4. Aspen
Chapter four
Aspen
I ’ve learned two things since yesterday afternoon when I gave my hand away in a sort of—I’m ashamed to say—unholy matrimony. I know I’m cheating at this. We both are. The fact that we only got married because of the letter, and then we set a deadline to make ourselves feel better. We did it so we can both move on and have peace.
One, I’ve learned that my new husband—and jeepers, that word is total cringe—is a crabathon, through and through. He’s the crabbiest of apples, a total crabfest, crab bag, marathon of crab.
Two, money will get you anything, even a fast wedding in a backyard full of unkempt gardens that were once probably nice, with a stranger marrying you and a stranger as a witness.
We got married right away. Might as well get it done and over with and start the timer on the two-week countdown. We both agreed we would keep this between us and as secret as we possibly could. My parents don’t even know I’ve left Atlanta. They’ve been kind of distant over this past year. We were so close before, but now, when I text them every other day, they’re fine. There have been weeks where I haven’t gone over to the house, and they haven’t visited me at my apartment. That would have been unheard of before, but now I think we all need our space to process, grieve, and try to get our lives and hearts back. It doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.
They work. I work. We’re all busy being up in our heads. I don’t mean to say they aren’t involved in my life. Because they are. We still do things together. Things like family dinners, hanging out, and holidays. I go and help them with yard work, we go for walks, and they come and chill at my apartment. We also still sit and do nothing at all. It’s just that if I say I’m busy or preoccupied, they’ll think I need space.
I don’t want to lie to them, but they aren’t ready for this kind of truth yet.
I wore a white sundress I packed, which was the nicest of the few dresses I owned. It was a gauzy number—like it was made for the beach—with a bit of lace. Patrick, on the other hand, wore black jeans and a black Henley. I almost laughed when I saw him dressed that way for the ceremony because I thought about how I first imagined him in a suit. I’m not even sure he owns one. He looked entirely menacing, and I think the JP was glad to get out of the twisted, decaying backyard. We both said the words. And yes, it’s official. I’m now a wife. When Patrick recited those vows, he sounded so disconnected. We both probably did.
But.
But it’s a brand new morning.
I get out of a king-sized bed that is about as comfortable as the couches downstairs, which is to say, it feels like it’s a sheet of super soft fabric over total concrete. Oddly enough, nothing hurts. Not my shoulders, my back, or my neck. That’s probably because the feather pillows make up for what the bed is obviously trying to perform in good posture miracles. The sheets were so soft that they felt impossible. Like they came straight from clouds or from a spider’s arse. I suppose they aren’t silk, but if they were, then they would come from a worm’s arse, so it’s not as far a stretch as you’d think.
The house is what most people would call minimalist. I call it cold and bare, but hey, it’s not mine. I’m just a guest here, and if Patrick likes the rooms spartan to the extreme, then all the power to him. He said he doesn’t, but who knows? He could be saying anything. I wouldn’t know. I don’t know the first thing about him.
I’m wearing my fluffiest pair of pink pajama bottoms and a black tank top. I brought Hilda One and Hilda Two with me, and now, they flip and snap as I walk to the huge set of windows. Yes, they do happen to be furry slides, and yes, I did name them.
The house is basically a series of cubes and wild slanted rooflines. And from here, I get a good look at the backyard. You can tell it was once glorious, but that was a hot minute ago, and now it’s just bleak. The only things living back there are weeds and a few trees that look like they’re barely hanging on. There are also no flowers. Just a lot of dead brown grass, dead twisted vines, dead brown branches, and dead brown other things.
Looking at the sad, sad backyard reminds me of how I feel inside right now. Bleak. Not good. There’s a decided lack of flowers blooming in my heart.
I fulfilled Jace’s last wishes, but no, as I didn’t do it the right way or in the right spirit, I was tormented by the dishonesty of it all night. I am not going to get more than this, but it is my choice where I go from here. I can wait out the two weeks like it’s the most unbearable time of my life, or I can try to get to know the sour crabapple who is my husband. I can shut myself off, and we can live in a world of silence before we go our separate ways and call it total incompatibility, or I can open myself up and fill these fourteen days with happiness and kindness.
