Angle of Pursuit, page 13
“Yeah, I think I remember when you used to take care of kids,” my dad said, and maybe that was true. My babysitting money had carried us through more than one emergency with the gas and water bills, emergency car repairs, medical emergencies, et cetera, et cetera. There was always something and there was nothing set aside, no resources to draw on besides what I could come up with myself. “Then you were a waitress after that, weren’t you?” he asked me. He held out his glass, apparently believing that I still was. “Could you get me another?”
“No. Good Lord,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know why I come over here.”
“It’s not a bad view.”
He didn’t mean himself. His girlfriend Mary’s house was perched on a bluff in Northport overlooking Lake Michigan and it was absolutely gorgeous, like, breathtaking. Right now, the sun was setting on the horizon and it was hard to tear my gaze away.
“I meant to tell you, we went to Las Vegas last weekend,” he mentioned as he poured himself another snort of expensive Scotch. She could afford it.
“Oh? Did you gamble away her fortune?”
“No, we got married.”
I turned my head slowly to look at him. “What? I thought you just said that you and Mary marry? I mean, Mary and you marry, Mary married…what?”
“Yes, Aubin, my girlfriend is now my wife.” He gulped his drink and grinned like a chimp. “My future is secure.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, she’s already changed her will.”
He was serious. I stared and then started shaking my head.
“She wanted to make an honest man out of me,” he said, still smiling maniacally.
“It’s going to take more than a trip to Vegas.”
My dad lost the smile. “Just because your marriage was a bust, it doesn’t mean that mine will be,” he said.
“Yes it will be, because you’re a drunk and a serial cheater.”
He dropped his glass, not noticing or caring that it fell onto his wife’s stone patio and shattered. “Don’t talk to me like that! Get off your damn high horse, Aubin Ariella. Do you remember why your own marriage broke up? It was because you’re a cheater, too. You were happy to fuck over your husband and you fucked yourself over as you did it. Now you drive some shit-mobile, you dress like—”
“When have you ever noticed clothes?” I asked angrily. “You would have to let Sissy go to school in rags.” I’d had to step in, visiting secondhand stores to dig through the bargain bins and raiding the lost-and-found barrels in public spaces to keep her dressed (somewhat) appropriately.
But he ignored that statement, like he had ignored the problem at the time, too. “You ruined your damn life,” he told me. “Are you happy now?”
“Happy? Are you seriously asking me that? What about my current situation would make me happy? Being a babysitter again? Or my crappy car? The fact that I’m single, probably forever? Or maybe that I lost all my old friends?”
He pointed at me. “You did those things to yourself. You had a chance for greatness, and you threw it all away.”
“I didn’t throw anything away! I was trying so hard and it was like—” The past year had been a constant struggle to get things right again, but it was like digging in wet sand on the shore of Lake Michigan with the waves rolling in. No matter how fast and hard I worked, the hole just kept filling.
How dare he talk to me like this? How dare he, when for my whole life, he’d been the one who sucked? “You’re going to screw things up with your rich wife,” I told him. “You’ll ruin this, just like you ruined my mother’s life. You’re a selfish bastard.”
“Takes one to know one,” he called after me as I stormed out, and I let him have the last word. What did it matter what he had to say? When had I ever listened to him about anything? I left his temporary wife’s house and drove home in my crappy car and I told myself that he was wrong now, again, just like always. And mentally, I put a line through his name on that short list of people who would still speak to me. It was only another burned bridge, after all. What did one more matter?
Chapter 8
I made my hands stay where they were, holding onto my water bottle, and I didn’t touch my hair. I didn’t play with my sunglasses, either, or the straps of my bra. I didn’t look at my phone or even turn my head to glance toward the trailhead. I pretended that I was relaxed and calm, that I was perfectly at ease. Nothing was the matter, nothing at all.
“Hey!” I heard a voice call, and now, slowly, I glanced toward the speaker. She was smiling and waving as she approached, but I kept myself from fidgeting and I waited. She could come to me.
“Aubin, how are you?” Mia asked. She didn’t reach for a hug but she was still smiling as if she was actually happy to see me.
“I’m doing awesome,” I told her. I also moved my lips into a smile, mimicking hers. “How about you?”
“Good, I’m good,” she answered, and added a few more inconsequential things about her job and her life, which I ignored. Then she looked at the trail. “Should we run or walk?”
“I’m fine to run,” I said, because I really was. Parker and I had been putting in a lot of miles, every day. I wanted him to be ready because he was definitely going to real high school and I thought he needed to play a sport. It was a way to meet people and to find a place for himself, things that dance and cheer had given to me. Cross country practices began soon, before the official school year did.
Parker had suggested football instead of cross country and had gone with Robby a few times to watch the Woodsmen training camp. After that, he’d decided that maybe it wasn’t for him. “They look like they’re trying to flecking kill each other,” he’d reported, and then grabbed his running shoes.
