What You Leave Behind (21 page)

“I get off at five,” he tells her, pressing her back against the side of her truck. His mouth moves with hers, sweet and slow, and she knows that the sun is inching higher, but she won’t hurry him. His mouth dips lower, glides along the line of her neck, and she can’t stop the soft moan that escapes her. Austin smiles at the sound of it and whispers in her ear, “I’ll cook you dinner.”

“I should probably go home tonight,” Harper replies, sounding more obligated and less enthusiastic about the idea. He nods in understanding, but his lower lip juts forward in a pout, and she kisses it with a sigh, her fingers drifting into his newly-shorn hair. “I know. It’s just that I should probably, like, grab clothes and shower and all of that. And I’ve barely seen Hilary since—I don’t even know the last time we had dinner together. I owe her a dinner or an explanation or something. Especially after how good she’s been about… everything.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Do your thing,” Austin tells her without any hesitation. “But, uh, maybe put in a good word for me while you’re there?”

“You’re silly,” Harper mumbles against his mouth, “She already likes you.”

“I want her to love me.”

Harper lets out a dramatic gasp, the breath hitting his chin as she pulls away, and says, “Isn’t the love of one Reed gal enough?”

Austin shakes his head and reaches behind her to pop the handle on her driver’s side door, as his lips find hers once more. “Go, before she fires you,” he says against them. “Or before I drag you back inside.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Harper laughs, retreating into her truck and nearly taking Austin with her. He untwines her hands from around his neck reluctantly and closes the door, waits for her to roll down the window so he can kiss her one final time. She starts the engine when he pulls away. “Go play with your wood.”

“Funny.”

“Well, well, well, would you look at who’s decided to grace us with her presence, Kevin,” Hilary crows when Harper lopes into the shop moments before the breakfast rush begins, but Kevin barely looks up from where he’s prepping the daily special—leek and asparagus frittatas—well-aware he’s merely a prop in Hilary’s ribbing. Despite how her words could be construed, they’re said with warmth and a smile. Harper knows she’s kidding, but on her way to the back office to stash her things, Harper still plants a kiss on Hilary’s cheek with a, “Sorry, Ma,” in tow, just for good measure.

They’re the last words Harper gets to speak to Hilary for hours, aside from “Paws off, lady— that’s my Dirty Chai,” and, “What’d you do with the sopressata?”

Around ten o’clock, the crowd tapers off, allowing Kevin to leave for his midday class at SOU, and Hilary springs her bun free from her hairnet and wipes her brow with a small stack of café napkins. Harper does nearly the same, only she wipes her forehead across the sleeve of her sweater, instead. As she does, Hilary narrows her eyes, focusing on the thick, grey wool of her sleeve.

“Didn’t you wear that the other night?”

“What?” Harper asks, feigning ignorance.

“That,” Hilary motions first to the sweater, but once she sees the jeans and the boots, she extends the gesture to include those, too. “All of that, actually.”

“Ah, yeah—long story.”

“Well, I’ve got a short one for you, if you want to split the difference and make them both medium-sized.”

“I’m not entirely sure it works that way.” Harper hops up onto the counter, using the old-timey register as a backrest, and sighs to herself softly as she thinks about the full emotional gamut her tale runs. It took a lot to get her into that sweater, those jeans, and revisiting the winding road that brought her there almost sours the feeling of happiness that comes with them. “I don’t think I’m in the storytelling mood—at least not this story,” she explains. “But I can tell you the happy ending of it all.”

“Oh? I like happy,” Hilary says, balancing a frittata in her palm and folding herself down onto one of the stepladders, which seem to have become permanent behind-the-counter fixtures since Harper dragged them out of the cooler. She breaks off a piece and hands it to Harper, whether she wants it or not, and says, “Let’s have some happy.”

“Austin and I are—we’re a thing, a real thing.”

“A thing? Well, ain’t that somethin’.” Hilary offers up a hand for high-fiving, and Harper leans forward, slapping their palms together obligingly as she takes a bite of the frittata. “How’d that come about?”

“That’s kind of the same long story.”

“Well, come on. We’ve got a good forty minutes until I have to get my ass off this stool. Catch me up.”

