“Well, I was always especially afraid of under the bed. Even now, I can’t sleep with one foot out of the comforter, or I think some monster will reach up and grab it.” Ryan shivers as if she’s thinking about it.
“How about you, Fletch? You know, he used to be terrified of Daffy Duck.” Keaton laughs as if just remembering the memory.
I’ve been lost in my own thoughts, half-listening while staring into the fire, but I glance up at the sound of my name. This is a fun, family bonding time, but I’d be lying if I told them anything other than the one thing I fear the most.
Falling off the wagon.
My biggest fear is getting my hands on a bottle and never letting go. Is that what they want to hear, though? Hell, no.
“Yeah, he was pretty scary with that voice.” I laugh along, but my heart isn’t in it.
I feel Ryan’s eyes on me as the group moves on to the next question, or some kiddish form of truth or dare. Honestly, I’m not really paying attention.
“Do you want to call it a night?” Ryan asks, as if reading my mind.
“Yeah, I’m pretty tired,” I tell her, glad for the excuse to get up and tell everyone good night.
We walk to our tent, not touching each other, and I feel like the biggest jackass in the world. For the words I should have held back, for attacking her like a savage, for letting her see my true struggle with sobriety.
Ryan turns away when we crawl through the zippered opening, and as I close it, I see her beginning to undress and slip into her warm pajamas.
“Hey, so …” My voice is awkward, and the woman I care about very deeply feels a million miles away.
“I’m pretty tired. Let’s just … sleep.” She tosses a look over her shoulder that says she can’t do this right now.
I’ve never seen her whiskey-colored eyes so guarded, not even when we were trying to deny that there was any spark between us.
Nodding, I set to throwing on my fleece-lined sleeping gear. Earlier, I thought we’d unzip both sleeping bags and lay on one while the other was thrown over us, giving us unfettered access to … keep each other warm, if you know what I mean. But Ryan just tucks herself into the singular sleeping bag, and I can’t help the disappointment that pings my heart.
Once I fold my body into my own, I flip the switch on the battery-operated lamp beside me, and we’re plunged into darkness. I can hear my family still outside around the fire, laughing and talking about whatever topic they’re onto now.
Ryan flips over with a huff, and apparently, we’re not just going to drift off into awkward sleep. “What you said earlier …”
“Ryan, you don’t have to … we don’t have to talk about it. I didn’t mean it.” I try to take the coward’s way out.
“Yes, you did, don’t play that bullshit with me,” she snaps, and I know I’ve hurt her.
Scooting to close the space, I pull her into my arms, our sleeping bags bunching between us. Even in the few hours she’s been distant, I’ve missed her being here. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I did mean it. But, it doesn’t mean you have to talk about it.”
Ryan blinks slowly, her chin tipped up to look me in the eyes. “I know I don’t. It scares me. We were … taking things slow, and you had to go and say all of that.”
I press a kiss to her forehead, because I can’t not breathe her in. This thread between us feels finite, in this moment, like anything could snap it. I long for her, yearn to do this for a long time to come. Does her being scared of that mean … she doesn’t want it, too? Either way, I have to own my feelings now. They’re out there, and I’ve held myself back from what I wanted for a very long time. It’s within arm’s reach, and I’d be an idiot to let it go now.
“I know I said that we could just … hang out. But, come on, Ryan. I think we both knew from the moment we said that, that it wouldn’t be true. It might seem fast, or too much this early in the grand scheme of whatever we’re doing together, but I don’t care anymore. I’ve felt something for you since the moment you walked into that rehearsal dinner for Presley and Keaton. You infected me, you got straight down into my marrow. The instant buzz that started between us, it’s a once in a blue moon thing. I’ve never felt the way I feel about you about anyone, that’s just a fact. You’re the first person I think about when I wake up, and you pop into my head a million times a day. When I’m with you, I forget about all the bad shit I’ve done, I forget the doubt that tells me I’ll never be the man I’m trying to be. Because for you, I want to be him. So yes, I want you to stay with me. I don’t ever want to let you go.”
