“LANDRY. I HAVE my period.”
Landry stopped, his shoulders going tight. “What?”
“I got my period,” she repeated. “I need some supplies.”
He frowned. “Supplies. What... What kind of supplies?”
It was seven in the morning, and Landry was dumbfounded. Not because he didn’t know that women had periods, and that it was reasonable and likely that Lila would have hers. She had been with him nearly a month now, and it hadn’t really occurred to him, though, until just now. And he also didn’t quite know what to get. His sister would. But...he had no idea. He’d never been in a long-term relationship with a woman. He’d never lived with a woman.
But by God, Lila was telling him and she wasn’t bashful or embarrassed in the least, and he’d be damned if he made her feel weird about it just because he didn’t have experience.
“What do you... What do you use?” he asked.
“I like period underwear.”
“I...” He did not know that was a thing.
There was only one thing to do. He texted Fia. I need some kind of feminine products over here.
Feminine products?
Lila has her period.
I have pads. I bet she hasn’t used tampons.
God in heaven.
She said she wants period underwear.
We’ll have to go to the store to get those. And probably Mapleton?
Do you know what those are?
Obviously.
Well, it wasn’t obvious to him.
“Hang tight,” said Landry to Lila.
Will you please bring over some pads? That should help at least.
On my way.
“Fia is on her way with some pads.”
“Great. But I hate those. I usually get the underwear.”
“I don’t know what those are,” he said.
“Are you one of those men who get squeamish about mentions of periods? My mom says that we should be comfortable talking about bodily functions. And that using blue liquid on commercials is a form of shame.”
He blinked. “I mean, I’m not opposed to an open discussion...”
“Good,” Lila said, making the kind of bold, confrontational eye contact teenagers excelled at. “Because I refuse to be ashamed of normal anatomical functions.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
“Periods are part of life,” Lila said, spreading her arms wide.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I just don’t have a lot of experience dealing with them. Fair?”
She got quiet. And then her eyes filled with tears. “I forgot for a second that my mom doesn’t really say anything anymore.”
He stopped, kind of unsure of what to do. A tear slid down her cheek and he moved forward, wrapping his arm around her. It was way more important he got this right than what he’d just said about periods. He took a breath, he prayed a little. He tried. “Maybe not. But she said those things to you, right. And they were good things. They became part of who you are, and even if she can’t say them to you now, you just said them to me.”
He thought of all the bad things his father had left behind inside of him. And he could only be grateful that when she was being formed, his daughter had been given something better. Better than what his father had given her. Better than what he could’ve given her.
Fia got there in less than five minutes, and she had a big package of pads in her hand.
She handed the package to Lila as soon as she walked in. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” Lila said, looking back up the stairs. “I have to start school soon. Can you get... I need the underwear.”
“Yeah. It’ll take me a little bit to get back with them.”
“That’s okay,” she said.
“You don’t want to go shopping with me?” he asked.
“No. I have school and... I just want the stuff that I’m used to.” She looked sad then. And he felt it in his own chest. Like his own heart was crushed. She was confident and bold, and not embarrassed at all.
But she was also vulnerable, and experiencing something she probably didn’t really want to experience with him.
“Whatever you need.”
Lila went upstairs, and they heard a door close.
“I bet you kind of wish she would’ve spent the night with me now,” Fia said, looking at him in a way he could only describe as gently antagonistic.
“Kind of,” he said.
“I’m going to go over to Mapleton to get what she’s asking for.”
“I’ll go too,” he said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’ll just let Denver know that she’s here, and she’ll be fine. She’s got tons of family all around her. And she’s just doing school.”
“No. I meant really because... You actually want to go on a period underwear buying mission?”
He shrugged. “I need to know what she’s talking about. I got a pretty sound lecture on not being ashamed of basic bodily functions.”
Fia grinned. “Well, Landry, she is correct. You shouldn’t be.”
“I mean, I’m not, as you know.”
He looked at her meaningfully, and her cheeks went fiery red.
He had never been squeamish about sex while Fia was on her period. Hell, he had wanted her all the time. But that didn’t mean that he knew the array of feminine products available.