Now I had on mine. My former friend Mia had texted me, again, and although I was sure that she was only hoping that I could offer some kind of path to Robby Baines, I had agreed to meet her anyway. She’d suggested drinks or coffee but I thought an outdoor area with more means for escape would be better. No, “escape” was a poor choice of words, because I wasn’t going to run away. Maybe I might want to, but I wouldn’t do it.
We headed down the TART trail. It was a beautiful summer day and this was a great place to run even if you weren’t worried about confrontation with anyone. Mia made the usual comments about how long it had been since she’d worked out and how out of shape she was, but I knew her and she never missed a day in the gym. I said the same, and also that I’d been eating way too much. It felt like the ice was broken a little but I was still very wary.
“So, what’s new, Aubin?” she asked casually.
“Do you mean, what’s new since the last time we spoke? Yeah, it has been a long, long time.” I watched her out of the corner of my eye and saw a flush spread on her cheeks, one that wasn’t brought on by the warmth of the July sun or the quick pace I’d set.
“I know it has,” she said, and paused for a moment before she continued. “Everything was so weird.”
“That’s one way to put it,” I said grimly, and then I just came out with what I’d been thinking about. “If you wanted to meet to get an apology from me, I’ll leave now.”
“I don’t—”
“I’m aware of everything I did wrong, perfectly aware, but it’s over now and I’m moving on.”
“Sure,” she said. “Ok. I wasn’t going to ask you to apologize to me.”
We kept running and I could see that despite what she’d claimed, she clearly hadn’t missed any workouts lately. I kept quiet as long as I could but then I did need to know. “Why did you want to see me today if it wasn’t to get me to say sorry? Was it because of Robby, Robby Baines? I’m not like a booker for him or something. I’m not his pimp,” I clarified. “I’m also not going to push you forward with him.”
“My God, Aubin! I wasn’t going to ask you to,” Mia snapped at me. “I texted you because it has been a long time since we talked and I felt…I don’t know, maybe I missed you? But I don’t miss you being a bitch.”
“That’s my best quality,” I told her, and for a moment she kept glaring at me, but then she smiled.
“That was what made you fun,” she told me. “All my friends now are so nice. It’s kind of boring.”
“I don’t know, I could go for some boring.”
“How are you?” she asked me again. “I mean really, how are you? Is the divorce final?”
I nodded, remembering that day. “It’s all done. Billy signed the condo over to me and made things very easy. We had no other shared assets, no children, nothing. I have a fresh start and I’m still young. Young-ish.”
“We’re the same age,” she reminded me, and sighed. “Did you hear that Erin’s marrying her boyfriend? Remember how she started dating the guy who runs the Woodsmen video stuff?”
Yes, I remembered, and I’d seen that our friend had gotten engaged.
“I’m the maid of honor,” she continued, “and you want to talk about bitch?”
“You, or her?” I asked.
“At this point? Both of us,” Mia said, and she told me a lot about the wedding details. No, it wasn’t going to be as nice as mine, not by a mile, but it did sound ok.
“Who are the other bridesmaids?” I asked casually, although I already knew the answer because I’d been stalking everyone’s social media to find out.
She named six other girls, all of whom had been friends of mine, too, but she left off one person.
“What about Jess?” I asked. “Isn’t she a bridesmaid? How is she doing?”
“Uh, yeah, she’s in the wedding party and I think she’s doing pretty good. She’s going to fly back for it,” she mentioned.
“Fly back?”
“She’s moving to Minnesota,” Mia explained. “She got a job offer in Minneapolis and she’s really excited about it. She’ll work for, um, a makeup company.” She looked directly down the trail as she said it and I saw her flush more.
“That’s great,” I said.
“Really? I thought you might be mad. After all, she did mess up your own makeup business.”
“I did that,” I answered, but Mia shrugged.
“I mean, both of you were running things, right? Jess isn’t stupid or anything.”
No, she wasn’t. I thought about it as we cut around a family with two strollers and then Mia started talking about the new Wonderwomen routines for the season, and after that, we ran for longer than I expected to.
Later that night, while Parker was still poking around my kitchen and finishing the leftovers from our dinner, I sat quietly with Robby on the couch at his house. He had the ice on his forehead again but he’d told me that he did want me to be there. Maybe no baseball, though. The lights and the noise bothered him, but the entire sport bothered me so it was fine to keep it off.
I studied his face, which had an expression I now could easily identify as “Robby in pain.” “Why won’t you take any medicine? Just over the counter stuff,” I suggested.
“Nah, I try not to depend on that. I used to swallow about a bottle a week and it can’t be good for you.”
But he was wincing again, with that tightness twisting his features. I had a strong suspicion that he wouldn’t have female company tonight—I meant besides me, not while he felt like this, and I considered that a good thing. He needed rest. I had been wanting to talk to him about meeting with Mia, but why would he care about my time with my old friend? It didn’t mean anything, anyway. Yes, it had been really fun to talk to her, almost like we had been current friends and not just in the past tense, but she was probably only curious and/or wanted some information to relate to the rest of the girls in the form of gossip. I might have wanted to do that as well if I were in her shoes and one of our other friends had imploded.
