Now or Never

by Victoria Denault

  “I begged for your forgiveness. I quit my job so I wouldn’t even work with her anymore. I let you move to San Francisco without me. I put up with all your tears and mood swings and—”

  “Let me move? Put up with me?” All the guilt I was feeling turns to dust and is replaced with the strongest sense of validation I think I’ve ever felt in my life. “When did you become that guy? The one who thinks being in a relationship means you control another person’s actions? That you have the right to give me permission like you’re my parent, not my partner?”

  “That’s not what I meant!” he yells, but it’s exactly what he said. “When did you become the girl who walks away from a decade-long relationship in a fucking airport line?”

  “When my dad died. When my life became too hard. When I decided I couldn’t lie to myself anymore,” I yell back. “I can’t trust you. I want to. I tried to. I can’t.”

  “I told you, she didn’t mean anything. I was lonely. You were spending all your time at your parents’. We were barely seeing each other.” He runs a hand through his light blond hair, causing a big chunk of it to stand up awkwardly. “And then you told me you wanted to go to San Francisco and that we could do long distance. You didn’t ask. You told me!”

  “I don’t have to ask your permission or get your approval on how I deal with my dying father,” I reply heatedly. “You should have been supportive. You should have been understanding.”

  “You should have fucked me,” Ty blurts out and I freeze. “We hadn’t had sex in a month.”

  “So four weeks is your limit?” I ask and every fiber of my being is drowning in sarcasm. “I’m sorry I didn’t see that section in the relationship handbook. I thought that if you’d been with someone for years and you claimed to love them and want to spend your life with them, the grace period for wanting to fuck like a porn star when you just found out your dad was dying a slow horrible death would be longer. My bad. I’ll read the fine print next time. With someone else.”

  I start toward the interior of the cottage. “Go home, Ty. Or go to a hotel. I’m done.”

  I feel his fingers wrap around my arm—tightly. Too tightly. I wince as I spin to face him. He has a look in his eyes that’s a dangerous mix of desperation and frustration and it makes my blood run cold. “You don’t get to end this with a sarcastic rant. You said you’d forgive me and you’d give me a chance.”

  “Let go of my arm,” I say firmly, eerily calm.

  He ignores me. “I’ve had lots of chances to be with someone else since you ran off to California. I could have fucked tons of girls, but I didn’t. I swear to fucking God I didn’t. Even though you’ve been a horrible bitch to me almost the entire time.”

  “Let go of me,” I repeat. “And get the fuck out of here.”

  “No.”

  “I think you mean yes.” The voice comes out of the darkness behind Ty. It’s hard, rough, menacing and I’ve heard it before—repeatedly—when I was a teenager. “Because when a woman wants you to leave, you leave. And you also take your hands off her when she tells you to. Or else guys like me do it for you, and trust me, buddy, you don’t want that.”

  Ty’s fingers slowly loosen and he turns around. I hear the screen door open and I fumble for the switch on the wall, flooding the porch with a creamy yellow light from a bug-deterring bulb in the wall sconce.

  Holden is standing just inside the door, his shoulders back, his fists clenched by his side and his bearded jaw tense. The look in his eyes is hard, unforgiving, dangerous. Ty is not a small guy. He’s six feet and broad, but Holden looks like a bear in front of him protecting his cubs—protecting me.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Ty asks. He looks tough and he sounds harsh, but I know him and I know he’s shocked and probably intimidated by this hulking stranger.

  “I’m her neighbor,” Holden replies and takes one simple but aggressive step forward. “And I heard her tell you to leave. So I am here to find out if you need help with that since, you know, you’re still here.”

  “I’m having a private conversation with my girlfriend,” Ty tells him.

  “Ex-girlfriend,” I mumble and absently rub my arm. I’m dazed, I think. He’s never laid his hands on me—ever. I look at Ty. “I’m sorry you came all this way. I’m sorry it has to be so…messy. But you need to leave. I think we both need to cool off.”

  Ty looks furious and, at the same time, devastated. “Ten fucking years, Winnie, and you can’t let me stay in a guest room?”

