Romeo is Homeless (25 page)
Authors: Julie Frayn
August rested her head against the window of the pickup and watched the storefronts and restaurants roll by. Had more than a year passed since that life-changing summer living on the streets of this city? And now she would be here every month, maybe more often. It wasn’t a pun. It wasn’t even irony. It was just a sad fact.
When she first learned the truth, she needed someone to blame. Was it her parents fault for keeping her so protected and sheltered from the world beyond their rural borders she was ill-equipped to make the right decision? No, that was crap. She’d learned about sex in school, learned about protection, pregnancy, disease. She chose not to make that leap with any boy before Reese. Maybe the school system was at fault. They taught all the parts, all the equipment, all the consequences. But no one – not teachers, not parents, not friends – prepared her for the feelings. Emotions she didn’t know how to control. Love. Passion. Lust. She couldn’t stop herself. Or maybe she just didn’t want to.
She’d maintained such a fabled view of him, her prince, her knight. After the birth of their son, the fog started to lift. The chinks in his armor dulled his shine. Her reasoning that his love for her had derailed him emotionally, had blurred his common sense, lost merit. Reality smacked her in the face more often than memories of their fantasy romance. He was a drug addict who shared needles. A prostitute who probably had hundreds of dates. How many of those encounters were unprotected? None of it lessened her responsibility, but it was his fault too. He had to share the blame.
She thought of him every day. It was hard not to when her son wore his face. But she didn’t have the time, or even the need, for her morning observance at the window seat. Once in a while, brief pangs of desire caught her off guard. She still held tight to certain memories, mourned the loss of intense passion. But another feeling had taken centre stage. Anger. How could he not have protected her from this? How could he abandon her, leave her to deal with it alone, for the rest of her life?
Little Reese started to fuss beside her. She popped his soother into his mouth then ran her fingers through his silky curls.
He looked up at her and grinned. Then his eyelids flickered and he fell back to sleep in his seat.
She always sat in the back with him so he wouldn’t be afraid, riding backwards with nothing to look at but the ceiling of the truck. She always watched his little face, her finger gripped in his whole hand. But today she was too distracted by the increasingly familiar sights and the memories and feelings they ignited.
The truck turned onto the street in front of the park. Blossom-free weeping cherries lined the path. Pigeons pecked at the ground around the benches, their heads bobbing back and forth like chickens. Goosebumps tingled up her arms. She sat bolt upright and banged her palm on the window.
“Stop! Dad, stop the truck!”
Before he could bring the truck to a full stop she opened the door and jumped out. She weaved through the cars that crawled through the afternoon rush hour, and raced across three lanes of traffic.
“Amber!” She screamed and sprinted down the park path. “Amber!”
Amber turned away from the man she was with and took one slow step toward her. “August? Oh my God, August!”
They crashed into each other’s arms, both of them sobbing. Amber pulled back, laughing through tears and stroked August’s hair.
“Damn, honey. Have I ever missed you.” She took both of August’s hands. “How’ve you been?”
“You know what happened?”
“Yeah.” Amber swallowed hard. “I was in the hospital for a few days. It was on TV, about you being found. And about Reese. Well, not about him. It only made the news because he screwed up subway traffic for a few hours.” She looked away and blinked several times, squeezing August’s fingers. Then she looked back, her eyes wide. “What are you doing here? You didn’t run…”
“No, no. I’m here with my dad. I’ll be here a lot, to see a doctor. A specialist.”
“Why? Are you okay?”
“Not exactly.” She looked at the ground. The enormity of the diagnosis, the potential finality weighed heavy on her shoulders. She looked at Amber, touched by the concern pinching around her friend’s eyes. “I’m HIV positive.”
“Oh, shit no.” Amber touched August’s cheek. “Honey, I’m so sorry.” Amber put one hand behind her neck, pulled her in and hugged her. “He didn’t know. He couldn’t have known.”
August pulled away, her brow furrowed. “How couldn’t he know? Or at least have considered the possibility.”
Amber looked away, then turned back to meet her eyes. “Yeah. You’re right. What do the docs say?”
“I’m on a bunch of medication and I have to come here a lot, at least once a month. If I manage it and it doesn’t turn into AIDs, they say I may live a full life.” Or she could get caught in the corn thresher during harvest this autumn and bleed out in the field before anyone could save her. Life was just as unpredictable now as it was last summer. “I’m so angry. I want to hate him. But I just can’t.”
