by A. J. Downey
“It’s no trouble.”
She gazed off into the distance again, her green eyes vacant as she thought about it. Finally, she gave me a wan smile and nodded, looking like she was on the verge of tears all over again.
“Okay, then,” I said and gave a quick nod.
I took her home. The neighborhood was a shitty one; Hilltop. I didn’t like a lot of what I was seeing, but I kept it to myself. This was the type of hood me and the boys belonged in, not someone sweet like Aspen.
“You got a way into the house?” I asked her when we pulled up to the curb out front. She stared at the dilapidated thing and gave a brittle nod.
“It’s not even my house,” she said softly. “It’s my mom’s.”
“She leave it to you?” I asked and immediately wished I could take it back as I shifted my dad’s truck into park. “You don’t have to answer that,” I said quickly. “It’s none of my business.”
“No, it’s alright,” she said. “She left it to me and Copper – um, that’s my brother. I mean, was my brother. God, everything’s so complicated!”
“Hey, breathe, one thing at a time, okay? Let’s get you in the house.”
She nodded and pulled on the door handle, sliding around in her seat so she could hop down. I picked up my cut off the seat in between us and shrugged into it as soon as my boots were firmly on the ground.
I hated driving cages of any variety, but it was too cold and too wet to expect Aspen to get on the back of my bike to get her here. She would have frozen her ass off.
She went to the rose bed in front of the house and looked around flipping over random rocks until she found what she was looking for with an ‘ah ha!’ She jerked her head for me to follow and I went up the path as she slid open the false bottom of the clever hidden key rock and retrieved the key.
“If you give me just a minute, I’ll find my phone book, call Lindsay, and give you your shirt back.”
“Sounds good,” I said with a nod. I was in no hurry. She could call her friend first if she liked.
“Home sweet home,” she said and followed it up before I could get through the door with a gusty sigh and a “Sorry, it’s such a mess.”
“Mess isn’t the word I’d use to describe it,” I said, stepping through the door and laying eyes on the scattered packing materials and piles of boxes.
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, rooting through one before shifting it to the floor and opening the one beneath. “What would you call it?”
I shrugged. “A state of transition, a moment of flux, you got a lot going on.” I put my hands into my back pockets for a lack of anything else to do with them and to resist the urge I had to start going through shit. I found myself wanting to learn more about her.
She was on her knees going through a third box when she suddenly let out another triumphant, “Ah ha!” and held up a little black address book.
“Nice,” I said.
“Let’s hear it for being paranoid,” she said, clambering back up onto her feet. “I hate to ask, but can I borrow your phone?”
“Paranoid?” I asked, digging in my inside pocket for my cell. I was having an ‘oh, duh,’ moment realizing she needed my phone to call her friend. The paranoid comment still threw me, though.
“Yeah, I write everyone’s number down in my book in case my phone ever decides it wants to purge my contacts or something,” she said, flipping it open and flashing through pages.
“Good idea,” I said and nodded. She was having a hard time juggling the book and the phone to turn pages so I took the book from her and held it open. She found the page and frowned at my phone.
“Shit, sorry, it’s five-four-seven-three,” I told her so she could unlock it.
“Um, you didn’t have to tell me that,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“It’s cool,” I said with a wink. “I trust yah.”
She blushed a bit and pulled up the keypad and entered her friend’s number and I smiled as she turned her back and took a few steps away. While she waited for the call to ring through, I slid a pen out of the inside pocket of my jacket suddenly inspired.
I flipped through her book until I got to the ‘F’s and wrote my name and number on an available line, even threw the address for the farm in there. I put the pen back, slipped one of the farm’s business cards out of my inside pocket and bookmarked the page with it, leaving it sticking out the top of her book.
If she ever needed anything, she could find me.
“I ended up at the bouncer’s house last night,” she said and there was hostility in her tone. I looked up to her hunched shoulders and had a quick moment of regret that quickly turned to pleasure at her next words – “And thank God, he was there to take care of me, because you sure weren’t. I just want my stuff back.”
There was a long pause, and she pinched the bridge of her nose.
“One of those yahoos put something in my drink, Lindsay. I’m glad you had a good time, but I really didn’t.” She turned and looked at me and said, “At least not until this morning. I just really want my purse and my phone back.”
Another pause.
“I’m at home. I had a hidden key… Yes, that’s fine. Okay. See you in a few. Bye.”
I was proud of her. She wasn’t taking any shit from her friend and letting her gaslight her. I held out her book when she held out my phone.
She took it, one eyebrow going up at the card sticking out the top.
“New number to add when you get your phone back,” I said. “Just call if you need anything.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said with a light blush. “I don’t want to impose any more than I already have, though.”
“Hey, it was no imposition,” I said. “Just glad I was there to catch you.”
“Me too,” she murmured, setting her address book aside on top of one of the boxes.
“I’ll, uh, be right back,” she said. “Just two seconds.”
“Take your time,” I murmured at her back. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t checking out the rounded curve of her ass beneath the checkered flannel of mine she had on.
