Tameless (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen – Wes

I stood in the doorway, blocking Meghan from entering my apartment. It was one thing to prevent her from physically entering, but her words had obviously made it inside, considering how she was screeching.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Dawn sitting on the edge of the couch. She looked at me wide-eyed, her mouth slightly open.

Meghan pushed on the door again.

I pushed back, edging through the doorway and stepping out onto the sidewalk, but not before turning my head toward Dawn and telling her to give me a couple of minutes. She nodded in response.

Out on the sidewalk, with the door closed behind me, I said, “What the fuck are you doing? How did you find me?”

She crossed her legs as she stood, looking like someone who needed to pee really badly. She fidgeted with her hands and her shirt. She was a fucking mess.

“I know the places you work, remember? So I just followed you here a couple of days ago.”

I shook my head. “So you followed me? Nice. Aside from all the other shit you’re into, now you’ve become a stalker.”

Her eyes became glassy. I didn’t know if she was about to cry or if this was some side effect of whatever drug she was on these days. “Fuck you, Wes.”

“Tell me why you’re really here, and then you need to leave.”

“I told you,” she said.

I took a deep breath and looked around, relieved to see no neighbors were out here.

“You’re fucking lying,” I said.

A bitter laughed escaped from her mouth. “No, I’m really not. The baby is yours, Wes. And who’s the cunt you have in there?”

“How far along are you?”

Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, with strands of it frizzing out from her head like she’d just been exposed to static electricity. Her cheeks were sunken, the bags under her eyes a light purplish hue. She looked like she’d been up for days, and very well might have been. She looked like shit.

She crossed her arms. “Long enough to know you’re the father.”

“How long?” I repeated. “Tell me, goddammit.”

It had been a little more than four months since we’d last had sex. Something told me she wouldn’t remember that time-frame, so this was my way of proving she had no idea who the father was. Assuming that was really a question at all—maybe she wasn’t even pregnant.

“I haven’t been to the doctor yet,” she said.

I shook my head and was about to tell her to get the fuck away from my place when the door opened behind me. I turned and Dawn, with her head down, moved past me.

“Wait,” I said.

Meghan made a move toward Dawn, but I caught her by the arm and quickly let go when it was clear she wasn’t really going to do anything.

“Stay here,” I said to her, and started down the sidewalk after Dawn.

She was moving quickly and I almost had to jog to catch her as she reached her car.

“Dawn, wait. She’s lying.”

She opened her car door and put one foot on the floorboard, her forearms leaning on the open door between us.

“I have to go.”

My shoulders slumped. The last thing I wanted was for her to leave. And it pissed me off that she was leaving because of this drug-addled psycho.

“She’s lying, Dawn. She’s probably not even pregnant.”

She looked at me with a sadness in her eyes, and all I could feel was guilt that I’d let her down somehow, even though I hadn’t done anything and none of this was my fault.

She said, “I just can’t be here right now, okay?”

I exhaled a long, slow breath. The night was ruined. It had started out so well, had gotten even better, and who knows how great it could have been?

“I’m sorry.”

She sat in the car and started to pull the door closed, saying, “It’s fine. Take care of whatever you have to take care of.”

“I’ll call you later.”

She closed the door. Didn’t open the window. Just looked at me. Nodded. And then she drove off.

I watched her leave the parking lot and as soon as I turned back toward my apartment, my mood shifted to furious because Meghan had ruined a perfectly good night. And the fury almost slipped over the line into rage when I saw that she had gone into my apartment.

She’d left the door slightly open and had taken a seat on my couch.

“I like this,” she said, when I walked in. “Nice place. But we need to get you some more furniture.”

I closed the door behind me and stood there, not getting any closer to her. “Are you high right now or just fucking crazy?”

“Wes.” She stood. “I didn’t know how strongly I felt about you until you weren’t around anymore. I fucking love you. So fucking much.”

I held back a laugh but couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. “I don’t believe you about that, about the pregnancy, about anything. When I told you months ago that it was over, I meant it.”

“You weren’t this angry then.”

This girl was unbelievable. “You weren’t as crazy fucked-up then.”

“The baby—”

“Yeah,” I said. “The baby. Right. Go see a doctor, then show me the paperwork. Otherwise, I don’t believe you.” I opened the door. “Get out, Meghan.”

“Don’t make me leave—”

“Now,” I said, interrupting her pleading. “Leave and don’t come back.”

She took a few steps toward me. Someone knocked on the door. For a second, I had this image of Dawn appearing in the doorway, having changed her mind about leaving, coming back to claim her rightful place in my apartment.

But it was the Chinese food delivery guy. I paid him, tipped him, thanked him, took the bag, and placed it on the counter.

Meghan walked over to the kitchen area and started to reach for the bag.

“You really need to leave,” I said, without raising my voice.

“Are you going to eat all that by yourself?”

I thought about giving her something. Maybe she didn’t have any money for food. Maybe it would have been the right thing to send her on her way with something to eat.

Then again, maybe not.

“Yes, I’m going to eat it all.” I pushed the bag away from her. I reached for her wrist, not forcefully, just enough, and led her to the door. She stepped outside and I closed it without saying anything.

Give her some food? No way. At this point, at the condition she was in, it would be like feeding a stray cat.

Chapter Seventeen – Dawn

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Sitting in his apartment, trying to hear what was being said but barely being able to make any of it out, I decided to leave.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I wanted to stay. I wanted Wes to get rid of that girl. I wanted our night to continue. It had started out in an amazingly unexpected way, and had ended the same way.