“I’m scared,” she says it again. The only two words in response to my quiet declaration in the darkness of our tent.
“Why?” My voice is a whisper.
“Because I feel it, too.”
Her short confirmation is all I need, a big, verbose confession to match mine isn’t necessary.
Without wasting another second, I kick out of my sleeping bag and make for hers, unzipping the side and making her giggle as I struggle to climb in next to her.
She stops laughing, though, when I cover her mouth in a gentle, deep, endless kiss.
We make love in slow, tender strokes, using the other’s mouth to silence the sounds from carrying past the paper-thin tent walls.
29
Fletcher
The summer ends in a flurry of squirreling away days in the sun, after-dinner ice cream trips and hoarding every possible second I can spend with Ryan.
September rushes by as well, the kids go back to school; I bury myself in the clock tower project, and Ryan gets hired as a computer aide in the middle school. The job is temporary, and it makes me wonder if that means she is as well, but I don’t push the issue.
We’re all but living together, with her going back to the guest cottage every few days for clean underwear. And … it’s settled into a nice routine. She teaches three days a week, while I work my day job. I was promoted to manager at the grocery store and had a few more projects come in, so I can afford to take her out on the weekends. Probably nowhere near as fancy as she’s used to in New York, but she never says anything.
Anyway, I cook us dinner, Ryan got me into bingeing Game of Thrones … even though I lie to Forrest and still tell him I’d never watch that nerd show. On the weekends, we hang out with my family or I take her to some of my favorite secluded spots in the county. For claiming she hates nature, she sure does love the hidden gems I show her.
All in all, we’ve settled into my idea of the perfect relationship. I get to spend all my free time with her, and the sex is still off the charts.
And then, October rolls around, and I wake up into my own personal day of hell.
From the start of this Wednesday morning, Ryan knows something’s up. I barely get out of bed, and I didn’t tell her that I requested off of work a week ago specifically so I could mope around.
“Hey, get up, you’re going to be late.” She pulls on a pair of yoga leggings, preparing to go take Presley’s morning class.
“I’m not going.” I know I sound like a petulant child, but I can’t help it.
Grief will do that to you, make you an irrational son of a bitch. The days I wake up and feel the need for a drink burn so harshly in my throat that it’s a like a wildfire rushed through there … those are hard days.
But those days are nothing compared to this day.
“Do you feel sick?” Now her attention is fully on me, my gorgeous girlfriend standing at the foot of the bed staring at me.
Her eyes hold sympathy, but also suspicion. I’ve never done this before, even on a day where I feel like my sobriety is slipping, and Ryan looks worried.
“No, I just … go to your class. I’m going to stay in bed.” I flip over, burying my head between the pillows.
My heart weighs about a thousand pounds in my chest, and even if I wanted to, I have no energy to leave the mattress.
Ryan sits down beside me, her body making the bed dip, and rubs a hand up and down my back. “I�
�m not going to class while you’re like this. Talk to me, Fletch.”
For someone who appears so callous and off-limits in her city-girl attitude, Ryan is extremely caring and kind. It’s something I’ve come to learn over the last two months while we’ve spent all this time together. There is no one more ready and willing to listen than this woman.
Too bad I feel like wallowing in my sadness. “Go, Ryan. I need some time.”
And even though she’s empathetic, Ryan also knows when to walk away. She isn’t a woman who will let you treat her like crap because you feel like crap. She told me as much when we were talking about her past relationships one night. It’s something she’s trying to change, and even if I’m gloomy right now, I respect it when she gets up, tells me she’ll be home in an hour, and walks out the door.
Once she’s gone, I flip over onto my back and inspect the ceiling.
Eight years ago today, my father died.
