Leo (11 page)

I come back to reality as I feel the upraised, puckered skin of a scar underneath the softness of his hair, at the base of his skull. My fingers just start to trace it from behind his left ear to the middle of the back of his head when he tears his lips off mine, the heat from our kiss still in his eyes.

"What happened to you, Jake?" I ask. That felt like one hell of a scar.

He looks at me for a minute as if he's thinking about whether he's going to answer me or not . But then he says, "Remember the stupid shit I told you I did to earn my father's contempt?"

I nod, frowning.

The heat in his eyes has faded and now he's watching me closely as he says, "Some of that resulted in me tearing the back of my head open. Someday I'll tell you all about it, Evie, I promise. But how about right now I get dinner started?"

I frown and reach my hand up to his hair again and trace the scar. His eyes close and he exhales before he reaches up and removes my hand and brings it to his lips to kiss it. "So damn sweet," he mutters.

Then he takes my hand and leads me to the kitchen and sits me down on a barstool.

"Can I pour you a glass of wine and take a few minutes to change out of this suit?" he asks.

"How about you go change and I'll open the wine and do the pouring," I suggest.

"Perfect. The wine fridge is beneath the counter by the big fridge and the opener is in the drawer above it. Glasses are in that cabinet," he points to an upper cabinet made of glass and full of wine and champagne glasses.

"Got it."

He heads down a hallway between the front door and the kitchen and I get to work on choosing a wine.

Ten minutes later when he re-enters the kitchen, he's in a pair of well worn looking jeans and a black t-shirt. His feet are bare and his hair is damp. He must have taken a quick shower.

He grins at me and I hand him his glass of wine. "Red," I say. "Hope that's ok. Goes with red meat and all."

This is the first time I've seen him in a t-shirt and I can see even more clearly how broad his shoulders are, how wide and muscled his chest is and how his biceps flex when he takes his wine glass from me and extends it towards mine saying, "To beginnings."

I smile and clink my glass gently on his and take a sip, even though I've already been sipping mine as I waited at the bar.

He strides over to the fridge and removes a package of butcher paper and as he's opening it over the counter, he says, "Can I ask you a question? You told me the other night that you didn’t date in high school. Why not?"

I'm sitting in Jake's kitchen, sipping wine while he cooks dinner for me. I feel protected and I feel relaxed and so I answer Jake honestly, even though I have never talked about my high school years to anyone, ever.

"When I was 15, my foster mom, Jodi, was diagnosed with cancer and she and her husband decided they couldn't foster anymore. I wasn't close to either of them, they were mostly disinterested in us girls who lived with them. They weren't unkind, just sort of indifferent and checked out. They watched a lot of t.v. and didn't take a big interest in getting to know who any of us were. We co-existed and they mostly gave us what we needed physically, but emotionally, they were not parents to us, at least not in the way I define parenthood. But I was comfortable where I was, I liked the house, I liked the girls I lived with and I thought life was as okay for me as it was gonna be in that situation.

"Anyway, when I was moved, I moved in with another couple and they made no bones about the fact that me and the other girls living there were drains on them, even though, as far as I could tell, the main reason we were there was for the checks we brought in. Me and Genevieve and Abby, the other girls who lived there, were mostly their slaves. We cooked, we cleaned, and we took care of their six year old twin boys who, it must be said, were good birth control for us girls if that was what they were trying to teach us. Our foster parents sat on their butts and if they wanted something, they hollered at us to run and fetch it for them. My foster mom, Carol, constantly made remarks about me, my body, my hair, my lack of personality, just being nasty. She was specifically mean to me, but she had an equal opportunity policy when it came to our care. She didn't spend one more cent than she had to on our needs, which meant that our clothes were constantly old and too small. At school, girls made fun of me because they thought I wore my clothes overly tight to get the boys to notice me. They called me a slut and worse and the boys treated me like one and so I steered clear of everyone as much as possible.