She coughed. “Great. Thanks for the memories. Let’s head out to Mapleton, then. We’ll buy a couple months’ worth so we don’t get caught unawares next time.”
“Good idea.”
They decided to take Fia’s car, which got better gas mileage, and they set off down the dirt road after he made sure that Lila knew where they were headed, and that his brothers and sister were on deck to handle anything she might need.
“She got upset earlier,” he said. “Because she told me something that her mom said and she forgot to make it past tense. I feel bad for the kid.”
“Ah,” said Fia, her eyes glued to the road. “You haven’t had to deal with this yet, have you?”
She meant the period thing.
“No. It just didn’t occur to me. Which I realize betrays my lack of experience with...living with women. But you know, we all had to be super independent. If we weren’t, then life was just going to be hard. And my mom wasn’t around anymore by the time I was old enough to know what a period was.” For the first time he wondered how Arizona had handled all that. It made him feel like a jerk that he’d never wondered about it before.
“I’m sorry. I guess we both have parental abandonment in common.” She grimaced. “Even though I was a lot older than you when my parents split.”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same bullshit, no matter how old you are. My parents were—” he pulled his teeth back into an approximation of a smile “—toxic.”
It felt like the word had come up a lot lately. It felt like it was a good one for him and Fia, and his mom and dad, and if that wasn’t sobering, nothing ever could be.
“Sorry. Wow.”
“I really never wanted to repeat the cycle,” he said. “That was never what I was asking for. But I would have, wouldn’t I? How did you see that back then, when I didn’t?”
He looked over at Fia’s profile. At her neat frown. The way that her brow pleated as she thought.
“I don’t know,” said Fia. “Maybe it was because of my dad’s affair. Because I found out right around then that he was...cheating.”
“How did you find out?”
“I saw him. I saw him with her. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell you. I just shoved it down and I kept it to myself.” She looked at him, just for a moment. “But it made us feel so fragile. So intense.”
“It’s why you were jealous,” he said.
She laughed. “I mean, if you can’t trust your dad...why trust your boyfriend?”
It made sense. It gave him a lot more understanding of what had happened back then. Why she’d gone off on him sometimes for perceived slights.
“I get it. I trusted my dad even though I shouldn’t have. Even when he proved I shouldn’t. I never had one big thing that broke it. It was just...a lot of time. To sit and reflect on why I felt so bad all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “What a mess.”
“Yeah. It was a mess.” What he didn’t tell her was that he’d wanted her to redeem him. Wanted her to heal him. Back then he’d looked at her and seen salvation.
Had his dad seen his mom that way at one time?
It was a sobering thought.
“I confronted him on the affair,” Fia said. “I yelled at him. I told him that I was going to tell Mom. He told me if I did I’d ruin everything. So I kept it inside because he told me I had to. Then two weeks later I found out I was pregnant. I was so scared, Landry. I thought... I thought that everything was broken. Ruined forever. I thought about not telling you. I thought about...making it go away. That seemed like the easiest thing. But I knew that I had to tell you. And then you wanted the baby. And... I wish that I would’ve told you sooner that I had doubts. That’s one thing I regret. That I didn’t tell you right away that I thought adoption was the best thing. Maybe then you would’ve had more time to adjust. Maybe then you wouldn’t have had a false idea of what I was feeling.”
It was sweet almost, the way she was trying to give him credit now. But after all that self-examination he’d done lately, he really couldn’t give himself that same credit she was. He’d been too stubborn. Too selfish. He’d seen her pregnancy as a gift because he’d seen it as a way to keep her, a way to heal himself...
He’d seen it as loving the baby, but it had been a very, very selfish love.
He saw that now.
“Nothing could’ve made me react to that better,” he said. “Because I wasn’t listening. I was feeling my own feelings. And I was... I was so desperate to prove myself. To prove all these things. That maybe I wasn’t my dad, that maybe the Kings could be functional. That you should stay with me.” He shook his head. “I wouldn’t have listened. I would not have listened to you, Fia. Don’t tell yourself that you could have done something different.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate it. Back then... It felt like the house was on fire. Burning all around me. My life was on fire. And when I handed Lila to her mother, I felt like I was handing the baby to a fireman who was outside that burning building. Like I was handing her to safety. When you say I gave her up, I don’t know what you picture. But that’s what I see.”
