“Why—? I was breathless and still clutching at his shirt. He kissed me softly on the lips. All sexual charge was gone. He turned on the ignition.
I climbed back to my side of the car and slumped down in my seat. It was because he didn’t want to go halfway. There was no “messing around” with Caleb. Most guys were happy to cop as many feels as they could get. With Caleb, it was different. You either went all the way, or you stayed in the shallow waters of kissing. He wouldn’t sleaze his way into sex, by pulling me further and further away from my chastity by giving me pieces of what I was missing. I sat back in my seat and contemplated throwing all of my inhibitions to the wind. What were they anyway? I could barely remember when I thought of his hands and the way they knew exactly where to touch.
I wondered what my mother would say. She would be happy that I found a guy like Caleb, but she would still be wary of him. My father had gifted us both with a package of suspicion that sat like a teeth baring watchdog in our minds. “Guard your heart, so it doesn’t get broken like mine,” my mother would say as often as twice a week.
Sheri, my mother’s best friend, brought Oliver Kaspen’s life to an abrupt end one Fourth of July after I turned eleven. She used his own 22 gauge shotgun to do the deed, plastering his grey matter all over her pink flamingo shower curtain. Unbeknownst to my mother, Sheri was one of the many women my father used for sex and money. She reminded me of a watery eyed cocker spaniel with a personality as slimey as a raw egg. Before my mother found out about his affair with Sheri, I knew. On the afternoons that my mom worked late and my father picked me up from school, we would go visit his ‘friends.’ These friends all happened to be women, and either had access to money, drugs or both.
“Don’t you go telling your ma about these little visits you’ve been making over here with your dad,” Sheri said wagging a finger at me. “She’s got enough on her plate as is, and your dad just needs a friend to talk to.”
They talked for hours in Sheri’s bedroom, sometimes with the radio playing oldies and cigarette smoke seeping from the crack under the door. My dad would be real nice to me after he came out of the bedroom. We always stopped for gelato on the way home. I didn’t miss him when he was gone. He was just some guy who walked me home from school and bribed me with ice-cream. At the time of his death, it had been ten months since I’d last seen him, and he hadn’t even called for my birthday. Oliver Kaspen, my namesake, died leaving me with a flurry of bad memories and a deadbolt on my heart that only he had the key to. I had daddy issues that doomed Caleb from the get go.
Chapter Ten
The Present
Sunday morning I wake in my bed, my hair reeking of sweat and cigarettes. I groan, roll over, and vomit into my trashcan. My trashcan? I didn’t remember putting it there. Then I hear the toilet flush.
My God-Caleb!
I collapse against my pillow and put my hand over my eyes.
“Hey there gorgeous,” Caleb walks in carrying a tray and smiling sunshine all over the room. I groan again and hide my face in a pillow. Last night: Alcohol, betrayal by a friend, an embarrassing phone call.
“I am so sorry I called you. I don’t know what I was thinking,” I croak.
“Don’t be,” he says placing the tray on my nightstand. “I feel honored that I was your first choice.” He picks up a glass of water and a little white pill and places them both in my hand. I hang my head in shame and snack on my thumb nail.
“I brought you some toast too—if you’re up to it.” I take one look at the bread and butter and my stomach churns. I shake my head and he quickly removes the tray.
My hero.
“I called the motel this morning,” he says not looking at me. I bolt upright in bed and feel my head spin. “Your friend checked out last night. Apparently, he was in hurry to get out of town,” he leans against the wall and looks at me through his lashes. If I wasn’t so nauseous, I would have smiled at the sight of him in my bedroom.
“Some friend, huh?” I toy with my comforter.
“It wasn’t your fault. Men like that should be castrated.” I nod and sniff my agreement. “But, if he ever comes near you again Olivia, I’m going to kill him.”
I liked that. I liked that a lot.
