A long groan escapes as I drag my body to a sitting position on the uncomfortable couch.
It’s like no one’s ever sat on this thing for longer than a minute.
Joanne strolls into the room with two coffee mugs in her hands. “How’d you sleep?”
My mouth drops to answer, but a distinct throbbing closes it.
Ugh…Hangovers are my least favorite thing next to being up all night from a screaming infant.
She snickers, sits down beside me, and offers the blue cup. “That’s what I thought.”
Once the mug is in my hand she pulls out a bottle of aspirin from her robe and shakes it at me. I quickly coo, “Gracias.”
I take two pills, down a few gulps of the dark beverage, and relax back against the couch.
“You wanna talk about it?”
I adjust my grip on the cup. “About what?”
“About what caused Patron shots, 2,5, and 9.”
Instantly, I grimace.
Did I really make it to nine? Shit. I don’t remember past seven.
I haven’t had that many shots since back when my parents spent Mario’s graduation party not so quietly fighting over his community college costs.
“Meena,” Joanne promptly says, bringing me back to the conversation. “I’m not asking as a therapist to help define your problems or to help discover solutions, though we can do that, I’m asking as the friend who had to help you onto the couch just after midnight because I don’t possess the super strength it would take to make it to my guest room.”
With a playful expression, I joke, “Are you calling me grasa?”
“I’m calling me weak. Do you know the last time I lifted something heavier than my laptop bag?”
The two of us lightly laugh together.
After having another sip, she questions again, “What pissed you off so bad last night only top shelf tequila could fix?”
I wince at the description. “Shit. Did I even pay for my drinks last night? Do I owe you?”
“No.” Joanne swiftly shakes her head. “You bought the first two and the rest were covered by the male population who were flocking to you like a pack of wolves.” The moment I start to smirk, she scolds, “Do not smile about that! If I hadn’t had pepper spray, we could’ve seriously been in danger.”
Yes, because pepper spray will truly protect us all…
Instead of making the savior of my drunken situation angry, I give her leg a gentle pat. “Muchas gracias, Joanne.”
She hums. “Thank me by explaining why we went out drinking like you just turned 21.”
My cup migrates towards my lips as the events of yesterday come rushing back like a freight train. When I lower the cup, I let my eyes meet hers again, and confess, “I had a long, shitty afternoon.”
“I was able to gather that much. Start at the beginning.”
“Oh, you mean the moment I went with Holden to drop the kids off at their grandparents’ house and he called me the help?”
She recoils. “What?”
“And then after that slap in the face, I go to my parents’ house to help my baby sister get ready for homecoming only to walk into a fucking war zone because they caught her making one of those stupid Snap Chat videos in just her towel.”
Joanne’s jaw hits the ground.
“Yeah, they didn’t know she was posting videos of herself anywhere and they almost grounded her for life when they found she had her own fashion You Tube channel.”
“Do they just not pay attention?”
They don’t have time to pay that close attention. Pulling in overtime when possible for extra income to try to stay above water comes at a cost. It’s one reason helping them even more is now a must.
“Needless to say, that shit storm took out all the sanity I had left. I managed to calm both of my parents down, prevent them from blaming each other for not knowing, convince them not to confiscate her cell phone, and explain to her why filming herself dressed like that is a terrible idea.”
Joanne shakes her head and has another sip of her coffee. “I’m so glad to be an only child.”
I smirk.
Now there’s a phrase I’ve never said.
“Well the latter explains shots 2 and possibly 3.” Her expression becomes concerned. “But Holden…”
His name alone makes me sneer.
“Meena, I warned you about getting attached to a man who is unavailable.”
“An, I told you so, speech? ¿Lo dice en serio?”
Joanne immediately bites. “Yes, really. I’m your friend. I warned you so you wouldn’t end up in this very position. Hurt. Hurt and contemplating the best way to skip out with the least amount of collateral damage for the children.”
Shame snakes itself around my ankle and slinks me further down on the couch.
