EDGES Read online

  It didn’t.

  He’d only been in love once, and it had been so long that it seemed like another life ago. He considered his first and only love to be a curse, because no matter what he did, he still to this day couldn’t reproduce the feeling of overwhelming happiness that he’d felt.

  All the girls, all the reverie, and none of it ever gave him any lasting joy. The girls never understood why. He couldn’t understand it either. Tiffany certainly wouldn’t understand, so he hid how unhappy he was. It had crossed his mind that maybe he was just doomed to a lifetime of watching everyone around him fall in love. Maybe it was punishment for the things he’d done to women.

  There was some cold spaghetti tucked deep toward the back on the bottom shelf. He took it, shut the fridge, and it was dark again. He leaned up against the counter with his bare butt and started to pick through the noodles and meat sauce. He flexed his feet against the linoleum floor, forcing himself not to think of how hot it was in the apartment, and tasted the spaghetti in his mouth. Sleep was impossible in this condition. He was grumpy and dehydrated. Plus, Tiffany liked to drape herself on him, which made it that much worse.

  During the sex tonight, his mind had wandered. He had pictured other women. His infatuation with Tiffany was slowly fading, as it always seemed to, inevitably, with every girl. He had started by imagining girls from his past. Then one from his Economics class. And regrettably, even Simone for a minute or two. She’d looked so good tonight in her white dress.

  Patrick glanced up at the sound of someone creeping down the stairs. He assumed that whoever it was, they were similarly disgusted with the heat and had gone to turn it down. But the steps kept moving past the thermostat. His eyes were semi-adjusted to the dark and he saw a figure in a black negligee step into the kitchen, staggering a bit and woozy. It was Simone, her dark hair a tangled mess, a slight glisten to her skin from sweat. He froze. Stopped chewing. Made no sound.

  Only a few feet away from him, she reached into the cabinet, completely unaware of his presence. She gulped down a glass of water, just as he had, and then went to the fridge. He prayed she wouldn’t open it. The bright light illuminated the space and she jumped, sensing his figure leaning against the counter.

  “Jesus!” Her eyes went to his dick. “Really, Patrick?”

  He lowered the container of spaghetti over the area, swallowed the half-chewed noodles that were still in his mouth, and shrugged. “I was here first.”

  “What the fuck are you doing down here?”

  He shrugged again. “I got hungry.”

  “Hey, that’s my spaghetti! What did I say about eating my food?”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

  She shook her head and went out of the kitchen for a moment. She came back with a folded towel and tossed it to him.

  “You just walk around people’s houses naked?”

  “It never bothered you before. You said I had a great ass… once upon a time.” He set the spaghetti on the counter and started to wrap the towel around his waist.

  “Oh, please.” She shook her head, disgusted.

  “I’m kidding. What are you doing up?” he asked. “I thought Josh would’ve put you to bed by now.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He wears girls out, that’s all.”

  “Shut up. Just for once.”

  “I would but I don’t know how.” He smiled, tucking the beach towel firmly in place.

  He could tell she wanted to punch him, and it amused him.

  Ordinarily, Simone was overwhelmingly beautiful, but when she got flustered, Patrick saw her beauty even more clearly. It was in moments like this that he knew he still had an effect on her. That a part of her still cared about what had happened between them, even though she always denied it.

  They stood there looking at one another.

  “You gonna close that?” He nodded at the fridge.

  She shut it and turned on the oven light. It was gentler on their eyes.

  “Why is it so hot in here?” she asked.

  “I turned it down. I think I did, at least.”

  She again shook her head at him, probably still bothered by the sight of him naked.

  He handed her the Tupperware of spaghetti. “It’s good. I didn’t realize you knew how to cook.”

  She grabbed it from him, then took a reluctant bite. “It’s spaghetti, Patrick. Not a quiche.”

  “You gonna answer my question?”

  “What question?”

  “What are you doing up?”

  She shrugged and looked down at her feet. “I have a hard time sleeping.”

  “When you’re wasted?”

  “I’m not wasted.”

  “I’m not judging. I’m kind of drunk still too. Right now I want to tell you that you’re so beautiful it makes me believe in God, but even drunk that might be inappropriate.”

  She reached out and laid one finger over his lips, scowling for a moment, but the scowl faded quickly. Her expression softened, and stayed that way, the two of them a foot apart in the semi-dark. Her finger slowly peeled off his lips, and her blue eyes relaxed.

  “No,” she said, “not just when I’m drinking. All the time. If I get to sleep right away I do all right. But some nights I just lie there and can’t get to sleep no matter what I do.”

  “Have you tried thinking of me to pass the time?” he asked, jokingly.

  “No, I haven’t, but come to think of it, that might actually make me drowsy. Good idea.”

  “Or it might give you heart palpitations. But seriously, is that why you’re always so abrasive toward me? Sleep deprivation?”

  “I’m not abrasive toward you.”

  “You’re always snapping at me. It’s confusing.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not because I’m sleep deprived, Patrick. It’s because of your personality.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Sorry,” she said, setting the fork back down in the Tupperware. “I didn’t—”

  “It’s all right. I know the real reason why all this is hard for you.” He pointed at himself, then at her, then back at himself.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Not a fond memory?” he prompted.