I study Hilda One and Hilda Two. My toes stick out the front, nearly covered by all their fluttery purple furriness. They look like they want me to try.
Sometimes, people act like prickly pears, Aspen, because they’ve had a shit run of things. Sometimes, they’ve been seriously wounded on the inside. Sometimes, it’s a persona, but other times, it’s real because there’s been a decided lack of goodness.
“Umm,” I grunt. I know I’m carrying on a conversation with my slides here, but hey. It’s not like I’m going to confess to my parents or any of my friends that I just went across the country and married a total stranger. They’d lose their ever-loving minds and shit total bricks. Shitting bricks cannot be good for bowel health. Just saying. “He seems incredibly rich. He could buy goodness if he wanted it.”
That won’t make up for what he hasn’t had in the past.
“How do we even know that’s true? That’s just a thing I was thinking.”
Money can’t buy happiness.
“It can buy a heck of a lot of things that spark joy. It can take you to places where it’s easier to cultivate peace or whatever.”
Money can’t change the past.
My throat gets thick. “You’re right. Look at you. Smart slides. It can’t.”
I know what I said yesterday. And I know what we decided. But now I’m deciding that even though this marriage might not be real, I’m going to try. I’m not going to try to love Patrick in that way, but I think he does need some kind of loving, even if it’s just friendly. I need to honor the spirit of Jace’s wishes, and I can start there.
So after getting dressed and heading to the bathroom down the hall to brush my teeth and throw my hair into a braid to keep it from turning into a knotted mess throughout the day, I head down a staircase that looks like it’s made of concrete and engineered by the willpower of some very clever architect. Both those things are probably true, but it appears to be floating on air, which is incredibly unnerving.
I head into the kitchen. The house is utterly silent. Like, the appliances aren’t even buzzing or humming kind of silence. I’m so scared shitless of this first day, this first meeting, the first moment of the next two weeks, that I probably have a constipated look on my face.
The whole place is a work of art, but the kitchen is a masterpiece. It’s torn right from a design magazine and brought to life. It’s better than state-of-the-art. The cupboards look like they’re floating above the lower bank. Half are open, raw wood shelves, and the top? I think it might be concrete. Jesus. I run my fingers along the smooth, hard edge. It’s definitely concrete.
Talk about trendsetting.
It’s so nice in here, with the huge windows, the massive stainless fridge, and the gas stove with the big hood overtop to suck up all the cooking vapors. It’s all so spotless and unused-looking that I’m almost scared to do just that. Use it.
Well, shit on that. I’m hungry, and the only way food is going to get made is if I rummage around in here to find dishes and a frying pan and invade the fridge.
Ten minutes later, I’m attempting eggs on a gas stove for the first time in my life, and let me tell you, this beast doesn’t function like the ancient thing in my apartment. Cooking with gas is a whole different ballgame, and it’s all I can do to keep the eggs from burning. I’m using a nonstick pan, but they keep freaking sticking.
“You mothers! Come on!” I slide the flipper under the eggs and try to twist and scoop them up without breaking the yolks. I get them halfway up, and so far, so good, but then…disaster. Yolks pour out of the slightly crispy whites and run all over the place. “Damn it! Curse you foul beasties!”
“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” a voice suddenly says.
“Ahh!” I scream, but I don’t flip the pan off the stove or send eggs flying across the room. The mess is contained. Go me. However, I do angle around and find Patrick leaning against the fridge. He came in here so silently, and now he’s standing only a few feet away. I never even heard a thing.
He’s rocking black again. Black jeans, black Henley. He’s done the vintage hair-sweep thing again, but he’s…oh. His beard. It’s not so overgrown and bushy today. He trimmed it down, and with the extra gone, it gives his face an entirely different look.
