Bess
Not bothering to look up when the bells above the diner door chimed, I heard, “What the hell are you doing here?” The tone was gruff, and a waft of cigarette smoke and Jim Beam hit my nose.
“Um, working,” I said as I looked up into AJ’s angry face. “The question is, what are you doing, AJ?” I stepped back, giving myself some fresh air.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m getting a coffee,” he said with a snarl.
Concerned that he’d been drinking, I tried to bring my palm up to his face to touch the man who had saved me years before, but he slapped it out of the way with his own rough and heavy hand.
“AJ, what are you doing to yourself?”
“I’m getting a coffee, Bess,” he answered, my name coming out long and slurred.
Narrowing my eyes at him, I crossed my arms over my chest. “You know what I mean.”
“Why don’t you get me a large coffee to go. And while you’re at it,” he sneered, “you can tell me why you’re working in this shithole of a diner when you have a cushy job over at the WildFlower. You slumming it again? Like when you gave me a whirl in bed?”
I turned around to the coffeemaker and grabbed a Styrofoam cup, filling it as I willed myself not to cry. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment, pulling air in and out of my nose.
Whipping back around, I handed AJ the coffee and said, “No charge, it’s on me,” before moving toward the kitchen.
Once behind the swinging doors, I ignored the light film of grease covering the linoleum floor and slid down to sit on the dirty piece of shit, dropping my head between my knees as I gulped for air.
I’d picked up a shift or two per week at the diner over the last month, ever since the day Lane left. The emotional bruises were taking much longer to heal than the physical, and I found even one day off work a week was too much time to be alone with my thoughts.
By chance, I’d hobbled into the diner the morning after Lane ran away, hoping for coffee and a hug from Shirley. She’d been short a waitress, and since I was off work that day, I filled in.
Sadly, I didn’t do a good job of hiding my injury, and ended up at Doc Riley’s after painfully serving breakfast to locals and tourists who wanted real rural flavor. The gentle gray-haired man assured me that my rib was bruised—not broken—and since I was an addict they preferred not to prescribe pain pills for, I just needed to grin and bear it.
Shirley had run home and retrieved a hot pack, which she wrapped tightly around my middle with a bandage, and tucked me into bed with a steaming mug of tea and Brooks. Then she’d sat on the side of my bed, stroking my hair as she made false promises that everything would get better.
Much like she was doing now on the kitchen floor of the diner.
Shirley slid down next to me. “Come on, girl. He’s a big boy. When he wants help, he’ll get it. No one knows the program better than AJ, honey. He knows we can’t offer him help when he isn’t willing to accept it. I’ve been keeping an eye on him. Me and one of his buddies.”
My heart breaking, I sniffed back my tears and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Aw, Bess,” she said and grabbed my hand, squeezing my knuckles. “You’ve had so much on your plate, I didn’t want to trouble you any more than I had to. With Lane gone and your side injured and the way you were pushing yourself at your other job—not taking any sick days even when I told you to—I couldn’t let you know about this.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder. “But it’s my fault. Everything.”
“This is not your burden, Bess. AJ should have never messed with you; he knew that. You were his responsibility to be there for in times of need, not sex. If he confused it all, that’s on him.”
“But I participated, Shirl. Ugh, And Lane. He was helpless, flailing in the bed, all tangled up in the sheets, screaming, and I couldn’t even figure out what to do for him. I’m such a failure at anything but this ridiculous life of mine with nothing but work. And it’s not even meaningful work.”
“There’s nothing you could do for Lane, honey. He just needs time.”
“How do you know?” I practically wailed. “You’ve never even met him. It seemed pretty final when he walked out . . . ran out with his boots in his hand, his button fly open.”
“You’ll just have to trust me on this one,” Shirley said as she ran her hand soothingly down my arm. “Go home, sweetie. Get a warm bath, take a rest. I’ll call you later.”
There was no rest in the cards for me, though, because as I pulled down my gravel drive, I saw a courier waiting for me in front of my house. Slamming my car into park next to his vehicle, I began to wonder how much more I could take today.
“Can I help you?” I yelled as I walked toward the truck.
“Delivery, ma’am,” the guy in the uniform said, stepping out of the truck.
