by LJ Evans
A guy stood a couple rows up from me, I immediately sensed the familiarity. “Hi, I’m Keith, and I’m an alcoholic,” he started. And then I knew and inwardly groaned.
“Hi Keith, welcome,” was the response.
“I’ve started dating someone,” Keith said.
“That’s good, right?” the leader replied, and I watched as the back of Keith’s head bobbed up and down in the affirmative.
“It is. He’s really good for me.”
“But?”
“I just keep waiting for it to fall apart. I’ve always messed everything up in the past, and… I just don’t want to mess this up too. It’s making me itch,” he answered.
And I knew he didn’t mean anything having to do with his skin. I understood the depth of that itch and how it was likely to overcome everything he was thinking in any given moment as he tried not to scratch it. And while I wasn’t quite there yet, thinking constantly of a way to ease the itch, I was close.
I listened as the people around us tried to reassure Keith that everything was going to be fine if he trusted his boyfriend and if he was honest about what he was feeling, and just got through one day at a time. And, again, I could hear Mac in their voices. Live in the now. Don’t worry about the future. Don’t regret the past. Keep going.
The meeting ended, and I hadn’t spoken. I didn’t really need to. Keith had pretty much said it all. I wasn’t sure how Keith would feel if he knew I’d heard his discussion about his relationship with Locke. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Keith knowing I was there. There was a damn good reason I’d driven up the coast. I definitely wasn’t ready for him to hear my doubts and fears about you. About me. About us.
As I was just deciding to duck out, Keith turned and saw me. We both stared at each other for a moment. I’m sure his brain was running through all the same curse words mine was. Shit timing.
And now I couldn’t go. Because I knew he’d fucking want to talk.
We helped stack the chairs against the wall without acknowledging each other and then walked out into the California sunshine shoulder to shoulder. Summer had hit, but this close to the coast it almost always felt like spring.
“Grab a coffee?” Keith asked. He looked at me with unsure eyes. Needing to talk. Needing some reassurance that I’d keep the AA confidentiality, so I just nodded.
We walked down the street to a diner on the corner and squeezed into a booth. He got a coffee. I got an orange juice. We sat there in silence in our own thoughts for a long time.
“How long?” Keith finally asked once the waitress had disappeared.
“Almost six years,” I replied.
He eyed me. “That’s pretty much since Tennessee.”
It didn’t need a reply, so I didn’t give him one.
“Does it get any easier?” he asked.
That didn’t need a reply either, but I gave him one, “No.”
He sighed and looked down at his coffee.
“It was pretty hard being gay in that town. I think Cam was the only one who made me feel normal,” he said with a tone of confession. I hated confessions. People always wanted one back for every one they gave up.
“I know,” I told him back. Because Cam had made me feel normal even when I hadn’t been.
“I didn’t really realize that I had a problem with alcohol until I came to L.A. I blew through a whole series of one-night stands drunker than a skunk. But, you get denied something for so long, you kinda go crazy when it’s an open bar.”
I just watched as he twirled his coffee cup.
“Last year, I got involved with some pretty messed up stuff. Almost screwed up my job with Dylan, but I guess he’s been in Hollywood long enough to see all kinds of addiction. He got me help.”
“Does Locke know?” I asked wanting to get to the point of the conversation before I was expected to reciprocate.
“Yeah. And he doesn’t seem to care, but…”
I just nodded. I got it. You didn’t seem to care about the fact that I was an addict either. You took it in stride and never let it become an issue, but I also understood the added pressure of not wanting to slip up for more than just yourself.
I didn’t really want to be the one giving advice to Keith. Wasn’t sure he’d even accept it since I was the asshole who’d tried to out him back in Tennessee when he’d just wanted to fit in like all the other cowboy football players. But he didn’t know that, and so I gave the advice anyway.
“My first mentor, he told me to live in the now. Not to think about the ifs. That the ifs will torture you.”
“Does that work for you?”
“Some days more than others.”
“What brought you here today?” Keith asked looking up and staring at me. I looked away, out the window at the ocean that could be seen peeking through the colorful stores on the opposite side of the street. Making me thinking of shades of color and slivers of shattered glass.
Reciprocation bites. “I’ve found the thing I want most in the world, and we’re both a little damaged. I don’t care. I think I can meld us together into something beautiful like the Kintsukuroi. Do you know it?”
He shook his head in the negative.
I brought up an image on my phone and showed it to him. A gorgeous blue glazed ceramic plate that had been fragmented, and a Japanese artist had welded it back together with gold. The piece was breathtaking to me. I’d had the picture on my phone for a long time, but I hadn’t really seen its place in my life until recently. Until you.
Keith whistled quietly.
“They take broken and make it art,” I said quietly. Keith nodded, and I kept going. “But, some people only see something that should be thrown out. They only see the damage.”
“You’re afraid that PJ will just see the broken and not the art.”
I didn’t even respond. Because, you were already seeing all the shattered pieces. And you saw how we meshed together too, but I wasn’t sure if you could see the art of us yet. The beauty that we made together. Or maybe, you just hated the thought of being welded to something more broken than you. Even if the welding was done in gold.
