The Space In Between (14 page)

WALKING TO OUR apartment, there
appeared to be a strange man sleeping next to a suitcase. Ladasha’s eyes
shifted towards me. “Do you…?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t tell who it was, so we approached
with caution. The man’s head was resting in his lap as Ladasha got closer and
poked him with her heel. My heart got stuck in my throat, noticing the old,
scuffed up brown shoes…I knew who it was.

 “Hey, freak. This isn’t a homeless shelter. Get the hell
out of here before we call the cops, assho—” Ladasha’s voice trailed off as she
stared into eyes that were now slowly waking up.

Oh no. “What are you doing here?” I asked, watching him
stand.

“Well, after going to the diners that didn’t have any clue
who the hell you were, and calling your cell phone one hundred times, I tracked
down your apartment. And I’ve been waiting here since six in the afternoon to
find you. And clearly now it’s…” He brought his watch to his eyes and looked
back to me. “It’s two in the morning.”

I choked back my words, shaking my head, “No. What are you
doing in New York?”

“Looking for you, Anders! Mom is freaking out! You didn’t
come for Thanksgiving, she said you weren’t coming for Christmas, and we
haven’t heard from you in weeks!” My older brother Eric was here, in New York
City, in front of my apartment. And I was holding a box with bras, whips, and
chains. This had the possibility of getting extremely awkward.

His eyes landed on the box, they traveled to my fake nails,
heavy makeup, and then they shifted back to the box. “What the hell is going
on, Andrea?!”

HEY, WHAT’S UP?
I typed into
the message.
No.
Delete, delete, delete.
We should talk.
Talk?
Talk about what? How my wife was blackmailing me to never talk to Andrea again?
How her secret would be world news if I were seen with her in public? It was
two in the damn morning and I couldn’t stop pacing this hotel room. I really
needed to get my own place as soon as possible.

I fell onto my bed, blankly staring at my cell phone. Son of
a bitch. I needed to call.

“Hello?” the tired, but deep, voice said on the other line.

“Kyle. I need advice.” I was desperate, so I reached out to
the one person who I knew wouldn’t hate me for calling at ridiculous times
during the night.

“I fucking hate you,” he whined. He didn’t mean it.

“Seriously. I don’t know what to do. Iris is blackmailing
me. I can’t see Andrea and she has no clue why. And I can’t tell her because
Iris is threatening to expose her darkest secrets. And I fucking miss her. And
I don’t just mean the sex. I mean
her
, Ky.” I ran my fingers over my
eyebrows, allowing realization to set in. I missed Andrea more than I have ever
missed anything.

“You know what you need?”

My ears perked up, ready to hear his advice. The last time
he gave me advice, I ran into Andrea. So I was anxious for some of his
knowledge.

“You need to be single for awhile. Clearly you can’t fuck
and leave it at that. You get all twisted in emotions like a little bitch.” He
was extra harsh today; he must have been really tired. “You need to deal with
your issues with Iris. Deal with your dad issues. And I mean really fucking
deal. Stop burying that shit and stop thinking that finding a second choice
will make it better. Listen, I was up late helping a friend out of a sticky
situation. I’m tired, all right? I’m going to sleep, asshole.”

I sat in my dark hotel room again. With my thoughts. Fuck my
thoughts. I didn’t want to be thinking about her, but she wouldn’t get out of
my head. I sure as hell didn’t want to be thinking about him, but there he was,
in my mind. I wanted everything about my past to disappear, but the memories
started to resurface.

I’D STOOD BEFORE my father after
he returned home from a heavy night of drinking. He stumbled into the living
room, where Mom had fallen asleep waiting for his arrival. He walked past me,
shoving me in the shoulder. “Get the hell outta my way, kid.”

I had enough; I couldn’t stand the hollowness of his
words. I shoved him back, telling him that I would be better than him. I would
never lay my hands on a woman, never drink, and I’d be a better father than he
could ever be.

His laughter was dark when he looked me in the eyes. I
could smell the rum on his breath as he whistled a tune. Grabbing me by the
chin, he pulled me close to his face, and his voice lowered. “You see what
you’re looking at right here, Cooper?”

My body tensed up and I narrowed my eyes, wanting to
knock the jerk to the ground, but even as a drunk, he was ten times stronger
than me. “Look real close, real fucking close into my eyes, son. You see what’s
there? That’s your damn future.”

