Heartbroken (Gritt Family Book 1)

by Gabrielle G.

  Fortunately, when I called my friend Patricia, she lined up a job for me at her private school in the city nearby. It had been my lucky day… or not. I was hoping, in a way, I wouldn’t find a job and had an excuse not to stay long. I was hoping to only be here a few weeks and bring my mother home with me.

  But I was lying to myself. I needed the job.

  Not because I needed money—being the ex-wife of a plastic surgeon meant I was set for life—but because I’d have never been able to spend time so far away from my son if I had nothing to do all day but think about him and what kind of trouble he could get into.

  Not that Adam is troublesome.

  He’s, in fact, a very responsible and lovely adult. He’s just the most precious thing I have, and I can’t stand anything happening to him. It has been so since his birth. Nobody could get near him but me. He was a gift from God, after all, and I needed to keep an eye on him at all times. It was him and me against the world. We had to let his father in at some point, but he was, and will always be, mine and only mine. Needing to know if he’s fine and hoping he’ll answer me so I can find sleep, I send him a text to calm my nerves. The nights he stays silent are the worst.

  Me: Did you just call me, Adam?

  Adam: Nope.

  He knows that if I ask, it’s because I’m worried. I never hid my mental health problem from my son. We don’t hide things from each other; that isn't how it works between us.

  Me: Alright then, good night, sweetie.

  Adam: ‘Night, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow.

  Feeling calm, I get ready for bed and persuade myself that the call was a mistake. But my phone rings again, with the same number. I have no choice but to pick up, or I won’t sleep tonight. I know the anxiety will eat me up until morning. I don’t want to feed the monster inside me. As stressed as I am, I try to grasp what this could be about, not answering would be worse.

  “Hello?” I’m not sure what else to say or who would call me at night. I’m way passed my prime. At forty-four, I don’t get late-night calls. My ex-husband doesn’t call me much anymore, and the few friends that I have are presently sharing a bed, even with the time-difference between Arizona and New York State.

  “Captain?” A deep voice answers me. “Is that you, Smith?” Only one boy called me Captain my whole life. A stupid, annoying, mischievous boy I was friends with over twenty-five years ago! Just hearing the nickname sends me back to the first time he used it.

  “Gritt? How did you get my number?”

  “You don’t talk to me for more than twenty-five fucking years, Alane, and the first thing you ask is how I got your number?”

  “I…I…” It seems that Luke Gritt is not a little boy anymore. If I’ve lost most of my confidence, it seems he gained it all. So goes the universe. It needs balance.

  “I heard you were in town,” he interrupts my stuttering. “Meet me before I leave.”

  “I don’t know, Luke. I don’t want to be trouble for your family.” I never wanted to be. For the last twenty-seven years, I never went back home. My parents traveled a little to Arizona to visit, well, my mother did. I barely saw my father for all those years. When he died ten years ago, I came in for one day and tried to be as discreet as possible so nobody would know I was in town. Since then, I have asked my mother to move to Arizona, but she’s as stubborn as a donkey, and you can’t make her change the path she thinks God drew for her.

  So, when she got sick, I’m the one who had to uproot my life and move back here. Coming back was hard, but I had to. I wasn’t going to let my mother die alone. It took me over twenty-five years, but I put on my big-girl pants and flew to upstate New York. I flew back home. A strange feeling for a place that hasn’t been mine for so long.

  “He knows you’re back. We spoke about it at supper.” I register what he’s saying, but I won’t acknowledge it. I don’t want to talk about his brother. Not now, not ever.

  “So, you’re not in LA being all big and mighty?” For years, I didn’t know where Luke was or what he’d done with his life until his name was mentioned in a gossip magazine as the tattoo artist of celebrities, and the next thing I knew, I was looking him up. If it weren’t for his roguish whiskey eyes, I would have never recognized him.

