The spoon hovers over my lips as I swallow hard. She called? Him? Her voice was in this house?
My lashes flutter.
“What did she say?” I ask, glad I sound calm.
Drumming his fingers on the table, his look is hard, cold. “She asked me about you. She still loves you, man.”
“She told you that?” I hate that my words sound so rushed and breathless, that hope stirs. Setting the spoon down, I clamp my jaws together, forcing myself to breathe in and out.
“She doesn’t have to. I hear it all over her voice. She was crying, man, a wreck.” He closes his eyes.
“What did you tell her, Alex?” My voice goes dangerously low as adrenaline buzzes hot and liquid through my brain.
“The truth.” He glowers. “That you’ve turned into a dick and I can barely stand you.”
I can’t help chuckling—he’s right. I keep hoping maybe he’ll get a clue. But the sick bastard refuses to leave.
I wanted to ask more, everything, for him to give me a play-by-play in graphic detail. What her voice sounded like, what her questions were. But she’d called him, not me.
I would have picked up, I would have talked, I would have… Squeezing my eyes shut, I get up and walk the bowl to the sink. “I’m going to the gym.”
“Fine, what the hell? You go do that, tell the next guy to take out your tongue this time. Or maybe…” He pops his knuckles. “…you’d like to just throw down here, let me kick your ass for once. It’d be real satisfying.”
Flicking the peace sign at him, I walk to the door, grab my keys and bag, and slam the door shut behind me.
I’m so ready to just run back to her, ready to beg her forgiveness, to tell her anything she wants, and it makes me sick.
Because I know Alex is lying.
Know he’s baiting me, trying to get me to think there’s hope when there isn’t any. Lili has always been honest with me. If she really wanted me back, she’d have called me. She’d have told me.
So I go to the gym and I drown her out. I fight until I can’t stand anymore, can’t think, can’t see her smiling face haunting my dreams.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Liliana
It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m sitting in a bar. The Pink Lady, in the same booth I’d first met him. I’m watching Asia dance, swishing her hips around and making all the men fall for her, but all I can do is blink and wonder.
Where is he?
I knew it was a long shot that he’d return to this bar.
Monique comes up to me, sliding into the seat beside me. Her brown eyes are quick to take in my appearance.
“You look like hell.”
I snort. “I feel like hell.”
“You want another drink?” She touches my empty glass of scotch.
I needed something hard tonight. I just didn’t want to think too much. Didn’t want to remember too clearly what I’ve seen, the things I’ve done. But I need him so bad, need to feel his presence, and I’d hoped when I walked inside it would all come back.
But it didn’t.
Because nothing is the same anymore. This is just a place, full of people I don’t know with a woman dancing on the stage, and it’s all wrong. I could have called Alex, found out where he was going, made sure to follow, keep my distance. Anything to just catch a glimpse of him, but it seems beyond pathetic and I’m no stalker.
Besides, I’m the one who walked away, not him.
“No.” I shake my head and point with the knife in my hand at the half-eaten strip steak on my plate. “I’m good.”
“You sure? Because, girl, you look hella bad.” Her lips purse into a straight line, then she hugs me and wiggles out of the booth. “You just let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“Yeah.” I don’t look back at her.
***
Ryan
“No, you’re not coming with me.” I shake my head at Alex, who’s glowering behind me in the mirror. “I told you, I’m going out by myself tonight. You’re right, Alex, I’m done dragging everybody into my shit hole. I’m dealing with this on my own terms, you got it?”
Yanking his ball cap off his head, he snarls, exposing his teeth. “You can’t do this, man. You can’t just go. It’s not good, not right—”
I know he’s scared. Know he’s haunted by so many things himself. For years I believed I was the only one in this, but now I know that isn’t the truth. Alex might not bear the psychical scars, but the mental ones… they’re all over him.
I grab his shoulder and look into his eyes. “I’m coming home tonight.”
His nostrils flare, and steel-gray eyes slice into mine. “Don’t lie to me.”
Everything crashes down on me, all my bullshit, all of it. What I’ve put him through for the last four years. I’ve never been anything but a dick with him, demanding everything and giving nothing in return.
“I’m sorry, Alex. For everything.”
His eyes grow huge. “Ah, fuck. No, hell no. You are not going out by yourself. That’s the same shit people say right before they kill themselves, they apologize and they—”
Rolling my eyes, I shake him hard. “I’m sorry, okay. I am. And I love you too. There, I said it. First time in my life I’ve ever told a man that, but I’m doing this on my own tonight and you’re not stopping me.”
Clenching his fists, his entire frame shakes. “I hate you, you know that? You’ve been a thorn in my side since day one. It’s Valentine’s Day—you think I don’t know what happens? I’ve lived through three of them. I can’t… won’t just let you walk out that door.”
“You don’t have a choice.” I glare and then turn.
What I do tonight, he can’t see.
No one can, because tonight it’s going to be raw, and it’s going to be my last one. I’m tired of this, living with the pent-up dread curling big, fat greasy fingers in my gut, telling me I’m worthless, nothing. He wanted me to fight, then I’ll try.
