Create a Life to Love

by Erin Zak

  “Roni!” Beth shouted as she yanked the phone from my hand. “How long has he been hitting her? Has this been a thing? What the frick?” Beth was shouting into the phone and looked crazier than I thought she was capable. She was always such a calm person. She held herself together. I’d like to think she got it from me, but these days, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Beth,” I whispered. I held my hand out and waited for her to put the phone back in my hand.

  “Sorry,” she said softly and slapped the iPhone back into my hand. “But you aren’t going to tell me.”

  “Yes. I am. Can you please give me a minute?” I waited until she stood and started toward the bedroom door. “Close the door, please.”

  Beth looked back at me. “I’ll be right out here if you need me.”

  “I’m the adult here,” I said quietly. “Please, let me handle this.” Her shoulders fell as she did what I asked. I put the phone back to my ear. “I’m sorry.”

  “Suze, he could have killed you. You know that, right?”

  “God.” My voice was strained. My head was killing me. And my stomach was in a knot so large that I wasn’t sure it’d ever relax.

  “Do we need to meet? Do you need to come here? You know you can.”

  “I think,” I said, then felt emotion rising up my esophagus until it voiced itself as a sob. “How did I let this get so bad?”

  Veronica sighed. “You are stopping it. Finally. That’s all that matters. Okay? You can’t go back. You cannot live in the past.”

  She was right. She was always right. “We’re going to leave. We need to leave. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” And she knew Steven almost as well as I did. Years of being my best friend, of helping me pick up the pieces, of buying me that eight-ounce New York strip to put on my bruise, made her an expert in Dr. Steven Weber. “Do you want me to buy you a plane ticket to Colorado? My best friend has a ranch. You guys can stay there.”

  I chuckled. It felt good. “No. I’m not going to hide out on a ranch.”

  Veronica laughed with me. “I mean, horses and shit. I don’t know. I’ve heard they’re therapeutic.”

  “I don’t know where we’re going to go,” I said softly. “He already threatened Melissa.”

  “He’s a fucking lunatic,” she shouted, and I heard her wife Mary say that she needed to get us to come there. “Did you hear her?”

  “He’ll know, though. You’ll be the first person he’ll harass here.” I rubbed my forehead with my free hand. Hearing Veronica’s voice was making everything feel more real. “God, Veronica, Beth had a baseball bat and I…I don’t want to even imagine how bad this would be if he hit her. Or if she hit him? Christ.”

  “Honey, you need to get your shit together and leave. I can draw up the papers, file it with the courts, and get your signature remotely. Do not hesitate.” I heard Veronica take a deep breath on the other end of the phone. There were a couple beats of silence before she asked, “Where did he hit you this time?”

  “He backhanded me,” I answered softly. “Across my face. My right eye is…” My voice trailed off as the tears started to form. I was so strong up until that exact moment.

  “Leave. Get your things together. Start driving and don’t stop.”

  “Roni…”

  “Listen to me. You know how crazy he gets. You’ve seen that look in his eyes before and have barely dodged his fist.” I flashed back to the last time this happened, to the drunken stupor I found him in, to the way he lunged at me, and hit the wall behind me. That hole in the wall stayed there for weeks until I finally paid a contractor to fix it. My stomach churned. “Get Beth out of there before he does something else insane.”

  She was right. She was absolutely right. When I first found Steven in college, he was so sweet and kind. But as the years progressed, as he slipped further and further away from our family, he became more and more volatile. I knew how to deal with him ninety percent of the time. It was the other ten percent, the moments when his nostrils flared, his fists clenched, and his vein popped on the side of his neck that scared me to death. “Okay.”

  “I’ll get the papers together, and you tell me where you’ve landed when you get there. Do you need money? I have a lot saved for the stupid addition to the house that Mary won’t let us start.”

  “No, I’m okay. I have an account he doesn’t know about.”

  “Suze, have you been planning this for a while?”

