After the Shut Up Ring

Chapter 5 – Angie

“So he asked you out?”Madison asks.

I’ve already told her the story over text, and then again on the phone, but she’s making me repeat it a third time in person. We’re hanging out in the kiddie pool while the girls tear around the yard like wildebeests. Miss Dawn is at pickleball. Brandon is trimming the grass sprouting by the back fence with a weedwhacker.

He’s ignoring me, and I’m ignoring him.

Mostly. I’ve caught him looking over once or twice. And he’s caught me.

“Yeah,” I say. “He texted and asked me if I wanted to see a movie.”

“And you said?”

“I told him I was busy with the girls.” Frankly, I panicked. That night in the living room, Tamblyn woke me up at three in the morning, shaking my shoulder, and Brandon was passed out with his head resting on the back of the couch. I’d drooled through his shirt.

Luckily, he didn’t wake up as I got the girls downstairs to their beds, and Tamblyn didn’t ask any questions. The whole next day, I was a wreck. When he texted, I lied about being busy before I even had the chance to think it through.

“And then he asked you out again? In person?” Madison is very concerned with the order of events for someone who’s heard them twice already.

“Yeah, when he dropped by after work to gas your mom’s car up.” Madison’s dad kept her mom’s car gassed up before he passed, and Brandon takes care of it now. Miss Dawn brags on that, too, and I don’t blame her. He’s a good guy.

“And you turned him down?” Madison cocks her head.

“I kind of mumbled, and then the girls started fussing, so I said I had to get them into the bath, and I took them and hid down in the basement.”

Madison sighs and leans further back against the inflated rubber side of the pool. “Why are you dicking my brother around, Angie? If you don’t want to go out with him, put him out of his misery. Are you afraid to tell him no because you’re living in his mom’s basement?”

“That’s not it.”

“You used to like him. You were always stuttering and tripping over stuff around him.”

“When I was, like, thirteen.” My cheeks heat. I had no chill.

“Thirteen-year-old Angie had way better taste than fourteen-year-old Angie.” Madison raises her palms in the air. “Just sayin’.”

Tyler and I started going out when I was fourteen, and he was sixteen. He drove, and he had the balls to ask me out. I was so unduly impressed.

“Granted.” I can’t argue facts.

“So why aren’t you into my big brother anymore? Is it because he always smells like motor oil?”

“He doesn’t always smell like motor oil.” Well, he does when he comes over straight from work, but I wouldn’t say always. When he showed up earlier, he smelled like soap and convenience store coffee.

“Is it because you hate movies?” Madison raises a thin copper eyebrow.

I snort. Madison reaches over the pool to fetch her red Solo cup. We’re both on our second Orange Crush of the day. It’s Saturday and sunny with blue skies for miles, so we’re having a party for four.

The girls are playing Barbies, dashing back and forth between the sandbox and the swing set and the town they’ve set up in the grass beside us. The town is made of shoebox houses, a silver Corvette, and the Fisher Price barn that Madison and I played with when we were kids. Madison and I are soaking up the end of summer vitamin D and listening to 104.3 on her mom’s old portable AM/FM radio.

I take a sip from my own red cup. “I like movies fine.”

Madison sighs. “So it is because he smells. I mean, I can’t blame you.”

She’s having the time of her life with this. She thinks it’s hilarious. It’s thrown me into three full-blown panic attacks in the past two weeks—once each time after he asked me out and a third time when I realized he wasn’t going to ask again.

“Why am I such a mess?” I cringe at the self-pity in my voice, but I know Madison won’t blink an eye. We can be our worst selves with each other. I’ve cleaned up her puke, and after I had Tamblyn, she compared my vagina stitches with pictures from the internet because I swore that it hurt so bad, they must’ve done them wrong.

“We’re all a mess.” Madison gulps from her drink and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“What if I go out with Brandon, and it doesn’t work out, and you have to pick sides?” I ask. Making things awkward with Madison isn’t my worst fear, but it’s a big one.

“Easy. I pick you.”