  “House is under renos,” Holden says easily. “Winnie shouldn’t even be staying in it. All the extra rooms are filled with crap or covered in dust.”

  Total lie. The entire upstairs, all four bedrooms, are just fine. But I am not about to correct him. Ty turns to him again. “Wow. You know a lot about your neighbors. Are you a fucking stalker or something?”

  Holden chuffs. “I’m the contractor. It’s my renovation project.”

  “Contractor and neighbor?”

  Holden gives him the coldest, darkest smirk I’ve ever seen. It says Fuck you, douchebag better than words ever could. “I’m a lot of things. Most importantly, I’m the guy who isn’t going to leave until you do. And you are leaving. Willingly or not.”

  “Jesus, enough with the threats, asshole,” Ty snaps and turns back to me. “I’m going to find a motel, but I will be back. I deserve more than this from you, Win.”

  He turns and Holden gracefully steps aside as Ty storms out of the house. A few seconds later he’s in his rental speeding down the street. I stare at his taillights until they’re gone, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “Did he hurt you?” Holden asks and reaches up and stills my hand. I didn’t realize I was still rubbing my arm where Ty had gripped it.

  “No. Not really,” I say softly. “I think I’m just in shock. He’s never done that before.”

  Holden stares at me intently. I can see some kind of war being waged behind those spectacular eyes that are more sky blue than silver in the yellow light shining down on us. He sighs and rubs his beard pensively as he breaks the eye contact, looking out toward his trailer. “Look, I know I’m the last person you want to get advice from and, trust me, I’m usually the last one to give it. But any guy who would do that, at any point in a relationship, isn’t a good guy.”

  “I know.”

  He looks at me again. I can tell there’s more he wants to say, but all he responds with is a nod. “Good.”

  Before I can thank him for stepping in and for not pounding Ty into oblivion, which would have only made everything worse, he swings open the screen door and disappears down the stairs, across the lawn and into his trailer.

  I barely sleep all night and the next morning just before seven, I text Ty to see if he’s awake. He is. He’s at a motel a half mile away in Old Orchard Beach. I ask him to meet me at a small diner near there and then I shower quickly, get dressed, throw my wet hair in a bun and head out the door. Holden’s trailer is still dark. The one time I wish he was up early, he’s not. Of course. I really want to see him and thank him. I sigh and walk toward Old Orchard Beach.

  As I open the door to the diner, I see Ty in a booth at the back. He seems far less angry and much more resigned. And exhausted. He looks absolutely spent. I know, as our eyes meet, that he’s accepted this. Finally.

  We spend about an hour holding coffees we don’t drink, talking out everything. The good, the bad and the ugly. He’s still upset. I’m still sorry. But we both know it’s over. A few hours later when we’re ready to leave, it’s started raining lightly. More of a mist really, but Ty offers to drive me home and I really don’t want to walk.

  When he pulls to stop in front of the cottage I start to unclip my seatbelt, but he stops me, placing a gentle hand over mine. I look up at him. “I’m sorry. For yesterday. For everything.”

  “I know. I believe you,” I tell him. “I’m sorry too.”

  “I hope things work out for you,” he says quietly
.

  “I hope they do for you too,” I reply and then, as he lets go of my hand and I release my seatbelt, I reach across the seat and hug him lightly. “Bye, Ty.”

  “If you change your mind…,” he says, but he doesn’t finish the sentence and I don’t reply. I simply get out of the car. I hear him pulling away as I climb the porch stairs. As soon as I open the screen door, I’m shocked to see Holden standing there, staring at me with a scowl on his face.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “You’re with him again?” Holden asks, clearly not happy with it. “After last night?”

  “I was just—”

  He storms by me. “Forget it. I don’t care. You had self-esteem issues when you were a kid and clearly you still do if you think that type of guy is the best you can get. But whatever. Not my business.”

  He marches out the door and stomps down the steps. I walk up to the screen and call through it. “You’re right. It’s not your business! So do your job and leave me alone.”