  I sighed. “No? Yes. I don’t know. I guess so? I knew it wasn’t going to last much longer. I never thought it would come to this.”

  “We never do.” Veronica’s deep intake of air was loud and clear from the other end of the phone. “I’ll take care of everything here. I’ll handle the judge. You’ll be able to take Beth wherever you need to, I can promise you. Temporary protection orders, whatever it takes. Okay?”

  “Thank you, Roni.”

  “Susan?”

  “Yes?”

  “Take care of yourself. I’ve got you covered here.”

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “I love you.”

  “Love you, too, Suze. You’re going to be okay.”

  We hung up, and I felt my hands shaking. I hoped she was right. I hoped we were going to be okay. At that point, with nowhere to go and no idea what my next move really was, I wasn’t super sure.

  * * *

  JACKIE

  It had been forever since I went to dinner with the girls. Tabitha insisted on going even though I told her a hundred times that I was working against a deadline, and I could not miss it.

  “Six thousand words is nothing! You can bang that out in two hours. Come on.”

  “Two hours?” I shouted at her from my bedroom. “You must be out of your fucking mind.”

  “I’m not,” she shouted back. “Hurry up. We are meeting them at Fresco’s in a half hour.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair and hoped my curls wouldn’t fall out the instant we walked outside. The humidity wasn’t as bad as it normally was in March, but it was still rough. I quickly applied eyeliner and mascara, sprayed myself with perfume, and then stepped back to check myself out in the mirror. I really did clean up well. And when I was nervous or working against a deadline, I rarely ate. So, the weight that was dropping off me was turning out to be a good thing. The long black skirt I threw on hadn’t fit two months ago, and now it looked great. I straightened the loose-fitting red tank top I paired with it and then grabbed my jean jacket. If we were eating near the water, the wind always cooled things off. I knew I was becoming more and more like a true Floridian when “cool” was eighty degrees.

  “Okay, okay, let’s go,” I said as I breezed into the living room where Tabitha was lying on the couch. I heard her whistle low and slow. I started to laugh at her. “Stop, please.”

  “You look great. What the hell? I look like a damn scrub.”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  “You dick,” she said as she opened the door and let me leave first. “If you pick someone up tonight, I’m gonna be real mad at you.”

  I looked at her over my shoulder. “I will not pick anyone up tonight. I promise.”

  She guffawed as our Lyft driver pulled up to my condominium. We climbed in, and he was off toward Fresco’s.

  “So, have you heard anything from your…daughter? I mean, are we calling her your daughter?”

  “God, no. I call her Beth. And no.” I reached for my purse and checked the pockets. “Speaking of, I forgot my fucking phone.”

  “Don’t worry. I got mine.” Tabitha held up her phone and winked at me. “You won’t be able to pick up anyone without a phone.”

  “You severely underestimate me.”

  “Hardly!” Tabitha shot back, and we sank into an easy conversation about her job at the elementary school as a librarian. It was weird to see her in that setting, but man, she loved it. She would go on and on about the kids and getting them hooked on different books and helping them find what
they’re passionate about. It was fun hearing her be excited. She’d taken forever to get through college, which was where we met. I graduated with a degree in English, and she was still figuring out her major. Three years later, she finally graduated with library sciences. It was the strangest thing to imagine her reading a book, let alone being the keeper of the books. But she kept telling me that the librarian at University of Tampa really helped her see the beauty in reading and unleashing her imagination. Later, she confessed that her and said librarian used to fuck in the stacks. I always suspected it, but she would deny it up and down. No worries. I teased her thoroughly once she came clean. Either way, she still loved what she did. I guess that was all that mattered at the end of the day.

  We pulled up to the restaurant, Tabitha finished up her conversation with the Lyft driver, promised to tip on the app, and then we headed into Fresco’s. Our group was already there, nestled in a corner on the patio. Everyone shouted at us, and I was thankful that Fresco’s was our normal haunt; otherwise, we would have been thrown out for being rowdy.

