Levi
She finished her tale, and I stared at her chin, quivering for control of her emotions. She was stronger than she knew, if she’d closed herself off enough to seal her lips and lock away her words for years.
“I was six years old,” she said. “That’s when I finally broke. It was my mother who helped me.”
I shifted on her thigh, my brows pinching. “You just said your mother frightened you into silence.”
“My mother abandoned me. Emily adopted me. She’s the only mother I’ve ever known.”
“Emily’s perfect.” It was said perfunctory, not sarcastically. Emily Carter was wife to one Jess Carter, a well-known, well-respected man in Elk Rapids. His history came to me with Katie’s words, and more memories of her as a child returned. She was the little blonde beauty racing around with others from the Carter brood, until one day, she no longer appeared like a child. Too much drink blurred my judgment then, as it blinded me now.
“She is, but it still doesn’t mean I don’t want to know why my mother left me.” She was reflective a moment, lost in her memories.
“I have blurred memories of what she looked like. I’m told I look like her, but my family hates the comparison. Even though I have my father’s blue eyes and his straw-blonde hair. He stares at me sometimes, knowing that it’s true. I do look like her with only hints of him. He doesn’t like the reminder, but I know he loves me unconditionally.”
“Unconditionally,” she repeated with a mutter as her eyes pierced mine. “How can any parent do such a thing as leave a child?”
“I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t really think I could give AJ away.”
She stared at me thoughtfully for a long moment. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again,” she admonished, a rush of emotion stealing from her lips with the warning. I nodded like a petulant child understanding his punishment. Her lake-colored eyes watered, threatening to drown me with her pain. “I’m sorry,” I said, but she ignored me, lost to her thoughts of abandonment. I should have shared my story. The one where my mother left me at age three. Tired of her drunk husband taking out his sorry life on her, she walked out. One day her closet was empty, her car gone. When she said good-bye to me that morning, she meant forever.
Instead, I turned my head and pressed my face into Katie’s lower abdomen. The comfort of her fingers crawling over my scalp soothed me. I should have also told her the real reason for my emotions on this day, but I didn’t wish to recall in words what haunted my mind. I honored this day each year by drinking heavily in hopes of paying homage and forgetting what happened. My eyes closed as I rubbed my nose just below her waist. My fingers were thick, weighed down by the amount of alcohol I had consumed, but I wasn’t drunk enough to not be aware of my intentions. I needed to get closer to Katie on a different level. Lifting the hem of her sweater, I pressed upward on my shoulder to kiss the warm skin of her belly. Her breath hitched as it had the night at the museum, and I took that sound as approval of my attention.
My mouth opened and sucked at the skin of her waistline before nudging upward. Shifting to my elbow crossed over her thighs, my position heightened me enough to raise her sweater and press kisses below the pink satin of her bra. My hand pressed upward, wandering under the heavy material and covering the softer fabric with my palm. My name ground out of Katie, creeping from the back of her throat in both warning and encouragement. As my heavy hand worked over the smooth satin, my fingers dipped into the cup of her bra and pinched her already peaked nipple. I hitched myself to a fully seated position, facing Katie awkwardly as she sat pressed to the wall under my bay window. My hand still kneaded the heavy globe within my grasp while my other hand covered her cheek and pulled her mouth to me.
Hungry and hurried, I captured her lips, drawing them deep between mine, latching on to her as if I were I man starved. The connection was what I needed—to lose myself in someone else other than me on this day. Katie whimpered at the roughness of my mouth over hers, but I selfishly ignored her as she didn’t stop me. Her sweet lips molded to the heat of mine, melting against me. My fingers dug deeper at the weight of her breast and I tugged the cup down to allow me full exposure. Dipping my head, I dragged the round form into my mouth, lapping and sucking with greed. Her hands returned to the back of my head, tenderly scratching, holding me to her.
Hastily, I freed one breast to pay homage to the other, latching on tight enough to leave a mark from sucking or to scratch the skin with my growing scruff. Katie didn’t seem to mind as her soft moans filled my ears, drowning out other sounds in my head. I needed this, I reminded myself. I needed her. Releasing her softly, a popping noise followed, and I sat up to take her eager mouth again. My fingers returned to tweaking those nubby peaks while my tongue traced the hill of her top lip and curled the valley of the bottom before plowing ahead. Her tongue met mine with equal force, spurring me on to take what I wanted. My fingers slipped to the waist of her jeans, and AJ cried.
