Exposed: A Novel (8 page)

Chapter 16
Taylor

Ocean City, Maryland welcomed me, complete with flooding rain. Figures. I drove up and down Coastal Highway, peering to the left and right, at the Chesapeake Bay, then the Atlantic Ocean, waiting for the sun to dry the rain.

I drove for an hour but the rain didn’t dry. So I pulled over, rubbed my eyes, and turned my cell phone back on.

New voicemail.

I dialed
*86
and listened.

“Taylor, Andy here. Just checking in on you. Give me a call when you wake up, I have something to ask you.”

“Taylor, Andy again. I’m starting to worry. Your phone has been off for over two hours.”

“I’m coming over. It’s been four hours and I haven’t heard back.”

Oh, no.

My jaw stiffened like it did after a date with Cola. I reached into my purse, hoping I remembered to bring Cola, just in case. But I found nothing except shimmery lip-gloss, rosy blush (I can’t live without blush), and enough cash to buy a new wardrobe or fifty more grams of Cola.

I started to call Andy back, but hung up. Before I put the phone down, it rang. I stared at his name on the screen. He’d never believe I drove to Ocean City alone. I could feel the back of his hand on my cheek already.

The phone went to my voicemail as I drove a few minutes and considered driving home, then parked my car near the sandy shore and got out to feel the sand between my toes.

Rain drizzled, dampening my head and eyelashes. I walked down a narrow path. Tall grass decorated with water beads waved to me as I walked by. And then, I turned the corner and the Atlantic Ocean reached its vast arms out to me, telling me to come and stay awhile.

Only a handful of people were scattered on the beach. Too rainy. A good thing, considering I didn’t want to be around many people, especially men. And especially men who might recognize me by my pictures or videos.

I sat a few feet away from the foamy shore and watched the waves crash against each other. The wind cooled my cheeks and chapped my lips. One after another, waves rolled to my feet. How could something so peaceful come from two things crashing into each other?

I took my shoes off and tucked my feet into the warm, gritty sand.

More waves collided, hushing me into a trance.

I analyzed the landless horizon, wondering how so many atoms could come together and form something so beautiful without a higher power. Recent memories of science class, evolution theories and all, floated across my mind. I wished my thoughts could’ve come together as easy as hydrogen and oxygen.

A big bang, I thought, staring at the hazy sky. A big bang couldn’t have created all of this. Every color in the sky, every wave that crashes—there’s no way.

It didn’t make sense to me. But then again, neither did God.

My phone rang again. The beauty of technology. Cell phones always interrupted good moments in life.

I picked it up.

Silence.

“Taylor?” Andy’s strained voice echoed against the
shhhh, shhhh, shhhh
of the ocean.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? Where are you? I’ve been to your apartment. I’ve been driving around everywhere worried sick. I thought you were dead.”

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t run off without telling me where you are, you hear me? What if something happened to you?”

“Yeah, what if? What if I died and you couldn’t use my body to make money?” I pulled my feet out of the sand and sandwiched my cell phone between my neck and head.

“Don’t talk like that,” he said, garnished with expletives.

For the next three minutes and nineteen seconds Andy told me what a horrible actress (by actress he meant porn star) I was and that I needed to get breast implants if I wanted to make something of myself. Oh, he went on and on, flattering me with empty words. “I’m only trying to encourage you,” he said. “You need to be the best. You want to be the best, don’t you? Don’t you want to be known for something?”

His words made sense. I did want to be known for something. But as his words bounced around my head, they cartwheeled off my heart. The frothy shore teased me, telling me there’s something more to life, something deeper than what I knew. But the reality of the sea felt untouchable—too illogical and unknown, too strange to trust. It didn’t make sense to me. But Andy’s words did.

Chapter 17
Ally

Jessie stood in the hallway, shoulders down, unable to look at my face. I knew what he was about to tell me. He slept with another woman. Probably the woman I saw skipping away from the house the other day.

He nodded to the bedroom. “Can we sit down?”

“I’d rather not right now.”

“I want to be honest with you.”

I nodded, swallowed, waited.

“I lied the other night.” He exhaled. “I’ve watched videos and I’ve bought magazines.”

“Did you have an affair?”

“I’ve looked at magazines, videos, stuff on the Internet, TV. . . .”

“And no affair? How do I know you are telling the truth?”

He looked down. “Do you realize how hard it is to be a man in this world? Do you even know what I have to deal with? I hate this stuff. I’ve tried to break out of it since the day it came into my life. It doesn’t work. It just comes back.”

“Do you realize how hard it is to be me? To feel like you’ll never measure up unless you get a thousand plastic surgeries and make yourself look like another person?”

“What am I supposed to do? Every movie we watch has something in it. I can’t even walk through the grocery store line without seeing something. And even if I don’t dwell on the image, it pops up later. And then another, and then another until I give in and look for more.”

“Do you ever, just once, think about what it’s like to be me right now?”

“I’m opening up to you. Can’t you see that?”

I nodded my head and chewed the inside of my cheek.