  When we got to the table, Barbara tackle-hugged me. A friend for ages, she started out as a girlfriend. It wasn’t until she finally found a significant other that we were able to actually be friends. We tried, of course, but nine times out of ten, we ended up in bed together. I was always the one breaking her heart, though, so when she told me about Jenny, I thanked every single higher power I could think of.

  “Jacks, you look awesome. How can you look this awesome and never leave your condo?” She asked as she squeezed me to death. “I have missed you so much!”

  I squeezed her back, then released the hug. “Barbie, you look good!”

  “I have been doing that stupid P90X bullshit that Jenny is doing. It’s ridiculous.” Barbara was always thin, and her legs looked like toothpicks. There was no way this woman was lifting any weights. Ever.

  I glanced over at Jenny, who was involved in a conversation with Tabitha. “She looks ripped. Is she taking steroids?”

  Barbara slapped me on the arm. “She does look good, though, doesn’t she?”

  Jenny looked a little too muscular for my likes, but I nodded and smiled big. Dana and Ryan were seated next to Jenny, and they both flipped me off from their seats. “What the hell?” I asked with a laugh as I made my way over to them.

  “You never fucking text me back. You never come over. All you ever do is hole up in your condo,” Dana said as she stood so she could hug me.

  “Dana, you know I’m writing my next book, right? And that writing is my job. Kinda like you have a job?” I was lying. I was a big fucking liar. I didn’t text Dana back because I knew what she wanted. And I couldn’t give and give and give to her when at the end of the day, what she wanted was not at all what I wanted.

  “Um, yeah, but what the fuck? Text me back. Tell me how it’s going. Lament to me that you actually miss human interaction. So I don’t think you’ve been eaten by an alligator.”

  Ryan stood to hug me, ran his fingers through his intentionally messy hair, then nodded. “I mean, she has a point. I haven’t heard from you since God was a boy.”

  “I texted you last week!” I smacked him on the ass when we finally hugged.

  “Oh my God, she texts you but not me?” Dana’s irritation was probably meant to come across as sarcasm, but I knew better. She was a little clingy with me sometimes. And stupid me, I started to take complete advantage of her clinginess when I needed her so-called “human interaction,” which, of course, was a code word for sex. I was working on distancing myself as much as possible lately because I knew I was a horrible person. I did give in from time to time. I was human after all. But damn. She was like a dog with a bone. “I swear. Who do I have to fuck to get a text back?”

  I raised my eyebrows at her. “Um, me?” I was awful. Why did I flirt so shamelessly with her?

  “Ryan didn’t fuck you!”

  “He would if he liked vagina.”

  “This is true. Jacks is hot as fuck.” Ryan smiled at me, and I blew him a kiss. He was such an adorable asshole that I could never not tease him. I was proud of him, though. He had built up quite the following in the gay community from his drag show appearances. Stackey-N-the-Backey was his show name, and he really was incredible.

  Dana laughed and sat on my lap once I found a seat next to Tabitha. Regardless of Dana’s inability to keep me at arm’s length and my inability to do the same, she was probably the only friend I could see myself giving in and settling down with. Like, if the world ended, and we wound up surviving a zombie apocalypse together, and the thrill of outrunning attack after attack led to screaming hot sex. That sounded really horrible, I know, but I did not want to settle down with anyone. Especially someone as clingy as Dana. Even though she was beautiful and really good in bed… One day, I was sure I would make an exception. She had a massive amount of curly, jet black hair that fell somewhere past the middle of her back. She typically wore it down, and it never looked frizzy. I swear it was a wig. It was too perfect. Especially in the Florida humidity. Every now and then, she’d tie it up into a bun, which made her look far younger than she really was. She always smelled like Aveda products, too. The rosemary and lavender mingled with brown sugar and vanilla because she owned a bakery. Her smile was ridiculous, too. The first time I met her, she wouldn’t stop smiling at me, and I was thankful she was in my life because regardless of my incapacity to commit, or to fall in love, sometimes that smile was all I needed to remind myself that my life really wasn’t that bad.