He still glowers like a classic grumpy pants, but I can see more of his face now. The trimming changed the shape of it. His face looks harder along the angles of his jaw, where the facial hair is now neatly level. It’s still a beard, just trimmed within literally about a quarter inch of its life, but even though his jaw is squared off, angular, and defined, he doesn’t look so scary. Maybe I’m just getting used to him.
That glower of his sends a shiver through me that ends right between my legs.
What the nuts? I didn’t just think that.
I didn’t find this man attractive in the least when I first saw him, but maybe I was just getting over my surprise at him being nothing like I thought he would be and looking nothing like I thought he would. I did say he has an interesting face, and that’s still true. I want to keep looking at him. And looking. And—
“I think your eggs are turning to char.”
“Frick!” Yup, he’s right. They’re burnt. Exceptionally burnt. It only took a few extra seconds of me not paying attention for them to burn. This gas thing is hecking potent.
I turn the burner down. The flames seem to go nowhere and are just as hungry for the pan. Hmphf. Whatever. I’m going to try again. I’m stubborn like that.
“How do you like your eggs?” I ask.
“Just like that,” he replies.
“No.” I was going to locate the trash can and feed it the eggs. I hate wasting, but these aren’t edible.
“Yes. Please.”
“You don’t have to take one for the team,” I say firmly.
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug, walks over to the impressive fridge, and finds the hot sauce. The bottle gets a hard shake before he sets it down on the concrete top next to the plates I set out. “Food is food. I don’t care much about what it tastes like. It’s only to fill a void.”
“Oh, you’re one of those. Is that from a long force of habit, your training, or the way you actually feel about eating?”
He looks surprised for all of a nanosecond before the glower returns, obscuring whatever he might be feeling. I’ve already learned that with my husband, the less emotion he feels, the better he thinks it is.
“I’ll eat them,” he says insistently.
“Let me cook you something else too. To make up for that. They’re nasty.”
The fridge doesn’t have much in it. Just a package of steaks, a head of lettuce, a few peppers, a cucumber, and a thing of strawberries in the crisper. Then, a loaf of sliced bread on the top shelf, a gallon of milk near the back, a few sauces in the door, and a thing of orange juice there too. I’ve already pulled out the carton of eggs.
Patrick pulls out the loaf of bread, sniffs it, does that shrugging thing again, and throws two slices into the stainless steel retro toaster on the counter.
I finally scrape the nasty eggs onto a plate since he’s not going to let me waste them—I don’t want to argue over it—and crack two fresh ones in. I have the heat lower this time. If I break the yolks, I’ll eat them scrambled, but I’m not going to burn them.
Just then, the toaster pops up, and the toast gets tossed onto the plate. It’s not even another second before Patrick sets to work on it, shoveling hot-sauce-coated eggs into his mouth like there isn’t going to be another chance to eat burned eggs and super dry toast ever again.
There isn’t any yolk to sop up, but he cleans the plate of the hot sauce with a piece of crust.
I swear he’s done in less than three seconds.
“Whoa. Uh…”
“Flip those. They’re going to burn,” he interrupts.
Damn it, he’s right. I get both eggs turned over without breaking the yolks. They’re perfect. I have to pay attention instead of watching him. But it’s hard. I’m suddenly very interested in everything about this man that I’m now legally wed to, for the better of two weeks or for worse. If that’s the best joke I can make, I’m really losing my touch. I haven’t had a lot to laugh about over the past year, so it makes sense that I’m ultra-rusty.
Before I can offer some decent eggs to Patrick, he’s at the fridge, slamming back half the container of OJ. He lets out the softest ahhhh after, like he’s just quenched a massive thirst, and tucks it back into the door.
“I was thinking about doing some grocery shopping later. Is there anything you’d like me to get?” I ask.
“I have everything I need,” he says.
Okay. The fridge is mostly empty, and the cupboards are probably not much better.
