So Screwed

by Melissa Marino

  And he was.

  The moment I opened the door his expression changed from annoyance to real concern, so quickly it even surprised me. In the half hour I waited for him to arrive, I’d prepared myself for everything he was going to throw at me—disappointment, judgment, anger, and all things in between. I was going to take it like the medicine I needed, the thing I deserved, and swallow every single bit of it.

  He stepped inside, and as he unzipped his coat with one hand, he placed the other on my back. “All right. Let’s do this,” he said.

  We went over to the kitchen table and sat opposite each other. I needed to look him in the eyes when I told him everything, so there was no room for him to think it was bullshit. I was coming clean, and in order to do that, I had to get all the dirty, disgusting truth out there for him to see.

  I wasn’t even afraid. I was ready. It was time. Because I knew this, could feel it in my bones, the words fell from my lips with candid ease.

  His expression never changed, not even for a second when I told him that I lied about teaching online classes. Every cent I gave him toward the bar was made through gambling. There wasn’t a shift of any kind in his posture when I told him that I awoke one morning after an all-night poker game with hardly any recollection of what had happened the night before. The night before I had racked up a debt in excess of $400,000. Aaron continued to hold steady as I explained I was given three choices: Pay the debt in the next two days; marry Dafne, who was Benji’s girlfriend, so she could secure a green card; or do neither and put everyone I loved around me in danger.

  Aaron barely took a breath when I said I would give up my life for three years to marry Dafne, to pay off the debt, but more importantly, to keep him and everyone else safe.

  He leaned back against his chair and folded his hands in front of him. “Abel, you have really screwed up good, but it would’ve been a lot easier to work through if you would’ve come to me months ago. I’m not trying to be condescending, but how could you not trust me enough to know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t help you through? That there is anything I wouldn’t do for you?”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t going to put you in that position, Aaron. Benji doesn’t fuck around, and I wasn’t going to put you in danger. It was my problem to deal with, or at least, I thought it was.”

  He rubbed his hand across his jaw, letting the weight of my words sink in. There was a lot there, and I wasn’t sure if he would or could believe me.

  “You think we should just pay him?” Aaron asked.

  The way he said “we” made tears sting my eyes. I didn’t know why I ever doubted him or thought he wouldn’t be exactly where he had always been: right by my side. I didn’t want him to save me, and I didn’t think he was necessarily doing that. He was just doing what he always did—be a brother.

  “I see no way around getting out of it,” I said.

  He slapped his hand on the glass table, shaking the vase sitting in the middle. “Shit, that is a fuck ton of money. I can’t just write a check for that amount and go on my way. I’m going to have to sell off some stock or figure something else out. Hell, Dad is probably going to have to kick in because I don’t know right now if I can swing it all.”

  He was offering before I could even ask. Of course he was because that was what Aaron always did.

  “I didn’t want you to bail me out again,” I said. “You and Dad were finally looking at me like I could do something for real with the bar and shit.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. Have you made some poor decisions over the years? Yes. But you know what? So have I. So has Dad. So has everyone in this world. Okay, so this is a biggie, and we’ll figure it out, but I’ll only do it if you promise me one thing.”

  “Of course, I’ll pay you back. Every single cent. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t because—”

  “It goes without saying. I’m serious as hell, Abel. You’re going to pay in every sense of the word.”

  “And I’m going to get help,” I said. Years ago in college, I chalked it up to me being a screwup. Now? It was something more than that. I didn’t know how to name it, or even recognize it, but it was there. “I wanted to be your equal with the bar. The gambling was a fast way to make money, and it was working well for a time. I might have been fooled, but I never should have been there to begin with. Now, the money is the price I’m going to have to pay, along with probably having already lost Evelyn forever.”

  Aaron gave me a sad, confused look. “Why would you think you ever had to be my equal?”

  “Because I never felt like I was.”

  He shook his head. “What? Because I ran a few successful businesses? That’s bullshit, Abel. You are everything I’m not. You’re fearless and insanely talented. You don’t run away or hide your feelings. Your career path? Your desire to be a teacher? It’s noble, and you choose it because you have the heart to want to give back to kids. Now, if you don’t think that’s amazing, if you don’t think there were times that I hoped I could be more like you, then you have more issues than just a gambling problem.”

  The tears began to fall, and I wasn’t even embarrassed about it. “There is so much shit to sort out I don’t know where to begin, but I know I need help.”

  “There’s no shame in that, Abel. When Callie and I had our shit, I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. I had to see a therapist to figure my own issues out.”

  That surprised me. I always thought he had it figured out. Even if he made a mistake, I thought he knew how to fix it right away. He wasn’t perfect after all, and realizing that eased my conscience slightly.

  I pressed my hand onto the table, fingerprints marking the glass from my sweat as I wiped away tears with my other hand. “I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but I can’t pay anything more for the California bar. I should’ve said ages ago, and I realize the irony of this will be enough to make this whole conversation even more ridiculous, but I got a teaching offer. I got the call two days ago, but it’s been a fucked-up two days. Anyway, it’s for a woman going on maternity leave in March, so I’ll still stay at WET a couple nights. If it goes well, they may offer me something else. I don’t know.”

