We didn’t go straight to his parents’ house the way I thought we would. First we went to check in at the large old hotel located right on Lake Erie in the heart of Cedar Point Amusement Park. Alex had made the arrangements, and I was surprised at his choice, but he only grinned as we took our bags up to the suite overlooking the water.
“If you’re going to do the park, you really have to stay onsite,” he said.
I cocked an ear to listen for the rumble of a roller coaster. “Are we doing the park?”
“You don’t think I brought you all the way not to ride the tallest and fastest roller coasters in the country, do you?”
I laughed. “I guess not.”
He stretched out on the bed and beckoned me with a come-hither pout. “Let’s try out this mattress.”
“Don’t we have to go to your parents’ house?”
“Not until Sunday.”
I crossed to the bed, but didn’t let him pull me down. Both of us knew my resistance was more for show than anything. I crossed my arms. “I don’t really want to ride a coaster with your love juice oozing down my thighs.”
Alex made a face. “You are soooo classy.”
“I’m serious.”
He sighed and looked put-upon. “Can I just eat you out until you come all over my face?”
“So long as you wash it right after,” I told him sternly.
I loved the glint in his eyes. “It’s a deal.”
“I might even suck your dick at the same time,” I offered archly.
He fell back onto the pillows, both hands clutched over his heart. “Yessss!”
“Hold that thought, tiger. I’m going to use the bathroom and freshen up a little.”
“Hurry,” he said, with a leer so blatant it should’ve been silly but wasn’t.
“Yeah, yeah. Give a girl a minute or two.”
“I’m counting.”
Laughing, I went to the bathroom and availed myself of the facilities, then grabbed a washcloth to do a quick freshening. A nine-hour car ride hadn’t done much for my sense of sexy. Over the sound of the water running, I heard the distinctive jangle of Alex’s iPhone—he was the only man I knew who used sound clips from The Wizard of Oz as his ring tone. And, considering most of the men I knew, that was saying a lot.
He cut Glinda off in midtrill. Through the cracked-open bathroom door, I heard the low murmur of his voice, then a laugh. Also low. Deep. A sexy laugh.
I froze at the sink, my fingers wet and soapy, and water clinging to my eyelashes. I blinked to clear them, and turned off the water. I could hear his voice, but only pieces of words. He wasn’t talking to his parents; I could tell that much. There was no denying the dip and cadence of his words or the implication in them.
I stood at the door, listening without opening it. I knew better and did it anyway. You never hear anything good when you listen at doors.
“Fuck you, man,” Alex said. “No, fuck you twice. Fuck you with something hard and sandpapery. Right. Whatever. Yeah, I know it has. Yeah. Well, good. It’ll be good.”
For other women with other boyfriends, the simple “man” would’ve been enough to chase away any fears…but of course, it only created some for me. My hand slipped on the door and it opened. Alex looked up.
“Yeah, we’ll be there,” he said, sounding subtly different with me as his audience. Or maybe my imagination put that butch accent in his tone. “Yep. See you then.”
He slid his finger across the phone’s face to disconnect the call. “That was Jamie, my best friend from high school.”
“Oh?”
I guess there are always moments when you realize for the first time you don’t really know the person you love. Something beyond the giggly checklist you go through in the beginning of a relationship—favorite color, favorite food, shoe size. When you first realize you could know all those things and a lot more and still not truly have a clue about the person you’ve decided you don’t ever want to live without.
“Yeah.” Alex hesitated, maybe realizing he’d never mentioned this friend before. “I haven’t seen him in a few years.”
“He’s still here in town?”
“Yeah. He invited us over for a barbecue on Monday. I told him we’d go.”
“Sure, of course. I’d like to meet your friend.”
