“Sure it is,” I said. “That’s exactly what you meant, and I resent it.”
“Ava, don’t ruin this, please?” he sighed heavily.
“I’m not ruining it,” I retorted. “I’m asking you a personal question that you are refusing to answer. I’ve told you everything about my life. Everything about my parents, about my grandmother, about my relationship with Dominic, and now I’m asking you to reciprocate.”
Brian sighed again as he pulled me closer and played with my hair. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was thinking about what I’d said. After a few minutes I felt him shift, then grab my arms and slide me off of him onto the bed next to him so that he could prop his head on his bent arm and run his hand over my naked body as he spoke.
“My family is messed up, I’m going to warn you in advance,” he said warily. When I nodded solemnly, he continued. “My father died when I was a baby. My mother never actually told me what happened, but there were rumors that spread around town and I heard them all. Some said he jumped off the water tower in the middle of town on a dare while drunk, and some said he smashed his car into a brick wall while driving drunk. You get the picture…my dad was a drunk.”
I reached out and held his hand for a moment without saying a word. Brian nodded slightly and continued, “My mom and I were alone for what felt like a really long time, but it was really only about three or four years. She waited tables at a local diner, and neighbors took care of me while she was at work. It wasn’t bad, and I don’t remember us having any big problems, but then I was what, 4?” He laughed a little and I smiled up at him as he remembered.
“Then one day my mom came home and said I was going to have a new dad. Two days later, Will moved in. He was a tall guy, a former Army sergeant who loved order and rules, and his guns. God, the man loved his guns more than anything on earth. They scared the hell out of my mother, but Will told her not to be such a fraidy cat and took her out to the range to learn to shoot. She did it a few times, but she always came back swearing she’d never hold another gun again. Will was nice to me, he took me fishing and camping, and played ball with me, but about a year after he moved in, my mom gave birth to my sister and nothing was ever the same again. The sun rose and set on Claudia, and she was the cutest baby ever. I loved having a little sister, she was sunshine and love.” He stopped for a moment and bowed his head so that I couldn’t see his face. When he looked up again, it was obvious that there was a lot of deep emotion buried beneath the surface. I lay quietly as Brian continued to trace patterns on my naked skin, and after a minute or two, he continued speaking.
“I was 12 the year that Claudia turned 6, and we threw a huge party for her in our backyard. Balloons, cake, games, the whole nine yards. There were at least 50 kids at the party, and at some point we lost track
of where Claudia was. Will told me to find her and bring her back to the party. None of us were worried because Claudia had a habit of drifting off and finding adventure or a new friend, but in our town, that wasn’t dangerous. Everyone knew who we were and someone always brought Claudia back home safe and sound. I scoured the entire block, but I couldn’t find her anywhere, so I headed back to the house to see if she’d come home before I expanded my search area. As I was headed up the front walk, I heard an incredibly loud bang. I turned to see if Butch Jackson was backing his hot rod out of the driveway across the street, but saw nothing, then I realized that the bang had come from inside our house. I tore up the stairs, ripped open the screen, and ran back to my mom and Will’s bedroom…”
Brian trailed off as he choked up. He bent his head again and took a few deep breaths before looking up and saying, “Claudia had taken two of her friends back to the bedroom to show them Daddy’s “big gum,” that’s what she’d called it because we’d all laugh when she said it. Anyway, she’d let her friend Caroline handle the gun and Caroline had accidentally pulled the trigger. For some reason, Will hadn’t locked up the gun or made sure the chamber was clear before he’d shoved it in the bedside drawer, and the bullet had gone straight through Claudia’s chest, tearing her aorta in half. She died almost instantly.”
“After that, my mother started drinking pretty heavily, and Will got really strict with me. By the time I hit high school, he was waking me up at dawn to do morning workouts with him and came in to check that I’d made my bed according to regulation before I went to school. I’ve always joked that the military was a cakewalk for me compared to what I lived with at home.” He stopped and gave me a weak smile, and I squeezed his hand as I smiled back at him.
“Anyway, I haven’t been home in a couple of years, I can’t go home. My mom is a raging alcoholic and Will is…well, he’s Will. He ignores her drinking until she needs medical attention and then he waits for her to dry out enough to be allowed to come home. Every time she does, the cycle starts again and she winds up calling me to come get her because she thinks Will is trying to kill her. I can’t go there without wanting to take a drink myself, so I stay away.”
“You must feel really alone,” I observed.
“You have no idea—” he stopped and looked at me. “Oh wait, yes, you do.”
“It’s okay, Brian,” I said. “I’m so sorry about your sister.”
“It happens,” he shrugged.
“Yeah, but I’m still sorry that it happened to you,” I said quietly as I reached up and stroked his cheek with my fingers. He closed his eyes and leaned into my touch. “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered.
Brian nodded, then opened his eyes and leaned down and kissed me deeply. I held his face between my palms as I returned his kiss, and felt the two of us sharing all of our pain and loneliness in a way that made it a little more bearable.
“We’re going to get through this and we’ll be okay,” I whispered into his lips.
*****
We lay in bed together for half the morning before Brian said he was hungry and that we needed to get something to eat. I agreed, and got up to go shower and get ready. We decided to go down to the restaurant for a change, so I took my time getting ready. I smiled at myself in the mirror as I stroked a coat of mascara on my lashes and then dusted peach blush on the apples of my cheeks to give me a little color. We’d been inside so long that I felt like I hadn’t seen the sun in ages.
I pulled on a jean mini skirt and a loose-fitting T-shirt before I slipped my feet into a pair of thin black thongs. I looked at the rumpled bed and smiled to myself when I remembered the way Brian had held me against his chest and moved inside me. There was no denying that we had something special, and there was no way I was going to give it up after this was all said and done. I wanted him in my life, and I was going to find a way to make that happen, no matter what I had to do. I could switch schools if I had to, I didn’t want to, but I had decided I would if it meant that Brian and I could be together.
I grabbed my purse and skipped out into the living room to find Brian standing in the middle of the room, holding my open laptop in one hand and running his other hand over his crew cut with an anguished look on his face. I gave him a confused look before I realized what he was looking at — the letter! He’d found the email I’d written to Dominic.
“Ava, really?” he said with so much pain in his voice it broke my heart. “You wrote this yesterday? And sent it?”
“Brian, no wait, let me explain,” I cried as I moved to take the computer from him. He held it up over his head, far out of my reach, as a sad look of betrayal spread across his face.
“I think this is pretty self-explanatory, don’t you?” he said quietly. “You’ve spelled it all out pretty clearly.”
“That’s not what I meant!” I cried. “I was trying to trap him, not get back together with him! He’s a psycho, and I wanted to catch him so that I could get back to my life — our life!”
“I’m not quite sure I see that here, Ava,” he said. “What I see is a woman who is still in love with her ex-boyfriend and who resents the guy her father hired to protect her.”
“I only said that so he wouldn’t try and hurt you, Brian!” I frantically tried to convince him of my plan, but since I’d never breathed a word of it, he’d been caught unaware. I didn’t blame him for being angry, but I didn’t want him to believe that anything I’d written in that letter could possibly be true. “I love you, Brian! That’s the honest truth! I love you, not that jerk who abused me and made me feel worthless!”
“Could have fooled me,” Brian said sadly. “I don’t believe you. I think you’re playing both sides and waiting to see who wins.”