I get the eggs onto a plate. They’re perfection. Absolute perfection. I should have started the toast already, but I’m shit at getting everything done at once. That’s the hardest part about cooking. All the timing.
I take out the loaf Patrick just had, and it smells freaking earthy as soon as I open the bag. I wrinkle my nose up when I realize it’s moldy. And not just a little. There’s, like, serious mold on it. Jesus, he really ate that?
He moves around the kitchen like I’m not even there. I close the fridge, grab my eggs, and watch him, though I try to pretend like I’m not. If he cares that I’m not a very good actress, he doesn’t let on.
A package of coffee beans comes out of the cupboard. It’s not some run-of-the-mill, gut-busting, nasty coffee one buys on a shoestring budget. This stuff looks expensive. A drawing of an orange and white fluffy cat on the bag gives two paws up.
After pouring beans into a grinder that he sets on the counter, he puts the lid on and hits the switch. He gives it just a few seconds to grind, then stops it. Then, a press comes down out of the same cupboard. I’m fascinated as I watch the whole process. Next, he takes a jug of distilled water out of the large pantry cupboard at the end and pours it into a retro-looking kettle that matches the toaster with its sleek stainless look. It kind of looks like an ancient rocket ship to me.
Patrick will devour burned eggs and moldy bread, but he won’t drink tap water in his coffee? That’s interesting. He appears to be a coffee snob.
I’m done with my eggs—and god lord, they were so much more delicious than they usually are—by the time the kettle clicks off. Observing Patrick using the French press with the boiling water and those grounds is almost like watching a scientist working in a lab.
He takes two mugs out of the cupboard. The dish set is plain matte black, and they’re chunky and heavy. The mugs aren’t tall. They’re just run-of-the-mill. He pours one and then makes a second mug. Without a word, he sets it on the counter in front of me.
I can’t drink coffee without cream and sugar, and that stuff smells bold.
It’s also ungodly hot, but he picks up the mug and takes a long pull like it’s not going to scald his darned face off.
If there’s no cream, I can deal with milk. I get the jug out, but as soon as I twist the cap off, I can smell how sour it is. I move to dump it down the sink, but Patrick hurries over to me like a wraith, takes it from me, puts the cap back on, and tucks it back in its place. Then, he produces a pack of something out of the pantry. Powdered milk.
He does all this like it is his regular routine. He has to eat. Is he eating stuff like this all the time? Rotten food? Spoiled milk? Was this the kind of thing he had to do over the past few years? And if it’s a yes, then it means Jace had to live the same way. It makes me want to cry.
No shit. It’s going to happen. My eyes are burning, and I know the tears are going to become a reality. I can’t hug my brother, and this man isn’t him, but I have the strongest urge to walk across the kitchen, wrap my arms around his rigid figure as he does the cross-armed— please god, not a hug because I’ll melt if you try that on me— thing, and hug the shit out of him anyway. I want to tell him I’m sorry, I’ll get groceries, and that he doesn’t have to live like this anymore.
I know that sometimes, after a lifetime of living rough, people can’t even sleep in a bed anymore. They have to lie on the floor to be able to fall asleep. Whenever Jace came back to visit, he didn’t sleep much at all. I’d find him up all the time. Does Patrick even sleep at all? He must. No one can live without sleeping.
I pour a little bit of the powdered milk from the bag into the coffee. It’s clumpy, so I stir it with the fork that I just licked clean. My first sip is pretty much like straight-up chewing coffee beans, but aside from it being an exceptionally dark roast, there are hints of caramel and chocolate in there too. It’s bitter enough to pucker a butthole, but really, it’s not that bad.
“I need to get groceries for myself, but if you let me know what you like, I can pick it up too.”
He grunts. I’m not sure if that means he’s annoyed or if it means he doesn’t know what he likes. I mean, he has to, right? It’s been a year and a half since he got out of doing whatever he was doing. It bothers me to think about anyone subsisting on this kind of diet. Well, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he just doesn’t like to waste, but good lord, there should be a line. And I’m drawing it. Those shit from the fridge are getting snuck into the trash can as soon as I get home with replacements, and if there’s wrath to be faced, then I’ll face it.
