Pretty Girls Don't Cry (19 page)

The hallway seemed longer, and the main bathroom seemed enormous, compared to the modest-sized rooms at her loft. The floor was extra squeaky, and the kitchen counters were worn and dated. The clock on the stove made a low, constant hum.

She lay down in her old room, on the spare blankets, since her beloved quilt had made the move with her. Had the room always been so quiet? She couldn't hear any traffic at all, and there was no pub down the street here in the suburbs, not like there was at her new place. She missed the noise, and fast-paced buzz of young people all around her, but she missed belonging to this little house too. She missed loading the top of the dishwasher while her mother loaded the bottom.

*

On Saturday morning, she told her parents only half of the truth. She was, indeed, going to see Tianne and Kylie, but she was also going to see Aaron afterward. As they'd had nothing good to say about him when he was a kid, she didn't count on a sudden change of opinion now that he was an adult of thirty. Her mother had been listening to the new radio show over the internet feed, but did not let on if she'd heard Aaron Edward's new song.

*

Tianne's husband had been called in to work for the day, so the girls met at Tianne's house and incorporated the kids into their plans. The six of them, including the baby, gathered around Tianne's thick wood farmhouse table and surveyed the craft supplies.

“I've never seen so many kinds of glitter,” Kylie said. Her cheeks had good color, and Nora tried not to stare, but the young woman seemed to have gained a few pounds. She'd been taking anti-anxiety medication (which she referred to as jelly beans in front of Tianne's kids), which helped with her moods so she could be in a better frame of mind, and take better care of herself.

Nora busied herself cutting hearts and diamonds out of red and purple tissue paper.

Tianne's ten-year-old son participated for all of ten minutes, before he decided it was more fun to shred papers and make his sister Lucy cry, prompting Tianne to acquiesce to letting him watch movies in his room.

“Boys and girls are NOT the same,” she told Nora and Kylie. “My mother-in-law says all her boys were exactly like this, and it only go worse when they hit their teens. How was I supposed to know? I only had sisters. You two are lucky you work with adults.”

“Adults?” Kylie repeated. “Have you not seen where I work? I never knew there were so many types of artificial vomit and poop. There's a new kind on my chair or desk, every day.”

Tianne's five-year-old daughter, Lucy, looked up with big eyes. “Poop? Art-i-ficial poop?”

“Look at those nice hearts Nora cut out for you,” Tianne said, quickly changing the subject. The baby, in Tianne's lap, lunged for the scissors, but his tiny little arms wouldn't reach.

They censored their conversation until Lucy and the baby went down for their naps, then the wine came out.

“You're getting laid,” Tianne said to Kylie. “When are you going to share the details? I hope you're using protection. If there's anything three kids has taught me, it's that the withdrawal method is not as reliable as guys promise.”

Kylie looked embarrassed, her gaze darting back and forth between Tianne and Nora. “It's still early, and it's more of a crush situation, bordering on second date territory. I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to jinx it.”

Tianne studied Kylie, then said, “Let's see if we can pry into something else then. Come on, this is my only non-computer interaction with adults—my husband doesn't count. Are you ... ready to talk about what's going on with your therapist?”

“Tianne!” Nora admonished her friend.

“She can always say no,” Tianne said.

“It's fine,” Kylie said. “I'm happy to talk about it. Talking is part of the recovery process. It's still painful for me, but ...” Suddenly she was crying. “When I think about the adversity ...” She sobbed a few times, then caught her breath and continued, “Nora went through, after she lost her leg, and now how she is, and how brave she is, and courageous, it really inspires me. I have both of my feet, and I should be thankful. I am trying to pray and practice gratitude.” She sniffed and blew her nose on a tissue Tianne handed her.

Nora felt her stomach pull up and her leg ache. If there was anything she didn't want to be seen as, it was courageous. She didn't fight as a soldier in a war, and she didn't travel to third-world countries to give medical aid. Sure, she supported some charities with her time and money, and she did what she could in her community, but she was no hero, and she didn't like wearing that label. She was no more a hero than any other woman who got up when the alarm clock went off and did her job to the best of her ability, whether she was a school teacher, or a mother, or a radio personality.