* * *
After we got the invitation to Dylan Waters’ open house, all the doubt and pain and issues in our life seemed to collide and ended up with you getting broken in new ways that still tear at me today. That still makes me hate myself and your brother and your rusty Bug and that shithead. But mostly, myself.
Dylan Waters had finally picked up the waterfall. Locke was ecstatic. You seemed awed and somehow tortured by the number in my bank account. Like you didn’t deserve to be with me because I had that number of zeros behind my name. That was the farthest from the truth. I was the one still struggling to deserve you.
Because I’d been reluctant to sell the waterfall and Locke had communicated that to Dylan, Dylan sent me an invitation to a party he held at his mansion after it was installed inside it as the main attraction. As an A-list director, you were sure that the party would have gorgeous, A-list actors there that you could write about in your blog. You were excited for the first time in a long time, and so I conceded to going when it was something I normally would have slammed the door on without a second thought.
You took me shopping. I bought a tux. You bought that sexy as sin slate-gray dress that shimmered like stardust and clung around you with a slit up the right leg that just made me want to reach inside it and touch you.
The day of the party I was cooking us grilled cheese when Locke called. I asked you to get the phone. It was sitting on my old sketchbook, and when you picked up the phone, you froze. I wasn’t sure why until I saw that my sketchbook was still on the page where I’d drawn a picture of Cam and the gilded cage in what felt like a different lifetime.
I’d flipped to that page that morning because I’d been thinking about the cage again. And I’d been trying to think of ways to recreate it in a different version. A version that fit you. Fit us.
But all you saw was another girl
and the cage that you knew I’d built for her.
After I hung up with Locke, I turned to you at the counter where you wore that shuttered look you were picking up from me. The one I hated.
“Bella.”
“What?”
“Do you want to talk to me about this,” I waved my hand at the sketchbook. Your face was dark and stormy.
“About why my boyfriend, the man I live with, has some other girl drawn on his sketchpad? No, can’t see why I’d give a shit,” you said and turned back to your own phone.
But you had cussed, and you did that mostly when you were pissed, so I knew this wasn’t going to go over easy.
“That’s Cam.”
“I figured.”
“It isn’t a new drawing. It’s old.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to know why I was looking at it.”
“Not particularly.”
“I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at the cage.”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You said the cage was her. Or the bird in the cage. Whatever, I gotta go,” you said as you headed toward the door and picked up your bag.
“What? We’re going to the party.”
“I know, but Justice has to take the baby to the doctor, and he’s asked me to cover his shift for him.”
“Don’t run away from me mad.”
You turned and stared at me. “I just need some space. I’ll meet you at the party.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“No, I won’t be done in time for the pictures you need to take with Dylan. I’ll just meet you there.”
Dylan wanted me before the rest of the crowd so we’d have time to take pictures for the media of me and him and the waterfall. I tried to get you a driver. Hell, I’d even resorted to Uber, but you refused. Said it was stupid when you’d be close enough to take your own useless car. Hank had sent it back to you with the starter replaced. I wanted to do a complete overhaul, you kept the repairs at a minimum to save your bank account. I hope you can see now that that was not the best of decisions. I know. I’m a jerk to bring it up after everything that happened, but I can’t let that lie. You do realize that I will never let you make that kind of decision again?
I know… This is exactly why you’ve left me. I’m a controlling asshole. But. I can’t go through that again, Bella. I just can’t. I wouldn’t survive it.
Regardless, that’s how I ended up at that stupid mansion ahead of you. Knowing you were angry and coming later. Me anxiously waiting for you to show.
I shook Dylan Waters’ hand while they took pictures of us in front of the waterfall. Met the wife who thought she was the second coming of Marilyn Monroe and then made it into the main room where there was enough liquor and food wafting around for it to be an inauguration. I was tempted, as I always am, by the champagne flutes drifting by, and it had been a hard day. Fuck, it been a hard couple weeks. But, I didn’t pick one up.
I found a pillar to lean against near the doorway so that I’d be able to see you when you came in, but that’s when I saw her instead. It surprised me, but it didn’t shock me to the core or have me holding my breath like it had the night I’d met you. I’d been so focused on you for months now that it didn’t seem possible that she could reappear in my life. I didn’t need her to reappear as I’d once needed vodka.
It was Cam. Cam Swayne. And I could see immediately how I’d thought you were her, but I could also see instantly how she didn’t hold a candle to you. You read that right, Bella. SHE WAS NO YOU! She was staring up at the waterfall like I’d thought she was the night that I met you. The peacock at the top matched her blue dress.
I won’t lie to you. I was drawn to her. But not in the way you thought. Not in the way that caused all hell to break loose. I eased up to her much the way I’d eased up to you at the gallery. She was so much taller than you. Even in flats, she easily reached my eyebrows.
“Ms. Swayne,” I said with a smirk.
She looked up at me with surprise in her eyes. The surprise that I’d been looking for all those nights ago. Her gray eyes, when she turned to me, seemed ages older than I knew her to be.
