Nesting Read online

  “Hey, gorgeous, where you headed?” When Macy didn’t answer, he said, “I know you remember me. And I couldn’t forget you if I tried.”

  “I have to go.” She tried to get around him, but he stepped between her and her car.

  “Not so fast. How about we hook up again? I’ll bet an encore is just what you need.” He moved closer.

  “Really, I have to go.” Macy looked behind her, toward the door to Whirligig’s. She took a step back and considered bolting to the bar.

  He grabbed her arm. “Darling, why so cold? That’s not how I remember you.” He tightened his grip.

  Macy tried to pull free. He maneuvered her around and pushed her against her car door. He smelled good—a hint of beer mingling with strong soap. She grew angry with herself for noticing.

  He pressed his body into her, and she could feel his hardness against her stomach. It flashed through her mind that Sharon might see, might think she’d asked for it, or wanted it. No, she told herself, Sharon’s not like that. Besides, she wouldn’t see anything, because there wouldn’t be anything to see.

  “Get off me.” Macy pushed him.

  “I don’t remember you liking it rough, but I can get into that.” He shoved her hard against the car. His mouth found her neck, and his hand moved between her legs.

  Fear and anger amalgamated into a rock that settled into Macy’s throat and threatened to suffocate her if this man didn’t kill her first. No, he would not. He would not kill her, or hurt her, or have her.

  Rage rose from somewhere deep inside. It freed her voice and allowed her to roar her dissent. “No!” She pushed him away, and her fingernails grazed his face.

  “Bitch.”

  When he reached up to feel his cheek, Macy shoved her key into the car door. She managed to get inside and lock the door behind her.

  Her hands shook so hard, she could barely pull the seatbelt across her. As she pulled out of her space, she saw him crossing the street. Gripping the steering wheel, she stomped on the accelerator. He sprinted to get out of her way. She tried not to think about the possibility that she might not have swerved to miss him.

  She glanced into the rearview mirror. She sped, and her hands shook even harder. Sharon wouldn’t represent her for DUI but how about for vehicular homicide?

  Macy looked again in the rearview mirror, worried about being followed. Maybe he wouldn’t try anything that night, but what about later, sometime when J-man was home? There was no way she’d risk that. She headed to Washington Road, toward the other side of town.

  Sharon’s Miata was in her driveway, probably where she’d left it when Allie and Pat had kidnapped her. Michael’s car, of course, was in his driveway. Macy was mad at herself for running to Michael. How could she be independent if she was afraid to go home alone? And what kind of aura did she have that a man thought he could approach her in that way?

  She used the key Michael had given her weeks earlier, the key she hadn’t yet initiated.

  Cam was stretched out on the sofa, watching the Comedy Channel. She lowered the volume when Macy walked into the living room. “You okay?” She jumped up and moved toward Macy.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” Macy stopped short, realizing Cam had caught her crying. She hated that her frustration often brought tears with it. “I’m fine,” she repeated.

  “Did something happen? Did someone—”

  “I’m fine.” Macy was a little overwhelmed by Cam’s concern. “It’s nothing, really.” She walked around the sofa, thinking, Great, now my aura says, ‘Comfort me.’ “I’m gonna jump in the shower.”

  Macy scrubbed until her skin screamed for her to stop, then she stood under the hot water until it began to cool. She didn’t bother blow-drying her hair. She found a pair of Michael’s pajamas at the bottom of the linen closet and slipped into them.

  Cam was watching Macy closely when she came out of the bathroom, the area between her eyebrows squinched up. Macy glanced at the coffee table. Just as she focused on a bowl coated in remnants of fudge swirl ice cream, Cam grabbed the dirty dish and took it into the kitchen.

  When she came back in, Macy asked, “What’s on?”

  Cam snatched up the remote and handed it to her. “Put on whatever you’d like. I wasn’t really watching.”

