A Reason To Be: Book 1

by Maria Xystra

  Sam gets in the shower and after a while, Eric comes out of their bedroom in just his jeans. Any woman would appreciate his well-sculpted body and even though discreet, I feel my cheeks reddening at the sight and look away. He’s not only shirtless; he’s also barefoot, as proven by his encounter with the corner of the couch.

  “AAAAHHHH” an opera-like scream makes me turn and I see him reaching for his toe and limping in circles. “Sweet. Mother. Of. Jesus.”

  I hurry to him and in between giggles I advise him to breathe deep. We end up holding hands and inhaling and exhaling together rhythmically just like a Lamaze class.

  “What are you doing?” Sam asks us in wonder as Cole hangs up his phone and goes: “Do I even wanna know?”

  Eric and I give our answers at the same time:

  “Who parked the couch there!?!” “The couch attacked Eric!!”

  “Awww, poor baby!” Sam says.

  “Awww, poor Eric! Do you think you’re gonna live??” Cole teases him.

  In a flash of a moment the two men lock each other in a weird grip.

  “Banging your toe on a corner is as bad as getting a paper-cut, dude!”

  They fidget for a while and seeing their bodies in close distance, I register the similarity in their tattoos. Fully-covered arms and elaborate designs on their torso make it easy to figure their ink choices are not random. They probably mean something to them. Something important. And from what I’ve noticed, every person in their clique has tattoos. At this point, I stop myself from picturing them pledging into some assassins’ league!

  Recovering from Eric’s epic fail we all march towards the kitchen.

  “So, Cole, you’ve been saying your cooking is magnifique, right?” Sam starts. I lift my gaze to him intrigued to know the answer.

  “Pf! Please! My cooking is legendary!” he stands tall in a Superman pose with his fists on his hips.

  “Really? You? I don’t buy it,” I joke, and he grins.

  “Wanna bet?” he raises an eyebrow at me.

  “Don’t do it, Lexy!” Eric warns me in an overly dramatic way.

  “Bet what?” I demand a bit suspiciously.

  “If I win…,” he starts and tapping his chin he carefully considers his choices. “You escort me to the gala!” he finishes.

  I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Couldn’t you just ask me instead of making up excuses like a bet?” I mock him lightheartedly.

  “And if you win,” he continues as if I said nothing, “well, there’s really no point even considering this possibility, ’cause it just ain’t happening!”

  “Oh, is that so?” I walk up to him. “If I win… I get to drive your car!”

  “What?? No fuckin’ way!” he retorts and slips on the defensive. I find his reaction pretty amusing and I know an evil grin is formed on my lips.

  “Scared, are we?”

  “Not at all! The bet is on!” he matches my grin.

  Sam and Eric stay silent watching our discussion with clear interest and when I turn to them Eric shrugs and clicks his tongue.

  “Get ready to escort him to the gala, Tipsy,” he shutters my hopes just like that.

  “So, it’s settled then!” Sam declares and lands on the couch. “Cole and Lexy are making us dinner!”

  “Yeah, I’ll hold you down while Tipsy chops you off, we throw you in the oven with some Eric sliced on the side and dinner’s ready!”

  They all laugh but I recover faster than them.

  “Oh no… I am not even laying a hand on a wooden spoon!”

  “Well, I won’t be needing anything from you,” he says. “For now. You just sit and watch.” He slips into his cocky self and under different circumstances I would hate it but now… I can barely keep myself from attacking him right here, right now!

  “Oh, I’ll be watching,” I assure him.

  CHAPTER 25

  Sitting around the wooden table in Eric’s garden, we all lean back in our chairs, fully sated. Cole’s cooking turned out to be a small taste of heaven. There was no exaggeration in it. So, I lost the bet. Damn it. But the food was definitely worth it!

  “That was delicious…,” I admit to him.

  “I know! So what time am I picking you up on Sunday?” he replies with a wicked smile across his lips.

