Breaking Skin (8 page)

When his fan leaves, Cole looks back at me and clears his throat, appearing embarrassed.

“Demolition Man?” I ask, arching a brow as I try to picture him flying down the ice on skates with a hockey stick in his hand. I have to admit, it fits. I would bet the friends he was with that night at the bar were his teammates.

“What time is that dance thing tomorrow?” Derek asks.

“We don’t know yet. Right, Aunt Nikki?”

I look at Derek, wondering if he’s seriously considering going. “Right.”

“I’ll text you when I know the time,” Langley says, sounding excited at the prospect of Derek going. “Oh, wait. I can’t. I lost my iPod Touch, and my mom won’t get me another one.”

My eyes shift in her direction. She had an iPod with this boy’s number in it? She texted with him? He’s older than her by a year, maybe two.

“What’s this about tomorrow?” Cole asks.

I look up at him and his watchful eyes are on me. “I’m doing a small impromptu ballet performance for Langley and her friends. It isn’t anything formal.”

“You’re a professional dancer,” he states rather than asks, and I know Renee must have told him. He gives his son a perplexed look, as if he’s not sure why Derek is interested in going. “Thank you for the invitation,” he says to Langley, “but Derek has hockey practice tomorrow.”

“Only in the morning,” Derek says.

“We’ll have to see how the day goes.” Cole appears uncomfortable as he places his hand on his son’s shoulder to urge him along. “Nice seeing you.” His gaze skims over me to include me in his polite good-bye.

Once they’ve moved down the aisle, Langley squints in my direction. “Derek’s dad is usually a lot friendlier than that.”

“I bet he is,” I mutter as overwhelming disappointment sets in. “So you and Derek text each other?”

She shrugs. “He just likes me to tell him what his dad does when he isn’t here. He wants to make sure he isn’t too sad without him.”

I squint at her. “Is that what Derek said?”

Langley nods.

“Does his father seem sad?”

“He doesn’t cry or anything, but sometimes he looks a little lonely.”

I feel an unwelcome twinge of sympathy. I understand lonely.

“I can’t believe I lost my iPod. I’m not even allowed to ask for another one before Christmas.”

Langley continues to lament her loss, but I’m still stuck on the fact that I’ve run into Cole again, here in Cooperstown of all places, and instead of the warm smile I remember, I get disdain. It hurts. I can’t pretend it doesn’t as I file away the new things I’ve learned about him. He’s a former pro hockey player, a father, my sister’s next-door neighbor, and sometimes he looks lonely.

I’m a fool because it’s the lonely part of that list that most captures my attention. If he’s lonely, maybe he’s not sleeping with Renee.

Renee
. My thoughts reluctantly return to her. Does my sister hate me? Even as I think the word
hate
, it doesn’t feel right. I don’t believe she hates me, but she still resents me after all this time. Instead of confronting me or trying to work things out, she does subtle, passive-aggressive things that cut deeper than any words she could say to me directly.

“Lasagna.”

I blink and look at Langley.

“Lasagna,” she repeats when she has my attention. “I want lasagna for dinner. Can you cook that?”

I study my niece with her big earnest eyes and thick, dark hair so much like mine and Renee’s. Her whole future is ahead of her, and I don’t want Renee to shut me out of it anymore. What Cole thinks of me doesn’t matter. He’s a dream and not part of my reality, but what Langley thinks does matter. It matters a lot, and I want her to know that.

“Well, kiddo. Lasagna is a tough one. I might need some help.”

She sighs. “I guess I can help.”

“Great. We’ll make it together.”

I
look at the road in front of me, but all I see is her, Nichole, the girl I picked up at Blackthorn’s that night. Nichole is Nikki, Renee’s sister, and the irony of that feels like a punch to the gut because I’m such an idiot. The reason I was originally drawn to Renee was because she reminded me of Nichole, and for a while, Nichole was a girl I couldn’t stop thinking about.