Neither of us moved for a moment, our mouths frozen to one another. Slowly, she pulled back and her eyes drifted down her body. She tugged at her sweater, righting her breasts under the material. Her hands moved methodically, her eyes avoiding mine.
“I’ll get him,” she offered, shifting her legs to move.
“No,” I barked, fiercer than I intended. “I owe my son an apology.” I stood and then remembered I was wearing shorts. My head swung to Katie as her eyes drifted to my leg. She didn’t want to look but she couldn’t help herself. Her eye was drawn to it as so many were. Everyone wanted to ask, the inevitable question on the tip of their tongue: what happened? Out of sympathetic politeness or an awkward sense of how improper it would be to inquire, they fought the words and struggled to keep their gaze from shifting.
Katie, however, didn’t bother to remove her eyes. She blatantly gawked as I rose, my knee locking for a moment, my leg outstretched with its awkward-looking plastic parts. It looked “normal” in the physical sense, but a camo wrap over the metal joint hinted at the mechanics of something other than flesh and bone. My foot clanked as I stood and I walked with a limp she would notice from now on and never question. Katie stared, but she didn’t ask. Her eyes expectant, she waited for me to offer the truth, but with the cry of AJ, I didn’t have time to explain a memory more painful than the abandonment of a parent.
* * *
I comforted AJ, changing his diaper and cooing words filled with apology in his tiny ear. I begged him to forgive thoughts he couldn’t understand. I kissed his forehead and his hair and held him close to me. Sometimes, dark, disturbing ideas flicked through my head, and I needed to fight the inclination, the haunting notions. Inhaling sharply and holding my breath, I breathed in AJ’s baby scent, wanting the fragrance of him to fill me. I would draw strength from his life to heal mine, I scolded myself.
The crack of a floorboard behind me spun me.
“You’re still here?” I asked surprised, the hurt on her face immediate.
She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. “I…”
I should leave, I imagined her saying. I want you to stay, struggled behind my teeth for release.
“I need to get to work.” Her head lowered, as if hesitant to say more, but wanting to speak. I twisted my head to peer out AJ’s window. I had something I needed to share.
“AJ’s been diagnosed with acute hearing loss. It’s why he wears the hearing aids. He’ll need surgery one day for cochlear implants. I have no idea if he can hear my apology, but one day, one day I’ll tell him a million times how sorry I am.”
I turned to face Katie, uncertain why I needed her to hear me. In a way, I wanted her to know how sorry I was for what I’d said, although I didn’t feel I needed to apologize to her directly.
“I could help you.” She spoke quietly, her eyes shifting to the floor, nervous for some reason about her offer.
“I don’t need your help,” I snapped, harsher than I intended, but harsh enough that it pleased me. I didn’t mean to lash out at her, but her naïve ideas that she could help my son in any way irritated me.
“Is this why you’re upset today?” My eyes opened wide. My upset, as she casually called it, had everything to do with this date and nothing to do with the diagnosis of my son. Suddenly edgy again, I wanted to be alone.
“Why are you here?” My brows pinched, confusion muddling the last light of my thoughts. Darkness wanted to settle in again. If I’d struck her, the pain on her face might have been less than the hurt in her eyes.
“You called me.” I flinched in recollection. Images of pressing a contact on my phone occurred in my memory. Was my intention to call Katie? My head told me no, while my heart seemed to have a mind of its own. I think I intended to call Alicia, but I couldn’t remember. I don’t know why I’d call anyone on this day. It was a day I kept to myself, to wallow on my own.
“You sounded like you needed a friend,” she added tenderly, her tone full of hurt like her expression, but attempting to suppress her pain. She’d exchange hers for mine, I could see it in her face. The way she looked at me like she’d take all my secrets, if I’d only let her. We seemed to come to an impasse as our eyes held each other, and my heart beat in my throat. I wondered if it could really be that simple. Could I even be a friend where the real benefit was friendship?
“I don’t,” I lied to myself. Staring at the freckles smattered over her nose and under her eyes, the innocence of her face reminding me, she was younger than me. A friend was all Katie Carter should be, and I broke our wordless conversation first by looking away. But my heart hollered in rebellion, shouting that there was more than one benefit to Katie, and instead, I should be running toward her.