Dream Maker

by Kristen Ashley

  As it was clear I was becoming more freaked, Mag repositioned to stand between my knees, where he now had both hands with fingers squeezing reassuringly.

  “Baby, hang tight, yeah? You’re in a good place. You’re covered,” he assured.

  I forced myself to breathe steadily and stared at him.

  He watched me do this before he continued.

  “If who got it is not who it was taken from, you were in the chain of possession, and they won’t care you’re not in the life.”

  “I didn’t know I even had it, whatever it is.”

  “They don’t know that.”

  “Well, Mick can get the word out to tell them that,” I snapped.

  After which, Mag looked over his shoulder at Mo.

  I did too, and saw Mo wore an expression that was more terrifying than his usual Resting Terrifying Face.

  “He won’t,” I whispered, and Mag turned back to me. “Mick won’t. He’s occupied covering his own ass, which means conceivably throwing me under the bus, if needs be.”

  “Evie,” he said softly.

  It was that softness. His voice, deep with a lovely timbre normally, going soft, it was like his voice box had been touched by the hand of God.

  And his face, staring at me with tenderness and understanding.

  And his friends, coming over to give him shit but this after two had been out last night trying to sort my problems and one was going to spend his day off covering my ass.

  It was all that.

  All that which finally made me lose it.

  “Welcome to my world, baby,” I stated snidely, and watched Mag’s expression go alert and his head twitch while doing it. “Last night you got a dose of the honey sweetness of my mom. The night before you got to spend quality time with the stand-up guy my brother is. It’s too bad I have to strip tonight. I could take you round to meet my dad. You could get high with him, his favorite pastime. So much so, I don’t think I’ve spent a minute with him my entire life where he wasn’t at least half-baked. Or we could find my sister, who’s probably wrestling on film in a vat of pudding to up her followers. But that’s okay. You can come watch me slither around all oiled up to earn tips for giving assholes hard-ons.”

  “Evan,” he whispered.

  “I’m trash,” I stated.

  His face got hard. “Don’t say shit like that.”

  “I am.” I leaned his way. “I’m fucking trash.”

  He lifted both hands and framed my face, putting his in mine and growling, “Do not say that shit.”

  “You are so blind,” I mocked. “So fucking blind. I’ve fooled you. But it’s not surprising seeing as I’ve spent twenty-seven years fooling myself. I can’t get out of it. I can’t find my way to a different life. Straight up, Mag, listen to me. I like you. You’re a good guy. So listen to me. You need to get out now. Save yourself because there’s no saving me. They’re gonna drag me down, and if you’re anywhere near, they’re gonna take you with me.”

  “Find somewhere else to be,” he rumbled, not at me, I knew, because the guys moved, though apparently Mag’s pancakes were really that good because they didn’t leave.

  They went to his room and shut the door.

  “Look at me,” Mag said.

  I turned my gaze from watching his bedroom door close to his face.

  “I like you too, Evan, and I’m not blind to shit,” he declared.

  “You need to let me go.”

  I meant his hold on my head and just…

  Me.

  He did not let me go.

  He made a speech.

  A speech that was such, I hung on every word.

  “We’re gonna sort this shit out and then we’re gonna date in a way you put a bag with clean panties and a nightie in my truck ’cause you’ll be spending the night. That is, before you got your stuff at my place, and I have mine at yours. I’ll make you breakfast. You’ll make me dinner. You’re gonna get your goddamn degree. You’re gonna find a job you dig. You’re gonna build the life you want, Evan. Don’t know if I’m gonna be a part of that. Just know, as of now, I feel the deep need to explore that possibility. And this is not a damsel-in-distress situation where I’m blinded to dick, intent only on saving the little woman. It’s because you like my eyelashes, you give a shit about the planet, you knew your brother was gonna get your ass in a sling but you moved to protect him anyway, you got no issue making the first move to go after what you want and you make fucking great bacon cheeseburgers, even without Worcestershire sauce.”

  “You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met,” I whispered.

  “And this is a bad thing?” he did not whisper.

