8. Summer
CHAPTER 8
Summer
O n Wednesday, I head to Jared’s new apartment after work. Today will be the first time I’ve seen it other than the few pictures he showed me when he first signed his lease. I pull into an open spot in front of the small apartment complex, rain pounding steadily on the windshield. I sit for a moment and close my eyes, listening to the staccato beat against the metal and glass of my car. The sound of the rain has always been steadying for me, and I need a moment before seeing Jared again. I hear my phone ping with a new message. I open my eyes and unlock the screen.
Ryan:
How’s your ceiling holding up? It’s coming down pretty hard today.
No bowls have been necessary so far.
Good. I wouldn’t mind the excuse to see you again, though.
Ah, yes. The old leaky roof wingman. Sorry to say he’s failed you this time.
Damn. Last time I count on him for anything.
I suck my lips in to squash my giddy smile and exit out of my messages app. I need to get Emma soon so we can enjoy dinner without having to rush.
Jared was lucky enough to find an apartment complex that only has one story—no one above or below him to gripe about normal kid noises. Before moving into my house, we had an apartment with a downstairs neighbor who would beat the ceiling with a broom every time Emma dared toddle too loudly.
This complex only has five, single-story units and he got the one on the corner with only one neighbor. I knock on the door and only have to wait a handful of moments before Emma throws it open excitedly. “Hi, Mommy! Come on, I wanna show you my new room.” She grabs my hand and tugs me inside, pausing impatiently for me to take off my shoes.
While I toe off my ankle boots, I take a brief glance around, noting that while sparsely decorated, the apartment itself has potential. The walls are a dull beige to match the equally dull beige carpet, but that’s nothing a good rug and some artwork can’t fix. I mentally check myself. Not your job anymore, Summer. Once my shoes are off, Emma pulls me through the living room and down a short hallway with three doors, one to the left and two to the right. As she’s opening the last door on the right, I ask, “Where’s your Dad?”
“Right here,” he emerges from the door next to hers, steam billowing out after him. He’s wearing a white undershirt and low-slung grey sweats, his typical after-work attire. As a foreman at the local lumber mill, he spends his days in uncomfortable hard hats, steel-toed boots, and thick utility pants. When he comes home, he likes to be comfortable. The familiar scent of his body wash and hair products assault me, and I feel a wave of unwanted nostalgia. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he timed his shower on purpose. He knows a freshly-showered man is my Kryptonite. They just smell so good and the wet, dripping hair really does something for me.
I avert my gaze and swear I see him suppress a smile out of the corner of my eye. As casually as I can manage, I say, “Hey, Jared.” I turn to Emma gesturing at the door in front of us, “So, this is your room?”
She gives me an excited nod and pulls me inside. My heart squeezes as I realize her room is the most decorated in the apartment. She has a pink heart-shaped rug in the center, fairy lights strung along the wall behind her bed, and an oak bookshelf and dresser combo that I recognize from Jared’s parents’ house. She proudly points to the purple, tufted bedspread that swallows the twin-sized bed whole, “This is what Daddy and I picked out last week. Isn’t it so pretty, Mommy?” She plops on the bed.
“It sure is, Em. It’s a little big though isn’t it?” The bedspread looks like it’s meant for a queen-sized bed rather than her twin.
“She insisted on this one even though I told her it wouldn’t fit,” Jared laughs as he enters the room behind us.
“Better for forts!” Emma says, a little hand gesturing to the bookcase and bean bag chair where I’m presuming she makes her forts.
“Can’t argue with that,” I say, sitting next to her. “So, where do you want to get dinner? We can go to Jack’s here in town, or we can go get lasagna at Little Ravenna’s. What are you up for?”
“Lasagna! Lasagna! Lasagna!” she chants, standing from the bed to twirl in a circle. I laugh because I had a feeling that would be her choice.
“Okay, Garfield. Let’s get out of here, then. It’s a thirty-minute drive to Ravenna’s and we want to get you home in time for bed.” I stand and touch her shoulder.
“Make sure you grab your raincoat, Emma,” Jared says, moving aside so she can dart past him. He turns his whiskey colored eyes on me. They sweep down my body lazily before he meets my eyes, “See you when you get back.” He produces a key from the pocket of his sweats, “I figured you should have the spare. Feel free to let yourself in.” He hands me the key, his fingers lingering against mine as I grab it. I try to brush aside the implication in his tone.
I slide past him, throwing a, “Thanks,” over my shoulder. I cannot handle flirty Jared right now. I blow out a breath before pasting a smile on my face. “Hey, Em. Ready?”