The ‘Friends’ theme song is playing from my small television when I get out of the shower. I shuffle into the living room in my robe and slippers and stand around like I don’t know where to sit. Caleb scoots over to make room on the couch for me and I curl into the corner. I decide to make some semblance toward being honest.
“I like you Caleb,” I blurt and then I cover my face with my hands in embarrassment. “That sounded like a fifth grade confession.”
He looks up from the TV, his gold eyes laughing.
“Do you want to go steady?”
I punch him on the arm.
“I’m not being funny. This is serious. We are not a good idea. You don’t know who you are and I know exactly who I am, which is why you should probably be running for your life.”
“You don’t really want me to do that.” He is being half serious now or at least he isn’t smiling anymore.
“No. But it would be the best thing.” I am ringing my hands in the sleeves of my gown. I feel nervous and sick to my stomach, plus the way he’s looking at me isn’t making things easier.
“You are bouncing me around like a yo-yo here,” he says placing both of his hands on his knees, as if he is getting ready to stand up.
“I know,” I say quickly, “I’m thinking that I am not the kind of girl you want to be friends with.”
“I don’t just want to be friend with you.”
I have a moment; my vision swings in and out of focus and my wretched, evil heart swells up like a balloon. I am so confused. I should not be doing this to him, but I want to. I rub my temples. This was all too complicated and unfair. After three long years, I have what I want and it isn’t real. He doesn’t know who I am, and if he did, he wouldn’t be sitting in my living room.
I blow air through my nose. Good Olivia is begging me to break things off with him for good. She remembers airport f**king blue and paint on the ceiling and what happens when those memories blow through your empty life and remind you of how cold things are. We turn back to the TV, both of us embarrassed and awkward. Caleb leaves a couple of hours later sucking the hope from my lungs as he goes.
“Lock all the doors, and call me if you need me, okay?” I nod biting my bottom lip. I don’t want to be alone but I am too embarrassed to ask him to stay longer.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” I will him to stay, gazing up at his beautiful face. He seems to hesitate, and for a moment, I think it’s working.
“What’s wrong?” I whisper. Please don’t let him remember. Please let him remember.
“Nothing…it’s just that I feel like we’ve done this before—déjà vu, you know?”
I do know, because this is the way our goodbyes went when we were together. He never stayed the night because I never let him.
“Well, bye.”
“Bye,” I say.
I make myself a cup of tea and settle onto the sofa. I lost him once because of my inner rottenness. My lies started unraveling one after another until he was so weighed down by the size of them, he looked me in the eyes and said goodbye forever. I remember feeling numb as I watched him leave, and then for the rest of the day, until I realized he wasn’t coming back. Ever. That was when the walls of my emotional dam came crashing down around me. The hurt I experienced was so potent and searing for the first six months, dominating each day like a sore throat. After that, it became a constant ache, an absence that never left your bones. Caleb’s gone, Caleb’s gone, Caleb’s gone….
Even now that he was back in my life, I still felt his absence. My time, I knew, was borrowed and soon the fierce pain would start again. It would only be a matter of time when he found out about our past and my sausage link of lies.
I decide to seize the day. If my time is short, I might as well be with him as much as I possibly can. I pick up the phone and punch in the number to his condo. He didn’t answer, so I chirp a message into his machine asking him to call me back, which he does, about ten minutes later.
“Olivia? You okay?”
“I’m fine, just fine,” I wave away his concern like he can see me. “I’m coming over,” I say quickly. “I’d rather not be alone and you promised me dinner anyway.”
I wait, holding my breath.
There is a pause, during which I fold in both of my lips and squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe he has plans with Leah.
“Great,” he says finally. “Do you like steak?”
“I’m all about the meat.” I flinch when he laughs. “Give me the directions.” I jot down the series of highways and streets he is rattling of, and toss my pen aside. I know the building he is describing. It was the type of thing you couldn’t help but look at as you drove across the waterway to get to the string of ritzy café’s and boutiques that lined the beach. It had at least thirty floors, a chunk of real estate that glittered like OZ.