“I get that. Can’t blame you.”
“What about Guy? What happened to him?”
“He will be an old man before they let him out. They wouldn’t listen to me, about what that rat bastard did, that Guy was protecting me. Hell, they even accused him of killing Ricki. Fucking cops.” She pulled a piece of worn paper from her pocket and stared at it. “I tried to visit him, but he wouldn’t see me. Gave the guard this.”
August took the paper and unfolded it.
Move on. Love, Guy.
He was always a man of few words.
Amber took back the paper, folded it and tucked it into her pocket. “You know, I lost my whole family in one summer.”
August took Amber’s hand. “Not your whole family.”
The man Amber had been talking to came up behind them. “Look, sweetheart, I haven’t got all day. Are we doing this or what? Maybe you could give me two for one, huh? You and your friend there?”
“If you don’t walk away right now, I’ll shoot you dead like the diseased dog that you are.”
August smirked. The man’s eyes doubled in size and he backed away.
Amber stared at August’s father.
August took her son from his grandfather’s arms.
Amber looked at the baby, then looked back to August, her knitted brows wrinkling her forehead. She pointed at the baby. “Is that? Is he?”
“This is Reese.”
Amber brought a hand up to her mouth, tears filling her eyes. “Oh my God. August, he’s beautiful.” She held out her hands. “Can I?”
Amber gathered Reese in her arms and bounced him up and down. “Hi, baby Reese-man. Look at those blue eyes. Those are Daddy’s eyes.” She gave him an apprehensive hug, then kissed his flaxen hair. “What about him, is he?”
August ran a thumb across Reese’s cheek, prompting a big gummy smile. “Nope. He’s clean as a whistle.”
A hand touched her shoulder and her father’s voice resonated past her ear.
“Miss, may we buy you dinner?”
“Amber, this is my dad.”
Amber’s smile was enormous. “Nice to meet you. I’d really appreciate that.”
August and Amber walked hand in hand toward the truck.
“I like your father,” Amber whispered.
“Yeah. He’s cool.”
He buckled Reese into his seat and helped August up beside her son. Then he opened the passenger door for Amber.
“Young lady, have you ever milked a cow?”
** END **
Thank you for taking the time to read
Romeo is Homeless
. If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a short review. Word of mouth is an author’s best advertising tool.
Julie Frayn pens award-winning novels and short stories that pack a punch. And a few stabs. She has published three novels and two short, short story collections. Her work has won the 2014 Indie Reader Discovery Award for Literary Fiction (
Mazie Baby
), two gold medals in the 2013 Authorsdb cover contest (
Romeo is Homeless
, formerly
Suicide City
), the Books and Pals 2014 Readers’ Choice award for women’s fiction (
It Isn’t Cheating if He’s Dead
), and been named to 3 Best of 2014 lists including Indie Reader, Readfree.ly, and Suspense Magazine (
Mazie Baby
).
A bean counter by day, Julie revels in the written word. When she is not working or writing, she spends as much time as possible with her two children (grown adults, really), while they still think she’s cool.
Julie can be found all over the world wide web. Please connect with her online:
Twitter:
http://twitter.com/juliefrayn
Facebook:
http://facebook.com/JulieBirdFrayn
Website:
http://www.juliefrayn.com
Without my children, nothing would be possible. Thank you Brynn for your unending encouragement, friendship, and faith in me when I needed it most. Thank you Charlie for your unending sarcasm, honesty, and bear hugs when I needed them most.
Thanks to my systir, Carolyn, my brother, John, and my mother, Irene. I know they are always there, always love me, always believe in me.
To my beta readers, Brynn Archibald, Carolyn Frayn, David Miller, Deb Grondin-White, Barb Munro, Sandra Kam, Laren Murphy, Alida Visbach, Jo Morris, Joanne Dutka, Jen Chatfield, Liz Siciliani, Natalie Siciliani, Shelley Priebe, Brenda Whitter, Jeff Hodgson, Jim and Christine Akeson, James Frayn, Chris Black, and Colinda Davis (and her whole book club).
A special thank you to Lori Moritz, a fellow writer whose feedback gave Reese a voice and made this story so much better.
And finally, a big thanks and shout out to my fabulous editor, Scott Morgan. Hire him. Really. I love that guy.