A knot gathered in his chest, and he felt an unexpected swell of emotion behind his eyes.
“Well, damn,” he said, trying to breathe around his feelings. “We were kind of a fucking burning house, weren’t we?”
“Yeah. I just didn’t want her to burn in it.”
“I know. We can’t be that now,” he said.
“We aren’t,” Fia said. “We aren’t. I promise. We are better than that. Because we are older. Because we have different resources. We won’t be a burning house again.”
The image struck him, and it was the second time in a couple of days that Fia had taken his worldview and turned it completely upside down. Because he had pictured giving a baby up as something cavalier. Something that you did to unburden yourself. But Fia had never been unburdened, not a single day. He could see now what she’d seen then. And he could never fault her for that. Not ever.
Fia turned the radio on, and he wondered if it was to keep them from having to talk more. The unfortunate thing was, they only had heavy truths between them, and that made being together a little bit exhausting. Of course, he was no stranger to having weight between himself and Fia Sullivan. That was just life, as far as he was concerned. It was definitely his life.
But while the song played, it got intimate, a little bit sexy, and he couldn’t help but notice the curve of her neck.
Which was not the point of this trip.
Not indulging in the attraction that he still felt for her was definitely part of proving that he was different.
That they had grown.
They were going to co-parent. Like functional human beings. They were not going to get trapped in the bog that was each other. Because it wasn’t about them. It wasn’t about their previous connection any more than it was about his anger. Any more than it was about her resentment.
They had set that aside, and he would have to set the attraction aside too. When she turned her head just briefly to look at him, he saw a glint of something in her green eyes that suggested that it wasn’t only him experiencing the feeling. But she would ignore it too. Because she knew that it was the best thing.
They pulled into the parking lot of the big grocery store in Mapleton and got out. It was early morning, so most of the shoppers were older. And it wasn’t all that crowded.
They got a cart and went inside, and he was struck by the domesticity of the moment. He and Fia had never had anything like domestic in their relationship. Not remotely. They had been nothing more than fire and flame. Nothing more than clandestine meetings and big screaming matches. There hadn’t been nice dates, or dinners with family.
They had not been this. But then, he didn’t even think he’d ever been to a grocery store without an adult at that point.
That was a pretty big indictment of the actual situation.
Fia took them straight to the feminine health products and grabbed two boxes of something clearly labeled Underwear. So there. It existed. He learned something new.
They were also right next to an array of condoms and lube.
Fia determinedly looked at none of it.
“Let’s go look at some snacks. I’d like to have more stuff for her. Easy to make things.”
“She can always just come to my house during the day.”
“I need to have food for her at my place,” he said.
“I guess,” said Fia.
“There’s no ‘I guess’ about it. She’s mostly doing school at my place.”
“She doesn’t have to. She can do it at mine.”
“Yeah.”
Fia then went and got her own cart, which felt like an act of defiance, and they started a run of competing supplies.
This was healthy.
They went through the line together and paid. When they got back in the car, he didn’t really know what to say. So he said about the dumbest thing he could have.
“It seems like they have a lot more kinds of lube than they used to.”
He had noticed that, but it was maybe not the best thing to say to his former lover. His former lover who he was still feeling a whole lot of things for.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Just...a thing I noticed when we were in the aisle with the condoms.”
She tapped the steering wheel aggressively with her palm. “I would’ve assumed that you were a lube aficionado,” she said. “Or do none of the girls you bang need it?”
He was shocked, jolted by her mention of other women. And whether or not his seduction attempts required additional lube.
“This doesn’t need to be a whole discussion, Fia. It was an attempt at small talk.”
“An attempt at small talk about lube. Interesting. Interesting choice.”
“I’m filled with nothing but interesting choices.”
“For sure.”
She let that ride, thank God. The only sound in the car was the tires on the pavement.
