Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series (24 page)

He could not yell at her.

He could speak to what he knew was true. He took as deep a breath as his chest permitted. “I am not just having fun with your sister. If she’s told you that just having fun is her own intention with me, I am perfectly fine with that. But fun is not my intention. She means something. She makes others mean something. It would be difficult to know Destiny and not mean something.” He knew his voice was strange, low and missing some kind of civility.

“That’s quite the speech,” Sarah said. “Who are you trying to convince?”

He looked at her. She wasn’t smiling over her pain anymore. She was just pain. Drawn and gray. “I’m convinced.”

“Huh.”

He felt the clamp around his throat again.

“You know what they say, Hefin.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t leave unless your feet are on fire.”

He thought of that hotel room in his village. Holding Jessica and looking out the window and feeling the smallness of the world. How simple it was to traverse. The oceans so small he felt he could ford them with his own legs.

“What did you draw?” Sarah asked.

He had barely registered he was drawing. He handed it to Sarah. She looked at it for a long time. She handed it back, and he looked at it. He’d gotten the carriage of Destiny’s posture just right. He hatched in another shadow where her hair slid over her shoulder.

Sarah leaned back into the sofa. “You’re as fucked as I am.”

Hefin outlined a dip in Destiny’s waist with the cheap blue ballpoint. Something he and Sarah could agree on.

“Yes. I think so.”

Destiny spooned tofu sautéed with garlic powder and olive oil over the noodle layer as quietly as possible while holding her breath, so she could overhear Hefin and Sarah.

It would be difficult to know Destiny and not mean something
.

She smoothed the tofu over and over on the noodles, until the whole thing looked kind of smooshed. She dumped diced tomatoes on top. Layered more noodles and the fake cheese that smelled blandly savory, in a pleasant and indefinable way.

Pleasant and indefinable.

She spread tofu.

She was tofu and healthy cheese.

When Sarah had said that bit about giving guys ass and maid service, she had actually sort of chuckled. It was something that Sarah and Lacey had observed before, and they’d kind of laughed about it. Well, she’d
kind of
laughed about it and Sarah and Lacey had fully cracked up about it.

Don’t talk about her that way. Do not talk of Destiny like that
.

His voice had been fervent, angry. He hadn’t had control over his voice either, it had cracked, been loud on some words, soft on others.

Do not talk of Destiny like that
.

It would be difficult to know Destiny and not mean something
. She dumped another glug of diced tomatoes, watched them swirl through the tofu. Smoothed them.

When he talked about her, she sounded like her name.

Destiny.

She smoothed. She reached over and grabbed one of the very-not-vegan chocolate cookies Hefin had bought and stuffed it in her mouth whole. Chewed, the chocolate melting over buttery goodness.

Slapped on a layer of wet noodles. Tofu. Cheez. Smoothed. Metallic-smelling tomatoes. Smoothed.

Ate another cookie.

Destiny.

How had she forgotten her
name
?

She got to the top of the pan. Hefin and Sarah had gotten quiet. She dumped the rest of the cheez over the top, didn’t bother to sprinkle it over so it would look nice and melt evenly.

She opened a drawer, pulled out the box of aluminum foil. Covered the dish. Opened another drawer, pulled out a Sharpie.

375 45–60 minutes

When they’d arrived and Hefin had removed himself to unload groceries and make tea, Sarah acted like Des had never left. It had taken most of their conversation to orient her to the time of day. To remind her that she’d been by earlier, had come back with food. Tears had trickled from Sarah’s eyes while she apologized to Des, over and over, for the mess Des had cleaned up.

When she had sat Sarah up, Sarah actually gagged from pain. She thought it was Sarah’s hip, but Sarah said it was her leg, now. It had started hurting earlier, she thought, from using her cane in Marnie’s small shop and standing more than she was used to.

She’d helped Sarah with a dose of ibuprofen, the only thing Sarah was comfortable with after her experience with the fentanyl.

She heard the teakettle in the kitchen and Des explained Hefin. Sarah had tried to tease her, but there was no worthwhile effort.

She put the lasagna in the fridge.

Cleaned up the dishes.