"I wasn't exactly brimming with self confidence as it was, but Carol made it her job to make me feel even worse about myself. This didn't exactly make me eager to put myself out there as far as making friends or dating. I ate my lunch in the library every day, and I went home after school and cleaned Carol and Billy's house. The day I turned 18, I got a job at The Hilton, and moved out with the intention of sleeping on Genevieve's couch for three months (she had moved out of our foster home and in with her boyfriend six months earlier), until I had enough money saved up for a security deposit on an apartment. Two months in to my stay there, her boyfriend made a pass at me, Gen threw me out and I had nowhere to go and so I worked during the day, went to the library after work and slept at a table in the corner for three hours until they closed and then wandered to several different coffee shops nursing coffees until it was time to go back to work, where thankfully, they have a shower in the employee restroom that they don't mind us using.

"I slept at a shelter downtown one night but an old man tried to crawl into my cot with me in the middle of the night and someone stole the pair of shoes I had left at the end of my bed before I went to sleep. I couldn't risk someone stealing the money I had saved for an apartment, which I was carrying all in cash. I would have been right back where I started and that was unthinkable."

I glance at Jake and there is a hard look on his face, his jaw clenching. I go on anyway. I don't feel like I can stop myself now.

"At the end of that month, I had enough money for a security deposit at any one of the apartments I had looked at. I called around and found the one that I could move into that day. I slept on the floor using my backpack as a pillow and a ratty, pink blanket I had had since I was a kid, until I could afford some used furniture. I got my GED that next year since I had moved out and started working before I graduated."

He is still listening intently to me and he takes my hand and squeezes it, giving me a small reassuring smile, although his face remains tense under it and there's something behind his eyes that looks like heartbreak.

I take a huge sip of wine. While I've been talking, Jake has slowly been working and now two seasoned steaks are in a pan on the stove and he's cutting several red potatoes into quarters that he's just rinsed in the sink on the counter in front of him.

"Want me to do that?" I ask nodding towards the potatoes.

"No, I want you to sit there and relax and sip your wine and talk to me," he smiles now, his face relaxing.

"You've been through so much, Evie," he says, glancing up at me with sad eyes.

"Yeah, but the thing is, in some ways I'm lucky for it."

He frowns, "How so?"

"Well, how many people do you think walk into their apartment at the end of the day, small and simple as it may be, and look around and feel like one of the luckiest people in the world? How many people truly appreciate what they have because they know what it feels like to have absolutely nothing? I went through a lot to get where I am and I don't take anything I have for granted, ever. That's my reward."

He's looking at me intensely, a fire in his eyes that almost looks like pride. I don't exactly understand it, but I appreciate it. Finally, he says quietly, "I never would have thought to look at it that way."

We're both silent for several minutes as he puts the potatoes in a bowl and pours in some olive oil and then opens a drawer and starts pulling out spices and tossing those in the bowl as well. Then he mixes it all with a spoon and pours the mixture on a baking sheet.

He turns to the stove and as he's turning the dials and putting the baking sheet in the oven, I watch his back muscles flex under his t-shirt and check out his amazing ass and wonder what it is about a man in jeans and bare feet that is just so damned sexy.

I take another huge gulp of wine.

He takes a bagged Caesar salad out of the fridge and brings it back to the counter, winking and saying, "Not everything home made. Don't hold it against me."

I laugh. "Please. I'm already completely impressed."

"Reserve that until you've tasted everything," he grins and the mood seems to have lightened.

He turns the steaks over and as he's mixing the salad in a bowl, he says, "Evie, the eulogy you gave for your friend, Willow. Tell me about that." He looks up at me and his eyes are sharp, focused.

"I'm talking too much about myself, again. How does that happen every time I'm with you?"

"Indulge me, you're fascinating to me."

