Whiskey at Midnight, page 15
“Don’t tell Mom about your assistants, get money.” Wren takes a sip of her drink and lights a cigarette. It’s pure coincidence that she blows toward his face, of course.
“I heard you have more incentive now,” he says, looking at the bracelet.
Wren doesn’t answer. She tries not to look at the bracelet and gulps down most of her drink, willing it to start working soon.
“You don’t have to worry about all that anymore. I’ll still send the money,” Roy says and looks down at his perfectly manicured nails. He has bags under his eyes. The fake tan he keeps all year long isn’t as grotesque anymore, like he’s trying to look more human. He plucks at one of his shirt sleeves, a movement that he would consider showing weakness.
The table looks freshly polished. The cabinets that go around the room have decorative plates on top. Plates with nature scenes on them that Lily has collected over the years. Fragile Lily who is probably upstairs in bed, reading or asleep.
“You want out now, but you don’t want to be the one to light the match,” Wren says.
Roy smiles. His eyes still look worried. “I think we have a new understanding.” He gets up, grabs his phone, and starts for the stairs. “There’s more vodka in the cabinet by the sink.”
Wren has two more drinks before going back to her bedroom. Everything feels fuzzy. She rips the pictures that have been tacked onto her bedroom walls down. Some of them are of friends from high school, people who never really knew her, people who she hasn’t spoken to since graduation. Others are pictures from around town, pictures that Wren took when she first got a personal camera. There’s the playground swings, one of them drooping more than the other from overuse. There’s the front of the high school, the parking lot empty. She leaves them all on the floor. The only picture she leaves on the wall is of her and her mother, back when Wren was twelve and her mother was writing poems of her own. They’re both happy. Their smiles are wide, their eyes almost closed from the bright sun.
Wren strips down until she’s nude and crawls into the bed, leaving her phone on the nightstand. She could send a message to Emma. She’d answer either immediately or as soon as she wakes up. There’s nothing to say though. And that’s always the problem.
Before sleep overtakes her, Wren pulls the bracelet off her wrist, reels backward from the force of it all, and shoves it down into the bottom of one of her bags.
They celebrate Christmas like the family they once were. Lily makes coffee early in the morning, keeps it hot so that when Wren finally trudges downstairs she can enjoy it. They don’t have stockings, haven’t done that since Wren was a little girl who still got excited about coloring books and chocolate bars. But there are cookies with icing on them, shaped like snowmen and reindeer. Wren eats them for breakfast with her coffee. She has to go back upstairs to get the gifts for her parents.
For the second time since Wren got home, Lily apologizes for not putting up a tree. “We don’t normally put one up anymore and I didn’t know you were coming.” Wren kisses her on the cheek in response.
There has been time to buy a tree. Time to buy it and decorate it over eggnog, but Wren never brought it up. Christmas trees smell funny anyway and her mother would have insisted on a real one.
There’s something deeply strange about wearing a tanktop and shorts on Christmas, but the weather is warm enough to warrant it. Wren’s mother wears a pastel shirt and capris and Roy wears a Hawaiian shirt so that Wren fits in after all. Though Lily’s eyes keep drifting down to Wren’s wrist, she doesn’t ask about the missing bracelet.
Wren’s mother tears up when she opens up her gift. She wipes at her eyes, bringing more attention to it, and holds them up for Roy to inspect. “Oh, I know exactly where I’ll put them. Thank you, Wren.” And then Wren is getting kissed on the cheek and some of the tears fall there.
“Oh, look, a tie,” Roy says. He raises his eyebrows at Wren.
“It’s so pretty!” Lily exclaims. “That’s so nice of you, sweetheart.”
Roy hands Wren an envelope. “Consider this a bonus,” he says quietly. It’s one of the more normal interactions that day and it makes Wren genuinely laugh.
Her mother gives her an anthology of English poetry. The spine is already cracked. “I’m glad I got behind and didn’t send it off to your apartment,” says Lily.