I roll my eyes. “No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would. And Mom would pick him, so the sides would be even, and we’d all just go on like normal.” Madison changes position, draping her legs over the sides of the pool. She’s only decent because she’s wearing a T-shirt that comes to her knees. I sit cross-legged in two feet of water like a lady.

“I can’t go out with him.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.” We don’t have secrets from each other.

“Humor me and explain.” Her face gentles because she does know.

“I just got out of an eight-year relationship.”

“Uh-huh.” Her expression says go on; we both know there’s more.

“I need to learn how to be by myself.”

“It’s hard, is it?” She rounds her eyes. “And yet I do it every day without even thinking about it.”

Madison isn’t into relationships. She’ll bring a guy home once in a while to scratch an itch, but she says she doesn’t want a man in her house unless he can find both the clit and the spare vacuum cleaner replacement bags without her help, and she hasn’t met a man yet who could.

“I have bad judgment in men.” I keep running down the list that’s been cycling on repeat in my head.

“You think Tyler and Brandon are in the same league?” She wrinkles her nose like the very idea stinks.

“No.” I know Brandon’s on a whole different level, but he never talked to me, and Tyler did. Tyler kept coming around despite how sad my life was with my mom falling apart, and I was so young and dumb that I thought that meant he was good for me. I lower my head. “Maybe I don’t deserve a guy like Brandon. And how do I even know that I really like him, and I’m not just fooling myself again because I want someone to want me?”

The question is so honest, so shameful, I can’t look at Madison as I ask it. I turn my head to watch the girls over on the playset, pumping the tandem swing as high as they can get it to go.

“It’s real messed up, wanting to be wanted,” Madison answers. “No one that selfish deserves to go to the movies with a guy who smells like motor oil.”

I splash her lightly. “You know what I mean.”

Like a ninja, she covers her drink so pool water doesn’t get in it. “I know that everyone deserves dinner at Olive Garden followed by a feature at the Regal 8. I don’t think you have to earn that with, like, a certain level of personal development or a long enough record of successful romantic relationships. I mean, who even has a record of successful relationships?”

“You just want to be sisters for real.” She’s also supernaturally compassionate, way more than normal people.

“Girl, we already are.” She raises her red plastic cup. I tap it with mine. We both sip, and when we’re done, her face gets serious. My stomach clenches. She’s going to bring it up. I’d give anything if she wouldn’t.

I check on Brandon out of the corner of my eye. He’s still by the back fence, trimming a vine that’s growing over the fence from the neighbor’s yard. His arm muscles flex as he raises the weedwhacker, his back arched, lunged forward on one leg. There are grass trimmings stuck in the hair on his forearms. He’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen, in real life, on TV, or the internet.

My belly feels weird.

“Are you afraid to tell him?” she asks.

Heat rushes up my neck to my face in a wave. I tuck my knees up under my soaked T-shirt coverup and hunch my shoulders.

“Yes,” I mumble.

“It’s not a big deal.”

I cast her a yeah right look.

“It’s not like you were sleeping around. That was Tyler.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Everybody’s got baggage,” Madison says.

I wrap my arms tight around my shins and rest my chin on my wet knees. “I’ve got herpes.”

Madison gives me her sweetest smile. “I love you and your herpes. The right man will, too.”

“You love my herpes?”

“Every single last one of them.” Madison’s straight face holds until she gets her red cup to her lips, and then she loses it and snort-giggles. I splash her again, and she gets a mouthful. She shrieks and splutters and slaps the water in revenge. Across the yard, the girls whoop in high-spirited solidarity from the swing set. Brandon takes off his safety glasses and looks over to see what’s going on.

“Uncle, uncle,” I squeal.

She narrows her eyes, palm raised and ready to swing.

I keep my eyes locked on hers and stretch my legs out, sinking lower until my chin is under water like a hippo. She slowly lowers her hand.

“So how are you going to tell Brandon about your adorable lil’ case of her-pes?” Sometimes, she likes to say herpes with a French accent, like boomer ladies pronounce Tar-jet.

“Oh my God,” I moan. “I can’t talk about this.”

