“Maybe not but that doesn’t mean I don’t still worry, that I don’t still care.” She sat so close now that a few strands of her hair brushed against my shoulder. She smelled like vanilla again, but this time I noticed the gardenia scent I knew she wore in the fall. She’d change out her perfume along with her wardrobe and fall was my favorite. Dark colors that reminded me of bonfires and the turning leaves on the oaks around my parents’ driveway and gardenias, that sweet scent that always reminded me of home, family, of Aly.
It was too much of a temptation. It was too much sentimental recollection I knew that couldn’t be mine and just then, I hated Aly just a little bit for dangling what I so desperately wanted under my nose. “It’s not enough, Aly.” Then, because I wanted her leaving, taking with her all the things I loved and could not have, I cleared my throat, making sure my glare was vicious. “I’ve got enough women who want to play nursemaid for me. I don’t need another one.”
If she was shocked, she didn’t show it. Instead, Aly stood up and made to leave as cool as if our business had been concluded. But before she walked out of the room, she turned to me and said, “Well, whoever you end up with, I hope she knows how to kick your ass.” Then she swept through the door and was gone.
My mother held stardust underneath her fingernails.
Sparks of twilight, of distant lives Lived over
And over.
The same sins visited upon every woman she would ever be.
Loving men
Who thought the word was too thick on their tongues.
Poison they spat out.
She taught me to hold within my cells the mark of a millions lives.
Mine, ours.
Until
I was whole and I let you feel The tremble in my limbs and the thunder of my heart.
You were the only one to drink that poison And lie about how good it tasted.
Eleven
“Have you completely lost your mind?”
My mother was a hurricane flying in front of me, twisting and seething around me so that I would know what a disappointment I was to her. How could I not be? I was pushing away happiness as it came to me. I was deflecting the sweetest bits of my life that had once made me feel like nothing could touch me. But something had. Loss. Loneliness. The abstract solitude that felt like a freezing burn inside my chest. Aly had walked away because I had pushed her away. Mom had heard what I’d said to make her leave.
There was no way in hell I’d get out of this without being berated and served a mighty dose of that Keira Glare. Still, I had to try to calm her. “Mom…”
“Don’t you try to pacify me. My God, Ransom, she didn’t have to come here. But I thought it would help. I thought, maybe, you’d get off your ass and stop moping.”
“I’m not fucking…”
“Do not talk to your mother like that.” Kona’s look challenged my own and, tired, feeling stupid, I relented, scrubbing my hands over my face.
Tristian stood next to my mother just within the kitchen doorway, a bottle of OJ in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other. He quirked his eyebrow up and suddenly seemed disinterested in his snack.
“Ransom, you have got to get yourself together. You are never going to get Aly back if you keep lashing out.” Mom’s voice was softer now, but there was still a bite in her tone.
“Who the hell says I’m trying to get her back?”
Mom stared at me, mouth open. “If you don’t, you are a damn fool.” She stepped closer, shaming me with one look. “If you love someone, you don’t intentionally hurt them, no matter how shitty your life gets.” She shot a glance at my father but kept silent, letting that one look topple him. Since we’d returned from Miami, the silence between my parents had doubled. It had happened three nights ago with Kona’s cell going off repeatedly and him outside on the patio. I’d crashed on the sofa with my foot propped up and old episodes of Merlin running in the background. An hour later I’d woken from my doze to hear my parents bickering. It wasn’t a fight, but the hurried, heated conversation had kept me up. “You don’t win battles on your own, Ransom. That’s not how real relationships work.”
She ignored my hand as I reached for her and looked at my father as though she wanted him to say something. We he didn’t, Mom grabbed Tristian’s arm and they disappeared to the back of the house toward her studio.
“Are you ever going to tell me what the hell is going on?” I asked my father, not bothering to keep my voice free of the irritation I felt.
Kona didn’t answer. Instead, he came around the sofa, slouching as he rested his elbows on his knees. “Keiki kane, you are fucking up.”
“Come again?”
My father moved his head, squinting as he glanced at me. “Richie Dole. I ever tell you about him?” I shook my head, watching Kona closely. I wondered what NFL war story I’d get now. “Thirteen years I’ve been using my NFL career as some cautionary tale for you, just to get you not to make the same mistakes I did or the same mistakes guys I knew did.”
“Yeah. And?”