“Okay,” Harper relents after a moment of her mother’s pouting. “In short, though.” Hilary nods encouragingly as Harper stares blankly at the menu board above them, piecing together a condensed timeline while she does so. “Let’s, uh—let’s start with Clare, since you had a front row seat to the stuff before that.” Hilary nods again, her mouth too full to voice her agreement. “So, I befriended Clare, did girly things. And thank you for that, by the way.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” she says around a fresh bite.

“Well, she encouraged me to call Austin out on his bullshit—lying to me. I fought with him and then forgave him. Then, Clare and I burned all of the Liam-y items in my life, because it felt like it was time. Clean start and all that. And then later that night, Austin and I almost made sweet, sweet lovin’—Josh Hartnett night, by the way.”

“He gets me in the mood, too,” Hilary laughs, knowingly nudging Harper’s leg with her shoulder as her eyebrows waggle up and down. “It’s the eyebrows. Or that mole. Probably the mole.”

“Moving on,” Harper says curtly, but Hilary knows from the way she rolls her eyes and slowly shakes her head that she’s laughing on the inside, almost on the outside. She clears her throat roughly in an effort to keep herself from laughing and when it works, she continues on. “Anyway, we didn’t. Because I’m crazy—that’s what it comes down to, I think. Thanks for that too, by the way.”

“You’re not welcome, by the way. Crazy is solely a Reed trait. Not my DNA.”

“Thought not.” Harper toes her mother’s elbow as she goes to take another bite, causing her to miss her mouth and the frittata to run aground somewhere along her cheekbone.

“Bitch,” Hilary laughs, wiping crumbs from her cheek.

“Also hereditary. On the Madsen side.” Harper waits for a retort or some form of retaliation, neither of which come quickly, if at all, and when enough time has passed, she starts again. “So, my epic amounts of maternally inherited crazy caused a fight. Not because I wouldn’t sleep with him. He would never. It was just the why of it, I think. Or what he thought was the why. Which is why, when the fight carried over to the next day, he ultimatum’d me—him or Liam, like there was actually a choice there. There wasn’t, by the way, and not because Liam left, but because Austin wouldn’t let me pick him. There was no winning. So, I fled his house in only a t-shirt and underthings, because what the fuck was that shit? That’s where the clothes thing comes into play, by the way, so remember that detail for later.”

Hilary nods attentively, paying rapt attention to the staccato tale her daughter tells. “From there, I went to Clare’s and borrowed clothes, because I didn’t want you to see me like that, and she helped me decide to talk to Liam, to see if that would give me the closure I needed. So, we went to talk to Sly. Then, you know the next few bits—road trip, yelling, road trip,” she rattles off, as if they’re completely inconsequential events, when they are, in fact, anything but. “When I got back, I went to Austin’s and told him I wanted him. He didn’t fight me on it that time, and then, well, I had him.” Harper blushes at this, but only slightly. She’s never had an issue with talking to Hilary about anything, including the intimate details of her sex life, so it isn’t embarrassment that turns her skin crimson. It’s the excitement that comes with something so new that pinks her cheeks. When she sees it, Hilary reaches up from where she’s seated and pokes a finger into one rosy cheek—amused by her fluster. “Stop that,” Harper commands, quickly batting her finger away. “So, then we officially became an
us.
”

“And the clothes?” Hilary asks after it becomes clear that Harper has forgotten to explain.

“Yes, the clothes. Well, I stayed at his place last night, and we woke up late this morning and then made ourselves later, and the only work-appropriate clothes I had were the ones I left there when I fled post-ultimatum. Thus, the outfit. And, ta-da, the story is complete.”

“That wasn’t nearly as long of a story as you made it out to be—the clothes story, anyway.”

“I guess.”

Silence blankets them as they polish off their shared brunch, and when her hands are free, crumbs wiped on the bottom of her apron, Harper goes around the front of the counter to fetch them a pair of honey sodas from the beverage cooler. Through the frosted glass that makes up the façade of the shop, she can see the sun begin to peek out from beneath the cover of grey clouds—December’s standard—and the thought of warm sunlight on her skin reminds her of Austin. Drawn to the feeling, she leaves a bottle of soda next to the register within Hilary’s reach and takes hers out front into the cold midmorning air, where she stretches her limbs before texting Austin a simple,
Told the mama and she’s happy
, before folding herself into a chair at one of the two café tables. The metal of the chair is frigid, not having soaked up enough sun as of yet, and she can feel it biting right through her jeans, stinging the backs of her thighs. She doesn’t mind though, knowing the sun is there and waiting for her, and she scoots the chair into a slant of sunlight, enjoys the contrast of wintery warmth. When she’s settled, eyes closed and head tilted back, with the sun and the wind both hitting her cheeks, her phone rings from within her back pocket—
Rodeo
by Aaron Copland, better known as the
Beef. It's What's For Dinner
song.

