Marie Sexton - Between Sinners And Saints (16 page)

They left at a disgustingly early hour on Wednesday, only because Jaime offered to drive the morning shift again. Levi slept as well as he could in Jaime’s passenger seat until ten, then took over driving so Jaime could sleep if he wanted to. Jaime claimed he didn’t need to sleep, but was happy to take a break from driving.

Levi couldn’t get over how happy Jaime was to be going to his family’s house. His enthusiasm was contagious, and Levi found he was dreading the visit far less than usual. Whatever happened, Jaime would be there, smiling his Boy Scout smile, making his dry jokes, making Levi happy simply by being there.

“Tell me something about you,” Levi said to him as he turned on the cruise control.
“Like what?” Jaime asked in surprise.
“Anything. You know all about me and my family, and I don’t know anything about you at all, except you’re from Cleveland.”
He glanced over at Jaime and saw the haunted look that always appeared in his eyes when the conversation veered anywhere near his past. “Let’s stop for lunch at the next town.”
“Okay,” Levi said, trying not to smile at Jaime’s evasiveness.
“Not Wendy’s.”
“I know.”
“Not McDonald’s, either. Find a Subway.”
“I
know.
”
“If you’re tired of Subway, we could look for one of those burrito places, like Qdoba.”
“Subway’s fine.”
“But not Taco Bell.”
“Jaime, I
know.
Now quit dodging the question.”
Jaime sighed. “I don’t like to talk about my past.”
“No! Really?”
Jaime shot him a withering glare. “Smart ass.”
“Come on, Jaime. I’m not asking you to reveal your deepest, darkest secrets.” Although he had a suspicion what that was already. “Isn’t there
something
you can share?”
Jaime was silent for a long time, thinking. Levi started to wonder if he’d upset Jaime so much he wasn’t going to answer at all, not even to be evasive. But finally, he took a deep breath and jumped in. “I was on the tennis team in high school.”
“Really?”
“I was terrible.”
“But did you like it?”
Jaime shrugged. “It was okay. Kind of boring.”
“Then why did you play?”
“There aren’t many sports that don’t involve physical contact. It was either tennis or swimming.” The tone of his voice indicated swimming hadn’t really been an option.
“Ah,” Levi said, with sudden understanding. “All those boys in their Speedos.”
“Exactly,” Jaime said, and although Levi’s eyes were focused on the road, he could hear the smile in Jaime’s voice.
“What else?”
“I was in the choir.”
“I’ve never heard you sing!”
“I didn’t say I could sing. I said I was in the choir.”
Levi laughed. “Fair enough. So why did you move to Miami? No massage schools in Cleveland?”
It took Jaime a moment to answer that question, too. “I left Cleveland the day I graduated,” he finally said, not looking at Levi. “Loaded everything up the night before and, as soon as the ceremony ended, I got in my car, and I didn’t stop until I was in Charleston.”
“South Carolina?”
He laughed. “No. West Virginia.”
“So you drove all the way to Miami by
yourself?
” He knew enough about Jaime’s anxieties to be surprised.
Jaime shrugged. “I didn’t really know where I was going. I only knew I had to leave. So I got on the road and I drove.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
“Terrified. I’d stop at hotels, then be awake half the night. But I felt like if I kept going, it’d be okay. There was some place just down the road that was
safe,
and I wouldn’t have to be afraid any more.”
“And that place was Miami?”
“No,” Jaime said, with a sad smile. “Miami’s where I ran out of road. If I’d had a passport and more than twenty dollars to spare, I probably would have kept going.”
“So you never found your safe place?” Levi asked.
Jaime didn’t answer, and when Levi turned away from the road long enough to glance over at him, he saw Jaime’s cheeks were bright red. He couldn’t seem to look anywhere but down at his hands, clenched in his lap, and Levi realized he already knew the answer. Jaime had found his safe place. But for some strange reason, that place was with Levi.
Levi held his hand out to Jaime. Jaime hesitated, as Levi had known he would, but eventually reached over and took his hand.
“I’m glad you ran out of road.”

