Trouble (13 page)

“Maybe your parents will want me to stay on the couch,” she tells me quietly, going for her bag. I snatch it out of her reach and put it behind me, crossing my arms over my chest.

“No way in hell. You’re staying up here with me.”
If it were the apartment, who am I kidding, even if it were the apartment I would insist.

I’m not letting her out of my sight for the rest of her life. Maybe she’ll think I’m going overboard and try to avoid me, but right now my testosterone is on overdrive. It’s pumping through me like
an instinctual serum, making me irrationally brave to tell this woman what to do. Part of me knows it, but the larger, more feral part of me has taken over.

“Caleb,” she starts with my name in
that
tone, you know, the one where a man ought to flinch, but he doesn’t until it’s too late? Yeah, that one.

“Daisy,” I tell her in an equally determined voice, my fingers digging into my arms. I straighten up to my full height and stare down at her, but it’s not as intimidating at it used to be. She just stares at me.

“I’m going to tell Carl that we’re not going to make it into work for a week.” She informs me, swiping my cellphone from my pocket before I can tell her not to. She flips through my contacts and quirks an eyebrow at all the women in there; I really should get rid of those. Then she pauses on Delilah’s face, and name and her eyebrows draw together as she studies that picture. I know the instant she recognizes the woman from the tattoo shop and feel my stomach drop out from under me. Daisy never struck me as the jealous type, but I’m about to find out.

“Caleb!” I’ve been saved by my sister, although I’m not sure about that just yet.

“Jessie,” she slides past Daisy by the door and flings her arms around me, pressing her cheek to my tense muscles and frowning when she realizes she walked in on something. “This is Daisy, my-” I stop, my what? My girlfriend, the girl I’m sleeping with, love?

“His girlfriend, he’s just too chicken shit to admit it,” Daisy holds out her hand to my sister as if she’s meeting one of my friends or colleagues and not a thirteen year old that’s a month away from being fourteen.

“Jessie, Caleb’s sister. I’d like to say I’ve heard a lot about you, but I didn’t even know Caleb
had
a girlfriend!” Jessie turns a pouty look on me, and Daisy smirks behind her back at me. Maybe the Delilah incident is over.

“
I can say the same.” The Delilah incident has just been trumped. My sister quirks an eyebrow at me and crosses her arms over her chest, almost a mirror of Daisy. I swallow once, audibly, and try to find something to say.

“It just never came up,” I say lamely. My palms
become sweaty, and I take the hunched posture of a man being beaten verbally by women. I put my hands in my pockets and look at the floor, wondering when the silent death rays will stop beating at my flesh.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,
Daisy
.” Jessie takes her leave then, leaving me in a heap of trouble.

“I’m not going
to even ask why you never mentioned a sister until we were coming here.” Daisy throws that out at me and grabs some clothes from her bag. I catch her around the waist and pull her up to me, putting my nose in her hair.

“I didn’t mention her because it
really didn’t ever come up. Besides, I really didn’t think I’d be speaking to my parents as much as I am right now,” I shrug a shoulder, and she softens in my grip. It’s the truth, and I know she can see that on my face.

“Fine, but could you let go of me now?
I’m going to take a shower,” My heart speeds up and quickly calms down all in a span of a few seconds. I remind myself that she’s not going anywhere; she wouldn’t do that to me. But a small part of me still fears it.

I watch her take her leave of me, closing the door gently behind her. My parents are still downstairs somewhere, probably ordering takeout for tonight and discussing my new girlfriend. The cellphone in my hand buzzes and I look down at it. Carl’s face pops up onto the screen with a goofy grin
, and I can’t help but grin back. I slide the phone to answer it and put it up to my ear.

“What’s up?” I greet him, sitting down on my bed with an arm slung across my leg.

“Just wanted to know when you were going to get back in here, I’ve got clients lining up wanting to see their drawings and new ones who want to know where you’re at.” Carl sounds flustered, and I imagine it’s because his best apprentice and receptionist are both MIA.

“Carl, I’m at my parents,” I try to tell him in explanation. There’s a silence on the other end of the phone.

“Do you need me to come get you? Are they holding you hostage in the basement? Say my last name for yes, do you remember my last name? You can answer yes or no to that.” I chuckle at his joking, at least, I hope he’s joking.