  A full beard, styled dark hair, build like a guy who spends a lot of time at the gym and not enough time outside. Luke did not become what I thought he would. I imagined an art teacher with longish hair and a smooth face, and I had found the spitting image of a biker, with tattoos, piercings, facial hair and rings on his fingers. After this discovery, I needed to follow him on Instagram. Next step would have been to reach out, but I never could bring myself to do it. Contacting him meant explaining, and I still didn’t know how to disentangle what had happened, even twenty-seven years later.

  “You keeping tabs on me, Captain?”

  “Kind of.” Hearing his voice, even if he has a different tone than when we were kids, makes me feel things I haven’t for years. The main one is safe. The other is home.

  “Meet me before I leave. We need to catch up, and I want you to meet someone important to me.”

  “Okay,” I whisper in the night. “But can you not…”

  “You know the deal, Captain. I’ll tell him I saw you, but if you don’t want me to tell him anything that doesn’t concern him, I won’t say anything else.” Luke always was the best at keeping my secrets, as long as they didn’t involve his brother.

  It’s one of the reasons I left.

  I couldn’t talk to him about his brother breaking my heart. I couldn’t talk to Patricia about the Gritt brothers. I couldn’t talk to my parents, and I certainly couldn’t speak to my Coach about his son.

  So, I flew to Arizona, living with my Aunt Clarisse, a renowned writer and the least judgmental person on Earth.

  Then I met Mark, married him and raised Adam. I completed a teaching degree and taught science for years. An easy life until Mark and I divorced a few years ago. He reproached me about not being enough in our relationship, not wanting the same things. And I didn’t. Not anymore.

  I had left a piece of my heart with a boy in New York State, and I needed it back.

  Aaron Gritt and I had a dream, and he destroyed it, leaving me behind to bleed when he ripped my heart out and took it away on his way to Culinary School.

  “Okay then,” I tell Luke awkwardly.

  “Want to meet at the rink?”

  “No, better to grab a coffee.”

  Luke and I make some plans for the next day after school, and I hang up smiling at the memories of the boy I once knew.

  Over the years, I’ve thought a lot about all the what-ifs my story with his brother held. What if I had stayed? What if I had followed Aaron? What if I had spoken up the day, he broke my heart? What if I saw him again? Aaron has always been my favorite what-if. But that’s all he’ll be, a what-if, a fantasy I could never have, a boy who changed the path of my life forever, who crushed my dream and shaped me into who I am today.

  He was my first love, my first heartbreak, and my first disappointment.

  And now, I just want to avoid him as best I can.

  I know he is in town, I know he is a local celebrity, I know he owns the best restaurant in the state, I know he has two kids, and I even know he’s a parent at the school where I teach. I pray hard I don’t have to ever call him for a problem with his children.

  There’s no way I can face him again without reliving the most intense years of my life, but as experience had taught me, my fate is not a kind one. I am the queen of bad luck and unexplainable situations.

  So, of course, I would have to see him, and soon.

  I know it, God knows it, and the Universe knows it too.

  And if I see him, I’ll act like an adult, leaving the past behind and our history under wraps so we would be able to discuss the problem of one of his children. I just hope his wife will be there too. It would be awkward but salutary not to have to face him alone and wonder what would
happen if he took me on my desk.

  After all, Aaron was the boy I could never totally have, not because of other girls or because he wasn’t mine, but because I came from a very religious family and there was no way we could have sex before marriage.

  We both promised we would wait until he didn’t.

  We both thought it was a given, until it wasn’t anymore.

  We never had sex, and I really hope he grew bald and had gotten fat.

  But again, I know with my luck that won’t be the case.

  3

  Then - Aaron

  “So, isn’t she perfect?” my stupid brother asks, once again, after practice on our way back home.

  “Shut up, Luke!” I grip the steering wheel.

  “Aar, I’m telling you this girl is perfect for you. She is competitive, pretty, funny and smart. You should have listened to her hypothesis in science class today. It was incredible!”

  “Why don’t you go for her then?” I know why, and I’m an asshole to ask him.

  Luke made his coming out to me this summer.

