by Cora Brent
Spence had commented on the ghosts here, my ghosts in particular. My brother is perceptive. Or perhaps I just wear my heart on my sleeve. Oscar stays inside my head whether I want him there or not.
I need some air, even if it’s satanically hot air. There’s a knotty wooden bench on the shallow front porch and once I’m outside I plop down onto it uncomfortably. I know I’m being watched.
The chickens run loose all over the yard. I picture unseen predators nearby, waiting for the cover of darkness as the brainless birds bob their heads and peck at the dirt. Suddenly a few of them squawk and some feathers fly loose.
A rather shabby pickup truck rolls into the yard and comes to an abrupt halt twenty feet away. I’m not especially interested in who’s in there. It’s probably someone from the crew, or maybe Monty. The door opens and a man emerges. He’s broad-shouldered and well built; tall, with a shock of black hair. For a moment I don’t feel a shred of recognition. Then a buzzing begins at the base of my skull and zooms through my entire body.
“Holy shit,” says a voice I recognize as mine. Somehow I’m standing even though I can’t feel my feet. I can’t feel anything.
He’s nothing but casual as he steps from the far side of the truck. He sees me but doesn’t seem surprised.
I, on the other hand, am quite surprised. Even though I’ve fantasized about this meeting six thousand times I’m still stunned. I shouldn’t have been.
“Loren,” he says and his voice cuts me in half. He knows it. His grin is as devastating as it ever was. I can see in an instant that he’s both different and the same. His mouth still tilts into a mocking smile automatically.
But there’s a wide chasm of time between us. Somewhere in that deep gulf we went from being soul mates to being strangers. I know nothing about the way this man’s body would feel under my hands. Whatever agonies he endured after the terrible night he left, the night I coldly ordered him to leave, belong to him alone.
“Oscar,” I whisper. I notice the way he stops walking, and the way his face freezes. Maybe he has an entirely new identity and the sound of the old one is unpleasant. Or maybe he’s hardened by the sound of my voice. It’s probably easy for him to hate me. This could be the start of some elaborate revenge. Obviously it’s no coincidence that he’s here now. While I’ve been wondering how I’m going to make cleaning horseshit look interesting for two months, Gary Vogel, knowing more than he ever hinted at, was scheming behind the scenes, ready to drop a bombshell. The only demand I’d ever uttered was ‘No Lita’. I should have figured out what else was up for grabs.
“I go by Oz now,” he says, rather tersely.
The cameras are here, ingesting every second. I have to say something. I have to do something. I have to not fall to my knees or run into his arms. Especially because he’s done nothing to invite me there.
“Welcome home,” I finally manage to say and it sounds strange to me because this was never home, not really. It’s just a place. That’s all it ever was. It only matters because of the things that happened here.
Oscar Savage stares at me from ten feet away. He looks me over shrewdly and I wonder if he sees more than a pathetic woman who has signed her private life away.
“Are you staying?” I ask him, clasping my hands behind my back to keep them from trembling.
“I am,” he answers and there’s an edge to the words, like he’s daring me to argue, which I don’t plan on doing. He watches me, all six foot two inches of bristling, resolute maleness.
I couldn’t move him if I tried.
My mind scrambles to come up with more words, any words, to fill the void. Oscar does nothing to ease the tension. He doesn’t even seem to notice that we are being filmed.
There’s nothing separating us besides five years of silence that began with a terrible night. So many details remain lost to me, intentionally lost, because I couldn’t stand remembering what it felt like to be in love. All I know is that for a little while we were together.
I know it was powerful, tumultuous, intense.
And then it was gone.
He was gone.
I’ve been keeping all of it buried for so long I don’t know how to sort through it now. But I’ll have no choice because here stands Oscar Savage, demanding either vengeance or acknowledgement. He’s not going to give me a choice about it so I’d better start figuring a few things out.
