Chapter 4
Christian
In desperation, I’ve come to use the bathroom and brush my teeth at the gas station.
It really is the cleanest and best smelling gas station I’ve ever encountered and it’s because Terrance, the owner, is a clean freak.
Always has been since I was a kid, when I used to come in here with sticky fingers from ice cream, looking for candy.
I would touch the candy displayed beneath the counter, searching for one I really wanted, and when I handed it to him, he cringed. Every time. It was father-like, truly. He’d wipe my hands, the candy, then the counter with a wipe. I’ve seen him scrub at the floor on his knees several times.
Terrance is a hard working man and one I’ve admired since I was old enough to understand what it meant to have a job. But he isn’t too happy with me these days.
I step into the mini mart with my small bag of toiletries, the bell above announcing my arrival obnoxiously loudly. His head snaps up and his eyes narrow.
“Calloway,” he says.
“Mr. Holt.”
Terrance sighs. “Here for more candy before you run off again?”
“I deserve that,” I rasp, leaning on the counter. “I just need to use your bathroom.”
I wait patiently for his answer while he inspects every inch of me. I do the same. There are more white streaks in his hair, which he’s grown out into a short afro, and the crows feet around his eyes are more prominent. It suits him.
“I’ve lost the keys.” He shrugs.
My eyes flit to the keys on the counter with a tag that reads, bathroom. “They’re right there.”
Mr. Holt groans. “Fine.”
I take the keys, relieved that maybe I can trim this stubble before it gets too long and brush my teeth. “Thank you. And I’m sorry,” I say. “For whatever…I did.”
“It wasn’t to me.”
“I know.”
“That girl stayed here, suffering in silence,” Terrance says, tapping his pointer finger onto the counter. “She loved you more than anything and all she wanted was for you to be happy and healthy. She wanted you to get help.”
My eyes drop to my feet and I kick the tile with the toe of my shoe. “I know.”
“And get out of that suit, boy,” Terrance laughs. “You look ridiculous.”
I laugh with him and finally meet his eyes. “This is all I have.”
“You have money,” he states. “Go shopping. And go brush your teeth, your breath stinks.”
“Missed you too, Terrance.”
He grunts and waves me off.
The suit is still on but with no jacket—I’m just glad I got to brush my teeth and shave. My sleeves are rolled up and the top buttons are undone, and I’m sweating through this shirt.
The air conditioning in my car is at its highest as I drive and ruminate on a plan to get her back.
Or at least get her to believe me when I say I’m staying for good—when I say there is nothing more important than her and us.
I need a plan that works even though I have done nothing to prove myself yet.
If I were her, I probably wouldn’t be able to look at me.
I can barely stand my reflection most days as is.
I should not have allowed my mother to dictate my life the way she did by forcing me out of Willow Springs and into New York after my father died. A father she allowed to beat me and a father she begged me to give half my liver to.
My family was complicated and despicable.
Everything they did, they did it for their money and for the company that is now mine.
I was simply an after thought—even as I was hauled to New York, and even when I nearly died.
Finally, I set boundaries between my mother and I by telling her what she needed to hear.
My trunk is filled with shopping bags from stores all over town and the mall in the city. After the gas station, I’ve spent the better half of my day searching for and buying new, more realistic clothes.
Not the suits I’ve been groomed into wearing everyday.
My mother has groomed me so well that I don’t even know if I’ll feel comfortable in jeans. I took advantage of the mall and bought five different Levi’s, some similar and others in a light shade of blue. The t-shirts I didn’t like so I went to a different store.
I somehow found myself buying black and white t-shirts in a Prada to wear with the jeans. And multiple new sneakers from…Balenciaga, Gucci, Saint Laurent, a few Adidas and Nike too. I couldn’t help myself, old habits die hard. But at least now, I’ll look somewhat domesticated.
I drive down Main Street, earning myself the dirtiest looks from town residents when they see me in the car, and for the first time—I hate my car.
This car used to be my pride and joy, the first big thing I ever bought for myself and now it’s meaningless.
The only thing that would make this car better is having her in the front seat.
But that isn’t going to happen again for a while.
I pass Books and Beans on my way to her house, again, and don’t see her car. Or her behind the counter. I turn left at the next stop sign, taking the road that leads me toward her.