  I revert my eyes from him and glance at the lake in the background. The night sky is mirrored in the tranquil waters and the pine trees around the secluded lake house make it look like one of those pictures you use as a screensaver for your computer.

  Taking in the scenery along with the big summer moon, I can’t avoid reminiscing about my childhood in Florida. My younger sister Lydia, dad and I spent a lot of summer nights in our garden, gazing at the stars and making a wish upon each and every one of them. We’d just lie in the grass and make up stories of how we imagined our lives would be in five years’ time. He had built an enormous tree-house for us – I always thought he’d hired an architect to design it! – and we’d leave the house in the middle of the night to just sit there. Sometimes we didn’t even talk to each other. Lydia and I were each buried in our own thoughts, but we were so comfortable in that peaceful silence. We’d even fall asleep there and dad would pick us up and take us back into the house.

  “Are you still with us, Tipsy?” Cole brings me back to present.

  The happy memories are in an instant replaced by the distance my father put between us after mum died; the estranged stance he kept, right to the tragic ending of our relationship when he allowed my life to be ripped away from me. When Marcus told him, I agreed to marry him, he barely lifted his eyes to me and then got back buried in an album that never left his desk in those nine years, since she passed away. Flashing images of Marcus inevitably invade my thoughts and I decisively shake out of it, before I get swirled up in those memories.

  “What was the question again?” I ask and take a sip of my wine.

  “Are you trying to get out of it?” he accuses me playfully. “I need to know what time I’m picking you up for the gala.”

  I still can’t believe he can cook that well!

  “How did you become a kitchen pro, anyway?” I truly wonder.

  “I had a great teacher.”

  “Did you use to cook with your mum?” I assume.

  He takes a moment to answer back and lifting his beer he points at Eric. “We grew up in an orphanage.”

  The information hits me hard and I blink two or three times in order to register it.

  “Oh. I…,” I look at Sam who seems to be familiar with the intel. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

  “It’s not a big deal. We learnt so much growing up there, it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us,” he says calmly, while discreetly picking at the label of his beer.

  “We had a blast!” Eric lifts the spirits preventing the mood from becoming too heavy. “Toy, Wheels, Menace and Gear were all there with us. I can honestly say that we gave Grace a really hard time.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Cole says with a laugh.

  “Grace was…?” Sam starts.

  “She was everything. Our mother, our teacher, our glue,” Eric says.

  “Is she…like…,” I try to find the right words to ask whether she’s still alive, but I stutter.

  “No, no,” Cole says, “she’s still running the orphanage.”

  “Do you keep in touch?” I surprise myself with my own question.

  “Of course. She still calls us ‘the terrorists’! We used to get into so much trouble and we’d get so much detention!”

  “Ha, ha, ha! I know! It was so unfair!” Eric says and turns to Sam. “I was never to blame, baby, it was always Cole’s fault!”

  “Are you still going with that, dude?” Cole accuses him mockingly.

  “What? It’s the truth!”

  “Yeah! Right!”

  “Dude!” Eric starts, “You would light our dorm on fire and I would spend the whole weekend cleaning it up!” />
  “You would start singing, at the top of your lungs, in the middle of the night waking everyone up and I would spend the whole week in the kitchen!!” Cole retorts.

  “That was your detention?” I ask him in between giggles.

  “Our detention was that for anything one of us would do, someone else would get punished for it!”

  “But we kept doing it anyway!” Eric adds casually.

  “Yeah…until the young ones came. And we had to cut the crap and help around.”

  “I know what it feels like to have been forced to grow up earlier than you’re supposed to,” I relate to their situation.

  All three sets of eyes land on me and I simply explain. “When my mum died, I was nine but had to step in and take care of my three-year-old sister, since dad basically shut himself away from us.”

  Sam’s eyes widen in surprise and I realize that it’s the first time I’ve shared this with anyone other than her.

  Eric gives Sam a perplexed look. “I thought you said Lex had no siblings and her parents died in a car crash.”

