Staying True - A Contemporary Romance Novel (23 page)

“I suppose you’re right.”

“That’s why they sparkle with such
beauty.” He winked.

I reached out and placed my hand over
his wrist ready to change the tone. “How’s life treating you?”

He craned his head. “My eyes are
giving me a bit of some trouble. I can barely read the large print anymore.”

“Do you want me to read to you?”

“No.” He straightened his lips. “I
just want to talk. Do you want to hear some fascinating stories?”

I scooted in closer. “You bet.”

We spent an hour with him listening
to stories about his days working the farm and how the great flood of
thirty-eight nearly swept away his whole town. He enlightened us about how
lucky we had it these days now that we could enjoy indoor plumbing and
electricity and town water. He circled around some of his childhood memories
with a laugh, and then he plowed through some facts about immigrating to
America from Canada. He explained how tough of a time he had learning to speak
English. As he finished telling us about a joke he played on some neighborhood
punks who used to make fun of him for talking with a French Canadian accent, he
started to nod off. We took the cue and stood. I leaned down and kissed his
cheek and whispered, “Next time I’ll bring a book.”

Shawna and I walked out of his home
saddened. “Does the guy ever get to leave his apartment?” I asked.

“Every Sunday. We’ve been taking him
out to that Rafters place. He turns into a light bulb there. He just brightens
to life. Ruby does too. It’s like all the burdens of life just drop off onto
the front stoop and allow those two to enjoy quality time together.”

I envied Shawna. How badly I wanted
to spend my weekends tumbling down the rolling hills, building massive bonfires
and cooking bacon and pancakes on the old-fashioned stove instead of waking to
boring bowls of Cheerios and the morning news. “Do you like it there?”

“I do.” She blushed.

“Why are you blushing?”

She fanned herself, reddening even
more. “I’m not blushing.”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with
Eloise, does it?” I nudged her.

Her face broke out into blotches. “Oh
stop.” She brushed my comment away with a flick of her wrist.

I latched onto her. “Tell me more.”

She licked her lips, twisted her
mouth, and blinked heavily.

“I’ve got a lot of time, if you have
something to tell me.” I squeezed her arm in mine.

She stopped, drew a deep breath, and
exhaled. “How about if we just go to the pottery shop and make a mug or
something?”

I released her arm. “Last one to the
car buys the coffee.”

I sped off leaving her in my dust.

* *

We sat molding clay. She formed a
ridiculous mug. “Do you like it?”

“Keep working it.” We pinched and
tucked and smoothed our clay as she dodged questions about Eloise.

“Come on. Tell me something.”

“She’s much younger than I am.”

“Like how much?”

“Thirteen years younger.”

I laughed. “So does she adore you as
much as you adore her?”

“Not in the least bit.” She lifted up
her mug.

“That is getting worse by the
minute,” I laughed. Shawna arched her eye in agreement.

“Does she know you adore her?”

“I turn into a silly, giggly fool
whenever she enters the room. I get worse each visit.”

“So you’ve got no game?”

“None.”

“Have you tried to let her know
you’re interested?”

She shook her head. “I won’t. I
couldn’t. I mean how would I start such a conversation with someone?”

“Don’t use words.” I smiled.

She flushed. “You have no idea what
it’s like for me.”

“You don’t give people enough credit.
Everyone is not out to get you.”

“Boss, there are some sick bastards
out there,” she said.

“I hardly doubt Eloise is one of
them.”

“She’s sweet. She’s shy. She can’t
even look me in the eye.”

“Invite her out for a walk by the
river. Just let nature take its course.”

“I’m not going to take her out by the
river and start putting the moves on her. She’d freak out.”

“Give me a break!”

“It’s always awkward when a girl
discovers my penis.” She tilted her head and examined the base of her mug. “The
girls I want aren’t interested in it. So, you tell me, how am I supposed to
entice a girl who expects something far different between my legs?”

“People don’t fall in love because of
your gender.”

“Give
me
a fucking break.”

“Love knows nothing about gender.
Souls fall in love. We might be more physically aroused by certain body parts,
but that’s just sex. That’s not love.”

“Maybe in your world.”

My cell rang. It was Jessica. I let
it continue ringing.

“I miss Ruby.” I didn’t look up. “It’s
like I’ve got this hole in my heart right now. Every time I take a breath it
hurts.”

“Why are you still with Jessica?”

Because like a romantic fool, I
hinged on the hope that she would’ve remained the old Jessica forever. “Who the
fuck knows.”

“Do you love her?”

I rested on her question for a
moment. “I do… I did… I love solving her problems.”

Shawna tossed her clay down. “Ladies
and gentlemen, she finally admits it.”

I stood up from the table and punched
my clay. It felt amazing. So, I punched it again.

“Go ahead and punch the shit out of
it. That’s what you need to do. Get mad. Get mad about something that belongs
to you. Fuck everyone else’s shit. Get mad because you want to get mad.”

I punched that clay over and over
again, fueled by an insatiable tolerance for pain that rose in me. I owned this
anger. No one else did. I punched it harder with each blow until Shawna grabbed
me from behind and pulled me away from it.

“Easy does it there. I didn’t mean
for you to break your knuckles.”

I wrestled out of her grip and
grabbed my clay and tore at it, shredding it piece by piece with my fingers
like an angry tiger clawing at its prey. I tossed wads of clay all over the
table, feeding this anger in me, this relentless anger for wasting so much of
my time on trying to be the right person for everyone. “I’m so tired,” I said,
firing the shreds at the table. “So tired of putting myself last all of these
years and letting people ruin the things I deserve out of life. Where does it
get me?”