“Yup,” she pops the p and comes toward me. “Bye, Daddy!” she calls over her shoulder. I lock the door behind us and lead her to the car, both of us hustling to stay as dry as possible.
On the ride back to Jared’s after dinner, Emma and I are singing along to a pop station on the radio when she says, “Mommy?”
I flick my eyes to hers in the rearview mirror, “Yeah, hun?” I turn the music down so I can hear her better. She’s twining her small fingers together and picking at the chipped, sparkly pink polish on them.
“Are you and Daddy ever gonna get back together?”
The question is a gut punch, even though she’s asked it a few times over the last month. It never gets easier. “I don’t think so, Emma,” I say gently.
“Daddy says ‘maybe’ when I ask him,” she states, a hopeful lift entering her voice.
I hold back a sigh of frustration and keep my eyes on the dark, rain-slicked road ahead, “‘I don’t think so’ and ‘maybe’ are kind of the same thing, Em.” My warm and fuzzy feelings over Jared decorating Emma’s room start to evaporate.
“‘Maybe’ sounds better.”
“I know, Em. I’m telling you now, though, that it is very unlikely that your father and I will be back together any time soon.” I hate being the one to disappoint her, but I can’t have her dealing with false hope .
“Why not?” she asks quietly.
“No one knows for sure what the future holds. But right now, at this moment, I don’t think we’ll ever be back together.”
“So, maybe?” she asks, hopefully. I laugh rather than answering her, because if I open my mouth I’ll say something hurtful about her dad and she doesn’t need to hear that.
When we get to Jared’s apartment, I help Emma out of her booster seat and we plod through the wet grass to the front door, the cold rain doing nothing to diffuse my fury. We swore we would do our best to be on the same page and not confuse her or give her false hope. I get the door open and usher Emma inside.
Jared is, predictably, playing a game on his computer. He’s wearing his gaming headset, so he doesn’t hear us. “Go ahead and start getting ready for bed, Emma. Brush and floss.” I nudge her towards the bathroom.
“Can you both tuck me in like we used to?”
“Sure, sweetie. Give us ten minutes.” Because his desk is facing the wall, Jared doesn’t even see Emma go past him. I roll my eyes and approach him, pulling down his headset when I get to him.
“Ah! What the hell?” He swivels around, panic widening his eyes, “Jesus, Summer. You scared the hell out of me,” he mutters, turning around again, and getting straight back into the game, fingers flying over the keys.
I rein in my annoyance, taking a deep breath in through my nose and out through my mouth. I want a civil conversation, and that won’t happen if I don’t check my anger. This is just too reminiscent of the last seven years. It was always me wanting to have a conversation or spend time together, and then him deciding that he’d rather do anything else (but would mostly rather play video games).
“Jared.”
“Give me a second, okay? I can’t pause it. You know this. We’ve been over it a thousand times.” Rapid fire clicking ensues while I contemplate pulling the plug on the whole system. I feel my anger rising like a swift tide and work to keep it toned down.
“Listen,” I tell the one ear he’s graciously left out from under the headset, “I really need to talk to you and we only have, like, ten minutes until Emma is ready for bed. I told her I’d tuck her in with you.”
To my surprise, he sighs, presses a button on his headphones, and says, “Sorry guys, duty calls. I’ll be back on in thirty.” Then, he exits the game and swivels to me. “What’s up?”
“On the way home, Emma asked me if I thought you and I would get back together,” I say, gauging his reaction.
He laughs, his foot that he had crossed over the other coming up to nudge me on the thigh, “She’s been asking that all the time. So what? It’s a normal question for a kid in her situation.”
“I know that, Jared. I told her that I didn’t think we would be getting back together. Do you know what she told me you said?” He gestures at me to go on. “She said that you told her ‘maybe.’ You can’t give her false hope like that. You and I have talked about this. When she asks those questions, we’re on the same page. No wishy-washy language or deviating from what we talked about. This is already so confusing for her, I don’t want to make it worse.” I sit on the nearby couch, crossing my arms and legs, frustrated that he doesn’t understand the gravity of these conversations.
He moves to sit on the worn coffee table in front of me, “Okay, but it is a ‘maybe.’”
“It’s not. I’m done, Jared. We’ve been done for way longer than just the last month. We just finally made it official.”
“Well, what if I’m not done?” He rests his hands on the outside of my thighs, his palms ghosting up and down the soft fabric of my pants.
