Under the Orange Moon Page 21

  Dylan slowly obliged. “You own that loft?”

  Michael nodded. “I do.”

  “Why wouldn’t Charlie say anything? He knew I was moving there.”

  “I don’t tell people everything. I bought it a long time ago and kept it for storage. Half the time I would even forget about it.”

  Dylan fell against the back of the booth. She shook her head as she sat baffled. “I thought I knew all there was to know about you,” she finally added when she was able to control her mouth once again.

  Michael shrugged. “It was just an investment idea that I put aside when the bar began to pick up.”

  “So, why are you renting it out now?”

  “The economy is poor. The bar’s sales have gone down a bit, so I thought now’s the time to fix the place up and make some money off of it.” He laughed and looked back down to examine his menu. “When the real estate agent said she was meeting a Dylan Mathews, I just about died. I never thought you’d leave your mother.”

  Dylan nodded. “That’s why you went down on the price so quickly.” She had wondered why it was so simple to get the price lower and why the real estate agent’s phone call only lasted minutes. She figured she would have to bargain. She should have known it was too easy.

  “I can’t rip you off, Dylan. You know that.”

  Dylan laughed and picked up a menu. She peered over the top of it and raised an eyebrow at Michael. “So, then what is this that we’re doing today?”

  Michael peeked over the top of his menu, eyeing her back. “This is lunch between two friends.”

  Dylan shook her head and made her selection. The waitress came back with their waters, took their order, and left them alone to talk.

  “So, how are things?” Dylan asked awkwardly. “How’s Oilies?”

  “Missing its favorite bartender actually.” He sighed and picked up the paper covering to his straw. He began to rip it into tiny pieces, rolling them into balls, and piling them up on the table. “It’s not the same is all I’m trying to say.”

  Dylan nodded her head. She hadn’t even considered taking her job back at Oilies and she really hoped he didn’t ask her to come back now. She might feel obligated to if she was living under his roof, so to speak.

  “How are you?” he asked, pointing to her.

  Dylan heard that question so much since Ben left, it was beginning to exhaust her. She came up with the same sharp answer, “fine,” for each time someone asked it. As common as a question like that is, she knew what it was that they meant. She almost wished they would just come out with it and say what they mean, less the tact: Hey Dylan. How are you since you stupidly fell victim to Ben McKenna?

  Michael was different, though. Dylan knew he probably was well aware of the way Ben left her. He simply wanted to know how she was, though. That was it.

  “I’m good,” Dylan answered. “I’m preparing for my gallery in June, my class is great, and I’m finally moving out of my mother’s house. I couldn’t be better,” she lied at the end.

  “Are you ready for the wedding?” Michael asked, raising his brow.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  He shrugged. “I’d still like to walk with you, if you’re okay with that.”

  Dylan nodded slowly as her lips curled into a pleasant smile. “I think that would be nice,” she answered. “Besides, Meredith is beginning to get a bit spazzy with the wedding just around the corner. This will make her happy.”

  “Right,” Michael chuckled. “Will you be bringing a date?”

  Dylan shook her head. “Nope, stag all the way for me.”

  “I’m bringing a date,” he said with a red face.

  “Michael Olerson,” Dylan began, “who are you dating?”

  Michael laughed in embarrassment. He looked down at his pile of shredded straw paper and laughed awkwardly. “Mary said she would go with me. I thought, why not, you know? She’s a nice enough girl.”

  “Mary? The waitress from Oilies?” Dylan sat back and smiled. She wished she could find it in her to feel upset. Even the slightest amount of jealousy would let her know that she was capable of moving forward. Sadly, she only felt relief. She couldn’t be more pleased with Michael moving on to another girl—someone—anyone—other than herself.

  “Yep, Mary.” He blushed. “She brought me ice after Ben punched me and she helped me clean up after. Since then, we’ve kind of hit it off.”

