Singe (25 page)

Eli blinks at the bottle on the table, how it seems to double and shift unless he squints and concentrates. He thinks of how his dad used to make waffles on Saturday mornings. He thinks of the horrified look on Addie’s face. He picks the Jameson up off the table, tips the last of it into the smudgy glass beside him.

Makes a choice.

Addie drives all the way home before she realizes she’s made a mistake and gone to her parents’ house instead, some weird muscle memory taking over, like nothing in her life since she moved out is even real. She sits in the driveway with her hands clamped at ten and two on the steering wheel. She knows if she lets go she’ll see them shake.

You’re a kid, Addie.

Christ.

It takes her a minute to realize the white noise in her head is actually on the radio, Gertie’s old transistor dial knocked out of place. She switches it off with sweaty fingers, wiping her hand against her skirt. The clutch burned at the last stoplight too, she can smell it now, acrid and heavy. The car feels like a prison.

Addie makes herself take two deep breaths before reaching for her phone. She scrolls through to E, then down to J for Jenn.
tell me what he says
is the last text, complete with a handful of less-than-three hearts. Addie swallows. Starts typing. Stops.

In the end she just throws the phone onto the seat next to her and scrubs both hands through her hair, yanking at the tangles. The curls at the base of her skull always mat together when she sweats, forming a thick snarl around her cross chain she sometimes has to cut out after a long shift. It never feels like a particularly good omen, hacking Christ off her body with kitchen shears.

A kid.

He’s not wrong, that’s for sure. All Addie wants right now is her mom.

She can’t have Diana though, because today is the all-ages church soccer tournament and the whole family is down by the field with lawn chairs and coolers full of orange slices, cheering or playing. Addie begged off like she’s been weaseling out of every family event lately, unable to stomach the Manzella clan out in full force. Now she wishes she’d gone. She could have had a beer and ignored everyone, watched Dante try to deflate the spare balls with his cleats. She could have discussed mindless baby chatter with Marina. Then she wouldn’t have had time to stop by Jenn’s, never would have—Jesus.

She rifles through the glove box, pulling out a stack of Dunkin Donut napkins and a handful of crumpled receipts before remembering she left the print outs with Eli. It’s the picture she’s after, Eli’s school photo, a sweet, chubby boy with hair that hadn’t yet darkened to the color it is now. When Addie first looked at the article, she’d thought the editor had mixed up the captions for him and Will. He was eight, just finished second grade.

Paulina will be eight in the fall. She was learning how to add three digit numbers when the school year ended.

Addie reaches for her phone again, dialing before she can think about it. It rings straight to Eli’s voicemail. The same thing happens when she tries again two minutes later, and a third time a few minutes after that. Addie rests her head on the steering wheel, squeezes her eyes shut.

His scars, she realizes suddenly, startling upright. The burns all over his arms and chest, the ones she’s been tracing with her fingers and mouth all summer, the ones he’s never really explained.

Oh, Jesus. Okay. Okay.

For a long time, Addie just sits. She thinks about the photo. She looks at her parents’ front porch. There are jam jars lined up along the railing. Addie knows they’ll be full of monarch butterfly cocoons, waiting to hatch in the sun. When she and Phillip were kids, her dad used to drive them out to the milkweed plants by the side of the highway to collect caterpillars. Now he drives the grandchildren.

Eli’s dad—

It’s past six by the time Addie finally throws Gertie into reverse and backs out of her parents’ driveway, the hum of the AC and the sound of her own pulse thudding like a drumbeat inside her brain. She’s back at Eli’s complex thirty minutes later, catching the exterior door as one of his anonymous-bro neighbors keys himself in downstairs. The guy shoots her an odd look, and for good reason, probably—she seems nuts, most likely, red-faced and her hair all disheveled.

She takes the stairs up two at a time, almost tripping on her stupid maxi skirt, hiking the fabric up inside her clammy fists like Cinderella in reverse. Now that she’s made the decision to come back she’s in a huge, stupid rush, like hurrying will make up for leaving in the first place. Like if she runs fast enough, she can turn back time.