  Not that he kissed a boy, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to kiss a girl. That’s how I got a shiner last week and became my father’s servant for the next seven days.

  My parents are hippies, totally against violence.

  Because Luke asked me not to tell my dad what I fought for, I got punished for hitting a jerk homophobe who insulted my brother and had to practice with the beautiful brown-eyed captain of the girls' hockey team.

  “That’s why you need a girlfriend. To let me be and have a little fun,” Luke says not fazed by my previous comment. That’s my brother, the happy, laid-back one and understanding of others. I’m more the asshole who distances himself from everyone.

  The only one I want to know all about is Luke.

  I want to be in his brain to understand how to be relaxed. I want to breathe happiness. I want the dark cloud over my head to dissipate. I’ve always been the miserable one, and he’s always been the shiny one. My parents think it’s because of all the maryjane they smoked when Mom was pregnant with me.

  I was born a crier and they barely slept for a year because of it. So, when she learned she was pregnant again, Mom decided not to smoke during her pregnancy. Luke came into the world with a smile on his face. They didn’t need more proof to see the cause and effect.

  When they had two more kids ten years later, she didn’t smoke joints either while being pregnant, and Salomé and Barnabas were born happy as clams, but just a little less happy than Luke. I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody can be as happy as Luke.

  “I don’t need a girlfriend, and I’m not even sure she likes me.”

  “But the question is, big bro. Do you like her?” I shrug for an answer. I know he has a plan. He has been studying her since school started because he claims he knows she’s the one I should lose it to.

  According to Luke, she’s the perfect sweet, beautiful girlfriend my virgin self should fall in love with. He’s a romantic. If he weren’t gay, I’m pretty sure he'd be married at eighteen and have children by twenty. He wants to find the one true love, like in a Disney movie, and of course, he wants me to find mine as well.

  “She’s perfect, but she’d be even more perfect if she had a brother.”

  I chuckle a little. “What does your perfect man look like?”

  He sighs. “I don’t know, Aar, I guess for the moment, he looks a lot like Mark Wahlberg.”

  “New Kids on the Block, huh?”

  “That’s kind of how I knew I was gay, bro. I got hard looking at them dancing; the Wahlberg I like is the Marky Mark one.”

  “Gold chain and bandana?”

  “And bare chest, don’t forget the bare chest!”

  I shove Luke nicely on the shoulder. Only he can make me laugh so naturally. That guy is everything to me.

  “So, what are you going to do, Aar? I know you like her. Not only because I hear you masturbate at night, but also because you can’t speak when you are next to her.” Luke looks at me and grins knowingly. “Oh shit! I was saying this as a joke, but you did rub one out thinking of her. This is awesome. I’m a genius. I knew it!” the smug ass says.

  “Don’t tell Dad, or he’ll bug me forever, or worse, he’ll stop the practices.”

  “Not quite a punishment after all.” Luke smiles.

  We park in front of the house and run into the kitchen, each trying to arrive first at the fridge. We need sustenance before getting out there to help our father.

  Our parents own a farm and grow vegetables. At the beginning, they just wanted to be able to feed us what they knew would be good for us. The farm grew, and they now have a few employees to help but still rely on us to give a hand. As they say, we should learn how to feed our future families.

  What I like the most is cooking with mom.

  I love to invent recipes and pair vegetables with meat. I’m quite good at it, but that’s not something I share with the world. I mean, I can’t really tell the hockey team that I like to cook. Even if Chris, our captain, is my best friend, I’ll get a roasting.

  Sometimes, I wonder if I could become a chef, but that’s a crazy idea. I think my father expects me to become a hockey player or take over the farm one day. So, I guess, I’ll go into business anyway.

  As I’m shoving whatever I can find to eat in my mouth, there is a light knock on the door. Luke pushes me towards it for me to go open it, so I humor him and do so.

  Right in front of me with her magnificent brown eyes and beautiful long blonde hair in a tight ponytail stands Alane.

