For You

Chapter EIGHTEEN

Sawyer gave me a ride on his bike to Bell's elementary school. I would have walked, but then I'd have been late for sure. Time had passed too quickly when I was in his arms.

As discussed, Sawyer dropped me off around the corner from the school's entrance, so Bell wouldn't see me on a motorbike. Thanks to the ride, we were actually a few minutes early. Sawyer pulled into a shady spot, underneath a big tree, and killed the engine.

We took off our helmets, and I said, “You can just dump me and go.”

“Dump you?”

“Whatever.” I started to walk toward the school, but he jumped in front of me.

I pushed him aside and started to run.

He caught me, his arms around my waist.

“Aubrey, what's wrong? Why does it seem like you're always running away from me?”

“I don't know.”

He turned me to face him. “Do I scare you?” His green eyes looked so sad as he asked the question, like he was the one afraid, not me.

“Relationships scare me. Not sure if you noticed, but I suck at them.”

He grinned, which made me able to start breathing again. “I suck at relationships, too. The last time I cared about a girl was over a year ago. She was my girlfriend. I think she was trying to get something from me that I wasn't able to give.”

“Sounds about right.”

“She's engaged now, or maybe married. So I guess that thing she wanted did exist in the universe, just not in me. I wasn't good enough.”

The look on his face, plus his words, crushed me. How could Sawyer think he wasn't good enough? The world was a really messed-up place if he believed that.

He continued, “She got the fat all sucked out of her ass and then threw me out with all the ass fat.”

Was he joking? What the f*ck was he talking about? He rambled on about ass fat.

The bell above the school rang, which meant the kids would be streaming out the doors any moment.

“You're not making any sense,” I said.

He blinked rapidly. “Her name was Janine, and she got liposuction done. She didn't need it done, but then she did, and I think it was a test for me, and I failed. I kept saying the wrong thing. I say a lot of things, and some of them are bound to come out wrong.” He looked down, shaking his head, then looked back up at me, a wry smile on his face. “You know, some people have real problems. Janine couldn't understand that. She'd talk about her hips like they were an atrocity.”

I didn't say anything, but I wondered, how bad were the hips, exactly?

Sawyer continued, “Never mind about Janine and all that. It's in the past. I know I have a big mouth, and I ramble a lot, but I swear there's a point in here somewhere.” He fixed me with his gaze, his green eyes looking almost emerald in the dappled light beneath the leafy tree. “My point is I really like you, and I want to spend more time with you, and if it means I have to wear a muzzle so I don't talk and ruin everything, then I will.” He grinned. “Wait. Your face. I think your face is broken, around your mouth area. Is that a smile?”

I widened my smile with a sigh. “We can hang out again, soon.”

“Tomorrow?”

I wriggled out of his grasp and started walking backward toward the school, in the direction of children's laughter. “I have tomorrow off work, but you probably know that.”

He pumped his fist in the air, like he'd won a prize. “I have most of tomorrow free.”

I kept walking. “Call me, or text me.”

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and pretended he was texting me that moment, which had the desired effect of making me laugh.

I turned around and sped up to a light jog, toward the school entrance to get Bell.

My face was still light from the smile. Sawyer had a strong effect on me, but at least it was a good one. My jeans were chafing, so I adjusted them, noting that my parts felt a little swollen within my panties. Was I already turned on again, just thinking about him, or was that the lingering effect of this afternoon?

The smile crept back up as I remembered, and I had to hold my hand up over my mouth before everyone saw and knew I'd had insanely hot, toe-curling sex not an hour earlier.

I looked around at the other mothers. There were white moms and Asian moms and plenty of Indian moms, with their lustrous black hair and broods of kids. Many of these dark-haired women were pregnant with the next one. So many kids for one mother, but I knew they managed because they had their mothers and maybe their grandmothers at home, living in multi-family houses with several generations.

As I stared at one raven-haired lady with twins in a double stroller, an elderly woman with silver hair trailing behind her, I realized she and I weren't so different after all. I didn't live with my grandmother, but she had been helping out with Bell so much over the last few months—so much that now I could breathe. I had a new life, thanks to my family.

And to think, my mother told me they were dead. Why would she do that? They were such good people, undeserving of being shut out that way. I noticed the tension creeping up in my body as I felt the anger at my mother, so I shook my head and tried to think of better things.

Like Sawyer.

I pulled my phone out to see if he'd texted me. He hadn't, but I stood there and typed a quick message to him.

Me: Thank you for the nice day in the sun. I had a lot of fun. ;-D

I thought he would enjoy the smiley face.