  “Can’t you see I’m trying to protect you?” I asked.

  He slid his fingers back into my hair and curled them around my head.

  “Trust me,” he stated, his tone now guttural, and those two words landed like punches in my gut, sharing inexorably that this conversation just took a dread turn. “This goes the way I want it to, there’ll be a time I got no choice but to land my shit on you. I’ll fuckin’ hate it, only slightly more than you will when you hear it. This is not the test of us, Evan. That will be the test of us.”

  I stared in his intense blue eyes.

  And got it.

  “Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria,” I said softly.

  “You know what a rape house is?”

  Oh no.

  No.

  That was when I lifted my hands and grabbed his head.

  “Yeah,” he grunted. “Well, I’ve seen one.”

  “Danny,” I breathed, my eyes stinging, the tears coming.

  “So, you want it straight-up, Evie?” he asked but went on before I could answer. “Your brother and his shit is chump change to what I’ve seen men do to women.”

  “Honey,” I whispered.

  “And I’m gonna fuckin’ get you clear, Evan, are you hearing me?”

  I nodded.

  “And you are not fucking trash. I know trash. And that is not you. And not simply because, in every instance I ran up against trash, it had a dick. But that does include your fucking brother.”

  “Okay, sweetheart,” I said soothingly.

  “Don’t talk that shit to me or anyone ever again, Evan. Yeah?”

  I repeated my nod.

  “We done with your episode?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You have ’em whenever they come. Let ’em fly. And I’ll talk you down. You still with me?”

  “Yes, Danny.”

  With all that was happening, it was more than the fact I was a crier that I couldn’t stop it.

  So the tear dropped from my eye to run down my face.

  Mag shifted a hand and caught it with his thumb, then spread the wet over the apple of my cheek.

  “Now, I’m making pancakes,” he declared.

  A sharp giggle escaped me that wasn’t humor, as such, even if it kind of was.

  “Okay,” I replied.

  He started to move away but then didn’t and both his hands shifted so he could rub his thumbs over the apples of my cheeks.

  “I got a really bad temper,” he admitted quietly, these words filled to the brim with shame and even fear that I knew to my soul he should not feel.

  And thus, I held on, with hands and eyes, and listened.

  “You gotta know that before either of us make moves to lock each other in. I wasn’t like that before. I can’t say I never got mad. But I never got mad in a way it was like I was outside myself, watching me lose it, and I had no control over how bad it got. I’ve been in fights. With guys. It used to get physical. And I lost my mind on Nikki a couple of times, just shouting, but she knew about it so she took it and it killed me, knowing she accepted that about me and I couldn’t control it. I found coping mechanisms. I haven’t totally lost it in a while, but I feel it sometimes, boiling under the surface. And I’ve researched it so I know it’s not something that will ever just go away, unless I medicate, and my job, I can’t
do that. So…that’s what…” he drew in a big breath and finished, “you gotta know.”

  “All right,” I said softly.

  “It gets bad, Evie, I gotta stress that.”

  These words made something inside me move, a weird fluttery feeling.

  It was around my heart. A tightness there I never really felt because I’d lived with it my whole life.

  But right then, in a colossal shift to the world as I knew it, it just…

  Loosened.

  “You heard my mom talk to me the way she did last night.”

  “Babe—”

  I pressed in at his head.

  “Listen to me, Danny, please?”

  He shut his mouth.

  “She’s never seen what you’ve seen, and she’s like that. And I’ve been taking it my whole life, knowing there’s no reason. I just did it because she’s my mom and I’m supposed to love her. There’s a reason why Nikki understood. You’re a good guy, Danny. Now it’s your turn to trust me, because I won’t lose track of that.”

  I was then still holding his head and he was still in my face, but way in my space.

  He’d wrapped one arm around me and pulled me to his body, his other hand at the back of my head, and we were making out again.

  It was getting heavy, what with my special somewhere pressed against his rock-hard abs, when, yet again, his buds spoiled the fun.

  “This is not getting me pancakes,” Auggie called.