She knows me too well. That’s exactly what I was thinking about every free moment I had before the liquor started flowing. Clearly, Holden’s never going to see me as anything more than the nanny who he now just happens to be sleeping with, so maybe it’s time to move on. I got to enjoy him for a little bit like I wanted. The kids are happy. They have a well-established routine another woman can just step into, which is what I’m known for creating anyway.
A wave of disgust washes over me.
I don’t want another woman taking my place. For once I don’t wanna leave, even if it would probably be better for all of us if I did.
“Meena, you have to stop running from your love life at some point.”
“Disagree. My zapatos are still in perfectly good running condition.”
Joanne glowers, seriousness taking over. “Holden is obviously not like every other man you’ve allowed yourself to be with. You…you’ve connected to him in ways you hate to admit. You’ve allowed yourself for the first time in years to be willing to commit and I think before you completely give up on him, you should see if you two can work through this.”
I swiftly place my mug on the glass coffee table. “¿Lo dice en serio? He called me the help, Joanne.”
She scrunches her nose at the term.
“I swear it feels like I’m the other woman! Like I shouldn’t do anything for those kids or for him outside of this little neat box labeled nanny. Like no matter what we do together or how close we get, he just can’t let her go. He can’t let himself be completely with me.”
Joanne places her cup next to mine. “Maybe he can’t.”
Just what I wanted to hear, confirmation I managed to fall in love with the one man who would never be able to love me back.
“But maybe he can, and he just needs guidance on how to do that.”
A puzzled look pops onto my face.
“From what I’ve gathered over the very little you’ve shared about Holden, it’s not that he doesn’t want to move on from his wife, it’s that he doesn’t know how. It’s like something is sitting in his way that blocks his ability to see you the way he clearly wants to. I would do two things. First, I would confront him about it. Tell him how you feel and make him face the behaviors head on. Second, I would challenge him. Have him do something with you he would’ve never done with her. Allow him to consciously register the difference. It may help his unconscious switch to the understanding he is ready to move forward with you. Worse comes to worst and he refuses or he can’t, end things romantically and continue on as the nanny.”
“If we end this, I can’t keep living in that house.”
“Then move out. Become an on-call nanny. Crash here until you get your own place.”
Her logical approach is unfortunately better than anything I was tossing around. As much as I would love to just find another job in Canada or Washington and bolt, I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet. Plus, my parents need me close by to deal with hurricane Mia, and Mia needs me close by to stop her from running away with a tattooed biker she randomly meets at the mall. I’ll give her advice a shot. I just pray like hell it doesn’t end with me back on this crappy piece of furniture.
A little after ten, I stroll into the two-story house I loathe for feeling like home.
There aren’t many places that have felt that way to me and possibly having to leave one of the only ones on the list is equally infuriating and devastating.
The moment the kitchen is in my vision, I see a sight that instantly makes me snicker.
Wyatt puts the knife down to toss his hands in the air. “Hola, Meena!”
I shake my head, still smiling. “Hola, Wyatt.”
“Cómo estás?”
“He estado mejor y tu?”
“Soy fantástico. Estoy cocinando Migas con un giro de Wyatt.”
Cautiously, I approach the area where he has finely chopped up onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, and jalapenos. He may be a chef, but not just anybody can make Migas….
I question, “Debo estar asustado o emocionado?”
“Cuando se trata de mí, baby, siempre debe estar emocionado.”
Yet it’s his best friend that has the track record for exciting me.
For getting my heart pounding.
After rolling my eyes, I grin again. “¿Siempre has sido tan arrogante?”
He tosses a piece of tomato into his mouth. “Si.”
We start laughing, but it’s short lived thanks to Holden’s sour presence. “What’s so funny?” His eyes immediately land on me and he croaks, “Meena.”
I instantly glower. “Al menos recuerdas mi nombre esta vez.”
Wyatt presses his lips together to prevent from laughing again.
“What?” Holden says, concern growing on his expression after one look at his best friend. “What did you just say?”
