Chapter 18 #2
I can’t stop thinking about the strong line of Danny’s jaw, the hard muscle of his body.
And the softness in his eyes when he wakes up, his hand finding mine under the covers.
I don’t know what it all means. Or what will happen after fight night, when our contract ends.
For once, I’m not letting myself overanalyze it.
All I know is that it feels really good in the moment.
“So, can we talk about it?” Casey asks quietly. “About why it never happened for us?”
“No.”
“Lauren,” he says, stopping, just as we reach the end of the cul-de-sac. “We need to talk. You need to know my feelings about it too. It hurt, every time you shut me out.”
My chest itches, red hives erupting from my skin. I don’t want to talk about this. About how I ruined it. How I fucked it all up before it even began.
“Stop,” I say. “You think just because it will feel good for you that I should have to listen?” Casey shakes his head, as if I have it all wrong.
He’s about to interrupt, but I head him off.
“Maybe it hurt me, too, Casey. Maybe I don’t want to hear how I ruined any chance we had because I was too scared or guilty or inhibited.
Or perfect. Maybe being too perfect isn’t the compliment you think it is.
I mean, goblin mode? What the fuck, Casey.
Saying those things to me was a fucking dick move. ”
Casey looks bewildered, like he just got punched in the face.
“I … OK. Shit. I’m sorry I said you were too perfect. And the goblin mode thing. It was a cop out, and it was lame,” he says, frowning. “But what could you possibly have to feel guilty about?”
God, maybe I should punch him. How is he so oblivious? How can he not see?
“Because every time you touched me, I was betraying my best friend.”
Tears sting the rims of my eyes. Casey is silent, his lips pursed. His own eyes have gone glassy. He’s processing in that controlled, methodical way of his. Sorting through his feelings like receipts on a table, doing his expenses.
“Because I lost her too,” I say, tears falling in earnest now.
“I needed to grieve too. But I never got the chance. Someone had to keep life afloat all those years. My own feelings were put so far on the back burner, the gas ran out. So excuse me for feeling conflicted when my best friend’s husband almost kisses me in the rain. And especially for wanting him to.”
“Fuck, Lauren.” His eyes, the sadness in them, unravels something that’s been coiled tight within me for six years.
I sit down hard on the curb. He sits down next to me, nestling me into the crook of his arm.
“God, of course. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.
Because of you, I got to heal. It never occurred to me that you weren’t healing right along with me.
” My breath hitches as his thumbs move back and forth on my forearms, a gentle question in his touch.
“You have nothing to feel guilty about. Ally wanted me to find love again. In fact, she’d be fucking pissed if she knew it took me six years to even date. ”
I laugh through my tears, because he’s right. Ally was always needling him to move things along. To pick up the pace. With getting married, with buying a house, with having a baby. She had strict deadlines for her life, like on some level she knew it would be cut short.
I shake my head, looking up at the stars. “God, I just miss her so much.”
“Me too,” Casey says.
A soft rain shimmers in the streetlights, filling the air with petrichor. It mists our faces, mixing with our tears. Casey’s head dips toward mine.
“Nothing is ruined yet, Lauren. Not when it hasn’t even begun.”
The space between us slowly compresses, as if in slow motion. It’s happening, right now. Casey’s lips are mere centimeters from mine.
My phone buzzes from the purse in my lap, vibrating me from this dream. I grab it.
“Hello?”
Casey leans away and puts a hand on his neck.
“I’m so sorry to bother you with this again, dear,” the smoker’s voice of my dad’s next-door neighbor says. My back goes rigid, stress cementing my spine. “But it’s happened again.”
Fuck, not this. Not now.
“I understand,” I say, checking my watch.
Casey eyes me curiously. My dad, I mouth to him. He nods, pressing his hand comfortingly to the center of my back. Supporting me.
“No problem. Yes, I’ll come take care of it now. Yep, right now.”
I hang up the phone, my limbs feeling like they’ve turned to lead. How am I ever going to manage this? It’s too exhausting to contemplate.
Casey pats my back and hops to his feet. “I’ll just let Helena know I’m leaving, then we’ll grab some Red Bulls and head down.”
“Casey, you can’t leave your own party.”
“We’re out of champagne and the caterers are packing up. The party’s over. Just go tell The Rock in there you have something personal to attend to, and I’ll meet you out front with the girls in ten minutes.” He holds out both hands to me, waiting to help me up.
“What about your mother?”
