Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) (9 page)

My eyebrows shot up. No one saw it. Ben was like a freaking hologram, painting ten feet away like he couldn't even hear us. Holly stared straight ahead.

“Ben and Cassidy and Josh,” I repeated, landing on a bar stool next to Holly, forcing her to look at me. “All working together.” I smiled. “How nice.”

“Yep,” Mom said. “Josh had a trailer.”

“Really?” I licked my suddenly dry lips. “Why didn't you call me?”

Mom turned around again. “Because we had enough people.”

“Mmm.” I nodded and tried to let it go at that, but my need to keep going at all costs overcame. “Everything go okay?”

Mom frowned. “Yes, Mommy, she drank all her milk, too.” She turned back around as I gave her a look. “My gosh, and you talk about Kevin being a hoverer.”

“How
is
Kevin?” Ben asked, coming out of silent mode on his way back to the garage. I saw the sarcasm in his face as he spoke his name.

“Kevin's just fine,” said Kevin as he strode through the back door.

“Oh, crap,” I muttered under my breath. I heard Holly snicker next to me.

Ben swung around, the surprise flickering for just a second before he masked it. He offered Kevin his free hand. “Lockwood. Good to see you, man.”

Kevin looked dumbfounded as he put his hand out on autopilot. “Landry.” His eyes went to me as if I'd put Ben there myself. “My God, where'd you come from?” Then he caught sight of the room. “Holy cow.”

Ben let his hand go to grab a rag off a stool. “Just about ran you over with a paint roller. Wasn't expecting anyone to just walk in.”

Kevin chuckled. “Well, you know how it is with family. We don't knock.”

“You're not family anymore,” my mother chimed in from the sink. “Go back to knocking.”

He didn't lose his grin, he was accustomed to her callousness with him. “Frances, good to see you.” He gave me a once-over. “Emily, you're looking nicer than the last time I saw you.”

I looked down at my heels and blouse and snug black pencil skirt, and back up to see Ben's eyes make the same slow trip.

“I'd say you look
really
nice,” Ben said, with such emphasis on the words that my face and ears felt as if they caught fire before he made it back to my eyes.

I didn't know if that'd truly been for my benefit or to piss Kevin off, but he achieved it anyway. Kevin's jaw tightened as he stepped forward. I threw Ben a look that I hoped said to grow up, as Kevin puffed up and turned to Holly by way of what I suppose was neutral ground.

“I wanted to talk to y'all about the house,” he said, pulling up a stool.

My mother turned, knife still in hand. “There's no
y'all
in the equation, Kevin, just me.”

I bit my lip to keep from laughing and I noticed Holly's face kind of came to life to enjoy it, too.

“Well then,” Kevin began, then turned around as if noticing Ben was still there. “Do you mind excusing us for a second?”

Mom tossed the knife in the sink and walked forward wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Ben's fine right where he is,” she said, bringing what only I knew was the hint of a smile to Ben's lips as he painted carefully around the corners of an outlet. “He has a reason to be here. Cass isn't here, so what's yours?”

Kevin gave her a patient smile anyway. “I want to buy your house.”

“I have a couple that might be interested,” I blurted out, raising my hand like I was in middle school. “I'm gonna show it to them next week.”

Mom ignored me. “I'm not selling to you, Kevin,” she said with a pat on his shoulder and a wink. “You're Cassidy's dad and I love you for that, but you aren't getting my house.”

“You don't know my bid.”

She shrugged. “Don't care.”

He tilted his head. “You might.”

“You're a womanizing prick, Kev,” my mom said, causing my jaw to drop. “No.”

Ben even took the silence of the moment to walk outside. I assumed to have a good laugh. Honestly, in my opinion, what he did wasn't that much better.

“You know what?” I said, getting up before Kevin had to try to save face. “I'm gonna go upstairs. Maybe go up in the attic.”

“Dressed like that?” Mom asked, already blowing Kevin off.

“I have a pair of sweatpants in the car.”