  As usual, when my eyes meet hers, I’m transfixed.

  My heart pounds, and the world disappears.

  I do all I can during our practice sessions not to fall into her eyes, or even look at her. It’s been this way since I saw her so relaxed the first time we practiced together.

  She was lying on the bench, propped on her elbows, looking at the ceiling, and her hair was like a fall of spun gold. She compelled me that day. I had never seen a girl so laid-back.

  Of course, Luke had told me how she wasn’t much into gossip and drama. But seeing her so unperturbed had turned me upside down. And seeing her now, standing on our threshold, I’m spellbound again.

  “Hey, Aaron.” Her voice is sweet but firm, nothing like the nasal voice of most girls our age.

  Trying to swallow my peanut butter sandwich to return her greeting, the bread gets stuck in my throat, and I choke on it, sending me in a fit of coughs right in front of the girl I want to impress.

  Impressing Alane is impossible.

  Everything I do at practice seems to be taken as a challenge to do better, and she does better every time. If she wanted, she could choke better than I’m doing right now. As I’m wondering if I’ll die at her feet, Luke magically appears with a glass of milk for me to chug down, which helps the sandwich go down.

  “Hey,” he says with all his cool. “What are you doing here, Captain?” She seems horrified that I almost died in front of her. She blushes, and my cock stirs. I don’t need more embarrassment, so I pray to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph not to get an erection in front of the girl I like, with my brother standing next to me and his arm around my shoulder.

  “Hey, Gritt, you forgot your workbook on the bench. I thought I would bring it back to you,” she tells my brother with a beautiful smile.

  People tend to smile at Luke, and I’m used to it. Nevertheless, I want that smile to be mine, to be given to me. It illuminates her face and underlines her freckles. It makes her even more beautiful than she already is.

  “Thanks, Captain. Look, I have to run and help my dad, but Aaron was just telling me a few ideas he had to improve some of your plays. He was going to talk to Dad about it, but since you’re here, why don’t you just come in. I’ll go tell your mom that Dad will drive you home later, if that’s okay with her.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but that’s Luke, trying to get the girl for me. I didn
’t even have to tell him I liked the girl because he already knew I liked her. He runs outside toward Alane’s mom’s car, and as her mother looks in our direction, Alane waves to tell her it’s okay, and her mother leaves. We’re still facing each other on the threshold, and I feel like the cat got my tongue.

  It’s awkward seeing her standing here before me.

  It’s strange having all her attention.

  I don’t know where to look or what to say.

  I throw my hands in my jeans pockets and wait for her to tell me something, to tell me what to say or what to do.

  I’m at a loss for words.

  That’s when my six-year-old sister Salomé comes running into the room crying her head off, followed by my four-year-old brother Barnabas with the body of a Barbie in one hand and the head of the doll in the other.

  “Aaaaaaaaroooooon.” Shit, I forgot I was in charge of watching them today after practice so my mother could go help my dad with something in the garage. Salomé runs toward me, inconsolable, and cleans her nose on my jeans. I bend down to her level and wipe her tears with my hand.

  “Hey, Sal, what happened?” My little sister is the cutest thing on earth, with her big brown eyes and long dark blonde hair, she looks more like Luke, but her eyes are much bigger, and she knows how to bat her eyelashes so we can’t refuse her anything. Well, Mom does. Dad, Luke and I can’t.

  “Barnabas broke the doll, again,” Barnabas imitates Salomé from behind her, and I hear Alane laugh at the declaration of my little brother. It’s a cute laugh, like her. It’s light and high pitched, and the way her shoulders rise and fall makes her breasts bounce incredibly in the thin tank top she’s wearing.

  I try to stay composed, but that’s before I hear what the four-year-old next to me has to say.

  “Aaron! You see the boobies. I want to kiss them.” Out of context, my little brother could easily sound like a pervert, but he has, in fact, been breastfed until recently, so “kissing the boobies” does mean putting them in his mouth but not for what I believe adults do.