It’s funny how life works out. I should be waking up in an oceanfront resort next to my brand-new wife, celebrating our honeymoon right now.
Instead, I’m waking up on an inflatable mattress in a barren apartment, next to a woman I’ve spent so many years angry at. If someone would have showed me this moment in a crystal ball last year, I would have wondered what could possibly have happened that would cause me to make a string of horrible decisions.
But now that I’m in this moment, I realize I’m here because I finally have clarity. I’ve never felt more certain about the choices I’ve made in my life than I do today.
I don’t want Kenna to wake up yet. She looks peaceful, and I need a moment to formulate a plan for today. I want to confront this sooner rather than later.
I’m scared of what the outcome will be, so a huge part of me wants to wait a couple of weeks so Kenna and I can live in secret bliss, full of hope that things are going to go her way.
But the longer we wait, the sloppier we’re going to get. The last thing I want is for Patrick and Grace to find out I’ve been lying to them before I can calmly confront them with my thoughts.
Kenna moves her arm to cover her eyes and then rolls onto her side. She tucks herself against me and moans. “It’s so bright in here.” Her voice is raspy and sexy.
I run my hand down her waist, over her hip, and then grip her thigh, pulling her leg over me. I kiss her cheek. “Sleep well?”
She laughs against my neck. “Sleep well? We had sex three times and then had to share a full-size inflatable mattress. I think I slept an hour, tops.”
“It’s after nine. You slept more than an hour.”
Kenna sits up. “What? I thought the sun just came up.” She tosses the covers aside. “I was supposed to be at work by nine.”
“Oh, shit. I’ll give you a ride.” I search for my clothes. I find my shirt, but Kenna’s kitten is curled up asleep inside of it. I lift her and set her on the couch and then start to pull on my jeans. Kenna is in the bathroom brushing her teeth. The door is open, and she’s completely naked, so I freeze in the middle of getting dressed because she’s got a perfect ass.
She sees me staring in the mirror and laughs, then kicks the bathroom door shut with her foot. “Get dressed!”
I finish getting dressed, but then I join her in the bathroom because I want some of her toothpaste. She scoots aside as she’s rinsing, and I start to squeeze some toothpaste on my finger, but she opens a drawer and pulls out a package that has a toothbrush in it.
“I bought a double pack.” She hands me the extra toothbrush and then leaves the bathroom.
We eventually meet at the front door. “What time do you get off work?” I pull her to me. She smells like fresh mint.
“Five.” We kiss. “Unless I get fired.” We kiss some more. “Ledger, I have to go,” she mutters against my mouth. But we kiss again.
We make it to the grocery store by a quarter to ten. She’s forty-five minutes late, but by the time we stop saying goodbye, she’s fifty minutes late.
“I’ll be here at five,” I say as she goes to close her door.
She smiles. “Just because I put out now doesn’t mean you have to be my chauffeur.”
“I was your chauffeur before you put out.”
She closes the door but then comes around to my side of the truck. I already have my window down, and she leans in and gives me one final kiss. When she pulls back, she pauses for a moment. It looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She just stares silently for a few seconds, like something is on the tip of her tongue, but then she backs away and runs into the store.
I’m a mile from my house when I realize I’ve had a ridiculous smile on my face during the whole drive. I wipe it away, but it’s the kind of smile that reappears with every thought I have about her. And all my thoughts this morning have been about her.
My parents’ RV is occupying the entire driveway, so I park in front of the house.
Grace and Patrick are back already. He’s out front watering his yard, and Diem is sitting in their driveway with a bucket of chalk.
I force the smile off my face. Not that a simple smile would give away everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, but Patrick knows me well enough that he might think my behavior is due to a girl. Then he’ll ask questions. Then I’ll have to lie to him even more than I have been.
Diem turns around when I close my truck door. “Ledger!” she looks both ways before meeting me in the middle of the street. I scoop her up and give her a big hug.
“Did you have fun at Grandma NoNo’s house?”
“Yeah, we found a turtle, and NoNo let me keep it. It’s in my room in a glass thing.”
“I want to see.” I put her back down, and she grabs my hand, but before we even reach the grass, Patrick and I make eye contact.
My heart immediately sinks.
His face is hard. There’s no hello. It’s the most resigned I’ve ever seen him.
His eyes fall to Diem, and he says, “You can show him your turtle in a minute. I need to talk to Ledger.”
Diem can’t feel the tension radiating from him, which is why she skips into the house while I’m frozen at the edge of the grass Patrick has been mindlessly watering. When the front door closes, he doesn’t say anything. He just continues to water the grass, like he’s waiting for me to admit my fuckup.
I’m worried for more reasons than one. His demeanor is making it obvious something is wrong, but if I say something first, I could be off the mark. Anything could be wrong. Maybe his mother is ill, or they received bad news he doesn’t want Diem to hear.
The way he’s acting could be completely unrelated to Kenna, so I wait for him to say whatever it is that seems so hard for him to say.