I roll my eyes. That's me -
fascinating
. But I answer him anyway. "I used to tell Willow stories when we were kids and lived together in foster care. She loved them and even after we were adults and I would go over and clean her up from whatever mess she had gotten herself into; drug hangover, shit kicked out of her by a boyfriend, whatever." I wave my hand, trying to banish the images that immediately assault my brain. "Even as an adult she would ask me to tell her one of
her
stories. She would ask for them by name, even in a completely inebriated state sometimes." 

"Sounds like she felt special in the ownership of them. She probably didn't have ownership of a lot. That's beautiful, Evie."  Jake says gently.

I stare at him silently for a minute because that
is
beautiful when he puts it that way.

But I say, "In the beginning, it was just stupid kid stuff. I had a vivid imagination," I laugh but it sounds hollow even to my own ears.

"It came in handy. Just a kid trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, you know?"

He nods as if he understands, which of course he doesn't but it's nice anyway. It's so hard to explain growing up in foster care to someone who has no concept of that type of childhood. Of course, Jake hasn't told me anything about his own childhood so I don't know what his upbringing was like. Obviously his family has money though so it was eons apart from mine, at least in that respect.

"Will you tell me about Leo?" he says.

I take a sip of my wine. "Jake, I've shared a lot tonight and it felt good and that surprises me because I don't make it a habit of bringing up my past very often, but can we save Leo for another time? Is that okay?"

I don't tell him that I'm struggling a little bit with the feeling that I'm betraying Leo somehow, even though rationally I know that's ridiculous. He threw me away a long time ago, and he's not even of this earth anymore. I cringe inwardly with the thought.

He stares at me for a few seconds and I start squirming at his intense gaze so I ask him what he's thinking.

He comes around the bar and sits on the stool next to me and I turn towards him and he takes my hand and says, "I was just thinking about how much I appreciate you sharing with me tonight. And I was also thinking that from where I'm standing, you've done a pretty remarkable job of not letting your past make you hard. There's not a harsh or bitter thing about you, not a single thing, not your attitude, not the way you hold yourself, not your eyes, not your smile, not the way you treat people, always taking care of the people who are lucky enough to have your love, and that's just you. Life obviously took a lot from you and I know you've been cut deep, but the fact that you relied on yourself to make it through and that you didn't let it make you cynical or cold, that is all you. Own that. That's what I was thinking."

A tear slips out of my eye, I can't help it. He's making slow circles with his thumb on my hand and staring at me with those soulful brown eyes and that's when I fall in love with him, just sitting in his kitchen, I fall head over heels.

He smiles at me and gestures to the small glass table in the eating area next to the bar and I stand up and walk there as he pulls two placemats out of a drawer and puts them down on the table and then places napkins and silverware for each of us.

I sit down and he returns to the kitchen to dish up two plates and returns with them, and the bottle of wine.

He refills our glasses and we dig into the food, which is completely delicious.

"Okay, truly impressed," I say. "This is amazing." And it is. The steak is tender and succulent and the potatoes are spiced perfectly with crispy skin on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside. The salad is crisp and even though it's from a bag, it's the perfect compliment to the dinner Jake's made from scratch.

When we've eaten in silence for a few minutes, I say, "Will you tell me about your parents? How did your dad pass?" I glance at him, nervous that I've brought up a painful subject, but he answers quickly.

"Heart attack. It was sudden. He lingered for a week afterwards but got a blood clot. That's what actually killed him."

"I'm sorry, Jake." I pause because his face seems like it's gotten hard. "You must miss him."

He sighs. "Yeah, I do. I wasted a lot of years with my dad that I can't ever get back."

"I'm sorry."

"It's ok. Really. It wasn't ok for a long time but I've come to a place where it's getting there." He pauses for a minute before he continues. "I realize now that there are a lot of paths in life. Some we choose and some are chosen for us. I was dealt some shit, just like a lot of us are, and I made a lot of poor choices too. I have to take responsibility for those. But the only thing we'll get from trying to figure out where another path would have taken us are questions there are no answers to and heartbreak that can't be healed. Regardless of how we got there, all any of us can do is move forward from where we are.”