“Eres un idiota que merece un golpe en la cara por la mierda que me pusiste.”
A punch.
A gut punch.
Perhaps even a nut punch.
His brow furrows. “Did you just call me a pussy?”
“Debo ya que eso es lo que eres.”
And what I feel you have been since the first time you touched me…
Wyatt braces his fist to his mouth, clearly amused by being able to understand what I’m saying.
“Can we…” He cuts his friend a quick glance. “Can we talk? Alone?”
I don’t reply.
“Please?”
Wyatt picks up the knife he had put down and mutters to me, “Deberías darle la oportunidad de explicarlo. Si no para él que para usted.”
I do deserve an explanation…I really do. With the constant hot cold shit I’ve gone through over these past few months, the least I have earned is an in depth explanation.
I roll my eyes and storm off the direction of my bedroom. “Si.”
There’s another snicker out of Wyatt before he says to Holden, “Bro, I’d proceed with caution. Your girl is half black and half Mexican. She can curse you with voodoo and light a candle in church to make sure your soul doesn’t make it to heaven without a few stops in hell along the way.”
Holden grumbles, “Do you have any idea how incredibly fucked up that sounds?”
Wyatt points the chopping utensil at him. “But accurate.”
I slowly shake my head.
“Especially after what you did.”
Now that part is true. And while my mother isn’t a voodoo priestess and my father is a holiday Catholic, the first part of Wyatt’s warning should be heeded. As much as I agree with what Joanne said, I’m having a difficult time stopping myself from tearing Holden a new one in both languages long enough to hear him out.
Once we’re both inside my bedroom he shuts the door behind us.
At the same time I flop on the edge of my bed, I state, “Estoy escuchando.”
Holden lets out a heavy sigh. “Can you please speak to me in English?”
I give my dark curls a ruffle and try to relax. “Start talking.”
His apology is instant. “I’m sorry about yesterday, Meena. So fucking sorry for what I said. How I said it. For…” He shakes his head. “You didn’t deserve that.”
“No. I really fucking didn’t.”
His shoulders plummet. “Tell me we can get past this.”
My mouth remains shut.
“Tell me we can get through it.”
I glance down at my feet.
“Tell me I’m not going to lose you because I said something fucking stupid, Meena.” Quickly he rushes to continue, “Because losing you is the absolute last fucking thing I need. My kids love you! I-”
His decision to end the sentence spurs the anger I was trying to hold back. “You what, Holden? Like like me? Wanna go steady?” Rather than leave room for a retort, I snap, “For fucks sake, Holden, you want me to be the one to say it first? Fine! I love you! I’ve loved you from the first time you looked at me and haven’t quite figured out how to stop despite the fact you clearly loved someone else. And I’m not asking you to forget about her or forget she existed, I simply need you to stop treating me like I’m an affair you’re having! Like you’re cheating on her!”
“That’s the problem! I did!” He abruptly shouts back.
Completely baffled by the drop of information, I try to pick my mouth up off the floor.
Holden runs both his hands through his brown hair as he attempts to gain his composure.
Impatiently I wait for him to face the demons he keeps denying me to see. To expose the secrets, I need to hear.
“Beth…” He braces his back against the door across from me. “Beth was far from perfect. She had mastered the art of coming across that way in public, long before Lynk was born. The world saw what she wanted them to see. Truth was, the Beth we all loved most, was Beth when she was high. Her sweet, hopeful, philosophical bullshit was just that. It was bullshit.” Holden shrugs. “When she was fucked up, she saw the world through blitzed filled glasses. And when she wasn’t?” His hesitation to continue tugs at my heart strings. “She was someone people wouldn’t recognize. I was constantly trying to love two different people. Fucked up, Beth? Loved being around my bros. Loved spending time with Lynk. Didn’t mind spending her trust fund or her parents’ monthly allowance on us or him. It’s the reason when we would go out to party at The Row on Saturdays, the guys paid you or whoever was watching him. She was too selfish when she was sober and I couldn’t hold down a real job while trying to go to class, raise Lynk, keep her grounded, and The Row covered. Those shit ‘Is My Boyfriend Cheating’ jobs, helped keep me from being broke, but barely more than that most of the time.”