I went out through the garage, where Ben was leaning over a five-gallon bucket of paint, stirring it with a flat piece of wood. Next to him on a makeshift table were two other small cans of paint with little wooden stir sticks poking out.

“Why do you do that?” I asked.

“What?” he responded, not looking up.

“Bait him like that,” I said, picking my way carefully around the random tools and pieces of discarded wood on the floor. “Is it on purpose, or does he just bring out the twelve-year-old in you?”

I felt, rather than saw the smile. “Little of both, probably.”

“Why?” I repeated as I got closer, my three-inch heels playing hell with all the power cords.

“Because he's the same condescending asshole now that he was then.”

“And—”

I was about to tell him that I agreed with him and he didn't need to bait Kevin anymore. But then I remembered that there wouldn't be a reason anyway since he'd left me and made all those petty arguments between them go away. The thoughts jumped over each other, distracting me long enough to step on a block of wood that turned under my foot.

“Oh—shi—” I exclaimed as I lurched sideways and the spike of my heel snapped off.

My left hand flailed out for support, met with one of the little stir sticks instead, and flipped it out of the can and across Ben's face. The paint splattered across his left cheek and nose, and slung streaks into my hair as I continued my sideways direction right into his arms.

“Whoa!” he said as I landed hard against him. “Are you okay?”

I gasped and then looked up just inches from his face, suddenly recalling the last time I was held so tightly against his body. I even was acutely aware of where his hands were and one of them was fairly south. Not that that had been by his choice. But then the sight of the paint across his face and in his eyebrows broke the moment and I clamped my lips shut as the laughter shook me.

“I'm—” I laughed again, trying to stop. “I'm so sorry.”

He let go with one hand to wipe a blob off his nose, and while I tried to stem the funny that just kept bubbling up in me, he smeared it along my cheek.

“Oh!” I said, laughing. “Not cool!”

I looked down at my clothes as he set me back on my feet, but he didn't back up for more space. Instead he picked a dripping clump of paint from my hair and smiled slowly, while we were still so close I could feel him breathe. His expression was playful and achingly reminiscent of the old days.

“
Now
you look really good,” he said, slowly backing up and not breaking eye contact with me until he bent to pick up my broken heel.

“Ha-ha,” I said, still chuckling. “Sorry about that.”

He shook his head. “No big deal. Hand me your shoe, I'll fix it while you're here.”

I handed it to him and walked lopsided out of the garage as he laughed and did damage repair on himself. The farther away I got, the more my heart constricted and I could feel the chemistry pulling me back. That had been a moment. Like the ones we used to have when we were best friends and thought the same and talked the same and were falling in love and didn't know it. For that dumb little second in time, there was no tension or secrets or resentment.

But as I tugged the sweatpants out of my backseat, I felt the familiar heaviness seep back in. The oppressing weight that reminded me that it was only me that fell in love back then. It was me that fell for the line and some tears and ended up hurt like I'd never been or would ever be again. Not even when my marriage ended. That left me angry and humiliated, but nothing like the deep hole that Ben left me with.

It was when I was face-to-face with him that it got all blurry. Like no time had passed and we were supposed to be friends. Except that he'd walked away from that.

I headed back through the garage holding my pants and wearing a pair of flip-flops I'd found on the floorboard. He handed me my shoe and set down a bottle of some really strong-smelling glue.

“Let it set good for twenty-four hours, and it should be okay.”

I sniffed it and wrinkled my nose. “Thanks.”

He pushed a piece of hair from my face, the unexpected brush of his fingers against my temple causing me to catch my breath. His eyes met mine as I did that and showed a flicker of something old.

“You were about to get paint in your eyes,” he said softly.

I laughed nervously as his fingers came back goopy, trying to disguise and shut down my reaction to his touch, but he'd already seen it. And to be honest, I was having trouble fighting the pull.

The sound of the back door shutting made me jump, and I turned to see Kevin standing there with another old expression I recognized.

“Jesus, get a room.”