He didn't text back, but that was a good thing, as he was probably on his bike. I got a tremor of fear in my belly, worrying he might feel his phone vibrate and try to answer while he was riding, and end up getting hurt. It was an awful, sick feeling, and I hated my imagination for being so good at picturing his crumpled body bleeding on the pavement.

“Hi.”

I looked up from my phone at a little face—Bell, with her blue eyes rimmed in red from tears.

Dropping to a squat to be eye-level, I said, “What's wrong? Were you crying?”

“No.” Her little lips puffed out stubbornly.

“Just in a bad mood? What made you sad?” I looked around for a sign, but nobody was looking our way, and I couldn't spot her friend Taylor.

She grabbed the zipper of my hoodie and zipped it up and down like a toy.

“Not talking?”

Her mouth moved from side to side, like the truth was trying to come out, but she was fighting it the way she fought sleep when she wanted to stay up late instead of going to bed.

I took her hand and started us toward home, hoping the rhythm of walking would draw her story from her.

Like her, I'd also been a sensitive little kid, but not to the extreme that she was sensitive. My mother hadn't put up with much of what she called my “fussing,” so I learned to keep quiet while she washed my hair with the shampoo that burned my scalp and stung my eyes. That was when I learned that everything ended—every moment was temporary, and pain was like the train passing by on the railroad tracks. If you waited long enough, soon you'd be back to looking at the trees.

We got all the way home, and Bell still hadn't said anything, despite my attempts to coax a few words from her. Feeling defeated, I let us in the front door of the building. If she wasn't going to talk to me, maybe it was about time she found that cold comfort within herself.

She turned and looked up at me, her big, blue eyes brighter and more blue from the recent tears. “Taylor is mean,” she said. There was a trace of something blue at the corner of her mouth. I hadn't sent her to school with candy, so I figured she must have gotten a sucker or gum from another kid.

“Your friend, Taylor?” I fought the urge to argue with her, to say that Taylor wasn't mean, that she was nice.

It was my and everyone else's instinct to argue with the truth—to insist that some person we didn't even know had to be nice, because how could we keep going in a world where even our friends were mean to us?

Bell looked longingly at the elevator doors, but came with me when I opened the door to the stairwell. I'd lied and told her it was my exercise to take the stairs, rather than tell her the elevator stunk of vomit and disinfectant and gave me claustrophobia.

Up the stairs we went, and out came the truth about her day. In her meandering way, she explained what happened. Her new friend Taylor had invited another little girl to play with them at lunch time, to draw on the sidewalk with chalk. The other girl didn't like Bell, though, and said she smelled like beans. She changed the rules for the hopscotch game when Bell tried to play, and then she'd pointed and laughed.

“She pointed?” I repeated, the image vivid in my mind.

“Like this.” Bell pointed her small finger at me, her eyes scrunched up with derision—an expression of hate I'd never seen on her sweet face.

I might have laughed if the heartbreak didn't make me feel like crying for her.

We got up to the apartment and she decided to have Quiet Time in her room.

I debated for a good hour whether or not to intervene. My mother wouldn't have done anything. She would have told me to slap the other girl on the face, to “slap the mean right off of her.”

Great parenting advice for a seven-year-old. Really.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head at my “colorful” mother. No wonder she was always angry and feeling like the other mothers were judging her. How could they not be?

Finally, I decided to phone Natalie. I was going to be the kind of parent who stuck her nose in.

Natalie sounded happy to hear from me. I explained what Bell had told me, and asked what she knew about this other girl, the mean one. Natalie then told me the other side of the story, which was quite a bit different from what Bell had said.

According to Natalie, who heard about the incident from Taylor, some other girls had been playing with the chalk, and Bell went over and dumped out half the chalk on the concrete and took the bucket away. That wouldn't have been so bad, but she took all the blue chalk with her, and wouldn't share. The other girls had the second-grade equivalent of an intervention, and tried to get some blue chalk. Bell then started putting the chalk in her mouth, chewing it and spitting it out at them.

As I talked on the phone, I lowered my voice. Inside her bedroom, Princess Land, Bell wasn't making a peep, and I could feel her listening to my side of the conversation.

Because I'd seen the blue chalk in the corner of Bell's mouth, I had no choice about which version of events to believe. Was this just the beginning of behavioral problems with Bell? Aside from her tantrums, she'd been so resilient, and had no problem keeping up with the school work. Now that we were finally in a stable situation and life was looking good for a change, now this?

I sunk into the couch with the phone at my ear, wishing the couch would just swallow me up so I didn't have to worry anymore.

