by A. S. Kelly
As I fix my hair into a ponytail in front of the mirror, Ian surprises me by hugging me from behind with his strong arms.
“Are you ready?”
“For what?” I ask, turning to him.
“To go kill my brothers.”
Everyone is awake downstairs. Ian’s mother has made breakfast which everyone is shovelling down, before running outside like crazed children. We all put on hats and coats, boots and gloves and head outside.
The light that greets us is blinding. There’s a blanket of white clearing the air, the sky is clear too and so are our hearts.
Nick pelts Ian in the back of the neck with a snowball. Furious, he runs after him, ready to knock some sense into him.
I laugh at the scene. I laugh because I’m happy. I laugh because Ian O’Connor is wonderful and he’s mine.
“Don’t ruin everything,” Ryan says coming closer to me.
“That’s not the plan.”
“Women always say that.”
I look at him raising an eyebrow.
“Are you mad at me by any chance?” I ask him, because that’s sure what it feels like.
“Not yet, and I hope I won’t have to be in the future, either.”
Ryan walks off, and leaves me with a strange feeling inside.
I’m annoyed at being accused of something; but then Ian raises his eyes and gives me a goofy grin before hitting me mercilessly with a snowball.
No, Ian O’Connor. That’s something you should never do.
66
Ian
“Did you have a good Christmas?” Jamie sits next to me on the bench.
“I don’t think you want to know all the details.”
“Jesus, no! I might be open-minded, but I don’t want all the details about you and my sister.”
I shake my head and stand up to tie my shoes.
“I spoke to her on the phone today.”
“Yeah, and…?”
“She was happy, Ian. So happy I wanted to throw up. I haven’t heard her like that since…no, what am I saying? I’ve never heard her like that, ever.”
I smile at the idea of Riley finally being happy.
“Have you spoken?” Jamie asks cautiously.
“Er, yes. Sometimes we talk, too,” I say, poking fun to take off the dramatic edge.
He looks at me with an eyebrow raised.
“Not exactly,” I say getting serious. “She’s not ready, but she’s promised that she will.”
“Do you believe her?”
“Don’t have much choice.”
“Haven’t you tried to bring it up?”
“I don’t want to force her. I told her I’d wait and give her the time she needs so she can start to trust me. I don’t want to ruin everything.”
“Well, that’s something. She’s not someone to trust people easily.”
“I know. Having her trust means everything to me.”
“I’m begging you, no more bullshit, okay?”
“That’s old news.”
“Yeah, but you’re still the same person.”
“What’s your point, Jamie?”
He holds his hands up, defensively. “Don’t get pissed off. I just wanted to have a little chat.”
“Well, mate, you are starting to piss me off.”
“Well, if it helps, you can kick someone’s arse out there on the field…”
“Not necessary.”
“So, is it serious between you guys?”
“Are you really asking me that? Do you have any idea how much I’ve kept pushed down inside me all these years?”
“I know, man. Better than anyone else, just like I know she was doing the same.”
I close my eyes instinctively.
“Can I ask you a question?”
He shrugs.
“How… How do you do it, Jamie? How can you be the way you are?”
He looks at me seriously for a second and then gives me half a smile.
“You want to know the truth? It’s because of her, mate. She pulled me out of it. She stood by me, she fought for me. She was my strength – and then rugby took care of everything else.”
I don’t know what to say. I don’t see how it’s possible for those guys to still be on their feet. I had the O’Connor family, my brothers. Jamie and Riley only had each other.
“I feel suffocated, Jamie. I wish there was some way to talk about it with her, so that she could just let it all go…”
“I know.”
I sigh in resignation.
“We’re in the same boat: let’s try not to drown her.”
“Hey dickhead,” Nick interrupts our discussion. “You haven’t had too much turkey, have you?”
“Who the hell let you in here? Don’t you know this is a reserved area? The team meets up in here.”
He shrugs with his usual devil-may-care attitude.
“There are no locked doors in my world.”
Self-absorbed bastard.
“I just came to tell you that we’re all here. Me, the arsehole and Riley.”
Just hearing her name, my stomach does a few somersaults.
“They’re waiting for me in the bleachers. Mum and Dad stayed home. They’re a bit tired out after Christmas.”
“Not hard to believe, with you two hanging around.”
“Speaking of that, I wanted to let you know I might have found a place.”
“It was about time.”
“Nothing fancy, just an apartment in Northwood.”
“In Northwood?” I look at him, narrowing my eyes.
“Yeah,” he says a bit uncomfortable. “I wanted to stick around close to home.”
“Seems like a good idea.”
He nods with a serious expression.
“Your being around is important. I can’t make miracles, but if we all do our part, it’ll make a difference.”
“Hope so,” he says, sighing heavily. “I move in in January but I have to take care of a few things first. I’ll be gone for a few days.”
“What is it, another photo shoot?” I say making fun of him.