That means the great money he was shelling out to me when it wasn’t the weekend, when they weren’t throwing a party was coming out of his pocket. It was the money he needed to eat. That he needed for his family…
“The major problem with your wife being blazed while taking care of your infant is her forgetting to feed him so she can get something to munch on. Or leaving your toddler unattended in the bathtub for over an hour because she popped a pill and couldn’t be bothered to stay awake.”
My jaw tumbles back down.
“Sober Beth? Hated being a mother. Hated having responsibilities. Hated…” Holden clears his throat to push forward. “Me. We were the ultimate buzz kill. We were chaining her down. We were always the problem in her life, never the solution.”
Is he really talking about pretty little Mrs. Happy Go Lucky? She was…she was a drug addict? She hated her kids?
“She was…quietly in and out of rehab. Her parents paid for facilities that were dedicated to keeping the anonymity of their clients as well as licensed with some of the best therapists and life coaches. We would tell everyone they were taking ‘family getaways’ that I couldn’t attend because of school and eventually because of my deal with the FBI. Not even my bros know the truth. Every time she came home clean, I held onto hope it would stick…but then after a couple days of being around Lynk, the loathing would return and I knew the drugs wouldn’t be far behind. She got pregnant with Sage, right after her last stint. Like Lynk she was an accident, but like an idiot who refused to believe things would never get better, I told myself Sage would fix our marriage. Fix our family. Instead the exact opposite happened. Once she found she was pregnant she shut completely down. Keeping her sober so there would be no health effects to the baby was exhausting and led her to hate me more than she already did. We constantly fought. Her parents tried to blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but they knew as well as I did, this wasn’t going to end well. After Sage was born she…found….some so called spiritual shit.”
I lift my eyebrows in question.
“It was a cult. The dude was a total fucking fraud from his name to his taxes to the way you ‘reached’ your next phase of ‘peace’ by offering your body to him to let the energy of ‘The Lion God’ flow through you. It was nothing but a big money sucking, drug induced, rape women scam. We fought about it frequently, which is the last thing I needed with a new baby and a constantly pissed off five-year-old. The night she died…I….” His hand slips around the back of his neck. “I was asked by the owner of The Dollhouse to go help a new employee set up her computer. Considering the nature of their business, she needed it secure. I had to go. I didn’t have a choice. All the money taking care of my family was coming from The Dollhouse, same as it is now, except then it should’ve been coming from both me and Beth. Her money was going to the stupid cult and her drug dealers.”
My mouth twitches with the urge to say something, but the truth is I have no idea what I can say. Nothing will make the hell he was going through better. Nothing can undo the pain he’s suffered. If he just lets his guard down a little more, maybe I can at least ease the lingering pain.
“We fought that night because she needed to get out of the house. She needed to get away from the kids and I told her I just…I just needed a couple hours for work. She swore she’d stay home, but she didn’t. She had one of the neighbors come over to watch the kids while she ‘ran an errand’. She went to pick up the divorce papers she had a lawyer from the cult draft for her. On the way back….just a couple blocks around the corner… she was T-boned by a teenager who wasn’t paying attention while texting and driving.”
Everyone who knew Beth had heard she died in a car crash, but I never knew the details. It was just one of those things you hear, but don’t dive too deep into.
“And while my wife, the mother of my children, was losing her life, I thought it would be a good time to fuck an escort.” The shame shakes his tone. “I went over there to do my job. That’s it. But…she started talking to me like she knew I hadn’t had sex in over a year…like she knew my wife had given up on our marriage. Like she knew I should’ve given up too. I later learned that’s one of the skills it takes to be a great escort. Knowing how to read a situation.” He doesn’t look away. “After I was done installing everything, we…”
The first thought I have leaps off my tongue. “Did you pay her?”