Wren drinks another cup of coffee while Roy hands each of them an orange. This part makes Wren roll her eyes. The orange, Roy says every Christmas, is meant to remind them all of the small things in life that are good. It’s always felt disgusting, eating an orange in such an extravagant house. Before Wren understood that Roy had hired someone to build the house just before they moved in, she imagined ghosts who lived there for hundreds of years. Ghosts who mocked them for eating a goddamn orange while Roy’s freshly washed sports car sits in the driveway.
Lily insists on singing Christmas carols, just like when Wren was ten years old and thought she had a good singing voice. Roy sings in a deep voice, his mouth opening wide with each syllable. Wren’s mother has a high voice, the kind of voice that might lead a small church choir. It’s not great, but it works well enough. Wren makes it through three songs before she excuses herself to the bathroom and sneaks upstairs to her phone.
She sends a quick message to Emma, wishing her a Merry Christmas. She places the phone back on the bed, above the covers, and goes back downstairs. She doesn’t expect a response anytime soon, not while Cam is there.
On her last day at home, Wren helps her mother outside. She kneels next to Lily and pulls at weeds until her fingers are sore and dirt is caked under her nails. The windchimes are up and the slight breeze causes them to emit high, short notes. Lily smiles whenever the wind blows a little harder. Roy pulls up as they are finishing. Wren’s mother wipes her hands on her old pants and Wren grabs a dirty rag for the same purpose. Roy gives Wren the same nod he’s given her the last few days. A nod that says, come on, you can do it, just end it already.
Wren rearranges her clothes that night. She takes each article of clothing out and puts them back in. When she comes across the bracelet, she holds it for a moment. It’s light, much lighter than it felt on her wrist at the kitchen table. She puts it back in the bag, on top of some clothes.
Ellie’s supposed to take Wren to the airport late in the morning. The Mathis family drink coffee together. Lily eats a bagel without any coaxing from Wren but then turns around and tells Wren that she should eat one herself. Wren eats a few bites and then sets the bagel down.
“I can’t eat anymore,” she says. “It’ll make my stomach feel weird on the plane.”
Roy watches Wren intently the entire time.
Ellie arrives thirty minutes before they have to leave for the airport. She’s chipper, asking how everyone’s holiday was, complimenting the flowers outside, probably for the umpteenth time.
“Don’t you have a camera somewhere?” Wren asks Roy.
“In my office.”
“Can you get it? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a family photo before I leave again? I’m sure Ellie won’t mind taking it for us.” Wren smiles sweetly.
Everything is silent in the kitchen for a moment. Ellie breaks the silence, gushing that she would absolutely love to help out. Roy is slow to respond, but rises from his seat to go get the camera.
When Lily smiles her upper gums show. Her cheekbones seem severe when she does it. She hasn’t smiled like that in some time, but Wren mimics it in front of the camera and places her arm protectively around her mother. Roy stands behind them.
“This looks terrific,” Ellie says. “I’m going to get a few more, just in case.”
On the third picture, Lily squeezes Wren’s torso.
“I’m trying not to get teary,” Lily says.
Outside, Wren holds onto her two bags on the front porch, shifting weight from foot to foot. Lily hasn’t looked so healthy in years. She wipes her tears away hastily and pulls Wren into a tight hug.
“Don’t wait so long to come back,” she whispers into Wren’s ear. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I can’t bear to actually watch you leave,” Lily says and goes back inside.
It leaves Roy in front of Wren and Ellie behind her, waiting against her little red sedan. In the past, Roy has said quick goodbyes. Sometimes because he has to run off to work, sometimes because he’s just no good at saying goodbye. But now, in front of Wren, he looks as scared as she’s ever seen him. His eyes begin to water. He doesn’t let any tears fall. His lip quivers.
“Looks like you’re staying,” Wren says. “I’ll see you around.”
Ellie is chatty in the car. When Wren doesn’t answer her questions in more than one or two words, Ellie begins telling Wren about her Christmas. She had the great fortune of spending Christmas afternoon by the pool, and if that’s not the greatest thing ever, Ellie doesn’t know what is. Wren tunes her out for the most part. Her phone sits in her pocket with no messages.
The coward is stuck. He’ll never get the nerve to leave himself. Wren smiles.
