The Offer

by Karina Halle

  “You mean the Nessie ones?” says Linden.

  I nod. “I had no idea why he wore them, he just called them lucky.”

  “That’s what he said to me when I made fun of them.”

  “Did he get defensive?”

  “Yeah, kind of. But he sometimes does when you don’t really expect him to.”

  I let out a ragged breath and sit down on the stool. My legs just won’t stop shaking. None of me will. My own blood feels rattled. “That’s Bram, isn’t it? Does what you least expect him to. I saw those socks on Matthew. There’s no way that was a coincidence. He knew about Matthew from the very start.” His words run through my head. “He said he did to them what Phil did to Ava and me.”

  “What a fucker,” Steph says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, what are you going to do?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just ran. I couldn’t be there.”

  “I don’t blame you,” she says just as James comes by.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” Steph says. “But Nicola needs a shot of whisky and fast.”

  “Make it two,” Linden says quickly. He looks a bit shell-shocked. I guess it can’t be easy knowing you’ve always been an uncle, you just didn’t know it.

  “And James,” I add in. “If you’re still offering me that assistant manager position, I want it.”

  He smiles at me as he pours the shot. “Good to hear.” But I don’t smile back.

  “I guess we should say congratulations,” Steph says softly. “But it just doesn’t seem right, right now. I’m so sorry, Nicola.” She searches my eyes and they become sadder by the second. “I know how much you’re in love with him.”

  And that’s what really stings. That I love him. That he doesn’t love me. And that this happened. One person’s love isn’t enough to keep two people together, I knew that much already.

  James hands me the shot and Linden and I down ours at the same time. It burns but not enough. I want it to burn away the gauze over this night.

  “I’ll have another,” I tell James and then Linden and Steph chime in with their requests.

  Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door to the bar and we all turn around to see Bram standing on the other side, looking pitiful.

  “Don’t open it,” I hiss to James. “Tell him you’re closed.”

  James looks at Linden. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing to worry about,” he says and nods at the door. “Let him in. I want a few words.”

  “Shit, it’s not going to be one of those nights in here, the ones that never end?” James asks. “Because when they do end, I end up calling the cops.”

  But Steph is already up and crossing the bar. She stops at the door, glares at Bram through the glass and then unlocks it.

  “What do you want?” she asks him, opening it a crack.

  “I need to speak to Nicola,” he says. He looks over her shoulder at me. “Please.”

  Linden taps me on the arm. “Go on,” he says. “Talk to him. I’ll have my words after.”

  Talking to Bram is the last thing I want to do. The situation can’t get any better. His words have the power to make it even worse. And no matter what happens, what’s done is done and I know things are going to suck for quite some time.

  “It’s fine, Steph,” I say to her. I walk over to the door and she reluctantly backs away, her eyes never leaving Bram’s.

  “I’m pretty sure we pinky swore on something,” she grumbles and then goes on to join Linden back at the bar.

  “Nicola,” Bram says. His eyes are red, filled with worry, mouth twisted bitterly. He looks like shit, like he’s been ravaged by something terrible. But it doesn’t make me feel a thing, not even glad. “I need to explain.” His eyes flit to a booth. “Should we talk inside?”

  “No,” I tell him and squeeze myself through the door, taking great pains not to brush up against him in any way. How weird one’s body goes from being a magnet, something you couldn’t stay away from, to being something you can’t imagine touching ever again.

  I thought that being outside I’d be able to breathe, but it’s a strangely humid night and the mist feels like it’s choking me. I shove my hands in my jeans, my arms stiff and close to my body as I stare at the ground.

  “So you found me here,” I say to him. “Explain, then.”

  “I would have told you – ”

  “No,” I say sharply. “Just forget it with the things you woulda shoulda done. You didn’t, okay? You didn’t, and it’s too late for that. So just start from the beginning. You have a son.” How ironic it is that under any other circumstances, that would have sounded beautiful.

  He breathes out, long and hard. “Yes. Matthew is my son. Seven years ago, I met Taylor. I fell for her fast and I fell for her bloody hard.”

  “How wonderful,” I can’t help but comment.

  “Please, listen,” he whispers and then clears his throat. “I fell for her because she was something good. She’s a good woman, I know you don’t want to hear that but it’s true. She brought me a sense of normalcy and purpose during a time that I didn’t have any. I was a fucking wreck back then, you have to understand. All the drugs, the parties. I was far gone down the tracks. I shoved everything I could up my nose, I drank everything I saw. I pissed away money. I made a lot of enemies and bought a few friends. You would have never even given me the time of day. I was just the worst rubbish walking the streets.”

  He swallows thickly. “But Taylor saw something in me that I didn’t know was there myself. And for a period of time I was in love and on my best behaviour, anything to be with her, the woman who made me feel like I wasn’t a worthless piece of shit, even though at that point I most certainly was. I thought love conquered everything, Nicola. I thought wrong. Because she ended up pregnant and my first instinct, my first thought was I needed to run. I needed to get out of it, to leave her with the responsibility.”