Only Ruth’s portion of the family had arrived ahead of them. It seemed strange to Jaime to be in the house without it being crammed to the gills with kids. After saying hello to everyone and putting his bag in the room he’d stayed in last time, Jaime wandered downstairs to find Ruth, Nancy, and Ruth’s son Carter sitting at the kitchen table snacking on pretzels. Carter was engrossed in some kind of hand-held electronic game. The room was warm and the smell of whatever was in the oven made Jaime’s mouth water.

“Get yourself something to drink,” Nancy said, “then help us finish these pretzels.”
Jaime found a ginger ale in the fridge and sat down with Ruth, Nancy and Carter just as Levi returned from putting his own bag away.
“What’s for dinner, Mom? It smells great.”
“Lasagna. But I forgot the garlic bread, and I’m out of ranch dressing. I have to go to the store in a few minutes here and get some.”
“No, Mom. You stay here. I’ll go.”
“Are you sure, honey? You don’t have to do that.”
“Jaime will want Sprite anyway.”
“Will you get dog food while you’re there, too?” Jaime asked. “I gave Dolly her last can this morning.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t get the kind with the peas in it.”
“I know.”
“It makes her throw up.”
“I know. I’ve had the pleasure of stepping in it more than once.”
“And don’t buy the store-brand Sprite knock-off either.”
“I know.”
“And not 7-Up.”
“Jaime,” Levi said, laughing, “I know.”
“Okay.” Jaime suddenly became aware of Nancy and Ruth, who were sitting on the other side of the table, looking back and forth between he and Levi. Ruth looked highly amused. Nancy looked surprised. Jaime felt his cheeks turn heat up when he thought of how their conversation probably sounded.
Levi seemed oblivious to the awkwardness in the room. “I have my cell phone when you guys think of something else you need,” he said as he walked out the door.
Once he was gone, Nancy and Ruth both turned to Jaime at once. Their expressions were so intensely inquisitive Jaime found himself backing his chair up a bit.
“What is
up
with him?” Ruth asked.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s so…” She looked to her mom for help.
“Different,” Nancy said.
“Cheery,” Ruth said.
“Happy,” Nancy added.
“I don’t know,” Jaime said, confused. Levi was always happy. There was nothing different about him.
“And I still can’t believe he’s here,” Ruth said. “After what happened last time, I didn’t think we’d see him again for at least a year.”
“I thought the same thing,” Nancy said, never taking her eyes off Jaime. “Levi says I have you to thank for bringing him home.”
Jaime was alarmed. What had Levi told them? “No, not really.”
“What did you do?” Ruth asked. “Bribe him?”
“I just told him it had been a while since I’d had a real Thanksgiving dinner. That’s all.”
Nancy frowned and nodded in apparent sympathy. Ruth seemed intrigued. “Still,” she said, “I’m surprised. Especially since it meant taking so much time off from
that club.
” She said the last two words with obvious disdain.
He was surprised Levi hadn’t told them about leaving The Zone. “He doesn’t work there anymore.”
He regretted it immediately. Nancy actually dropped the pretzel she was holding, and Ruth leaned halfway across the table toward him. “Really? Since when?”
“Since…” Their questions made him uncomfortable. He felt like he was gossiping about his best friend. “A couple of weeks ago, I guess.”
“Where does he work now?” Nancy asked.
“Nowhere, but—”
“He quit his job without having another one lined up?” Ruth asked. “In this economy?”
“Well,” Jaime said, feeling even more like he should shut up, but not knowing how to extricate himself from the conversation, “I don’t think he thought it through much. It seemed like it happened kind of fast.”
“What made him quit?” Ruth asked.
“I don’t know.”
“When was this exactly?” she asked. She had the look and feel of a bloodhound on the trail. She’d found the scent. She just hadn’t followed it to the end yet.
“Two or three weeks ago.”
Ruth nodded, looking pleased. But all she said was, “Very interesting.”
“Is he looking for a new job?” Nancy asked.
“He has an interview next week at a nursery.”
Nancy and Ruth were obviously pleased to hear it. Carter, who until then had shown the lack of interest typical of kids when it came to adult conversation, looked confused. “He’s taking care of babies?”
“No,” Ruth said, without looking away from Jaime. “A plant nursery.”
Carter went back to his game, obviously unimpressed.
“Tell me, Jaime,” Ruth said, “is Levi still…” She waved her hands in a circle in front of her, as if she didn’t know quite how to say what she wanted to ask. She seemed to think Jaime would catch her meaning, but he had no idea what she was getting at. She blushed when she realized she was going to have to spell it out. “Is he still”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“seeing lots of people?”
He was still confused by her meaning, and she sighed in frustration. She glanced at Carter, apparently to make sure he wasn’t listening, before turning back to Jaime. “S-E-X,” she spelled quietly. “Is he still seeing lots of people?”
Jaime felt his cheeks heating and he knew they were turning bright red. He felt like an idiot for not having caught on to what she was asking sooner. “I don’t know,” he said. It wasn’t something he’d thought about before. The idea Levi was suddenly celibate seemed odd. And highly unlikely. And yet, when would he see another man? He’d quit the club, which meant his primary means of finding partners was gone. He certainly never brought anyone home in the evenings, even though Jaime did his best to assure him he wouldn’t be offended if Levi asked him not to come over once in a while. Of course, Jaime didn’t know everything Levi did during the day while Jaime was home working, but he went to Levi’s house every single night, and not once had he seen anything there to indicate another man had been there before him.
Nancy and Ruth were both watching him with unabashed curiosity in their eyes, and Jaime could only shrug. “I don’t know,” he said again.
Ruth nodded, a knowing smile on her face. “Yep,” she said, nodding smugly, “that’s very interesting indeed.”

