Stronger (17 page)
Authors: Misty Provencher
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Fuck the no-change-for-a-year idea.
Getting divorced, or at least filing the papers, is a lot like when I lost my virginity. I feel different, but I look the same. I come down from the courthouse steps, elated and giddy--shit, I'm never
giddy
--and when Aidan takes my hand with a smile, we tromp down the steps as if we just eloped. We walk a block or two, swinging hands.
"Can you tell me about him now?" Aidan asks. I don't give it much thought. I'm still high from signing my name to the legal documents.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything," he says. I laugh.
"It's a long story."
"The Christmas tree lot is a million blocks away," he coaxes. "We'll stop for hot chocolate if you need more time to tell it all."
"Alright." I grin. "I met him when I was fourteen. I dropped out of high school and we moved around wherever Des thought there would be work. We got married the minute I turned sixteen."
"What about your family? Didn't your parents have a fit?"
"No," I say. "My father was long gone. My mom was a single parent bringing in minimum wage. No matter how hard she tried, she could never make ends meet with my sister and me weighing her down. She wasn't crazy about Des, but she thought he'd take better care of me than she could." The radiance of a moment ago is only dulled a tiny bit by the admission. I've had years to wall out the way my mother was relieved for me to be Desmond's mouth to feed instead of hers.
Aidan doesn't give me the tragic face I expect, the one that made me stop telling people my history years ago. It's why I keep on with his questioning.
"You never finished school?"
"No."
"But I thought you're a designer?"
He's so naive. I flash him a pitying grin.
"Desmond married another woman. A rich one," I say. I take a deep breath. This is really a do-or-die moment. Telling him everything could end what we have, but I know that we can't go any further unless he knows my truths. I take his hand. "Des wouldn't divorce me, but he didn't want to struggle to live anymore. He married Claudia for her money. He knew I didn't have any skills to earn a living, so he hires me as their designer. He has contractors do the work he drums up and pays me a bullshit consultation fee." I gulp before I tell him the raw truth. "It's all a scam. It's awful and I never wanted to be part of it, but when he left, I had no other way to survive."
"So if you filed on your own, that's the end of the money," Aidan's voice trails off. I'm sure he's in shock. All I can do is nod. "And his other wife is going to find out."
"Yes."
"You could go to jail over this."
"I know."
Then he asks something I don't expect.
"Why now?" he says. "What changed?"
"
I
did." I wipe at the tiny sting in my nose that doesn't come from the rush of winter wind battering us on the sidewalk. "And I just realized that Des changed too. Probably a lot longer ago than I think."
"I don't understand why you would keep going back when he was beating you," Aidan says. "He
was
beating you, wasn't he?"
"Not like you're thinking," I say. The heat of a blush scales my neck and makes the wind burn twice as harsh on my cheeks. My eyes scramble away from his. "Desmond has always been a little kinky, but it's gotten worse in the past few years."
"Beating is beating, Lydia, and if he's doing it under the guise of sex, than he's a really sick bastard."
"Maybe."
"Not maybe," he says, tugging me to a halt. Aidan catches my gaze and his is too intense for me to break away from it. "Definitely."
The blush turns my cheeks into a stove top.
"You don't agree?" he asks. The simmer of his tone makes me uneasy.
"At first I didn't like it, but..."
"What does he do to you?" His brows steeple. "I know about the mirror, but what else does he do to you?"
I shrug. The words don't come out. Desmond and I have such a huge history together that talking like this makes me feel disloyal. It doesn't matter that Des has done me wrong in about a dozen different ways--it's not something that I want to discuss with Aidan. What can come of it but another judgment?
What I want is for Des's injustices to boil inside my skin, so I can throw them on Des like hot oil when I need to. And I'm going to need to, when Claudia finds out.
"Alright, we'll talk about this another time," Aidan says when I don't answer. He takes my hand, pointing up the street. "Right now, we need to get you a Christmas tree."
<<<<>>>>
"This won't hold more than a couple of your ornaments," Aidan complains.
"I don't care."
"But you can get a real tree!" He steps back, doing his best showcase hands, with his bulky man hands, in front of a Douglas Fir.
"I didn't want
any
tree."
"Well," he grins, "then this one is perfect."
"That's what I thought."
He insists on buying the tree, since I didn't want it anyway. We leave the lot and head for our apartment house, the tiny tree over one of Aidan's shoulders. The breeze of passing cars charges up the sidewalk and makes us both curl into our coats a little more.
We pass a convenience store and when I glance up at it, all that pops out are the liquor ads, adhered to the window. I look away quickly. Aidan makes a soft, understanding grunt.
"Makes you feel guilty to even look, doesn't it?" Aidan asks. A tinge of heat warms my face as the embarrassment shrinks my laugh.
"Yeah," I say.
"I know," he says. That's all he needs to say. We are both people who can't walk past a liquor store without feeling as if the neon signs are illuminating our shame. We are people that walk by, fantasizing about locking ourselves inside. I don't need to tell him that the desire burns my throat like a desert thirst. Aidan takes my hand with his free one.