After all, somewhere in all that buried history is the truth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Five Years Ago: Part 2
It seems like hours have gone by and still she waits for the whistle. Never for a second does she doubt it will come. That would mean doubting him.
Earlier tonight her mother was waiting for her when she ran, breathless and disheveled, through the front door. Lita was perched on the edge of an enormous chair backed with ghoulish ivory tusks, a relic from the days of Rex Savage, when people didn’t know any better about much of anything. It certainly never occurred to them that massacring a majestic animal for a few trophies was wrong. Ren has always hated that chair.
Lita was tapping her thin fingers on the ivory arm. Dark and gray roots showed through her blonde hair. She made no secret of despising her husband for moving the family out here, for despising her children for failing to lift her out of these circumstances. She observed Ren with a silent sort of disgust before lighting a cigarette. When she decided to speak her words were like bullets. “You better goddamn well watch yourself, girl.”
“Of course, Lita. It would never have occurred to me to watch my step if you didn’t order it,” Ren answered with eye-rolling sarcasm.
She knew how it irked Lita Savage to hear her children call her by her first name. Of course all five of them did it.
After Ren and her mother exchanged a tense look, one of ten thousand such moments of tension over the past seventeen years, Ren hurried out of the room. The air was poisonous wherever Lita was and Ren didn’t want her mood spoiled. She was still on a high from being with Oscar.
Now, lying in the dark and waiting to hear something from him, it seems impossible that he’s been in her life for less than a month. She can’t remember what it was like to spend a day without him in her world. Ren doesn’t think of herself as romantic. She’s not all silly and swoony like her sisters. Boys say nice things to get what they want and every now and then she lets one of them kiss her. Oscar, on the other hand, still hasn’t tried a damn thing. She doesn’t know how to ask him to.
There it is. The sound begins low and ends on a high note. Ren smiles and goes to the window.
“Where the hell are you going?” Brigitte hisses from her bed.
Since August still hasn’t gotten around to cleaning out his parents’ ancient crap from the extra rooms, Ren gets to be stuck in the smallest bedroom with her two sisters. The three beds take up so much room it’s tough to walk across the floor without bumping into a freaking mattress. As Bree complains at least once a day, “This sure as shit ain’t the lifestyles of the rich and famous.”
“Can’t sleep,” Ren hisses back. “I’m just gonna go up to the brothel and see what Monty’s up to.”
“Bullshit,” Brigitte answers, a little too loudly. Ava stirs in her sleep and lets out a catlike whine. Bree lowers her voice. Slightly. “Monty’s either out getting busy with some local airhead or else he’s drunk on that beer he stole from the Consequences Convenience Store yesterday.”
Right outside the window, Oz lets out another whistle.
Brigitte hears. She vaults out of bed and pads over barefoot, pressing her face to the window. But Bree always takes her contact lenses out before bed and Ren knows she can’t see anything out there.
“Who’s that?” Bree frowns into the darkness.
“An owl.”
“Like hell.”
Ava suddenly sits up in bed. She must have been just pretending to sleep. She sighs and uses a rare serious tone. “Careful, Ren. I mean it. Lita’s hair is already standing on end. I heard her
this afternoon, whining to Dad about Oscar.”
Ren feels uneasy. “What was she saying?”
“That Aunt Mina better haul her saggy ass back here and retrieve her hellraising little thug.”
Ren exhales, relaxing. “Oscar hasn’t exactly raised hell. She must be confusing him with Monty.”
Bree grunts and crosses her arms. She starts chewing on a fingernail. “She’s afraid. Lita, I mean. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thinks you’ll wind up bearing Oscar Savage’s love child and tarnishing the family name.”
“More than it’s already tarnished,” Ava agrees.
Ren isn’t especially moved by her mother’s distress. “She’s just making noise because she’s got nothing better to complain about at the moment. Lita still thinks one or more of us will be her meal ticket back to Hollywood. To her, any exposure is good exposure.”