“No, Carl, I’m here of my own free will. For now,” I glance at the door and up at my ceiling. There’s a poster of a voluptuous girl covered in tattoos up there. I’d better take that down before Daisy comes back in.

“So what you’re telling me is that two of my employees are an hour away from work,” he trails off and I sigh on my end of the phone, pinching the bridge of my nose as I close my eyes.

“Yeah, and we’re not coming back for at least a week.” I listen to the silence greeting me again and wonder if Carl has hung up. “I’ll understand if you have to find a few more employees, Carl.” I explain to him, meaning it. I might fire some of my employees too if they told me they were going to take a week’s vacation without notice.

“Fire you? I didn’t fire you when you broke the rule of humping the clients. From what I recall there’re several occasions that happened with one particular client. I didn’t fire you when you broke the dating an employee rule, although I guess you were dating her before you got her a job. So part of that’s my fault. I didn’t fire you-”

“Alright, alright, I get it. I’m not fired. Look, I can redo some of the drawings and e-mail you the pictures when I’m finished. I just can’t reach my hand through the computer and do the actual tattoos yet,” Carl is silent again, and I wonder if it’s going to be like this entire conversation.

“Good, do that, and I’ll just hold the vultures off until you get back, kid.” There’s his usual term of endearment for me. It actually makes me feel relaxed to hear him say that. “Just take care of your girl and try to stay out of trouble for a while.”

“Thanks,” There’s a lot more in that word than what is actually said, but Carl knows that. He hangs up the phone and I hang up mine, leaving the device on my old dresser. I stand up on the bed and reach for the ceiling. It’s not hard, I’m not exactly short.

My fingertips brush the edges of the poster and I pull it down, rolling it up neatly and stuffing it into my small closet. When I open up the closet I find paraphernalia from when I was a kid into dirt bikes, and my hands shake as I pull out the tool kit that Ronnie and I would use to work on his dirt bike. I sit down with it on the bed, unsure of what I’m really doing with it. It would be best if I just put it back into the dark depths of my closet again, but I find myself flicking open the little latch and lifting the lid.

It squeaks as I lift it from not being opened in over six years. Taped to the inside of the lid are several baseball cards, but it’s what’s underneath those baseball cards that was
important to Ronnie and me. I pull one off to see if it’s still there, and sure enough, there’s the pair of earrings that Ronnie stole from a department store. He was going to give them to his first girl, but never did.

I lift up the level in the box and stare down at the bottom
, it’s all still here. My face splits into a smile as I pick up the screwdriver set that is like a Russian nesting doll set, and open up the largest one. Instead of screwdrivers inside there’s a little baggie of weed. It doesn’t look like anyone’s gotten into it, but it’s years old and I’m sure it’s not as potent as before. I stuff the bag back inside, it would feel wrong to get rid of it.

By the time Daisy comes back in with wet hair from her shower, I have the tool box stuffed underneath the bed and I’m lying back on my bed staring at a plain ceiling. She settles next to me and stares up at the clean spot on the ceiling, her lips curving up into a grin. “Took the picture of that sexy woman down, huh?” So she did notice.

I roll over and grab her around the waist, burying my face into her stomach. Daisy lays back and strokes my hair idly as she closes her eyes. If I could have it my way, we’d never have to leave this spot. Me with my ear plastered to her abdomen and her rhythmically running her hands through my hair. It’s soothing and arousing all at the same time.

There’s a quiet knock on the door
that interrupts my oasis of peace. Daisy sits up and I run a hand over my hair to flatten it, but the flushed spots on Daisy’s cheeks say it all. She was enjoying giving the scalp massage as much as I was receiving.

“Come in,” I call out as I sling an arm around Daisy’s shoulders. My mother doesn’t flinch at the scene of Daisy with her flushed cheeks and me with my mussed hair. She takes it like a pro.

“I just wanted to let you kids know that dinner is here.” She goes for a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“We’ll be down in a sec, Mrs. Jacobs.” Daisy
peels my arm off her shoulders, but my mother doesn’t close the door.

“If you’re going to be seeing my son, it’s Tracy. Mrs. Jacobs makes me sound old or something!” I know my shoulders stiffen at the statement because Daisy gives me a sideways glance. If she only knew, my mother never allowed a girlfriend of mine to call her Tracy. It was always Mrs. Jacobs because she never approved of the ladies I kept company with.

My mother disappears before Daisy can respond. I hear her footsteps trailing down the hall with a steady rhythm. It’s the same rhythm I used to hear as a kid.