  “We’ll figure it out, okay,” he said. He rose from his chair and walked over to me. His hand rested on my shoulder. “You’re going to figure it all out.”

  I leveled my eyes to his and spoke straight from my heart, clear and with honesty. “Yes, I will.”

  * * *

  I paced the alley behind the building that housed By Invitation Only. I knew which way she would head when she left and I was a safe distance away. Far enough away to hide, but close enough to catch when I needed to. The temperature was in the teens, but with the windchill, it was almost below zero. The wind whipping around stung my skin, but was no match for the burning anxiety I had waiting for her.

  I saw her immediately, with only one foot into the alley to cross it, before I called to her.

  “Evelyn? Can I talk to you for a second?”

  She leaned back on the heel of one of her black shiny shoes and placed her hands on her hips. “What is it, Abel?”

  “Please. It’ll only take a minute.”

  She tied the belt of her red coat tighter as she headed toward me, the sounds of car horns and my heart echoing in my ears. It had been weeks since I’d seen her, and she was the same as I last remembered. Stunning and cold. The cold part had nothing to do with the weather, either. She was so strong. She was stronger than me because every step she took closer I had to force down the lump in my throat that was forming. The lights above the buildings cast a halo around her, illuminating her hair and the gold strands blowing in the wind.

  She stopped an arm’s length away and cocked her head to the side. “What?”

  I should’ve planned better what I was going to say, but all that came out was, “I’m not getting married.”

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  Her cheeks were bright pink
from the cold wind, and I so wanted to reach out to touch them, to know what they felt like. I’d never touched her face in the cold.

  I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat. “Yeah. I wanted to…tell…you.”

  She shrugged. “And why would I care?”

  “I don’t know. I…I—”

  “What?” she snapped. “It’s cold as shit out here, and you can’t spit out whatever it is you want to say. You came here. You wanted to say something. Say it!”

  “I love you!” I shouted. “I’m not getting married because it was all bullshit and I want the chance to explain it to you if you’ll let me, but I’m in love with you. I love you.”

  Her eyes were wide and her head shook, first slowly, then faster and faster. “No,” she said. “No. You don’t get to say that now.”

  “Why not? I should’ve said it before, but I’m telling you now. I’m so fucking in love with you and that should’ve been enough for me to not fuck up, but I did. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you that I’m working on my book, and I got a teaching offer and how Dafne—”

  She pushed her hands into my chest. “Don’t say her name! Just…don’t do any of this!”

  She spun around and tried to run off, but I caught her arm, forcing her back to me. She needed to believe me. She needed to look into my eyes and see the trust, the thing I’d been hiding from her for months.

  She pulled against my grip until she didn’t. Her body turned, her back to me, and I saw the smallest movement of the shoulders.

  Raised. Lowered.

  Faster.

  Shaking.

  “Evelyn?” I whispered. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” she mumbled. “I’m not okay. I can’t do this, Abel. I can’t see you or hear your voice or anything.”

  Her voice cracked at the end, and I watched as her entire body almost caved in on itself. Sobs, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching cries emerged as she bent at the waist, her arms wrapped around her stomach.

  I knew she didn’t want me to, but I had to. I had to touch her. I had to do something.

  I don’t know how it happened, but one moment I was cautiously approaching, touching her shoulder with the gentlest of touches and the next she was in my arms.

  She hadn’t been so close in so long. Her smell, her smell wasn’t just the perfume. I was never, ever going to be able to re-create it. It was all her.

  Sobs shook her whole body as she gripped the back of my coat in her fists. I let her. I wanted her to make me feel it—the pain I caused her—so I could remember it. I wanted to hear it in her broken cries, her labored breathing. I wanted to taste it in her tears.

  I cradled her face in my hands, wiping away her tears with my thumbs. There were too many for me to keep up with it.

  I did this. I did this to her and it was killing me.

  I wanted to tell her to stop, but I didn’t have that right.

  Her eyes, rimmed red and hued purple underneath, looked at me, tore into me. Desperate. Pleading.

  I brought my damp fingers to my mouth and tasted her tears. Taking what I did to her into my body so I could swallow it whole.

  She yanked my fingers from my mouth and pressed her lips there instead.

  It was all madness.

  It was tongues and biting and groans until I had her up against the brick side of the building, her legs wrapped around my waist. It was cold, but not cold enough to stop.

  It was everything I missed. Everything I wanted. But it was different now.

  She ground into me harder and harder, as I grew harder and harder. Then I made a mistake. I spoke and then it broke.

  “I missed you,” I said between kisses.

  She paused all of her movements and stilled her lips on mine before retreating so very slightly. Then those eyes were back on mine, and all the hurt and anger filled right back in before me, replacing where the tears had been flowing.

  With our lips only inches apart I couldn’t brace myself fast enough.

  “What are you trying to do, Abel? Do you want to fuck me to try and forget about her?”

