Chapter 25
chapter twenty-five
Jude
Today's vocabulary word: prevalance
"There are a few things you should know before we go in there," I said, turning off the main road through Sedona to the neighborhood where my mother lived.
"This is going to be good," Audrey said under her breath.
I ignored the bite behind her words the same as I'd ignored her pointed silence for the past few hours.
I got it. I'd crossed a lot of lines last night and she was pissed.
It wasn't the direction she wanted this to go and that was fine.
Finding her asleep in a bunker of pillows made it clear enough.
Understood. Life liked to fuck up my hopes and dreams anyway.
Not sure why I was wasting my time being disappointed.
I cleared my throat and focused on the issues at hand. "My mother lives in a small house that she shares with her friend Marguerite. It's just enough for the two of them but nowhere near enough for another person, let alone two. Regardless, she's going to insist we stay there."
Audrey kept her gaze on the road ahead, her chin tipped up like it helped her pretend I wasn't sitting beside her. "Please tell me that will not occur."
"It won't, we have rooms at one of the resorts in town," I said. "But she will insist."
"And you're expecting me to defuse that situation?"
"It would help." She clasped her hands in her lap and I took that as agreement. "Don't eat any of the candy they have around the house unless you're up for a strange trip."
"I believe I'm already on a strange trip."
"The kind that'll have you freaking out over the texture of a rug and talking to doorknobs. I speak from experience." I rubbed the back of my neck as Mom's little terra cotta-colored house came into view. "She's going to want you to nail down plans. For the wedding."
"And I'm defusing that one too?"
She flexed her left hand, the light purple gem on her finger catching the sunlight as she moved.
I'd known the moment she realized it was the ring.
The one she'd dreamed up years ago. I knew the universe was made of cold, cruel irony but finally giving her the ring she'd always wanted and getting lashed with silence drove the point home harder than necessary.
My chest tightened, that unrelenting band that made me worry about heart attacks and living wills back in place. "Handle it however the hell you want," I snapped. "I'm just telling you what's going to happen in there."
"Thanks so much," she bit back.
"Anytime," I yelled.
"Have you considered that we're doing all of this because you won't have an honest conversation with your mother?"
I leveled a stare in her direction. "I guess you'd know all about that, wouldn't you?"
She returned the stare, a wall of ice behind those hazel eyes. "It's good that you got my punishment out of the way for today. It would've been so uncomfortable to do it in front of Janet."
"Just trying to be efficient," I replied.
I pulled in front of my mother's house and shoved both hands through my hair. I didn't see how we were going to make this work. Not with last night still a raw, open wound between us and our story held together by threads. I'd be stunned if we lasted thirty minutes without throttling each other.
"Give me a minute," she said, pulling a small zip-up bag from inside her tote. "I'd rather not start this off looking like roadkill."
"You don't look like roadkill." I kept my gaze on my phone as I said this. I didn't want to watch while she fussed with her hair and dabbed makeup on her face. I didn't want to know her small, private moments. I couldn't. "She just wants to see you. She won't care how you look."
"I care," Audrey replied as she swiped a rosy-colored wand over her lips.
Okay, yes, I watched.
It was fucking ridiculous how something as irrelevant as lip color could hollow me out. One minute she was pressing her lips together and inspecting her work in the mirror, the next she was the only thing in the world worth seeing. Everything about her just made me want to lean closer.
The part that really killed me was that she didn't need me.
She said she'd needed me back then, when it all fell apart, but not anymore.
It was masochism at its finest but I wanted to know when that'd changed.
What was the series of events that led her to surgically remove me from her life and just…
move on without ever looking back? Maybe she could teach me how to do it because I still hadn't figured it out.
"Well." She snapped one of her products shut. "I'm still roadkill but now it's more like recent roadkill. Fresh. Not much of an improvement but it's something."
"Shut up, you're beautiful." The words were out before I could claw them back inside my head. Because being a jackass came naturally to me, I added, "And you don't need me telling you that because you know it."
She layered both hands over her chest and dropped a wistful sigh. "You really know how to make me feel special."
All I could see was my ring on her finger. Right where it belonged. I hated that I thought it and I hated that it was true.
