Kylie’s frown deepens. “Yes, you are.”
I laugh. “I’m your dad, Ky. I’m contractually obligated as your father to be nice to you.”
Kylie looks to her mom. “Is he nice?”
Nell snorts. “Nope. To me, usually. To you, always. To everyone else? Depends on how much he likes you.”
“You weren’t very nice to Oz when he dropped me off,” Kylie points out.
I crack my knuckles. “My daughter—my only child—shows up on the back of a motorcycle with some tattooed, long-haired punk. It’s sorta my job to scare a little respect into him.”
“How old is this Oz?” Nell’s voice is calm, but Kylie and I both know she’s anything but.
Kylie lifts an eyebrow at her mother. “Mom. Really?”
I watch her gather herself, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. When she opens her eyes, she’s visibly calmer. “How old is he, Kylie?”
Kylie just shrugs. “I dunno. A little older than me.”
“You don’t know, you mean.” Nell sighs. “Just use your judgment, baby girl. Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t get involved with the wrong crowd, okay?”
Kylie is clearly done with the conversation. She rolls her eyes and walks away. “I got it, Mom.” I hear her mumble under her breath, “Everyone seriously needs to chill the f**k out.”
I chuckle, knowing her mom would’ve grounded her for that. I let it go. Once she’s gone, I voice a thought that’s been nagging at me. “Something about that guy…he looks…familiar. I dunno. I can’t place it, though.”
Nell doesn’t look at me from where she’s pulling food out of the fridge to make dinner. “I didn’t meet him, so I couldn’t say.” As she sets a thawed pound of ground beef on the counter she, glances at me, a question in her eyes. “You really thought he seemed okay? You have a hard time denying that girl anything. I don’t want to make any hasty judgments, but bad boy stereotypes exist for a reason.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”
She waves a messy hand at me. “You’re an exception, obviously. And maybe this—Oz, is it?—maybe he is, too. But I don’t want to see her get hurt. And what about Ben?”
I lift both shoulders. “I dunno, babe. She’ll have to figure him out for herself. The hard way, maybe. You can’t learn about love without getting hurt. As for Ben, I’m wondering the same thing. I think maybe she’s not seeing the forest for the trees, you know?”
Nell nods. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She finishes mixing the taco seasoning into the beef and tosses it into a frying pan. I wipe the counter off while she browns the meat. “I just wish I could protect her. I don’t want her to go through the kind of things you and I did.”
“Nothing much we can do about that, I’m afraid.”
She sighs. “I know. I know. I just hate it, is all.”
“Me, too.”
Later that night, in bed basking in the afterglow of a slow and thorough lovemaking, Nell seems lost in thought. Deep, private thoughts. The kind I have to drag out of her.
I turn toward her, pulling my arm from beneath her head, propping my cheek on my palm. “What’s bugging you, Nelly-girl?”
She doesn’t answer right away. “Sometimes I just…I wish—god, it’s stupid.”
“Wish what?”
“That we’d had another baby.”
I wince, and fall back onto the pillow. “God, Nell. I know. We tried for ten years.”
She shrugs, and I see a glint in her eye. “Why, Colt? There were no problems with Kylie’s birth. The doctors couldn’t find anything. No miscarriages. Except that one, obviously. But…ten years, and just…nothing. Why?”
I want to get up and leave the room, run from this conversation that has come up at random over the years during our entire marriage. “I wish I had an answer for you, baby. It just wasn’t meant to be, I guess. That’s a shitty answer. A non-answer. But I just don’t know. I would’ve given you another one if I could’ve.”
“We could’ve adopted.”
I groan. “Goddamn it, Nell. We’ve been through this.”
“I know, Colt. I know. “ She wipes at her face. “I just…I wish—”
“I wish, too, Nelly. I wanted a son, or another daughter, as much as you did. You know the reasons why we didn’t adopt. We didn’t have the money, or the time. We were touring with Kylie in a stroller, your mom following us around from city to city. Hiring nannies. And then once we’d settled here, it just wasn’t ever…right. I don’t know.”
“And now it’s never gonna happen.”
I blow out a long breath, and I can’t stay in the bed anymore. “I—we’re not—I don’t know, Nell. Kylie’s graduating this year. Are we really going to talk about bringing another child into our lives now?” I step into a pair of shorts. “I love you, Nell. I just don’t think I can keep having this conversation.”
“Yeah.” I hear the bitterness in her voice, and I don’t know what to do about it.
I go down to the garage and tinker with the Triumph for an hour or two, because it’s what I know. I’ve spent far too much time in the garage, tinkering, just to get away from a conversation that has no solution. Nell’s fine, most of the time. But every once in a while, for no reason I’ve ever been able to decipher, she just gets this bug up her ass, and there’s nothing I can do about it. We tried. I tried. We both got tested; nothing seemed wrong with either of us. But she never conceived again. We talked about adoption, in vitro, surrogacy. None of it was feasible, or possible, or it just seemed wrong for us. Not what we wanted. And every once in a while, without warning, she gets maudlin about it, tears up, asks why. And I don’t have the answers. I’ve never had the answers.
I toss a wrench into the toolbox a little more forcefully than I need to, and go inside. I slam a beer standing on the back porch, watching the lights of Nashville, listening to the rush of cars in the distance, wishing I could find an answer for her, something to close the subject once and for all. And, as always, I’ve got nothing.
THREE: Burn Scars and Shredding Guitars
Oz
I’m alone in the apartment. Mom’s working. She’s always working. I’ve got a joint in one hand, my lighter in the other. I’m in my room, the window open to suck out the smoke. I turn up the volume on my iPod dock/alarm clock until “We Stitch These Wounds” by Black Veil Brides drowns out my thoughts, buries my mind beneath guitars and drums and someone else’s angst, someone else’s anger, someone who gets it.