The rest of Levi’s family arrived after dinner, and the kids argued over who would be sleeping where. Jaime wished he had the option of trading with one of them. When they’d visited Levi’s family back in September, he hadn’t had any nightmares, but that was before Levi had awakened them. Looking back, Jaime couldn’t help but marvel how Levi was simultaneously the cause of his terror and the remedy for it.

He was used to falling asleep in Levi’s bed, cocooned in soft sheets and Levi’s comforting smell. He had grown accustomed to listening to Levi’s quiet breathing on the other side of the bed. He would have been happy to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag like one of the kids if he could have done it in Levi’s room. Instead, he found himself in a twin bed with rough, starchy sheets smelling of laundry detergent. There were three boys in the room with him, sleeping on the floor, but their presence did nothing to keep the nightmares at bay.

He woke shortly after one o’clock, sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath. His heart was pounding and his sheets were soaked. For one horrifying moment, he thought he’d wet the bed again, just as he had when he was a child. But no, it was only sweat causing his sheets to stick to his body.

“You okay?” one of the boys asked from the floor. Jaime fought to regulate his ragged breathing. “Yeah,” he said. “You scared me.” Jaime thought it was Carter talking. “Sorry,” Jaime said. He thought about lying back down and

trying to sleep more, but he could feel the ugliness in his brain, lurking in dark corners and crannies, waiting for him to sleep again. It was like being in one of those Halloween haunted houses and knowing there was a man in a mask right around the corner, waiting to scare the piss out of you. No way did he want to face that.

He climbed out of bed and made his way through the sleeping bags on the floor to the door, with Dolly behind him.
“Where you going?” Carter whispered.
“To the bathroom,” Jaime lied. “Go back to sleep.” He went down to the family room, which was dark and empty.

Dolly sat on the couch next to him, and he turned on the TV. He turned the volume down low and flicked through the unfamiliar channels until he found Syfy. He could always count on them in the middle of the night. He fell asleep again sometime before five and was awakened at six by Ruth. She was still in her pajamas.