Brigitte sighs as if she’s being forced to explain physics to a five-year-old. “Unless it involves the sexcapades of two kids, both with the last name of Savage. Get a clue, Loren. The wrong people get wind of this and we’ll look even shittier than we already do. I can see the headlines: Deranged Famous Family Now Inbreeding.”
“That’s messed up, Bree. We’re not even really related for crying out loud.”
“You think that will matter in the realm of the tabloids?”
Ren turns away, troubled. Brigitte may seem like a spoiled brat most of the time but every once in a while she manages to hit the nail on the head. Ren doesn’t have an answer for her. She’s had enough of her sisters for now. Oscar is out there waiting in the darkness, waiting.
“We’re just friends,” she says, flinging open the window.
“Just friends,” repeats Brigitte in a mocking singsong before hopping back to her own bed.
“Just friends,” parrots Ava with a yawn and then rolls back under the covers.
Ren is still wearing the same cutoff shorts she’s worn all day. But she exchanged her loose button down shirt for a form-fitting tee. The night air smells of rain. Miles to the east the mountains are masked by darkness, an absolute kind of darkness with no moon, no stars. A flash of lighting parries with a groan of thunder as a summer storm approaches.
Oscar is closer than she thought. He catches her as she stumbles on her way out the window. His strong hands linger on her waist longer than they need to and his breath is close to her ear.
“Thought you’d probably be asleep by now.”
“No you didn’t or you would have come.”
“I’d have come anyway, Ren.”
They are inches apart and she can’t breathe. Is this how it happens for every girl? There’s an ache that’s nearly painful, something she can’t solve by herself and doesn’t even know how to talk about. Oscar pushes a few strands of hair from her forehead. They’d spent the day together, as they’d been spending every day together, but it isn’t enough. They are like opposing magnetic ends, always finding their way to the same space in the dreary landscape of Atlantis.
Today August had decided he needed some tools and the town of Consequences was the nearest place to shop. Lately the Savage patriarch had become something of a hermit, adopting a scraggly beard and spending most of his time either up in the stifling attic or out in the old barn with Spencer. The barn was built as a set prop; it was never meant to be a true barn and it was in desperate need of a makeover if it was going to start housing more animals like August wanted. He’d hatched some kind of half-baked scheme for boarding horses. Ren didn’t pay much attention to the details. Of course Lita had nothing but horror for the whole endeavor.
Spencer tagged along with them this afternoon. Ren didn’t mind because Spencer wasn’t in the habit of taking an interest in other people. Her younger brother lounged in the bed of the pickup the entire time and stared up at the sky thinking inscrutable Spencer-type things that probably involved being twenty miles away from the nearest human being. She’d let Oscar drive. Within two days after his arrival, Ren had taught Oscar to drive a stick shift and he was actually more comfortable behind the wheel of the old clunker than Ren was. Several times his smooth fingertips grazed the skin of her thigh as he reached for the stick. Too often to be wholly accidental. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t encourage him either.
Once they were in town, Spencer disappeared into the hardware store. There was a vending machine by the gas station on Central Street where they grabbed some cold sodas and chips. Ren and Oscar wandered around, licking their cheese-covered fingers and laughing together with sticky mouths, not aware that anyone else even existed. For all they knew the entire populace of Consequences had been reduced to ash by some cosmic apocalypse. They sat on the pickup tailgate, side by side with their hips touching while Oscar talked in an excited voice about caves.
Hanging out in the back of a pickup truck in some small town that didn’t even warrant a map dot, beside the boy she was falling in love with, Ren felt as far away from Hollywood as she could get. It was a good feeling.
Then a woman resembling a muskrat, tiny and matted, stopped right in front of them. She smelled like she’d perfumed herself with nicotine.
“You’re one of those Savage girls,” she said in a monotone that hinted at nothing.