  “Not really.”

  It stung to hear her say it aloud, even though he didn’t quite believe she meant it. He gazed earnestly at her. “It was for me.”

  “Patrick, don’t do this.”

  “I’ve always said what’s on my mind.”

  “No,” she said, setting the spaghetti on the counter behind him. “You always say whatever will fuck with my head the most.”

  He didn’t deny it. Swiftly, he shifted topics. “What about Josh, is that a fond memory?”

  “It’s not a memory, seeing as how it’s happening right now. And it’s not really any of your business. But I’ll say this, I know he’s not going to use me and then pretend like it never happened.”

  Patrick ignored that. “Did he try the hand thing?”

  He watched her for a long period of silence until her face fidgeted uncomfortably. “You… you know about that? Never mind, don’t answer that.”

  He laughed and she did too. It caught him off guard. How good it felt to laugh with her.

  “He’s world famous for that… that… I don’t really know what to call it.”

  “A maneuver?” she suggested.

  He laughed. “Yeah, that’s perfect. A maneuver.”

  “All I’ll say is that it was… interesting. Took my breath away, for sure.”

  “Like an ice bath?”

  They laughed together again. Then silence stretched between them and he feared she was about to retreat upstairs. He wanted her to stay.

  “I hope you guys can make it work,” he said at last.

  She snorted softly. “No, you don’t.”

  He voiced the lie as if he’d practiced it a hundred times. “Of course I do. You’d be good for him.”

  The r
eceptive gaze she held toward him twisted suddenly. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? You’d be good for most guys.”

  Her blue eyes grew wide and angry. “Most guys?”

  “What? Is that not a compliment?”

  She shook her head, shifting to a look of hurt. “I just don’t get how you can be so sweet one moment and so underhandedly cruel the next.”

  “It’s not my intention.”

  “It’s exactly your intention.” She crossed her arms and stepped back. “I guess it’s best that we stopped when we did.”

  He nodded, then hunched for a moment, feeling like an ass, and then straightened up to appear unfazed. He ran his fingers through his hair. There was nothing left to say. He lifted his water up off the counter, finished it, leaned forward close to her—she stood still as a statue—and gently pressed his lips against her cheek. “I’m sorry.” The lace of her negligee brushed his arm as he slipped past her toward the stairs. “Goodnight then, dear.”

  “Hey, Patrick,” she said.

  He stopped and turned back to her.

  She kept her arms tightly crossed. “Fuck you.”

  Mallory

  MALLORY PAINTER SLAPPED THE STEERING wheel of her Subaru Forester as she came to a sudden stop at one of those lights that always seemed to turn red whenever she came along. She stared up at it, wondering what she had done in life to deserve having this light despise her so. She glanced in the rearview and tugged on some of the red curls that wouldn’t fall into place. She’d never been an angry person, but found herself visiting the feeling more and more when she was late driving into the city from her house out in isolation. Her fiancé hadn’t exactly forced her to move so far from town, but she had gone along with it so that he could fulfill his dream of living out of the city. It was important to him.

  In her heart, she loved being in town, seeing her friends often, loved the energy of it. But he’d been insistent. And as some couples who progress along toward marriage find out, sooner or later, someone has to sacrifice something in order to keep the relationship moving forward. So she’d agreed and now regretted it each time she had to make the drive and beat the clock.

  The light still hadn’t changed.

  She stared at the glowing clock on her dash. She imagined it also having a personality, just like the light. She imagined it letting out a little cackle whenever a new minute blipped past the hour.

  You’re going to get reprimanded, the clock said to her. Maybe even fired. She heard it giggling. Boo-hoo for Mallory.

  Mallory gritted her teeth and told herself that she wasn’t crazy. Green, finally. Her tires grabbed asphalt and away she went.

  A bright warm day was coming over Durango. She hoped spring would be long and drawn out. In Colorado, especially if winter dragged on, you could be launched from winter straight into the throes of a blistering summer in the stretch of a week. All the snow had melted away at least; all except at her house farther up into the mountains.

  She roared into the outskirts of town and passed a posted thirty mph speed limit sign doing a hair over sixty. But there was no slowing down. Her boss was an unholy bitch, and all the employees there knew that if there was one hard and fast rule, it was never to show up late.

  After a few calculated turns with tires screeching, Mallory pierced the heart of the 25,000 person town onto Main Street, where all the blocks were truncated and jammed with strips of restaurants and shops. She lurched forward in her seat after hitting the brakes. A group of pedestrians had ventured out into the crosswalk without looking.

  “Why don’t you all squat down and play a game of chess while you’re at it?” she grumbled. Her engine roared once they cleared.

  At the next intersection, she veered around a middle-aged woman carrying those strong reusable grocery bags that the purists always carried with them when they went shopping.

  “What do you think of that, huh? And I don’t recycle. Have fun taking your poops while you’re living in a goddamn tree.” Mallory swept the red curls out of her flustered face. Storefronts blurred by. Her shift had started five minutes ago, and she hadn’t even parked. Middle of the day. Late? Again? Mallory!

