Page 6 of Make Me

I start to pull my sweatshirt over my head, and while I’m doing that, I ask myself why I’m too damn stupid to unzip the thing. My gray tee shirt rides up, leaving my torso and chest exposed. Another cool wind hits, and I feel my own nipples harden. “Here,” I say, handing her my sweatshirt. “You seem cold.”

“I have to go. Good night.” She turns her back to me and grabs the bowl. I walk behind her and lay my sweatshirt on her back. She freezes, but she doesn’t order me to move. She steps around me and goes inside without another word. She looks at me through the glass while she pulls the shades.

“What the hell are we doing, girl?” I ask Sam. She stares at me and whines. “Yeah, yeah. It’s all me. What the hell amIdoing?” I run a hand through my hair and let out a breath. I see movement from inside the house and pause. Laci peeks through the blinds, and when she sees me still standing on the deck, she quickly closes them. A few seconds later, the lights go off, including the outside light. Shrouded in darkness, I whistle for Sam to follow me off the deck.

It’s as if the temperature has fallen even further since she went inside with my sweatshirt. Sam runs ahead of me and waits for me to open the door for her. She runs in and takes her usual post in front of the couch.

I pull off my tee shirt, drop to the floor, and do thirty pushups. My body is coated with a sheen of sweat when I’m done, but I still have no answers for my actions. What the fuck was I doing over there? I saw her sitting out there, and it’s like I had no choice but to go to her. I ordered Sam to go so I could have an excuse. She just seemed so lonely and a little bit lost. It broke me to see her sitting alone and staring off into the distance.

The minute I looked into her eyes the other day, I was transported right back to my senior year. Hell, I’ve thought of her more than once over the years. I used to come back home during the college breaks and find an excuse to go visit my old coach from high school, but in reality, I was looking for her. I never saw her again.

She was always curvy, even as a high school freshman. My hands ached to touch her then. Hell, I want to walk back over there and touch her now. Feel her body on mine again. Her breasts are even fuller now than before, but it makes sense because she’s had a child. Her eyes still have the same pull, and her lips still beg to be kissed.

I grab a water, along with the remote and lie on my couch. ESPN is on, but I’m not paying attention to any of it. We’re still months away from football season, and baseball has always bored me to tears.

My phone vibrates across the coffee table, and I curse, because I know who it is. I’ve been avoiding her calls all day.

“Hey,” I say, finally picking up.

“Coop,” she coos through the phone. I pull the phone from my ear and cringe. “I’ve been calling you all day. Where have you been?”

“How’s Chicago?” I ask, ignoring her question. I don’t think she’d like it if I told her I’ve been preoccupied with someone else since yesterday morning.

“It doesn’t have you. Coop, I’m so glad we’ll be home tomorrow. I’m all bachelorette partied out, to be honest. And I want to continue our conversation. I’ve really missed you this past month.” She lets the sentence dangle. This is one of the things I dislike about Candace. She leaves statements unfinished and waits for me to finish for her. When I stay quiet, she continues. “I just feel like we’ve lost enough time, and no one knows each other the way we do.”

I sigh into the phone and say, “Candace, not now.”

“You’re right, baby. We need to talk face-to-face.” She gives a high-pitched laugh and says, “Cami got so drunk last night. I keep telling her to slow down on the alcohol. Nothing packs on the pounds like mixed drinks. Who wants to be a fat bride on their wedding day? I told her that three weeks is enough time for her to drop a few more pounds. You know what she did when I told her that?” She continues on before I get a chance to answer. “She ordered a bacon cheeseburger. A freakin’ double. I hope Chad is a chubby chaser. I can’t believe she still eats beef.”

I let out a sigh. Chad’s been my best friend since the second grade, and I know he loves Cami. He could give a shit about her size. “Maybe she was hungry, Candace. I still eat beef, as well as billions of other people on earth,” I say. I can picture Candace now. She’s probably standing in front of a mirror, looking at her body and pinching her side to check for fat.

“Well, all of that will change once we…” She leaves the thought unfinished, but if she thinks I’m going to complete the sentence for her, she’s in for a rude awakening. I sit up. Sam must sense my change in attitude because she approaches.

“Once we what?” I ask.

“Never mind that for now,” she says quickly. “You already know what I want, and that’s for us to be back together. Our breakup was so silly. Anyway, I still need to lose two pounds. You’re going to die when you see my ass in that bridesmaid dress.” She goes on for several minutes about everything they’ve done in Chicago.

“I’m coming to see you tomorrow as soon as we get back. Be ready for me,” she lowers her voice and whispers the last part. “I’ve missed you, Cooper. I’ve missed us.”

“I won’t be here,” I announce. She stops talking, and I swear, she must have stopped breathing too. “I told my mom I’d spend the day with her. Margie and the kids will be there. It’s a family thing.”

She doesn’t say anything. I can imagine her looking around frantically, waiting for me to ask her to come. Candace is the only girlfriend I’ve ever had that my mom hasn’t liked. Even before that incident in high school where she crashed my car and left it in a ditch, Mom despised her. She was happy when we broke up midway through our freshman year in college. In fact, my mom is the one who persuaded me to go to college out of state. Now, I realize it was to get me away from Candace. But when Dad died suddenly two years ago, I came back home and took over the family construction business.

I ran into Candace one Saturday morning last year while I was out getting breakfast, and since I was single at the time, we started seeing each other casually—or so I thought. Candace no longer does casual. When her older sister got engaged, she started hinting that we should do the same. The closer we got to the wedding, the stronger the hints got. I thought she understood that I wasn’t ready, but one Sunday morning a few weeks ago, my mother called me freaking out. It turned out, Candace had taken it upon herself to announce our non-existent engagement in the town’s newspaper. I ended things that day.

“Oh, okay,” she says, her voice small. I feel like an asshole all of a sudden.

“I won’t be there late. I’ll come by your place on my way home.” She’s happy with that for the moment, and she continues to talk about her weight loss plans. I tune her out, and I’m suddenly relieved she won’t be coming here.

I lie to myself and say my relief is only because Sam doesn’t like Candace and vice versa. I ignore the voice in the back of my head telling me that my relief is because Laci won’t see another woman coming in and out of my house.

* * *

The dark blue Honda Civic is parked outside when I leave for my mother’s house the next day, but neither she nor Ivy are anywhere around. Sam stands next to me and hits my hand with her nose.

“We can’t go back there, buddy. She already thinks I’m a weirdo. And remember Candace?” At the sound of that name, Sam lets out a whine, drops to the ground and covers her eyes with a paw. “Oh, don’t be so damn dramatic.” I open the door to my Ford F-150, and she jumps in the back. Before I can pull away, the door to Laci’s house opens, and they come out. Laci is holding Ivy, who is barefoot. In her other hand, she has a small pair of sneakers and a big bag thrown over her shoulder.

I don’t bother starting the car. Like a statue, I sit and stare at them. Laci puts Ivy in her car seat. When she’s done, she stands up straight. She doesn’t move at first, but she slowly turns around and looks right into my eyes. We both freeze while we stare. Sam senses her too because she starts to bark and hit her nose against the window.

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