"Let's go." I grabbed the keys and my phone, and didn't dare another glance at my fiancée as I climbed out of the car.
The front door flew open as we approached and Marguerite appeared, her tattooed arms out wide, bright orange glasses sliding down her nose, and a t-shirt with Free Societies Read Freely stretched over her chest. "We were beginning to think you weren't coming," she cried, fumbling us into an embrace.
"You woulda been better off on pack mules at the rate it took y'all. "
"I was looking into it," I said, patting my mother's partner in crime on the back. "Marguerite, this is Audrey."
"We're family now so you'll call me Rita like the rest of the girls do." She clasped Audrey's hands and leaned back, looking my fiancée over. "Aren't you just a doll?" She let out an ear-piercing shriek. "I bet you keep this boy up on his toes. It's a good thing because he needs a firm hand."
Rita patted my cheek with a little more pep than necessary but it earned me a real smile from Audrey, one without a shred of those good girl manners. Worth it.
"It's wonderful to finally meet you," Audrey said, gathering Rita into a hug. "I've heard so much about you."
Lies. Pure lies. But she was damn good at it—and that was a little scary.
Rita stepped back and shooed us toward the door, saying, "Let's get you inside.
Your ma will be back from work soon enough and she's gonna flip that I got to see you first. Come on, get in there.
I just mixed up some iced tea and I have some double chocolate brownie energy balls in the fridge. Do you like dates, Audrey?"
"I love dates," she replied.
"Good, good. My balls are full of dates," Rita said.
I stifled a laugh that I knew neither of them would've appreciated.
"Then I might need to steal that recipe from you," Audrey replied.
"Oh, I have a whole bunch of them," she said. "Lemme get my phone, I'll show you."
I watched while Audrey and Rita settled on the patio with iced tea and energy balls, slipping into an immediate familiarity over dates, of all things.
Audrey could do that. She knew how to give people exactly what they wanted from her in any situation.
It was how I'd known she'd be able to do this with me.
For me.
I also hated it when she did this. It was like she had a closet full of hermetically sealed personalities and could pull out a new one at any moment. But it meant suffocating herself and I didn't need an accounting of the past decade of her life to know she'd spent enough time suffocating.
As I lingered inside, I was painfully aware of the distance between us.
I'd kept my hands to myself, a conscious effort when every instinct screamed at me to close the gap.
But then I'd catch her eye and see that mask of polite composure, and remember that this wasn't real and my instincts could get fucked.
But I'd have to touch her again. Eventually. It would be strange if I didn't, right? They'd notice. My mother wasn't one to demand public affection but she'd pick up on something if I stayed five feet away from Audrey with my arms crossed for the next few days.
What a fine mess I'd made for myself.
I edged closer to the patio when I saw Audrey point to Rita's tattoo sleeves. I didn't hear the question but Rita tossed her head back with a bellow of a laugh.
"Back when the world was new and I was young, I taught high school art and sculpture," she told Audrey, motioning to the crook of her arm and then a spot just under the neck of her shirt.
All of it covered in colorful ink. "But after beating breast cancer twice, I decided to keep the art and ditch the schools.
Now, I bop around to tattoo studios around the country doing specialized ink work on scars. "
"That's incredible," Audrey said. "I love that so much."
Rita leaned back in her chair, clasped her hands over her belly with a satisfied nod. "It's a good time."
"I did one year in second grade and that was plenty, and then I moved to a fourth and fifth grade loop," Audrey said.
"And it hasn't stolen your will to live yet?" Rita asked.
She took a long sip of tea as if she needed to think it over. "Not every day."
Rita waved her off. "Give it time."
Audrey laughed and steered the conversation toward Rita's newest tattoos but I wanted to stop and go back to the last part.
I wanted to ask what she meant by not every day and find out if her work made her happy or if it was just another personality she put on.
Ask—again—why she didn't teach dance. Even on the weekends, just because she loved it.
That'd been the plan. She'd study comparative literature and dance at Barnard, and when she finished school, she'd teach English and some dance classes in her spare time. The idea was that she'd be able to find work anywhere since I hadn't known where I'd land for grad school.
But I knew best of all that plans changed.