“Awesome.” Alex tossed the phone onto the bed and headed for me with a familiar grin. “Now…about that business with the oral sex…”
We didn’t make it into the park for another couple of hours. We spent Saturday at the park, too. We rode every ride, sometimes twice, and ate our fill of amusement park junk food. I hadn’t seen Alex act the part of tour guide before, but it was clear he was proud and excited to show off to me the machinery he’d worked on and the bathrooms he’d scrubbed back in the days of his teenage employment at the park. He was different here, the way I guess we all are when put back into a place we’ve left.
And he had stories to tell. It was the most expansive Alex had ever been about his past, and I gobbled up every scrap he offered. Realizing there was so much I didn’t know made me all the more determined to learn all I could.
We walked hand in hand on the midway, lost a roll of quarters in the arcade. Had our pictures taken in the photo booth, me laughing on his lap. Kissing. He won me a stupendously crappy stuffed frog with great goggle eyes and a crown.
“Should I kiss it?” I said.
“I’m the only prince you’ll ever need, baby.”
It was a very good day.
Early Sunday, when it was still dark, I woke to the muffled sound of something nasty happening in the bathroom. I sat up in bed and felt the empty spot beside me. I heard the toilet flush and the water in the shower turn on. It ran for a long time, so long I was just about to get up and check on him, when it turned off. Alex came into the dark room a few minutes after that and slipped into bed next to me, naked.
“Are you okay?”
“Too many loopty-loop rides and ice cream.” He sounded a little hoarse and exhausted. “I’ll be okay.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“No.”
We’d made love the night before and he’d been fine. I turned to press the back of my hand to his forehead, checking for heat. My own stomach turned at the thought of a virus shared with a kiss.
“Do you feel better?”
Surprisingly, he croaked laughter. “I’ll be okay, babe. Really. I promise. I just need to get some sleep.”
I yawned, not knowing the time other than it was early. “How long have you been up?”
“I haven’t slept.”
“Oh, honey.” I shifted in the sheets. “That sucks.”
“Yeah.” Another croak masqueraded as a laugh. “I’ll be okay. I think I can sleep, now. A good yark always does that for me.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
He turned on his side, away from me. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry you don’t feel good. Sure I can’t get you anything?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Really. Just…” He hesitated and cleared his throat. “My stomach’s just shot to shit, that’s all.”
I got it, then. “Your parents?”
His body shook a little, from a shiver or a nod, I couldn’t tell. “Yeah. Fuck.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “We don’t have to go.”
“Yeah,” Alex said soberly into the darkness. “We do.”
I thought I understood, though my heart went out to him that it had made him so nervous he was sick. It didn’t do much good for my peace of mind, either. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
I understood that, too. I rubbed his back in gentle circles and listened to the sound of his breathing finally get soft and slow as he fell asleep. Then I was the one with a churning stomach, staring at the blackness, unable to sleep.
“This is it.” Alex pulled the emergency brake, though we weren’t on a hill, and turned off the ignition.
/>
We sat in front of a small but well-kept bungalow on Sandusky’s main street. It had a narrow driveway leading to a detached garage, a small front porch and a side door. Gray stone walls, door and window frames outlined with black. A black slate roof. The door had been painted red.
Alex made no move to get out of the car. I didn’t, either. I looked through the front windshield at the tiny house. The curtain at the front window twitched.
“Babe, we can’t sit here forever.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Yeah. I know. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute,” I told him, and waited until he’d turned to me. I took his face in my hands and kissed his mouth. “It’s going to be fine.”
Alex looked grim. “I do love you, Olivia.”
“Good.” My smile couldn’t tempt one from him, but I tried.
He sighed. “Let’s go.”
We went to the side door. Just before he pushed it open, Alex grabbed my hand. Hard. I winced and tried to ease his grip, but he wasn’t watching me. He pushed open the door and we went into a small, cluttered kitchen filled with steam and the scent of good things baking.
A skinny woman with a head of blowsy, faded hair pulled off her face with a stretch headband turned from the sink, where she’d been scrubbing at a pot. She wore a stretched-out, pale yellow shirt, the hem unraveled and untucked from a pair of baggy white walking shorts. Her hands were red and raw, her arms and face freckled and bare of makeup.