“If not pills, can I get anything else for you?” I asked, but he answered in the negative again. It was impossible to sit there doing nothing while he was in pain, though, so I started to delve into the root cause of the headaches. If we knew that, we could fix them. But no, he swore that he drank enough water, and when I asked him about red wine, he asked me if I knew a lot of people who had that during football practice. Everything else was a “no” or “nah” or ignoring me, as with my questions about tooth and jaw problems.
“Ok, fine. What if the cause is stress?”
“Stress?” he echoed.
“Stress,” I agreed. “Maybe that’s why you have headaches, because you get worried and anxious.”
“Nah, I don’t get like that,” he told me.
“Yeah, you do. You said that when you were trying to learn the playbook for college, your heart beat really hard and you would sweat. You said that when you were a kid, you would go look at the moon because you were so nervous and that helped you calm down. Those are symptoms of anxiety.”
Robby opened his eyes. “Do you remember everything I say? That’s just how I am. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Sure, right. “Sit up a little,” I ordered and still holding the ice in place, he listened to me. I climbed behind him to perch on the back of his couch, settling my knees next to each of his shoulders. It was lucky that I’d been dancing my whole life so that I could open my hips so much—he was very wide.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I was reading about this,” I explained. “You’re annoying with how you won’t take medication, so I looked into what else we could do to treat headaches. I watched some videos, too. Look straight ahead and stop twisting around.”
“You’re rubbing my neck?”
“Shh. This is supposed to help.” I massaged with my thumbs at the base of his skull and then moved my fingers down, and yes, I rubbed his neck. I did that for a while at the points that the various websites had instructed, and then I rubbed his shoulders, too.
“You know, this would be easier if it didn’t feel like I was massaging a block of stone. Did you ever think about getting less in shape?” I asked.
“Mmm,” he answered. It sounded sleepy.
“Is it working?”
“It feels good,” he rumbled, and I smiled at the back of his head. My hands were actually getting tired but I kept it up, working down his spine as far as I could reach and digging into the muscle.
“I know the names of all of these,” I volunteered. “At one point, I started a self-study of human anatomy.”
“I know the names from pulling all of them,” he remarked.
“Does anything hurt right now?”
“Feels good,” he said again, and I paused, thinking that he should just go to bed. His hands took mine and put them back on his neck. “Do it more.”
“Don’t order me,” I instructed, but I did as he asked. After another moment, I paused again to stretch my fingers, which had started to ache. Robby leaned back then and rested his head against my stomach. He looked up at me.
“You don’t have to keep going.”
“I will,” I said. It was funny to have him so close. When we walked together, he would sometimes link our elbows or even sometimes put his heavy arm around me, but this felt a lot more intimate than when we were out on the sidewalk. That might have been why my voice sounded a little husky when I spoke again. “I just need to rest for a minute. You really are like a chunk of rock.”
“I’ve been told that before in regard to my head,” he agreed, and I frowned.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
He picked up my hand. “Shoe’s on the other foot,” he mentioned as he started to rub my palm. I let my fingers relax and watched him.
“It seems like that helped you,” I said. He’d lost the squint and the pain-face. “Does your head feel better?”
“It does. Thank you.” He didn’t seem inclined to move, though, and switched to rubbing my right hand. He looked at the calluses there. “From your old job,” he noted, and I nodded. “That wasn’t good.”
“No, I hated it. I didn’t hate the cleaning part,” I clarified. “That was kind of rewarding. Like, I could actually see that I was accomplishing something. Even if that something was gross, it was a visible difference and the offices looked better after I’d been there. But I hated being out at night.”
“I remember.”
“Really? No,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t tell you that. I just complained about the smell of the sprays and how they burned my throat and about all the people who never learned to flush.”
“I could tell by how you’d get worried about it,” he said. “You’d talk about being alone in the building, or how no one was on the roads with you so late.”
I didn’t realize that he’d noticed, but it made sense. His mom had been afraid to do that job alone at night, too. “I needed a companion, like you were.”
“You needed not to do it anymore,” he answered.
I stared. “Is that why you talked to Anders about me? Because you were trying to get me a new job with him? I thought it was to help Parker.”
He closed his eyes as if he meant to sleep there. “It just worked out,” he said, but I wasn’t so sure until he added, “I’m the one who suggested starting a sea monkey empire, remember?”
Yes, that had been another recent “business” plan. Maybe he wasn’t calculating career moves for me, after all.
“What would your dream job be?” Robby asked.
“How do you know I don’t have it right now?”
He opened his eyes a little. “Fighting with Parks about his coffee habit is your dream?”
“Maybe not,” I allowed. “But it’s working. He’s down to one cup a day.” I tugged my hand away from his so I could work on his trapezius and deltoid muscles and his eyes closed again. “I used to just imagine myself yelling orders. In a general sense,” I explained. “I’d be wearing something amazing and telling people, ‘Buy! Sell! Get it done! Faster! I’m in charge!’ That was when I was a kid. When I was in college, I got a little more specific. I was interested in marketing so I thought I’d get a job doing that.”