Shawna picked up her ugly mug and
squished it between her hands, stretching and pulling at it. She grunted and
dropped the clay to the table and rubbed it back and forth. “We’re in control
of our lives. Just like this clay, you see, we’re in control. We’re reshaping
it to what we want it to be. I say what it turns into. Nobody gets to choose
that for me. It molds after me, not the other way around.”

I gathered all of my shredded clay
and starting rolling it together, forming a long, snakelike shape. The cool,
earthy clay soothed my hands, and I rolled it like I meant to roll it. It would
become what I wanted it to become. I grunted as I worked it and pounded it, conforming
it to my standards, my ideal, and my vision.

Shawna cheered me on, coached me to
keep going, to keep pruning, and refining. “Make it yours.”

I swirled my snakelike coil into a
circular shape, rolling it in on itself until I formed a round hotplate. Each
curve smoothed. The top surface flattened. It reminded me of a braided area
rug, so perfect and equal.

We both sat down and stared at my
hotplate. “Why a hotplate?” she asked.

“Because that’s what I wanted it to
be.”

She patted my back, leaned her head
against my shoulder and continued staring at it with me. “Good enough reason
for me, friend.”

* *

I returned home not more than two
weeks later to find a used pickup truck in my driveway with a trailer attached.
In it sat several lawn mowers, rakes, trimmers and other landscaping equipment.
The truck’s decal read Jessica’s Landscaping.

I entered the living room and Jessica
was sitting in front of a massive pile of paperwork wearing glasses. “Hey,
you,” she said without rising, without looking away from her paperwork.

“What’s going on here?”

“I told you, I wanted to start my own
company. So I did.” She finally looked up at me. “Cool right?”

“Shouldn’t we have discussed this
first?” I stood holding my suitcase still. She eyed it.

“It’s done. There really was nothing
to discuss. If prison taught me anything, it’s to work smarter, not harder. I
just went for it.”

“So that’s it. You’re in business?”

“Yes. I got a CPA to draw up the LLC
paperwork.”

She looked too much like a woman in
charge. “How did you afford this?”

“Crystal from the club invested in it
for me. She gets a percentage of profits and owns part of the shares to the
company.”

She sounded like she was speaking a
different language. How did she know how to do all of this? Why hadn’t she
asked me to do this for her? “Am I part of this LLC, too?”

She tapped her cheek with a ballpoint
pen. “We can add your name, sure.”

“Add my name? This isn’t an
electronic flyer that you can just edit.”

She calmly placed her glasses down on
her lap. “You’re mad?”

“Well, yes, I’m mad. This is absurd.
I go away for a few weeks and suddenly you turn into Jessica, owner of a company?”

She stared me down. “I thought you’d
be happy for me.”

I fumed. How dare she change our
lives like this without even considering my opinion? I never would’ve chosen
that ugly font for the decal and I certainly never would’ve bought a Nissan. I
couldn’t get over that she met with a CPA and ironed out the details of her
company name, investors, and equipment purchases without me. “I could’ve
helped.”

She softened. “I know. I just needed
to do this on my own.”

I nodded and broke the stare. “Okay.”
I headed towards the stairs with my suitcase. “I get it.”

For the next several weeks I watched
as Jessica morphed into Ms. Entrepreneur. She worked long days, and by the time
she returned home, she barely had the energy to say goodnight, let alone kiss
me. When we did speak, we did so in snippets.
How was your day? Good. How
was yours? Excellent? Any new clients? Yep. How many? So many.

At night, while she sneaked in full
of grass stains and smelling of mulch, I sat on the patio and cried. I hated
our routine. I hated not having a role. I hated not being included. She ran her
business and thrived. Meanwhile, I worked out of the boring corporate office of
The Gateway Suites and wanted to bury myself in a hole and suffocate. She
bloomed to life, and every time I saw the twinkle of satisfaction in her eye, I
cringed. She found life in the same spot where I found death, the death of us,
of our future.

I turned into a weed, nourished only
from her occasional request to pay a bill or call a client for her to let them
know her crew was running late. Soon, I hated everything landscaping. I hated
the pungent smell of gasoline, the relentless stains of grass, and the endless
streams of mud that found its way into my foyer.

Somewhere in between exiting prison
as an ex-con and wielding corporate paperwork, Jessica distanced herself from
me, from us. “I just need to do something bigger than the old me,” she said one
rare night as she joined me on the patio after dinner.

“I just want to be included. That’s
all I’m asking,” I said, tossing out one last Hail Mary pass.

“I’ve got it covered. You need to
just trust that.”

I stared up at a woman who I didn’t
even know anymore. I didn’t recognize the serious tone of her voice, the cocky
attitude, the confident stance. A stranger stood before me. She wedged this
business in between us and allowed it to take my spot as her partner, her
companion, the thing to which she turned.

One blink she clung to my every word,
the next she spoke over me. We had nothing in common suddenly, other than
enjoying a nightly cigarette together now. And, I hated smoking. So go figure.
I bent to meet her needs and in the process I became addicted to nicotine and
suffered serious mending withdrawals.

She was fixed, and I had no idea what
to do with her mended soul.

This truth slapped me.

I was the broken one.

I was the fucked-up one.

I was the one craving to mend still.

I willed for her to stand before me,
dangling her problems and broken spirit in my face like a tease. I wanted her
to need me because that would land me in the sweet spot where purpose and
direction merged and offered me something I could wrap my brain around and mold
into something full of purpose again.