  “She’s a lucky girl.” Dylan slightly regretted saying that when it was too late. She could see the look in his eyes, a look that seemed to scream, Then why didn’t you want me, Dylan?

  They ate their food and chatted away, reminiscing, joking, and catching up. Michael didn’t ask about Ben and he didn’t treat her as a fragile head-case on the brink of a meltdown like everyone else had. They were normal.

  As they both stepped outside, Michael turned to Dylan and smiled. He fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a silver key. “Here,” he said, practically presenting it to her with a chorus of angels and a beaming light, “it’s all yours.”

  Dylan smiled as she took the key to freedom out of her new landlord’s hands. “Thank you,” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “No parties,” he teased.

  “Don’t worry. My friends and I will just come up to Oilies and get free alcohol,” she said, nudging his arm.

  “Funny.” He looked down at her and smiled a peaceful smile. “I’m glad it’s you moving in there, Dylan.”

  “Me too.” She began to step away from him. She wanted to go call Charlie and tell him to get his muscles and truck ready, but Michael’s expression stopped her.

  “Listen,” he chewed on his lip while he spoke, “I didn’t want to bring this up, but—God—I feel like I should.”

  “What is it?”

  “Ben came by before he left for Massachusetts. He apologized for that night and basically told me that he was taking off and no hard feelings.”

  “Oh,” she said, attempting to hide her grief.

  “I just felt like you should know that, I guess. I know it’s kind of pointless now, though.” He shrugged. “I suppose I just wanted you to know that I don’t hate Ben, and if he can admit he was wrong, then so can I. I am sorry for my part in that, Dylan.”

  Dylan sighed long and heavy. “Well, thanks but, you’re right, it’s pointless.”

  She didn’t need to say that this was not a closed wound for her yet. It seemed to be in the air all around her at even the mention of Ben’s name. She could feel her face turn white with a sickly color and she seemed to take on an unintentional, awkward shift in her body that she wished would stop. She tried to be strong and appear to be moving on. It didn’t always work for her, though.

  Seeing her discomfort, Michael leaned closer, and said, “I’m always going to be your friend, Dylan.” He put one arm around her and looked down. “Always.”

  “Bye, Michael.” She smiled as she turned away from his arm and quickly walked away.

  Ben stretched his arms out over his head, and sighed. “What was that?” he asked sleepily.

  “I asked how that made you feel.” Dr. Fields said for the second time, possibly the third. “Having such a powerful father?”

  “Ah, yes,” he remembered, “the F word.”

  “Yes, that pesky little word that you love so much,” she replied.

  Ben put his head back against the brown leather couch, a cliché piece of furniture to have in a therapist’s office, he thought. He looked around the room for the tenth time and still couldn’t find a clock anywhere. It was a tricky game this woman played, hiding all the clocks so he couldn’t know the time. What if she denied her paying patients the full hour? How would they even know if they were being ripped off?

  “Where are you, Ben?” she asked in an irritatingly calm voice. “You’re thinking about something.”

  “I’m wondering where all the clocks are,” he admitted through a yawn.

  “Time is important to you?”


  Ben laughed. “Sure.”

  “What was funny about what I said?”

  He laughed again. “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Are you happy when you laugh, Ben?” she crossed her legs. She had been sitting still for nearly an eternity and Ben wondered when she would move. It simply wasn’t human to sit like that for as long as she had.

  “Isn’t that a sign of laughter?” Ben asked, still looking at her crossed legs. She wasn’t attractive like he found Professor Gray. He just needed to focus on something other than her emotionless face and the clock-less walls.

  “No. Not necessarily. In your case, I believe your laughter is a way of masking your discomfort. Would you agree?”

  Ben’s lips pursed. “Whatever you say.”

  “You don’t agree then?” Her eyes narrowed in on him. “I’d like to hear your theories.”

  “How can I have theories about my own feelings?” he asked through another gust of laughter. “Wouldn’t I be the one to know the answer? There’s no theoretical guessing about it.”