  I looped my finger through the belt loop of her skinny jeans and pulled. “What’s been going on?” I asked, and when she looked down at me, I couldn’t help but smile back at her.

  “Well, since you never text,” she said, then reached forward so she could push a lock of my hair behind my ear. “I’ve been really good. I’ve missed you.” There was a sharp inhale of breath, and I knew she was mad at herself for saying that. We’d had the talk numerous times about her clinginess. God, my relationship with her made me sound like such a giant asshole. And maybe I was. Dana gathered her thoughts and continued. “The bakery is doing really well. I had to hire a couple more people to help in the kitchen, so that’s good.”

  “I’m really sorry I’ve been awful about texting.” I figured it’d be a good idea to at least appear human. I scrunched my face.

  “Didn’t need my distraction?”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. She was one hell of a distraction, too. Falling into bed with her while working on a book never did anything good for me. And in the long run, it wasn’t that great for her. The more I slept with her, the more I fucked her up.

  “When you’re finished, maybe we could, y’know, distract each other?” She stood and leaned down to place a kiss on my lips. Her hair fell over her shoulder, and the scent made me want to rip her clothes off right there. It had been way too long for me. And to be brutally honest, maybe that human interaction with Dana would distract from my constant thoughts about Susan.

  “Maybe that can be arranged,” I said as she started to walk back toward her seat next to Ryan.

  “Yeah, so she met her fucking daughter!”

  My head snapped toward Tabitha. Was she kidding me? “What the hell, Tab?”

  “What? You didn’t say I couldn’t tell anyone! They all know your background!” Tabitha’s hands flew in the air to indicate she thought she did nothing wrong. I should have known better than to tell her.

  Instead of taking her seat next to Ryan, Dana pulled out the chair next to me. She sat and made sure to lock her eyes on mine. “You met the baby you gave up for adoption?” she asked with a quiet voice, but the rest of the table seemed to hear because they all quieted down.

  I let myself look at each person at the table and then stopped when I got to Tabitha, who gave me a tiny smile that for some reason gave me strength, even though I could have killed her for not keeping her mouth shut. “She found me. She’s sixteen. Her name is Beth. And I don’t kn
ow if I thought I’d ever survive such a fucked-up couple of days.”

  Ryan put his elbows on the table, his hands now under his face as he listened inquisitively. “My God, this is crazy.”

  “I know. Believe me.”

  “Well, how did it go? Was it weird? Was she nice? Did she look like…” Dana’s voice trailed off, and I looked at her. I knew she wanted to ask if Beth looked like her father. I refused to ever talk about him, so I was thrilled she didn’t finish her sentence.

  “It was okay. She was nice. A good kid,” I said. “Look, you guys, I don’t really want to rehash this. I’m sorry.” I pointed at Tabitha. “And you will be buying all my drinks and my food. Pony up, ya dick.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tabitha said when she leaned into my space.

  Deep down, she knew she shouldn’t have blabbed. It was absolutely the biggest secret in my entire life, but thankfully, everyone at the table knew about the skeleton in my closet, so I wasn’t as mad as I probably should have been. I was trying really hard to stop obsessing about things in my past, especially that time period. I started writing right after it happened, and I hadn’t stopped. I had obsessed on paper and didn’t talk unless absolutely necessary, and now I had no burning desire to rehash anything. Especially the only people I’d been able to think about since I pulled away from Savannah. I needed to stop.

  I glanced around the table. Everyone else got the hint and started to have their own conversations. I took a deep breath and calmed down. “It’s okay. I promise,” I finally said. I leaned forward and looked at Tabitha. “I…”

  “Susan.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know.” Tabitha put her hand on my leg. “I can read you like a book.”