“For who?” I asked foolishly. I didn’t get deliveries except from . . . Lane. This must be a mistake.
“Bess Williams, is that you? I was told this was your place and instructed to wait for you, make sure your hands touched the package.”
“That’s me,” I said with a sigh.
“Great, sign here,” he said, shoving a clipboard at me. Obviously, he was through waiting for me.
I stood in the driveway, holding the small box with trembling hands until he was gone. Then I opened my door and let Brooks do his business before sinking to the floor for the second time in one day.
Still wearing my jacket and Nikes, I stretched my legs out in front of me. With my dog’s head resting on my shin, I tore the brown paper wrapping off the box.
It was a blue box. A Tiffany’s box. I only knew this from watching movies; I’d never been to Tiffany’s in my life. Had never even dreamed of going.
My heartbeat picked up its already frenetic pace as I tugged at the narrow white satin ribbon, allowing it to fall to the floor like I had done with the airplane ticket months before. And like my heart had done when Lane walked out.
When I removed the lid, my breath halted.
I set my hand on my dog’s head, and he looked up at me with what looked like compassion. A letter fluttered out of the box and into my lap. I picked it up, my eyes almost too blurry to read it.
My beautiful Bess—
I’m sorry for my horrible behavior when I left your place so abruptly last month. I’m most sorry for hurting you and not staying to take care of you.
There are no explanations or excuses. Just know that it wasn’t about you. There are pieces of me you don’t know, and I hope you never do. They are buried deep where they belong, but recently some stressors made them move to the forefront of my mind. The nightmares are not new. I thought they were contained; they had been for some time.
I never meant to hurt you, either physically or emotionally. Your feelings and your body and its safety are of equal importance to me. I’ve come to cherish both more than I care to admit.
You also need to know that I’ve maintained my distance over the last month for your sake. Obviously I wasn’t in a good place, and I had no intention of drawing you further into any of that. It’s age-old business that needs to stay where it was—in the past.
But the more time passes without you in my life, the greater the void I feel. Like an idiot, I thought maybe time would make it easier, but there is nothing more that I want than to see you again.
This is a little gift from me to you, but no expectations are laid on your receipt of it. Whether you agree to see me or not, I want you to have this.
Please call me if you want. I can make arrangements to come see you or for you to see me.
Bess, know this—my heart was on autopilot until I met you, and you made it beat steady and strong again.
~Lane
P.S. The various shapes are for us—you and I are different, but together we work. The yellow is for the bright lemons, their zest only rivaled by your essence.
My eyes stung, my pants leg soaking from where my tears had dripped on it, and my body was hot and cold at the same time. I was sweating, but a fine layer of chilled goose bumps had formed along my arms. Sensing my tension, Brooks whined and stood up, pacing back and forth next to me.
My fingers shook as I took the gift out of the box. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. A heart pendant hung from a white gold chain. I didn’t think it was silver. Not from Tiffany’s.
It was a big heart, framed in white gold and filled with diamonds. Not just little chips of diamonds but diamonds. They were all shapes and sizes, clustered together in a random pattern that only made sense as a whole. Mixed in every few stones was a yellow one. I assumed these were some type of special stone or colored diamond, I didn’t know. But their yellow brilliance sparkled and shone brighter than the clear ones.
The piece took my breath away; I was afraid to pull it out of the box. Tentatively I slid my finger into the box and stroked the piece without removing it, massaging it to life like the letter was doing to my heart.
Then I shut the box, set it on the counter, and went to take a bath.
My emotions were whipping back and forth like a yo-yo, something that was never good for me. When I was in high school and my feelings overwhelmed me, I found alcohol. When the boys took advantage of my body, I found pot and other light mood enhancers. When I got to college and didn’t know who I was, I demanded the harder stuff.
Right now my emotions were in overdrive. My body was still reeling from the effects of AJ’s harsh, cold touch and the warm, gentle stroke of Lane’s tongue. At the same time, my mind spun because I had not one single clue what my life should or could be. The cumulative effect of all this upheaval in my life was very, very bad—bad times one million for me—and I needed to calm myself, not run away or slip into old habits like using drugs or alcohol or men to dull my pain.
I didn’t know how to do this, how to cope with stress. I only knew day-to-day boring, and that was all I could handle.