  Cam was a sweet girl, but her age was reflected in her choice of humor. Apparently, bodily function jokes still made her laugh. Macy chuckled. “This is fine.” She took a seat on the far end of the sofa to see if she could find something funny in toilet humor.

  During the next commercial, Macy caught Cam staring at her. She slipped in a little reminder of Cam’s living arrangements. “When did Michael go to bed?”

  “About an hour ago.” Cam shifted around to face Macy and hit the mute button. “Is that Sharon’s car next door?”

  “Yeah, she’s back.”

  “When do you think you’ll talk to her? Do you think she’ll be over to see you and Michael tomorrow?”

  “Relax, Cam.”

  “Sorry. I’m just anxious to meet her.”

  “You’ll meet her soon enough.” Macy smiled at Cam, hoping her words hadn’t sounded too harsh.

  Macy moved over to the loveseat and snuggled into its arm. She didn’t want to go to Michael’s bed, but she didn’t want to talk either. She shut her eyes and could hear Cam settling on the sofa. The scent of herbal shampoo lingered in her wet hair. The light of the muted TV played against the inside of her eyelids in a swirl of images from her evening out. What was I thinking?

  Part Three

  Molting

  Chapter Ten

  Dreams and Games

  Dream currents wrap around her, holding, warming from the inside out. A light fog tickles the drowsy Savannah River and traps heat beneath its surface. She and Emma lie on the grassy knoll, on their sides, facing one another. When Emma opens her mouth to speak, Macy steals her words and her breath and holds them hostage, clearing the way for their mouths. Emma’s cilantro scent binds them and transforms Macy. She is supple, hungry, on fire.

  But it was Michael who was waking Macy with his shower dampness, his deep, male voice. If he had just kept quiet, she could have moved with him; she could have been making love to Emma. But his voice wasn’t Emma’s voice, and Macy couldn’t make it be, and it became impossible to finish the make believe.

  Macy rolled away from him and faced his beige bedroom wall.

  “Come on, honey,” he said.

  “Shhh.” She desperately wanted to go back to sleep, back to the grassy knoll.

  “Jeremiah’s two rooms away and out like a light.” Michael nuzzled her neck.

  “Yeah, but Cam’s still up,” she mumbled. “She might hear.”

  Michael pulled away. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “What?” She didn’t really want an answer.

  “Why are you so worried about your precious little baby dyke hearing, huh? Afraid it’ll assault her sensitivities to find out straight people actually fuck, too?”

  “What?” Now she did want an answer. Now she was wide awake and angry about more than being robbed of her dream. “Where in the hell did that come from? And don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you treat her has changed.”

  “You think I don’t see how she looks at you? I’m letting her stay with me. What the hell else do you want from me?” Michael leaned back against his pillow.

  “Does this have anything to do with Sharon?” Macy asked. “I heard what she said about letting Cam stay with you.”

  “No. Sharon will be fine.” He rested a hand over his eyes, as if shielding them, even though there was only the faintest light sneaking in through the blinds.

  When Sharon had come back and found Cam living with Michael, she was unhappy with him. She apparently felt betrayed, like he had sided with Cam. Macy hadn’t ever mentioned overhearing Michael’s response—that he had only asked Cam to stay with him because he feared if he didn’t, Macy would invite her to stay with her. She wondered if doing so
mething nice still counted if your motivation was whacked.

  Michael gave the sheets a playful tug. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.”

  He lowered the sheet and exposed her breasts. When he moved in to kiss her neck, she held him off with both arms.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She was exasperated and feeling a little hurtful. “What do you mean, what now? I don’t want that any more now than I did five minutes ago. What do you imagine has changed?”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Macy whipped off the sheet and flung open her arms in a crucifixion position. “Okay, okay, whatever you want.” She didn’t try to hide the sarcasm.

  Michael sprang from the bed. “This is not right.”

  As he yanked on his pants, Macy pulled the sheet back over herself. She rolled to face the wall and heard his keys jangling when he left the room.