Her Jeep is in the driveway when I pull in and she’s hopping out, grimacing and wincing as she lands on her feet. Lana gives me a side eye, her lip curling, as she struggles to walk to the house, legs wobbly.
I shut the engine and get out, catching up to her in two steps. “Lana.”
“You’re too persistent for your own good,” she grumbles with an eye roll.
“Let me help you,” I say, not waiting for a response. I bend and scoop her with an arm beneath her knees and the other around her back.
“Christian, what the hell are you doing?”
“Your feet or legs obviously hurt,” I say and take her up the stairs to the front door. Lana doesn’t protest, which only solidifies my assumption of her pain. “Keys?”
She shoots me a glare and shoves the key into the door, pressing the button above the handle and pushing open the door. I take one step before she reminds me, “Take off your shoes.”
Take off your shoes. She always reminded me when we got home to our old apartment.
But the way she says it now feels like a welcome home as I bring her into a house I’ve never been in.
A house I’ve never walked around in with things I’ve never touched, with places I’ve never kissed her, a bed I’ve never held her, a kitchen I’ve never cooked for her in, a table I’ve never ate a meal with her at, a living room I’ve never held her and watched a movie she picked, with surfaces I’ve never made love to her on, and walls I’ve never kissed her up against, a shower we’ve never shared.
But she isn’t saying welcome to our home. She’s saying it as, you are a visitor in my house and these are my rules, so take off your shoes. I take what I can get.
I don’t put her down as I try to slip off my Louboutin loafers.
In front of me to my right, there’s a staircase.
Past those stairs, from what I can see, is her kitchen and a seating room with a long white couch from.
Light floods through from her glass back doors.
To my right is her living room, where I take her after I kick the door closed gently.
“Here,” she mumbles.
I set her down gently, careful not to put her shoe clad feet on the couch because I know how passionate she feels about not wearing shoes in houses. Lana sighs and her eyes close. Lifting her legs, I sit on her couch and let her calves rest across my thighs.
“Is it your feet?” I untie her sneakers and pull them off carefully, a bloody bandaid coming off with them. She hisses with quiet ow’s and shit’s and expletives in Spanish and English.
“It’s the shoes.” She curses again. “I just…haven’t been able to buy new sneakers, that’s all.”
She doesn’t want to buy new sneakers yet—she was always a saver. My thumb presses into the arch of her foot and I don’t miss her quiet moan.
“You can go,” she whispers. “You don’t have to…Just go.”
“I want to,” I say, and press down the arch again, smoothing out the tension. “I used to do it all the time.”
I look up at her and she’s already looking at me, her caramel eyes soft and nostalgic. “I know,” Lana breathes. “Thank you.”
“Anything.”
“I’m still very angry with you,” she whispers.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“This is a temporary cease fire,” she says. “It feels too good.”
“Temporary cease fire,” I agree with a nod, and I move on to her other foot.
Lana sighs into the press of my thumbs and sinks into her couch, curling her body against the cushions like she might take a nap. “You can’t be here.”
“Why not?”
Her eyes flutter, lids heavy. “You know why.”
I’ve been thinking about the other night since…
the other night. I want the moment I kiss her again for the first time in four years to be something that will stick.
Something I can take with me if she comes to me and says I need to go and she means it.
If she tells me she is serious and I have no chance at all.
She hasn’t told me any of that, but there is still time.
Lana looks up at me with heavy, tired eyes and I try to read her.
But I just… I always end up just looking at her.
I look at her now and I want to ask, How much love do you get these days?
How much space or peace do you have? Are you resting?
What hurts? How can I fix it? Can I be a part of it?
Is there a chance and is there space in your heart for me?
I don’t know anything anymore and it terrifies me.
“Tell me anyway,” I rasp, just needing to hear her voice.
“You left me,” she whispers into a yawn. “You left.”
I put more pressure on her foot, knowing this part well enough from all the times I’ve given her these massages when she used to work at Katherine’s Diner. It’s this spot that puts her to sleep right here.
“I had to,” I manage to say. “My dad died, Lana. I had to take over and—”
“I know,” she whispers. “Never mind, I don’t want to talk about this right now. You can go, I just want to take a nap.”