Tried to figure out what she was feeling. She had spent so much of the last few months being around Sarah and feeling afraid, and she still was afraid, but she was trying to figure out what was traveling along with the anger, right this minute.

It sort of felt like fear, but she was breathing hard, and her scalp felt hot where her braids were heavy.

Oh.
Anger
.

She was pissed.

She was pissed because she was standing in her sister’s apartment making a casserole and two hours ago she was in the middle of coming, Hefin’s bristles against her neck, his voice saying her name. She was pissed because when she had come over here a couple of hours earlier than that, she’d called Sam in a panic and he
wasn’t
here, making
a casserole.

She couldn’t be angry at Sarah. Destiny turned around, finally. Sarah’s head had drooped to rest on the sofa back and she looked asleep. Hefin was looking at Destiny, expectant. Gorgeous. His hair was still just an insane mess of his tiny curls and crimpy waves. His stubble broke over his square jaw to spread over his neck, his throat. The neck of his T-shirt was stretched, and the chest hair over the top looked messed up, too.

That top lip, puffy from their kissing.

His eyes, dark and squinting at her, trying to figure her out.

Her. Just her.

“Can I use your phone?” She knew who she was pissed at.

Hefin stood up, his hand dove into his jeans, and she watched his waistband drop under the cut of his tight hips. “Yeah, of course.” He stepped forward, held it out to her.

She took it but pulled him close, by the back of his neck. Moved her lips to his ear to whisper. “Do you want to come over to my place, now?” She watched goose bumps break out over the tender spot just behind his earlobe. She kissed that spot.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Hold on. I’m going to take this call outside.”

It rang a long time, but Sam finally answered. “You need to come over here and look at Sarah, see if she needs to be seen again. If you’re too busy, call PJ to stay with her until you come. I know it’s hard to believe, but I actually do have a tiny bit of a life.” It didn’t feel totally great, especially when she came back in and saw Sarah curled up on the sofa again, but Sam promised to come. Even sounded a little chagrined.

She walked over to where Hefin was waiting. He had arranged the cookies within grabbing distance for Sarah, and next to the cookies was a sketch of Des, Sarah’s kitchen sketched in around her. In her picture, her braids had wisps escaping from them and she was standing on one foot with the other foot resting in the other leg’s knee pit. It was “tree pose,” something she had learned in a college yoga class that helped her back stay straight when she was working standing up.

He’d drawn a little cartoon speech balloon over her head:
Food is in the fridge, Sarah!

Oh shit
. He’d gotten upset with Sarah, defending Des, but then was supernice to her right after.

Des had zero defense against such hotness.

She made sure Sarah seemed reasonably comfortable and grabbed Hefin’s hand.

He asked if he could try driving the limo back to her house and he drove six inches an hour while they laughed the entire way. She made him switch so she could park or they’d never get inside.

He’d never get inside her.

“Wait,” she said against his mouth, her back against her front door.

He eased his hands away from her hips. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for dealing with Sarah.”

“Of course.”

“And for what you said.” Des felt a blush, but met his eyes.

“What I said?”

“To Sarah. About me. When I was cooking.”

“You heard all that?”

“I did.”

“C’mere.” She pulled him by the hand to her sofa. Sat them down. Faced him.

“So I am thinking that I am going to be a mess when you go back to Wales.”

He let go of her hand. “That’s the last thing that I want.”

“You may not want it, but it’s still true.”

“I’m not thinking I’ll manage much better.”

She took a deep breath. “There’s no chance you’d …” She couldn’t even say it, when it got right to the hard part.

He shook his head. “I’ve already been here too long.”

“It’s where you thought you were going to live forever, you know.”

“I know.”

“It’s not really you, you know.”

“What’s that?” He was squinting again.

“That’s the problem, I mean. You’re not the problem. I’ve been surrounded by people my whole fucking life. Watching what they do, how they act. How they act after they do stuff. You’re not the problem, or at least, you’re not some giant share of the problem.”

He just kept squinting.

“Like.” Destiny put her finger on his knee. “You know Jennifer Aniston?”

“The actress?”

“Yeah.”

“There is a television that gets passed around from hut to hut in my village, so yes.”