It’s a weird thing to think, that he’s been gone for almost a decade. I spent so much of my life with him, but sooner than I realize, I’ll have spent just as much time with him gone. The thought makes me want to rage, to punch holes in the wall or fuck up my life worse than I have in the past. If it wasn’t for the debilitating sorrow keeping me chained beneath the sheets, I probably would.
I drift in and out of a hazy, restless sleep as I wonder what Dad would say if he were here today. Would he approve of Ryan? Hell, he’d probably like her more than he liked me. Would he be proud that my creation was going to be displayed up there in that clock tower? Would he rag on me for renting a place above Carlucci’s, or use it to score more free pizza? He always had a complimentary slice waiting for him whenever he went to see the restaurant’s owner.
And the rest of my family? Well, we just never really talk about it. I know that Mom goes to his grave in the morning and then eats a marble frosted donut by the lake in Bloomfield Park. Marble frosted were his favorite.
But this day hits me harder than it does my brothers. They all have families, people, and actives to keep them occupied. I’ve never had that before this year, and I can’t seem to drag myself out of it despite having Ryan around. My bond with my father was complicated, but I was also the one who was there when he died. I saw it with my own eyes, and …
I have to shut the thought down before it completely undoes me. Instead, I slap a pillow over my face and drift back off to sleep. The memories are too painful to relive.
“You could have told me today was the anniversary of his death,” Ryan says quietly as I emerge from the dreamless sleep I was in.
Her keys are in her hand, and her face is a little red, so I know her workout must have ended just a little bit ago.
Sitting up, I wipe the exhaustion from my eyes and survey her wearily. “Never had anyone with me on this day before.”
She kicks off her sneakers and crawls up the bed, planting herself next to me and then pulling me into her arms. It’s not the hold of a lover, it’s one of compassion … which I didn’t realize I needed until right now.
“You’re grieving. It’s nothing to hide. You don’t have to talk about it, but I can be here for you.”
God, I feel like a goddamn wimp. Tears threaten behind my eyeballs, and I burrow deeper into her chest, trying to take comfort in the warmth of her silky skin.
“Sometimes I wish my Dad were here, just so I could ask him if he was proud of my recovery. I’m not sure if he knew how bad my addiction was getting before he died. I was only twenty-two when he died, enrolled at the local public college, and I wasn’t around for much of his last years. Part of me has always wanted to know what he would have done had he seen me spiral like I did. Or maybe, I wonder more, if I would have spiraled like that? My dad was a great father, but he could be harsh. He never hit us, but his words or lack of them could serve as an even swifter hand of punishment most times.”
Ryan listens intently, letting me work out my own feelings on the subject.
“Would he have dragged me home by the ear and gone all Marine or some shit on me? Would he have locked me in a bathroom for three days to detox, and then told me to get my fucking life together? I think about it all the time; how, if he were still alive, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten away with so much.”
“I’m not sure that’s a very fair judgment of what your mom and brothers did for you, though. They gave you space, stepped in when necessary, tried to allow you to mature and do things on your own. Some might argue that you had to hit rock bottom before you could improve your life.”
She had a point. If my father had forced me to get clean, would it actually have lasted? I doubt it.
“I guess I just miss him. I’m the baby, the one who spent the most time clinging to his pant legs, following him around the office or listening to his deep philosophies on baseball strategies and using statistics to set a lineup. My older brothers were off and gone living their own lives before I could really remember, and Forrest was always in a world of his own. I probably spent the most time with my dad, alone, out of all of us. We fell into almost … a friendship, when I wasn’t out partying. All the time, I think about what he’d think of my woodworking, how he’d have helped me move into my first apartment.”
Then Ryan says something that I think will stick with me for the rest of my life.
“I think trying to interpret what our parents would think of our life is the wrong way to go about it. Sure, I assume all parents have a vision of where they want their child’s path to go. But … that isn’t the point. Our choices and our dreams are. People waste a lot of time trying to please others, especially the ones responsible for creating them. If we spent half as much time just living for us … we might all be a lot happier.”
