by S. Celi
And as I walked the steps to my room once more, I wondered if I could ever be in the same room as her again.
“YOU CAN’T AVOID me, Spencer,” Avery said a few hours later.
She stood right next to my poolside lounge chair in tennis whites drenched in sweat, and she squinted from the afternoon sun. After a quick look her way, I had turned back to page fifty-six in Dad’s binder and the list of rental properties owned by the company, each one described in excruciating detail. Somehow, I’d managed to memorize most of it; studying had always been something that came so naturally to me.
Maybe, if I focused on the list and the rest of the information in the binder, I wouldn’t get hard from Avery’s smell again. Or from the memory of the night before that threatened to blur my thoughts.
Maybe.
“Did you hear me?” she said when I didn’t answer her. “Spencer? Come on, talk to me.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk, Avery.”
Eyes on the binder. That was what I needed to do. That was how I could stop the war between my head and my dick. Eyes on the binder and not on her. The binder.
Avery sat on the lounge chair next to mine and put her hand on my knee. “I want to talk. I need to. We need to.”
“No, we don’t.” But as I said it, I slammed the binder shut, recoiled from her warm touch, and leaned back in the chair.
“Come on,” she said, taking that as an invitation for discussion. “Last night was—”
“Was what?” I adjusted myself so that her hand fell off my knee. There. Better. Much better. We needed space from each other, though all I wanted was another chance to be inside her. I needed to remember, though, that life didn’t always give me what I wanted, and it wouldn’t be starting now.
My life didn’t work that way and the current mess I had made of it proved it.
Avery looked over her shoulder as if she wanted to make sure no one heard what she said next. “Last night was great.”
“Of course it was great. You got a new car. Taken it out for a test drive yet?”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She hesitated. “I’m talking about what happened after. It was unforgettable.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
Sounding flippant seemed like a good option that that point. If I acted like it hadn’t been that huge of a deal, maybe it wouldn’t be. Maybe we could reverse this. Maybe I could stem the fury of this coming tidal wave. Everything changed the morning after sex, anyway. Why did that have to be any different with her?
“Well?” A beat passed. “Did you like it?”
“Last night was a lot of things, Avery.” I sighed, because the hopefulness I heard in her voice tugged at my heart. We’d tangled with something dangerous for sure. Something I didn’t know if I could re-tame. “A lot of things.”
She studied me. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Me either.”
A slow grin pulled at one side of her lips. “And I keep trying to figure out when we can do it again.”
“Again?” I rubbed my hand back and forth across my mouth. Again. Again. Absolutely not. Right then and there, I made a major decision. “Listen, Avery. We have to talk about this.”
“Talk about it? What is there to talk about? Things are pretty clear.”
I stared at her, unsure of what to say.
“What?” She leaned closer and from the expression on her face, I knew I had her rapt attention. Wide eyes. Half-open mouth. Slow, shallow breathing. I had to be careful with what I said next.
“That can’t ever happen again,” I said. “Ever.” I allowed myself to turn to her. “Look, I’ve been thinking about it, going over it again and again in my mind. Avery, that has to just be a one-night thing. The past. That’s it.”
“What do you mean, that’s it?”
“I mean exactly what I just said.”
“But that can’t be it. It can’t be.”
“Yes, it can.” I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. “And it has to be. It must be. That’s the way this has to work, okay?”
About twenty-five yards away from us, two landscapers began trimming the bushes that lined the backside of the house. Their shears clicked and clacked, growing closer by the second. Soon, their work would bring them around to the pool and a long array of prefect hedges shaped like diamonds, circles, and squares. This conversation had to end before they got to our area.
Or they might hear everything. They might know everything. And we couldn’t have that.
“Spencer, I don’t understand why we can’t.”
“One night. Never again.”
“But I don’t want just one night.” She looked away from me, and her voice broke some. “That’s not fair.”
“Well, life isn’t fair.”
No matter what, I had convince her. She had to understand me and go along with this. If it didn’t work, if we kept going down this road, it would ruin us. I knew that. She had to realize that, too. Had to.
“This goes against everything acceptable,” I said. “Whatever this is—it won’t work. It would ruin my chances to work in the family business. Destroy our parents. Break up our family. This would have ramifications for years.”
“I know that, Spencer.” She swiped at her face with the back of her left palm, her head still turned and her focus somewhere off in the distance on the wide lawn that opened out from the pool and led to the tree-line that divided Chadwick Gardens from the neighboring estate. “I know that better than anyone.”
“I know you do, Avery.”
“We have to stop now. Right now. This is for the best.” I lifted my hand and considered touching her knee, but as soon as it went up, I put it on the armrest of the lounge chair again. If I touched her, I would never stop. And then, everyone would find out about us.
Us. What an off-the-wall idea. Us. Too bad it could never happen.
Fate could be such a bitch.
“You have Mitchell,” I said after she rubbed her eyes again with the back of her hand. He wasn’t a great option for her, but I said it anyway. Anything to make this work. Anything to stop this before it got further out of hand. “Right? He likes you. A lot. I saw the way he looked at you last night. Why don’t you go date him? I’m sure you’ll be happier.”