“Patrick.” I can see the dead gardens through the kitchen window. He starts like I’ve set off a firecracker right next to him. He ate all that nasty stuff with a straight face, but now it looks like he’s tasted something that’s an eleven out of ten on the nasty scale.
“Rick please. Not Patrick. I hate that fucking name.”
“ Rick . Can I ask you something?” His eyes say no. He tenses. “Do you have a hate for flowers, or are you just really bad at keeping things alive?”
“Yes.” His face blanks out. It’s like watching water go down a drain, and then that drain slams shut.
“Which one?”
“Both.” He turns around, coffee in hand. After a few hard swallows, he sets the mug down. It sounds empty.
“Isn’t letting something that was so incredible go to waste—”
“Incredibly vindictive and absolutely satisfying but ultimately quite juvenile? Yes, probably.” He pivots slowly. I have no idea what my face is doing until he rolls his eyes. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m not above admitting my flaws. And there are many.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “What would a man like me do with flowers?” That’s gentler and so, so raw. I don’t know why it makes my throat feel thick.
“What wouldn’t you do with them? They’re beautiful,” I say.
“What if they remind you of something you want to forget?”
“What do you want to forget?” I know he’s not going to tell me, but we’ve come this far. It’s a tense conversation. The kitchen is suddenly strung tight, and it feels like I left the gas running on the stove. Explosive.
“The things I never had.”
That slipped out. I can tell. His face now looks like the gross scale has rocked up to a twenty out of ten. I drop my eyes away from his because looking a feral beast in the eye isn’t a smart idea. I take in his all-black attire. It fits him well. He’s so freaking broad that it’s almost hard for me to grasp. He does look nice this morning, in that I’m dressed in black, ready to complete the mission and fuck things up way.
I didn’t stand here and demand that he answer me. He volunteered that information, but I know better than to press on it.
“Would you mind if I went out there and spent some time cleaning things up? Sometimes, I need methodical work to take my mind off of other things. The more physically punishing, the better.” I ask his chest that question since I can’t meet his gaze.
“That’s fine.” He sounds dismissive. “Just don’t plant anything new. I’ll only let it die.”
He sets his mug in the sink and walks out of the kitchen. Walks. Not storms. I don’t think he’s angry. Not with me. But I do think he’s hurting.
Don’t get sappy. You’re not here to fix him. Even if you were, what could you accomplish in two weeks?
I hadn’t planned on planting anything. I understood the futility of that before I even tried. I’m no gardener. My parents had a small yard, and my mom did plant flowers in pots, but that was her thing, and I really didn’t help much with it. I just enjoyed all the pretty things she grew. At my apartment, I don’t even have a balcony. I have no houseplants. Maybe I should. Maybe I should get a fish so I wouldn’t have to name my footwear and give them personalities.
Don’t say my life is sad. Because it’s not sad. It’s just something I’ve always done for fun, and no, not that kind of fun. I do know how to have real fun too.
I grasp the coffee mug and head over to the massive patio door at the far side of the kitchen. I’m surprised the backyard doesn’t have a pool or a tennis court since it’s big enough. Sadly, it doesn’t. It’s just an endless garden. Endless ruin and endless brown, twisted deadness.
Anything you plant out here, you can’t take with you anyway.
I know that. I freaking know.
You can’t take anything of that man with you either, so don’t even bother with that nonsense.
Maybe my footwear is wiser than I ever knew. Kidding. I really am kidding. It’s all me, just talking to myself in regular thought speech, however our thoughts sound. I guess it just sounds like my own speaking voice. Anyway, I’m right. I’m the wise one. It’s very, very good advice, and I’ll be sure to remember it when my chest feels like my ribs are getting smushed and stomped on over moldy bread, sour milk, and dead flowers.