“A.J.!”
I saw where he got his wide grin, and his deep gray eyes, too, when the woman moved closer. Alex looked quite a lot like his mother, though I had a hard time believing he’d ever have allowed himself to look so haggard.
“Ma,” he said in a cool, distant voice nothing like her adoring tone. “This is Olivia.”
I stepped out from behind him with a smile on my face. I wasn’t expecting a warm embrace and was, in fact, hoping for nothing more intimate than a handshake. I didn’t even get that.
What made it worse was that she’d moved toward me, arms half-open, then stopped. “Oh…hello.”
I saw her gaze travel over my face and linger on my hair, pulled back today with the locks twisted into a braid. Then she glanced at my hand, caught tight in her son’s.
I’ve had my share of curious looks, especially from people who’ve met my parents first. Sometimes it’s been the other way around. I’ve been judged on the color of my skin before I ever opened my mouth, and not always by white people. But I’d never, until that moment, been so awkwardly and uncomfortably aware of another person’s reaction upon seeing me.
“Mother,” Alex said sharply. “This is Olivia. My fiancée.”
“Oh…yes, of course. Olivia.” Mrs. Kennedy, who still didn’t have a first name to me, put on a smile. She wiped her hands over and over on the dish towel she grabbed up from the counter “Come in! Come in. Dinner’s going to be ready real soon. I’ll have to call your dad. He’s down in the basement. Come here, A.J., and give your mom a kiss.”
He moved dutifully forward. Her fingers scrabbled at him, striving to keep him close a moment longer. He pulled away gently. Her eyes skated over him, drinking in the sight with such painfully obvious pleasure I didn’t want to see it.
“You two go into the living room. Your sisters are there. With the kids. They’ll be so happy to see you. Let me go get your dad.”
“Okay.” Alex took my hand again. “C’mon, babe, let’s go say hi.”
I swallowed hard and lifted my chin, girding myself for more stunned looks, but Alex’s sisters, at least, didn’t seem as shocked as his mother. He had three, all much younger. Tanya, Johanna and Denise. All of them had multiple children, ranging in age from late teens to drooling toddler, and I got the impression there were other kids missing. Not a husband in sight, though Johanna and Denise both wore plain gold wedding bands.
Alex greeted his sisters with easier affection than he had his mother, and they in turn hugged the breath out of him and slapped him around a little in the way younger sisters can do to older brothers. I knew that from experience. I hung back, not wanting to interject myself into the flurry of their questions, but Alex turned and drew me forward, my hand in his. He didn’t abandon me.
The older kids gave perfunctory greetings and went back to reading or texting or playing their video games, but the three youngest crowded around me with wide eyes. The littlest, a diapered girl in a smudged yellow sundress, climbed up on the sofa beside me and touched my hair over and over.
“Trina, get down offa her,” Denise said, but made no other move to get her kid off me.
Alex scooped up the girl and flubbered the side of her neck until she squealed, then handed her to her mother. “Change her diaper, for God’s sake.”
Denise rolled her eyes. “Yeah, listen to you, like you’ve ever changed a diaper in your life. How about you, Olivia? You got any kids?”
I looked around at the pack of children and then at her. “I…No.”
Tanya reached to ruffle Alex’s hair. “Maybe you will soon, huh? Big brother gonna be a daddy?”
“Yeah, you’d better get caught up,” Johanna told him. “Hell, even Jamie’s got a kid now. I seen him at the mall a couple weeks ago. You still keep in touch with Jamie, don’tcha?”
“Of course he does,” Denise said with scorn. “Do you even think he’d be back here just to see us?”
She said it like a joke, but we all heard the weight of truth in her words.
“Yeah, I knew Jamie had a kid,” Alex said. “His name’s Cam.”
“Well, well, well,” said a booming voice from the back of the room. “If it’s not the whattaya call it…prostitute son?”
“Prodigal, Dad,” Tanya said under her breath.