  Mag broke the kiss only to mutter against my lips, “I’m gonna kill these fuckin’ guys.”

  I smiled into his eyes.

  The anger slid out of his.

  He then kissed my forehead and let me go, turning to Auggie and saying, “Newsflash, asshole. The reason they’re good is you gotta let the batter rest.”

  “This dude is Julia Child with a Bronze Star,” Boone noted. “His pancakes are good but he’s a virtuoso at the grill. He can even make pizza on that fucker.”

  It was good to know Mag could cook, but…

  “Bronze Star?” I asked Mag.

  “That’s like, eightieth-date territory, baby,” he muttered.

  “Right,” I whispered.

  He turned his head from the batter and grinned at me before he leaned in and touched his lips to mine.

  “So, Evie,” Axl said, sliding the cup of coffee he’d poured me earlier on the counter by my hip. “Just in case you got time, I brought my laptop. It’s acting up.”

  “I’ll have a look,” I told him before I took a sip of coffee.

  “She’s not free tech support, dickhead,” Mag growled.

  “Yes, I am,” I decreed.

  “See,” Axl jerked a thumb at me. “She is.”

  “Is it in your car?” I asked.

  Axl nodded.

  “Go down and get it,” I ordered. “I’ll have a look while Danny’s cooking.”

  “On it,” he replied and took off.

  “Babe,” Mag called.

  I gave him my eyes.

  “Seriously” was all he said.

  “It’s okay. Promise” was how I replied.

  He blew out a sigh.

  My bag at the other end of the counter rang.

  Auggie grabbed it and brought it to me.

  It was Charlie.

  I had a callout.

  I heard the sizzle of butter hitting a warm griddle, the promise of goodness.

  And I felt my heart beat.

  Free.

  And there you go.

  Life goes on.

  And sometimes, I was now learning, it was good.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Dream Team

  Evie

  So, she’s got nothin’, and we’re on a break, and she’s at Target, buying Legos.”

  Auggie was on the phone.

  With Mag.

  Sharing about our day.

  “She then makes me drive her to the goddamn county lockup, not so she can lay into that asswipe brother of hers. So, she can lay those Legos on Bobbie. You know, that cop who sometimes runs the desk there. Because Bobbie’s kid was sick.”

  I stood in the hall outside the dancers’ dressing room at Smithie’s club, hands on hips, ordering, “Stop talking, Auggie.”

  Auggie ignored me.

  “Yeah, Evie doesn’t have a couch, but Bobbie’s kid has a new Lego set,” he told Mag. “Then she gets a call from some old lady whose got somethin’ jackin’ with her computer. And just sayin’, brother, you’re up for dinner at Gert’s next Tuesday. And so am I and Boone, Axl, Mo and Lottie. I tried to get us out of it, but the woman talked so much, I couldn’t get a word in.”

  I put my hand out and demanded, “Give me your phone, Auggie.”

  “Yeah,” he said into the phone, continuing to ignore me. “So, Gert’s one tough cookie and she pretty much thinks Evie walks on water, which means, when the woman takes a breath, I tell her what’s goin’ down, and Gert loses her goddamn mind.”

  I squinted my eyes at him at that reminder and remained in my stance, hand held out, glaring at him.

  “This is probably why she let slip that Evie has been single-handedly feeding her for the last two years,” he continued.

  Which was when I moved, shouting, “Auggie! Stop!” at the same time launching myself at him and going for his phone.

  He just rounded me with an arm, tucked me to his side and twisted his torso away, all the while still…freaking…talking.

  “Yeah, so heads-up on that too, brother. Gert didn’t wanna accept, but she’s in a financial sitch so she can’t really argue too much. This means I’m on grocery duty next. I volunteered Boone, Axl and Mo and Lottie, but you’re up after she gets through the lineup.”

  “Auggie! I have to start getting ready! Stop messing around! Give me that phone!”

