The whole place smelled amazing, like walking into a Ma & Pa restaurant where homemade tortillas were being kneaded and flattened to slap onto the griddles. My stomach lurched, and I hoped Jonas hadn’t heard its rumbling as I stood, mouth opened and gawking at his home.
It was so normal and lived in, definitely not as immaculate as I would’ve pinned Jonas to have chosen. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised to walk into a modern monochromatic theme with nothing but a sea of white and black with perfectly symmetrical furniture and not a spill of color throughout it. This was completely the opposite of that.
“I hope you find it adequate.”
I nodded, still speechless.
“Great. Caridad has our meal ready. She’s my housekeeper and cook, but I mainly just love her cooking. It reminds me of my mother’s.” He waved at the tiny, chubby lady pouring soup into two bowls. She smiled and bowed her head toward him as she continued to put strips of tortillas into the soup and garnished it with cilantro.
“Would you like it served now?”
“Yes, Caridad. This time we’ll eat outside. It’s a beautiful evening.”
“Si, Senor.” She turned back to another pot where she stirred the contents and proceed to pull out two cloth napkins and utensils.
“Let’s go outside, Liv.” Jonas slipped his fingers through mine and gave me a gentle tug. It was enough to yank me out of my fascination with the entire set up he had going on here.
Jonas took me through a large courtyard, which was the entire middle of the house. Along each side ran a covered walkway leading into doors which led to either rooms or the inside hall of the house. A large fountain sat along one wall where a table with four chairs sat surrounded by a lush garden of vines and flowers and a small vegetable garden off to the right. The splashing water made it serene, and I peered up to see the expanse of night sky in the open courtyard. The smell of fresh earth and cut grass lingered in my nostrils, and my heels sank into the dirt until I hopped back onto the flagstone path Jonas had led me to.
It was out of a fairy tale, and I had no words to offer on how beautiful I thought it was.
“Here we go.” Jonas pulled out one of the cushioned metal chairs of the patio set and let me sit down before he pulled out one for himself and sank into it.
“This is really nice,” I managed to croak out, but I was still staring up at the sky, seeing an occasional star or two. We were still inside the city, where the lights obscured the stars with their overbearing glow. I missed the night sky, where all the stars were visible and lit up the darkness like twinkling Christmas lights. Even in darkness, they shone brightly and never made me feel afraid. Of course, those were days Audrey and I would pull off the road to sleep in our banged up station wagon. We’d put the pillows on the pull down door and laid our sleeping bags underneath us so the hard metal of the car bed wouldn’t dig into our bones too much.
We’d had competitions on how many constellations we could name. When we first started this ritual, we could name the most popular ones, but only those. After studying a library book on astronomy, Audrey had been able to name several more than I could, but we’d compared the look of the stars to those in the pictures of the book under a flashlight and spent the night eating s’mores from a tiny fire we’d stoked as we chatted the night away.
I missed those carefree days.
“I hope you like Tortilla soup.”
I nodded, my stomach flipping again at the mention of food. I’d barely eaten lunch earlier because my nerves were frayed to oblivion, knowing tonight was our first date.
“Good. Also, we’ll be having potato tacos with cabbage and Cotija cheese with a tomato lemon sauce. Do you like those?” I nodded, knowing what he was talking about. I’d had those tacos on a trip to Mexico once, and had eaten enough to stuff a cow. My mouth watered at the thought.
“Excellent.”
At that moment, Caridad waltzed in and placed a piping hot bowl down with spoon and limes to one side. I watched her as she placed another before Jonas. Dark red napkins to keep spills from our clothes came with the set up, and I felt like we were at a restaurant under the stars and not at his home. The food smelled absolutely divine.
It tasted even better.
Don’t get used to it, I told myself. The warning was shoved to the back of my mind, however, as the night wore on and Jonas peeled layer after layer off his hardened exterior.
This wasn’t going the way I wanted it to, or was it?
