by Lux, Vivian
A piercing scream from behind me invaded that thought. Sammy kicked his chubby legs against the back of my seat and Ada reached back and tried to swat him back into place. "Dios mio, child, I have no idea why you're so upset. Please, Mama's begging you, tell me what the hell you want?"
Sammy took a deep breath and for a moment I foolishly expected him to clearly articulate what it was that was bothering him. Then he let out an indignant shriek and kicked my seat with both legs at once.
Ada swore softly and yanked the steering wheel into the parking lot of her complex. She threw the car into park and wrenched the door open, rushing back to his car seat and hustling him inside. I followed out of habit.
Peace reigned the minute I walked in the door. Some brightly colored cartoon characters were dancing on the television set, and Sammy watched with rapt attention, all his protests forgotten as he calmly sipped from his sippy cup. Ada turned to me with a shell-shocked look on her face. "So…. Hey."
I sagged into one of her beat up easy chairs. "Hey. Thanks for getting me."
"Of course. Want something to drink?"
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to will the image of Crash on the floor out of my head. "Coffee? Tea? Something caffeinated that will help me think clearly?"
Ada laughed shortly. "If I had something like that I would have drunk it all already."
I shook my head. "Water then."
She headed into the kitchen and let out a shriek of surprise. "Oh hell, look at that! I do have coffee, sorry. And it's a full pot, too!"
I laughed. "You forgot?"
"I forget everything, all the time," she answered and I heard the door of the microwave slam shut as she reheated what must have been a stone cold cup of coffee.
That reminded me of something Crash had said and I was suddenly, morbidly curious. "Hey," I called into the kitchen, "can I ask you something?"
Ada reappeared in the doorway with two steaming mugs. Her hands shook slightly and I wondered if she should really be drinking more caffeine. "What's that?" she asked, handing the cup to me.
I took a sip. It wasn't Starbucks, but it would get the job done. Clear the fog from my brain. I hoped. I was about to ask the my question when she sank down in a chair, looking so defeated that it felt selfish to worry about my own problems. "You okay?"
She pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture I recognized in myself. We looked alike, my sister and me, though you wouldn't see it unless you saw us stand next to each other. That's when the similarities were really evident. Ada's skin was slightly lighter than mine, more olive than tan. She used to wear extensions, but gave it up when Sammy wouldn't stop tugging on them, and now wore her curly hair in close-cropped locks against her forehead. I felt like it made her look older. She was still struggling to lose her pregnancy weight three years later and I knew it bothered her. Before Sammy she had been a tiny little slip of a thing, a fact that seemed to deeply offend our mother who was always trying to get her to eat more. Now the opposite was true. We shared the same wide nose, the same full lips, the same shaped face that tended towards roundness especially during certain times of the month. I knew she envied my height even though I only had about three inches on her, but I envied her skin color, so it was a trade-off.
Ada took another sip of her coffee, then looked down into the cup. "I think this is like, my fifth one today," she mused. "But nothing is touching the tiredness. It's just giving me a headache.
"You seem more tired than normal," I observed.
She laughed. "Normal, yeah I guess I am tired normally, aren't I? You're right, this isn't normal tired, this is I-was-up-all-night-fighting-with-my-husband tired."
I sat back heavily in my chair. "You guys okay?" I couldn't picture her and Manuel fighting. They were such a solid pairing, such partners in everything they did. It was like they were made in a matched pair in heaven, one female version, one male version.
"If you asked him, I'm sure he'd say yes," she said tightly. "Manny doesn't have the first idea why I'd be upset."
"Why are you upset?"
She exhaled heavily. "Don't you ever tell him I said this," she admonished me and I nodded in agreement, sisterly lips sealed. "But there isn't actually a concrete reason. There's just a feeling like something isn't right. I've been with him long enough to know that being in love goes in cycles and I guess right now I'm in the point where I don't love him." She dropped her voice slightly, keeping an eye on Sammy who was still riveted by the television. "I don't really even like him that much," she whispered. "He's just…there."
"Oh." I didn't know what to say.
"And the worst part?" she said tightly. "Is so am I. I'm just…here. Every day is the same, nothing happens. He comes home from work and we do the same things we say the same things, we go to bed at the exact same time and wake up at the exact same time to do it all over again. And it's just so damn…boring."
I sipped my coffee and considered. The image of Crash shaking on the floor flickered back in front of me again, and I must have made some sound, because Ada suddenly straightened up, tucking her legs up under her and curling back into the chair, looking exactly like how she used to look as a small girl. "So that's it. Married life is boring, right?" she sighed. "That's how it's supposed to be, right?"
I shook my head slowly. "Not if you ask Mama and Papi."
"Hah, I know. Even if their routine is boring, they make it full of drama just by virtue of being them, huh?"
"I don't think they'd have it any other way," I mused.
She sighed. "No," she said wistfully. "And that's why they're going to last forever. Relationships need passion; they need really deep feelings to take you through the parts where things aren't quite so exciting. I'm just, I'm not really sure Manny and I have that." She looked away, out the window into the parking lot below, and I saw the flush creep up her cheeks. She was embarrassed.