He knew she would ask questions if he told her the truth. “I came down a bit ago,” he said instead.
She yawned as she sat on the other couch. “Oh man.” She moaned. “Don’t tell my mom, but I’d kill for a cup of coffee right now. How about you?”
“I don’t drink it.”
“Really? No coffee?”
He shook his head.
“Tea?”
“Nope.”
“Pepsi? Mountain Dew?”
“Sprite.”
“Do you drink alcohol?”
He laughed, thinking about pina coladas. “Once with Levi, but no, not normally.”
She shook her head in amusement. “You’re a better Mormon than any of us real Mormons.”
Dolly had apparently decided they had been chatting long enough. She had more urgent matters on her doggy mind. She stood up, nudging his ear with her nose and whining.
“Okay, girl,” he said, pushing her off the couch and standing. “Let me get my shoes and we’ll go.”
Dolly turned in frantic circles, panting, as if she couldn’t even wait that long, and he laughed.
“Care for some company?” Ruth asked, surprising him. “Maybe a bit of exercise will help wake me up.”
And so, ten minutes later, the three of them set off on foot in the fresh morning air. It was chilly, but not quite cold. There were few cars out, and the only other people they saw were lone joggers.
“There’s a park around the block,” Ruth told him, and he followed her around a couple of corners, then across the street into a small park. She kept up a constant stream of chatter as they walked around it. It wasn’t until they were leaving the park that she said, “Levi seems happier now than he’s been in a long time.”
She and Nancy had said the same thing the day before, but Jaime couldn’t see any significant difference. “He always seemed happy to me.”
“Hmm,” Ruth said, and they walked in silence for a bit. “You guys really aren’t… She glanced at him sideways.
Jaime laughed. “No.”
“But you live together, right?” she asked, sounding suspicious. “It sounded like it.”
Jaime felt himself blush and kept his eyes on Dolly, who was sniffing along the sidewalk ahead of them. “It’s not like that.”
“Then like what?”
Her questions were coming dangerously close to his secrets. He certainly didn’t want to tell her he spent the night at Levi’s more often than not because he couldn’t bear to sleep alone in his own house. “We’re friends,” he said.
“Why not more?” she asked.
“Because.” It was the only thing he could say. The rest was too hard to put into words, but it boiled down to two simple things: because Levi could have anybody he wanted, and because Jaime was damaged. Levi may not have known the details, but Jaime suspected he had an idea, and nobody could be expected to deal with that. Even Jaime himself couldn’t quite handle it.
“What is it, Jaime?” she teased, when she realized he wasn’t going to say more. “Is my brother not cute enough for you?”
He laughed. “Yeah, right.” He shook his head at the idea Levi would be not good-looking enough for anybody.
“Don’t you like him?”
“Of course I like him,” he said. “He’s my best friend.” He blushed again when he realized how childish he sounded. He turned to find her looking at him, her eyebrows up, bangs hanging in her laughing hazel eyes. He’d never noticed before how much she looked like Levi, and it struck him that this woman was Levi’s sister. Of course he’d known, in theory, but it suddenly dawned on him what it really meant—shared genes and shared memories. Years of eating breakfast and dinner together, watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, teasing each other and fighting over toys as kids, and probably over CDs and bathroom time as teenagers. Sharing tears and frustrations, joys and sorrows. Having no secrets. As an only child, he couldn’t imagine having someone be such an integral part of your everyday life whether you wanted them or not.
She was looking at him now as if she couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. It made him uncomfortable.
“Why do you think he quit the club?” she asked.
Jaime shrugged. She’d already asked him the day before, and his answer hadn’t changed. “I don’t know.”
“Did you ask him to quit?”
“What?” he asked, startled. “Of course not. Why would I?”
She looked like she was tempted to laugh at him, but instead she shrugged. “No reason,” she said, turning away from him, and they walked back to the house in silence.
Most of the family was up when they got back. Nancy, Rachel, and one of the K-Wives were bustling around the kitchen. The turkey was in the oven. Levi was at the kitchen table with a slew of his nieces and nephews. The center of the table was filled with clean bowls, jugs of milk, and at least eight boxes of cereal. Ruth moved two of the kids to the breakfast bar so she and Jaime could sit down across from Levi, who was pouring what appeared to be neon confetti into a bowl.
“What the hell are you eating?” Jaime asked.
“Fruity Pebbles.” Levi offered the box to him. “Want some? They’re good.”
“No, thanks,” Jaime laughed as he reached for the Corn Flakes.
“Jaime?” Levi said, his voice low and serious.
“What?” He looked across the table and found Levi regarding him with troubled eyes.
“You okay?”
“Of course.”
Levi didn’t look convinced. “Did you sleep last night?”
“Sure,” Jaime said. He hated sometimes how easily Levi could read him. He glanced around the table. It wasn’t just Levi looking at him. Ruth and a couple of the older kids were watching him, too. “I slept fine,” he said weakly.
“He woke up around one and left to go to the bathroom and never came back to bed,” Carter said.
Ratted out by a ten-year-old. Jaime felt his cheeks burning and he couldn’t meet Levi’s eyes. “I’m fine,” he said, and was glad when Levi didn’t argue.
* * *