Almost Home. Debbie Macomber

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СКАЧАТЬ across the room. “Here’s a third,” I yelled. “I said I’d throw it, and I will!” Another one went flying, and another.

      “Stop it, Chalese.”

      “No, you stop it, Aiden. Did you sleep with me so you could have a fuller picture? Perhaps you want to know my mind, and my boobs and butt, too? What is this—the full-body interview? Maybe you can give your readers a play-by-play.”

      He paled, white as snow. “I slept with you because …”

      “Because what?”

      “Chalese …” He swore, turned away. “You know why I slept with you.”

      “Yes, I do know why, and clearly we let passion shrink our brain cells. Get out of my house. Right now!” Two dogs named Sherbert and Mr. Green ran in, tongues lolling about. When they saw me yelling and upset, they stood in front of Aiden and growled.

      “Get out, Aiden. Go. Go skedaddle back to that newspaper of yours, tap away on your keyboard, and do your thing.” I felt a wave of depression, of black, gooey sadness, take hold. It was a sense of inevitability, a sense of dismal doom. I had been hiding for years, but the hide-and-seek game was over. The game was up. I leaned back against my wooden head-board, bracing myself for what was to come. “We’re done. We are completely done.” In case there was any doubt about what I wanted him to do, I threw a light blue silk pillow at him.

      I did not miss the shattered expression on his face. I felt it in my own heart, which was shriveling, shrinking, dying.

      “Can you quit throwing pillows and understand for one second how this is for me? I’m sorry about this—”

      “Sorry about this, Chalese,” I said, mimicking him. “You poured out everything last night, all about your childhood, and, hey, I’m sorry about blowing your privacy and about dragging up that you are Annabelle Purples, children’s writer who has a truly famous crook for a father, but thanks for the sex!” I wanted to run. Run as far as the ocean shore, then jump in and swim until I couldn’t swim, swim to the whales, swim with the whales. “Get out. Get out now.”

      I did not miss the hopelessness mixed with anger in his expression. I felt the same way. Like my life had been crushed.

      As soon as he left, I pulled the covers over my head and soaked my one remaining pink pillow with my tears.

      “Hello, Mom,” I said into the phone, muffling my weeping with a tissue. “You’re going to Los Angeles next? I received the box of peaches and the box of kale. Yes, the natural spices from Africa arrived, too. I’ll be sure to use them liberally, as your instructions dictated. I love you, too, and yes I’ve been thinking about more designs ….”

      I braced myself for the article. Each day I checked online. It did not appear.

      I kept working on my book at a frantic pace, while shoveling in orange truffles and coffee, but in my off moments, almost breathless with despair, I took a break and drew away my anger.

      I drew Cassy Cat, the presidential contender who usually wore glasses and simple clothes, in a low-cut red gown smoking a cigarette in a biker bar. Above her I drew a bubble that read, “Hey, baby, want some of this? Aiden Bridger, a little man, if you know what I mean, sure didn’t.”

      I drew Fox with his pointy nose from behind, his tuxedo coat pulled open by his sharp claws, clearly flashing a group of puppies in front of him. I put a sign on the fox’s coat that said, “Aiden Bridger: Exposing Everyone!”

      I drew the prissy Goose as a streetwalker. A fat dog with a long tongue leaned out of his truck. “How much?” he asked. The truck was a twin to Aiden’s, and the license plate said, “A. Bridger.”

      And popular humble Herbert Hoove the Horse? I drew him at a poker table, aces sticking out from his sleeve, his hat, his shoes. He had a name tag on. It said, “Aiden Bridger, Gambler.” The bubble above his head read, “I get so tired of screwing people.”

      It was my silent way of revenge. My way of getting back at Aiden while I raced to meet the deadline. A way to rebelliously cope while the tears streaked down my checks as if I had faucets in my eyeballs.

      Little did I know that the rest of the nation would be cackling their hearts out—or screaming in outrage—by the middle of the next week.

      It was announced that I had won the Carmichael Children’s Book Award. My agent and publisher began fielding calls and requests for interviews.

      All were denied.

      I wished I felt happy about the award.

      It was one of those things, though. If you don’t have that special someone to dance around with when cool things happen, the cool things don’t seem that cool.

      “I think if we grabbed your sister, the crying Christie, took off our shirts, and drove through the night half-naked, I could get rid of my writer’s block,” Brenda told me, crossing her red and white polka-dot heels on the top of my blue picnic table in the clearing of the woods. “My life would be better. I’m tired of Shane, you know. He wants me to dress up in a superhero costume, and I am so done with that.” She dropped cherries into her mouth. “I mean, how many times can you be Wonder Woman and still keep it fun?” She clicked her heels together.

      I went back to my draft of another picture for my book. I was giving one of my characters, a llama, dreadlocks. He was a hippie sort of llama.

      My hair was slung up in a ponytail, I had been wearing the same jeans for days, and I was operating on approximately four hours of sleep a night. I smelled; my hair was gross. Besides Brenda, the only person I had seen in days was Reuby, who came in to pet the cats when I walked the dogs one afternoon.

      “Wanna see my new cell phone again?” he’d asked. “It takes awesome pictures. It’s sick it’s so awesome. I can’t believe the Authority Figure bought it for me.”

      I nodded absently and shoved my bangs off my head.

      My book was quite late. Editor was threatening not one heart attack, but two. Agent was having a loud, prolonged fit. PR agent called to bite her nails over the phone.

      And in my grossness, I could also hardly breathe. I was so unbelievably … sad. It was the sad you get when your dreams are almost there … and then they’re obliterated. The sad you get when everything seems to stop and get stuck in bleakness. The sad you get when you feel you will never be in love again, never feel happy again, never overcome this giant emotional boulder in your path that seems to want to squish you.

      But I had a deadline, so I kept drawing under that clear blue sky. Must keep employed, I muttered. Must not end up as scraggly, molting woman pushing cart down street. Nutmeg Man put his head on my thigh under the table and whimpered.

      “Brenda, sit down, stifle the hysterics, and write. Don’t overthink it.” I popped a cherry into my mouth. “Write one word. One letter. Write a paragraph. Describe your costume dates, what you know about men, about life. Be funny. And leave me alone so I can finish these dreadlocks.”

      “When we were kids and sending stories back and forth to each other I never had writer’s block.” She dumped a handful of cherries into her mouth and clicked her heels together.

      “The romances you sent me were СКАЧАТЬ