“She’s jetlagged. She’s been dying to get to bed. Trust me.”
I hesitate. “But I’m not supposed to leave Danny alone.”
“Lauren, it’s a family emergency, and he’s a grown man. I’m sure he knows how to call an Uber.”
If I could do this myself, I would. But I can’t.
Things are fucked up between Casey and me right now, but there is no one who knows me better. No one else I’d let help me with this.
I grab onto his hands.
We pull up to Dad’s house within the hour, it’s peeling white picket fence miraculously still standing despite years of inattention.
“Ah, to what do I owe this surprise?” Dad says as we walk up to the front door. The porch is littered with cardboard boxes. Trinkets. Treasures. Trash.
“We were in the neighborhood and thought you might like to take the girls out for burgers,” Casey says, clapping Dad on the shoulder. His eyes are friendly and relaxed, glazing over the mess as if it isn’t there.
“I see,” Dad says slowly, realization dawning.
He looks around the porch, bewildered, as if seeing his overwhelming number of belongings for the first time.
“Oh. I’ve just put a few things in the front temporarily.
Just waiting for a little space to open up inside.
Though I can see it’s gotten a bit out of hand again. Did the neighbors call?”
I nod. “You can’t keep your things in the front, Dad. Remember? We promised. It isn’t fair to the rest of the neighborhood.”
Dad nods. He dabs the corner of his eye with a handkerchief. “Yes. Yes, of course. They’re right. I’m very sorry about this.”
I pat his arm. “It’s OK. Casey and I will take care of it. You just enjoy your burgers with the girls, and when you get back, we’ll play some Scrabble. Casey has been bragging how he’ll finally beat you this time.”
“Ah, a delusion I look forward to handily disabusing him of.”
“Ending a sentence with a preposition, old man? You’re slipping,” Casey teases.
Dad’s eyes sparkle. “A delusion I look forward to disabusing you of, you bastard. Better?”
“Much.”
Dad finds his hat and coat, and the girls hug his arms as they head to the car, begging him to do their favorite Looney Toons impressions.
I walk into the house and wince. It’s worse than last time.
And the time before that. The smell hits me, a familiar mix of sour rot and pipe smoke.
Nausea follows almost immediately. It’s the scent of my childhood—happy memories mostly, but tinged with odor, like a lighthearted book with black mildew dotting the crease.
The smell would hang on my clothes, reminding me not to let anyone get too close.
Close meant playdates. Sleepovers. Close meant someone seeing how we lived.
But someone did see. Ally, in third grade, when she took the liberty of gathering my schoolwork when I was out with the flu.
She brought me my binder and looked around the house with unjudgmental wonder.
There were tunnels that brought you to each room, even mine.
But when you opened my door, my room was clean.
Bright white sheets scented with a hint of bleach.
A tidy nightstand. A single book. That’s how I liked it.
Blank white space is easier to clean. Easier to know if Dad’s treasures were encroaching on my territory.
It wasn’t until Ally and Casey were married that I invited him in too.
I didn’t want to, but Ally insisted, rattling on about how interesting my father was.
His stories, his worldview. Eventually, I relented, and one rainy Sunday we arrived at Dad’s with a warm, oil-dotted box of perogies for a quick Scrabble game.
When Dad opened the door and the mess came into view, I held my breath and waited for revulsion to cross Casey’s face.
But it never came. He was so believable at pretending not to see the piles of trash, they almost disappeared for me too.
As if we were sitting in a normal living room.
As if we weren’t afraid to drink from the water glasses.
Casey whistles now, throwing things into large black trash bags at random, while I wash a tower of teetering dishes.
“We can’t keep doing this for him,” I say. “Coming down here every other month when his stuff overflows and the neighbors complain.”
“Yes, we can. Plus, the girls love going out for burgers with him.”
The deal we have with Dad’s hoarding disorder is this: we are allowed to clean for the exact amount of time it takes for him and the girls to eat a Dick’s deluxe burger, milkshake, and fries.
It’s an agreement we’ve had for years and employ every couple months.
Usually, they’re out long enough for us to clear the front porch and sanitize the kitchen, but, dear lord, it’s bad tonight. Luckily, the girls know to chew slow.
“Hopefully the line at Dick’s is long,” I say. “We’ll need the extra time.”
“It’ll be OK. As long as the front porch is clear, his neighbors should be happy,” Casey says, tossing a heap of ancient Time magazines into the bag.