How did I find someone whose soul completely matches my own? I thought this on an almost daily basis, that’s how much Ryan shocks me with the things she says. As if she and I share one brain.
And one heart.
30
Fletcher
“All right, bend it, bend it … just a little more …”
The piece fits snugly, exactly where I intended it to go, and I turn the welding torch off and flip my mask off.
“Damn, that looks nice.” Stefan high fives me, his coveralls dirty as hell from the last two hours of grease and fire.
I huff out a breath, examining the work. “Yeah, it really does.”
We’ve just finished bending one of the metal pieces into the circular face of the clock I’m due to deliver in a month and half’s time. The piece was a coppery straight bar of steel that I used a saw and a torch to mold and sculpt into a line of flowers, shooting off in every direction from the center bar. It took me weeks to get the hang of the welding practices, but with some help from Stefan, the expert in that field, I pulled it off. The two semi-circles I created, from sketches of real flowers I found in Bloomfield Park, outline the face of the clock perfectly.
“Almost done now,” my friend muses, plopping down on a stool and wiping the sweat from his brow.
He’s not kidding. I can’t believe how fast the last three months have moved. What started as a conceptual idea then moved into the drawing and design stages, which led to picking out the materials. From there, I spent hours in my barn, cutting and sculpting, sanding and studying the inner workings of a clock. Forrest helped a ton because my brain just couldn’t compute a lot of it, but the creativity was all me.
When it came time to start threading metal into my massive cube that would be installed on top of the tower on Main Street, I knew I needed help. So I called Stefan, a buddy I met at a local artist trade show near Philly.
And together, we’ve been working for the past few weeks to infuse copper into the stained wood design. It gives the clock an old-world feel, while also keeping it timeless. Not to be punny, or anything.
But it looks … damn good. I’m bragging, because yeah, I’m fucking proud. This project has been really tough to pull off, and by the time it gets hoisted up there with a
crane and installed, it will be my biggest piece finished to date.
“Don’t you have a hot date to get to?” Stefan looks at his phone and then holds it up for me to see.
“Oh, shit,” I mutter, pulling the welding mask clear off my head as I start shrugging out of my dirty work jumpsuit.
“Yeah, don’t make the mistake of standing your woman up. Especially in the early days. It’ll leave you in the doghouse, bro.” He chuckles to himself.
Stefan lives with his wife and two kids about an hour from here, and for as much as he talks crap about them, you can tell he’s a dedicated family man.
“I don’t plan to. I can make it to Ryan on time … if I do fifteen over the speed limit.”
I slip into my boat shoes, comb my fingers through my hair, and leave Stefan to clean up. I know he’ll take one for the team as he yells after me, “Don’t kill anyone or get pulled over!”
Damn, I totally lost track of time. It’s not that I forgot about our date, but I just got so wrapped up in what I was doing that the hours blended together. Ryan will forgive me if I’m a few minutes late; she loves how hard I’m working on the clock.
I make it to the sushi restaurant in twenty minutes, meaning I’m five minutes past the time my girlfriend and I decided on to meet for date night.
The minute I get out of my car, she’s on me. It’s only a joke, but this wouldn’t be Ryan if she didn’t rib me.
“I have to drive myself to the date and he’s late. Jeez, not sure this guy is getting in my pants after this asshole behavior.” She rolls those beautiful amber eyes, that tonight are lined with black kohl.
The makeup only enhances her minx-like beauty, intensifying every already knockout feature of her face. She’s more dressed up than usual, probably because I’m finally taking her out of Fawn Hill. She’s been asking for sushi for a month, and we don’t have a local restaurant, so I finally ponied up and asked Forrest where he likes to go. So here we are, standing outside of an eatery I know I won’t like, with Ryan in a leather mini-skirt that my dick can’t seem to keep calm about.
Falter: The Nash Brothers, Book Four Page 15