  My veins are starting to throb with rage. I’m relating to Taylor more than I’d like.

  “I couldn’t be a father. I really was a worthless shit. And I started to think she was a crazy loon for ever believing in me. I loved her, I really did, but it wasn’t enough to make me stay. It wasn’t enough to make me not cheat.”

  I gasp. “You fucking cheated on your pregnant girlfriend?”

  He looks at the ground, his shoulders sloping. “I’m not proud of it. But I did. That’s how I fucked up. And I fucked up a lot.”

  I’m starting to feel sick. “How could you be such a pig? God, do I even know you at all?”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine and they’re flashing with shame. “That was a different me. I’ve told you what I was like.”

  “I didn’t know you were that horrible.” I can feel my lips curling with disgust.

  “Well, I was, okay!” he yells. “Now do you understand why people can’t ever give me a chance, why they never let me become anything more than what I was? I was a horrible fucking person and I did terrible things. Maybe I didn’t rape women or rob banks or deal drugs, but I was horrible in other ways. I hurt Taylor in a way I could never repair and I hurt my relationship with Matthew from the get go. Because by the time I started to smarten up, by the time I started to pull myself together, it was far too late. Taylor didn’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Smart woman,” I mutter.

  “And Matthew was kept away. I tried, I tried and I tried to get them into my life but she wasn’t having any of it. So I did what I could, which was to send money every single month. I paid child support and then some. I made sure Taylor and Matthew had the best life possible.”

  “But you never gave them a dad.”

  “I tried,” he says again, his brogue thickening the more upset he gets. “But it was too little, too late. And I don’t blame Taylor at all. All I could do was send the payments and sent the presents and hope that I could somehow make her life just a little bit easier.”r />
  I’ve got this bad, sick tickle at the back of my throat. My brain wants me to think of something horrid and I’m shoving it aside for now as Bram is talking, pleading.

  He goes on, running his hand through his hair. “About three months before I came out here, Taylor and Matthew moved. They’d lived in Jersey and suddenly everything was getting returned to sender. It made my move out here a little easier, I guess. But I never stopped putting money away, hoping that one day she’d contact me again and I could go on trying to make things right. That day happened today. She’s been living in San Bernardino with her aunt and she saw me on the news.”

  “So she just wants her money.”

  “I don’t know what she wants, to be honest. But I can’t lie and say I’m not glad she’s here. Being around you and Ava has made me realize how much more there is in me to give.”

  That sick feeling is back. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, helping you…” he trails off.

  I can feel my chin tremble. “Wait. Hold on.” I take in a shaky breath. “Is that why you wanted me and Ava around? Is that why you took such an interest in me, in her, helping us every way you could? To appease your fucking guilt?”

  He looks like I’ve just slapped him across the face. “No, it’s not like that.”

  “It is,” I say, feeling absolutely humiliated. “I was just a charity case. We both were. You never cared, you just wanted to get rid of your sins, you just wanted to feel better about yourself. No wonder you never loved me! It was never about that!”

  It’s all coming together in one shattering moment.

  I feel like my heart has been condemned.

  “No!” he cries out, grabbing my arm and pulling me to him. His eyes are panicked, wild. “That’s not it all, it’s not. It’s not! Nicola. I…I…you…”

  “See, you can’t even say it!” I yell at him, getting in his face. “That’s because you don’t feel it and you never will. You only want to love me because you think it would make it all so much easier.”

  “No, please, you are the world to me. You are my whole world,” he pleads.

  I rip out of his hold. “Well, apparently your whole world has way more people in it than I anticipated.”

  “Don’t do this,” he says. “Don’t walk away from me, from us. We’re so good together, so fucking good.”

  I fire back at him. “It was all a damn lie! There was nothing real or good about it!” I start heading back into the bar.

  “Please!” he yells louder. “There was never a lie, there was only the truth. What we have is the truth. I can’t do this without you.” His face seems to shatter before my eyes. “I thought maybe you could understand,” he adds that in a small voice.

  I pause at the door, feeling bitterness snake up my throat. “The only thing I understand is what it’s like to be in her shoes and what it’s like to be charity. And that’s enough understanding for me.” I open the door and pause, realizing I’m about to do the hardest, most painful thing.

  But the right thing.

  “I’m sorry, Bram.” Hot tears prick at my eyes and I try to steady my voice. “This is going to break Ava’s heart. But we’re moving out tomorrow. So we won’t be your charity anymore.”

  I step inside the bar and lock the door without looking back.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nicola

  Ava won’t stop crying.

  I should have lied. I should have told her we were just going away for a short time. I should have told her we would see Bram again.

  But I couldn’t. The lie would hurt me to say, to even thinking about, and over time it would ruin her.

  It was best for us both to be ruined up front.

  After I returned home from the Lion, my heart was a bleeding mess in my hands - condemned, unsafe, unstable. The sight of my own apartment – of Bram’s charity – was enough to make me sick, so I immediately began packing.

