Chapter 14
C assidy and Aria looked at the garment on the hanger and neither of them spoke, but the looks on their faces said more than enough.
No, those looks told me.
Gross. Please.
“Y’all, come on,” I cajoled.
“This is cute.”
“It looks like something my mother would sleep in,” Aria mentioned, and Cass nodded hard in agreement.
“You’re right, Ari. I can definitely picture Aunt Amber wearing that gown.”
I slammed the hanger back onto the rack.
“All right, then. You two find something for me!”
They were happy to try.
In less than two minutes, both of them held up new selections.
“Mine’s better,” Cassidy said, and after a moment, Aria had to agree.
“It’s perfect with her coloring,” she said, regretfully putting hers back.
“You’ll be so cute in that, KayKay!”
I looked at Cassidy’s pick for me, a lace demi bra in deep teal, with matching little shorts.
It was beautiful and the price wasn’t too bad.
I’d gotten a slight tan because I’d been testing out my bikini in the back yard, and unlike Aria, I didn’t burn.
The teal would have been nice with that and it might have helped to bring out the gold streaks in my eyes, which both of these girls always swore were there.
They crossed their hearts and said absolutely, there was gold.
Yes, they were correct that this little lingerie set was very cute.
The shorts would have emphasized the muscle I’d gained in my butt region due to all the running I’d been doing.
I’d started to throw in planking and crunches, and this would show off that work, too.
It was much sexier than what I’d picked and much more flattering.
“So?” Cass prompted.
“No,” I answered firmly.
“No way. I’d be almost naked.”
“Are you kidding me?” she demanded.
“I spent twenty years of my life covering you up and the one time I try to get you to show it off…”
“Why don’t you want to, Kayleigh?” Aria asked.
“Are you feeling insecure?”
I had felt that way in the past, especially after my second rehab stint.
Before I’d gone to that place, I’d lost weight because I hadn’t been eating well and then afterwards, I’d swung the other way.
I’d gained a bunch when I’d started to put food in my mouth to feel better, instead of alcohol, drugs, or a man’s tongue (or other body parts).
Things had eventually evened out, though, and now, with the exercise I was doing, I was comfortable with my body again.
I actually felt great about it.
I was feeling pretty great, in general.
All Caleb had to do was look over at me—or if I saw his name come up on my phone—or if I heard someone start to say “cake” or “cagey” or “caper,” my heart seemed to lift.
It was surprising how many words began with the same sound as his name, and you could pick up on so many if you were listening hard.
But I shook my head at my cousins.
“No, it’s not body issues.”
“So…” Aria waited.
They both did.
“I’m not the kind of woman who wears things like that,” I explained.
“Attractive things? Sexy things?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes, you definitely are.”
“No.” I removed the hanger from her hands.
This shopping trip had been a bad idea.
It was very fun to hang out with them, of course, and I always wanted to hear what they were doing and to gossip about our family.
Taygen and Marc had been a topic which took a lot of our time today.
But they had also spent a lot of time talking about Caleb, and they hadn’t been satisfied with my answers to their million and two questions.
They also weren’t satisfied with what I was saying now, so I tried a different tactic to explain myself.
“Don’t you remember the advice we got about keeping up the mystery with guys?” I reminded them.
“‘Don’t show everything, girls,’” Aria quoted her mother.
“‘Leave some secrets for him to discover after y’all are married.’”
“Of course, she was the one pregnant with your brother when she walked down the aisle with Uncle Jed,” Cassidy pointed out, and Aria said that Cass wasn’t one to talk, either.
They both laughed, but they weren’t distracted for long.
“Why don’t you want to look cute for Caleb? Does he have something against lace? Nudity?” Aria asked me.
I started to walk toward the shop’s doors.
“I’m ready to go,” I said over my shoulder.
“How about lunch?” I saw the look they gave each other, but they also gave me a break.
For the moment.
Cassidy was home for good from their tour but we all lived in different places around the area, so we had met at the mall in Chattanooga to shop.
Cass wanted some clothes that fit her, since she was getting bigger but was not fully maternity-sized, not yet.