But I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Not anymore.
Because the only one who can fight this battle is me. I know that now, Lili taught me that. Her leaving, it killed me, but she’s right. If she’d taken me back, nothing would have changed. My promises about telling her everything after we got married, just more lies. She was right not to take me back.
Grabbing my keys and wallet I walk to the front door. Ryan trails me like a little lost puppy.
“Think about Lili, man.”
I pause in the doorway, taking a deep breath. “That’s all I ever do,” I finally admit, refusing to turn back, to even look at him, to acknowledge that I hadn’t cringed when he said her name.
Getting into the car, I head to a bar. Any bar. Doesn’t matter. Stopping at the first hole-in-the-wall shit place I find, I get out and jog inside, tapping my finger on the bar top the moment I get there.
The bartender looks at me and the memories, they’re rushing in, threatening to swallow me—to take me and drag me down. “Whatever’s on tap,” I murmur.
He comes back a moment later with a dark stout. Paying, I turn to find a seat. My fingers encircle the cold glass, watching as the sweat slides down its face, as the foam froths at the top, my throat working so hard, ready for the first cool taste, waiting for the numbness that follows soon after.
“Hey, sexy.” A woman drops into the seat next to me. Blond with huge tits, she smiles up at me. Her eyes are blue as the sky, her nose delicate, and her lips a bloody, ruby red. Dressed in a short black dress and fuck-me heels, she looks wrong in this place. Like she’s trying too hard to fit in.
This bar is a biker hangout with old, rusted-out license plates stapled to plywood walls and scribbled over with graffiti.
She exudes strength, fire… but beneath that, there’s something fragile. Something that reminds me of Lili.
I swallow.
Her fingers walk up my biceps and she squeezes it hard, nail dragging along the length of muscle. “Buy me a drink?” She licks her lips and
her intentions are obvious.
This is easy. No thoughts, no hearts, no nothing. Just sex and a quick release and I could do this and for a while forget about flowers, about the button nose and the tiny cleft jaw, the three freckles spanning her nose.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
She jerks as if taken aback by my question, and the forced sultriness vanishes, replaced by a deadly intensity of hard, calculating truth. Ugly, unvarnished, stripped down and naked, shivering in the cold winter rain… something broken, not quite right… she has no hope left.
She’s a stranger to me, but in that second I read the same harsh truths in her that live inside me.
“What?” she asks, voice sharp.
Turning in my seat with my hand still gripping my glass, I ask again. “What are you doing here?”
Fidgeting, she crosses her legs, turns aside, and gives me a completely closed-off posture. “Look, if you don’t want what I’m offering, whatever.”
Curling her lip, she hops off the stool and moves down the line to another guy, another face, and in that instant I know an epiphany’s happening.
She is me.
I am her.
Two sides of the exact same coin, we live in the world, but we aren’t a part of it. Closing ourselves off, offering nothing but crumbs and expecting everyone to just clap and sing our praises for doing it.
Pushing away from the bar, I leave my glass and race back to the car.
I’m lost, floating in the middle of a sea, hanging on to nothing, just drifting. Closing my eyes, heart pounding, I don’t know what to do.
I know what I want, what I need, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. Starting the car, I go to find out just what I’m made of.
Thirty minutes later, I’m parked, staring at the huge gray stone façade of a cathedral. Large wooden doors stare back at me, daring me to take that step closer, to walk up to it, open it, and trust.
Jaw working, I squeeze the wheel, pulse thumping so damn hard it hurts.
I’m probably the only one here. I don’t know what I’m even doing.
I don’t go to church, hardly ever pray. I’m not really sure I even believe in a God, but here I am, because this is where everyone says the answers are.
I touch the keys, talking myself out of it, ready to turn the ignition, pull out, and head back to that bar, to the seat I vacated, and drown out the voices warring inside me.
But I grab the door and I get out. The night is chilly, a soft sleet is starting to drift silently around me. I’m not doing this for Alex or even for Lili. This is for me.
Throwing the door wide, I walk in.
The interior is massive and ornate.
Golden candelabras stand guard on either side of the door. A dozen lit candles flicker within each one. Wooden pews sit empty, and down the long aisle several rows of votive candles are lit, their light dancing mysteriously along the cool gray stone and stained-glass window.
For a second, I don’t think I’ll be able to move. My feet feel locked in place. A dark shadow pulls away from the wall, and startled wide eyes behind a thick pair of wire-framed glasses gaze at me.
“My son?” he says, closing the book in his hand with a sharp snap. “May I help you?”
Licking my lips, I’m still not sure I should even be here. What do I say? Where do I start?
He glides closer, causing his black robes to swish around his ankles. “Are you okay?”
I must look crazy, standing with my arms plastered to the door, legs braced and tensed, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
How do you fight?
Alex always tells me stand up and fight. Face the demons. How do you do it? I don’t know.
Approaching warily, the man doesn’t stop until he’s standing inches from me. “It’s all right,” he says. “My name is Father Michaelson. What’s your name, son?”