There are dumb little brass knockers on all the apartment doors in this building, more for show than anything else, and when she gets to Eli’s she raps hard with her knuckles, the way she would if she was on duty and responding to a call. “Eli,” she calls, trying to sound calm and collected, like a grownup and not a panicky kid. “It’s me.”

It feels like a long time before he comes to the door. When he does, his free hand is around Hester’s collar, holding her back as she scrambles to escape. “Hey,” he says, slurring a little. “What’s up?”

“Oh.” Addie looks at Hester’s lolling tongue, thrown. “I’m, um. Hi?” She feels pulled up short, a dog on a lead. She doesn’t know what she expected to find back here, but it wasn’t Eli’s bloodshot eyes and his smiling, wagging dog. “Hi.”

He barely opened the door a quarter of the way, like maybe Addie is an insurance salesmen and he’s three seconds from telling her he’s not interested. Now he nudges Hester behind him and closes the gap even more, small enough that he can block it with his body. “Hi,” he parrots, not nicely. Hester peers out around his legs, panting. Addie smells booze. “What do you want?”

Right. Okay. Addie inhales and reminds herself that she was the asshole in this relationship yet again. It’s a squirmy, unfamiliar feeling, like having an egg cracked down the back of her spine. “I’m sorry,” she says. “That’s all. I came back to say how hugely sorry I am.” Eli has his arm up on the doorframe, the scars just barely visible in the dingy hallway light. Addie makes herself look away.

Eli blinks slowly. “Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago.”

Crap. “No, for like—no, sorry for
me
. It wasn’t my business, and—shit.” Hester has wiggled her way through Eli’s legs and bolted out into the hallway, jumping up to lick Addie’s face. “Why is she here?” Addie asks, trying to shove the dog off. This isn’t going how she planned.

“Uh.” Eli hesitates. “Listen, I’m not sure if—” He doesn’t get to finish the thought though, because as soon as all four of Hester’s paws hit the floor again she’s headed back into the apartment like she’s too excited to pick just one destination, knocking the door open in the process with her strong, furry body. And sitting on Eli’s couch—the couch Addie’s spent all summer on, watching Food Network and napping and letting him fuck her six ways from Sunday, oh God—is Eli’s ex-wife.

Eli’s small, blonde, perfect, professor ex-wife.

Holding a wine glass.

So.

For a second Addie remembers Jenn getting kicked out of their grandma’s, how it took her a minute to comprehend what Jenn was saying that terrible night when she was fifteen. How she’d understood her family one way before it happened and afterward as something else entirely. How she’d had no idea what she’d had until it was gone.

Addie gapes at them from the doorway, this couple and their goddamn golden retriever. Eli looks pale and stricken under the alcohol flush. “Addie,” he starts.

“Sorry,” Addie tells them. “I… Sorry.” She has no idea why she’s apologizing. Suddenly it’s a year ago, barbeques and fundraising dinners, all the run-ins Addie had with Eli’s wife when she was still Eli’s wife. They once had a conversation about the merits of Bud Light Lime, Addie and Chelsea. Addie doesn’t know how she forgot that. “I’m gonna go,” she hears herself say.

“Addie.” Eli steps out in the hallway. “Wait.”

Addie shakes her head. “Don’t,” she tells him, and Eli doesn’t. She is acutely, painfully aware of Chelsea just around the corner, her clever listening face.

There’s no dignified getaway to be had. Addie’s flip-flops slap loudly as she turns and walks back toward the stairwell, face hot. She
feels
like a kid now, Jesus, sent away from the adult’s table to play. Less than a summer, she and Eli have been dating. A handful of dinners, a lot of good sex, and somehow Addie forgot how long it had been. Somehow she thought because this was her most serious relationship, it was Eli’s too, that maybe everything was new for him like it was new and special for her. She conveniently forgot about his
marriage
that lasted half a freaking
decade
.

There’s a man carrying groceries who stands aside to let Addie pass him on the landing. She turns away so he doesn’t see her face.

God. Of course Eli didn’t open up and tell her about his dead brother after a few months of going out. This isn’t high school.