CHAPTER

7

I
GLARED AT HIM. “
G
ROW UP,
K
EVIN.
M
Y
G
OD, WE HAD A LITTLE
paint dilemma here, if you couldn't tell.”

I held my arms wide to demonstrate the Jackson Pollock masterpiece I'd become. Kevin ignored me, narrowing his eyes at Ben, who'd gone back to cleaning himself up.

“If you're gonna hit on my ex-wife, Landry,” he began, and my stomach dropped. “Have the decency to not do it in her mother's garage, with me here.”

“Kevin!” I said, fighting the overwhelming urge to stab him in the eye with the heel of my shoe.

But Ben just laughed. His face was relaxed when I looked, but there was the old game. That thing behind the smile when all would go dark and unreadable in his eyes.

“Lockwood, I've never thought about throwing paint around as foreplay, but maybe you're on to something.” He winked at me and one side of his mouth curved up in his playful way.

I looked at him and just shook my head. “Really?”

“And by the way, when I decide to hit on
your ex-wife
,” he continued in a low voice as Kevin passed us. “You can get a front-row seat for all I care.”

“Okay,” I said, clapping my hands together as I slung my sweatpants over one shoulder. The dick swinging was getting a little over the top, and yet my girly mind honed in on the
when
in Ben's sentence like it was crack. “We need to go in and clean up. Kevin, please go home.”

I looked at him in all his blue-eyed blondness and back at Ben and was reminded of fifty-five million similar altercations at every locker area we'd ever had. Landry, Lattimer, and Lockwood sealed the deal that we would always be together. And it usually looked just like what I was standing in the middle of.

“Kevin,” I repeated, getting his gaze back to me. “Please.”

When he finally got in his glares and left, I turned to Ben.

“Just can't help yourself?”

He looked my way for just long enough. Enough to see the darkness still there. “Guess not.”

“Why?”

It fell out of my mouth before I could think out whether it should. He was on his way to the back door and turned around, a look of disbelief on his face.

“You're seriously asking me that question?”

Suddenly I was seriously confused, for the second go-around. Every time we circled that cage, it felt like we were on different playing fields. He didn't understand what I meant. I didn't understand what he meant. Whatever it was, I couldn't pull anything out of my head to justify the long look he was giving me.

“Let's just go clean up, Em, okay?” he said quietly, reaching for the doorknob.

I followed him in, met by Tandy, who finally crawled out of bed and growled at us.

“Little late, there,” I said to her. “Why didn't you chew on his ankles?”

Holly gasped. “Oh my lord, what did Kevin do to y'all?”

I looked up and laughed, wishing we still had that moment where Ben would be laughing with me, but he had moved back behind the walls. He did smile on the way to the bathroom and splayed his hands.

“I was a bit of a klutz,” I said, holding up my shoe.

“You've got my den in your hair,” my mother said, holding out a piece. “And it's about the same color.”

I huffed at that. “My hair is not taupe.”

“Kind of is,” she replied, nodding.

“It is not!”

“You need highlights,” Holly said quietly, and I felt my mouth fall open.

Ben came back out a few minutes later, most of the paint scrubbed from his face but still some streaks in his hair.

“Ben, don't you think Emily's hair is the same color as the paint?” my mother said, laughing.

I closed my eyes. “Mom, are there any boundaries with you?” I had to laugh anyway. It was too sad if I didn't. When I opened them, he was closer than I thought and looking at me with awe as I laughed. A smile crept upon his lips as if he didn't want it to, and then he gave a micro-shake of his head. Suddenly there was warmth in his eyes again, as if he couldn't hold it back.

He touched the dried paint smear on my face, and I held my breath. “I think as long as she laughs, her hair could be green for all I care.”

He let his finger trail down my cheek and then went back out the door, leaving me stuck in place under the light fixture and right on top of the spot where Holly was evidently conceived.

Holly's eyebrows shot up, Mom pulled out a stool and sat, and both of them stared at me.

“What in holy hell did I miss?” Mom said.