His voice is steady, quiet and soothing. As if he were used to my kind, those down-and-out rejects lost in the blackness and darkness, unsure of how to ever come out.
Somehow I find my voice. “Ryan.”
His smile is strong. Nodding, he gestures for me to come. “Would you like to talk?”
Not quite so panicked, I ease slowly off the door and shake my head. “I’m not sure.”
“Then why are you here?” He kneels on the cushion of one of the pews.
My words have returned full circle. The blonde, she’d left, walked away and never answered… I remembered I didn’t want to be her anymore. I wanted to be me. Free of the shackles.
Squeezing my fingers together, I force myself to fight. Because some battles aren’t fought with fists, some are fought by just standing up and facing it, facing the truth, learning that what others have done to you doesn’t have to make you who are you. Only you can do that—you have the power to say “enough” and walk away, truly walk away.
But it starts with the first step.
“I was raped. When I was ten. By my uncle.”
I’ve never spoken the words, never told another soul. The silence is heavy. Nothing moves, not me, not the priest, because the words, they’re still hanging there—a filthy, ugly parasite waiting to pounce on me.
“Would you like to go to confession, son?”
“I’m not a believer, Father. I don’t come to church, I’m not sure why I’m even here.”
He rubs his chin between his fingers and stands. “But you’re here now. So let’s go talk.”
I follow him to a small cubicle with a heavy curtain draped in front of it. There are two chambers separated by a thick panel of wood. Opening his side, he looks at me. “In there, you just talk. You don’t have to look at me, and I don’t have to look at you. This is a safe place, Ryan.”
Nodding, I go in and I tell him everything, every single gory detail. He listens, doesn’t utter a sound, doesn’t offer meaningless condolences, and it’s amazing, because I realize it has all been a lie.
The lies I told myself, that talking wouldn’t help, that reliving it wouldn’t make it better, only worse… But it did make it better, because the truth has set me free. Like someone has grabbed the burden hanging around my neck, grabbed it and thrown it off.
I’m shaking by the time I finish.
Finally he speaks. “Unfortunately, this crime is hardly ever reported, especially by men. I’m sorry for what you went through, Ryan. I truly am and I want to say something to you I’ve wanted to say to each and every boy this has ever happened to. It wasn’t your fault.”
I drop my head into my hands.
“Your girlfriend? Liliana was it?” The priest asks.
“Ex. She dumped me.”
He inhales. “From what you’ve said, it’s because you refused to share with her what you just did me. Do you love her?”
“With everything that’s inside me.”
“Does she love you?”
I don’t know. Not anymore. “For a time, I thought so. But I’m not sure about anything anymore. I put her through hell. She probably wants nothing to do with me now.”
“You know, even priests know what love is. As the Bible tells it in First Corinthians, thirteen-four, it says ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’ Do you understand what that means?”
My entire body trembles. I want to believe that so desperately. But they’re just words from a book. “Do you believe that?” I ask quietly.
“I really do. If she loves you, she’ll listen and she’ll accept you, no matter what.”
I stare at the edge of the fluttering curtain, counting my breaths, listening to the steady thump of my heart in my ears.
“Thank you,” I whisper and then, yanking the curtain back, head out to where I should have gone all along.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Liliana
I call Alex. Only to find out that Ryan’s gone out on his own. Exhaustion leaches from my pores. There’s no more in me, the worry is all-consuming and I can’t, just can’t, do this anymore.
I have my mother to consider, Javi. They need me to be strong. So I walk back inside my house, sit in front of the TV, and promise myself this will be the last night I cry for him.
I’m cleansing Ryan from my system like I should have done months ago.
So I sit and I cry and watch infomercial after infomercial—the hosts’ fake laughter and audience’s oohs and ahhs ring in my ears.
I’ve made my choice—I gave him one too and he made it. I had to live with the decision.
And just as I’m ready to walk back to my room and forget it all, car lights wink through the windows. My heart seizes the moment I spot the car pulling alongside the curb.
Grabbing a sweater, I toss it over my shoulders. Has Ryan hurt himself again? Where did Alex find him this time? Bloody, violent images race through my head as I throw the door open, never stopping to consider that if Ryan was in the hospital, Alex wouldn’t have driven here, he would have called.
Sleet is falling, making the sidewalk slick. I’m shivering by the time I run down the path. And then I stop dead the second it dawns on me that it isn’t Alex getting out of the car, it’s Ryan.
“Ryan?” My voice comes out a breathy whimper. “Ryan?” A sob this time.
He’s parked under a streetlamp. Cold, stinging wisps of ice prick my face, but I can’t focus on anything other than the man standing there with his heart in his eyes and hands by his sides.
Dark wavy hair curls across his forehead, both eyes are bruised, his jaw is a sickly yellow, but he’s never looked better to me.
I’m not sure how, but I must have been walking this whole time, because next thing I know I’m right in front of him and then my memory grows fuzzy. All I know is he’s in my arms again and I’m holding him—and thank you, Jesus—he’s wrapping his arms around my waist and hoisting me to his chest and he smells so good. So clean. I don’t smell alcohol.
This isn’t the same man.
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