  I was naive and so fucking stupid. I carefully lowered her to the ground, and the moment her foot met the pavement, she ran.

  Away.

  Again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  EVELYN—

  Two things grew from betrayal—pain and confusion. Both were like currents that had me drifting calmly for days on end until a sharp shift would propel me off toward one. I’d tried to hold tight to one, but the waves would be too strong and my body would crash into another. Pain and confusion were often equal parts of the sea, but the elements of rational and irrational measured the same. I found validation in both because they rose through me together. However, I wasn’t drowning anymore. The truth gave me peace, a sliver of hope, but it wasn’t enough to keep me from going under at times.

  It was much like the March weather. Rainy dark days that rolled in violent storms biting at the skin with icy edges left over from winter. I’d watch the waves crash up against the barricades when I ran along the lake. It seemed like the sky didn’t reveal the sun for days on end, but the days when the gray parted, only for a moment, the sun was still there.

  I hadn’t seen him or talked to him since I left him in the alley almost two months ago. Up until that day, I thought the hardest thing I’d ever done was leave him to go to Charleston. No. The hardest was turning my back, knowing he was free and clear, and walking away from him again. It would’ve been so easy, so seamless, to erase all that had happened, and slip right back until us. But the brain and the heart didn’t work like that.

  And I wondered about him endlessly. How he was doing. What he was doing. Callie and Aaron never said, and I never asked. The wounds were still so raw, and I hadn’t been ready to throw salt into them. Maybe it was time or maybe it was two mimosas in me at brunch one Saturday morning at Flo’s with Callie that made me ask.

  I sliced into another area of my Fruity Pebbles French Toast, taking a piece to dip into the zabaglione cream. “How is he?” I asked without looking up from my plate.

  Callie stopped mid-bite into her Cocoa Pebbles French Toast. “Who?”

  “Voldemort,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Who do you think?”

  “Well, we shouldn’t be discussing either of them, but if you really want to know, I’m not going to keep anything from you.” She took a sip of her Bellini, taking longer to respond than I’d expected her to. “He’s good.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “That’s it? Come on, Cal. You said you weren’t going to keep anything from me.”

  She tilted her head to the side and frowned. “Why do you want to know?”

  I pressed my fork into the cereal crumbs and again looked to my plate, not her. “I don’t know.”

  “I think we’ll need to make a deal if I tell you anything, okay?”

  “What kind of deal?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “You always have crazy conditions.”

  “Nope. No conditions. Well, that’s not exactly true. There’s one. I don’t want you to get upset.”

  And there it was. Something was going on that I didn’t know about. My mind began running into a million different directions. Did he change his mind and go back to her? Did he regret saying he loved me?

  “Wipe the pout off your face,” she demanded. “I haven’t said anything yet and you’re already sad.”

  “When you say you don’t want me to get upset what am I supposed to think?”

  She sighed and tossed her napkin on top of her plate. “This is all so screwed up and again I feel like I’m in the middle.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that, Cal. I know you and Aaron have been through a lot with this and—”

  “Do you?” she asked. Her voice raised in the way I knew meant she was upset. “I don’t think you know. Aaron and I argued so much over the whole thing. There were hurt feelings between us. We’ve worked really hard to not let untrut
hs come between us. So, I don’t think either you or Abel know what Aaron and I went through.”

  She was right. I didn’t. And even though I’d witnessed how upset they both were the night of their Christmas party, I’d never apologized for probably ruining it.

  I slid my hand across the table and put it on top of hers. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been too wrapped up in my own shit to even ask. I mean, I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind over the last few months that you and Aaron both warned me it was a bad idea to get involved with Abel. I should’ve listened.”

  “We both told Abel the same about you. It wasn’t that we didn’t think you were good enough or whatever, but we knew if things didn’t go well it would create such a mess. Like, my best friend hasn’t been over to my house since the night she stormed out in tears. And my boyfriend’s brother never comes around, either. He won’t even go to his parents’ for family dinner with us. So, what I’m saying is, I didn’t want you to apologize. I wanted you to know Aaron and I miss you. We miss Abel. You two don’t have to be together, but you can’t stay away from us forever.”

  “It wasn’t going to be forever, but you’ve been there. I wasn’t ready.”

  “I know and that’s why I waited until you brought it up first. Like, we’re planning this amazing springtime Alice in Wonderland party for Delilah’s seventh birthday. She asks about you all the time, and I know she’ll be heartbroken if you both weren’t there.”

  “Wow. You’re bringing out the big guns with that kind of guilt.”

  “It’s not supposed to be, but I don’t know.”

  We were both quiet, sipping at our drinks and looking out windows. My hand retreated. There were so many people out for an early Saturday afternoon walk. It always got that way when the weather began to shift. The cold kept us inside all winter and at the first break, even if it meant only a little, we ran with it. It wasn’t even unusual to me to see a man pass by in shorts and flip-flops, walking a big black Labrador.

  “How is he?” I asked, still gazing out the window.