My heart jumps at the contact. An old, sad part of me is desperate for affection that he never willingly gave. I take a steadying breath. “This,” I say, as I gently remove his hands, “ might have worked a year ago, but I’m not a dog begging for treats anymore. You’ll be affectionate with me for a week, and then you stop. We go back to the way things were and it repeats. I can’t anymore. I need you to understand that.”
“Is this because of Supermarket Guy?” he asks, leaning back out of my personal space and removing his hands.
“Oh my god. I’m truly going to murder Anthony. I don’t care if he sends me a gift basket for Christmas every year,” I throw my hands up in exasperation, “Ryan, ‘Supermarket Guy,’ is just the contractor I hired to fix the leak. We bumped into each other after I saw you and Emma and he walked me out because it was getting dark.”
“I would have walked you out if you wanted me to,” he says, arms crossing defensively.
“No, you wouldn’t have. You haven’t walked me to my car since our first anniversary, Jared.” I shake my head because he always chooses a random detail to focus on in an argument rather than trying to fix what’s actually wrong.
He has nothing to say to that, so instead he switches tactics, “You have to run the guys you date by me first.”
I release an incredulous, “Excuse me?” I sit up a little straighter, my brows shooting toward my hairline.
He clears his throat uncrossing and recrossing his arms, “Well, I don’t want random guys around Emma.”
I work to keep my voice down, “You know damn well I would never bring ‘random guys’ around Emma,” I use air quotes around the offending language. “If and when I date, that is my business—” he tries to interrupt, but I hold up a silencing hand, “If it gets serious enough that I would want Emma to meet him, I would of course introduce you to him first. I expect the same courtesy from you for any woman you date. But I won’t be telling you about any and every guy who might show interest in me.”
He deflates, “Fine. Okay.” He waits for a beat and then, “So, Supermarket Guy is showing interest? ”
I try to find my patience while I close my eyes briefly. “One man does something nice for me and suddenly the whole town thinks he’s down on one knee.”
“Well, that is kind of what happened with us, remember? I started carrying your books to class for you, and that was after two months of trying to get you to talk to me about anything not school-related. When you let me, that’s how I knew you were into me. You don’t let anyone in. You never accept any help. When you do, that means you care, whether that’s friendship or something else.”
The bathroom door opens and I stand. “I guess. Doesn’t mean anything is going on though.” When did he get so observant? He’s right, of course. I struggle to let anyone in because I’m so afraid of the pain of losing them. I don’t accept help because one of the earliest lessons I learned is that you can only truly count on yourself.
Before I forget, I take Jared’s key out of my pocket and set it on the coffee table. I don’t want any part of what keeping it would insinuate.
“I’m ready for bed!” Emma calls down the hallway.
“We good?” Jared asks as we head towards her room. I give his shoulder a squeeze and nod.
After I leave Jared’s, I rush back to my car and get on the road. The rain is coming down so hard, I have my windshield wipers on the highest setting and they still hardly clear my vision.
As I make it to the outskirts of town near my neighborhood, I see a white lump in the middle of the road. Just as I’m about to swerve around it, the lump moves and I see a head turn toward the headlights of my car.
“Oh shit, dog!” Thankfully, I manage to swerve around it. I pull to the side of the road, turn on my hazards, and get out of my car. The rain instantly drenches me. I cautiously approach the large dog and put a hand out to show I’m not a threat. Its tail gives a feeble thump and I approach quicker, seeing that it’s friendly. “Hey, pup, why are you out in the middle of the road?”
The poor thing whines and as I get closer, I see that their back leg is twisted at an odd angle. My stomach heaves and it takes everything in me to keep my lasagna down. I avert my gaze from the leg and look the rest of the dog over, quickly noticing that it’s a she and appears to be otherwise uninjured, apart from some scrapes making her white fur rust-colored in some spots.
“Oh no, you poor thing!” Tears slip down my cheeks and burn my throat. I’ve never been able to hold it together when I see an animal in pain. I gently pet her head, and she licks my palm, eliciting another sob from my throat. I quickly get myself as composed as I can, and try to lift her but stop when the struggling makes her let out a yelp of pain.
“Okay, pup. We’re going to figure this out.” I pull off my raincoat and drape it over her so she warms up a little. I shield my phone with my upper body, but when I press the button to wake my phone, nothing happens. My phone is dead. “Oh, come on!” Why does this shit always happen to me? I put the useless hunk of glass and metal back in my pocket and go back to stroking the dog’s head, hoping a better idea comes to me soon, because we’re both freezing.