“And his blushing bride-to-be.” Mr. Kennedy moved into the room on feet that looked too small to support his bulk. He was short of hair up top, but the growth sprouting from his ears and eyebrows made up for that. “Livvy, is it?”
“Her name’s Olivia, Dad,” Alex said to him. To me, “John Kennedy.”
“Just like that idjit who got his head blown off.” John Kennedy must’ve been warned by his wife, because although his roving gaze picked me thoroughly apart, he didn’t look as surprised as she had. “Welcome, girl. We’ve been waiting for the boy to bring someone home for a long time. Hell, we’re just glad you’re a girl, right?”
His knee-slapping hyuk-hyuk was the only laughter. All of Alex’s sisters found other places to look, and Alex said nothing. I cleared my throat.
“It’s nice to meet you, sir.”
“Sir? Sir, yet? Nice manners on her, son. But you don’t have to call me sir, Livvy, just call me John.”
“Her name’s Olivia,” Alex said tightly. “Not Liv.”
His father looked at him. John Kennedy was a lot less stupid than he was acting. His smile tightened chapped lips at the corners, and he fixed his son with a deep, solid stare.
“I heard you the first time.”
“Umm…dinner’s ready…” said Mrs. Kennedy, who still had no first name. “Let’s all go eat, okay?”
John patted his giant belly. “Yes. Let’s do that. C’mon, Liv—Olivia. You come sit next to me.”
It was hard to tell if this was an honor or a punishment. John Kennedy talked my ear off for the entire meal. He had a lot to say about many topics—religion, politics, newspaper columns. Taxes. There was a lot wrong with this country, in John’s opinion, and all of it appeared to be the fault of many people who were not John Kennedy.
“You a vegetarian?”
His question surprised me, interrupting as it had a diatribe against a local chain department store that apparently no longer carried his favorite brand of cigarettes. Startled, I glanced down to the end of the table where Alex was entertaining one of his nieces with a magic trick. I looked at my plate, where most of the food was gone.
“No.”
John pointed with his fork at the small slice of ham I’d taken
for politeness but hadn’t touched. “You’re not eating that.”
“Dad, for fuck’s sake—”
“Hey!” John drew down those heavy brows and stabbed the air with his fork. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
Some of the kids giggled. Alex didn’t. He put down the saltshaker he’d been trying to make disappear.
“She doesn’t have to eat anything she doesn’t want to.”
“John,” said Mrs. Kennedy timidly, “the ham is very salty. Maybe Olivia just doesn’t care for it.”
John reached over and ground his fork into the small slab of ham on my plate and lifted it to his mouth. He took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “Ain’t a damn thing wrong with that ham, Jolene. I’m just wondering if Livvy don’t eat ham for some reason.”
I clutched my hands in my lap to keep anyone from seeing how they’d suddenly begun to shake. “No offense meant, Mrs. Kennedy. I’m sure it’s delicious.”
“Huh. I thought maybe you weren’t eating it because you were one of them moose-lums.”
“Dad!” Alex shoved back from the table, but I cast him a look.
“I’m not a Muslim, Mr. Kennedy.”
He eyed me. “Good. Cuz I won’t have a goddamned Muslim at my table.”
Across from me, Johanna groaned and dropped her head into her hand. “Dad. Good Lord.”
“What’s a moose-lum?” asked one of the smaller kids.
Nobody said a word.
John shot me a grin filled with crooked, yellowed teeth. “Just so long as you ain’t one.”
I wanted to stand up then and show him the necklace my mother had given me. I wanted to proudly proclaim I was a Jew, just to see if that would piss him off. I wanted to own who I am. But I caught Alex’s gaze and his angry slash of a mouth, and I knew the only thing standing up for myself would do was cause a lot of trouble just then. John would probably say something incredibly rude, and from the look on Alex’s face, I thought he might just punch the old guy in the face.
“Delicious mashed potatoes, Mrs. Kennedy,” I said as serenely as I could.