Into a pause in the conversation, I muttered, “Life is shit.”

On the other end, Natalie made a strange sound, and after a moment I realized she was laughing.

“Aubrey, it's not the end of the world.”

“Oh. You're right.”

“Let's hang out tomorrow, just the two of us for some girl-time. Then you and Bell can join us again for dinner, and the girls can cement their friendship.”

“Won't they just resist?”

“We have to try. If Bell feels more comfortable, socially, it should calm her aggression.” Natalie giggled. “I feel like a zookeeper.”

“It's like we're putting the monkeys in a cage together for their own good.”

“Good analogy. Anyway, I'm excited about this. We loved having you last week, and Dave enjoyed having someone new to tell his tree-planting stories to.” She kept going, making plans without waiting for my agreement.

I thanked her and we arranged for her to come pick me up at the apartment at noon, so I could help her with some shopping. Then we'd pick up the kids together at three and have dinner at her place. She stressed the fact that I wasn't obligated to bring anything but my “lovely self.”

After I ended the call, it beeped with an incoming message from Sawyer.

Right. Sawyer.

I was already proving myself to be a bad girlfriend by making other plans for my day off.

Sawyer: There's a report on the news about some shocking indecency.

Me: Huh? Should I be worried?

Sawyer: Apparently some guy was at the same beach we were at and he was flashing his wang.

Me: Wang!

I giggled and stretched out on the couch, cradling the cell phone lovingly. Getting messages from him and imagining him saying the words was almost as much fun as hanging out with him in person.

Sawyer: So obviously we can't go back there tomorrow. How about we go terrorize people at the mall? We can go to Zellers and grope each other in the underwear section. I don't know about you, but seeing all those giant ladies' panties hanging on their plastic hangers gets me so hard.

I knew he was saying it for a laugh, but the idea of him getting hard, even as a joke, made me feel so giggly and turned-on. I reached a hand between my legs and pressed down where I felt swollen.

Me: I'm going to wear giant panties next time I see you. So big they come out of the top of my jeans.

Sawyer: It's difficult to text efficiently with only one hand.

I didn't even have time to reply, when he sent a series of messages.

Sawyer: Msdiryey pantiesss ekewn daladdfjjjl!!

Sawyer: Uhhhhh..almost..there..morepantiestalkplease.

Sawyer: I hope you know I'm just kidding.

Sawyer: I'm at the grocery store picking up some stuff for the house, and people are staring at me, wondering why I'm laughing my ass off in the magazine aisle.

Me: I wish I was there with you.

Sawyer: You could come meet me? Bring your daughter and we can do some serious double-household shopping.

Me: Another time.

Sawyer: They have Cheerios on sale. Those big boxes that don't fit in the cupboard, so you have to keep them on top of the fridge. Want me to get you some?

Me: I'm good.

Sawyer: I could bring them over tomorrow.

For a moment, I thought about making plans with Sawyer and then phoning Natalie to cancel. Then I remembered Bell's red eyes, and how important it was for her to have some stability. If we could have more play dates and she could feel comfortable in her friendship with Taylor, maybe it would help.

Eating chalk.

Good lord.

You have to laugh, or you'll cry.

I composed a message.

Me: Turns out I can't hang out tomorrow because I have a play date with another mother from Bell's school. We're meeting early in the day.

Sawyer: This means I won't get to see your giant panties? You are a tease.

I knew he was joking, but it still stung to be called a tease. Guys don't know how that comes across, even said jokingly.

We sent a few more messages back and forth, him being flirty and cute, and me trying hard not to embarrass myself too much.

I started making dinner, but kept getting distracted by his messages, so by the time the food was ready, Bell was cranky and giving me a hard time. You would think hunger would make the kid less fussy, but she seemed to become more picky whenever dinner was late.

She scowled at me and picked at the food with her fingers, trying to remove the miniscule dots of cracked pepper I'd accidentally put in. I'd been distracted by the messages on my phone and forgot she only liked the “tiny” pepper from the shaker, not the freshly-ground crunchy stuff from the grinder our grandparents gave us as in our apartment-warming gift basket.

“For heaven's sakes, it's just spice,” I said, exasperated. “It's not dirt or poison, so don't give me that look. If I wanted to feed you dirt, I'd disguise it better, and you'd never even know.”

I'd meant the comment as a joke, but her little eyes narrowed and she glared at me like I was the most rotten person on the whole planet.

She didn't know I'd just canceled a date with a hot, sexy guy so I could have a play date for her emotional well-being. Nope. To her, I was just the a*shole who put crunchy pepper chunks on her macaroni.

What an a*shole.