She disappeared into one of the bedrooms and I sighed, rocking back and forth impatiently between my heels and the balls of my feet on the area rug that covered the worn-down hardwood floor beneath it.
I could already tell, she was gonna be on my mind for a minute. I somehow hoped she would find an excuse to call me soon.
Chapter Three
Aspen…
I kept thinking about him – Fenris – long after he’d left and Lindsay had arrived. She was wholly unrepentant about things and genuinely didn’t understand what the big deal was. She seriously thought it was just another rowdy night out with the girls. Like, I was fine and overreacting. I didn’t think I was angry enough, but to be honest? I just couldn’t muster up the energy for it.
Instead, I’d taken my things, had checked to make sure everything was there, and I’d ended the friendship. Done. Right then and there. No going back.
I was tired of being mistreated. Only thing I was more tired of was the fact that I’d been allowing it for so long.
I took a hot shower, a proper one with shampoo and conditioner this time. I hadn’t used any of the stuff at the goat farm. I didn’t want to dry out my hair and let it turn into a frizzy mess on me – so I’d just watered it down really, really, good until I got home. Now, I felt truly clean and that was saying something.
I’d washed a lot more down my shower drain than just dirt and used soap.
I made myself some hot tea in my favorite hand-thrown mug and settled into my favorite old chair of my mom’s in the living room.
So much was up in the air, it wasn’t even funny. I didn’t know how long I had to live here with Mom still owing on the house and everything still caught up – even more tangled now that my brother had died.
I supposed I would have to sell it, which I didn’t want to do, but I didn’t see any other option. After paying the rest owed, I migh
t get out with at least a decent down payment for a place of my own. I just didn’t want to think about any of it right now.
I unlocked my mostly recharged phone and picked up my address book from the side table where I’d relocated it.
I couldn’t imagine calling Fenris for anything else, but I couldn’t deny I wanted to. Just… Jesus! How soon was too soon? My divorce wasn’t even final. I’d only left Charles four months ago.
He was being an ass over the division of assets, trying to get me to talk to him, but I didn’t want to.
I heaved a big sigh at the big fat mess in front of me and let my gaze un-focus, drawing up the image in my mind’s eye of my unlikely savior.
He was unconventionally handsome – rugged, and those blue eyes of his… I shuddered to think of how they seemed to see through right down into my soul. He was massive, imposing, and downright scary but I couldn’t help but realize how kind, gentle and how sweet everything he had done for me had been. He’d been a perfect gentleman, and it just didn’t make sense to me, what with his rough exterior.
I plucked the business card out of my book and read it over again.
Fjordson’s Family Farm
Fenris Fjordson, his address, and an office number. I wondered if Fjordson was his actual last name or if it was made up too. I mean, he’d already said that he went by Fenris, so that couldn’t really be his first name.
I sighed and entered him in as a new contact, adding his mobile number that he’d written in my book and the business line under ‘work’ for good measure.
It was raining heavily outside the front window and I sat in the little golden pool of lamplight, cozy in my pajamas and robe, hands wrapped around the steaming mug in my hands and just let the sky cry for me, too spent to shed any more tears right this moment.
I wanted to, though. Just how many losses am I supposed to take this year? I wondered. First Mom, then Copper, then Charles, and now Lindsay – I didn’t have many friends and so I was feeling the loss keenly.
I sniffed, sipped some tea, and closed my eyes, letting my tears match the rainfall outside my mom’s window.
I missed them. I missed them all terribly.
God, I felt too old at thirty-eight to be starting all over again… but here I was, and that was just what I was going to do.
I sighed and tried not to let my misery swamp me which was a lot easier said than done. It felt like my mind was literally on fire. I had this funny feeling in my chest, and every time I looked around at the mountain of boxes around me, I felt overwhelmed.
“Get it together, Aspen,” I murmured, staring out the front window and sniffing back more tears. This feeling… this loneliness had been around for a while, except now? Now it was raw and aching. The chasm left behind in the center of my chest at the loss of literally everyone I held dear was killing me slowly.
“One day at a time,” I whispered. “You’re doing the best that you can with the hand you’ve been dealt.”
I repeated the positive affirmations the social worker had given me and they just didn’t work anymore. I felt like I was drowning, like there was no more coming up for air and I didn’t know what scared me more – the prospect that I had literally lost everything inside of a month’s span, or the deep-seated feeling of apathy that was creeping from the darkest parts of me and had me so thoroughly bound up.
I sighed, struggling within myself and finally gave up.
Enough of this. I was tired, so damn tired. I set my tea aside, switched out the lamp and went to bed.
I wish I could have slept a solid twenty hours like I had a few times since, well, everything, but I had to work the next morning.
There were certain perks to owning your own business, but there were a lot of drawbacks, too. My biggest drawback right now was that I needed to be there.
I couldn’t let my business crumble. I had to keep going, but it was hard, so unimaginably hard right now. I didn’t have anybody who understood, or who I could talk to anymore. I’d been on my husband’s health insurance and he’d switched jobs after the break up. I don’t know if it had been just to kick me off of it, I mean, I don’t think he was that spiteful.
I sighed and went to bed, waking up just as tired as when I had laid down.