“So. How many women have benefited from your expertise since me?”
He thought he’d said the worst thing possible. But no, she’d gone and done it.
He was floored by that question. And also, he hated it. He did not want to talk about sex with Fia. Not now, not ever.
“None of this is about us.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.” She paused for a beat. “I don’t actually care.”
“Good.”
“It’s... But you can’t go bringing a lot of women home when you have a teenage girl living in the house.”
So she did care.
“I’m not tempted to, thank you,” he said.
“It’s just, I imagine that it’s curbed your lifestyle a little bit.”
“I think you make assumptions about my lifestyle that are not actually true.”
“So. Then you can answer the question.”
“Very few, Fia,” he said through gritted teeth. “Does that make you happy?”
She looked at him sidelong. “What do you mean ‘very few’?”
For God’s sake. Whatever. He didn’t care. He didn’t have any pride about it one way or the other.
“Three?”
“In thirteen years?”
“Yeah. I don’t—” he let out a hard breath “—get a lot out of it.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes. I’m serious. I tried. After the wound healed a little bit, I tried. I was... I was only disappointed. By the whole experience. It’s actually distinctly depressing to feel like you will never have...”
He didn’t know if there was any point in finishing the sentence.
She didn’t say anything more.
“You’re right,” she said softly. “This isn’t about us.”
He felt wounded. By the whole conversation. By all that it forced him to reveal.
“How about you?” Because he felt like it was fair. Because she’d asked him.
“No one,” she said.
He looked at her, and he couldn’t figure out what the hell to say to that. His stomach was tied up in a knot, a knot that seemed to extend up his chest, wrap around his lungs, make it impossible to breathe.
“You’re kidding,” he said. “More than that, you have to be lying.”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t... It seemed dangerous. After you.”
Because of course she was the one who had gotten pregnant. Of course she was the one who had to carry the physical consequences of that. He had been so sure that he was affected by that in a unique way. He had been so certain that he was the one that was scarred by it. Fia hadn’t even had sex since she was sixteen. And sure, it had never been the same for him. But he’d done it. He’d gone out and taken some lovers and tried to forget her, using sex. Using other women. And she had been just so...devastated by what she had experienced with him it had actually ruined her.
There were circumstances where a man might take some pride in ruining a woman for all other lovers, but that was not what this was.
This was about scarring somebody. Taking one of life’s joys and stealing it from them. This was about the harm that he’d caused that he’d never been able to acknowledge.
It didn’t mean that he hadn’t been hurt.
But Fia had never tried to deny his hurt.
He’d tried to deny hers, because like she’d said, he had needed a villain. It had been convenient. It had been expedient for him to make her the villain, because then he could oversimplify everything. Then he could make it all easy.
But it wasn’t easy, and it never could be.
“Damn. I really fucked things up for you, didn’t I?”
As apologies went, it kind of sucked. But it was the refrain echoing in his soul.
“There were two of us involved in that relationship,” she said.
“But it didn’t help. The way that I reacted to everything.”
“No. It didn’t help. But we can’t keep rehashing it. We can’t keep going over and over...”
“We can, though. Until I get it all sorted out inside myself. Until I...reckon with the fact that I hurt you. All the ways I hurt you. Because all I have thought about for years is the way that you hurt me, Fia. But I never looked deeply enough at the way that I hurt you. I looked at you and saw the person who was in control of the decision. The person who was in control of whether or not we became a family or broke apart. That wasn’t fair. It was never fair. And it becomes clearer and clearer to me when you say things like that. You haven’t even had sex with anyone else. Because you were so...so scarred by what happened. By the consequences. I’m sure that the way I treated you had something to do with that.”
“I don’t know... Don’t. Don’t make it sound like you were evil. Or abusive. You weren’t. You were fundamentally a pretty good boyfriend. Until everything went to hell. Or at least, you were as good as I was. I was the one who screamed at you all the time, every time you talked to another girl. I was the one who was so obsessed with you that I started sneaking out every night to see you. You never pressured me for sex. I jumped on you. I was the one who told you it was okay the times you didn’t have a condom. I bear as much of the responsibility for what we were as you do. Yes, the whole thing surrounding Lila’s birth...and the way that you held it against me, that we can interrogate. But don’t act like you victimized me. I own responsibility for us.”
