Dirty Red (Love Me With Lies)(23)

I feed her the rest of her bottle and repeat my burping trick.

“Do you want to put her back, or should I?”

He takes her from me, but this time he holds my eyes for one … two … three seconds.

SCORE!

While he puts her to sleep, I run upstairs to put on something sexy. I am so nervous when I get back to the kitchen; I rip open a bag of frozen broccoli and cram a handful into my mouth.



I’m wearing a black nightie. It’s not presumptuous. I don’t want Caleb to know I’m trying to have make-up sex. I saunter around the kitchen until he comes back down. When I hear him on the stairs, I make a show of rewashing the bottles Sam cleaned earlier. I hear him behind me. He pauses in the doorway, and I smile knowing that he’s looking.

When he moves to the living room, I follow him. When he sits down, I crawl onto the couch next to him.

“It’ll never happen again. I was having trouble bonding with her. Things are much better. I need you to believe me.”

He nods. I can tell that I haven’t convinced him, but he’ll come around. I’ll play mommy, and soon he’ll be looking at me like he used to. I kiss his neck.

“No, Leah.”

I jerk back, narrowing my eyes. Who was using sex as a weapon now?

“I want to say sorry.” I pout a little, but he only looks annoyed.

“Then say it to Estella.” Then, he gets up and walks away. I roll onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. Rejection. Had that ever happened to me before? I couldn’t remember a time. This was getting out of hand.

I want to call someone — a girlfriend … my sister. I need to talk about what just happened, gain some perspective. I reach for my cell and scroll through my contacts. I pause when I reach Katine. She’d only half listen to what I said, and in five minutes we’d be talking about her. I keep scrolling. I reach Court and my heart throbs. Court! I dial her number. Before it can go through, I hang up.





Chapter TenPast

I remember humid summers, with air so thick it felt like you were breathing soup into your lungs. We’d get restless at home — my sister and I, running up and down the corridors of our big house, screaming and chasing each other until we’d get in trouble. My mother, exasperated, would send us outside with our nanny, Mattia, while she rested. Mattia made frequent trips to the dollar store for things to do outside. Courtney and I, who spent most shopping excursions at stuffy boutiques, found it endlessly amusing that you could go to a store and everything inside was a dollar. She’d bring us sidewalk chalk, jump ropes, hula hoops, and of course, our favorite — bubbles.

Mattia always saved them for last. She’d pretend that she forgot the big pink container inside, and we’d sigh and pout. At the last minute, she’d pull it out from behind her back, and we’d jump and cheer like she was so clever. We called the bubbles “empty planets” and the game was to pop as many empty planets as you could before they could self-implode and send their debris hurtling toward earth. Mattia would stand underneath a tree for shade and blow them for us. Our legs were perpetually covered in bruises from this game. We got into the habit of tripping each other to reach the empty planets first. We’d run so fast Mattia said we looked like blurs. She called us the Red and the Raven for our respective hair colors. At the end of the game we’d tally up how many bubbles we’d popped. Twenty-seven for Red, Twenty-two for Raven, she’d announce. Then, we’d limp inside happily, rubbing our bruised shins and asking for popsicles. My mother hated the bruises. She made us wear hose to cover them. My mother hated most things associated with me — the tangles in my hair after a bath, the color of my hair, the way I chewed, the way I laughed too loud, the way I flicked my fingernails across my thumb when I was in trouble. If you asked me, then or now, what she actually liked about me, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. What I could tell you was that my childhood was the cool pop of bubbles on my skin. Court and I laughing and breathing soupy air. Mattia giving me hugs to compensate for the sharp words of a distant mother.



My mother loved my sister. My sister was worthy of love. I remember walking in on them once, as she was brushing Courtney's hair after her bath. She was telling her a story about when she was a little girl. Courtney was giggling, and my mother was laughing along with her.

"We would have been good friends if we'd grown up together. You are just like me when I was your age." I sat on the edge of the bathtub to watch them.

"What about Jo?" Courtney asked, shooting me a smile that was missing its two front teeth. "Would you have been good friends with her too?"

It was like she hadn't even noticed I was in the room until Court said my name. She blinked at me slowly, and smiled at her youngest daughter. "Oh, you know Johanna and her books. She wouldn't have had time to play with us, all that reading she does."

I wanted to tell her that I would burn every book I owned to be a part of their little mother/daughter club. Instead, I just shrugged. Courtney was a lot like my mother; the only difference being that she actually liked me.

I should have been jealous of her, but I wasn’t. She was the kind one in my family; the one who got up early on my birthday and piled a plate with little Debbie snack cakes and sneaked them into my room singing “Lake of Fire” by Nirvana. My birthday was on the Fourth of July — a huge imposition to my parents who hosted a party for the company on that day. But, Court always made sure the day was special. When my straight A’s went unnoticed, she would pin my report card to the refrigerator and circle my GPA in red marker. She was the love in my otherwise loveless life ... the warm blanket in a household that valued frigid emotional temperatures. When everyone else skimmed right over me, my sister zoned in. We had a bond and bonds were hard to come by.