  And that’s when I suddenly remember that since I changed my name at eighteen, I’ve been going with that fictional story because I didn’t want anyone to know the truth about my family. I wish I had filtered that before letting it slip. But now it’s too late. What’s the point of lying anyway? It’s not like I’d be in danger around Cole and Eric.

  “Well, that’s just a better version of the real situation,” I declare and get up, starting to gather some dishes. “The truth is,” I continue without making eye contact with anyone but still feeling their stares drilling me, “my mum killed herself when I was nine and my dad is probably still alive somewhere, drinking himself to death every night and living in his own pathetic little world.”

  I make my way to the kitchen leaving them in a shocked – I’m guessing – state. And I’m not in a better state either. Bringing my mother to mind, I place the dishes in the sink and reach for my necklace. I drop my head and feel the tears welling behind my eyes in a burning sensation. My heart sinks thinking about the things my mother used to say. Things that would help me understand why she wouldn’t be with us for long. Things that would somehow explain her illness to a little girl, the fact that it was killing her, that it was painful. The fact that it was even more painful having to leave her girls behind; not watching them grow up to become women. It tears me apart, even now, so many years later.

  “Lex…,” Cole’s husky voice startles me. I didn’t even hear him coming into the kitchen. I inefficiently try to pull myself together taking deep breaths but his hand on my shoulder chokes me and I lose all control. My tears start running down my face against my will to keep them in check. A small sob escapes my lips and Cole’s firm hands start to turn me around. As soon as I realize his intention I shove away his hands and getting out of his grip, I run up the stairs.

  This cannot be happening. I thought I had no more tears left to shed for my mother. Crying and mourning her was a very common thing for me to do but I thought that after some time had passed, I was better. Apparently, I am not. I thought I was stronger now, but apparently, I am not. And the worst thing is that the last person I wanted to see me in a state like this is the one standing in front of me right now. I keep my hands wrapped around myself and my eyes on the floor until his shoes enter my field of sight.

  “Go away,” I ask of him in a low voice.

  He takes a step closer and I place a hand on his chest to keep him away.

  “Please, just leave me alone.”

  He grasps my wrist and pulls me into his arms, crashing me against his chest. I was already trembling but now my body is shaking violently with every sob. Cole tightens his embrace and shutting my eyes, I allow his warmth and that uncanny feeling of safety emanating from him, to engulf me and calm me down.

  “You know, Cole, in a way, you’re lucky,” I note after I’ve managed to control my breakdown.

  “And why is that?” he says keeping me in his arms but slightly lifting a hand to caress my hair.

  “Your family at the orphanage was so much better than what my family would ever be.”

  “Don’t say that, Lex. I’m sure you had some nice memories of your family. You should keep that and let go of all the rest. Some of us never had that.”

  “You might think it’s worse growing up without parents but I’m telling you the pain of having lived something great and then having it ripped from you under the most horrible circumstances is much worse.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. But you don’t need to keep going through that alone, you know.”

  I step away from him and turn my head to dry my tears without him seeing them.

  “It’s just that…not a day goes by without…without thinking what if…what if I could prevent this turn of events? What if I wasn’t just a mere observer and could actually have done something to stop it!”

  “Do you think there was something you could have done? You were just a kid, Lex…and Sam said your mother was dying from her disease. It was inevitable. And your mum knew that. I don’t blame her for wanting to put an end to it before you saw her hit rock bottom.”

  “I know…I get it now…” I show him my pendant. “She gave me this the last time I went to her bedroom.” I open it and show him the tiny oval picture inside. “Her name was Aurora…it means ‘dawn’ in Latin and grandma said they gave her that name, ’cause she was born right when the sun was rising to a new day.” I can’t keep a smile off my lips. “She was a beautiful woman. Inside and out.”

  “I can tell,” Cole is no longer looking at the necklace and traps my eyes in his.

  “I’m sorry I… I didn’t want you to see me like this,” I admit to him kind of embarrassed.