In the past, if someone had said something to this effect, Nora would have challenged them and thrown off their constructed ideas of what her life was all about—what
she
was all about.

But as she looked at Kylie, who seemed so healthy and connected to her life, she decided to let it go. Nora pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and counted to twenty, then she picked up the scissors and cut some more diamonds out of tissue paper.

She glued the diamonds to some thick card stock and added some glitter. The rock star she had a date with later that evening would be the recipient of this card. Like Kylie, Nora chose not to talk about this new relationship, for fear of jinxing things before they began.

*

As she drove up to Aaron's house, the A-frame log building got bigger and bigger. The place had to be five thousand square feet inside. Despite Aaron's complaints about the unfairness of the music industry, producing music seemed to pay a weensy bit more than being a radio DJ.

Nora freshened her lipstick in her car and popped a breath mint in her mouth. She thought of young Aaron Edward at camp, with all his packs of gum—as
if
he needed a gimmick to get girls to talk to him.

He opened the door wide, and she was surprised he wasn't wearing the leather pants. She'd been imagining him in them, but the khaki-colored, knee-length shorts were more appropriate for the warm summer weather. His black t-shirt, sporting the album cover of an Indie band Nora neither loved nor hated, was tight, showing off his chest, arms, and narrow waist.

Nora was just wondering how it was Aaron didn't have a wife or live-in girlfriend when she spotted a matronly woman in the kitchen.

“Hi honey,” the woman said to Nora. “You kids probably want your private time. I'm just finishing the dusting and I'll be out of your hair. Don't mind me.”

Aaron led Nora throughout the house, showing her the recording studio that took over the entire top floor. “It may seem like a big space, but when you have a band in here, plus their entourage, and their entourage's entourage, the place fills up.” He stopped to examine the arm of a leather sofa. “Cigarette burn. I'll have to add that to their bill.”

“Glamorous,” Nora said.

“You think that's hot, you should see my filing cabinets.”

They ended up in a sitting room, facing the picture window.

“The only thing marring your lovely view is my crap car,” Nora said.

“Your car's cute.” He reached over and pulled on one of her curls. “Boing.”

A door slammed somewhere in the building. “Housekeeper leaving? Are we alone?”

“Mm hmm. Helen has left the building.”

She thought through a few scenarios in her mind. She could be coy, or she could be forward. She could continue to pretend they hadn't been flirting with each other over their webcams, or she could just say something. She could ask him to kiss her, or ask for permission to kiss him.

She stayed silent and tried to send him a message with her eyes.

He started to say something, leaning in to her, then he closed his mouth and kissed her.

After so many years of dreaming about this minute, Nora found it difficult to relax and experience it, so busy was her brain screaming out i
t's happening! I'm kissing Eddie!

Her mouth was dry from nervousness, and the kissing was awkward. His hands flew around like confused birds, lighting on her shoulders, her lap, then the back of the sofa.

After a few minutes, he pulled back, his gaze down, and said, “I feel like a teenager.”

Nora felt like a teenager too, but in a good way. “You have my permission to go to second base,” she said. Though they'd barely seen each other in person recently, the long webcam sessions had given them some comfortable familiarity.

He rubbed his hands together and blew on them, making her laugh. He put his hands on her stomach, under her shirt, and she stopped laughing. He kissed her again, and with his hands under her shirt and out of the way, it was much more enjoyable.

She ran her hands through his silky black hair, and then down his back. His spine was damp with perspiration. She pulled back and lay along the couch, pulling him down against her. He lay on his side next to her and kissed her face and neck. He rolled her onto her side, spooning against her back, and kissed the back of her neck. She shivered and arched against him.

They kissed and touched each other for an eternity, neither one making a move to remove a single article of clothing. Flushed with pleasure, she rolled back to face him and kissed him until her cheeks and lips were raw from his chin. His chin was closely-shaved, but still rough compared to her soft skin. He grabbed her by the hips and held her steady underneath him, and the weight of him on top of her was bliss.