If I’d known how hard it would be to get her out of my system, I wouldn’t have sneaked out of her apartment in the middle of the night without getting her last name or her number. But I was too preoccupied. My career was ending and so was my marriage. I could hardly see through the shitstorm swirling around me. It took me a month to wake up to the fact that my need for Nichole wasn’t going away. It was getting stronger.

Once I decided I wanted Nichole for more than one night, it felt right. She felt right. Finally, the possibility of something good was on the horizon, but I didn’t have her number. All I could do was turn up at her place and hope she was willing to talk to me.

Nearly a month after I walked out of Nichole’s apartment, I stood outside her door, wanting nothing more than to be back inside again. I should have realized that wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t my year for good things. In the weeks since I’d met her, Nichole had moved. She was gone, and her neighbors didn’t know where she went. I walked away from her door, flattened by disappointment. Blackburn’s was a dead end too. I sat in that bar night after night, but she never came in again, and no one there knew anything about her.

I glance at Derek through the rearview mirror. He’s playing a game on his phone, and by the sound of it, a violent one. I make a mental note to check out what new games he’s downloaded since he was last at my house.

“You and Langley text each other?” I raise my voice so he’ll hear me over the explosive sound effects coming from the backseat.

“Uh-huh,” he replies without breaking his concentration.

“How did that come about?”

Even though Derek is only ten, most kids know who his parents are. Some befriend him only because of that, and he’s been hurt by it in the past. I don’t think quiet, polite Langley has ulterior motives, but I wouldn’t put anything past anyone.

Derek lowers his phone and looks up. “I gave her my number. She’s my eyes and ears when I’m not here.”

“She’s what?” My gaze flicks up to the mirror.

“Someone needs to keep an eye on you. You were pretty upset when Mom told you to leave. Since I’m not always here, I need a way to make sure you’re okay.”

My eyes stay on the mirror longer than is safe because I’m trying to figure out if he’s serious. “Exactly how does that work?”

He chuckles. “Relax. I don’t have her spying on you or anything. She just lets me know stuff like when she sees you working in the yard or going out with your friends. That way I know you’re doing things and not hiding in the house all day like Howard Hughes, growing out your fingernails and watching the same movie a million times in a row over and over again.”

I find myself laughing, but the fact that he’s worried about me makes me grip the steering wheel tighter. He shouldn’t worry about his old man. It’s supposed to be the other way around.

“How do you know who Howard Hughes is?”

“I saw a movie about him on TV and then I googled him. Cool guy. Kind of weird at the end, though.”

“Well, you don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine, and I’d appreciate it if you would call off your eight-year-old spy.”

“She’s not a spy, but she lost her iPod so we won’t be texting anymore anyway. A seriously unfortunate development.”

I shake my head in amusement. “How did you get so smart?”

Derek shrugs. “I have no idea. My mom’s an actress and my dad’s a dumb jock.”

“Hey!”

My spine stiffens, but I play it off with a smirk, squinting at Derek through the rearview mirror. He knows about my condition, but he’s a kid making a joke. He doesn’t mean anything by it, even though I can’t see the humor in that joke anymore.

“Just kidding, Dad.”

Derek chuckles and goes back to his game as I smile, genuinely this time, in spite of myself. Somehow I’ve got a kid who’s funny and smart. I feel so much love for him, my chest aches with the pressure of it sometimes. The fact that he only lives with me half of each month is a tragedy I still can’t accept, and the uncompromising way Celeste enforces our shared time is unfair but there’s nothing I can do about it.

Every time there’s a family celebration, it has to be planned around Derek’s time with me because Celeste can’t be trusted to bring him, and she won’t let me take him if it’s not my week. It breaks my heart the way Celeste holds Derek’s time hostage.