“I don’t really get how you do that.” He looked out the window, every feeling on the spectrum shifting through him. “How you act so fair. How you let me be so many different things, but I only let you be one.”
“Because I’ve had to,” she said. “Because that’s what it’s like to be a woman in the world, Landry. Because it’s what it’s like when you find yourself pregnant as a teenage girl and you have to go through all of your options. You have to be able to see things from a lot of different angles. And...it’s what I had to do in my family, too. I had to be able to see things from everybody’s point of view. Because my parents...”
“There was no scope for complex thinking in the King household. You agreed with my dad or you were out on your ass.”
“How...how did you all end up with the ranch? I mean, I know your dad was in prison for a while after...”
“That’s not what we were talking about,” he said.
“No, I know. It’s just not interesting, though. How I survived. Why I’m able to think about things this way. It’s because I went through something really hard. And I knew that I wasn’t a villain. So I had to learn to think of myself in a more complicated fashion. I don’t think that’s actually unique. I think it’s survival. I think we both had to do our fair share of that. It sounds like you had to look at things black-and-white to survive.”
He ground his teeth together. “Yeah. In a fashion. My father wasn’t abusive in the way that Seamus McCloud was. The McClouds survived worse than we did, don’t get me wrong. But he made everybody around him feel like they were walking on eggshells all the time. He set himself up to be the smartest, most important man in the room. He was gregarious and interesting when he wanted to be, and he was a tyrant at other times. But again, not in the way that he made you feel afraid. He made you doubt yourself. Made you doubt your own strength. Made you question everything. So yeah, I chose black-and-white a lot of the time, because my dad splintered things. Because he made me question reality. Denver wouldn’t let him come back after he got out of jail. He paid him to leave. That’s the only real thing our dad ever loved. Money and power. We made it clear he didn’t have power anymore.”
“He... Denver has money?”
“Yeah,” said Landry. “You started the whole collective with him, do you not know that?”
“I always thought that big injection of cash he gave was from the Kings.”
“No. It was from his pocket. There was nothing here. Everything our dad made was from his drug running, his illegal gambling and loan sharking. It was all dirty money, and the ranch itself...that was a front. It was dying. Denver did what he had to do to get it back on track, and he made it clear to our dad that there was no place for him here. He was a narcissist who overplayed his hand.”
“I... I really had no idea. Not the narcissism thing, I did know that. I mean, maybe I didn’t think of it as a diagnosable condition, though I know for him it was on that level.”
“It’s tough,” he said. “Because I’ve spent a lot of time hoping I’m not my father. And I realized I’m more him than I’d like to be. I acted in a way that would’ve made him proud. I’m sorry about that.”
“You’re not your father.”
“Hell, I might be, Fia. What do I really want to have a kid for? Is it to shape her into something that’s mine? Is it to prove myself right? I’m not sure that I can trust my own motivations. It’s messing with me because I’m not sure what my dad thought about anything. I imagine him as some kind of Machiavellian figure who knew that he was manipulating everybody around him, but now I just wonder if he thought he was justified. That scares the hell out of me. That I could be him and not fully realize it. That what I was doing was making a cast of villains to avoid looking at the fact that I was one.”
“I told you. Don’t oversimplify it. You aren’t a villain. You never were. I care about you, Landry. I always have. Even though I’m angry at you. I didn’t fall in love with a narcissist when I was fifteen. I saw that you were hurting. That you were a kid with a lot of feelings, and nowhere for them to go. No wonder you were so angry.”
“It was hard not to be angry. He would tell us we could do something, have something, and then tell us he never said it. He would forget all birthdays. And then get angry if we forgot his. If we didn’t make a big song and dance about the patriarch. He talked about the cost of raising us. What we owed him. How much more money he’d have if they didn’t have all those kids. When my mom left, he said it was us. I knew it was him. I knew it wasn’t us. But then you have to wonder why she didn’t come back. Ever. Because we are grown now, and he’s not here. And she’s no contact for what reason?”