Wren doesn’t get a chance to call a cab when she lands. Emma is waiting outside on the sidewalk. Her shoulders are hunched and her hair falls into her eyes. Before Emma can spot her, Wren sets one of her bags down and searches it until she finds the bracelet and a jacket. She throws both on and picks the bag up again, right as Emma sees her. Emma doesn’t smile.
“Hey,” Wren says. She doesn’t move toward Emma. The body language says it all. There are no alarm bells, no anger, just cool resignation. Wren adjusts her bags. “Where are you parked?”
Things are too quiet in the car at first. Emma drives with her hands positioned at ten and two, her knuckles white from her grip. They’re almost to Wren’s when Emma speaks. “I fucked up.”
“I know.”
They don’t speak again until they’re at Wren’s and Emma asks to come upstairs. They go into the apartment, through the living room, straight to Wren’s bedroom. Wren doesn’t unpack. She tosses the bags near the closet for later. Wren walks around the room, inspects the walls and floor. Nothing has moved. It’s the recovery period, adjusting back to real life.
Emma stands inside the bedroom with her arms crossed over her chest. Her facial expression is similar to Roy’s before Wren left. Wren likes Emma a lot more than Roy, so she sits on the bed and pats the spot next to her. Emma sits like she’s expecting a needle to be hidden there, just sharp enough to prick her.
“I didn’t fuck her,” Emma whispers. “She was crying and upset and I don’t know, I kissed her.”
“Okay,” says Wren.
They sit in silence again. Wren doesn’t mind. She’s spent a good portion of her life in the kind of quiet that would drive most people mad. Maybe that’s what finally got to her mother.
Wren looks at all the pictures on the wall. At some point between high school and college she stopped taking so many pictures of people and started concentrating on nature and buildings. Those things tend to outlast people, so maybe it wasn’t such a strange move, after all.
Emma’s hands shake and she brings them together to try to hide it. Wren has seen Emma act like this before, back when Cam would hold Emma’s hand underneath the table, back when their date ended in disaster. The betrayal Emma thought she carried out against Cam when she started sleeping with Wren looks like nothing in hindsight. Because the Emma next to Wren now looks more broken and scared than any Emma she’s ever seen before.
“What do you want now?” Wren asks.
It’s impossible to ask the question without thinking back to the bathroom at the bar. There will be more times that Wren has to ask Emma the same question. It’s the nature of what they’re doing. Because Emma will tell every little detail of her day, if she stubbed her toe or mispronounced a word, but she won’t tell Wren the answer of this question until Wren asks. Maybe one day the bathroom won’t be the first thing Wren thinks of because there will be too many places to think about, places that she’s asked this question.
Emma looks around, trying to find the answer somewhere on the wall or in Wren’s hair. Emma takes a long time to answer, minutes at least, long enough for Wren to smoke half a cigarette, which means Emma and Cam have talked and whatever Cam said has made the question harder to answer. Wren scratches at the skin beneath the bracelet.
“I’m with you,” Emma finally says.
“But what do you want?” Wren says.
Emma flinches, searches the room again. When she makes eye contact with Wren, her eyes fill up with tears.
It shouldn’t really be like this, Wren knows. Wren shouldn’t be the one to demand hard answers. She should be fucking Emma right now, taking what she can get until it’s too late. Because Emma might have gotten Wren a Christmas present, but it takes more than that and Cam will always be around.
“You,” Emma whispers, her voice strained.
It doesn’t matter that she can’t say the full sentence anymore, that it feels more like a defeat than a victory. Wren stubs her cigarette out and kisses Emma even though the tears flow harder. Emma doesn’t cry quietly, not like all of those times in the shower that Wren ignored.
Despite it all, Emma moans when Wren licks a nipple or nibbles at her throat. She grabs onto Wren’s hand when Wren is taking too long and guides it to her cunt. Wren can take a hint. It’s one of the few things she’s good at. So she fucks Emma with quick, harsh strokes that cause Emma to hiss between sobs. Minutes after Emma’s back arches off the bed, she whispers “thank you” into the air. Wren doesn’t respond.
