Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series Read online

  She took in a thin breath. “And that’s why I didn’t even care if you were just being nice. I just needed to let him know I’d be okay. I needed to know I’d be okay. So, thank you.”

  She exhaled on something like a laugh and looked down at her mangled sweet.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I do this around you. I swear I don’t normally cry all the time.”

  He was still quiet, but not silent. It calmed her. She picked up a bigger crumb of croissant. “I’m gonna eat this anyway, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, soft. “Here.” He picked up his chocolate cream and ripped it in half. “Take this too, but you see, not all of it, because I’m greedy.” He held it out to her, the cream spilling out of its middle over his fingers. “Go on, then, or I’ll take it back.”

  She pulled it from his fingers, taking on the mess. They watched each other devour their halves in big, sloppy bites. “Good?” Hefin asked. He was only asking, a little, about the doughnut, Des thought.

  “Yeah,” she said. She watched him smile at his hands again. “I’m good.”

  Chapter Four

  Des often thought that Lakefield, Ohio, was not a beautiful city, even on a pretty spring evening.

  It teetered on the Rust Belt, just north of the gateway to Appalachia. Lakefield’s downtown buildings were built along square lines, with more attention paid to their best position around the lake than civic beauty.

  A mental map of the city felt engraved into her brain from countless ride-alongs with her dad, doing homework in the huge front seat, her books laid out over the dash. Lakefield’s neighborhoods marched, in likewise orderly squares, to the north, south, east, and west of downtown, and their desirability compared to the affluent north suburbs waxed and waned from decade to decade along with the economy.

  Whatever else could be said, it could never be said she didn’t know where she belonged. Which was here, she was certain, in the crowded and noisy neighborhood of her birth, where she knew every tiny house she drove past. Knew who lived inside of them, knew, even, what was most likely in the oven for their dinners on a cool spring night like this one.

  She knew. She was certain.

  It wasn’t just where she lived—this neighborhood was who she was.

  Des’s phone softly hitched and purred on the seat next to her, its formerly smartphone smartscreen, glassy and blank. She had dropped it in the bathtub a month ago, and after two days in a bag of rice, it would now receive calls, but the screen stayed completely dark so it couldn’t make calls, or text, or do anything else. Including ring, really. It sort of breathed hard and gasped.

  She tapped her fingers all over the screen until some magical combination made it pick up the call. New phones cost money, though. Money she didn’t have, at least until she had been working at the library for a couple of weeks.

  A thought that filled her with some strange combination of stomach-rolling nerves and almost painful anticipation.

  A warm flash of dark eyes.

  A phantom aroma of sanded wood and caramel.

  She smiled. Tried not to. Couldn’t remember the last time she had to suppress a smile.

  There was never enough off-street parking in the crowded, narrow streets of her neighborhood, and absolutely no room for a stretch limo, so she turned into the alleyway behind her house and her landlady Betty’s.

  “This is Des Burnside.”

  “Hey, Desbaby.” Des felt her smile pull away from her mouth. Her older sister Sarah sounded sleepy, which wasn’t like her. But so many things, since Sarah’s bike-racing accident, meant that Sarah wasn’t like Sarah.

  “You just getting up, Sarah?”

  “Kinda. Never really fell asleep.”

  Des forced her breathing into an even, unalarmed rhythm. “Your hip bothering you, Sare?”

  The line was quiet for a beat. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is if you’re not sleeping. They said that you should get some relief with rest, that the pain shouldn’t keep you up anymore.” Des cleared her throat. “You could call Sam—”

  “Can you take me to PT today?”

  Des sighed. “It’s still at four thirty?” Des looked at the clock in the dash of the limo. “What were your plans for a ride, anyway? I’m going to have to go right to your apartment.”

  “Sam.”

  “So did he get hung up at work or something?”

  “No. I left a message and told him not to come. I don’t want to deal with him today. He can’t keep his opinions to himself at the session and bosses the therapist. I won’t be able to focus. Plus, PJ said he’d meet us after, and he doesn’t want to deal with Sam either. I’ll buy dinner.” Sarah paused. “Please don’t call Sam.”