“Fuck off, Ian!” he turns and starts to leave.
“Hey, Nick!” I stop him. I dig around in my bag in search of something then turn back to him.
“Could you give this to Riley?” I hand him my keys.
“Oh shit,” Jamie declares. “This is serious.”
“Shut up!” I say scoffing, before turning my attention back to Nick.
“Tell her I’ll be waiting for her. At home.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
67
Riley
Nick drops me off outside Ian’s apartment. After having cheered him on like a rabid fan, I find myself here, holding the keys to his house, ready to leap into the darkness – or, rather, ready to leap into his arms.
I lift the garage door with some difficulty then close it behind me. I take my jacket off and look around with both my heart and my stomach upside-down, feeling very emotional and a bit anxious because he wants me here. He really wants me in his life. He wants me in his family, in the stands and in his bed. He wants me in his past and his present and I want to be all of his future.
I didn’t think I’d really be able to do it, to feel emotions without the past influencing my every breath. I still don’t really feel like myself, but I feel like I am able to build something new and healthy. I know I’m still in pieces, as if I’ve been run over by a lorry, leaving my body a shell full of dust, but I’m still here.
I’m broken, but still in one piece.
I imagine it’ll take Ian a while to get home so I decide to make myself a cup of coffee and maybe read the online show timetable to see what’s planned for the New Year. We’ve also got a new show coming up, something important, and I want to check out our competition.
I grab my coffee and wander about the house looking for a computer - I think I saw one in Ian’s
room a few nights ago. I walk around the bed and find it on the desk. I sit down on the stool and open it up. I turn it on, and after a few seconds the screen saver appears. As I’m about to press the button for the internet my eyes fall onto a file on the desktop.
‘Fucking Bastard’ is its name.
I bite my lip and drum my fingers nervously on the table. I know I shouldn’t open it, that it would be an invasion of his privacy, but something pushes me to do it.
I click on it with my fingers shaking and the folder opens.
My heart beats wildly and my throat is so parched that I can’t get down even a sip of my coffee, but my fingers and my eyes move of their own accord, spurred on by a sensation stemming directly from my stomach.
Fucking Bastard. It thunders in my head, strong, so strong it could fracture my skull. I look over the content frantically, every sentence that I read showing me that this is exactly what I think it is.
Photos, information, research.
My life.
My entire life in a folder on Ian’s computer, and now flashing in my face.
But it’s not seeing my past before me that hurts. It’s not reliving the emotions again, like this, and all in one place.
The garage door closing makes me jump up, but I don’t turn around. I hear him coming towards me. Heavy steps, suffering steps.
Guilty steps.
“Please, let me explain.”
I shake my head, overwhelmed.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
I get up, knocking over the stool as Ian reaches his hand out to me.
“Don’t come near me!”
“Just let me speak, okay?”
“Tell me how long you’ve known.”
“Don’t be like this, Riley.”
“When you slept with me…” I say, shaking.
Ian is frozen, not moving.
“You knew it then, didn’t you?”
His jaw clenches.
“My God,” I bring a hand to my mouth. “You pitied me.”
“What? No!”
“You slept with me because you pitied me.”
“No!”
“Don’t lie to me!” I say pointing my finger at him.
“I swear to you, Riley.”
“Now I understand everything.” I let my head fall into my hands. “Your rejection a year ago and your sudden interest now.”
“Fuck, no!”
“What were you trying to do, put me back together?”
“My God, Riley…”
“Maybe my brother convinced you. Maybe you guys are in on this together.”
“You’re upset, you’re not thinking this through…you’re making a mistake.”
“I don’t believe you! I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth! How…how could I have trusted you?! All that bullshit, all those words. It was all a load of crap, all of it!”
“You can’t really believe that, Riley.”
“I don’t believe anything,” I say in resignation. “Starting today, you’re back to being that fucking bastard, Ian O’Connor. The only one there is.”
68
Ian
I’m frozen in place, my hands knotted into fists, short of breath and wanting to bang my head against the wall until it splits in two.
“Riley,” I say, moving close to her as she takes two steps backwards.
She crosses her arms and hides, like she always has. We’re back to square one.
“How many other things have you lied to me about?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Well, why don’t you explain it to me then?”
I try to grab her arm but I stop the moment I realise that Riley has already decided. She’s already issued the sentence and all I can do now is ask how much time is left before she puts the key in the door and walks out on me.
By this point, there’s no sense in lying about it. Riley’s feet are already out of the house. Out of my life.
“I’ve known for weeks.”
She is silent.
I hear her breath, her confusion and her guilt, but I don’t feel her heart.
“Jamie spoke to me about it. He was worried about you, he told me you’ve never faced it, that you’ve refused therapy, that you keep pretending it didn’t happen.”
“He was in on it, then.”
“No, he has nothing to do with it. He thought he was helping you.”