He didn't make any effort to remove her clothes. She, however, had to make an effort to not remove his. She ached for him, and didn't want to wait any longer than it had been.

He shifted his weight and asked if he was hurting her.

“No,” she said.

Grinning he said, “But you were making those little noises.”

“Shut up,” she said, wrapping her arms around him as she pressed her hips up against his.

He stopped talking and kissed her some more, his weight pinning her in place under him. She let out another sigh, and he nibbled her earlobe.

*

They didn't even get to second base, and she appreciated the sensation of still being hungry for him, an hour later.

Eventually, they transitioned into cuddling, and he mentioned dinner. Nora's head was hot and foggy as he pulled her up, off the couch.

Downstairs, in the huge kitchen, Aaron rummaged through the drawer full of takeout menus. She fidgeted, peeking in drawers. When he turned to watch her, she smiled as shyly as a teenager and twirled one of her corkscrew curls with one hand.

They ate pizza and watched an old movie together, he with his arm around her shoulders and she with her hand on his knee. Something was happening between them. She didn't know what it was, but she'd have to tell her parents. Not tonight, though. Tonight they would just be together, holding hands and kissing like a couple of kids.

*

When Nora got home to her parents' house that night, she was careful to open and close the door quietly to not wake her parents. Razzles was on her bed. The fluffy white cat had been ignoring her since she'd arrived the evening before.

She whispered to him, “Oh, are you over your abandonment issues? You want to hang out with me now?”

He got up, stretched, and lay down a few feet away, just out of reach.

“Playing hard to get, huh? I couldn't take you with me. My apartment doesn't allow pets, and Mom would miss you.”

He flicked his tail and closed his blue eye, looking at her only with his green one. He was mostly deaf, but he still knew when he was being spoken to, and usually purred in response.

Nora took off her clothes to get ready for bed and put her compression sock on the bottom of her right leg. She had a startling thought that made her pulse race. Was Aaron afraid of her body, and what he might find underneath the prosthetic? Was that why he hadn't tried to take her clothes off?

He hadn't seen her leg since the time he visited her in the hospital. Her residual limb had been wrapped in a cast, under the blanket. He'd kept staring at the flat part of the blanket, where the leg should have been, his face pale and his voice trembling. Then Nora's father had come in and shouted at them both. Aaron ran off, and it was the last time she'd seen him, until he showed up at the radio station. By then, it had been so long that she hadn't even recognized him. In her mind there were two Aarons: the scared, guilty-looking boy, and the funny, charming man who gazed into his webcam and asked her about her day.

She wondered if he saw Nora as two people, or one. If he saw her as one person, was it the funny radio station DJ, or was it a victim—a disfigured, damaged person to be put on a pedestal as some courageous hero, some champion for disabled people everywhere.

Nora did not sleep well.

*

On Sunday morning, Nora's mother asked if she was allergic to the new laundry softener she'd used on the bed sheets. “Your cheeks are so red,” she said, reaching to touch them with her cool fingers.

“Oh, no. I'm afraid it's chin-burn. From a guy.”

Nora's mother poured a cup of coffee and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “And …?”

Her father was in the garage, and it was just the two of them. Nora would be leaving in a matter of hours, so she could be back to her place in time to prepare for her work week and get a decent night's sleep. If she was going to tell her parents, or at least one of them, about seeing Aaron, now was as good a time as any.

She told her mother, starting from the point when she'd first seen Aaron Edward at the station, and ending by saying she'd been to his house the night before. Even though she and her mother didn't usually discuss Nora's sex life, Nora made a point of telling her they had not slept together.

Nora's mother grabbed a stool, carefully, and took a seat at the kitchen island. Finally, she said, “I do not know what you see in
that boy
.”

“He's thirty, Mom. He's not exactly a boy.”

“He's trouble, all the same. And look at you. You think you're so smart, with your new morning show and your bohemian little apartment that you won't invite your parents over to. You've still got a lot of growing up to do, young lady.”