“Addie.” That’s Eli, catching up with her down in the front vestibule of his building, by the rows of anonymous mailboxes that all look the same. It smells like floor cleaner. The sky opened up sometime in the last five minutes, sheets and sheets of rain pouring down and spraying right back up again off the blacktop, flashes of lightning like something out of the Old Testament. “Addie,” Eli says again, grabbing her arm as she’s pushing the glass door open, preparing to dash. “Hey. This isn’t like that woman at the Perfect Pint, okay?”

Addie whirls on him, the door clanging shut again, the muffled sound of the storm outside. “I know it’s not, Eli,” she says. “It’s your wife.”

“Ex-wife,” he reminds her.

Addie shakes her head. “Look, it’s fine. I get it, of course you’d want to talk to her. She already knows everything, right?”

Eli shrugs helplessly. “I mean,” he says. “We were married.”

God, Addie feels so stupid, she feels like the stupidest person in the world. “I know,” she says stubbornly. “I just, I came here to tell you that I’m sorry I lost my temper and I was awful and of course I want to know that stuff, but if you’ve already got somebody you can talk about it with then—”

“Look, I
want
to tell you that stuff, okay?” Eli interrupts. “I mean, I
don’t
, I don’t want to tell anyone that fucking stuff, but if I have to tell it to anyone else then I want—” He breaks off. His words still aren’t lining up straight. “I was a dick, okay?”

Addie glances back over her shoulder at the haze of rain. The rivulets of water on the other side look cool and inviting. “Okay,” she says dully. She wants to rest her forehead against the glass, maybe bang it a couple times. She wants to magically be somewhere not here, to not have shared all her secrets too early and too fast. It feels like her skin is inside out for all the world to see.

“Okay,” Eli agrees. Neither of them say anything for a long second. The lightning flashes and Addie starts counting automatically, one one-thousand, two one-thousand,
crash
.

“Half a mile.” At first Addie thinks she said it out loud by accident but it’s Eli’s voice. He was counting too.

Just then Addie’s phone starts ringing deep in the pocket of her maxi skirt, like it was cued up to the storm. She’s expecting Jenn, but when she fishes it out the screen says PHILLIP CALLING in bright, jarring letters. Addie’s so surprised she picks up. “Hello?”

“Hey, Ads, thank God.” He’s in his car, Addie can tell from the tinny speakerphone connection. “Listen, Danielle broke her ankle at the soccer game, it’s kind of a scramble. Would you mind swinging by the field and picking up Kristine? Aunt Marianne went with the ambulance.”

Addie opens her mouth. Only her brother would say
kind of a scramble
and
ambulance
in the same breath. “God, Phillip. Is she okay?”

Eli’s eyebrows pop up in concern, listening. Addie shakes her head at him impatiently.

“She’s fine,” Phillip says, at the same Marina cuts in with, “You could see
bone
, Addie.”

Perfect. That is all today needs. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Addie tells them, hanging up with a beep and scrubbing a hand over her face. It’s still a freaking deluge outside the double doors. “I gotta go,” she says, once she’s filled Eli in as quickly as humanly possible. The field is all the way across town. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to bail, I just—”

“Yeah, yeah, no, of course,” Eli says, reaching out and brushing her fingertips with his callused ones, just gently. She feels physically awkward all of a sudden, like she doesn’t know how to hold her body, what she usually does with it when he’s around. “Look, just—don’t give up on me, princess, okay? Not yet.”

“Eli.” Just like that Addie feels like she’s going to cry all over again, his good sad face and his family and how huge and deep and terrible everything feels, how she cares about this person more than she ever, ever thought. She pops up on her toes so she can reach him, presses a lame dry kiss against his mouth. “I’ll see you at work, okay?”

“Okay.
Addie
.” Eli gets both hands on her face then, crowds her. Pushes his whole self up against hers. She thinks he’s going to kiss her but in the end he just doesn’t, knocks his forehead lightly against hers. “See you at work.”

Back in the car she calls Jenn to let her know about Danielle’s ankle. She’s the first one to think to do it, which makes her sad and angry in equal amounts.