  “Don’t be. Shedding tears for your loved ones doesn’t make you any less strong of a person. I’m sure she’d be proud of the woman you’ve grown to be.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” I murmur and rub my hands on my face. “Let’s go back downstairs. The others would get the wrong the idea,” I joke.

  “Trust me, they’d hear us all the way to the garden if we were…going through with the ‘wrong idea’!”

  “That’s not what I meant!” I shove him playfully towards the stairs.

  He sits on the staircase banister and slides to the lower floor.

  I do the same and… land on his back.

  “There they are!” Eric shouts from the porch. “For a minute there I thought you were heeheeh-!” he finishes his sentence with a Michael Jackson vocal sound as Sam shoves him in the ribs.

  “See?” I tell Cole.

  “I was just gonna say ‘killing’ each other!” Eric defends himself. “Anyways, I have something for you!” he reaches over the porch bench and retrieves a guitar.

  “Ooh! A guitar!” I exclaim happily but Cole and Sam don’t seem to share my enthusiasm.

  Eric clears his throat and sits on the edge of the porch. We all settle at the bench and Sam passes me a beer. She looks pointedly at me and I simply nod and wink at her, letting her know that I’m fine.

  “Let’s seeeeeee,” Eric starts playing a rhythmic beat on his guitar.

  “This is a tale about four people,

  Two are a couple, the other two…a riddle?”

  We start giggling and I understand why Cole and Sam were not excited about the guitar. I find his impromptu singing rather cool!

  “My girl’s name’s Sam,

  All I wanna ask is…would you like to get some?” he says and wriggles his eyebrows. Sam flips him off and I nearly spit out my beer.

  “My best friend’s Cole,

  Sometimes he’s such an asshole!” no need to stop and think there. Cole glares at him.

  “Don’t give me that evil eye,

  You know I had to make it rhyme!”

  It seems I’m the only one enjoying this so much!

  “I guess he wants to punch me,” and when Cole leans threateningly towards him and reaches for his le
g, Eric finishes with

  “what the hell? Don’t touch me!”

  “OK honey, that’s enough,” Sam pleads for him to stop.

  “I can’t stop now!” he complains wide eyed. “Not until I bow!” he picks up the tone again.

  “And then comes Lexy,” I brace myself for what he’s about to say,

  “Even when she cries she’s sexy!”

  I bury my head in my hands to hide my reddened eyes.

  “Come on Lex, let us see you smiling,

  And I swear I’ll stop with the rhyming!”

  I can’t resist and my face splits to a grin. I recall that night we were at a club and Cole and Eric made poor Ty sing a song I’m sure Eric came up with. Eric plays two notes and lets us know that he’s done. “The end!”

  I quickly follow his lead and cheer him up with: “Hey Eric you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Ricky! He-he-hey Ricky!”

  “Oh my God it’s contagious!” Cole teases us.

  “You’ve created a monster!” Sam adds dramatically.

  The rest of the night went by with lots of laughter, beers and singing. I vaguely remember settling in the corner of the bench, next to Cole, as we kept teasing each other about everything and nothing.

  CHAPTER 26

  I’m running around the house giggling as I move from room to room. I know I have to keep quiet, but I can’t help it.

  “You can’t hide from me, Alexandra…I’m gonna get you!” daddy’s voice comes to my ears and I quickly try to move further away. Taking a fast turn, I lean against the wall and bring my hands to my lips in order to calm my breathing down. Daddy always finds me. Why would this time be any different?

  Before I realize it, fear starts swelling up in my lungs and I sense my carefree smile being replaced by a face full of despair and agony.

  In an instant, my dream fades away and I drift somewhere between sleep and consciousness, feeling one arm slipping under my knees and another one behind my shoulders.

  I do understand what is happening, but I feel like I can’t even lift my arm to help whoever is carrying me, not even able to open my eyelids. The strong arms around me comfort me, making me feel safe and warm even before I feel the softness of the bed underneath me. ‘Thank you’ I think to myself, but before I can put my thoughts into words, I drift away for once more.