My folks get to see my sister’s kids all the time, but not Derek, not unless it’s my week. It makes me feel like a failure, not only to Derek, but to my parents too. They’ve been married for almost forty years. My divorce is the first in the family, and I see how much my folks worry about Derek and me. Everyone worries about me, which is why I have to work twice as hard to make them all believe I’m okay. And I am okay, most of the time.

“Can I go over and hang out with Josh?” Derek asks as I pull into the driveway. Across the street, Josh is playing hoops in his driveway.

“I thought we were going to work on the tree house?”

“It’s early. We can do that later.”

I sigh to myself because I’d looked forward to spending the whole afternoon working on the tree house with Derek. “Sure.”

The minute I park, Derek pockets his phone and jumps out of the car. I should be pleased he’s made friends in the neighborhood. That’s why I moved to this quiet family street, to give Derek what I had growing up—a community, a sense of home. Celeste can keep her ritzy gated development with fenced-in yards where no one knows their neighbors. I’ll take a cul-de-sac filled with neighborhood kids anytime.

Speaking of neighbors, while I stand in the driveway and watch Derek make a basket, Langley and Nichole arrive home next door. Langley waves to me as she walks to the house carrying a grocery bag, but Nichole doesn’t look in my direction once. She had to have seen Langley wave, so she knows someone, likely me, is standing over here, but she purposely doesn’t turn her head, and I realize I’m disappointed.

What did I expect? I wasn’t exactly friendly at the store, and when I mentioned that Renee talked about her, she went pale, her porcelain skin losing what little color it had. She obviously realizes Renee wouldn’t give her any sister-of-the-year awards.

More disappointment wedges itself into my thoughts because despite what I know about Nichole, I still can’t take my eyes off her. When I saw her step out of that taxi this morning, I couldn’t breathe.
Is that her?
I wondered.
After all this time, could it really be her?

As she walks toward the house, I watch the fluid way she moves and notice how her dark hair tumbles down over her shoulders, the ends brushing against the small of her back. She mesmerizes me. Even two years later, my reaction to this girl feels like a kick to the stomach. I want her the same way I wanted her in the bar that night. It was only hours after Celeste served me with divorce papers.

I didn’t want a divorce. I wanted to stay in my house with my son, with the family I built. After our game that night, with the divorce papers still sitting in my locker, I trudged over to Doc’s apartment, ready to drink myself into stupor. After a few hours, he insisted we meet the rest of the guys out, and I was too fucked up by then to argue. I didn’t argue all night until we were at Blackthorn’s and I realized he intended to talk to the girl I couldn’t take my eyes off of.

I turned in my chair and gave Doc a stony look. “Not her.”

His brows shot up. “Who? The brunette? You want her?”

He eyed me with satisfaction, obviously pleased I wasn’t thinking about Celeste. But I hadn’t thought of Celeste that way in a long time, even though I’d remained faithful to her. No matter how bad things got, I wouldn’t cheat on her, although I knew she couldn’t say the same about me. But that night there were divorce papers with my name on them. Things were different.

“Yeah,” I said. “I want her.”

I wanted Nichole as much as I’d ever wanted any woman, probably more, and I was done denying myself that pleasure. In my memory, the night I spent with her rates right up there with the night I won the division championship.

When I left Nichole’s apartment, I still wanted her, but I had no business wanting her. I hadn’t even signed my divorce papers yet, and I’d been drinking. You don’t meet the girl of your dreams the day your wife files for divorce. It doesn’t happen that way. After I went back to find Nichole and couldn’t, I thought maybe it does happen that way sometimes, and I blew it.

But I didn’t blow it. I dodged a bullet because now I know the truth. Nichole isn’t who I thought she was. She’s Nikki, and from what Renee told me, Nikki sounds a lot like Celeste. Nikki puts herself first and Renee puts her family first. Caring for her mother may be a thankless job for Renee, and an incredibly difficult one, but there’s something commendable about it, something I can respect.

Nikki, on the other hand, I can’t respect. She turned her back on her family and that’s something I can’t abide, no matter how beautiful she is.