Aria was always looking for stuff for her kids, because she loved to dress them up and also because they were growing so fast. We’d accomplished those things, and then I had casually suggested that we stop at a lingerie boutique.
For the past one thousand, five hundred, sixty-one days, no one had seen my underwear except when my mom had thrown it into the washer with one of her loads.
And now? Somebody might get the chance: Caleb.
I’d been thinking a lot about that—I wasn’t concerned how I’d look in skimpier clothing, but I was worried about stepping things up with him.
So far, we’d been kissing.
Period. We were doing that plenty but it was still the gentle, easy, no-pressure-to-up-the-game stuff.
Yes, it still had the same effect on me, the one where I felt buoyed up by the air so that I floated off into space.
But I always pulled back, and he never pushed for more.
Aria and Cassidy caught up as I power walked toward the food court.
“KayKay, what’s going on? Also, slow down, because I’m getting winded a lot easier now,” Cass told me, and I immediately stopped.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone in there,” I said.
“Why?” Aria asked again.
“I don’t know if Caleb likes lace, because I haven’t been wearing any in front of him. We’re not there yet,” I admitted.
“There’s no need to rush,” she told me.
“But don’t you want to?” Cassidy asked.
“Yes. No—I don’t know,” I confessed.
“I don’t want to ruin things. We’re doing so well and I’ve never had this experience.”
“Normalcy?” Aria suggested, and I nodded.
“That’s it exactly. I feel totally safe and comfortable with him. There’s never any drama,” I answered.
“If he says something, he means it. If he’s thinking about something, he’ll tell me. If he’s going somewhere, he doesn’t hide the destination.”
“And you don’t know how to deal with that,” Cassidy said, and I nodded again.
“I’m also not being dramatic, myself,” I continued.
“There’s no reason for it! I don’t have to cry or cause a scene, because we talk about things. I don’t need to secretly check his phone and his pockets to find out if he’s seeing other girls, because I already know that he isn’t. I don’t ever follow him, because he lets me see his location on my phone.”
“My word, when I think of the hours we spent spying on your boyfriends…” Cass let the thought peter out, but I knew that there had been a lot of those hours.
“Sorry.”
“We had a lot of fun doing it,” she recalled.
“We sang and danced in the car the whole time.”
“That was fun,” Aria agreed.
“We were really bad spies, though.”
“I don’t need to be one anymore, but I’m not quite sure how to go about things if I’m not acting that way. What if I do something to hurt him somehow? What if I do something to ruin it? He keeps saying that he’s not good at relationships but clearly, one of us is worse. Me,” I filled in when they seemed not to understand.
“You’re very good at relationships with us,” Aria volunteered.
“You always keep in touch. You listen when we talk and you’re fun to be with.”
“And you’ve given really good advice to Marc and Taygen,” Cass said.
We sat down at a table in the food court.
“It hasn’t worked yet,” I noted, but she said that was due to Marc and Taygen, not to my solid tips.
“It seems like you’re doing great with Caleb,” Aria told me.
“Last week when we were over at Sage’s house, he couldn’t keep away from you. And when they forced him to go play baseball in the yard, he kept looking at the windows to try to catch a glimpse of you.”
“He’s even worse at baseball than my husband,” Cassidy said.
“Jack is relieved about that.”
“You know why he sucks at sports? Because he was totally isolated as a kid. His mom locked the two of them away from the world. Then she dropped him, too, the witch,” I said, but then felt bad when I remembered Caleb’s theory about why she’d acted that way.
“I need to talk to Aunt Paula about her.”
“Y’all are back on speaking terms?” Aria asked.
“Mostly.” We were both making an effort, me to be civil and Aunt Paula to keep her inner monologue private.
Anyway, that was enough on this topic because I was tired of worrying about myself.
“What are you and Jack up to?” I asked Cass.
“Are you already working on another song?”
We did have lunch together, but it was quick because Aria had to get back and I also felt some anxiety about being away from Sir and Caleb for too long.
Of course they were fine together, and nothing more had happened with the man who was trying to steal our dog away from us.