“Seth!” she said, and her face broke into a smile. I didn’t think she’d ever smile at me again. Not after I’d hit her, and she’d landed on the floor. Not even after I’d apologized, and she’d wished me luck.
She reached over and hugged me. Which I didn’t know how to react to. I tensed up. And it was then that I realized there was a baby bump in the middle of us. Her stomach was pulling at the fabric of her blue dress in a way that left no doubt that she was a decent way into the pregnancy. She must have taken my tension as being due to the baby because she pulled away and put a protective hand on the mound. The smile was still on her face, but it didn’t reach her eyes anymore.
“I never thought I’d see this again,” she said with a hand to the waterfall.
“I never thought I’d see you again,” I responded smoothly, and I was surprised to see her flush in a way that reminded me instantly of you and how much more your blush suited you than hers did her.
“Cami Swayne?” Another voice shot out from behind me. And I turned to see Keith approaching in a white coated tux with Locke following behind him in his own tux.
“Keith McMullin! Oh my God, I can’t believe it’s you,” and she was engulfed in another hug, this time by Keith. I watched them carefully. Once upon a time, I would have wanted to kill him for hugging her. For coming anywhere near her.
Locke seemed confused. He didn’t know their history. He barely knew my history with Keith.
“Cam, this is my boyfriend, Locke,” Keith told her with a smile.
“How do you know each other?” Locke asked.
“Because it’s a goddamn Tennessee reunion. All we need now is for Jake to show up,” I slammed out with my normal crap attitude.
Cam look like I’d hit her in the baby bump. A hand reached up and pulled her to a body, but it wasn’t Jake’s. The guy stared at me through shaggy blonde bangs with a look that wished me pinned under a car.
“Jake’s dead asshole,” the shaggy blonde growled.
And I saw Cam’s eyes flash with an enormous pain that she hid with a smile and a grip on this other guy’s arm that was like a life line. And I was hit again in the gut. Jake had died? My heart twisted for her. For Cam. For the loss of the thing she loved most in the world. I hadn’t known. What if I’d known?
Thank God I hadn’t. That’s what I felt. Relief. You know I don’t lie. You know.
“Shit. I’m… Shit.” It was all I could say.
“Still the prick, huh, Seth?” Keith said, but it was with a smile that said he didn’t quite care that I was still a prick.
“Seth. This is the loser who hit you?” The shaggy blonde said, moving her away from me with another hand.
“Jesus, Blake. We were seventeen. And remember, I hit him first,” Cam said with a hand on his arm and her usual smart-aleck smile.
I looked at her hand on his arm, and it was as if I could feel it on my own. Her hand had stopped me from doing many terrible things when we’d been together. It was either her hand on my arm or her mouth kissing me that kept me from pounding one of her many followers into the ground.
“There’s never an excuse to hit a woman,” shaggy Blake said as if he wanted to invite me out back. He reminded me of someone else from Tennessee.
“You’re right,” I said with my own growl but not an apology.
I was still reeling. From the idea of Cam losing Jake. Of losing her soulmate, and it made me think of you. Of what I’d do if I lost you. My heart constricted until it felt like it would wink into nothingness.
It was then, when my heart was completely balled up, that you walked up to me. I hadn’t seen you come in even though I’d been looking for you. Instead, you slid a hand into mine and reached up to kiss my cheek. And when I looked down at you, everything clicked into place. Your beautiful smile, the color on your cheeks that w
as never far away. Your beauty, your fire, your etherealness, it grabbed all the pain and burned it to ash. Cam Swayne could never have even a tenth of the beauty that you held in your tiny little frame. You were a flaming volcano. She was a tiny campfire.
You didn’t realize the emotions I was going through right then, but I clamped you to my side and kissed your forehead, just trying to convey something of what I felt to you.
“PJ,” Locke said with a smile. I didn’t have words yet. I was still catching my breath from seeing you. I know you thought I didn’t want to introduce you. It wasn’t that. I was taken in by just how much my chest had expanded at seeing you.
“Hey Locke, Keith” you said and kissed both their cheeks.
And like always, that was when I wanted to slam anyone’s face into the waterfall, when they were touching you. I hadn’t given one iota when they’d hugged Cam. But them touching you that was enough to make me crave that champagne flute again.
Then, because I was still reeling from everything, you turned to the other two people in our group and introduced yourself.
“Hi, PJ Hensley,” you told them, sticking out your little hand.
“Blake Abbott and this is my fiancé, Cam Swayne,” Blake responded.
You shook their hands, but you got a look on your face as you took in Cam that made me nervous. I could almost see you retreating into yourself, the protective barriers of sass and attitude coming down over you.
“What are you doing here in L.A., Keith?” Cam asked, trying to ease past the sudden quiet that had descended on us.
“I work for Dylan’s production company,” Keith said nonchalantly. “That’s how I met Locke here. Was helping Dylan buy Seth’s waterfall through Locke’s gallery. I had no idea it was the same asshole from all those years ago in Tennessee until Locke showed me his picture. What are you doing here?”
“Blake is Derek Waters’ lawyer,” Cam said with a wave in the direction of the stage where a band was setting up and a dark-haired singer who was tuning his guitar.