  “Yeah,” he said into the phone he was not giving me. “So now I don’t know whether to be terrified of the chick Lots has lined up for me or jump the gun and just walk into the dressing room and ask her to marry me. But after the Lego argument, where Evie essentially threw down in a goddamn Target about her right to buy a sick kid a present, I’m leaning toward terrified.”

  The Lego argument was not my finest hour.

  People stopped to watch.

  But he’d actually thought he could tell me I couldn’t buy something, stating he’d buy it and I could say it was from me.

  Of course, he was right. I should save my pennies to buy a new mattress, so I had somewhere to sleep.

  But he’d actually thought he could tell me I couldn’t buy something…

  And I’d listen.

  And obey!

  I stared at his perfectly angled, perfectly stubbled jaw.

  “Sure,” he said then offered his phone to me. “Mag wants to talk to you.”

  I snatched it out of his hand, pulled out of his hold and walked two paces away before I put it to my ear and said, “Auggie doesn’t get any more of your pancakes until the end of time.”

  Mag’s laughter spilled into my ear.

  Okay, that made me feel better.

  Slightly.

  Reminders of his bodacious pancakes made me feel even better.

  Though not enough.

  Auggie had shared all my secrets with Mag!

  “And, you know, since we’re spilling our hearts out to each other, either directly, or through intermediaries, you should know that Gert’s my only friend. She’s seventy-nine, is an aficionado of Olive Garden and her children don’t live close. Girls my age never got me. I would say this is a boon for you, since you don’t have to pass some girlfriend test. But Gert loves me and she’s gonna look you over with a keen eye. And if you aren’t on your best behavior, she’ll begin a campaign to surgically excise you from my life.”

  Through chuckles, Mag said, “I can win over a seventy-nine-year-old woman.”

  “You don’t know Gert. She’s very opinionated. The first words she spoke to Auggie were, ‘God, I hope you’re not Evie’s new boyfriend. You�
�re way too pretty to be good for any woman.’”

  Mag burst into laughter again, through it forcing out, “Fuck, I wish I was there to see that.”

  “I do too,” I replied, turning my eyes to Auggie. “It would serve him right.”

  “Baby, three things,” Mag said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “First, girls didn’t like you not because they didn’t get you. But because they saw all the guys wanted a shot at you and they were jealous.”

  “That’s what moms are supposed to say. My mom just told me to stop being so weird.”

  I heard a sucking void of sound over Auggie’s phone and rethought sharing that with Mag.

  “Second,” he eventually said, his voice sounding tighter, but he was persevering, “stop buying Legos for people’s kids. You got somethin’ like that you wanna do, you tell me. I’ll swing by Target, get it, and you can do the giving.”

  Hang on a second.

  What?

  Not Mag too!

  “Last, you can tell Aug he’s off duty. I’m headed to Smithie’s right now. I’m on you and I’m your ride home.”

  I stood stock-still.

  “Evie,” Mag called.

  I remained standing stock-still.

  “Evie,” Mag growled.

  “Hey,” Auggie said softly, suddenly standing close.

  “You’re off duty,” I said stiffly. “Mag’s on his way.”

  The phone was out of my hand, I heard Auggie mutter, “Evie’s having a moment. I got it. See you soon.”

  Then Auggie’s black eyes were so close, nothing else existed.

  “Talk to me,” he urged.

  “He’s on his way,” I whispered.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “He can’t watch me dance, Auggie,” I told him. “He can’t see me dance.”

  “Hey,” he said then grabbed my neck on either side “Hey, hey, hey,” he repeated, and I knew why.

  The damned tears were building in my eyes.

  “My boy thinks you’re the shit, babe,” he said.

  Another “babe.”

  Yeesh.

  I didn’t have it in me to get into that.

  Mag was on his way and he was going to see me dance.

  “I gotta get out of my head, you know, to do it,” I shared. “I gotta be like, a different Evie in order to be able to go out there. I’m not like Lottie. She’s talented and she’s proud of her abilities, of her body, she understands the world where this exists. She puts things in boxes. She uses them to get what she wants and she’s at one with that. I’m not…that’s not me.”