Page 30 of Sublimate
“Still, that’s a really big deal! We should do something,” I told him.
“Like have a glass of champagne?”
“No, and that’s not very funny,” I said, but he was smiling again and I liked to see it. “There are other ways to celebrate. I don’t mean sex, either.”
“Good, because I don’t want to have sex,” he replied. “It’s not you, personally. I don’t want to sleep with anyone. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Now he sighed. “At rehab, a counselor was talking about the connection between our addictions and physical relationships, how addicts use sex for their own purposes. It came out during that meeting that several of my fellow junkies there were managing to sneak around and sleep with each other, and I was appalled. Not the sneaking, but that they wanted to do it. I had no desire and I still feel so…” He thought. “Apathetic. I don’t know if I’ll want to do it ever again.”
“I bet you will,” I said. “Are you worried?”
“I must be, since I just told you all that. I’m sorry for saying it.” He looked like he was embarrassed.
“No, I’m glad you did. I want us to be friends and that’s the way to do it, by admitting to hard stuff. For example, Cadence recently told me that her dad isn’t dead. It’s not a secret but they never talk about the truth. Her mom led people to believe that he went off to work somewhere far away and then died in a jungle or a pit, something like that. But actually, they got divorced and now he lives in Phoenix. She says that he cheated on her.”
“The story’s a little more prosaic,” Nolan said.
That was a good word. I wasn’t sure what it meant and I wanted to look it up. “I just thought it was strange since their family doesn’t seem to be like that. I always thought that people who lived in nice houses wouldn’t be cheats and scammers.”
“No, those people are everywhere. Unfortunately,” he added.
“We never decided how we’re going to celebrate your sobriety because we got sidetracked by sex,” I said. “That doesn’t appeal to you, but does anything else?”
He shrugged.
“What did you like to do as a kid? Did you have something that was a special treat?” I persisted.
“Did you have one?”
“Going to the movies,” I answered immediately. “I love it. I haven’t been in forever but I can imagine the smell of the popcorn…” I inhaled like I could catch it now. “What about you?”
“I don’t mind the movies.”
“No, what was special?” I pressed. “Cupcakes? A new book?” I knew that was Cadence’s favorite thing.
“At my grandparents’ house, an ice cream man used to come by,” he said. He was speaking slowly, like he was pulling out the memory. “I would hear the music and go running to the truck. They had a really long driveway, but he would slow down and wait for me so I could buy something. I used to get a popsicle that was in the shape of a panda and had gumballs for eyes.Those were hard as rocks and turned your fingers black when you picked them out.”
“That sounds so fun. Should we try to find an ice cream truck?”
“We could get a cone,” he suggested. He smiled again. “I don’t know the last time I did that.”
“Today’s a good day for ice cream,” I said.
“It is,” Nolan agreed. “We should go to a movie later, too.”
It just felt good all over.
Chapter 7
He was precious. I had been a girl who’d loved dolls desperately and I had always wanted to have a whole family of them. I’d had a doll at one point but it was gone now. It must have been lost in a move, because there had been a lot of those…
The baby in my arms made a little noise and his father’s head jerked to look in our direction. I had met Nolan’s friend Beau when he’d come over before, and he had seemed very laid-back, very chill.
But not today, because he had also brought his son Finley to visit.
“He may be hungry,” Beau informed me. I rocked the baby gently but his dad jumped up to hover above us. “He may need a new diaper. Is he feverish? Maybe there’s too much of a breeze where you’re sitting. A hair can become wrapped around an infant’s toe and cut off the blood supply. I need to take off his socks and check.”
“I think he’s fine,” I said, but this was his son and I could see that he was itching to have him back in his own arms. Reluctantly, I handed over that perfect baby, but then I moved to sit next to them on the couch so I would still be close and see his cute little toes. They didn’t have any hairs wrapped around them.
“It might be better, in an evolutionary sense, if infants had verbal abilities at birth,” Nolan pointed out. He was in the living room with us but had taken the farthest seat from the new father and his child. “Then he could say, ‘There’s a damn hair wrapped around my toe. Somebody help me.’”