“You’re going to have to if you want to get busy with my brother.”

“No, I don’t. I can be single for the rest of my life. Or I’ll join one of those special dating apps.”

Madison puts her feet back in the pool so she can press her soles against mine. She tries to make my legs bend, but I brace my knees.

“But you want to date Brandon,” she says. “You want to go on a movie date with him and ride in his truck and let him take you for a drink at Donovan’s and talk until closing time about—” She scrunches her face. “The Orioles? Diesel engines? Bass fishing?”

I curl my toes over the top of hers. “I can’t do it.”

“Yeah, I’d be out of there in five minutes tops, but you love pretending you like sports and acting like you’re interested in what other people say.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It isn’t going to be as bad as you’ve made it in your head.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Your doctor said sixteen percent of the women in her practice test positive, and, like, virtually everyone used to get HPV before the shots. That’s a lot of awkward conversations that must have gone fine, or you’d hear about it.”

“Not necessarily.” I’ve never told a soul except Madison.

I found out when I was almost due with Ivy. My OB/GYN did the routine tests they do right before you pop, and I came up positive. I confronted Tyler, and he tried to act like I must have cheated, but we both knew I didn’t.

He was gaslighting me, and I let him. I was nineteen, my mom was gone, I had no other family, and I was about to have two babies under two.

Where was I going to go? Not to either of the foster families I had after Mom died. They were both nice enough, but it’s not like we connected or anything. Definitely not to the Kaczmareks. They were still reeling from losing Mr. Mike.

A few weeks after Ivy was born, Tyler got wasted and admitted that he cheated on me with a girl from work. He swore that he’d never do it again. I was so sleep deprived that I would have forgiven him anything if he’d only watch the girls long enough for me to take a nap.

I’m not proud of it. Any of it.

I wish I’d left him then. I wish I’d had the brass balls of the people on social media who talk about disclosing to their dates like it’s no big deal. But I thought no one would ever want a nineteen-year-old with herpes and two kids, so I’d better make the best of it. Even before the second baby and the diagnosis, I thought no one would want a teen mom who’d barely earned her high school diploma.

I’d better be grateful for Tyler Reynolds.

I don’t know when that conviction began to unravel, but it was long before the wedding debacle. It was like every so often a part of me would catch a glimpse of a different future, and then the rest of me would panic and double down on Tyler.

Once, when Tamblyn was about eight months old, Tyler went hunting in Montana with his dad, and I had two whole weeks alone with no one but me and the baby to worry about, and it was fine. Better than fine. It was nice.

I didn’t have to put dinner in serving dishes because that’s how his mom does it. I left laundry in the dryer overnight and just shook the wrinkles out in the morning, and I didn’t have to hear anyone bitch. It occurred to me that it could be like this all the time.

Then he came home, and I clung to him. I knew I’d been fine, but for some reason, as soon as I saw him, it was like I’d stared death in the face while he was gone. Not long afterwards, I convinced him to have Ivy. I pointed out how it’d be better to have our kids close together so that when we’re done, we’re done. The logic spoke to him.

In my head, I was all in, but a part of me just wouldn’t fall in line. When Ivy was about three months old, I got the job at the hospital. Sometimes, when I was working the weekend and Tyler was at home with the girls, I’d stay after work to get a cappuccino from the cafeteria. I’d drink it so slow that it’d be cold before I was even halfway finished.

I’d start daydreaming word problems, calculating how much it’d cost to get a two bedroom for the girls and me, adding utilities and co-pays and a cell phone bill without Tyler’s parents’ family plan. Then, without fail, a cold feeling would come over me, like a ghost walking over my grave, and I’d dump the cappuccino and speed home. I’d make something nice for dinner, and later, in bed, I’d let Tyler do one of the things he liked.

Because wanting things—and going after what you want—is for people with nets under their tightropes. It’s not that it’s easy to say yes to the boy who won’t take no for an answer, or to stay with the man you’re with. It’s that it’s smart.