He rubbed his forehead.

I looked away.

“Are we going to get through this?” he said.

I played with my wedding ring. The diamond caught sunrays from the windows. I wish I could be as bright and reflective of beauty, I thought. Really, I’d just give anything to feel alive again. To stick my head out a car window and laugh until my jeans are too big.

I remembered the night Jessie proposed.

On a humid Saturday in July, when Jessie and I were so in love we ignored conflict, he picked me up for our usual date.

I opened my apartment door and he beamed with a rose held between his teeth. “Happy three months.” He handed me the rose.

I took it, wondering if he’d finally say it. A few weeks into our relationship he told me that he had never told any woman that he loved her. He wanted to save that for his wife. Every day I waited with a fear inside that he’d never say it and I’d end up single again, wondering if God wanted me to wake up alone for the rest of my life. “So, where are we going?” I pried.

“You need to learn to like surprises.”

“And you need to learn to surprise me.”

“Oh, what are you saying? My attempts weren’t successful?”

I smiled and sat down, waiting for him to close the car door. He didn’t. He got down on one knee beside me and took my hand, smiling that adventurous smile of his.

“How’s this for a surprise?” he said.

I laughed. “Yeah, right. We’ve been here before, remember? Remember the fear in your eyes when I got even?”

He squeezed my hand. “Allyson, since the day I first saw you in Barnes & Noble I knew you were different. I don’t know what it is, but that first time I held your hand, I can’t even explain it, but you . . .” He looked down at our hands. “Shoot, what am I saying?”

“Are you being serious, Jessie?”

When he looked up at me again I knew he wasn’t kidding. Jessie is a prankster. We both are, but when he’s serious his entire face relaxes and his eyes don’t dart around as much.

He stared at me. When he blinked again, his eyes were wet. “Allyson, I had this all planned for later, I had a speech and I can’t remember it.” He paused, looked to the left then back at me. “It doesn’t matter. Just know that I love you and I’m a better man because of it. You’ve changed me. You’ve completed me like no other women ever could. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

I glanced down and saw a diamond ring in Jessie’s right hand. I blinked about eight thousand times in one minute, wiped my eyes with my right hand, and looked at the ring again. “You’re serious!”

“Allyson, say you’ll marry me.”

I jumped up to hug him and hit my head on the roof of the car. His eyes lightened when I managed to get out of the car and stoop down next to him. “Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes.”

He held me and started talking again. I didn’t hear him. “Just stop talking right now. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

He smiled. There on the gravel, sitting beside his car, we planned our future.

Minutes turned to hours, timed by the multihued sky. When the colors dimmed our faces and the streetlights lit our eyes, Jessie stood and took my hand. I waited in front of him, both hands in his, and there in the gloaming silence he brushed my hair behind my ear and whispered three words I longed to hear.

“I love you.”

We never left the parking lot.

Jessie leaned against the bedroom doorframe, rubbing his thumbs into his palms. And I missed him. I missed the fun—laughing in bed so loud we’d disturb the neighbors, jumping in his arms when he walked through the door, splashing each other while we washed dishes.

I missed old Jessie.

This wasn’t what I signed up for.

Chapter 18
Taylor

I guess I deserved the bruises. I shouldn’t have gone to Ocean City without telling Andy. He cared about me like no one else. And I failed him.

Alone in my bedroom, I listened to the sound of the air conditioner as Cola stared at me from my dresser. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t want him this time. I wanted to try to handle my problems on my own, or maybe I wanted to wallow in my bad mood and I feared Cola would make me feel too good. He did so effortlessly. Always made me forget my problems, but never helped me deal with them. Then, after a date with him I’d wake up to the same problems. I guess that’s how Cola became my best friend.

Drip, drip
. Water drummed from the bathroom. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the sink to completely turn off. So I learned to deal with the sound and turn it into something peaceful and soothing.

Kind of like what I had become.

I turned to my side and stared out the window. Orange lights flickered by my window, almost to the beat of the dripping water. Summer air, I could smell it even with the windows closed. Crickets talked, adding to the tempo of the drips.

Reminded me of the night Daddy kissed me before he died.

He cupped my face in his hands, looked me right in the eyes and said, “I love you, princess. Don’t you forget it.”

I smiled as he kissed my check and patted my head. He got into his car that sweaty August day and blew me one last kiss.

I didn’t know a drunk driver would take Daddy’s life twenty minutes later. If so I would’ve kissed him a thousand times and told him even more times how much I loved him. Instead, I smiled and selfishly soaked in his love.

Years afterward, I wondered if Kenny Eckhart knew he’d ripped a daddy from a four-year-old little girl. I still had his address, still wanted to write him and tell him he took Daddy from me, but I figured he knew and didn’t care, otherwise he would’ve looked at me the day we went to court.

The orange lights, the buzzing air conditioner, the dripping water, all of it hushed me into a daze.

I could barely keep my eyes open. When I saw Daddy’s face on the backs of my eyelids I begged sleep to take me away and never let me wake up.