“No it’s not.”He was wrong. He was wrong. He was…

He shoved me again, chuckling in a wicked tone. “Yup, it
is. You’re exactly your father’s son. You can try your hardest to run from it,
but the apple don’t fall far from the damn tree, kid.”

I SPENT YEARS proving him wrong,
being a better person, giving back to the community, and loving my wife the
best way I knew how. And when she became pregnant, I knew I would be better
than him. I was ready to be a dad. A damned good one at that. I just didn’t
plan for what happened next.

The first time she had a miscarriage, I wasn’t there.

I’d been doing voiceovers for our reality show. Iris had
finished her voiceover work earlier that day and headed to her doctor’s
appointment. She kept calling me on my cell phone, but I didn’t answer. I had
to get the work done so the editing process could begin. The world of
television worked on a time schedule, and if you didn’t show up and do your
job, you could cost the network a shit-ton of money. My wife could wait, seeing
as how she’d dragged me into this fucked up world of reality television.

The calls kept coming, and I kept ignoring. It wasn’t until
she texted me ‘911’ that my eyes shot up and I removed the headphones from my
ears. Everything slowed down. I was sure I was running, but it felt as if I
were going nowhere. When I arrived at the doctor’s office, Iris was sitting in
the waiting room, drained, but not tearful. She must have cried before I
arrived. The doctor told us a bunch of bullshit I didn’t understand. I started
hollering at him, tagging him as the cause of my newfound suffering. My eyes
shifted to my silent wife.
Our suffering.

I demanded a real reason. “Y’all better fix this! Do you
know who we are!? Your ass better make this right!!” He’d fucked up and he
should have been able to fix this. Fix him or her.

Fix our baby.

Iris stood up and started to walk away from me, nearing the
exit. I narrowed my eyes at the doctor— eyes filled with unwarranted hate— and
informed him that this wasn’t the end of it. I rushed over to Iris and wrapped
my arm around her. “We’ll fix this, all right?” I whispered over and over
again, stroking her hair.

By the time she fell asleep, I’d had a drink. Or three.

The second time it happened, I wasn’t there.

I’d been out having a drink with my manager when I got the
call. I looked at her in the hospital bed and her shoulders shrugged. She
looked away from me. We didn’t speak a word. When she was released from the
hospital, I offered her my hand to hold, but she refused it. I was slapped with
a feeling that things would never be the same. As we stepped into the
apartment, Iris went to the living room couch and allowed the cushions to soak
her in. I asked her what she needed. She whispered a harsh reality. “A
husband.”

I wanted to reach out to her and wrap her in my arms, but I
couldn’t.

“Can you change the bed sheets? I want to go to sleep.” She
rubbed her puffy eyes and rested her hands over her face. She must have cried
in the hospital before I arrived. She’d never cried in front of me. Not even on
our wedding day. I wandered to our bedroom, willing to at least fill one of her
requests. If I couldn’t be the husband she needed in that moment, I could
change the sheets.

The red stains on the 800 thread count Egyptian cotton
sheets reminded me of how I hadn’t been there. A vexatious amount of guilt
washed over me as my tongue tasted the whiskey still upon my lips. My wife had
lain in bed by her lonesome, while our second unborn child cried out for her to
notice. Cried out for Daddy to wake Mommy before it was too late.

But Daddy hadn’t been there. And Mommy had to wake to
excruciating pain. Mommy probably reached out for Daddy but only found his
pillow.

A week later, we were on a red carpet, showing up at a
charity event for some celebrity ‘friend’ of ours. “Save the whales. Save the
goldfish. Save the goddamn fruit flies.” What a fucking joke. None of these
people were our friends—they didn’t know the shit we had been through. We
hadn’t even had time to mourn, but that evening on the red carpet, I wrapped my
arm around Iris’s waist and she smiled, my hand almost touching her stomach. I
flinched at the thought and moved my hand closer to her side.

That was the closest connection we’d had in weeks, and it
was all an act. An image for the paparazzi and media to relish in. Season three
of our reality show was about to premiere in a few weeks, so of course we had
to hold up our appearances.

No, we didn’t find time to mourn, but I found a few moments
to have a drink.

Or six.

After we’d gone through the two previous miscarriages, it
had been really hard on the both of us. She never spoke of it, but I knew it
ate at her spirit. It sure as hell ate at mine.

I couldn’t think about it anymore. I forced myself to go to
sleep, to shut my mind down from all the issues I refused to face..