He releases the nozzle and drops the water hose. He walks closer to me, and each of his deliberate steps is aligned with the pounding of my heartbeat. He stops walking about three feet from me, but my heartbeats just keep pounding. I don’t like how silent it is between us. I can tell he’s about to confront me, and Patrick is not a confrontational person. The fact that he’s not circling around what he wants to say with a Welp has me more than concerned.
Something is bothering him, and it’s serious. I attempt to alleviate the tension by casually saying, “When did you guys get back?”
“This morning,” he says. “Where were you?” He asks it like he’s my father and he’s pissed I snuck out in the middle of the night.
I don’t even know what to say. I’m searching for whatever lie would fit this moment the best, but none of them seem to fit. I can’t say I was parked in my garage, because my parents’ RV is in the way. I can’t say I was home, because obviously my truck hasn’t been here.
Patrick shakes his head. His face is filled with galaxy-size disappointment.
“He was your best friend, Ledger.”
I try to hide my inhale. I shove my hands in my pockets and look at my feet. Why is he saying this? I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what he knows. I don’t know how he knows.
“We saw your truck at her apartment this morning.” His voice is low, and he’s not looking at me. It’s like he can’t stand the person standing across from him. “I was certain it was a coincidence. That someone who has a truck just like yours lived in the building, but when I pulled up next to it to get a better look, I saw Diem’s car seat.”
“Patrick—”
“Are you sleeping with her?” His voice is monotone and flat in an unnerving way.
I reach an arm over my chest and squeeze my shoulder. My chest is so tight it feels like my lungs are in a vise grip. “I think the three of us need to sit down and talk about this.”
“Are you sleeping with her?” he repeats, much louder this time.
I run a hand down my face, frustrated that this is how it’s coming to a head. I just needed a few hours and I was going to talk to them about it. It would have been so much better that way. “We’ve all been wrong about her.” I say it unconvincingly, because I know nothing I could say right now is going to be absorbed by him. Not when he’s this angry.
He releases a half-hearted laugh, but then his face just falls into the saddest frown, and his eyebrows draw apart. “Have we? We’ve been wrong?” He takes a step closer to me, finally looking me in the eyes. His expression is full of betrayal. “Did she not leave my son to die? Did your best friend not spend his last hours on this earth alone on a deserted road barely breathing because of her?” A tear escapes, and he angrily wipes it away. He’s so angry he has to blow out a steady breath to keep from screaming at me.
“It was an accident, Patrick.” My voice is almost a whisper. “She loved Scotty. She panicked and made the wrong choice, but she paid for that choice. At what point can we stop blaming her?”
He chooses to answer that question with his fist. He punches me hard in the mouth.
I do nothing, because I feel so guilty that they found out this way I’d let him punch me a million more times, and I still wouldn’t defend myself.
“Hey!” My father is running out of my house, heading toward us. Patrick hits me again, right when Grace runs out her front door. My father pushes himself between us before Patrick can get in a third punch.
“What the hell, Pat?” my dad yells.
Patrick doesn’t look at him. He’s looking at me without even an ounce of regret. I take a step forward to plead with him because I don’t want this conversation to end now that it’s finally out there, but Diem runs outside. Patrick doesn’t see her before he tries to lunge at me again.
“For Christ’s sake!” my dad yells, pushing him back. “Stop it!”
Diem starts crying when she takes in the commotion. Grace reaches for her and starts to take Diem in the house, but Diem wants me. She’s reaching for me, and I don’t know what to do.
“I want to go with Ledger,” Diem pleads.
Grace half turns and looks at me. I can tell by the look of betrayal on her face that she might even be hurting more than Patrick is right now.
“Grace, please. Just hear me out.”
She turns her back to me and disappears with Diem inside her house. I can hear Diem cry, even after the door closes, and I feel like she just ripped open my chest.
“Don’t you dare try to put your choices on us,” Patrick says. “You can choose that woman, or you can choose Diem, but don’t you dare try to make us feel guilty for a choice we came to peace with five years ago. You did this to yourself, Ledger.” Patrick turns and walks back inside.
My father releases my arm. He moves so that he’s in front of me, and I’m sure he’s going to try to calm me down, but I don’t give him the opportunity. I walk to my truck and I leave.
I go to the bar, but instead of going inside, I beat on the door to Roman’s stairwell. I beat constantly until he opens it. He looks confused, but then he sees my busted lip, and he says, “Ah, hell.” He steps aside and then follows me up the stairs to his apartment.
I go to the kitchen and wet some paper towels to wipe the blood from my mouth.
“What happened?”
“I spent the night with Kenna. The Landrys found out.”
“Patrick did that?”
I nod.
Roman’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t hit him back, did you? He’s like sixty years old.”
“Of course not, but not because of his age. He’s as strong as I am. I didn’t hit him back because I deserved this.” I pull the paper towel from my mouth, and the whole thing is covered with blood. I walk to the bathroom and inspect my face. My eye looks okay. It’ll probably be a little bruised, but my lip is sliced up on the inside. I think he hit me so hard my tooth cut through my lip. “Fuck.” Blood is pouring out of my mouth. “I think I need stitches.”
Roman looks at my mouth and then winces. “Shit, man.” He grabs a washcloth and wets it, then hands it to me and says, “Come on, I’ll drive you to the ER.”