“He’s an asshole.” Sadness strangled her voice. “Drinks too much. You know that.”
“I drink too much, too.”
She sniffed. “Maybe that’s why I liked him for a while. Or why I tried to make myself like him, because he reminded me of you, and you’re the person I want to be with. Even the raging alcoholic side of you.”
I laughed before I could stop myself. What a crazy thing to think, and a more insane thing to say. Normal people didn’t consider heavy drinking a desirable trait and I knew she didn’t, either. She just wanted to find some way to make her argument stronger. She wanted to hang onto something that would never work out, something a rational mind knew had doom written all over it.
“He’s rich. Good family. Smart. Preppy.” I tried to remember traits I knew about Mitchell, but I didn’t know any that mattered. “And you know Dad and Linda like him. He’ll fit right in to your life.”
“He’s just like all the other guys I know at UC, and all the other guys I’ve grown up with. Rich. Entitled. Assholes.” She shrugged. “And I’m sick of that. So sick of it.”
“Dad says I think I’m entitled,” I said.
“He doesn’t see the real you. He only sees the DUI and the accident. He doesn’t know what I know.”
“You can’t have me, Avery. It isn’t right. Think about it. You know this.”
“Well, I don’t want Mitchell, either.”
“Give him a try.”
“Aren’t you listening to me? I don’t like him. Not anymore.”
“You might like him again.” As bitter as these words tasted, I had to get them out. The gardeners had already pruned four bushes since I’d noticed them, and we didn’t have much time before
they’d be in range. I had to convince her. And worst of all, I had to convince myself. “He’s not the worst 21-year-old guy I’ve ever met.”
She turned back to me, and even with the sunlight, I saw the tears that threatened to slide down her face. “He’s not you.”
“Don’t do this, okay? Don’t go somewhere we can’t go.”
She looked at the concrete pool deck. “We already did, Brother.”
“Stepbrother,” I said. “But you’re right.”
“Right about what?”
“Don’t you understand? You’re my sister. I’m your brother. This isn’t okay. People won’t understand.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I don’t care if people don’t understand.”
“It’ll matter more than you think, AJ. We’re family.” Every second that she didn’t accept this made me grow more desperate. “You don’t have sex with your family. Everyone knows that.”
She pulled her gaze to mine and tilted her head as if studying me, or thinking of a way to make a better argument. “I know that. Family’s off-limits.” She bit her lip. “But being with you isn’t like being with family. It isn’t.”
“Except it is.” I held up my hand and glanced over at the gardeners. They worked so close to us by then that I could make out what they said to each other. Another minute or so, and they’d start trimming the hedges along the pool deck, well within earshot of us. Time to close this discussion. “I’m serious, Avery. One night. That’s all. It’s in the past, and it’s over.”
“And you mean that?”
I nodded.
“No turning back?”
Another nod from me.
“Like it never happened.”
“Yes. Like it never happened. Promise me,” I said. “You’ll be happier without me. Promise me you understand.”
She shook her head.
“Avery. Promise me.” Our eyes locked in a stalemate neither of us wanted to break, as if we both knew the pain leaving would cause the other. “Avery.”
“I promise,” she whispered.
“Okay,” I said, but this was a hollow, empty victory. After this conversation, we’d both lose something, and I knew it. “Good.”
“Good morning, Mr. Chadwick, Miss Jackson,” one of the gardeners called, tipping his baseball cap. I gave a curt nod, and Avery’s normally brilliant smile was a ghost of its usual self
“Back to work.” I fumbled around for the black binder of doom.
“I need to take a shower,” she said, and stood from the lounge chair. “Goodbye, Spencer.”
“Goodbye, Avery.”
I couldn’t be certain that she’d heard me, though, because by the time I said the words, she’d already started to walk away from our spot on the pool deck and head back to the house. I watched her ass get smaller and smaller.
And I wondered if something inside of me had just died.
DAYS PASSED. MOMENTS slipped away. Pieces of time ticked by on my watch, never to come back again. I told myself that Avery did a decent job of moving on, and that I did a decent job of watching her do it, but it didn’t help much. Soon, the slow torture began once more, only this time it had a charge.
An angry charge.
Once she walked away from me that day at the pool, she ignored me in ways she never had before. She’d walk into a room, see me there, and walk out again. A few times she came into the kitchen to get food and spoke to Henry, but never said one word to me. At family dinners she only shot me stony, angry stares, and never smiled at me the way she had in the past. She talked around me to Dad and Linda, and pretended I didn’t breathe. Worst of all, she pranced around the house in short sundresses, with perfect makeup on, and hair that never had one strand out of place.
I wondered half a dozen times if she did that just to remind me of what I’d given up in the name of preserving the family.
In retaliation, I passed the days studying the binder out by the pool, acting more focused on my future, and talking with Dad when he came home about what aspects of Chadwick Properties and Construction needed me the most. I highlighted my skills and did my best to make him see what an asset I could be to the company he loved.
In some ways, it worked.