But they were at the farmhouse today, checking on things and meeting with Marc about the next steps, and that place gave me anxiety.
We had put up our empty trays but suddenly, Cassidy stopped walking and Aria plowed into her.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, but it wasn’t the person I was thinking about, the person I was always thinking about lately.
Like whenever I heard the word “Cayman” or…
But this was not Caleb.
We all stared at the various members of Taygen’s family, her mother, father, and one of her brothers.
They weren’t seated too far away and they were openly staring in our direction.
“We have to be nice no matter what,” Aria warned, speaking without moving her lips very much.
“I still think that she and Marc will get back together and imagine seeing them at the wedding. And at holidays. And christenings. And everything else!”
“Unlike some people, we have manners,” Cassidy reminded us.
“Let’s walk by and nod casually.”
We prepared to do that, putting on the expression that Aunt Amber would have called “pleasant yet aloof.” It had been reserved for when other kids were behaving poorly at pageants.
We’d been reminded to remember where we came from and to be “pleasant yet aloof.”
Taygen’s family definitely noticed us.
Her father stood up, right in our path, and her brother pushed back his chair.
All right, then. We would have to put Cass in the back for protection, due to her pregnancy, and Aria was sadly useless when things got physical.
So this was on me. I mentally prepared, glad that my fingernails were still long even after all the gardening that Caleb and I been doing.
“I hope you’re proud of how your cousin has treated my daughter,” Mr. Stock told us.
His face was the ruddy red color of an old drunk, and I remembered how Marc had talked about his alcohol use.
“We’re not going to discuss their relationship with you,” Cassidy answered calmly.
“That’s their business, not ours.” She turned but Taygen’s brother got up and blocked her way.
“Really?” she asked him.
“Ryker, what are you doing?”
We’d known him in high school and he’d always been kind of an idiot, but he and I had gone out a few times anyway.
I didn’t remember it too much.
“He hurt my sister,” he mumbled, but he did step aside, and as he moved, Taygen appeared behind him carrying a few shopping bags.
She stood there shaking her head.
“Daddy! What are you doing? Why are you bothering them?”
“They should know where the fault lies.” And to my surprise, that man pointed right at me.
“This is the one who led Marc astray.”
“Ew!” Cassidy said.
“They’re cousins and that’s disgusting.”
“I mean with her behavior!” he angrily told her, and turned on me.
“He was a good man until you started working there with him. You, with your drugs and whoring around! We all know.”
“Daddy, stop it!” Taygen said furiously.
“She doesn’t do those things!” Aria said, just as mad, but…
I didn’t feel like I had a lot to say to defend myself.
Taygen did, though. “What happened with me and Marc was not because Kayleigh! All she did was try to help! She wasn’t the problem, but other people were. You know what she told me? Y’all are the reason that we broke up!” She pointed at her family members and they turned their glares in my direction.
Images of uncomfortable holiday parties flitted through my mind.
“Uh…”
“And Kayleigh was right!” she continued.
“I let you be mean to Marc. I let you treat him so badly that I’m ashamed of myself. I’m ashamed of you.” She turned to Aria.
“Can you give me a ride home? I don’t want to be with them anymore.”
My cousin nodded mutely and Taygen pushed her brother the rest of the way out of the aisle.
“Move, Ryker! You’re no better than Daddy.”
My Lord.
We all walked as fast as Cassidy could go through the mall doors and when we were outside, we looked at each other.
“I’m so sorry,” Taygen told me, her voice trembling.
“My father is just…he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“That’s ok. Does anyone remember where we parked?” I asked.
“It wasn’t around here.”
“KayKay,” Aria said.
She sounded so concerned.
“I had already figured that I played into it somehow,” I told them.
“I knew there was something going on with the guest list.I got the feeling that the problem was me, and that I wasn’t going to get an invitation.”
“You were!” Taygen insisted.
“Was that the topic of one of your fights with Marc?” Cassidy asked her, and she blushed.
“You know, it’s not them.”
“What?”
“You said that your family was at fault. I’ll grant that they may be nasty and stupid, but you admitted that you let them act that way to Marc,” Cass pointed out.