Life throws bombs. It yanks the rug out from under your feet. People disappear. One day, you have a home, and the next, you’ve got a bed in someone else’s room, in someone else’s house. If you’re safe and secure, you thank your lucky stars. You hunker down, and you make it work. Especially when you have little girls who depend on you.

When Tyler stood up in front of everyone we know and said those vows, he’d run the numbers, and he figured I’d take it. He didn’t misjudge. I’d shown him over and over again that I would. Deep in my innermost self, though—unbeknownst even to me—I had a limit.

In the end, he gave me an out. He set it up, and to take it, all I had to do was say no. One word. Just once. Yeah, I had to say it in front of all our friends and family, but after it came out of my mouth, it was done. Tyler and I were over.

Brandon isn’t safe or easy. Going after what you want is a way different proposition than blowing up your life. Saying no when you’re pushed to the edge is a cakewalk compared to saying yes to taking a risk. At least for me.

What if I tell him about the herpes, and he looks disgusted?

What if I tell him, and he acts like it’s fine, and then he ghosts me? What if he tells people?

What if he’s really nice and kind and says that he respects me for being up front, but that it’s not something he can handle?

And if it doesn’t go off the rails at that point, but it does later when it’s not just a crush? What if we get a few months down the road, and he realizes he doesn’t want a ready-made family? Since we split, Tyler has been a complete dick. What if Brandon decides he doesn’t want the hassle?

“You’re working yourself up into a panic attack, aren’t you?” Madison asks. Apparently, she’s been watching me spin out while she chews the ice from her drink.

“Yes,” I squeak.

“Life is hard and scary as shit,” she says as she tilts her face back to bask in the sunshine. “At least it’s sunny, and we’ve got Orange Crushes and each other.” She lifts her head, doubling her chin to give me a smile and a wink. “You’re gonna be okay, girl. I’ve got your back.”

“I’ve got yours, too.” The pressure on my chest eases. The girls, suddenly done with the swings, come tearing over and fold themselves over the side of the pool, squealing and shrieking. Madison splashes Tamblyn, and I drag Ivy onto my lap. She curls up against my chest, sweaty and sticky from melted popsicle.

I’m lucky.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost everything, but it’s not true. I have an entire kiddie pool overflowing with love. The future is terrifying, but this moment, right now? This specific Saturday afternoon on this specific day in September, in the backyard of this particular house in this particular cul-de-sac, it’s as warm and soft as I hope heaven is.

After playing a little longer,Ivy says she has to pee, and Madison wants a refill, so she takes both girls inside for a bathroom and snack break. I soak in the sun, listening to the weedwhacker. About when its engine cuts off, I realize that I’ve probably been abandoned for the TV and air conditioning.

I survey the yard to assess the damage. Dolls, accessories, and sandbox toys are strewn in a twenty-foot blast radius around the pool. I need a laundry basket and a helper. I also need to get out of here before Brandon comes over—or decides not to.

I make a start by scooping up the various plastic critters floating around me like vegetables in soup. I’ve almost cleared them all when a shadow falls across me. I tilt my head back and squint. Every inch of my skin wakes up.

Brandon stands over me, hands on his hips, back straight and chest broad like Superman. Tan work gloves hang from his front pocket. His damp T-shirt clings to his pecs. I feel caught like a mouse in a trap. My heart flutters as fast.

“Is the water cool?” he asks.

I nod. I don’t know why, but a cheap, blue, plastic, kiddie pool holds the cold better than an Igloo cooler.

Brandon glances around and then drags a lawn chair over from the deck and places it flush against the side of the pool. “Mind if I join you?”

I shake my head. “I was just heading inside,” I say, but I make no move to get up.

I don’t want to now.

Brandon bends over—unlacing his boots and peeling off his socks, I guess—because when he straightens up, he’s bare foot and rolling up his jeans. It’s a tight fit getting the denim past his calf muscles, but he manages to fold them up above his knees. He eases his feet in the water, leans back, and exhales.

I can’t see his eyes since he’s traded his safety glasses for his mirrored wrap sunglasses. I hope he’s got them closed. I’m already self-conscious enough.