•   •   •

“
S
O, WHAT IS WITH ALL THE POTATOES?”
I
ASKED
H
OLLY AFTER
I'd somehow extricated myself from that conversation—only because Mom realized she didn't have mustard and had to make a run for it. Holly and I hightailed it up to the attic before she decided we needed to run for it with her. “Why does she have five hundred potatoes down there?”

“Something about potato salad for some barbecue stand out on the interstate,” Holly said, as we stood up there and just looked around, overwhelmed. This was after she got everything she wanted. Boxes were everywhere. Old furniture, toys, plastic tubs marked with pieces of masking tape advertising
Holly First Grade
or
Emily Girl Scout Stuff
.

“Of course,” I said.

“I don't know,” she said, “I was still in shock at the time so the words kind of bounced off me.”

“So, are y'all okay now?” I asked, looking at her in the odd light from the tiny dirty window mixed with the two bare bulbs overhead. “I mean about selling the house and all that?”

She shrugged and halfheartedly peeked into a box. “Not much I can do about it. She's just—I don't know. It's like she's throwing everything away.”

“Throwing what away?”

“Us, I guess. Dad.” She looked up and gave a little smile like she knew that was crazy. “I know that sounds stupid, but it feels like that. Like she's stripping away all the things that made this home so she won't miss it.”

I sat on a nearby wooden trunk. “Maybe you're right. Maybe that is what she's doing, but I think there are reasons.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Like?”

“I don't know.” Suddenly I was too worn out to try to analyze my mother's problems. “Maybe it's not all that complicated. Maybe she's just tired, and wants to play for a while.”

Holly laughed at that. “Speaking of playing, what's with you and Ben painting each other?”

“Oh my God,” I groaned, covering my face with my hands.

“And
her hair can be green as long as she laughs
?” Holly nearly squealed. “You can bluff Mom on that maybe, but not me.”

“I don't know, Holly.” I dropped my hands and shook my head. “That's the honest truth.”

“Are you—?” she asked, looking at me with raised eyebrows instead of finishing the sentence.

“No!” I said, giving her a look. “Are you crazy?” I got up from my stool and went to find something to dig into, as just the thought of getting physical with Ben made me sweat. “I'm avoiding him at every turn. Problem is, he's
at
every freaking turn.”

Holly tilted her head. “Looks to me like he still has a thing for you.”

I shook my head. “He's—confusing. I don't know that he ever
did
have a thing for me. That could have all been a lie.”

She made a sarcastic noise. “Actions don't lie, Em. Anyone could see the chemistry y'all had.” She widened her eyes. “Still do.”

I thought of his expression in the garage, his touch on my cheek, and felt goose bumps trickle down my spine. “Half the time he's trying to get me to be like old times, and then the other half it's like he's pissed off at me. At me! I mean, really?”

“Have you talked about it?” she asked, closing a box back up. “About why he left.”

“No. It's the giant walrus we dance around.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.” I saw a bicycle tire poking out around the back of a box, and I started pulling some boxes out of the way. “Probably because I don't want it to lead to Cassidy?”

“That would be the first thing I would've asked,” she said. “Where the hell did your sorry ass go, and why?”

“Well, I'm chickenshit like that,” I muttered as I put my back into a particularly heavy box.

“You avoid confrontation.”

I cut my eyes her direction.

“Okay, Greg.”

She held up her palms. “Whatever, just saying.”

“Look over here,” I said, pulling the bike out.

It was a blue and purple English Racer with white stripes, and a glittery purple seat.

“Oh, my—I can't believe it,” she said, her face breaking into a huge grin. “My bike! Wow, I can't believe it's still up here.” She looked around. “Is yours here, too?”

I sighed. “No, I sold mine to Tina Blake, remember? For money to go to the festival.”

Holly laughed. “Oh, yeah. And then she moved or something? God, they were so pissed off at you.”

I shrugged. “Oh, well, I was an entrepreneur.”

