ask to stay, and that’s fine because then she doesn’t have to find a way to ask him to leave. When he’s gone, Stella showers, opening her mouth to the spray to wash away the taste of him. Just once, she thinks, maybe some stranger she seduces will ask her about the scars. And maybe, someday, she’ll tell him.
CHAPTER TWO
“Mom!”
Stella had been dreaming about the ocean. Soft waves lapping at her toes, scuttling crabs, warm golden sand. In the dream, she’d been wearing a beautiful teal bikini. That was how she knew it was a dream—even in the days before childbirth and everything else that had happened, she’d never worn a bikini. Too much skin exposed to the sun.
“Mom!”
She opened her eyes and groaned. Her sheets had tangled around her feet. The pillow she used between her knees had gone missing, lost somewhere in the abyss of her blankets. Her neck hurt. The lavender oil she’d put on her pillowcase had been the source of the vivid dreams, but it made her sneeze now.
“What?” she muttered, knowing Tristan couldn’t possibly hear her. From the sound of his shouts, he was yelling from downstairs. “What, for the love of all that’s holy, do you want?”
The elephant tread of her sixteen-year-old on the stairs was enough to force her to burrow farther into the blankets. Tristan had hit another growth spurt, topping six feet now, and his shoe size had gone up along with it. She’d given birth to a giant. A giant with huge feet that tripped him up and left enormous muddy tracks on the floor and couldn’t seem to move with anything resembling silence.
“Mom, I need lunch money.”
Stella lifted her head from the pillow just enough to glare at her son standing in the doorway. “You have to tell me this now?”
“Yeah, well, I need to eat lunch, don’t I?”
“What about last night, when I asked you if everything was ready for school and you told me it was?”
“I’m gonna be late,” he warned. “I’ll miss the bus, and you’ll have to drive me.”
That would be infinitely worse than having to direct him to her checkbook, since it meant she’d have to get out of bed and didn’t even have time for a shower. With another groan, Stella waved her hand toward the jumble of junk on her dresser. “See if I have a twenty in my purse.”
At the rate Tristan ate, twenty bucks would last him for only a few days, but she could deposit money in his account later. And in fifteen minutes, according to the clock, he’d be on the bus and she’d be able to sneak back to sleep for another hour.
He rummaged through her bag, couldn’t find her wallet and suffered through her grumbling as she took the purse from him to find it. “Dad’s picking me up after practice today. I’m staying there tonight.”
“Wait, what? I thought I was supposed to take you shopping—”
“Dad will take me.”
“Does he know that?”
Tristan shrugged, not caring.
It wasn’t that Stella didn’t trust Jeff, but she knew from past experience how happy he was to pawn off any sort of parental responsibility on his new wife who, God love her, meant well but was as helpless and fluffy as a bunny rabbit. Cynthia had married Jeff when she was twenty-two. She’d never had children, had never even babysat and had inherited a tween son who seemed to be as foreign to her as if he’d been born on Mars. Even after four years, it seemed cruel of Stella to expect Cynthia to pick up Jeff’s slack when dealing with Tristan was so clearly a constant adventure for her.
“Have a good day! Love you!” she called after him as he thundered down the stairs again. Tristan didn’t answer. The front door slammed.
Silence, blessed silence.
This was Stella’s shared-custody life. In the beginning, Tristan had been only eight, still in elementary school. Too young to go out with friends, still content to hang out watching movies with his mom. Still hopeful, maybe, that his parents were only separating, not getting divorced. They’d decided it was too disruptive for Tristan to move back and forth between households on a weekly basis, so he spent most weeknights with her. Stella had come to enjoy having every other weekend free once Tristan left for school on Friday morning.
Now, if he didn’t have a sports practice or a school activity or plans with friends, Tristan spent his time in front of the TV with his video games or an endless stream of movies. Their house had become the place to hang out, and that was fine with her even if the noise level sometimes became hard to handle. She’d rather he was at home than have to drive him around or pick him up from places. Now that Tristan was older, of course, he could get rides and so had been spending more random weeknights with Jeff, especially since he now required less “care” and could simply hang out.
There was no point in going back to sleep now. Stella stretched and wriggled free of her blankets. Every part of her creaked and crackled as she stretched. Time for another visit to the chiropractor. She needed to get there more regularly rather than waiting until she was in agony, but somehow time always managed to get away from her. She winced at the sharp ache in her neck as she twisted her hair on top of her head—time for a visit to the salon too. And maybe a trip to the optometrist, she thought as her reflection blurred briefly. She blinked away the sleep, bringing her face into focus. She leaned on the sink for a moment, staring in the mirror.
Stella gripped the porcelain until her fingers turned white. She breathed in. She breathed out. She breathed until the face of the woman in the mirror stopped looking as though she wanted to cry.
She smiled.
She frowned.
She looked concerned.
That last one wasn’t such a good look for her. It wrinkled her forehead and creased lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. It was almost as bad as feigning interest, which required a little more sparkle in the eyes. But all of it was better than the woman with haunted eyes and downturned mouth that had greeted her a few minutes ago.
Steam had wreathed around the showerhead, so she pulled her nightgown over her head and hung it carefully on the hook. It swung, loose, and she made a mental note to fix it even as she knew she’d forget again until the next time she hung something on it and it threatened to fall. In the shower, she bent her head so the hot water could pound away at her neck and shoulders and back—it was a quick fix that would ease the aches and pains for a while, at least. So would a double dose of ibuprofen and some stretches, if she could force herself to manage them. She should’ve worked out before she got in the shower, but the morning had already started off upside down—why bother to fix it now?
She slicked her palms full of soap and slid them beneath her arms. Over her belly and thighs. Something stung her there, and she turned to let the water wash away the suds.
A small bruise, the size of a quarter and already fading greenish at the edges. It hurt when she pressed it, but the pain was brief. She pushed it again, making it ache. Then harder. Her fingernail dug into her skin, and that hurt worse. She could’ve made herself bleed, but stopped before that happened. She had enough scars without giving herself more.
The tears fell before she could stop them, and even though the shower made them