I’m wearing a bikini under my T-shirt. It’s full coverage on the bottom, but the top ties together around the neck and back. The triangles cover my areolas, but not much more. Of course he can’t see that, but I’m super aware of how I’m spilling out of the spandex under my shirt, and how he could see my nipples popping through the cold, wet cotton if I didn’t have my arms crossed. I must look as uptight as I feel. I can feel my heart thump against my forearm.

“Is this the same pool that you and Maddie played in back in the day?” he asks, oblivious to how I’m freaking out that I’m naked underneath my clothes.

“I don’t know. Could be.” Knowing Miss Dawn, it’s likely. She can make a penny squeal.

Brandon was already too old for kiddie pools when Madison and I became friends. He’s not much older, but he always seemed so much more mature. Maybe because Mr. Mike was big on teaching him how to be the man of the house. They always had their heads stuck under a car hood, or Brandon was holding a ladder or a toolbox while Mr. Mike messed around with something. A lot of kids would’ve been bored, but Brandon was so serious about it. To me, it never seemed like he was helping, but like he knew what he was doing.

“They’ve left you to clean everything up?” he asks.

“Looks like it.”

He stretches his legs until his feet are almost an inch from mine. I can’t tuck my legs any tighter to my chest, and I can’t stop looking down. His feet are tanner than mine and twice as large. I can see the tendons running up from his toes. In comparison, mine are pale and soft and pruned from the water. I can tell my red nail polish is long overdue for a touch up, but I don’t think a man would notice.

Brandon flexes his long toes. My cheeks flush, and my stomach goes squishy. He chuckles softly. “It’s like the difference between Coco and Bailey’s paws.”

Coco was the Great Dane the Kaczmareks had when we were growing up. Bailey was a dachshund. It was funny because everyone kind of agreed that Coco was Miss Dawn’s, and Bailey was Mr. Mike’s.

My heart twinges like always when I think of them. Coco passed when I was in sixth grade, and Bailey passed the summer before eighth.

“They were good dogs,” I say quietly.

“The best.” Brandon’s mouth softens. I bet he’s feeling exactly what I am—that happy sadness. Or sad happiness.

To me, time feels split in two—before, when Coco and Bailey and my mom and his dad were around, and afterwards, when there was so much missing.

In a way, I was lucky. I was moved into foster care where I had a blank slate. In the Kaczmarek house, you were always tripping over reminders—a leash left hanging on a peg behind the mudroom door or an old plastic lighter in the places where Mr. Mike used to sneak his smokes.

“I miss them,” I say.

“I do, too.”

I can’t be sure because of the sunglasses, but from the angle of his head, I’m pretty sure he’s looking into my eyes, and in my heart, I know that underneath the everyday words, we mean the same thing.

I’m missing part of myself.

It’s weird how you can only talk about loss with cliches. It’s like no one wants to risk being specific enough to stir up the worst of the pain. So you stick to the generic things everyone always says. Those were good times. He was a great guy. She’ll be remembered.

Nothing about the mole on her right cheek that she hated and that you can still place in the exact right spot on your own face which looks more like hers every year. Never how every winter, when the sky turns that particular shade of gray, you still catch the ghost scent of Marlboros and snow on a leather jacket when you step through the front door to drop the girls off.

“Remember when you and Maddie did that backyard carnival, and you used this as the duck pond?” he asks.

“Yeah. We made a roller coaster out of pushing a laundry basket down the slide.”

“I almost broke my arm on that ride.” Brandon’s lips curve.

“You loved it.”

“I did.” He grins wide, showing his bright, even teeth. I can’t help but smile back. Something in my stomach skitters.

He leans forward a little, and the weather between us changes, like a wispy cloud crossing the sun, not worrisome, just a change in the mood.

“Angie,” he says, lowering his voice. “Go to the movies with me.”

My abs clench, my blood rushes in my veins, and I have no idea if I’m excited or terrified. I can’t mumble something and duck away this time. I’m sitting at his feet in a kiddie pool.

