She pulled away from the stop light, and we were silent as she drove. Hazleton wasn’t a terribly large town, but it stayed plenty busy. And it didn’t take me long to figure out she wasn’t taking me to my house. I relaxed into the seat, staring out the window. I wasn’t above being humiliated by the situation, and I didn’t bother trying to talk to her or look at her as she drove.
She pulled up in the driveway of a small bungalow style home with a stone exterior. It was surrounded by old mature trees with branches that hung way too low. It was charming. It was also in serious need of a tree trimmer.
I climbed from the car, looking around. “I can trim these branches back,” I said as I turned right into one, smacking my face and sending shooting pain through my entire head.
“That’s not necessary,” she said as she turned and walked toward the house.
“My face begs to differ,” I muttered as I followed her. “Hell, it’s better to get them trimmed back now before winter hits. The last thing you need is heavy snow on these branches—”
“I said, it’s not necessary,” she snapped as she stopped and turned around to face me. She let out a frustrated huff. “It’s a rental property. It’s not my problem.”
“Until one of those branches snaps after a heavy snow, and you end up with a hole in your roof,” I said.
She stared at me for a moment, but then she turned and kept walking, ignoring my comment.
I followed her inside and closed the door behind us. Her home was clean, but there were stacks of books everywhere, stacks of printed papers, a laptop open on the coffee table, sitting off-kilter on top of an open book. It still looked like her, smelled like her, it just was her.
I picked up a picture from a sofa table that sat along a wall in the living room. It was a picture of her and her sister Hilde. I instantly smiled at nothing more than the smile on her face in the picture. I’d not seen that smile yet since re-inserting myself in her life, and I had this incredibly depressing notion it was because of me. I wanted her to smile—a real, spontaneous one, and not only that, I wanted it to be because of me—something I said, something I did, something that had anything at all to do with me and how I made her feel. She used to smile all the time when we were kids. I could always make her smile. Now I just seemed to have the opposite effect on her.
When I set the picture down, it was just so I could pick up the one next to it. It was Helene with two small children. A boy and a girl. They were clearly Hilde’s and Mark’s. Hilde and Mark were both a few years older than us, and they weren’t the type who would have been friends with someone like me. The little girl in the picture looked like Hilde, Helene too for that matter. The boy was the spitting image of Mark.
I glanced at Helene, and she was already watching me. “Hilde’s?”
She nodded, walking over to me and looking at the picture in my hands. She was close, and I could smell the subtle scent of her perfume. I caught myself leaning into it as though I could absorb part of her.
“Sienna and Brody. Sienna’s three and Brody is five.”
I nodded. “They’re beautiful.” A quiet laugh escaped my mouth. “You’re an aunt.” My brain wrapped around the notion, but it wasn’t just that notion. It was seeing a picture of her smiling with two children in her lap. It was the notion of her with her own children someday. I had no idea if that was something she ever thought about, but she deserved that kind of happiness if she wanted it. Me, I’d be a nightmare, but she could pull it off—knowing Hell, better than anyone else in the world.
“Can I shower?” I asked as I set the picture back down. I reeked of beer and whatever other filth was on the bar floor—not to mention the holding cell I’d been in.
She looked up at me for a moment, but she didn’t scoff, she didn’t glare. “Yeah,” she finally said, turning and walking away. “Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I’ll toss them in the wash. I’ll get you a pair of sweatpants.”
I followed her down a short hallway, passing the bathroom along the way. When she walked into her bedroom, I stayed standing in the doorway. It wasn’t a large room—nothing of this house was large, but it was just another visual piece of who she was now. I soaked it in, letting my eyes delve. Her bed was made with a simple white quilt, the sheets peeking out from underneath were white and black floral, and there was a gray throw at the foot of the bad.
I stared at the bed, imagining what it would be like to fuck her brains out in that bed. I was half-drunk after all and fucking and drink seemed to go hand in hand for me. Fighting too for that matter.
Sex was generally a simple thing for me. It didn’t require commitment, it didn’t require a relationship of any kind. But fucking was complicated with Helene and me. It could never be simple. Simple ended a long time ago for us.