“Yeah sure, making you pity me!”
“Stop saying that.”
“And Jamie’s little chat with you wasn’t enough for you? You wanted all the gory details?”
“Please, don’t be like this…”
“Those photos,” she says pointing at the computer.
The photos of her face after the assault.
“They’re the hardest to bear. I can’t imagine what you went through,” I say, before choking on my own tears.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “You don’t know, Ian O’Connor. You don’t know what it means to live in fear. You don’t know what it means to not sleep at night just to make sure you and your brother make it to the next morning. You don’t know what it means to pretend that everything is fine, that all that shit will go away some day to calm your little brother, who is scared to death just hearing the sound of his father’s voice. You don’t know what it means to hide in your own house.”
“Not like this, Riley,” I beg her.
“What is it? You wanted to know it all but you don’t want me to be the one to tell you?”
“I don’t want you to do it right now. You’re upset, you’re—”
“I’m perfectly fine.” She lifts her head. “I always have been, or Jamie and I wouldn’t be here right now.”
She’s doing it again. She’s building a wall between us. Between her and the world, between her and her feelings.
“Jamie was so…” she sighs. “Jamie is wonderful, he always has been. A good boy, kind, sensitive. Jamie is the only reason for me to live. And I would have done anything for him. My dad had a lot of problems, but his biggest one was his son.”
I rest my hand on the counter to help prop me up because I can’t do this. I’m falling apart as she stands before me, showing me the strength, once again, that I’ll never have.
“Our mother left. Another man,” she shakes her head. “She abandoned her children without looking back. Jamie was three years old,” she says, controlling her rage. “She left us with him. Maybe she had no idea what would have happened or maybe she did: it’s not something I think about,” she says bitterly.
“Our father didn’t take it well. He had a bad temper – always did – but this pushed him over the edge, and day by day it got worse. He was an unreasonable hothead, was prone to fits of rage that put the fear of God in us,” she says inhaling deeply.
“Never ever a kind word, no affection or hugs. Just indifference. But Jamie and I were able to get by – he was my world and I could have gone my whole life like that just to watch him grow up. But he was insecure, fragile… He was just a kid that needed to find his path, while my father wanted to raise a tough guy just like him. A bastard. He started taking out all his rage on my brother when he was just eleven years old. Beating him, a lot…” she says, barely keeping it together. “I tried to protect him, to redirect his anger at me, to get in the middle. Sometimes it worked, and Jamie would escape and lock himself in his room as my father took it out on me, and other times…” she says shaking, but stays standing. “According to our father, Jamie was a kid who needed to be shown the right way to grow up. But Jamie was perfect – my dad was the only problem.”
“That’s enough, Riley, please. None of this is useful now.”
“I need to!” she yells, on the edge of the abyss.
I lean over the counter, taking my head in my hands. I was the one who provoked her and set the timer. All I can do now is to sit back and wait for the explosion.
“Jamie cried every night. And if he heard…”
she brings her hand to her mouth. “So, I brought him to my room, I pushed the dresser in front of the door and then I held him and kept him safe until he fell asleep. I told him all kinds of stories about how his life would be, about what we’d do when we were finally free, all the wonderful things that would happen to us. I promised him every day that I would take him away from there, and that he’d have the future he deserved. We just had to hang tight a little while longer until I could take care of him. We learned how to hide our bruises, the visible ones as well as the ones only we could see and feel. We learned to pretend, to how keep going, to stay on our feet even if we didn’t have the energy. We learned how to survive,” she says proudly.
“That damn day, my father saw Jamie leaving a locak coffee shop. He was holding a boy’s hand. His fury was uncontrollable.”
“That’s enough,” I try to take her hand, but she wants nothing to do with me.
“God, Ian…I could hear the bones crushing under his fists,” she says with tears in her eyes; but they don’t fall. “I couldn’t see anymore, I put myself in the middle and his rage fell on me. I yelled for Jamie to run away, to call for help and I don’t remember anything else after that, apart from the pain. I woke up in the hospital two days later. They told me that my father pushed me down the stairs and that I landed on the bottom step. I had a broken arm, bruises, and this,” she says, raising her shirt to show me her scar. “An internal hemorrhage. I was saved by a miracle. They took out my spleen.”
Right now, the only thing I want to do is hug her but she won’t let me near her.
“The worst part of it was that it was the week before my eighteenth birthday and I could have left without looking back. I had left school, I had already been working for two years and I had a second job my dad didn’t know about. I was saving my money just to escape, but things didn’t go to plan,” she comments bitterly.
“The first time my dad hit Jamie, I tried to call for help. They came to our house and asked my dad all sorts of questions and my father went insane. He hit both of us, he threatened us and locked us in the basement for three days. All it did was make things worse, and no one helped us. So, we tried to stick it out until we could finally leave. You probably think I was stupid, that I should have insisted and asked for help again…”