  She heard no response from him as Cam muttered, “Hey, what’s up?” Michael was polite enough not to slam the front door on his way out.

  Cam. Macy knew Cam had a bit of a crush on her, but it was harmless. She was a sweet kid who would soon meet a girl her own age, and then she’d forget all about whatever feelings she imagined she had for Macy.

  Macy knew the routine with young men and women. She’d seen it before.

  Macy had to ask herself, was she living her same old routine? Was she, on some level, repeating her past of game playing, maybe even provoking Michael’s jealousy over Cam?

  She thought about Emma’s note and asked herself, Have I found mine? Or was being with Michael just one more game in a long line of games? Maybe she was just playing house with him. That could explain her lack of desire to go to the next level. He’d asked her to move in with him several times, and she always answered that it was too soon.

  Then there was the intimacy issue. Macy’s desire for Michael was sporadic, at best. She knew on one level that this was directly related to her attraction to Emma. Another game, for sure—cat and mouse. Macy had been well aware of Emma’s feelings for her but crossed the line anyway. She’d led Emma on at every opportunity.

  Even though Macy had physically backed away from her desire for Emma, in truth, it had taken root and refused to let go.

  Lying on Michael’s too-firm mattress, under his plain beige sheets in his plain beige bedroom, Macy didn’t regret being with him, she just had major reservations about its rightness. As much as he sometimes angered her with his persistence, she couldn’t blame him for wanting more physical attention than she was giving. But she couldn’t help thinking about Emma. And she didn’t know whether it was worse for her to fake it with Michael or to turn away from him.

  Macy didn’t want to think about her decisions, or Michael’s frustration. She took several deep breaths, banished the negative energy, and tried to relax. Her gaze was caught by the corner of the dictionary, behind the table lamp where she’d left it after she looked up the word whirligig. A spinning toy. She focused on the third definition, though—something constantly changing.

  Macy rolled onto her back. Staring at the ceiling fan, she focused on the tickle of the breeze. She slid the sheet off slowly and let the air tingle a path down her body. She knew the next day would bring more dreams and more games, and she didn’t know how long that would be enough. But for the moment, she only cared about the touch of that breeze. Her hand followed the current down her belly, to the place at the river where whirligigs were action verbs and her dreams waited.

  Chapter Eleven

  Smashed and Swoled

  “If you loved me you’d—”

  Dorianne’s words sent Kenny’s head reeling. He hated it when people said that. His first memory of those words was when he was eight. His mama had an allergic reaction to some poison oak, and her face got all swelled up. It was hideous. She swelled so bad, it made her long hair look shrunk up to her chin.

  Kenny could remember sitting at the kitchen table, eating ribs and not being able to look at his mother. Her face seriously scared him.

  His mama had asked him to pass the peas, and he tried to do it without looking up. He spilled those peas all over the place. She yelled at him, but he just kept staring down at his plate. That was when she’d said it: “If you loved me, you’d look at me.” Kenny behaved himself and didn’t tell her that he didn’t love anybody that much.

  His dad had laughed and said, “If you loved us, you’d put a bag over your head.” Things got real quiet.

  Maybe Kenny didn’t like his dad saying mean stuff to his mama, or maybe Kenny just wanted to make some points, but he decided to do the right thing. He looked up and was gonna say, “Sorry, Mama.” But when Kenny saw her swelled up face, his words slipped out as, “Sorry, Monsta.”

  His dad laughed real loud, his mama threw what was left of the mashed potatoes at her husband, and Kenny ran to hide in his bedroom.

  “Kenny.”

  He looked up. It wasn’t his mama all swelled into a monster; it was Dorianne. Pretty, sweet, Dorianne, who looked like she was about to throw what was left of their mashed potatoes at him.

  “I do love you, baby, but I don’t want to go see Grace.”

  “Just show her the proof.”

  “You already mailed it to her.” He stared into his baked chicken and studied the smooth white of the meat. He hoped if he didn’t look up, the talking would go away.