“I am,” Ren answered warily. Long accustomed to being known for what she was - or rather what her family was - than who she was, she was prepared to be annoyed. Ever since they’d moved out here to Atlantis they’d been treated with polite suspicion by most of the locals. Most had no memory of Rex Savage or of the golden era of cinema that briefly made the area a place of interest. They only knew a bedraggled family with a famous name had moved into their midst.
The woman shifted her gaze to Oscar. “But you’re not one of them boys, are you?”
“He’s not my brother,” Ren blurted and blushed, irritated with herself for explaining anything to this prying stranger.
“I’m not her brother,” Oscar confirmed in an amused voice and he slung a casual arm around Ren’s shoulders. “I’m her cousin.”
The woman had no more questions after that. She pursed her bloodless lips together and ducked into a paint store.
“Think we scandalized her without even trying,” Oscar laughed.
Ren had wished he would keep his arm around her. But he removed it as soon as the woman was gone.
Now though, in the darkness with nothing but the yips of coyotes in their midst, there’s something about the thickness of his breathing and the way his hand squeezes her shoulder. Like he wants more and he’s considering taking it.
“Come with me,” he whispers, grabbing her hand.
Their steps are soundless as the thunder drowns out everything but its own complaints. When there’s a lull in the rumbling Ren hears music; crashing, angry music from another era.
“Monty.” Oscar nods in the direction of the brothel.
Out of the night comes the brief, piercing howl of female laughter.
“Sounds like he has company.”
Oscar snorts. “That he does. And he’s sure as hell not shy about keeping it in the bedroom. Or in his pants for that matter.”
Ren feels her face getting hot. “A little TMI, dude.”
“Believe me, not as much TMI as I’ve suffered tonight.”
“Gross. Just do me one favor, Oscar, and keep it to yourself.”
He laughs, nudges her shoulder. He’s teasing now, flirting. “I’ve been keeping everything to myself, Loren.”
“What does that mean?” She knows what it means.
He raises his strong arms toward the sky and stretches. “It means this whole goddamn desert stay has been one long drought.”
This is what he does, this flirty banter that never ends with anything more than handholding. Sometimes Ren thinks he’s testing her. Other times she thinks he’s holding himself back for another reason, a vague sense of honor or a funny feeling that there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed.
Or maybe he just thinks she’s ugly.
“A drought, huh?”
“Yeah. At least I’ve got my blue balls to keep me company.”
Ren sniffs, deciding she’s a little insulted. “All those fancy schools and they skimp on etiquette lessons. Mina might be upset when she realizes she didn’t get her money’s worth.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means you talk like a man whore sometimes.”
Oscar stops walking. He allows a long minute to pass before speaking. “Thought you figured a few things out about me already. Being a gentleman doesn’t come naturally to me, Ren.”
“Then don’t be one.”
She tosses the words off frivolously. When he grabs her wrist it’s a shock.
“Stop,” he warns. His tone says he’s not kidding anymore.
She’s defiant. “Why?”
He’s closer now. There’s a sweet smell on his breath and she recognizes it. Beer. He must have snagged a can or two from Monty. He’s got her other wrist and if he moves an inch closer their bodies will press together. He’s so much bigger than her, so much stronger. Her head begins to swim.
“Because,” he snarls, “if I kiss you, Loren, there’s no fucking way I’m going to stop.”
He says it like he can’t imagine anything worse.
She shakes her hand loose from his grip and reaches for him, touches his face. He turns his head away and spits a curse, something in another language that she doesn’t recognize. The humiliation stings.
Ren tears away from him and begins stalking back to the house. All their teasing during the long, hot days of the last month and they’ve never fought. They’ve also never kissed. What kind of an idiot is she anyway? They’re not falling in love. They are just two bored kids who can’t find anyone else around worth talking to. Even if they were to mess around it wouldn’t mean shit. Oscar has told her a few things about himself already, about all the girls. To him, she would just be another one. Forgettable.