The weather was better, at least. I mean, it was still crisp, but the skies were blue and the leaves were changing as fall battled it out with these last dregs of summer. It was so Pacific Northwest in that you needed to layer. Cold in the mornings, misty and foggy, but by the afternoon, highs in the seventies.
Plus, it was always warm in the back of the shop with all the kilns firing unfinished pieces.
If it was one thing my mother and I had been close on, it was for our mutual love of pottery. Otherwise, our relationship was fairly strained. Copper and I both agreed, it was like we carried too much of our father in us and for some reason… our mother hated him, but we never knew why, precisely.
It wasn’t like he was around. He’d ditched us when I was just a baby and never bothered to look back. Copper was two, and pretty quickly it was apparent that he needed to become the quote, unquote man of the house.
He really came into the role when I was five and he was seven and he nearly shot an intruder when Mom was working a late shift at the diner. That was back when we lived in Colorado. She nearly had us taken away from her and she moved us to Washington to avoid it.
Her best friend, Annie, had lived out here which is what brought us this way back in the eighties. Annie had died of lung cancer back in 2014. She smoked a pack and a half a day from the time she herself was fourteen, so it wasn’t exactly a shocker. It still sucked, though. Annie was like a second mom to me and Copper and had owned a bead shop. She’d left everything to my mother, which is how my mother had bought this place.
Copper had a home, a wife, and a daughter of his own when he died, so everything that was his was now theirs, which left me in quite a bit of limbo since half of this house was his. I didn’t worry too much for right now. His wife, Christen, was a bitch but his son, Silver, was as sweet as could be – a little darling with his dad’s smile and – God, I missed my brother.
He had always been the one to take care of the big things. I mean, I had taken care of my mom while she declined with her pancreatic cancer, but the big decisions and power of attorney and all that? That had been Copper.
He’d always known what to do.
I drove myself to Seattle and my little pottery shop off Airport Way in the Georgetown neighborhood.
It sat in an old, squat, brick building just a bit down and across the street from the old Rainier beer brewery and down the block from one of the oldest bars in Seattle – the Jules Maes Saloon.
Georgetown was quickly becoming the second artsiest neighborhood in Seattle. The first always was, and always would be Fremont, but the prices to rent in Fremont were exorbitant and a little shop like me would struggle to survive.
I keyed my way in the front door, raised the blinds to let the natural light in the front windows and with a sigh, went and put my purse and jacket away and to don my clay-and-glazed-stained apron.
It was time to unload the kilns, restock the shelves, and see what pieces I was getting low on to make some more. I was almost certain I would be at the wheel churning out some more potbellied mugs – those always went fast.
My thoughts turned back to Fenris and the baby goats on his farm from the day before and I smiled. He was strange, such a mixed dichotomy of dark and light, gentle yet rough. He’d been so selfless and I didn’t feel right, like I’d not properly thanked him.
I thought about his house, and how rustic, yet homey it was. How he and his father really seemed to appreciate the simple things, and I had a sudden idea.
“You’re crazy,” I muttered to myself but I was smiling, and it felt good to do something good. As soon as I had enough mugs made to go into the kiln for a first firing, I took stock of how much room I had left and set to work on some more dishes.
&nb
sp; I liked working the wheel. It allowed my mind to click off and for me to just coast for a while. I didn’t have to think. I just had to concentrate on what I was doing so whatever piece I was working on didn’t come out malformed. The nice thing about clay, unlike my life, was if it wasn’t cooperating or turning out how you wanted it to? You just slapped it down into a lump and could start again.
I wish everything else was so simple.
Chapter Four
Fenris…
“Yeah, Pops, what’s up?” I pressed my cell to my ear and plugged the other with the middle finger of my other hand.
“Where the fuck you at, boy?” he demanded gruffly through the line.
“Waiting out this rain shower under an overpass, why?”
“Just wanted to let you know, the stray kitty you picked up at the bar last week was back. Left a couple heavy-ass boxes here for you.”
“Shit, yeah?” I asked surprised. I hadn’t heard from Aspen and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been massively disappointed by that.
“No, I’m making it up,” he said dryly. “How far out are yah?”
“Twenty more minutes if this shit would settle to a dull roar,” I answered. I didn’t mind riding in the rain but when it came down this bad, it wasn’t a question of my riding but of citizen’s driving. I didn’t want to get slammed into by a cage or worse because they couldn’t see my ass for the road spray. So, when it hit a certain threshold, I pulled my ass over to wait it out a few minutes so shit could settle down.
“Fine,” he grumbled.
“Well, open ‘em up if you’re that damn curious,” I said laughing.
“I can wait,” he said and with a harrumph, ended the call on me. I laughed again and tucked my phone away. The rain wasn’t exactly letting up, but my curiosity was getting the better of me, so goggles down, I fired my bike back up and cautiously pulled back into the flow of traffic on 18.
When I got home, my dad was out back under the eave of the house, cigar between his teeth and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, the mug big, brown, and handsome – almost a tankard versus a mug. The clay was thick and sturdy, the layers of coating or whatever artistic and rustic.
