was morning. I was asleep in the back seat of my Toyota with one leg stretched between the front seats and the other pressed against the glass.
“Shit,” I murmured, rubbing the crud from my eyes. My long hair was all over the place. Thank God I was still at the cemetery because I was wearing a dress and lying in a position a gynecologist would endorse.
Then I sat up and found myself staring at a neighborhood, or more accurately, my mom’s front yard. Nope, I wasn’t at the cemetery.