After about a week, Dad brought me to the offices on 5th street in downtown Cincinnati to talk with his employees in person. While there, he showed me around, and told everyone I’d join the company on Monday, August 4th, in a position yet to be determined. That afternoon, he said he’d give me one of the unused offices instead of a cubicle like everyone else whom started at CPC.
“You seem very focused, son,” Dad said as he got out of his Porsche SUV when we pulled up at Chadwick Gardens around 6PM that night. He grabbed his briefcase from the back seat and tossed a waiting Henry the keys. I followed him along the gravel path to the front door. “I like this. Maybe the Peace Corps did rub off on you.”
“I hope so.”
“Life skills. Responsibility. That’s what I wanted you to learn.”
“I’m ready to be a part of the company, Dad.”
“Son,” he said. “The more I think about it, the more I think you’re ready to prove it.”
Dad pushed open the heavy front door to the house, and as he did my mind flickered to the illicit kiss I’d shared with Avery on the front steps I stood on now. A small shudder crept up my spine. Ten days had passed, but it might as well have been ten minutes. I still thought I could taste her lips on my mine.
“You okay, Spencer?” Dad waited for me inside the door, and he frowned. “Something wrong? You stopped walking.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I shook my head a couple of times and walked inside the house. “It’s nothing.”
“He’s fine.”
Avery’s voice floated from the top of the stairs and I glanced in time to see her walk the steps in a black sundress with red rickrack around the halter neckline. Mitchell followed behind her, and I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes or grunting in disgust. He still had a stupid, goofy grin on his face. Bad call on my part. I shouldn’t have pushed her onto him; I really shouldn’t have suggested it. There had to have been someone better than him at the party, or someone better that she just knew in her regular life.
“Did you two have a nice day at the office?” Avery asked when she got to the bottom step. She said it to both of us, but she didn’t look at me at all. No, no matter how many times she’d ignore me, I still hoped each time that she wouldn’t.
“Sure did, honey. Great day at the office. Lots of changes.” Dad placed his briefcase next to the long bench beneath the twisting staircase. Since he didn’t look at Avery, I doubt he noticed the way she looked at me. She had some kind of bizarre twinkle in her eye, as if she enjoyed whatever torture she could inflict on me.
“Good,” Avery said. “It’s about time Spencer became responsible. About time he did something in the name of the family.”
“That’s right,” Dad said. “Just what I’ve been saying all along.”
“And you’re always so right,” Avery said, and a sarcastic grin tugged on the edge of her lips.
Damn, I hated when people talked about me right in front of me. She wanted to play a game with me, she wanted to see me flinch in her presence, and she wanted to know she still had some kind of control over me. I didn’t want to give her that, and she didn’t need to know just how far the pain of giving her up went.
Not yet.
“You two going out tonight?”
Dad shoved his hands in his pockets and gave Mitchell one of his iciest stares. I followed that with one of my own. Wasn’t too hard to do. Whenever that guy showed, something inside me wanted to punch him, anyway.
Avery shrugged. “Just a birthday party for one of the girls from Summit.”
“Where is it?” Dad asked.
“Down at the Banks.” Her eyebrows knitted together. “They rented one of the private rooms at some restaurant.”
“How late are you going to be out?”
; Avery shrugged again.
“Not too late.” Dad nodded at Mitchell, who still stood on the final step of the staircase with his hand wrapped around the railing. “Midnight.”
“Midnight.” She laughed. “What is this? Some kind of curfew? I’m not a kid anymore. I’m 22 years old, for Christ’s sake.”
“No drinking.” I said.
Avery laughed again, interrupting me. “Wow, if I’d known he was going to get such royal and avid attention, I would have brought Mitchell here sooner.” She gestured to him and made a move toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He nodded and stepped off the final step of the staircase. “Nice meeting you, Mr. Chadwick. Again. Nice meeting you again.”
“Good night, Mitchell. Nice to see you, too.”
I waited for the front door to shut before I said anything. “He’s an idiot, Dad. That guy is a total idiot.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
Then I walked toward the entrance of the den. Distraction. I needed a distraction. Maybe TV would work. Or Internet porn. Or Facebook. Something. I called one more thought over my shoulder before I disappeared into the den. “He’s going to screw it up with her.”
PREDICTABLE.
Guys like Mitchell were predictable. They did stupid shit around girls and made rookie mistakes. Too much time thinking about sex and not acting on sex. Too much time worrying, and far too many stupid comments. They wanted too much, too soon, and they didn’t know how to handle themselves.
I knew this. I had lived this.
Still, I had pushed Mitchell on Avery anyway, so I had no one to blame but myself. I’d done it because I couldn’t figure out a better answer to the question of whom she should date if she couldn’t be with me. The idea of her with someone else insulted and repulsed me, but at the same time, I knew her being with me didn’t make sense, either. She didn’t deserve a fucked up, bizarre love that defied common sense. She deserved a safe kind of love. And Avery deserved life where she wouldn’t want for anything, where she would have every comfort she would ever want, and where the past wouldn’t ever hurt her again.