“Well, I’m starving.” Daisy surprises me by hauling me to my feet immediately, and then she drags me down the hallway towards the stairs.

I’m not sure what I expected to find downstairs, but it definitely is not the scene that I walk into. My sister is actually sitting at the dining room table, and my father is sitting at the head of it. I watch with suspicion as my mother plops potato salad onto five plates set out on the table. Two pizza boxes sit in the middle of the table on a linen cloth.

Daisy thinks nothing of it as she sits down at the dinner table with my family. I have not sat down and had dinner with my parents at the dining room table since I was below ten years of age. I wonder if my sister has
ever
eaten dinner at the dining room table. She looks almost as confused as me, but she’s taking it a lot better than me. I’m the only one left standing.

At the sound of my mother’s throat clearing, I actually come back to reality long enough to sit down next to Daisy.
She piles on three slices of pizza onto my plate next to my potato salad, and then she proceeds to chow down on her own slice. I watch her with shock as she devours two slices of pizza before I actually manage to bite into my first slice. My family does not seem to notice the fact that I’ve joined the living dead.

“So Daisy, how long have you and Caleb been seeing each other?”
My sister probably has no idea about our actual relationship and why Daisy and I are here. I’d like to keep it that way. My little sister should not have to deal with the realities of this world too soon. She’s already dealt with death.

“
Around three weeks now I guess,” Daisy sits back in her chair, and I see a small flush creeping up her cheeks. It’s as if she just realized she was eating like an entire army in front of my family at the dining room table. I feel a grin creeping across my face when she glances at me.

“Three weeks? Wow, it’s been-” Jessie cuts off mid-sentence when she realizes what she was about to say.
I understand exactly what she was going to say, and I don’t want anyone tiptoeing around me about it anymore. I have larger problems ahead now.

“It’s been three weeks since Ronnie’s death. It’s alright, Jessie.” I reach a hand across the table to brush my fingers over the back of my sister’s knuckles to let her know that I mean it. She’s struggling with tears, but manages to pull them under control.

“So what do you do for a living, Mr. Jacobs?” Daisy immediately tries to change the subject, and for that I’m grateful. My father jumps on the opportunity to get away from any more awkward talk of Ronnie’s death.

“I’m a carpenter.” Daisy looks genuinely interested when my father starts discussing the techniques he uses on wood and how to build a dining room chair. Then he gets to the part where he actually built this dining room table and these chairs, and the cabinet my mother keeps her dishes in along the wall.

My sister rolls her eyes as she delves into her pizza, and my mother picks at her potato salad. I can tell by the swirling of the potato across the plate that she is upset about something, and I have a few ideas. She does not approve of the fact that Daisy and I are living together. I’m sure that she’s upset about the fact that I was recently arrested for almost beating a man to death, even if it was in self-defense. To make a long story short, I have not grown up to be the man she thought I would be.

I grit my teeth as I put down the half-finished slice of pizza.
My sister is too engrossed in Dad’s story about the time a man cut off his finger with the saw to notice the awkward silence between me and my mother. I clear my throat quietly to have something to do so I don’t seem like a zombie at the dinner table. As soon as Daisy is done with her plate, I grab it and take my own out to the kitchen. My mother follows after me silently with her own, my sister’s, and my father’s.

This is something we used to do together when I was much younger. When I hit my rebellious teenage years, I refused to wash the dishes with my mother. I scrape off the scraps into the trash, pile the dishes on the counter, and grab a towel to dry. We work in silence until the last of the plates is away.

“Do you love her Caleb?” I almost shatter the plate in my grip when she actually asks me. Is this what has been bothering her all night? My throat works as I try to formulate an answer to that question. I’ve made love to Daisy on more than one occasion, and I’ve grown to care about her life more than my own. Does that mean that I love her?

“Yeah, more than anything.”
I finally admit to my mother. Saying it out loud to someone other than Daisy feels more right than anything has in my life for a long time. “I love her more than life itself.” At those words it really hits me how much I care about Daisy. I put the plate up in its proper place and when I look back down at my mother I see tears in her eyes. “Why are you crying?”

I haven’t seen my mother crying on my behalf for years. She sniffles once and rolls her eyes to the ceiling to keep the tears from actually falling. When she’s regained her composure, she sniffs once and runs her hands down her shirt as if it’s wrinkled.