“She didn’t let them act that way to me, though,” I said, and I put my arm around Taygen.
“I appreciate it a lot.”
“I’m trying,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my last boyfriend before Marc to figure out why I stayed with him for so long. It was because my parents really liked him.” She frowned.
“They liked him, even if I didn’t.”
“I didn’t, either,” I assured her.
“I didn’t at all,” Cass said, and Aria added that she’d never met that guy, but she would probably agree with our opinions of him.
“Marc is so different,” Taygen told us.
“He always treated me so well! Even when he was mad at me, he never raised his voice. He would never raise a hand, either.”
“Of course not!” Aria said, horrified, but Taygen blushed and I got the feeling she’d seen some of that behavior before.
“He’s not perfect,” she continued, “but I’m not, either. They didn’t like how he stood up for himself and how he stood up for me, too.”
I gave her a tissue from my purse because I’d taken to carrying them, just in case.
She blew her nose and calmed down before we started the hunt for our cars and then said goodbye to each other.
Before I left, though, I ran back into the mall to pick up one more thing, and then I drove out to the farmhouse.
As I went, I thought a lot about the girl I’d been—because I had changed, I really had.
Hadn’t I? People like Taygen’s parents were always going to think of the old Kayleigh, though, the one who’d been wild in so many ways.
It would have been different if I’d enjoyed it, like if I’d had fun when I was with those guys…
but often, I’d felt uncomfortable and unhappy, and then I’d spent so much of my energy trying to get them to stay and care about me.
It would have been different if I’d enjoyed the parties, if I’d gotten drunk because I liked the feeling or if I’d done the drugs because I’d enjoyed the high.
But I also remembered holding my nose to get the liquor down faster and choking on pills as I tried to swallow too many.
And then there was always the next morning, the empty hole that was still there no matter how I’d acted the night before and the memories that had never gone away, no matter what I’d done to obliterate them.
Sir was on the porch when I stopped in front of the farmhouse, wagging his short tail and jumping up off his front feet in excitement.
“Hello,” I called to him and he ran over, but he didn’t jump on me.
The weight of his affection was still enough to almost knock me down, but I held onto the car and petted him.
“I missed you, too, and I’m glad to see you.”
“Kayleigh,” Caleb called, and I was very glad to see him as well.
He smiled as he walked down the steps and immediately kissed me, so the feeling seemed to be mutual.
I heard Marc in the background, saying something about young love and motel rooms, but I didn’t listen.
When we broke apart, my cousin was already walking toward his truck, still muttering under his breath.
“Wait,” I called after him.
“I saw Taygen.”
That made him stop on a dime, and he listened intently to what I had to say about her family and her reaction to them.
I told him some but not all, avoiding the parts where her father had insulted me because that would only have made Marc furious and distracted him from all the maturation that had gone on with his ex.
“She said that?” he asked more than once, and when I was done, he made me repeat it.
“She said that I stood up for her? She knows that they were wrong?”
“She knows that she was wrong. I’m not sure if she’s ready to change all her opinions yet, because it’s a lot to face. It’s a lot to progress from the person you’ve been your whole life to someone stronger and maybe smarter,” I answered.
“But I can see that she’s trying. Would you want to give her another chance?”
He bent to pet Sir, which really did help to calm turbulent emotions.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“Being alone like this isn’t fun and I miss her. But I also feel like there’s a weight gone from me. I can do what I want without someone looking over my shoulder and telling me that it’s wrong.”
“Marc, I don’t want to sound condescending, but you’re young,” Caleb said.
“What’s the hurry to get married? Even if y’all do get back together, why rush? You could date for a while and make sure it’s what you both really want.”
“I didn’t say that we were getting back together,” my cousin answered quickly.
“Who ever said that? It wasn’t me. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I never said that I missed her and that I don’t like being alone.”
“You just said exactly that, you liar,” I commented, and he scowled at me.
“I never said that I still love her. I don’t, not anymore. I don’t. I’m over her, totally. Absolutely over her.”