  “So, you believe you can make sense of all that you feel. You don’t believe that you need assistance in sorting out your emotions.” Dr. Fields looked down at a pad of paper and began to write slowly like she wanted to be discreet.

  Ben may have met his match in this woman. No one frustrated him this way. It was quite twisted the way she switched up his words and made him think. He opened his mouth and then closed it, chuckling to himself when he realized he had no quick words to retort. “Sure,” he answered, only because he couldn’t allow her to have the last word.

  She looked up at him and stared. “Let’s talk about your mother.”

  Ben’s bodied tensed. “Let’s not,” he replied quickly.

  “I haven’t brought her up in the last two sessions.” She turned in her swivel chair and crossed her other leg. “Shouldn’t that count for something?”

  “And I thank you for that. Let’s not begin now, and we can keep this entertaining banter we’ve got going on between us.”

  “We don’t have to talk about her death. What about her life?”

  “Her life was her death,” Ben answered. “She hasn’t been alive for a long time.”

  “There was never a good time?”

  “If there was, it was long before I had the ability to remember.”

  “How did you cope with that?”

  Ben growled in frustration. He looked the doctor in her professional eyes and knew that she would report any difficulties he gave her. He was positive she was handed a small amount of information about his life that may have said something like DEAD MOTHER: SUICIDE and ALCOHOL ABUSE. That was all they had on him, though. They knew nothing about the Mathews, and more importantly, they didn’t even know Dylan existed. That part of his life was a mystery to the people here.

  “Ben?” she asked calmly, leaning in. “Ben, how did you cope with having such a sad mother all your life? Little boys especially need their mother’s selfless nurturing. They need their mother’s love. How did you cope without it?”

  Ben looked down at the carpet beneath his feet. It was a god-awful burgundy color that reminded him of his high school library. His brain continued to picture a face he didn’t want to think of. The carpet wasn’t helping. Damn this woman, he thought. He knew how he coped without his mother’s attention, of course. He had Linda.

  He remembered a time when he was five, maybe six. He had fallen from his skateboard doing a trick that Charlie bet him he couldn’t do. He scraped his knee and walked it off, vowing to never let anyone see him cry. He hid on the side of the Mathews’ house, and wept as he tried to clean up the blood that was pouring out of his busted knee. As he picked the rocks from the gaping hole in his skin, he winced from the stinging pain. He felt gentle hands wrap around him, causing him to jump at the an unfamiliar touch. He looked up and saw Linda’s sympathetic face staring down at him. In her hands she held a bandage and a washcloth. She said nothing as she sat in front of him and wiped his face, then his knee, and tenderly placed the bandage over the open wound.

  “There,” she said, smiling. “Now, next time you try that jump, don’t go so fast and try not to hesitate.”

  Ben ran from her that day, knowing she would never tell a soul he cried, and knowing he could always count on her from that moment on. He even ended up successfully mastering the skateboard trick Charlie bet him he could never do. That part he enjoyed the most.

  “Linda,” Ben said sadly, without thinking.

  Dr. Fields almost looked stunned. She shifted in what Ben assumed to be excitement for her boring personality. “Who’s Linda, Ben?”

  Ben smiled. “She’s someone that took the place of my real mother sometimes.”

  “Do you still see her?”

  Ben shook his head slowly.

  “Why?”

  The timer behind her went off in an alarming ding. It seemed to have made even the doctor jump, but only because she was finally getting somewhere with him and now, by her own fault for setting the timer, she was pulled back again. Ben was sure the next time he came in there would be no timer.

  “Time’s up,” he said, beaming. He stood to his feet and stretched out his arms. “Until we meet again, Doctor.”

  Dr. Fields sat back in her chair and pointed to him with her silver pen. “We’ll start off right there on Monday,” she reassured with a small smile.

  “Right,” he said, flashing a patronizing grin.

  He stepped just outside her office and raised his eyebrows at his babysitter, Professor Arthur, waiting for him in the waiting room. His two professors had taken turns making sure that he made it to his appointments. He had hoped that after the first two sessions, the hovering would end. No such luck.

