Page 106 of Heartsick & Lipsticks
SKYE
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The musical stylings of Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” blared through my AirPods as I sat on my knees in my bathroom, bent over the tub, scrubbing it. Lola and Callie were both out, so I could have played the music over the speaker, but I wanted to blast it and drown out the voices in my head without getting complaints from the neighbors.
Cleaning had always been an escape for me, and over the weekend, my apartment was the cleanest it had ever been. I’m talking white-glove-ready clean. Hello, my name is Spic, last name Span, and I am a cleaning addict.
I’d organized all the closets, drawers, and cabinets in the entire house. I’d sponged down all the baseboards, walls, doors, and ceilings. I’d Marie Kondo’d both mine and Callie’s wardrobes and donated four large bags of clothes to the women’s and family shelter.
Besides cleaning, I’d given into my other escape, Target. I’d purchased new bedding, throw pillows for the couch, a new pair of sweats, several candles, and new glassware in an attempt to make this place feel like home once again.
My attempts at spring cleaning and retail therapy were not as successful as they’d been in times past. I hadn’t gone an hour, or maybe even a minute, without thinking of Nick, Bella, and Naomi and missing them.
I missed cooking for everyone. I missed making cookies with Bella and Callie. I missed watching the girls in the pool together. I missed hearing my mom and Naomi laughing and talking about whatever show they happened to be binging-watching. I missed playing board games. I missed having movie nights. And I missed seeing Nick every morning before he went to work and every night when he got home. I missed hanging out with him on the weekends at the beach. I missed his voice, his smell, his eyes, his smile.
It just felt so strange that in less than two months, Nick, Bella, and Naomi had become like family. I wasn’t sure when exactly it happened. Probably not the first week; I’d been so stressed that Lola was going to invite people over or Callie was going to spill something or break something. But somewhere between week one and three days ago, a familial connection had formed that was proving difficult to break mentally and emotionally.
I’d worked so hard to give Callie a stable home, and for the most part, I thought I had succeeded. But that was different than giving her the family dynamic we’d shared at Casa de Locke. I hadn’t even known it existed. But now that I did, there was a heavy sense of loss that I just couldn’t shake.
I was fully engrossed in my current method of coping, obsessive cleaning, when I felt a hand on my back. I screamed as I jumped up and spun around to find Lola standing behind me.
“You scared me!” I took off my cleaning gloves and pulled the pods out of my ears. “I thought you were going to be out all day.”
She was supposed to be out on a boat with Charles, a man she’d dated last year. Out of the blue, he’d contacted her on Saturday, the day after we moved home, and asked her to meet him for drinks. Before accepting his invitation, she’d checked in with me to see if I needed her to stay with Callie. She’d been home before eleven, and we’d watched SNL together.
I know they say a leopard doesn’t change its spots, but Lola’s were fading before my eyes. After our talk in the kitchen, I’d purposely kept my expectations low. It was something that came naturally to me to avoid disappointment. But I had been pleasantly surprised by her behavior. It had only been a few days, but Lola had shown me every day that she was trying to change. On Friday, she cooked dinner and cleaned up afterwards. On Saturday, she’d deep-cleaned her room. And yesterday, she cooked a big Sunday breakfast. I’d insisted on doing the dishes before I went to take a shower. When I got out, she’d unloaded the dishwasher and meal-prepped my lunches for the week.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Her hands wrung together in front of her. “I need to talk to you.”
Alarm bells went off. Her countenance was different than when she’d asked to talk to me on Friday. Something had happened. “What? What’s wrong? Is it Callie?”
“No. It’s not Callie. Okay, so you know Charles?”
I nodded.
“Did I tell you he’s a journalist?”
“No.”
“He is. I’d sort of forgotten that since it had been a while since I’d seen him. Anyway, when we went out on Saturday to catch up, he was asking me about what I’d been up to and how my life has been.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t mean to say anything, honestly, but you know how I am when I get a few drinks in me.” She took a deep breath. “We were talking, and I told him about Naomi and that she was sick. I told him how much I was going to miss her because of how close we’d gotten, but that I was so glad I’d met her. I told him about all the things in our pasts that we’d bonded over. Growing up in dysfunctional, abusive houses. Getting pregnant so young. Both the fathers of our children dying and how that impacted our lives forever.”
“Lola.” Her name came out like a warning, but I had a feeling the damage was already done. My stomach churned with nausea.
“He asked me questions about my past and hers. I thought he was genuinely interested. But he wrote a story about her. About Nick, about everything.”
“What?!”
“Other people have picked up on it, and it’s everywhere online.”
I walked past her and picked up my phone from the nightstand. It was attached to the charger, so I sat on the bed as I quickly typed his name into the search bar, and the page populated with click-bait headlines.
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