I CLIMBED INTO bed and snuggled up to A.J.
He pulled me in close. “Everything okay?”
“Not even a little bit. Teagan had another talk with Jessie. When I told you that he’d told her everything earlier, I was wrong. He told her that he didn’t want a big wedding. What he neglected to tell her is that he has a daughter.”
A.J. didn’t seem surprised.
I’d like to say that I was all mature about it, but it really pissed me off. Teagan is my sister. If her boyfriend has some deep dark secret, and my boyfriend knows about it, it is his duty to tell me. “Is that what you didn’t want to get in the middle of?”
“Yep.”
“I’m trying really hard to keep you out of the middle of it, at least where my family is involved, but at the same time, you know what? That’s a pretty damn big secret to hold, A.J.”
“It isn’t my secret. It wasn’t my place to say anything. If you told me a secret, wouldn’t it be your right to determine when and if it should be shared with the masses?”
“I know that it wasn’t your secret.” I wiggled into a comfortable position. “Just for the record, I don’t have any secrets like that.”
A.J. got very still. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“You’re scaring me. You’re acting like you do have a secret like that.” I turned so I could see him in the tiny bit of light that was coming through the blinds. “A.J., do you have a secret like that?”
Because I swear to God, although I kept thinking that Teagan should just get over it and get on with it, I was twenty-seven kinds of hypocritical. If A.J. had a kid walking around out there that I didn’t know about, I was gonna have a heart attack and then maybe commit a homicide. Or two.
“It’s not a secret, and it’s not like that.”
I sat up. “What does that mean?”
“It means that just like everyone else in the world, I have a history. Things happened to me before I met you, and I haven’t shared every moment of my life. Not because I’m hiding anything, just because I haven’t.”
“Please tell me you don’t have a stack of kids out there somewhere.”
I thought he’d laugh. He just looked sad.
I couldn’t breathe. “A.J.?”
“Cara, I don’t have a stack of kids out there.”
“Do you have any kids out there?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“Come here.” He pulled me back down so that I wasn’t sitting anymore. I lay on my side. It seemed that he didn’t want me staring at him while he told me whatever it was that he was about to tell me.
“Before I met you, I dated a girl named Amanda.”
“I remember. Suzi talked about her. Suzi wasn’t exactly her biggest fan.”
“Yeah, well, I should have listened. I’m not sure what you want me to say. Do you really want to hear about my previous sex life?”
“I don’t want details about your sex life. If that’s all we’re talking about, then we don’t need to talk about it at all.”
A.J. started running his hand lightly over my back. It’s a comfort thing, as much for him as for me. It’s not really a sexual thing, although it is kind of sexy. It’s more like a connection while we talk, which is about as sexy as you can get. I think he started doing that the very first time we lay in bed talking all night.
“You know, I don’t want you to ever feel the way that Teagan feels right now, so I’ll tell you everything. If I’m telling you too much, stop me.”
“That works.” I tried not to panic. This couldn’t be good.
“I met Amanda at work. I was the photographer; she was the model.”
“Great. She’s beautiful. Suzi left that part out.”
“Beautiful?” He snickered quietly. “Maybe on the outside.”
He took another breath, like the whole conversation was hard on him, so I reminded myself that since I was the one who asked for the information, I needed to just shut-up and let him get it out.
“At the time, I thought we were perfect for each other. She was really outgoing and always had something to do. I was more into my work, and I was in my starving artist phase. Had fifty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment and only two pairs of pants. She had about a thousand pairs of shoes and about fifty thousand dollars’ worth of makeup and hair stuff. I guess opposites really do attract.”
My thought was that opposites attract, but they don’t last. That’s what my mom always said. The other day, she mentioned — in her ‘mom’ kind of way — that Teagan and I needed to refocus and get more positive. But my mind went straight to the dark side. Suzi and Barry came to mind because they’re about as opposite as you can get. That brought me to a dark place. Of course there are some exceptions to every rule, but still… A.J. was talking.
“Our relationship was reckless and stupid. We met and were living together in days.”
“I know that one.” I smiled. “First we were living together. Then we...”
His voice was as stern as I’d ever heard it. “That was nothing like this. Cara, you mean everything to me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You know that, right?”
“I feel the same way.” I started to say something else but got interrupted.
“Good. You’re doing that thing you do when you ask a question but then don’t allow the person to answer.”
“Sorry. I’m one hundred percent listening, and I won’t interrupt again.”