  “Okay. But if you’re hurting—”

  “Love you, Desbaby.”

  Des gripped the steering wheel tight with her free hand, suddenly flashing on the way her dad’s giant hands, in their old-fashioned driving gloves, had looked holding the same wheel.

  How had he done it? All four of his kids would do anything for him, for no more than one of his mild, “now there you go’s” and a hug that smelled like the limo’s vanilla car freshener and Camels. It was like hypnotism, how safe he could make them feel, even after how confusing it all was when they were little and Mama had gotten so sick and passed away.

  She felt like no matter how much she loved Sam and Sarah and PJ she’d never understand the trick of how her dad held them all together.

  In fact, she had never doubted that they would ever have any trouble holding together, forever, until he left them behind to scatter. His ashes swirling in the wind on the winter morning just a few months ago took longer to disappear than their Sunday dinners, the ease that his children had always had with each other.

  Now she was the only one who seemed to remember that there was a way that they could all fit.

  She was the only one who had watched and listened and stood by and understood that whatever each of them had to offer the world, they had the most to offer each other, as a family.

  It was like her family was one of those cities built on a river. There were a lot of good reasons to build a city on a river—the commerce moving up and down and away meant the city was never isolated and could grow strong. But everybody knew that every once in a while there would be a season with too much rain, the river would overspill its banks, and the city would go under.

  Des was sandbagging in the rain.

  “I love you, too,” Des answered, but Sarah had already hung up. Des breathed as deep as she could, trying to catch any of the vanilla-and-cigarette smell that could possibly be left in the fading velour upholstery. Nothing.

  She jumped at a knock on the driver’s window and looked up to see Betty.

  “Hey,” she said, muscling the broken window down.

  “Heard the diesel idling back here.” Betty smoothed her hands over her pale hair, blond mixed up with wide white stripes, getting wider. Those white stripes were almost the only sign that this woman Des had known her entire life wasn’t ageless.

  “Sorry, I just needed to use the phone.” Des fought frustration.

  Those five minutes she’d had, alone, driving around and thinking about a man were kind of nice while they lasted.

  “Park and come inside; Rennie and I made lemonade.”

  Des heard the security door on Betty’s back stoop screech. Betty’s nephew, son of her late husband’s sister, was all long limbs and sharp brown eyes. He stood in the doorway, scuffing the cement with his expensive sneakers. He’d recently had his soft curls sculpted into a kind of throwback flattop.

  It made him look older. Self-assured.

  Des remembered what it was like to feel his damp curls against the crook of her elbow, giving him his last bottle before he dropped into sleep and she could do homework on his folks’ couch.

  Betty had been her mother’s best friend and done her best to shuffle her best friend’s four kids back into a normal life after their m
om died, and Des didn’t remember a single time Betty herself had cried.

  Des was driving her dad’s whole life around, their whole lives around—the limo still had the straps her dad screwed into the back to hold PJ’s cello case, a net to hold Sarah’s soccer gear.

  It had to mean something.

  It had to mean that Des meant something.

  “I can’t. I’m picking Sarah up for PT.”

  Betty looked away. “She feeling better?”

  Des shrugged. “It’s slow.”

  “Hey, Des!” Rennie’s voice seemed liked an adult’s. Was an adult’s.

  “Yeah?” Des leaned out the window.

  “I bought those plans from the Internet. Just let me have one weekend with your limo.”

  Rennie was some kind of budding engineer genius and determined to convert the 1994 Lincoln Town Car ten-passenger limo into a vehicle that burned vegetable oil, but her current financial-risk margin did not account for eighteen-year-old mechanics.

  Betty saw her hesitate. “He could do it, in a weekend, you know. No more gas expense.”

  Des closed her eyes. She could tell Betty about her new job at the library and that she would be making plans to get back into a sensible car pronto. Tell her that she didn’t want to drive people in the neighborhood around in her limo like Betty thought she should.

  Except to tell her anything was to invite conversation, and lemonade, and debate with Rennie.