I don’t know what to say. I want to go with him. And I can’t.

His mouth gentles into an easy smile. “We can go as friends.”

“Friends?” It comes out a breathless squeak.

“You buy your ticket, I buy mine. You buy popcorn. I buy malted milk balls. We share.”

“I don’t like milk balls.”

“More for me, then.” The corners of his lips sneak higher, cajoling, and I feel mine curve, too. “I’ll even let you drive.”

“Let me?” I roll my eyes. All of a sudden, I can’t be still. I shift-slide on the plastic under my butt, bumpy from the grass underneath.

“Why not, Angie?” The tone of his voice has changed. It’s still calm and even, but the playfulness is gone. He really wants to know. He sees me squirming and blushing, and he’s not stupid, and I’m not subtle, so he wants to know why I won’t say yes.

What can I say?

“It’s complicated,” I blurt, and with a burst of nervous energy, I stand. Water gushes down my legs, dripping from the T-shirt that clings to all the places I’d rather it didn’t. I hop over the side of the pool and start picking up toys.

He stands, perfectly cool and collected, and steps onto the grass. “Tell me.”

“You wouldn’t understand.” I know that’s not fair. I should say I don’t want to explain or I don’t want you to know. That would be honest, at least.

He stalks off toward the deck, and my heart rockets into my throat. Is he mad? Is he giving up?

As quick as he goes, he’s back with the mesh bag Miss Dawn keeps the outside toys in. He holds it open and half-smiles down at me. He’s not happy, but he’s not mad.

I’ve got two arms full of dolls, dresses, Nerf balls, and tiny pink plastic teacups. I awkwardly drop all of it in the bag.

“Here,” he says and hands me the bag. I take it before I can think. My brain is moving slow and fuzzy, and I can’t blame the Orange Crush. I sipped it so slow it never even went to my head.

He starts picking up toys and shooting them into the bag, basketball style.

“Two points,” I say when he sinks a teapot from five feet away.

He grins. “Nothing but net.”

We gather everything, and then without talking, we stand side-by-side by the pool.

“On three,” he says. “One, two, three.” We lift at the same time, tipping the water into the grass. He lifts higher than me, so it rushes over my bare feet.

I pick up the bag, and he grabs the hose that Madison left lying on the ground. We head for the shed.

There’s a pulsing between my legs, and I can’t seem to catch my breath. I feel like I’m sneaking away with him, but behind the shed is where the tub for outside toys and the hose reel are kept. We have a completely legitimate reason to be alone back here, hidden from the house.

But when I drop the toys in the tub, I linger, watching Brandon recoil the hose. When he’s got only a few feet left, he turns the nozzle and rinses grass clippings off his feet.

“Your turn,” he says when he’s done. His lips quirk. Suggesting things. Daring me.

I stick out one foot at a time, and he rinses them, very slow and very careful, all the way up past my ankles.

My breasts grow heavy, and my nipples are hard, but I can’t casually cover them while standing on one leg.

He straightens, takes a drink from the hose, and sighs, satisfied. “Tastes just like I remember.”

“Like pennies?”

“Yeah, delicious.” He holds the hose higher between us. “Thirsty?”

At some point, he took off his sunglasses and folded them over the collar of his shirt, so when I glance up, there’s nothing between me and the full-blown effect of his bright brown eyes. Pure need punches me in the gut. Yes, I’m thirsty.

I part my lips. He raises the hose.

“Are you going to jerk it away at the last minute and spray me in the face?”

“Never.”

I side-eye him like I have my doubts, but I don’t really. I’m just nervous because something is pulling us closer and closer together, and I don’t want it to stop, but I’m not prepared, and also, in my daydreams, I’ve been waiting for this moment forever.

I lean forward and sip. It does taste just like I remember.

I glance up. Brandon drops the hose. My lungs catch. He reaches for me—I don’t know if he means to cup my face or plunge his fingers into my hair or what—but he misses because our lips meet first, and he tastes like cool water, like home, like remembering.

I fling my arms around his neck. He’s one step ahead of me, lifting me, wrapping me in his arms, urging my legs around his waist, backing me against the shed.