Nothing is normal after. Cam wears a bracelet that looks exactly like one that Wren has. Cam’s also coming out more, without Mark. She never mentions him. He must have said something about college campuses being perfectly safe for young women. After the third night of going out and seeing Cam, Wren takes off her bracelet with the black beads and puts it into a drawer to be forgotten.
Cam and Emma dance, as friends, Emma says. Wren spends time with Taylor. Reese has always been more talkative, more willing to tell Wren something of herself. Taylor compliments Wren on her new bracelet, holds onto Wren’s hand while she looks at it. When she asks where Wren got it and Wren says Emma’s name, she doesn’t give Wren a meaningful look or say that it was so nice of Emma. She just says cool and goes about her business. That cements in Wren’s mind that Taylor is the perfect person to spend time with at the bar now.
Taylor still blushes when Reese says a flirty comment and tries to look at Reese’s ass when Reese is bending over, but the nervousness she used to show before is gone. She’s no longer afraid to get caught and that makes Wren smile.
They spend New Year’s at the bar. Wren ignores the extra bartender for the night, the same guy from Halloween, and only orders from Reese or Taylor. Steve wears large glasses that light up and a cheap headband with fuzzy balls sticking up on each side. The hostess is there. Victoria is her name, Wren finally remembers.
“Shots at midnight,” Steve keeps reminding Wren.
“Don’t you have someone to kiss then?” Wren asks.
Steve shrugs. “I’ll find a way to do both. Smoke?”
Cam and Emma are deep in conversation. Emma is probably expressing distress about student teaching again. They don’t notice when Steve and Wren slip away. Victoria is in the bathroom.
“What the fuck is going on?” Steve asks as soon as his cigarette, borrowed from Wren, is lit.
“What?”
Steve shakes his head, causing the fuzz balls to move side to side violently. He exhales slowly. “Paradise is troubled. You’re hanging out with Taylor all the time here. Emma is like a kitten and Cam is a bowl of milk. What the fuck? Is Cam tugging her around again or what?”
Wren pulls her jacket closer around herself. She watches as a guy outside lifts up his date and twirls her around. Miraculously, though they wobble, he doesn’t drop her. Steve snaps his fingers to get her attention again. “They kissed on Christmas,” Wren says.
“God, it’s like pulling teeth. And?”
“And that’s it. They kissed. They’re friends again. Emma comes home with me. It’s the same as it’s always been.” Wren glares at Steve.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t that way for a little while,” says Steve.
“Doesn’t matter,” Wren mutters. “You ready to go back inside?”
Steve hasn’t smoked all of his cigarette, but puts it out anyway. “Yeah, if you’re not going to be a mopey cunt.”
That makes Wren smile. She punches him in the arm and follows him back inside. Victoria doesn’t give her a look that says she’d stab Wren if she had a knife handy. In fact, she smiles at Wren. So, Wren buys her a shot, in case it will keep the good mood going.
Truthfully, Victoria and Steve make a striking couple, even if Steve would hate them being called a couple. Victoria is shorter than Wren and barely comes to Steve’s chest, but she is burly and looks like she could keep up with Steve. She isn’t beautiful, not like Emma, but she would be Wren’s first choice of all the girls she knows if Wren needed help in a fight. For Wren, that’s a compliment.
The drunker Steve gets, the more he wants to dance. He switches from dancing with Victoria to grabbing Wren and spinning her around until she dances with him. It’s almost like it was months ago, when Wren didn’t worry about Emma so much and she made sure Steve got home safely most nights.
Victoria grabs onto Wren’s hand and twirls her around. Steve claps at that.
The bar is decorated, probably by Reese. Black and silver streamers hang high above everyone’s heads, so high that no one can touch them. Reese and Taylor both wear plastic top hats, but like Halloween the hats don’t last long. It’s apparent, looking around, that Halloween is more important than New Year’s, that the few decorations are up just for the customers.
Emma invades Wren’s space to hand her a fresh drink and dance with her. Her free hand runs down Wren’s back. She smiles at Wren, not the carefree one that she gives in Wren’s bed, but one that seems to ask if everything will be okay in the end. Wren kisses her chastely.