What pissed me off the most was that it should have been her leaving, not me. But I couldn’t continue sitting there, mainly because of one thought swirling around in my mind: Wes was denying everything she said, and while I wanted to believe him, there was a part of me that didn’t.

He had mentioned the girl by name to me before. He’d told me how she was clinging to him, basically stalking him, but he’d never said why. I guess maybe it was because she cared for him, maybe even loved him, but she was going about it in such an intense way, it just made sense to me that maybe there was more to it—like a pregnancy.

All of this was a lot to process while driving around and avoiding going home.

I needed to talk to someone. I needed a friend to listen to everything. I didn’t need to be told what to do, I just needed to say it out loud to another human being. Maybe that would be a valve that would relieve some of this stress.

I texted Maggie, waited a few minutes, no response. I texted Rachel, same result. They were my two closest friends and I hadn’t seen them much in the last couple of weeks, so I had no idea what they were doing. Rachel traveled a bit for her job. Maggie was always with her boyfriend when she wasn’t with us girls. I tried calling them, both calls ending up in voicemail, but I didn’t leave any messages.

It was then that I thought of the one person I’d always been able to talk to confidentially. Aunt Jackie, my mom’s sister. She lived in Redondo Beach, which was only a thirty-minute drive from Santa Monica.

Aunt Jackie had no kids of her own, and as far back as I could remember, she’d always referred to me as the closest thing she’d ever have to a daughter. She had also told me that if I ever got in a situation that I couldn’t tell my parents about, I could always go to her and she’d keep it private while we figured it out.

This was exactly the kind of predicament she was talking about.

She’d lived in the same house for as long as I could remember. It was just a block from the beach. She was single, never been married. She divided her time between the health-food store she owned, and doing yoga on the beach in the mornings and evenings. She was just about to go out to the beach when I drove up and surprised her.

“Dawn!” she yelled through the screen door, pulling it open and hugging me. “What a nice surprise.”

She held me, and I held on tighter. “I should have called.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I was getting ready to walk down to the beach but I can skip it.”

She let go. I didn’t want her to. I guess it showed in my face, too, because as she looked at me the smile dropped from her face and her expression turned into one of concern.

“What’s wrong?”

I sighed, closed my eyes, and lowered my head.

“Come inside,” she said, guiding me through the doorway with one hand on my shoulder. “Hungry?”

“God, yes, I haven’t eaten since lunch. I had dinner plans, but…well, I’ll tell you about it. It’s part of why I’m here.”

She told me to sit at the kitchen table while she prepared a plate of leftovers for me.

I don’t think I’d ever seen my aunt not look amazing. She was in better shape than most women in their twenties. She had short brown hair, a golden brown complexion, and a statuesque build, probably 5’9, taller than any other woman in our family.

She put a plate of food in front of me.

“Mashed potatoes?” I said, surprised.

She smiled and sat across from me. “Even better. Pureed cauliflower with organic butter and chives.”

I was skeptical, but tried it, and was surprised how good it was.

“Good, huh?”

I nodded, mouth full.

“You can eat and talk at the same time,” she said. “Now, what’s going on?”

I told her everything…well, almost everything. I didn’t tell her about the strip club. Not because she would have judged me but because I didn’t know what Wes would think of me telling people. Especially people he might see again, like Aunt Jackie.

As I told her the story, her face went through several changes. First, surprise. Then, disbelief. Followed by what looked like anger (she was always protective of me). And as I wrapped up by telling her about what happened earlier in the evening, she looked concerned. As long as I could remember, I had never seen her look worried before. She was always an evenly calm, rational person.

She held a dish towel in her hands, folding it and unfolding it.

“Do you trust him?” she asked.

I nodded, then contradicted myself. “I mean, I guess. I don’t know. It goes back and forth, you know?”

“I know. It makes perfect sense. I remember how devastated you were when he left back then.”

My gaze dropped to the plate in front of me. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry anymore. I had eaten about half of the plate of mashed cauliflower, and I put my fork down.

“This is all so confusing.” I pushed the plate a little, enough so I could cross my arms and lean on the table. I was feeling uneasy. It was as though I needed to brace myself, prop myself up somehow. “I guess I didn’t know how strong my feelings for him were all those years ago. Or…I guess I just didn’t know what they meant. And when I saw him again, things just fell right into place, you know?” I hesitated for a moment. Aunt Jackie remained quiet, letting me talk it out. I raised my eyes to meet her stare. “I think I might have loved him, just not in the way I thought I did. Does that make sense?”

She nodded and gave me a half-smile. “It’s a tough situation. There’s so much history there, good and bad.”

“And now there’s the present. I feel like there’s a future, too.” Those last few words came out of my mouth as I choked up a little.

She started fidgeting with the towel again. She knew something. She had something to say but wasn’t saying it.

“What?” I asked.

She looked up from her fidgeting hands. “You know I’ve never tried to tell you what to do, but this is one exception. Your parents will lose their minds over this.”

“He’s better now. You should see him.”

Her lips tightened into a thin line. “I believe you. I know you’re a smart young woman and you wouldn’t get mixed up with him if he was still as volatile as he used to be, but trust me when I say this is not a good idea.”

I sipped from a bottle of imported water. It tasted earthy, almost salty. I swallowed, trying to avoid looking like I didn’t like it. “I know it isn’t. I know.”