  She imagined her boss Brenda’s face. It was a skeleton looking face. Would make a great boss’s face for a movie, always displeased. Dead eyes and a painted on mask of skin. She was one of those women that lived for work, mainly because no sensible man would ever sleep with her.

  Mallory’s blood pressure soared.

  Two blocks away yet. Must go faster.

  Her phone started ringing and her stomach dropped, thinking Brenda was already calling to ask where she was. She fished for it and let her eyes leave the road for only a moment.

  There was a startling boom. Mallory’s head jerked forward, banging the steering wheel hard. Something rolled up onto the hood of her Forester, and then smashed into the windshield. She screamed and slammed on the breaks. What was it? A man? A bicycle?

  As the brakes locked up, the man she’d collided with wailed and went sailing back down the hood and onto the asphalt.

  “Oh no! Oh God!”

  The sound of the collision and brakes screeching knifed through the pleasantness of Main Street.

  Mallory froze, white knuckling the wheel of her Subaru. Pedestrians were startled on both sidewalks, and looked in at her and then at her victim. Her phone kept ringing and ringing. “Damn you, Brenda!”

  Mallory realized she’d just killed a cyclist.

  The lights changed but cars at all four ends of the intersection stayed parked, waiting for her to do something.

  Move, she ordered herself. Her door opened with a creak. The asphalt felt hard as steel under her rickety legs. She crept around to the front of the car.

  A middle-aged man with a gray speckled beard, dressed in colorful spandex, writhed, grasping at his lower back. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. People were scowling at her and she tried not to look into their eyes.

  An epiphany struck as she squatted to help him. Her being late suddenly had an excuse. “I ran over a hippy on a unicycle,” she imagined explaining to Brenda. “An extra-dirty one. Really, when you think about it, it was like public service.” She knew Brenda hated tree-huggers. Brenda’s skeleton face might smile for once. Probably not.

  He came to rest on his side, but his face was still scrunched up, yipping at every slight movement.

  She rubbed his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  His face tensed more, rich with pain. “It was red! Didn’t you see it was red?”

  “But… it was green,” she said. “Or maybe it wasn’t? I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop touching me!”

  “Don’t move.” She pressed him back down and he seethed, not able to fight her off through the anguish. “Your spine could be severed. We need to get you back-boarded.”

  “Get off of me, you lunatic!”

  Mallory cooperated and backed away. He sat up, but didn’t get to his feet. The pain was apparently real, and so was the supposition in her mind of a lawsuit. She rubbed the crown of her head as a pain radiated through it.

  His bike lay pinned beneath her bumper. She wrapped both hands around the frame and tugged until she dislodged it, snapping off a small part of a knob on the handlebars that looked expensive. Sirens filtered through the air, a sound that chilled her to the bone. She scrutinized the frame of the road bike. Damn, she thought.

  He noticed her examining the bike and scowled.

  “I’ll replace it,” she offered.

  “You can’t. It was custom. Worth more than your piece of shit Subaru, I bet.”

  He shook his head fitfully and finally got his feet under him. His body went rope tight in a spasm. The only way to stand was for him to lurch over and steady himself on the hood of her car, which had crumpled under the weight of his body when he hit it.

  The stopped cars moved on eventually. So did the pedestrians, except for one or two who were watching the whole t
hing unfold. Two police vehicles came blazing in from opposite directions, converging on her car.

  It was becoming clear that it’d be jail instead of work. Mallory would be stuck with an itchy junkie picking scabs off his arms all day instead of grumpy Brenda scowling at her from across the room while shaking her head the way a disappointed mother would.

  Teddy, her fiancé, would probably throw a lamp against the wall when he found out about this. He’d scream at her and tell her she was ruining both their lives.

  A tall, dark and handsome police officer emerged from one car. A homely woman police officer stepped out from the other. The male cop approached them while the woman cop gathered witnesses from the sidewalk.

  Mallory’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking and sweat was breaking out under her arms. It had been green… hadn’t it?

  The good-looking male cop dropped his chin down and spoke into the radio fastened to his chest, requesting an ambulance.

  “What happened, ma’am?” His aviators were icy.

  Mallory explained, but conveniently didn’t mention that she had been digging for her phone. Then the cyclist gave his end of things, barking furiously.

  “Is that true, ma’am?” the officer asked, his expression flat.

  “It’s… uh…” Mallory glanced at the woman cop. She had brought a young man off the sidewalk and was getting his statement. “It was green. That’s all I know.”

  The cop appeared annoyed that the two of them were telling different stories. “Don’t go anywhere,” he told her.

  He conferred with his partner. A discussion between the two ensued with lots of hand motions.

  The bystander she’d interviewed was watching Mallory from afar. He was young. Maybe twenty. Just a baby. Mallory wanted to sit down on the curb and put her head between her legs. The embarrassment was crushing.

  The male cop returned to Mallory as the ambulance arrived. The paramedics took care of the cyclist, led him to sit on the ambulance’s tail.

  “This young man over here says that the light was, in fact, green.”

  Mallory flinched and looked once more at the young man. He was still staring back at her, flashing a slight grin. Mallory cocked her head and thought his expression odd.