“No!” Holden shakes his head profusely. “Fuck no. It was…she wasn’t ‘on the clock’. She wasn’t being Kandi. She was being Kourtney. The Kansas girl who ended up very far from home and doing things she never thought she would’ve for prices she couldn’t even believe.”
Silence settles momentarily between us.
Still unsure of what to say, now for a different reason, I fold my hands in my lap and wait for him to continue.
“I had a moment of weakness and cheated on my wife, Meena. I was on my way home when I got the call…I never got to apologize for making a mistake. I’ve never forgiven myself for it either. I don’t think I deserve forgiveness. I betrayed her. I betrayed my kids. I…” the sentence falls and so does his expression.
“You can’t hate yourself forever,” I quietly scold. “People make mistakes, Holden. We’re human. And while I’m not going to justify you sleeping with someone else, I’m not going to pretend you’re the world’s biggest asshole because you did. And it’s not like you knew she was dying while you were having sex or went out looking to get laid that night.”
His head falls forward.
“You’re going to have to forgive yourself and accept the fact it’s okay to be happy, Holden. Something….might I add without looking like a complete bitch, you weren’t with Beth.”
He lifts his eyes back to mine, which is when I hold a hand out for him to join me on the bed. When he drops down beside me, he confesses, “Yesterday…looking into her father’s eyes was like looking into hers and I don’t know…I just…snapped. Protected our relationship the same way I had for years despite how unhappy we truly were. Keeping Beth’s perfect persona feels like appropriate penance for what I did. Nevertheless, I swear, Meena, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
My fingers float to his. “I believe you…”
The first hopeful look of the conversation appears. “Yeah?”
“Si.” His spirits noticeably shift, which is when I add, “But the truth is you did.”
He lets his shoulder fall again as he nods.
“Joanne thinks-”
“Your child therapist friend?”
I tilt my head in question. “Did you look her up?”
Holden gives me a small smile. “Actually, no. I’ve just been paying attention when you talk. For some reason I never felt the need to go diving for more information than that.”
Pride pushes my shoulders back.
Looks like I’m rubbing off on him more than he realizes.
“Joanne suggested that you do something with me that you would’ve never done with her.”
His forehead crinkles. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something. She says by doing so it may trigger you to embrace the difference. To accept that I’m not Beth, to accept that it is okay that I’m not her, and to finally move forward.”
He slowly nods.
“She also said the more unique, the bigger the impact it’ll make.”
Holden squeezes my hand. “I’ll think of something for us. I’ll figure out a way to defrag my mental hard disk, I swear. In the meantime…can you accept my apology and not give up on me yet? On us?”
Instinctively, I reply, “You can respire, mi Corazon. I’m not ready to give up.”
“Good.” He lets out a soft sigh and leans his face close to mine. “Because I do love you and losing you isn’t an option on the menu screen.”
Enraptured not only by hearing him say it back, but declare letting me leave isn’t what he wants, I mount his lips without further apprehension. Holden groans at the impact and wraps a hand firmly around the nape of my neck. In one swift motion, I’m straddling his lap and our lips are parted. Our tongues are tangling.
Unfortunately, the feeling of our heartbeats knocking against one another is cut short by the pounding on my bedroom door. “Hey! I didn’t come all the way over here to eat migas alone!”
Wyatt’s complaint pulls our lips apart.
Holden plants a kiss on my shoulder before yelling in return. “Busy, asshole!”
I snicker and slide myself out of my boyfriend’s lap, receiving a pout in the process. “Come on, birthday boy. Let’s go celebrate with your bro.”
“But-”
“We’ll celebrate the other way later.”
He sulks, but links his hand with mine.
When we open the door Wyatt offers us both a wide, award winning grin. “They’re even better than they used to be when I would make them half hung over in college.”
We lightly chuckle and follow him back towards the kitchen.
Holden’s birthday may have started off a little rocky, but I have a feeling the rest of it will be filled with many smiles similar to the one his best friend just flashed.