“Thanks. So, I moved in with her.” He waited a heartbeat to see if I would compare and contrast, since he had moved in with me as well, but I kept my promise and didn’t say a word.
“We’d been living together for a few weeks when she came home one night and told me that she was pregnant.”
My heart stopped. It was Teagan all over again. What the hell? I go my whole life without a single case of childhood weirdness coming into my reality, and in a matter of hours, that changes. I go to tell my mother I’ve got an issue or two, and instead I find out that she has been abused and Teagan was assaulted.
Tonight, I go over to comfort Teagan because Jessie has this big dark secret that threatens their future, and I find out that A.J. has that secret, too. Not the same secret or anything, but a secret.
Maybe it isn’t that things happen in threes, because I was lost on which three we were in right about now. I didn’t think I could figure it out even if I used a calculator with an abacus override. Maybe it’s that things come in clumps. Maybe Mom was right, and there was nothing new. There were just a bunch of things sloshing around in the universe, and you happened to get caught up in the muck.
I didn’t say anything. Not because I was that good at keeping promises, but because my brain and mouth weren’t working. Normally in times of stress, even if my brain didn’t work, there was no shutting my mouth down. But right then, neither were working.
A.J. was so lost in the past he didn’t even notice.
“I was scared, but I was excited. I always wanted to be a dad, and even if the timing sucked — and it couldn’t have sucked much harder — I figured we’d make it work. I figured I’d sell all my equipment, probably be lucky to get half for it, but that would give me about twenty-five grand and be enough to pay for school. I could learn to do something that would be a regular nine to five.”
He was quiet for a minute. I let him have some time. Mostly because I still didn’t know where this was going, but I was pretty sure this was one of those moments in life when you look back and know your world tilted off its axis just a little bit.
A.J. continued. “We decided not to tell anybody. Amanda was really pissed when I told Suzi, but Suze had promised to keep it to herself until after a safe amount of time had passed and we told everybody. I thought we should get married. After the way my parents were, I was totally focused on giving the baby a perfect life. I wanted one hundred percent involvement. Amanda refused the whole idea of marriage. She insisted that married models didn’t get as much work. Total BS, by the way. She should have known that I’d know that — since I was in the industry — and I should have paid closer attention and taken that as a warning, but I didn’t.”
He took a deep breath and spoke even more quietly. He’d stopped rubbing my back. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I didn’t do anything. Just listened.
“That very first weekend after she told me, she came in late. Really late. And drunk. Completely shit-faced. I couldn’t believe it. Why would she drink? What about the baby? Does one drunken night mess up a baby’s life? Or is it just one stupid night: no harm, no foul? I didn’t know the answer, but every worst case scenario went through my mind, and I lost it.”
If A.J. confessed that he’d smacked her, I’d understand. I’d completely lose all respect for him, but I’d understand.
“I yelled at her. Screamed. I told her we were going to the hospital. Maybe they could do something. What was she thinking, getting drunk while she was carrying our baby? I don’t even know everything I said, but I yelled loud enough that the neighbors called the cops. The cops showed up, and they talked to each of us separately. The cop that was talking to me said that if Amanda wanted to be a total bitch, all she had to say was that I’d hit her, and my ass was in jail. She didn’t do that. God, I wish she had. Instead, screamed loud enough for the whole world to hear: I don’t know why he even gives a fuck. The baby isn’t his anyway.”
I could feel the hurt radiating from A.J. I still didn’t say a word.
“Long story painfully short, I was just some douche she thought she could pawn her kid off on. Her words, not mine. She thought I was such a loser that I’d be proud to take care of her kid while she was off making movies and commercials and doing print work. Living her life as she had before she got pregnant.”
“Why didn’t she just have an abortion?”
“Good question. She thought that having a kid, one she would never have to deal with, gave her character more depth. Honest to God, that’s what she said.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. It took me a long time to get past it. I haven’t really gotten over it. Because of my parents, I had trust issues to begin with. That’s why I was never heavy into dating or anything. I just don’t trust people. But when she pulled that on me, it set me back. Way back. I got into my work. I avoided all personal relationships, with the exception of Suze and Gran, and I tried to bury it in the back of my mind.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything.”