My thighs squeeze his rock-hard sides. My heels bump the backs of his rock-hard thighs. I feel soft and delicate and light and scared and alive. His mouth is firm and demanding and so, so sweet.

Nowhis hands cup my jaw. Now his fingers tangle in my hair. He presses his hips forward and grinds his tented fly against my pussy. I whimper into his mouth. He groans deep in his throat.

“Fuck,” he moans.

I tug his bottom lip with my teeth. I want to make him cuss again.

He pins me harder with his hips and fumbles at my shirt hem while rubbing his rough cheek along mine until his teeth find my earlobe. He’s not content to stay anywhere longer than a second, his lips seeking out the thudding pulse point in my throat, the crook of my neck. Shivers race across my hot, bare skin.

My shirt is gone. He peeled it off, and I hardly noticed. He tossed it on the ground.

He shoves the little triangle of my bikini top aside and covers the peak of my right breast with his hot mouth, his tongue lapping my aching, tender nipple. I whine and arch my back. Peeling paint scratches my shoulder blades.

He is so strong and certain and hungry, but he’s not putting my hand on his dick or lowering me to my feet so he can urge me onto my knees. He wants to touch me. Everywhere. He can’t decide. His hands clasp my hair, stroke my thigh, splay across the small of my back, slide up my spine and grip the back of my neck. He wants to hold me as close as I want to be to him.

He smells like fresh sweat and cut grass and sunny days and aftershave.

He suckles my breast, and the ache reaches all the way down to my swelling clit. I don’t want him to stop—any of it—but his mouth is as greedy as his hands. He abandons my nipple to cover my cheeks with kisses and then takes my mouth and my breath and my sense. Every touch is a shock, like ice cubes on sunbaked skin, and as good and sweet and right as the memory of drinking straight from the hose.

This must be what it feels like to belong. To be where you’re supposed to be.

His fingers slip past the elastic of my bottoms and stroke between my slick pussy lips.

He’s touching my pussy.

Panic blares in my brain. No. Dirty. Don’t. Stop. Too much, too fast, too far.

My stomach heaves, jarring me from my delirium.

I snatch his hand and drag it away, digging my nails into his wrist, and without conscious intent, my entire body bucks and twists. My hips jerk back. I drive a shoulder forward into his chest and dive to the side. I’m fighting to get loose, and if he doesn’t want my hip to pop out of the socket, he has no choice but to let go.

“What the fuck?” he says.

I tumble onto my ass and pop straight back up, stumble a step, and sway to a stop.

I gape at him, wide-eyed and gasping with my boobs hanging out, nipples swollen, rosy with rashes from his stubble. I snatch the bikini cups and yank them back into place. The humiliation is one hundred percent complete.

I hardly remember my dad at all, but my body has never forgotten what to do when a man gets angry.

Brandon’s shoulders go back and chest goes up. The veins on his forearms pop. His face sharpens, and his eyes darken.

I hold my breath. I keep myself very, very still.

“What was that, Angie?” he asks, his voice leashed.

I don’t know.

My legs are jelly, and I’ve lost the ability to explain myself.

His nostrils flare, and somehow, he grows taller. “I wasn’t attacking you.”

I know that, I do, but my throat won’t work, so I can’t tell him. I wrap my arms around my chest.

“You could just have said no. I’m not a fucking creep. Damn.” He glowers, waiting for me to say something. Like what? I’m sorry? I am, but I’m getting mad, too.

It wasn’t a graceful dismount, but I’ve stopped going along with things I don’t want to be doing, and I’m not going back to being that person, not even for Brandon Kaczmarek.

He scrubs the back of his neck. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s always been calm, assured, and even-tempered, but it’s like someone spun him around, tipped him over, and spilled him out. My brain isn’t scared of him, but the rest of me is ready to bolt.

He cranes his head back to glare up at the sky, exhales, and shakes out his arms. Then he levels me with a hard, cold gaze. My stomach knots. I didn’t mean to ruin things.