“It wasn’t you,” she said. “And you’re not your father. Look at the lengths you went to to get your child.”
“I don’t understand how you can say that.”
“Because I can believe that both are admirable things. My giving her up, and you wanting to make space for her in your life. And I can believe that what you did was a little bit petty while also acknowledging that you did it out of love.”
“Shit,” he said. “I feel like an emotional preschooler next to you.”
“Because the world only demands men ascend to the emotional level of the preschooler, Landry. That’s the problem. So if it seems outrageous to you, it’s only because I don’t think you realize how much is asked of women. But let me tell you, being the one ranch with only women, being the only woman on the board for Four Corners, I do get how different it is.”
He found himself considering that position she found herself in yet again. The matriarch in many ways. This woman who was strong enough to hold her own with men. He had never appreciated how much more work she did. There was so much he didn’t know. Hadn’t considered. She made him feel like he’d been walking through the world with blinders.
And maybe it wasn’t narcissism.
But damn, righteous anger was a hell of a drug. And it didn’t make your vision clear.
“Well, I don’t like the idea of being an emotional preschooler. Particularly not given that I’m raising a thirteen-year-old who has to be a woman in the world. I need you. You know that right. Because I don’t know what period underwear is, and I don’t know how to navigate all this. I didn’t have a woman in my life for long enough. And poor Arizona had to acclimate to what we were. Feral.”
“Well, I want to be part of this. Of Lila. Of her life and your life.”
“Maybe tonight would be a good night for her to spend the night,” he said slowly.
“Really?”
And he felt something inside of his chest loosen. A fist.
“I’m not in control of this, or her. I have to stop thinking of myself as the primary parent. I’m ashamed, Fia. Of myself. Because the truth is, that part of me was firmly rooted in my seventeen-year-old thinking. But I am a grown man. And I can certainly look around and see that this is different than I thought it was. And that what I wanted was...” He sat there for a long moment, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say next. Because it had been a feeling inside of him and nothing more for a very long time.
“Back then I wanted a sure thing. I wanted firm ground. Because I didn’t have anyone who felt safe in my life. My mom left, my dad was volatile. And you and I felt so fragile. I saw a kid as something that would glue us together. I saw it as a simple, uncomplicated love. I could just love a child and they would love me. Hell, I loved my dad even though he hurt me. And I was convinced that I would never hurt a child of mine. Not ever. I was certain of that. And now here I am with her, she’s thirteen and she’s complicated. The love that I feel for her is so all-consuming, so intense. It’s painful and brilliant all at once. I know that I couldn’t handle it then. But I was so desperate. I was so desperate for something that felt cut-and-dried. But this isn’t, of course. It never was. I was a fool to think that I could...”
“You wanted to control something.”
“Yes. And most of all, I wanted you to look at me and see a hero. Because I wanted so badly to be a different kind of man than my dad was, even then. And you saying we weren’t in the right place to raise a baby felt like you rejecting me, as the father to your child, as your boyfriend. It made me feel like I couldn’t possibly be better than my old man. That made me feel like I must be a liability. And so yeah, I made you the bad guy, because I didn’t want to be.”
He took a deep breath, and he felt like there was ground-up glass in his chest. He could barely breathe.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”
“I’m sorry for hurting you.”
The words were simple, a balm for those wounds.
He felt differently now than he had a few days before. It was amazing what a conversation could do.
Well. And a very strong motivation to actually listen to each other.
They just hadn’t had it before. They had no reason to forgive each other, and now, they did.
Though he did feel in the end of all things, he was the one who possibly needed forgiveness more.
He might’ve had his reasons, but that didn’t mean he’d behaved right.
“Well, I can ask her if she wants to stay at your house for a couple of days, do her school there. You’re right. There’s no reason she can’t.”
“Thank you,” she said.
They finished the drive in companionable silence. And for the first time in a very long time, he felt like he’d said the right thing to Fia Sullivan. Even more important, he felt like he’d done the right thing.