  He slams his trailer door. I turn, march into the house and slam the front door. Who the hell does he think he is? Yes, I had self-esteem issues when I was a kid. Who doesn’t? I was too tall, too skinny, with bad skin and bad hair. Big deal. Who is he to judge me? Maybe if he hadn’t picked on all my weaknesses, I wouldn’t have had so many self-esteem issues. Fuck that jerk. I could march over there and explain to him I was simply saying good-bye to the only real boyfriend I’ve ever had and that civilized people do that, but he doesn’t deserve to know the truth. He probably wouldn’t understand it anyway.

  I glance through the window toward the trailer.

  Neanderthal. I hope this renovation goes smoothly so I can rid myself of this asshole as soon as possible.

  7

  Holden

  I’ve almost survived thirty-six hours without fighting with Winnie. It’s honestly the closest I’ve come to a miracle in my life. After I watched her hug that asshole who had his hands on her, and told her how stupid I thought she was for taking him back, she has been avoiding me. I’ve barely even seen her. She’s kept herself hidden upstairs while I’ve been in the house, and when she leaves, she walks past me, and the trailer, like we don’t even exist. But today, we’re gonna have to confront each other again. It’s demo day. Walls are coming down. She won’t be able to ignore that.

  I woke up this morning early, and exhausted. I couldn’t sleep most of the night because earlier, as I puttered around the trailer, made dinner and tried to watch some Netflix on my laptop, but I could hear her. Again. Like every other night, she was crying. I could tell she was drunk because when girls drunk-cry it’s way louder than their normal cry. Guys too for that matter, although I’ve only witnessed my father drunk-cry, for weeks after my mom died, and he didn’t know I heard him. I didn’t dare talk about it. Anyway she didn’t cry long, at least not that I could hear, but it stuck with me.

  I lay awake much longer than I should have thinking about whether she was okay, knowing she wasn’t. What had this girl so distraught? I thought, from what I’d seen, she’d worked things out with that boyfriend. But if so, why did he leave? Why hadn’t I seen him again and why was she still here? Was it something else that had her so wounded? If it wasn’t just the boyfriend and it was something else, that just proved this guy is a world-class piece of shit. Because if a girl I loved was this broken up over something, I would be there to help her through it, at all costs. He had left her here.

  As I opened up the storage hatch in the side of my trailer and started to take out my tools, I called my own sister not just to get my mind off Winnie, who I have yet to see this morning, but because I needed to know when I might get my truck back. She answered on the first ring.

  “I was going to call you after work,” she explains without so much as a hello. She sounds defensive so I try to defuse the situation immediately.

  “How did Duke’s hockey tournament end?” I ask. “Thanks again for letting me stay and watch a game.”

  She had been at my nephew’s hockey tournament in Boston when her car died on the way to the arena from the hotel. She had it towed to a garage and called me in a panic that night when she found out it would take a few days to get the part it needed. I know it killed her to have to call me. When I came back to Maine, I reached out to her right away. But just like she said the last time I saw her, when I was sixteen and she was almost eighteen, and she still wanted nothing to do with me. I made a point of running into her a lot this summer because this town was so damn small I knew what places she would frequent. She begrudgingly introduced me to my ten-year-old nephew, Duke, but not as his uncle. She just called me Holden, which stung but it was better than nothing. She stayed aloof and distant—until the call.

  So without hesitation, I drove straight down there and insisted she take my truck until her car was fixed. Duke’s team was in the middle of a game when she met me in the arena parking lot, and she invited me to stay and watch it. They won and Duke even scored. It felt like we made progress that weekend—like maybe we were inching our way back to a family relationship again. But now, she sounds distant and aloof.

  “They lost in the finals,” she explains curtly and I can hear a lot of noise in the background of wherever she is. “Anyway my car is fixed. I just have to pick it up in Boston. We were going to take a bus there after work tonight. I think if I hustle and Duke isn’t late coming home from school, I can get us on the seven o’clock one. You’re in Ocean Pines, which isn’t far from the bus station, so I can drop off your car on my way there and walk from your place.”

  “You can just drive it to the bus station and I’ll pick it up there,” I offer. “If that’ll be easier.”