“I’m not Tyler, you know,” he says.

“I know,” I whisper even though I don’t understand what he’s getting at.

“He’s a dick, and you didn’t say shit about it for years.”

My chin wobbles. I never would have expected for Brandon to be an asshole about something like this. “So that means I don’t have the right to say no to you?”

He expels breath like hot air from a steam engine at that and stalks a few feet away before he turns, plants his feet, fists his hands on his hips, and clenches his teeth.

“That’s not what I meant,” he bites out.

“So what do you mean?”

He closes his eyes, like he’s collecting himself, and then levels me with his gaze, and there’s hurt and confusion in it, and I’m not prepared. Tyler is Teflon. I’ve never been the one to hurt someone.

“Goddamn it, Angie, you almost married him. You were at the altar. You were going through with it.”

How are we talking about the wedding? I don’t know how we got from A to Z, and I’m not sure exactly what he’s mad about, and whether or not I should be mad, too. All of this has gotten away from me.

“Didn’t you ever see me there, Angie?” he asks. “I was always there. Goddamn.”

He throws his shoulders back and stomps off again to walk it off. He gets a whole five feet before he turns back around. “I would never do anything on purpose to hurt you.”

And I understand perfectly well what he means now. He wouldn’t, but Tyler did, and I let him, over and over, for years. Even though everyone except Madison was too polite to say anything, they all saw, and they heard. The jokes. The names. The put-upon pissing and moaning when I was in his way or too loud or not quick enough or asking for something.

And Brandon blames me for it. Like I blame myself.

My head drops.

Moments pass. We’re silent. Finally, he sighs. “Just forget it, okay?”

“I don’t know why you think you can be mad at me,” I mumble at the wet blades of grass stuck to my bare feet. I shiver. It’s cool in the shed’s shadow, and my bones are cold inside me.

Because I do understand what’s happening here. He wants me.

Now.

Before he knows everything. But if I let this go one step further, what happens then? I have to tell him what’s going on with me, and what if he’s disgusted that I just let him touch me down there, and I didn’t even warn him?

It’s easy, right? I just tell him, and he’s either cool with it, or he’s not. It’s no big deal. People have this conversation all the time.

And he might not freak out. Tyler did when I told him, but he was gaslighting me. It was an act, and he wanted me to be ashamed so I didn’t ask any questions. Brandon isn’t like Tyler at all. He could very well be cool with it, and who knows what might happen then?

Maybe we fall in love and make a home together. Maybe we become a family—him and me and the girls—and we live happily ever after, and I have everything I’ve ever wanted.

I just have to sit him down and have a conversation. It’s no big deal. If we don’t have sex during a breakout and use a condom, he might not catch it, and I haven’t had a breakout in a couple years. And if he wants kids, we can talk about it. It’s a conversation. People who want to be in relationships have conversations about harder stuff than this.

He’ll be cool, or he won’t, and either way, I’ll handle it. I know how to deal.

I just can’t breathe, that’s all. He’s mad at me, and the stakes feel so fucking high, and I don’t have a grip.

“Talk to me, Angie,” he says.

I stare into his deep brown eyes, and even though it feels so raw that my stomach goes sour, I still search for help there, for a miraculous burst of understanding, for the right words to say or the courage to say them, I’m not sure which, but he can’t read my mind, and I’m fumbling this moment in excruciating slow motion.

He shutters his face and tightens his jaw.

“Fine,” he says, and I can hear the fuck this, I’m done. He turns and walks away, calm and cool and collected. Fine.

I’m left alone behind the shed. There’s a daytime moon like a smudge in the blue sky, and a stuffed elephant in a doll’s dress forgotten by the swing set.

For a second, I ball my fists. I see myself beating them against the shed, pounding until the meat of my palms are bruised, screaming so the birds in all the trees in the entire neighborhood take flight and the ground opens up and swallows me whole.

Instead, I bend over and pick up the hose. I turn off the water and coil it neatly on the reel.

I go pick up the elephant, and I walk calmly back into the house because I am grown, and I have two little girls.

I have to be fine.