When I arrive, I hand the keys to my Bug over to the valet attendant and step into the chilly lobby.
A doorman greets me. His eyes start at my feet and climb slowly to my face. I had seen this look a million times from Caleb’s friends. I was among them, but not one of them. Their eyes were tuned into Laboutin and Gucci, so when I showed up in my off-the-rack clothing, their looks glazed over like I bored them. Most of their conversations began, “When I was vacationing in Italy last year…” or “Daddy ’s new sailboat….” to which I would be the silent listener, having never left Florida, especially not on my dead beat daddy’s toy schooner. My daddy was the guy who threw his empty beer bottles at other men’s good fortune.
When I complained about it to Caleb, he tutored me on the art of snobbery.
“Look at them like you know their secrets and you find them boring.”
The first time I looked down my nose at an heiress, she asked me where I’d bought my shoes.
“Payless,” I replied. “funny isn’t it, that our shoes are identical, yet the price you paid for yours could feed a small country for a month?” Caleb had choked on his shrimp cocktail and the heiress had never spoken to me again. I’d felt a sick power. You didn’t have to be rich and important to intimidate someone, you just had to be judgmental.
I don’t look directly at the doorman, but I blink rapidly in his direction like he’s annoying me. He smiles.
“Are you visiting Miss?” Are you veeesiting, mees?
“Caleb Drake,” I say. “Can you tell him that Olivia’s here?” Just then I hear the elevator door slide open and Ricky Ricardo nods to someone over my shoulder.
“Olivia,” Caleb says, putting his hand on the small of my back. I jolt at his touch.
He smiles at the doorman.
“This guy cheats at Poker. Completely swindled me out of a hundred dollars last week.” The little jerk beams in response. Why was it that attention from Caleb turned people into living glowworms?
“Sir? It was the most honest hundred dollars I’ve ever made.”
Caleb smirks and leads me to the elevator.
“You hang out with the staff?” I ask as the doors closed behind us.
“I play poker with them on Tuesdays,” he says looking at me sideways. “What? I like them. No pretenses. Besides, I don’t remember any of my other friends.” He lets me step out of the elevator first and then follows behind me. I get the feeling he is looking at my butt.
“It’s beautiful—this place.”
He makes a face. “Not really homey is it? It’s a little macho-bachelor.”
“Well, you are both of those things, so it fits.”
“I’m sure I could have bought a house for what I paid for this.”
“And a minivan,” I grin.
He grimaces. “That I’m not so sure about.”
“This is it,” he says stopping at 749. “Do not be intimidated by the eighteen foot ceilings and the plasma televisions—they are impressive, but not to be feared.”
I follow his shoulders into the living room.
His condo is impressive. The foyer, as it turns out, is as large as my bedroom. It is bare except for the massive chandelier that hangs over the butter cream tiles. I feel classy by osmosis. He leads me into the living room which, just as he promised, has impossibly high ceilings. The entire main wall is a window, which shows a view of the ocean.
“Now, tell me,” I say stopping to admire a painting, “did mommy help you decorate or did you just hire someone?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “But word is—I dated a decorator just to get the free swag.”
“Is that so?” I reach out and touch a finger to the cover of a giant atlas that was resting on his mantle.
“This is the kitchen,” he says leading me into a room full of stainless steel. He leads me into a hallway and pauses before opening the door.
“My office.”
I peek around his shoulder into a room that was cased ceiling high in bookshelves. My stomach clenches in excitement and I felt an urgent need to pee. Books. Wonderful, magnificent books.
“You read all of these?”
“I hope not. That would indicate I had absolutely no life pre-amnesia.”
“I don’t know,” I say, my eyes sweeping over the titles. “I think you’d enjoy a good classic…maybe Great Expectations.” I pluck it from his bookshelf and place it in his hands. He pulls a face, but doesn’t put it back, placing on his desk instead.