“A long time ago, Suzi pointed out that you didn’t move hardly anything into the apartment when you moved in here. She suggested that I ask you about that blue sculpture…”
“Yeah. Right after Amanda told me she was pregnant, I was working on a shoot in this old neighborhood. Beautiful young women and a beat-up area with weathered older people —a total rip-off of the movie ‘Mahogany,’ but they figured that movie was so old nobody would even recognize it. Anyway, I saw that in the window of a little shop, and it just spoke to me. Of the future that I was going to have with my child, and the way I was going to break the cycle of what my parents did to Suze and me. When everything blew up, I kept it. To remind me that I’m just as screwed up as my parents.”
“No, you aren’t. You aren’t screwed up at all. Just because some girl abused you doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with you. She thought you were an honorable guy. That’s what she was saying. If you thought the baby was yours, you would do the right thing and raise the baby well, which shows you are the opposite of your parents.”
“Thanks. It really doesn’t matter. That’s all history. I feel like I don’t even know that guy anymore.”
“Then why do you keep it?”
“Bob Marley said, ‘Don’t forget your history nor your destiny.’” He shrugged. “I keep that as a reminder.”
“I’m sorry she hurt you.”
“I take responsibility for my part in it. I was stupid. I moved too fast. I didn’t know who she was before I got involved with her.”
“We didn’t know each other very well when we got together,” I reminded him.
“Not true.”
“Oh, Suzi? She told you all about me?” My stomach flipped. Did A.J. come looking for some safe and boring girl? Was that why he moved in with his sister’s ex-roommate?
“She talked about you, but that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Okay.” He must have heard the doubt and concern in my voice. I’m not saying I was insecure about some stuff, but mostly I’m not saying it because everybody already knew it anyway.
“I knew you by what you did. The way you treat people. The look on your face when those little ducks in the water retention pond got separated from their mother. You stood guard until she had them all back. The homeless guy that talks to the stop sign. You check the weather to see if you should bring him water.”
“Twice now I’ve found him with those sticky things on his chest that they use to check your heart in the hospital. I worry about him. I’ve tried everything I can to get him off the street, but he just doesn’t want to be helped.”
“Cara, don’t you see? You do help him. The best thing you can do in anyone’s life is to let them know that you’re thinking about them. That you care. That they’re on your mind even if they’re not in front of your face. That old crazy guy knows that somewhere there’s a pretty redhead that cares enough to drive over and bring him bottled water and a sandwich. People are so isolated now. All of our technologies haven’t brought us closer together; they’ve done the opposite. That old guy, he has a connection with you. I’ll bet if you asked him, he would tell you that it means everything to him.”
“Maybe.”
“You take it for granted that people care about you. That you can make a phone call and a dozen people will be anywhere you want them as fast as they can get there. When I got the crap kicked out of me in Old Town, it wasn’t my family that responded — it was yours. Think about that. Your family didn’t come to check on me because they care about me.”
“Yes, they did.”
“No, they didn’t. They came because they care about you.”
“That’s not true. Even if you broke up with me tomorrow, when the cops found your broken and bloodied body in the alley — I’m not saying I would hurt you, but you should be aware that I have a dark side — my family would check on you. Probably before they even went to the jail to bail me out.”
He chuckled. “I’ll remember that.”
“Seriously, A.J. Maybe when we first met it was all about the fact that they cared about me so they cared about you by extension, but that isn’t the case anymore. They care about you because they care about you.”
“I appreciate that. Really. I know Suzi and Gran were worried about me when it happened, but I’m not even sure my parents knew.”
“I’m sorry.”
A.J. took a deep breath. “Okay, that wasn’t true. There’s no way they didn’t know. They watch the news. Friends of theirs had to see it. What’s so messed up about our family that my parents didn’t even call to see if I was okay?”
I had no answer.
After a minute or two, A.J. took a deep breath. “I worry about that.”
“Worry about what?”
“Worry that there’s something in my family’s DNA or something. What happens if I turn out to be like my father?”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it skips a generation. You’ll be more like your grandfather. I met him, you know. He was a great guy. He was so funny, and he was so gracious. He pinched your grandmother’s butt. She actually blushed. Suzi and I about fell out laughing. I only met him two or three times, but, A.J., you’re like your grandfather, not your father.”
He pinched my butt and made me laugh.
I allowed myself one moment of panic. If it really did skip a generation — all the ugliness and bad habits - then I would be more like my grandmother than my mother. When people say you’re like your mother, you cringe inside, no matter how wonderful your mother is. But if I was actually like my grandmother… Not good. Not good at all.
A.J. was able to take my mind off of it.
Evidently, sunrise heart-to-hearts wake him up in all the right ways.