  She wanted one more long quiet moment before she dealt with her sister, her brothers, to think about the way the air around her changed when she sat next to a dark-eyed man who had seen more of the world than she could imagine.

  “We’ll talk,” she managed, “but Sarah—”

  “Go,” said Betty, and flicked her hand in a shoo motion.

  Rennie ducked into Betty’s house, letting the security door bang behind him.

  She eased through the alley, refusing to feel guilty.

  Des pulled up to Sarah’s building, and Sarah started angrily hobbling toward the limo, her cheeks flushed and her chrome medical cane flashing in the late-afternoon light every time it hit the pavement.

  “Des!” she yelled.

  Des rolled her window all the way down. Wary. “Yeah, Sarah.”

  Sarah leaned into the driver’s door, her boy-short mahogany hair sweaty at the temples, her one gray eye and one blue eye narrowed right at Des. “What the fuck is Sam doing here? Did you call him?”

  Des looked to where Sam had his hands shoved into his pockets, standing by his sedan. Of course he would have ignored Sarah when she told him to back off.

  It was Sam.

  Des closed her eyes and resisted pressing her fingers to her temples. “No.”

  “Why is he here, then?” Sarah demanded, leaning back on her cane.

  Des looked over at Sam watching them, running his hand through his red hair—not the only trait he shared with Des. Worry about their family, a certain kind of hypervigilance.

  “You know why, Sarah.”

  “Because he sucks.”

  Des looked at Sarah, whose pretty mouth was smooshed into a tight line; but her eyes were suspiciously shiny.

  Des stared at the blue Dumpster in the alley until her eyes crossed. Her older brother was getting increasingly—patriarchal. As annoying as it was, it was kind of understandable. She guessed. Sometimes.

  Des breathed in, breathed out. “Dad. He misses …”

  “I know,” Sarah whispered. “I miss him too. But you know what? I miss Sam more.”

  Her brothers and sister missed Dad. In their own way. Sam’s way was just the most annoying.

  Des caught Sarah’s eye, then flinched when Sarah gave her the scary look that took full advantage of her differently colored eyes. Creepy.

  “Get in, Sarah, Jesus.”

  Sarah started propelling herself toward the passenger-bay door. Des squeezed her eyes tight, hoping to squeeze out some patience. She stuck her head out the window. Yelled. “Sarah! Get in next to me. I. Am. Not. A. Chauffeur!”

  As an answer, Sarah yanked open the passenger-bay door and threw her cane onto the bench seat with more force than strictly necessary, hurling herself after it. She lay across the long bench and draped her arms across her eyes. “Lakepoint Physical Therapy Center, James.”

  Des looked over to where Sam was now crouched by the driver’s door.

  “You suck, Sam!” Sarah yelled from the back.

  Des ran her hand over Sam’s hair, making it stick up even more. “You suck, Sam.”

  Sam reached up and honked Des’s nose. She wrinkled it, but felt her eyes burn. Dad used to honk her nose. Now Sam did. She wondered if he even noticed he’d started doing it.

  “Tell me how she does, Des. If it seems like she’s hurting too much.”

  Des looked into Sam’s gray eyes, exactly like hers. She looked at the crinkles around them, tried to figure out if there were more than the usual number. She reached out and traced a bouquet of them with her finger. “You’re doing that thing again.”

  He batted her hand away from his face. “What thing?”

  “The thing where you’re trying to do everything, and help everybody, but really you’re just driving everyone crazy.”

  He looked over at the blue Dumpster. “Driving everyone crazy is Sarah’s job.”

  “Maybe, but you’re a definite runner-up.”

  He took a deep breath. “Is PJ meeting you guys for dinner after?”

  “Yeah. I think that’s the plan.”

  “Then I’m not invited, I take it.”

  “Sam …”

  “I should get back to work.” Sam and Lacey had just started the long process of opening a low-income health clinic in their neighborhood. To make ends meet in the meantime, Sam was also moonlighting as a doc at an urgent care. He stood up, and Des lost his eyes to the glare of the late-day sun.