Harper doesn’t move beyond what’s required to pull the phone from her pocket and place it to her ear, doesn’t even open her eyes to see who it is. She only asks, “Are you seriously calling me from ten feet away?”

“You see it as ten feet, I see it as having to stand up, walk around the counter, and out the door.” Harper laughs and uses her body weight to swivel the chair. She sees a sliver of Hilary’s bun peeking out over the counter and the telephone handset missing from the base, its cord curling down toward the floor and out of sight. “So, my story…”

“Ah, yes. Your story.”

“So, Liam—”

At his name, Harper’s eyes open and she squints against the sunshine as she says, “Wait, really? Are you kidding? You’re kidding.”

“It’s good, I promise.”

“Fine,” she relents, waving a hand in her mother’s direction, as if to indicate she has the floor.

“So, he came by the house last night—”

“What part of this is good?”

“The part where I stabbed him in the chest.”

“Jesus fucking—” The chair tips back just a bit too far as Harper reacts to Hilary’s words, and she grips the table just in time to stop herself from capsizing. Harper slaps a hand hard over her sternum once she’s steady and she chokes down a swallow of air as she heads for the door. It’s one quick step away, and as she throws open the door, she says half into the phone and half into the quiet of the shop, “You did
what
?”

“The boy was bent over in the drive, like he was praying to the vision of Allah in that oil stain of his, and I didn’t know if or when you would be back, so I had to get him gone. And, you know, since the knife trick worked so well with Austin, I figured I’d give it a shot with Liam.”

“You didn’t stab him then?”

“No, I did.”

“Jesus, Mother.”

“Jesus, Harper. I didn’t do any
real
damage.” Hilary shakes her head as she stands, hands on thighs to push her upright, pulls the carving knife from the holster at her side, and turns it over in her hands as she watches the overhead light glint on the blade. Demonstratively, she presses the tip of it into her apron with a slight flick of her wrist, creating a small slice just beneath the M in the embroidered
Meat and Eat
. When she pulls her hand away, she points to the hole. “That was the extent of the damage. I put a nice little hole in his coat, and scared a little shit out of him, I’m sure.”

Harper leans back against the cold case, the curve of her spine fitting to the curve of the glass, and remains quiet, pensive. Something has changed within her and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the words coming from her mother’s joyous face. She thought going to California would give her closure and it did, but she never factored in what it would be like when Liam returned. She told him she hoped he would be civil, but never thought about how she would be, what it would be like to see him in the spaces they once filled together. Picturing him at the base of the driveway, bent on his hands and knees, with Hilary standing over him, knife exposed, sets loose a rattle somewhere deep within Harper’s chest, leaves her shaken.

She feels sorry for him.

“You’re not mad at me, are you?”

“Of course not.”

Harper sighs wearily and rakes a hand through her hair while the other goes to rest over her heart. She feels the rhythm of it against her palm, steady and true, and every beat holds both their names—they pulse through her, one and then the other and back again. Austin,
Liam
, Austin,
Liam
, Austin,
Liam
. That fainter sound, the one that echoes behind the louder of the two, that’s Liam, and Harper knows that he’ll always be there, tucked away somewhere deep within her soul.

“Then why do you look so sad?”

“I just thought it was all over.”

“What?”

“The pain.”

“Honey, you can’t keep letting him make you feel—”

“Not me.” Harper doesn’t expect her mother to understand—she barely understands it herself—but when she says, “Liam,” Hilary’s face softens, as if she does. “I just don’t want any of us to hurt anymore.”

“There’s two sides to love, Harp, and the other side isn’t nearly as pretty. But you can’t really have one without the other. How would you know pleasure, if it weren’t for the pain?”