  I packed all through the night, with music blaring. I never answered the calls or the knocks at my door. If Bram was yelling at me, I didn’t hear it. If he was reunited with the woman and his son – his son – I didn’t know it. I went on like a demon, until dawn broke the cityscape and my entire apartment was packed in every spare box, suitcase and garbage bag I had.

  There were a lot of garbage bags.

  What I really wanted to do was find a place to move into while Ava was gone. I was delusional. I don’t know why I thought that would happen, why I had the idea that maybe my mother could drop her off in a whole new life. She would never have to see our old place again.

  But I had everything packed, no place to go and no car to get me there even if I did.

  I called my mom. I explained what happened.

  I did it without crying. I thought I was so brave.

  My mother came over and the minute I saw Ava’s face, I realized I wasn’t brave at all.

  I was a mess.

  She looked around the apartment in confusion. She didn’t understand and no matter how I tried to explain it, there was no right answer to what was happening.

  I didn’t want to blame it all on Bram. I didn’t want her to hate him even though I was starting to believe that I did.

  Ava doesn’t hate. She doesn’t have it in her. She just gets broken, like a porcelain doll.

  To make matters worse, all the emotions she was feeling, the rejection, the discomfort and the pain of losing the things she loved, made her feel dizzy.

  Sick.

  She threw up and her blood levels were all over the place.

  I’d never felt so alone, even with my mother there, trying to get the proper food into her, water, insulin, balance. I knew Bram was next door. I could hear him, but I would never ask for his help again.

  Luckily, just as we were about to take her to the hospital, she pulled out of it.

  Then the tears came.

  They haven’t stopped.

  I’m at my mother’s house, sitting on her sofa with my legs curled up under me, sipping tea. It’s picture perfect but I’m a raging torrent inside.

  Ava is beside me sniffling, wiping her nose on her arm, on me.

  I can only hold her. I can only tell her it will be all right, even if I don’t believe it. It feels so futile, so useless, yet I keep saying it anyway.

  Kayla has offered her apartment to the both of us. So has my mother. But I still have a job – and a promotion – so I’m going to stay with Kayla in the city. Ava and I will be squished into Kayla’s den, but it’s just temporary and I think Kayla needs some help with her rising rent costs herself. Linden and Steph offered their place too, but I can’t look at Linden right now. He reminds me too much of his brother. He has offered to move my furniture out of the apartment and put it right into storage until we find a place of our own and get started. That generous act, well, that reminds me of his brother also.

  Ava shifts in my arms and looks up at me with big wet eyes and there’s so much hope in them that it makes me want to cry. Because I pray that the hope isn’t misleading.

  She lost Bram who had become her father figure whether I wanted it that way or not.

  I lost my heart.

  I loved Bram.

  I loved him.

  His smile, his jokes, his generosity. His lips, his eyes, his jaw. His attitude, his good nature, his humor. His ease, his height, his body. His ambition. His adoration. His devotion.

  He looked at me like I was magic.

  I started to believe it.

  We were magic together.

  And I still loved him.

  After everything, how can I not?

  How can I stop?

  But this love is what’s making me collapse inside.

  Second by empty second.

  Brick by heavy brick.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Bram

  Six Weeks Later

  “You know, I don’t think I ever told you how sorry I am.”

  I hear Taylor’s voice from across the table bu
t I’m not really listening. There’s a song playing in this San Bernardino strip-mall café, the volume too low and it’s bugging me that I can recognize the beat but I can’t hear the lyrics.

  “Bram,” she says softly and finally I look at her.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I’m sorry about the way things happened with Nicola,” she says and that name feels like a fist in my heart. “I shouldn’t have shown up at your door like that. I didn’t think that…”

  “You didn’t think that I’d have anyone meaningful in my life,” I finish absently. I twirl the watch around my wrist and give a melancholy shrug. “I don’t blame you. And please, there’s no need for you to be sorry. I’m sure I had it coming. Karma has a sharp eye, you know.”

  She nods. “I know. But it’s been so many years and…I really didn’t have the right to show up like I did.”

  I sigh. She says this but I know she thinks its justified and she’s probably right. When someone has been wronged– when someone else has fucked up so much that their debt will never end – there’s really nothing they can do that’s ever uncalled for, ever too much.

  I don’t blame Taylor whatsoever. She was watching the news and suddenly there I was, the baby daddy she tried so hard to forget. She doesn’t tell me this, but I bet she wanted to throw rocks at her TV, perhaps burn it. She at least screamed and cursed it, I know that.

  Then motherly instinct took over and she piled Matthew into the car and drove up to San Francisco to see the man she tried to pretend never existed.

  I know she only came for the money, though she tells me that wasn’t the case. She said it was about seeing me through new eyes. I was successful and ambitious and, more than that, I was virtuous now. I was the opposite of the man she hated. I had proven that I could get my life on track and actually make a difference in other people’s lives, not just my own.