  Professor Arthur stood to his feet and dropped a magazine down onto the table in front of a couch. “All set?” he asked with a smile.

  Ben nodded and flung his jacket over his shoulder. “Have a good night,” he said, and bolted out the door. The last thing he wanted was anymore heart to hearts with people trying to look inside his head. If he stayed, the professor was surely to ask more invasive questions and Ben could only handle one nosy person per day.

  As usual, he went home alone. He was always alone.

  When Dylan got home from her lunch date, Linda was waiting for her outside. She was on her knees, hovering over a giant pot filled with soil and flowers. She would say that she was gardening, but Dylan would know better. She was waiting to make sure her daughter wasn’t kidnapped and murdered, and continually looking out the window had gotten to be tiresome.

  Dylan hopped out of her car and smiled. “Still alive,” she teased.

  Linda sat up and rolled her eyes. “I see that.”

  She sat down next to her mother. “You’re never going to guess who my new landlord is.”

  “I haven’t a clue.”

  “Michael Olerson.”

  Linda sat up, shocked. “You’re kidding. He’s just a relentless element in your life, isn’t he?”

  Dylan placed a pair of gloves over her hands and began to toss the few garden rocks back into the pots they managed to roll out of. She never understood the way her mother loved to tend to her flowers. Linda said it was relaxing. Dylan thought it was stupid, but she would help her anyway out of obligation based on the grounds that she was the only girl, causing those duties to lay heavily on her in an irritatingly sexist way.

  There was no point in arguing; Linda would only see what she wanted to be real. Even when Dylan turned ten, Linda was ecstatic to present her daughter with an extravagant dollhouse that Dylan had never asked for, never spoke of, and never cared to even look at. It was such a thing that most girls would have cried happy tears over. Not Dylan. She was too busy admiring her new paint easel and sketch charcoals to notice the pink monstrosity behind her.

  And the lack of girlish charm inside her would always make the yearning to please her mother that much greater. It would be disrespectful if she didn’t. N
evertheless, she sometimes wished at least one of her brothers would’ve been gay. Maybe then Linda would have had the daughter she always wanted.

  “So, you’re still moving in then?” Linda asked with a curious stare.

  “Absolutely,” Dylan answered quickly.

  Linda sighed deeply. “So then this is our last night together living under the same roof?”

  Dylan nodded her head and frowned. “It would appear so.”

  Linda sighed again, and stood to her feet. She brushed the dirt from her legs and picked up the hose. As Dylan sat on the ground, staring up at her, she sprayed her daughter in the face, and yelled, “Consider this your send off!”

  Dylan screamed and laughed as she ran into the house to hide and dry off. She hopped up the stairs to her bedroom and looked around the near empty space. It was the first time really looking at it as she was sure she would be leaving it for the first time. For twenty-two years this space belonged to no one else. She wasn’t even sure if it ever would, only because they were all positive Linda would never leave.

  She hated that she thought of Ben in that moment, that he went along with her memories in her own bedroom. She hated that she could only seem to focus on those memories now. She imagined the way he kissed her, held her, laughed with her. Now, she only despised the way his lips would form a genuine smile as he made love to her. He would cup her cheeks, staring into her eyes like he’d never look away, like for the first time he was really seeing someone other than himself.

  Dylan’s heart seemed to crack away one piece at a time. It was only getting worse. The emptiness he was able to leave behind on her consumed her inside and left a tight feeling in her chest that literally ached from time to time. Thankfully, she was able to conceal her pain on the outside so that she looked somewhat human.

  “I come hoseless,” Linda teased from behind her. “Hey, how about a Cosmo night as a final farewell? Do you think you could spare a Friday evening for your mother?”

  “You’re handling this mysteriously well, Mom.”

  Linda sighed, defenseless. “I knew it was coming. If I make it hard on you, then you’ll never come back to visit me.”