“You came by it honestly,” she said, a strong hint of sarcasm lacing her voice. “Oh, look.” She pointed at three hand-painted stars along the main bar, with the words
Love, Daddy
, and smiled in memory. “Daddy painted these on here just for me. Our three favorite stars from Orion's Belt.”

“I remember that,” I said.

She looked back up at me, her eyes a little misty. “Daddy may have not taken Mom on the trips they wanted, but he was there for us. He was there for what mattered. Making the memories in this house.”

I nodded, but not so much to agree with Holly, but for something to do to disguise whatever I looked like when the past decided to suck me backward. Because the ringing, the sound of air rushing by, the tightening of my chest as the blackness closed in—all that was happening. Again.

•   •   •

I
TRIED TO FOCUS ON
H
OLLY, ON FINDING A PLACE TO SIT SO
I
didn't fall over—although I never had before. I tried not to flail around as everything went dark, thinking I probably
had
done that before.

“Emily?” I could hear Holly saying. “You okay? You look—” I never got to hear how I looked because I blinked my vision free to see a much emptier attic.

I stood next to a support beam, wondering why I was there. I'd come to realize that each of my traipses backward had some sort of purpose, even if I didn't understand it yet. And each time, I stayed in the room—even the very spot I stood in. I couldn't imagine what could have happened in the attic that I needed to see.

Oddly enough, I was calm. I didn't know why. It still wasn't normal, but maybe since I'd been there and done that a few times, I had a fairly good feeling that I wasn't going to die.

There was no one there. Just me and the dust and much fewer boxes than what would be there decades later. As I turned in my customary circle of allowed movement, I saw Holly's bike. I chuckled as I looked upon the shiny bright and perfect purple-and-blue spectacle, and realized Holly's fourteenth birthday must have been close.

The familiar sound of clomping footsteps reached my ears, and I sat down cross-legged to await whomever was coming up the creaky pull-down stairway.

My mom's head poked up first, her blonde curls tied up in a silver scarf that glittered in the light when she pulled the chain at the top of the stairs. Behind her was my Uncle Tommy.

“What on earth could this be?” I whispered, and then shook my head at myself. Just once, I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs at someone to see if they would hear me. I didn't know what I'd do if they did, but it would be cool to try.

Tommy looked so young, I noticed. Younger and healthier than I'd ever remembered. He didn't have the sweaty, creepy look with the dark circles under his eyes that I always associated with him.

He lugged a large box in front of him. “I appreciate this, Frannie,” he said with some effort. “I promise it's just till I get my feet under me again and get a new place. I'll come get all this stuff.” He set down the box with a thud as my mom watched with her hands on her hips.

“I know,” she said, her voice quiet, like it wasn't the first rodeo. Knowing how many times Uncle Tommy was evicted or kicked out of wherever he was lucky enough to land for a while, it probably wasn't. “How many more boxes do you have in your truck?”

“Five or six.”

My mom just nodded. “Okay, let's go.” She glanced around the dark walls. “We can slide them up against the sides here so they'll be easy for you to find.”

“Thank you,” he said again, putting a hand on her arm. “You know how he gets about stuff like this, I just didn't want to sit through another lecture—”

“Another lecture?” Mom said. “Tommy, he has the right to get pissed.”

Uncle Tommy sighed and visibly deflated. “I know.”

“Do you?” Mom asked. “You say that, but you keep doing this anyway. Throwing money at blinking lights like it'll reproduce, and expecting everyone to float you when it doesn't.”

“Frannie, the economy is bad right now, I'm just trying to get us some more capital for inventory.”

My mom's face screwed up. “Capital for inventory? Tommy, the capital comes from sales, not a roulette wheel. When there are no sales, you don't buy more.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, looking away.

“No, it's not okay,” she said. “Not anymore.” She leaned over so he had to look at her. “This isn't a game. It's your dream, yours and Charles's. It's our livelihood, or it was supposed to be. It was supposed to feed our family, but lately it's only been feeding your bookies.”