“Don’t be smart. So remember when the whole entire world was making a deal of her divorce?”

“Right.”

“I had a total epiphany reading an article about it and getting the worst haircut of my life at this terrible campus place when I was in college. I had just broken up with my boyfriend because I caught him hooking up with a mutual friend. Wait. Do you know what hooking up means?”

“Terrible expression. And yes.”

“What do you call it?”

He laughed in that way that made him look seventeen. “I didn’t really.”

“Didn’t call it anything, or didn’t hook up?”

“I didn’t hook up.”

Des felt warm all over. Pleased. “You entered your marriage a virgin?” Also, teasing Hefin was basically the most fun, ever.

“Oh, Destiny.” He looked up at the ceiling, his neck and ears completely pink.

“Shit! You seriously entered your marriage a virgin?”

“Jesus, no. But I’ve never hooked up, I guess, either.”

“You’re a goose person.”

“I’ve lived here for some time, and I haven’t heard that expression.”

Destiny scooted closer and reached up to play with the curls on the back of his neck and watch his eyes close when she found sensitive places. “A goose person. Like a goose, you mate for life. You find your goose, and that’s it.”

He smiled, but the crease in his forehead folded in. “Goose person. I get goosed.”

She laughed. “You’re messing with me.”

“A little. But if you mean I don’t have casual relationships, that’s true.”

Des put her head on his shoulder.
Fuck
. But she had to triage. “So I was reading this article about Jennifer Aniston?”

“Right.”

“Because people are awful, she was getting interviewed about her divorce or upcoming divorce, I don’t remember exactly when this was. And, like I said, I was newly
single because of the ex hooking up. With someone not me. So I felt something of a sisterhood with Jen.”

“Of course.”

“In this interview where they were probably trying to get her to be all petty about Brad and his unsanctioned hooking up, she said this thing like, ‘You know, even if something like this happens and it’s seventy/thirty, like seventy percent on him, I have to own that thirty percent that’s mine.’ ”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know. Thinking about it, maybe it was even ninety/ten, but the percentages don’t matter.”

“What matters?” Hefin was getting soft in her arms as she talked into his neck and played with his hair.

“My point is that,
dude
, you have way more than owned your thirty percent.” She dropped her arms around him and squeezed. She wanted him to understand that even if he ran away to Wales, or ran back to Wales, or whatever, it wouldn’t be because he was a failure. It wouldn’t be because he made a bunch of mistakes and it wouldn’t be because he broke his wife’s heart and didn’t get to do Beijing stuff.

“Don’t you know,” she said, thinking out loud about this goose person in her arms, “all you did is fall in love with someone. Which, isn’t a crime. Plus, I’m sure Wales and Beijing and London and all those other places you could have gone are awesome, but you know, Ohio is awesome, too.”

He laughed, one of his cough laughs. She smiled. “Go Bucks!” he whispered.

“Yeah! Go Bucks. And what about her seventy percent?” He stiffened. She smiled again. Goose person. Even after the other goose had flown away. It didn’t bother her, though, even as he was in her arms.
It would be difficult to know Destiny and not mean something
. He said that.

“Or even her thirty percent? I get the sense no other options but the Buckeye State were even on the table. Which, okay. But I’m pretty sure you can’t keep a husband in a cage all day like one of those dogs that chews up the carpets.”

He cough laughed again. “I was a goose, now a dog?”

“Stay with me. Jennifer Aniston, remember? She had a thirty percent to own, Hefin. Plus, remember, also? I am excellent at watching people. You owned your thirty percent, but what’s more I know that if she was yours, you didn’t let her own hers. You
took her thirty percent. You took all the percents. You were suffering, and you didn’t say because you thought that would mean she wouldn’t suffer. But she knew you were suffering, she must have. And she didn’t take back her percent. She let you take them. She let you take them and take them until really, what you did is you broke your own heart.”

His mouth came over hers, and his hands followed, tight at her face. She tasted his tears, and she tasted his mouth. And it was the best, salty, chocolate, tea kiss ever. He didn’t let her breathe, his mouth was so tight to hers, and it seemed less like he was kissing her and more like he was trying to get her words inside of him.