  “Go home, Sam. Or you know what?” Des looked back at Sarah, glaring at both her and Sam from the back. “Just come with us. Sarah can get over herself.”

  But Sam walked backward. Started to turn back to his car. “Hey, Des, call me about what’s going on with you, okay?”

  He jogged off. Slammed into his car. Pulled out of the alley so fast gravel popped under his tires.

  “Is he gone?” Sarah’s voice sounded small.

  Des advanced POS Limo slowly through the alley. “You know he is, Sarah.” Des took in a breath. “You know he’s just trying to help, too.”

  “He feels guilty, is all.”

  Des squeezed the steering wheel. “No reason for him to.”

  “No.” In fact, Sam had always made it clear he hated the illegal bike races Sarah competed in. Actually, they all kind of did. The races involved bike messengers and daredevils from all over the city and usually took place at night, when the roads were more clear of traffic.

  The routes took cyclists over places where bikes normally couldn’t go—overpasses, tight alleys, long stretches of freeway. They were dangerous and cutthroat and promised the kind of exhilaration that Sarah found addictive.

  The night Sarah had her accident, it hadn’t even been a week since their father had died. Sarah was brought to the same hospital where Patrick Burnside had taken his last breaths, her body broken and bleeding. Sam had to be physically restrained from the triage room where she was being stabilized.

  Des still had bad dreams about how he had cried that night, in a way he hadn’t cried over their dad the whole time he was sick, or when he had finally died. He had gripped Des’s hand and wept, hopelessly telling her about every complication he had ever seen or knew of when a body met a motor vehicle, scaring the fuck out of Des though she had stayed quiet, trying to absorb his current grief, his late grief, she hadn’t known which.

  It wasn’t until weeks later, after Sarah’s second surgery, that Sam had to be pulled out of Sarah’s room again, that time for yelling at her, screaming really. Blaming her for the way the orthopedic surgeons were shaking thei
r heads. For getting hurt and scaring them. Scaring Sam. Sarah had just looked out the hospital room’s window while he railed, quietly pushing the nurse’s call button until staff came and led Sam away.

  Des had sat at Sarah’s bedside that night. They were quiet for a long time. Eventually, Sarah had turned to Des and said, “You know, Des, it’s no better to be safe than sorry.”

  Sarah and Sam hadn’t really spoken since.

  Later that night, after Sarah’s slow and painful-looking physical-therapy session, over veggie burger takeout from the vegan beer hall, Des watched Sarah and their younger brother PJ bend their dark heads together cracking up over some stunt on a reality TV show they were watching on PJ’s phone. They sat in the back of the limo, the sunroof open to the night air, the onions they had picked off their burgers stinking in a greasy paper bag on the floor.

  They looked, in that moment, happy. It was almost enough to forget that Sam was nearby, not even a handful of blocks away, working himself to death. It meant that Des couldn’t completely enjoy the moment, laugh with her brother and sister in the old limo bay where they’d eaten takeout together dozens of times.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Sam and how he told them years ago to always get onions on their burgers for the flavor but then to pick them off because the texture was gross. Sam was there, even if Sarah and PJ didn’t acknowledge it. It made Des sad to think of that, at the end of such a remarkable day.

  So Des thought of Hefin.

  She thought of the clothes loose on his rangy body. She thought of how he refused to let her carry her bag. She thought of how he sucked his sugary tea off his fingers, the way he looked when he slid his pastry over to her to eat, nearly shy. She thought of the way his small smile had made brackets around his mouth. How his top lip was fuller than the bottom, and how this anomaly made his mouth look like it had already been kissed.

  She bit into her burger, savory with smoky mushrooms, and wondered if Hefin’s soft top lip tasted sweet, what it would feel like between her teeth. She imagined brushing her fingertips against the grain of his dark stubble while she placed a kiss in the center of that lip, licked his bottom one.

  She imagined how it would feel if one of those looks he had brushed in her direction, for less than a blink, held. If he had kept looking and looking at her, at her mouth, until there was nothing to do but touch her. Kiss her.