Chapter Fourteen
Audrey
The motel room walls were pressing down on me, and I rubbed at my temples to stifle the pain throbbing like an endless drum. I hated the fact that Liv was out all night with Jonas. It was near morning, and she still hadn’t graced us with her presence. Damn her. I was going to kill her when she waltzed her little skinny ass back in here if it was the last thing I ever did.
“Audrey?” Saul’s voice parted the silence of the darkness, and I rolled over to see what he wanted.
“Yeah?”
“Can’t sleep, can you.” He didn’t ask, just stated the fact that I’d been tossing and turning for hours.
“I’m sorry if I’m keeping you awake. I can get up and go hit the diner if you want to rest.”
He sat up, rubbing his face. The cracking pops of his neck as he stretched made me think of firecrackers popping in the distance. Fourth of July was around the corner.
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, really, you don’t have to. I’m just going to go grab a snack and read while I’m there.”
“I could use a snack too.” He yawned and was already climbing out of bed. I sighed and dangled my legs over the edge of the bed. Since Liv wasn’t there, I had the whole second bed to myself and didn’t have to share with Saul. It was nice to spread out on the mattress, but not feeling his soft breaths and warmth radiating off him when I had slept in the same bed made me suddenly feel so alone.
Why was that?
“That’s what we’re about, sleeping and eating.” I stuffed the pillow behind my neck and stared at the popcorn ceiling. Maybe I shouldn’t worry over Liz. Maybe I should just let her go. She’s always gotten herself out of messes—sometimes with my help yes, but…this time, she’d gone too far. Aligning herself with Jonas this way had left me feeling like I’d lost her, for real this time. If I kept holding on, I’d be pulled into the undertow and drowned like a sinking rock.
I let out a breath, hoping the stone weighing heavily in my heart would disintegrate with every little breath.
“Nothing like facing the future with a full stomach.” Saul was standing by the bed and held out his hand for me to take. I smiled. He had a way, this man. He could make the monsters lie down and quiet their endless attacks on my mind with easy words. Just like that.
“Okay, but I’m sick of Denny’s.”
“Fair enough.” He laughed as I slipped my fingers into his warm ones. His firm grip lifted me up out of bed, and I stood there, almost chest to chest with him, both of us in just our sleepwear. Mine consisted of a thin camisole and panties while he wore pajama bottoms and was shirtless.
Oy vey…
“I’ll just…um…Let me get changed.”
“Okay.” His voice sound gruff, as if he was holding back things he wanted to say. Instead, he let me go, his hand falling back to his side. How I longed for his hands to touch me again, in more places than just my fingers.
Turning, my heart was frantically thumping like a panicked squirrel attempting to jump a tree. I was happy to have the excuse of finding some clothes and dashed for the bathroom as fast as I could. Pushing the door closed behind me, I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. How much longer could I tolerate Saul’s presence without caving in and throwing myself into his arms? It’s not like it would’ve been a bad thing; he was dreamy in every sense of the word, and I wouldn’t mind having a taste of his soft, plump lips. It’s just…It was just…
Just what?
“U
gh!” I huffed and pulled on a pair of jeans and a maroon button up shirt, tying the ends into a knot and looping my belt through. Brushing my hair into a messy ponytail, I stared at myself in the mirror. I was make-up less, but my face was still radiant and rosy in the early morning light streaming in the frosted ventilation window above the shower. Maybe I should give into things, in more ways than one.
“Yeah, just let go, Audrey.” I winked at the girl staring back at me and smiled.
Finishing up, I headed out to find Saul all dressed and patiently waiting for his turn in the bathroom.
“You sure do well being surrounded by girls.”
He laughed as he brushed his teeth, and I sat at the small table near the bathroom, just watching his movements. Funny how such small things made me feel happy, secure.
“I had stepsisters. Hogged the bathroom all the time.” He wiped his mouth and grinned, running some gel through his hair to comb the flyaways down.
“Ah, no wonder.”
