Lucky This Isn't Real

The kid was young but had done a world of living that I couldn’t even imagine and seemed wise well beyond his years.

“Oh. Um. Well. I was just on my way out. But would you like to come in?” I finally asked. “I’m sorry for being so rude. I just hadn’t known who you were at first. And now I have to dart out.”

“Thanks,” he said and sauntered into the apartment. “And no problem.”

“Eat what you want from the kitchen,” I told him. “Gavin should be back soon. He had an audition.”

I left the apartment and made my way down to get the bus home, fighting the hot rage stirring up inside me. Gavin had many reasons to go to therapy, yet he had acted like he didn’t. Almost as if I was the strange one.

There was a lot he wasn’t telling me.

And why should he?

This was only a fake relationship.

And I guess he really thought of this whole arrangement as make-believe the entire time. Or else he would have shared some details about his life with me. Instead, he had acted as if everything was just fine, and he had even said he had no need for therapy.

I felt like a fool for thinking that Gavin and I could ever be anything other than fake engaged. A real relationship took honesty, and we certainly didn’t have that.

Chapter Thirteen – Maggie

During my bus ride home, terrible images flashed through my mind, of what Gavin’s childhood could have been like. I might have seen too many movies, but I imagined bomb plots and gang fights with knives.

I had heard about what Northern Ireland had been like years ago. We’d learned a little bit about it in school, but everything had happened before I was born. I was so far removed from that part of the world that the events there didn’t seem real.

I remembered reading something about President Clinton helping with a peace agreement. I guessed everyone thought The Troubles were over in the late 90s. Seemed that they weren’t, though, and Gavin had grown up in a country filled with turmoil.

I was really confused, flitting between feeling as if I was falling for him, feeling really bad for him, being really mad at him for lying to me, and realizing that I never really knew him at all.

Not the real him, anyway.

How could he keep such a major part of himself from me?

It was then that I felt the crushing weight of hypocrisy come down on me. My past wasn’t as deep and dark as his, but I wasn’t really open about it, even with my therapist, either. At least not as much as Gavin seemed to think.

Dr. Benoit knew what had happened with Kenny and Raquel, of course. It had been the effects of that whose ordeal that had brought me there to see her, after all. But I meant everything before that. Before my mom married Raquel’s dad.

My dad’s death had gone entirely unsaid, and that was no small matter. I supposed I hadn’t ever really dealt with it.

While I hated that Gavin had lied to me, I couldn’t really blame him for how he grew up and the fact that he wanted to keep that part of himself buried. It wasn’t as if it was his fault.

I just didn’t feel like I could risk a real relationship with him, though.

If he could keep the trauma of growing up a secret, what else might he be willing to hide?

Was he violent?

Eoin hadn’t seemed to think so, but his perspective could have been skewed by how he had grown up.

I needed to talk to someone. I called the one person who would tell me the truth, as hard as the truth might be to hear.

“Hey, girl,” Darcy said as soon as she answered the phone.

“Hey,” I said, with considerably less excitement.

“What’s up, buttercup? You sound a bit down.”

“You could say that,” I said, wiping a tear from my eye.

“What happened? Did you and Gavin try anal? Did it not work out for you?”

“Not that.”

“But you fucked, right? Please tell me you fucked that gorgeous Irish man.”

“Yeah, we did.”

“And he kicked you out after? Is that why you’re so down?”

“No,” I sniffed. “He was sweet. Too sweet, really. Said I could take my time. I could eat anything from his massive kitchen. He even gave me the code to his fancy apartment.”

“Okay, not seeing the downside,” Darcy said.

“There’s more to it than that.”

“Spill the tea and tell me what happened.”

I stared out at the passing scenery.

“His brother came by.”

“He has a brother?”

“Yeah. He has five.”

“There are five of them? Geez Louise. Did the brother who stopped by look like Gavin?”

“Yeah, he does, but he’s a kid. Only like eighteen.”

“Still legal,” Darcy pointed out. “What did this brother want?”

“He was there looking for Gavin.”