  “I don’t want to put you out any more than I already have,” Bradie replies.

  “It’s not putting me out and, if you want…” I pause, worried volunteering to do her another favor will piss her off. Everything about me kind of does. “I can swing by tonight and just drive you guys to Boston.”

  “I can’t ask you do that,” she snaps.

  “You’re not asking. I’m offering,” I correct her gently. “I’m working a new job, but I can wrap it up around five and head right over. It’ll be quicker than taking the bus and cheaper. I know the new alternator you had to get isn’t cheap.”

  All I can hear is her breathing. It’s almost labored. Like the debate going on in her head is actually physically taxing. I try to put her at ease. “I’m not asking anything in return, Bradie. I’ll just drop you off and go.”

  “I’m still not telling him who you are,” Bradie replies, her tone serious but also a little heavy with guilt. “His dad disappeared on him. He never had any grandparents and I just don’t want him to get his hopes up on you. Okay?”

  “I know. I have a lot of trust to earn back,” I reply. “I’ll just be your friend Holden who is doing you a favor. That’s it.”

  “Okay,” Bradie relents and I can’t help but smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “I’ll be there at like five thirty,” I tell her. “I’m going to walk there so it’ll take a minute. You’re still on Union right?”

  “Yep,” she says, sounding embarrassed. “The dilapidated white one on the left.”

  “Your brother is a contractor,” I tell her. “You should see if he can do something about that.”

  “Yeah, well right now I just need my car back,” she mutters. “See you tonight.”

  She hangs up. I shove my phone in my pocket and glance up at the Braddock cottage. Everything is quiet and dark. Winnie clearly isn’t up yet. I decide I’ll walk down to Hogan’s, since Cat doesn’t want me at her store, and grab a coffee. If Winnie isn’t up by the time I get back, I’ll have to wake her ass up. I have work to do.

  I think about the Braddocks as I walk east to Hogan’s. I used to watch the Braddock kids with wonder. Jude and his sisters liked to pretend they hated each other, but everyone knew they didn’t. The three girls would go to all his summer games. Even on the
hottest beach day, they’d be in that crappy indoor rink cheering him on…admittedly, it did sometimes sound like heckling. But I remember him getting into a fight once, some kid went after him and dropped his gloves first, and those three were at the glass threatening his life and calling him names that even made me blush.

  My sister and I were nothing like that, even before my mom died. We didn’t fight all that much, but we certainly didn’t support each other. We were just two very different people coexisting in the same house. And then after our mother died, we handled it two completely opposite ways—Bradie withdrew and I lashed out. My dad and I fought every time we were near each other. She would always ignore us and lock herself in her room. She never took my side or defended me, which is what I desperately wanted. So, I started picking the lock and I would take or break her stuff. I hated her for not taking my side, not reacting, not helping me through my grief, but I realize now that I wasn’t helping her either. The day I got busted and went to juvie she told me that she never wanted to see me or hear from me ever again. She was angry I was tearing the family apart even more, which at the time I told her was bullshit because she never acted like she wanted me around in the first place. Anyway, she got her wish for over a decade until this summer.

  Hogan’s is empty, so I get my coffee and am back at the house in less than half an hour. I drink half of it on a bench on the beach, watching the tide come in, but then it’s nine o’clock and I have to start work, especially now that I have to quit at a certain time to get Bradie and Duke. I head back to the cottage, up the front stairs and knock on the door to the porch. No response. So I walk across the porch, and knock on the heavier, oak door. Still nothing, so I open it with the keys Jude gave me. The whole first floor is empty and quiet.

  “Winnie!” I call out, but she doesn’t answer. “I’m starting work now!”

  Still nothing. Maybe she went out while I was off getting coffee? Oh well, fact is I’m here to do a job and I’m going to do it. I head back out to my trailer to grab my tools so I can get started demoing the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, as I’m breaking up the tile, I hear stomping and she appears in the doorway looking rougher than a homeless alley cat. Her ash-blond hair is sticking out every which way, and she’s got makeup smeared around her eyes, which are puffy and red, giving her a distraught raccoon look. “What the fuck, Holden!”