“Yeah, I’m super-fast at getting ready because of it.”
“Sounds like they were freaks.”
He laughed again and held his hand out, the cane dangled from his other hand. “Shall we?”
“You bet.”
The morning sun obliterated my vision, and I scrambled to dig my sunglasses out of my purse. That was one problem Saul didn’t have, but he donned his sunglasses too. He wore them indoors too while we played and anywhere we were besides at the motel. His eyes weren’t drastically different, but they did call for attention.
If he let me, I’d love to stare into them for hours.
The diner wasn’t busy, so we promptly were seated and ordered our food. I tapped on the table with my spoon, awaiting some coffee. There was no way to avoid thinking about Liv, but I tried. Oh, how I did. Why was it that, lately, she occupied most of my thoughts? How had I let her overtake my life in such an overbearing way? It had snuck up on me, and after all this time, I had fallen into the dreaded mother hen position, no matter how hard I fought it.
“How long have you been out on your own, you and Liv?” Saul accepted his coffee as the waitress dropped off our drinks and wiped down the empty tables in her section.
“It’s been a long time.” I closed my eyes, thinking back, rewinding the years like a movie playing in reverse across my mind. “We left when Liv was three months shy of sixteen and I had just turned seventeen…so, three years?”
“That’s a long time.” Saul leaned forward, his sunglasses still on so I couldn’t tell what his expression was under the dark plastic
“Yeah.”
“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but why did you leave?” His question didn’t agitate me, or make me shift uncomfortably in my spot like I usually did when someone asked about our pasts. His tone was more like a calm inside the constant storm whipping about us, and it drew me in, like a warm, safe place.
“Well, my mother had us when she was really young. She was seventeen when I was born and eighteen when Liv came along. Her name was Rose, by the way. Our father stuck around long enough for us to get in school before he left one night, no note, no reason on why he was gone. I remember because my mother had taken us to the park that day, where we fed the geese and rode a really cool kiddie train around the small pond. She took us there a lot when our dad was working and we got stir crazy back home.”
The memory of my mother’s long caramel brown waves, which would shine in the sun, and her long dresses that would float as the breeze ruffled them up filled up my head. She had never looked frazzled; always calm, always happy. That’s how I remembered her. Facing out toward the water, clutching her arms around her like she was cold, even though the day was warm and brilliant. Her face never came to me when I thought of her. It only came when I stared at the faded photographs she left behind, which were all I had left of her now. In my mind, it was always a profile of her that came to me, nothing of her full on face. It made me wish I could remember her features more clearly, but time had a way of blurring such things out.
“After he left, she struggled to keep food on the table and the rent paid. Moved us to a tiny studio room for a while, that was a converted garage of one of her friends, until we got back on our feet.”
“Must have been rough.”
I nodded, but the memory of us three rolling into each other in the one queen size bed in that shack made smile. “It was, but it was fine with us. She kept things so normal, calm, we really didn’t mind. We three were so close, thick as thieves, nothing brought us down. She found ways to make it fun, even when there was no money.”
“She sounds like wonderful woman.”
“Yes, she really was. Unfortunately, she always fell in love with the wrong man. When we were twelve and thirteen, she shacked up with a guy who eventually became our stepfather. With her, he was okay, but he’d lose his temper over silly things, like leaving a dish in the sink, or food not being ready right when he got home from a long day at the construction site. He was moody, volatile, but my mother had a way of calming his rage. I know she loved him, but as time went on, he wore her out.”
“What happened?”
“Well, after one particular nasty fight, me and Liz had walked in from school and caught the jist of the fight. It was really bad. He hit her, and she stormed out, crying and hysterical. Liv was spooked, so I rushed her to our neighbors’ two houses down, where we played with a girl there, and hid in her house until nightfall. When we came back, Mom was still gone and our Stepdad was drunk and passed out on the couch.”
“Where’d she go?”