  “She might not have gotten it.”

  “She got it.” Kenny looked up.

  “That’s still not the same as face-to-face.”

  “Then you go see her.” As soon as the words were out, Kenny knew it was a mistake. His mind raced back to the scene at the Barnes and Noble, when he’d first laid eyes on Grace. “On second thought, you shouldn’t be going anywhere near her.”

  Dorianne waved the papers from Family Finders. “She’s my half-sister, and she can’t deny it any longer.”

  “Okay, say she don’t deny it no more. That still don’t mean she’ll want a damned thing to do with you. It especially don’t mean she’ll want to carry a baby for us.”

  “A family member is a logical first choice.”

  “There ain’t nothing logical about anything here, baby.”

  She took a big breath. “Kenny, if you loved me, you’d take this stuff to Grace for me.”

  He hurled the plate of baked chicken across the room. It was just like in a cartoon, but instead of Wile E. Coyote sliding down the kitchen wall in slow motion, it was Kenny’s dinner. There was half a chicken, leaving behind a long, greasy slug-trail.

  As he watched its descent, all he could think was, Shit, now I got to paint them walls. He’d told Dori they didn’t need any new paint, but now they did and it was all his fault. He deserved getting stuck with Toasted Sunflower or Warm Caramel walls.

  “If you wanted your chicken fried, all you had to do was ask,” Dori said before catapulting a spoonful of potatoes across the table at Kenny.

  He wasn’t stupid. He heard the pain behind the joke. He didn’t know what else to do, so after he wiped off his arm, he flicked his own spoonful of potatoes across the table. His aim was better—got her right in the cleavage, but he didn’t gloat any.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bring the papers to Grace. On one condition.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll never use the words ‘if you loved me’ again.”

  †

  Kenny pulled up to the vinyl-sided house and wished he could just forget all about his promise to Dorianne. But he knew better. He rang the bell and looked around at the clutter on Grace’s porch—little girl skates, a bicycle, a three-legged table wobbling under the weight of a pile of newspapers.

  His plan was to only do what he had to, nothing more. He knew if he just put the copies of what Dori had dug up into Grace’s hand, he could go back to Dori and say he’d done his part.

  Grace answered the door, stepped out, and pulled the door shut behind her, like she was afraid Kenny would try to peek inside. She stoo
d there all but challenging him. For some reason, she reminded him of Jack.

  He could hear Jack plain as day.

  “You’re afraid to go.”

  “Am not,” Kenny said.

  “I knew you couldn’t be as brave as me,” Jack taunted.

  “Can, too.”

  So Kenny went fishing with Jack and Gary, even though Jack was mean, Gary was creepy, and Kenny wasn’t allowed near the lake at the chalk mine, no matter how good the fishing was.

  Kenny held the papers out to Grace.

  “I got enough crap in the mail from you already. You people need to leave me alone.”

  He waggled the papers, impatient for her to take them so he could get on home. “Dorianne asked me to drop these by.”

  She didn’t take them. She stared at him with eyes lined with the same long lashes as Dori’s, but there wasn’t anything flirty about Grace’s eyes.

  Kenny was glad Dori had Macy around to be nice to her when they were growing up, instead of Grace. He had no doubt Grace would have been as big a jerk as Jack, who’d bullied Kenny no end.

  Kenny felt the heat of his anger creep up his neck to his face. He got mad at Grace for every time Jack’d had to one-up him when they were kids. He got mad at her for every time he’d felt like other people were telling him in their own way that Jack was better than him. Then he got mad at himself because eventually he’d started believing it.

  Once, in high school, Kenny had overheard Lisa Reynolds and Marie Tucker talking about a party Marie was having. Lisa told her to invite Kenny so he’d invite Jack along. Kenny guessed Jack was too far out of their league, and they didn’t want to ask him direct. Kenny didn’t want to go but went anyway. By the end of the night, Jack and Lisa were making out and Kenny was finishing off the keg.