"Is it ever going to get easier?" I croak. My voice is parched.
"Yes," he says, squeezing my knuckles.
"I hope you're right."
"I am," he says. I cling to the words, as I squeeze his fingers back.
<<<<>>>>
We eat take out and we take barf-free showers together and we talk about Christmas. We attend meetings at night and I listen sometimes. But, almost every other second of my life, I'm thinking of how much more perfect this would all be with a sip of some cognac or a glass of red or even a gulp of a foamy beer. I'm still too ashamed to admit any of it when we share struggles around the meeting tables.
"What are you thinking of?" Aidan asks one night. We just got out of the shower and even though he's already wearing a t-shirt and some plaid pajama bottoms, I sit on the edge of the bed, naked, squeezing the water out of my dreads. I guess I was staring into space too long again. Or he's checking to make sure I'm not silently stroking out. I still tip my head up at him with a blush at being caught, as if my face is a movie screen, playing my guilty thoughts. He stands in front of me, tracing my collar bone with a light finger. "You can tell me anything, you know."
I pause, biting my tongue against telling him the truth, but this is Aidan. If anyone understands what I'm thinking, it's him.
"I was thinking about drinking." I frown.
"That's what I thought," he says with a faint smile.
"I can't stop thinking about it."
"It seemed like those thoughts would never end for me either," he says, "but they did."
"What am I supposed to do until then?" I say as he squats down before me. "I think I'm going insane."
"You're not," he says, his finger running up my neck to my lips. He smoothes his thumb over my bottom lip and wipes the errant tear that streams a single path down my cheek. He smiles up at me. "What helped me was to think of something better."
"I can't." A bubble expands in my chest, sucking up my air. It forces out more tears. Aidan slides his hand beneath my ear, his thumb fluttering over my cheekbone, disturbing the path of a second tear.
"Christmas presents," he whispers.
"I...don't...care...about...that..." The sob I'm holding in crimps each word. Aidan's touch remains constant, smoothing over my cheek.
"No, no," he admonishes softly. "Just close your eyes and listen to what I'm saying. We're going to go Christmas shopping together, Lydia. We're going to buy Christmas stockings to hang on the wall and we're going to get something for our crazy neighbor. Maybe we'll get Mrs. Lowt a naughty fireman calendar. Or a good pair of binoculars, so she can spy on the apartment house across the street."
I laugh at that, but I'm still gasping in tiny, hiccupping breaths. Aidan's voice remains mellow, soft.
"When we're tired of shopping, you'll make me carry all the bags. We'll still stop at a few shops, even though you said you were done. We'll walk around downtown and look at all the lights. I'll get us hot chocolate and if there are carolers singing for money, I'll pay them to sing
Baby, It's Cold Outside
. And I'll kiss you as they're singing. People will stop and smile at us. Afterward, I'll take you to dinner at Rinaldi's and I'll feed you ravioli across the table. It will be so sexy, all the tables around us will start whispering and they'll eventually kick us out for public indecency."
I blink, swallow. My lungs fill all the way to the bottom and I exhale one long, smooth breath.
"There," he says. He leans in, planting a soft kiss on my forehead. "Better?"
"Thank you," I say. I mean it in deeper, heavier, and more meaningful ways than I can express it.
"I told you there were better things to think about," he says with a grin.
<<<<>>>>
I choke down the eggs Aidan insists I eat for breakfast and leave him in my apartment so I can head down to Jan's salon.
"I want to get my dreads out," I tell Jan the second I'm sitting in his chair. His lips slant to the side of his cheek.
"You sure about this? You've got some of the best dreads around."
"I need a change," I say. Then, after darting a cautious look around the room, I whisper, "I
filed
."
"Filed, filed?" Jan says.
I nod, catching my bottom lip in my teeth as I smile.
"Well, alright then," he says, reaching for a comb. "Change it is! There's no way I'm cutting them out, though. You better have some juicy gossip about that neighbor of yours, because this is going to take a while and taking out all the snarls is going to hurt."
<<<<>>>>
"Wow," he whispers. There's no smile accompanying it; there's no excited incline to the word. I try not to scowl. Aidan reaches out and takes some of my hair in his hand. "I thought it was going to be short."
He lets the strands slip through his fingers, so they spill over my shoulders. He picks them up again, his focus intense and gentle, all at once, as he lets the hair slide over his palms.
Oh.
He's mesmerized
.
I smile so hard, my ears pull back with it, as if they're trying to give my joy more room.
"The real me," I say. His gaze slams into mine. I blink at the impact.
"I love it," he says. Since Des left, I've made a point to never allow the praise of men to feed me, but Aidan's compliment is so genuine that it warms my stomach more than a shot of tequila. He gives me his elbow like a gentleman from the 50's. "You ready to go Christmas shopping?"
I'm ready to go anywhere he wants to take me. We take the bus down to the sprawling, outdoor mall and enter the thrall of Christmas chaos. There are carols playing from shops, the smell of sweets, the colorful splashes of scarves and the constant rustle of shopping bags as people bustle by us.