My hands were shaking. I hadn’t told anyone this story in a long time. I don’t even think my ex heard the whole story. Some things were meant to be shoved into the deep crevices of one’s mind, like an odd, hidden closet, where everything you had to keep buried and didn’t want to display ended up in boxes of memories, stuffed away with the door glued shut, never to be opened again. This was that….repressed. The resurfacing of emotions made me tremble.
“The police came by later that night, when Liv and I snuck back in and took our baths and slipped into bed. I got up to the sound of the doorbell, Liv was still asleep, and I tiptoed down the hall to hear what was going on. My stepdad, his name was Brian, he was still drunk but coherent enough to answer the door. That’s when…” I gulped, my mouth turning dry as I saw the scene flash across my vision, as if it had just happened. “The policeman told him that our mother was dead. Her car had busted a tire on the highway, and it had sent her car slamming into the opposite lanes of traffic, head on into a large truck. She’d died on impact.”
“That must have been devastating for you both.”
I sipped on my coffee. The steamy heat from it made the tremors fade. Right on time, our food arrived, the story interrupted as we shoveled the food into our mouths.
“What made you run away?”
Washing down the hash browns with some water, I sat back and wiped my mouth with a napkin. These tiny mundane things are what kept me going when the past wanted to swallow me up in its constantly awaiting despair.
“Well, the next three years were hard. We avoided our stepfather as much as we could. He ignored us to the point of pure neglect. As long as dinner was ready when he arrived home, he’d drink himself to sleep after that, and then we were free to do what we liked. He barely left us money to buy the food to eat, and somehow, he paid the bills on his days off before heading to the bars with his pals to drink the day away.”
“Wow, he took it hard, I take it.”
“Yeah, he didn’t seem to care anymore after she died. She was the anchor for all of us.”
“Something happened…didn’t it?”
The napkin had been twisted into a tight rope, and I unraveled it, only to twist and knot it up again. “Yes.”
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me anymore about it.” Saul had finished his breakfast and leaned back. He pulled off his sunglasses and let his eyes drift to my general direction.
He then leaned forward, brought his hands to slip under mine, and threaded his fingers through mine. They were warm, strong, and my heart melted right into them with no resistance at all.
“It’s alright.” I breathed in, deep into my chest, feeling my diaphragm expand and relax. “Well, we were getting older, taller, developing. He started looking at us differently, his eyes lingering just a bit too long for comfort. I noticed it a long time before we left, and it always had me on edge. I just always never believed he’d do something to us. I only wanted to wait to turn eighteen and get the hell out of there with my sister.”
“I see.”
“One day…I had to babysit for a friend of a neighbor’s. My neighbor I babysat for always let me bring Liz along, so we did homework together and watched her kids too. But this woman, she was suspicious of us and said I couldn’t bring her, so I told her to lay low or hang at her friend’s house until I got off. Well, her friend had left for the weekend, so that was out of the question, so she said she’d lay low in our room and stay out of Brian’s way.
“So when I got off around eight that night and got home, the house was eerily quiet. I assumed he had passed out in his bed until I heard a loud thump down the hall in our room. Sure enough, my panic rose as I rushed toward the back of the house and found my sister under Brian, where she was trying desperately to claw at him and push him off. He was grabbing her boobs, her ass, everything, and her pants were ripped down the side, her underwear too.”
Saul listened, never reacting with horror or judgment. It was so easy to talk to him.
“I grabbed her jewelry box, it was hard wood, and smashed it on his head. I hit him again and again until he slumped over her, and I had to help her shove him off. She was a wreck, her makeup in streaks, her clothes torn up. I checked her out and asked her how far he got. She just trembled and shook, holding onto her shoulders to cover up her naked chest. With her help, we dragged him out and into his room, and then barred his door. I got her to change and asked her again how far he’d gone. Once he was out of sight, she’d been able to tell me he’d almost raped her, but she fought him so hard, and he was so drunk, he’d been too uncoordinated to complete the deed.