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Thirty-One

Maddie

We’ve been separated for seven months. I’ve been living in my old house with my mother.

I don’t think I’m ever going to heal fully from what happened that night, but every day the sun shines a little brighter and the bird songs are a bit more encouraging.

But there’s still this gnawing hole inside me, and I wonder if somehow it’s the separation from Aidan instead of the death of my father. Is this man my fate?

I’ve thought over and over about how fucked up it is that we both lost our fathers violently on the same day of the year, and how possibly neither one of us will ever be able to witness another fireworks display without an accompanying flashback.

Though we haven’t seen each other, letters have been exchanged.

And texts. We’ve discussed the details and parameters of our separation, and Aidan has assured me it’s only temporary.

That he’ll give me the time I need. But he doesn’t call and he doesn’t visit.

And maybe that would render a separation pointless.

It’s like he doesn’t trust himself to speak to me or see me.

And I don’t trust myself with any of that either.

He refuses to allow a divorce. That’s the Catholic in him.

I feel like I should be more angry about it.

There just is no divorce in the Church—at least not traditionally.

Legally, it doesn’t matter what he thinks about it.

I could get an attorney and petition the court and free myself from him at any time.

But I know he still watches me, and I feel pretty certain he’d find some way to stop it.

It seems unlikely that after two decades he’d walk away now.

He acts as though he’s done this noble thing by “letting me go”, but if I’m still legally bound to him, all he’s done is made my leash longer and just a bit more invisible.

Is a cage with invisible bars really all that much better?

Do I imagine he’d let me date and just go on with my life?

Would I even want to? Could I allow myself to believe that he’d stand in the shadows and let another man touch me when he still believes deep down that I’m his?

Nothing seems to penetrate that caveman thinking.

And why do I feel like every man who ever entered my life after this, I’d compare him unfavorably to Aidan?

The tattoos, the otherworldly good looks, the intensity, the way he touched me, the way I felt like he’d go scorched earth on anybody who tried to harm me.

Do I imagine any other man would look at me the way Aidan did?

And even if they did, would it match his endless consistency?

I don’t want to romanticize things I know are wrong, but… he’s been devoted to me for a very long time, and there’s an odd sort of safety in that. Stability. A part of me wants to run back to him. It feels easier, but I don’t know if it’s right.

No I do know. It’s not right. I have to be strong and hold onto that.

The doorbell rings, and I rise from the overstuffed leather chair I was curled up in. I put down the book I can’t seem to get into no matter how hard I try.

“Hello…”, I say as I open the door. I stop short, feeling foolish when I realize there’s no one actually at my door. For a moment I think I hallucinated the doorbell, but then I glance down to find a white box. Gold writing in an elegant script on the top reads Frosted Delights .

Inside is a single cupcake. I know who it’s from.

It’s a replica of the cupcakes Aidan brought to our first grade Valentine’s party.

I look down at the sugary red heart pressed lightly into the whipped pink frosting, and all the iridescent white sprinkles, like sparkling snowflakes clinging to the top.

I’m sure if I bit into it, the cake would be chocolate just like that day.

I notice a red envelope under the box. I pick it up, break the seal, and slip out a handmade valentine, and in spite of everything I have to hold in a laugh.

Aidan’s artistic skills haven’t improved much since we were six.

Two stick figures holding hands. Lots of gold glitter.

There are hearts drawn on the red paper in white crayon.

And the message? A little less sweet than when we were children:

I’ll never give up on us. I’m a very committed stalker. Come home, Maddie.

And then under that, as though it’s taken every piece of will he possesses, he’s added the word, Please , in a shaky script that looks like he had to wrestle a demon to get that word out of him.

It must kill him to have to use the word Please when he’s so used to getting whatever he wants .

I imagine running his inherited criminal empire, that word isn’t used a lot by him.

I scan the immediate area until I find him leaning against a black SUV across the street. He’s wearing all black and dark blue mirrored sunglasses. His arms are crossed over his chest, and even though I can’t see his eyes behind the mirrored lenses, I feel the weight of his gaze.