“I don’t know if you remember Hamlet ,” Caleb commented, and Marc said that he did not, and he wasn’t going to stand around discussing senior year English Lit class.
He opened the door to his truck and a bunch of junk spilled out, which interested Sir a lot.
My cousin made sure that the dog was out of the way and then roared off.
“Personally, I’m not sure what you meant about Hamlet , but Marc was always really good at English. He definitely understood that reference,” I said.
“Queen Gertrude said that another character protested too much and revealed the truth by mistake,” Caleb explained.
“Want to place a bet on whether Marc and Taygen will reunite? I say yes.”
“I don’t remember Shakespeare, but I do remember the thing about a fool and her money being parted. No, I will not take that bet,” I answered, and pointed at the house.
“What’s happening in there?”
“Come look,” he invited, and I wasn’t thrilled about doing that but he held my hand and Sir stuck close enough to my legs that I had trouble walking.
Those things made it more palatable.
My cousin Dasia’s crew had been hard at work on the heating and cooling in the previous week, and demo had happened in the kitchen and a few walls where plumbing needed to be replaced.
They’d done a lot but it had only served to make the house look more desolate and scarier.
I had been saying that it made me anxious to be inside this place and that I didn’t like it, but I put a different name to my feeling as we walked through the empty, dark rooms. It was fear.
“What do you think?”
“They’ve made good progress,” I said.
“Marc has everyone moving along well.”
“Yeah.” Caleb frowned, though, as he looked around.
“They’ll paint and redo the floors.”
“That will make a big difference.”
“Maybe it needs new windows. Maybe I should take down some walls and make it more open.”
“I thought you just wanted it more habitable,” I said.
“But you might appreciate those changes when you move back in.”
“What? When I move back in?” he asked, echoing my words.
He dropped my hand and stared.
“I just assumed that you would want to,” I said.
“Don’t you want to?”
“Uh, sure, I should live…hell. No, I don’t want to do that.” He looked at me.
“Do you want me out of the house on Signal Mountain?”
“What? No! I don’t want you to go, not at all,” I said, and I decided that this was the perfect time to hug him.
I felt him relax when I did, sighing out some tension.
“I’m totally happy, just the way things are.”
“Just the way things are,” he echoed again, and I nodded.
“I think everything is perfect. I really, really don’t want you to live here,” I said.
“You don’t like this place.”
“Well,” I started, and paused.
I picked up my head to look at him.
“Well, no. I don’t, but it’s not because of the thing that happened with the moth tickling me, or whatever that was.” Because the more I’d thought about it, the more doubts I’d had that there had been any kind of insect there.
“It’s because this house feels so sad to me, because I keep thinking about all the bad things that happened to you.”
“I never got hurt,” he said.
“You did, even if she never actually used the switch that she made you cut. Your mother hurt you by being—”
There was a noise upstairs, like metal cans falling and then rolling.
Sir started to bark and I froze, staring at the staircase and waiting for something to descend.
“No one’s up there,” Caleb told me.
“It was only a pile of materials falling over.”
“I want to go,” I said.
“Right now.” I was already moving toward the door, pulling him along and with Sir at my side.
I didn’t stop on the porch, either, but went straight to my car.
“I need to go see what fell,” he said.
“I’ll clean it up.”
“No,” I told him.
“Seriously, don’t you feel it? Marc doesn’t like being in there, either. And the other day, the framers ran outside because they were scared. They said they heard voices, and even if the mice are gone, Sir is nervous.”
For the first time in a while, Caleb put his knuckles back up to his mouth.
“It will be better when the renovations are done. It’ll be better painted.”
“It’s more than how it looks. I thought I was just being, you know, kind of fanciful or just foolish. But I don’t think it’s that, and I’m not putting a name to anything but I don’t want to be here.”
We stood looking at each other and Sir wiggled in between us.
I waited for Caleb to tell me that yeah, I was acting fanciful and foolish, just like a child.
“I feel it, too,” he said.
“For a while, I’ve thought that…there’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is, not exactly, but I do feel it. This is my house, though, and I’m not going to run away.”
“I want to run way, exactly that. Please?” I asked, and he didn’t argue.