Even though it’s cold out, the sun is bright and at an uncomfortable angle. I cross the street, taking the box with the cupcake and the card with me.

When I reach him, he removes the sunglasses and puts them in is inner jacket pocket. I open the box and pull back the pink and white striped paper cupcake liner.

“Is it drugged?” I ask. That would be one way to get me to come home.

“Of course not. I would never.”

“Prove it.” I break off a piece and offer it to him. There is long, slow searing eye contact between us. I forgot the way his gaze consumed me, and how I was more than happy to be held in such intensity for his languid consumption.

He lets me feed him the cake as though he’s a baby bird, but then he grips my wrist hard and sucks my finger into his mouth to get at the last bits of pink fluffy sweetness. Without breaking eye contact, he breaks off another piece of the cupcake and feeds it to me.

I work hard to keep from moaning as the moist chocolate cake and sugary frosting burst out in full flavor across my tongue.

“Come home.” Aidan says again.

He’s tried to give me the illusion of space, but I’m not happy. I can’t live with my mother forever, and no matter how hard I try, I just can’t see a future without Aidan in it.

“It’s wrong. Everything about this whole thing is so wrong,” I say.

“I know. But let’s just be wrong together, okay?”

When he says it like that, it somehow seems right.

I’ve been trying so hard to be the “good guy”, maintaining the socially acceptable mask, trying to pretend I’m still the same person I was last year.

And it’s not that I even think it’s evil for me to be with him.

But I can’t move past the fact that I killed my own father.

No matter what else he was, he was my dad, and I shouldn’t get to have a happy ending after that.

“I could just take you,” Aidan says, those tendrils of darkness seeping around the edges of his voice.

That would be easier, and a big part of me prefers it.

Then I could be the innocent in all this.

Choosing him is somehow so much worse. How can I reward him for all his years of stalking graduating into coercing and imprisoning?

How can I allow myself to have any bit of happiness after I shot my own father?

Aidan tips my chin up so that my gaze is level with his. Then he kisses me. It’s soft and sweet, and probably more like how our wedding day kiss in front of hundreds of people should have been. Yet it still takes my breath away.

“Do you not think you could find happiness with me?” he whispers when he finally pulls away.

I want to argue, pretend he’s got some nerve, act like he’s too arrogant for his own good. But he reads my truth too easily.

He doesn’t ask me to give him a verbal agreement.

I think we both know that no matter how much I want to, I just can’t bring myself to say the words.

I can’t say Oh yes, Aidan, please carry me away to your castle where we can live happily and evilly ever after.

I mean I know you’re probably not much better than a serial killer and who the fuck knows what you get up to with crime every day?

I just want to be Mrs. Aidan Stryker forever!

Cue swooning.

Yeah, that’s not going to happen, even if my warped brain wants this dark fairy tale ending so much more than I’ll allow myself to admit.

He opens the passenger side car door. “I’m taking you home. Get in and eat your cupcake.”

“I don’t have anything to drink,” I say, stalling. Because the real moral dilemma here is not having a beverage to go with my Valentine cupcake.

He nods toward the interior of the car, and I see a small carton of milk like the kind we had at lunch in elementary school sitting on the arm rest between the two front seats. And it’s chocolate, my favorite. Since it’s winter, I’m sure it’s still cold.

“Well, you appear to have thought of everything,” I say.

“I did.”

I glance back at the house and spot my mother in the front window. Oh good, someone who can be alarmed and judge me and pull me away from the precipice before I stupidly jump off this cliff to my obvious doom.

But she nods at me. Does she actually approve of me with Aidan? How can she? My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out to find a text from my mother.

You should go home. I’ll be fine here. We’ll get together for brunch on Sunday.

She plays it off as though I’ve just taken a break to help her for a while now that my father is no longer here, even though we both know all the reasons I’ve avoided Aidan.

She waves at me from the window, and honestly it’s more of a “shooing me off” wave than a “goodbye” wave. I wave back. And then, having no other reasonable options, I get into the SUV with my cupcake, and Aidan takes me home.