Sir rode with him in the truck, and every time I looked back at them in my mirrors, the dog was draped against his side.
We were both quiet that night, but we went through our normal routine.
It was very nice, I thought, to have a routine.
Caleb and I walked Sir and had dinner, then we got ready for bed and read together.
We’d just finished Persuasion , so I had picked a different book.
“ Hamlet ?” Caleb asked.
“It’s about ghosts, isn’t it?”
“Uh, partially.” But he didn’t open it as I settled next to him on his bed.
After reading, another part of the routine was that we slept separately, so I would go back to my own room.
“Are you sure that you don’t mind the two of us like this?” he asked.
“Like this?” I gestured at the bed.
“I mean how we’re living together. We’re roommates,” he modified.
“I like living with you.” I leaned forward and kissed him.
“I don’t want to put pressure on you,” he told me.
“I don’t want you to feel like you owe me.”
“I do,” I stated.
“I owe you for letting me stay in this amazing house and for helping me take care of the problem with Sir…what did you do?” I asked, because his knuckles had risen again.
He put his hand on my shoulder instead.
“The attorney worked it out. She represented our interests and Sir’s.” The dog’s tail thumped the comforter.
“It’s resolved.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that the paperwork about his bloodline and everything else is in her possession and that guy won’t make any more claims of ownership.”
“How much did you have to pay him?” I asked.
“What should the limit have been? I couldn’t let you worry and I wouldn’t let him try to take Sir. I’ll do what I can to protect both of you, always. This wasn’t anything in comparison to what you’ve given to me.”
“What have we given to you?”
“I don’t know how to phrase it.” He thought and then said, “I think the best word is joy. Maybe contentment. All of that.”
Now the dog picked up his head and threw himself over onto Caleb, and I did the same.
We were both so crazy about him.
“The best day of my life was last Christmas when I blew out my tire,” I said.
“I found Sir and you found me.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course I do!” I exclaimed.
“And you looked up my address because you were worried about me. What if you hadn’t done that? We might never have seen each other, ever again.”
“Uh, I wasn’t that worried.”
“You came to find me because you thought that Sir was a mean stray. You aren’t,” I assured our dog.
“I wanted to see you again,” Caleb said.
“Yes, I wanted to make sure that things were all right with the stray you took home, but I also wanted to see you. I thought you were so beautiful and you had…I guess it’s that you had so much spark. I sparked right back to you, and I spent the whole night planning how I could convince you that I wasn’t a murderer or worse.”
“I would never have thought that!”
“You did think it, which was smart. But I didn’t want anything except to see you again and talk to you. I wanted to get to know you more.”
“And that was lucky for me.”
“It was the best decision I ever made,” he told me.
“Then I hired Marc.”
“Because of me?” I asked incredulously.
“I also needed to work on the house.” Then he shrugged.
“Yes, because of you. Because of you, I’m not the same person anymore. I get a sensation kind of like I’m floating, like my feet aren’t even touching the ground. I only have to think about you and I feel that way.”
“Really?” I rested my chin on his chest so I could see him.
“I do that?”
“I feel light,” he said, nodding.
“Free. Amazing.”
“I feel it, too.”
“I’ve never been good at relationships,” Caleb told me.
“Never. I never put in the effort but I am now. You know, it doesn’t seem like effort when you want it so much. I want you, so much. I don’t want to be your roommate and I don’t want to leave things the way they are between us.”
Confusion washed over me, confusion and hurt.
“You don’t?”
“No, I want more,” he said.
“I want everything. I love you, Kayleigh.” He brushed back my hair.
“Why are you crying?”
“You mean that,” I said.
“My Lord. There are tissues in my bag but it’s downstairs.”
“Use this,” he directed, and dabbed at my eyes with his t-shirt.
“I do mean it. I love you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m very, very sure.” He reached and pulled me up his body so that he could kiss me.
“I love you so much. You’re the most wonderful woman, and you’re the perfect woman for me. I love you.”
Sir whimpered.
“I love you, too,” Caleb assured him.
He kissed me again and this was contentment. This was joy.