"Do you want to talk about something else?" I asked gently.
She exhaled a sigh of relief. "Yes, please, anything," she answered.
I opened my mouth and asked the question before my pride could pull me back from it. "What do you remember about Ben Nelson?"
Ada looked at me and her brow knitted together. I could tell she wanted me to elaborate, but I just stared at her implacably.
"Okay, fine, be all random and mysterious like that," she finally relented. Then she leaned back in her chair. "Ben Nelson, the accident guy, right?"
I bristled slightly. The accident guy, that's how everyone knew him, and it seemed like it was the only way he knew himself too. He even freaking named himself after it, for some reason. It pissed me off that he believed that was the only thing that mattered about him, and it pissed me off harder that everyone else seemed to agree.
"From high school, yeah."
She giggled slightly. "I had the biggest crush on him," she sighed.
I sat up straighter. "I didn't know that."
She looked up and laughed a faraway look in her eyes. "Oh, it wasn't really anything, I never expected he and I to go riding off into the sunset together or anything." I blushed, remembering how we had ridden to the reservoir only hours ago. We needed to do that at sunset. "He was a junior, and I was a senior, so I definitely wasn't going to admit it, but all my gosh, he was just every silly fantasy I ever had rolled up into one white-boy package."
I almost told her that I agreed, but I bit my tongue. Instead I asked, "What do you remember about the accident?"
"Well, I had graduated already, remember? So it wasn't like I heard it first hand. But Manny he knew him, they were both on the soccer team. Manny was pretty shook up."
I was startled, I couldn't picture my tattooed biker guy playing soccer, but when I thought real hard, I vaguely remembered seeing him in his jersey in the hallway. It was an old version of him, just like that was an old version of me, and it was hard to recognize him as the man I had made love to only hours ago. "I didn't know that Manny he knew him," I said.
"Well
Ben, he was like, one of those guys who knew everybody, you know?"
I could see that, I nodded. Ada went on, "He was just, well everyone just liked him. The guys they wanted to be him, and the girls they wanted to be with him, you know that cliché? All that was totally true in the case of Ben Nelson. But when the accident happened, I don't know," her voice got a little far away. "Everyone kept talking about him like he was dead. Manny was talking about him like he was dead, even though he was just in rehab. But it seemed like it was too hard for people to see him as he actually was. Like they preferred the memory of Ben to the reality of Ben."
I bit my lip hard and tried to blink back the tears. Everyone preferred a memory of him that he couldn't remember himself. What must that feel like? "He lived with his grandparents right? And they were the same way?"
Ada nodded. "Manny said something about that, how they were old and set in their ways, and dealing with this new version of someone they thought they already knew was just too damn hard." Ada knocked back the rest of her coffee and stared down into her cup. "I know he's back, Gabi."
I looked up in shock, "How?"
"Everyone has seen him Jokers. Everyone has seen him…with you."
I knew she was watching me, waiting for my reaction. There was no lying to my sister, especially not with the blush creeping up my cheeks. "Yeah…" I said, silently acknowledging her unasked question.
"Is he…okay?" she asked.
The image of his seizure flashed in front of my brain again, and I shook my head to clear it. "He seems… .He seems like he's getting there."
"Why do you say that?"
I didn't know why. "Because he really wants to be better now," I heard myself say and instantly knew it to be true.
My big sister's shifted forward in her chair, hearing the note in my voice that I couldn't hide. "Gabi…"
"Yeah, okay. I really like him. I can't stop thinking about him. When I'm not with him, I want to be with him, and when I am with him I want more, all the time. Yeah he's got problems, yet he has a past, but it doesn't matter to me because I want to be his now."
The vehemence in my words startled both me and Ada as I clutched my cup fiercely "Fuck it, I love him, okay? I fucking love him and I have no idea what to do about that." I stared at my coffee cup like it was the reason for my racing pulse. I felt like I was going to explode out of my skin.
Ada took several breaths. "You remind me of Mama and Papi," she said softly and a touch sadly. "Passion."
I groaned out loud and slammed my cup down on the end table so as better to cradle my head. "Passion is really fucking confusing," I moaned. "I liked it better when there wasn't so much...meaning...behind everything."
"That's what makes it worth it, I think," my big sister said, letting the weight of her words sink in just before Sammy's cartoon came to sing-songy end. Then she stood up smartly and turned off the TV. "That's it, no more TV, you'll rot your brain," she announced. Sammy began wailing and the room was suddenly too full of sound for me to be able to hear my thoughts. I could only feel what her words had done as the goosebumps marched up my arms.
Fuck.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Declan
I was lying on my bunk, contemplating getting up and grabbing an Advil for the pain that knifed through my back. But in the end I elected to reach for the whiskey bottle instead.
An unspoken truce had arisen between all of us Sons to get blindingly drunk on a regular basis rather than bicker any more. None of us really saw the point in sobriety anyway. Case and J. were drinking almost constantly now, a beer in the morning right through to a fifth of whiskey by light's out. The new prospect, Thorn, seemed only too happy to join them, but he kept his worries to himself. The kid had a diplomat's knack for keeping his head down and his mouth shut, soaking in the needed information in his own time. And right now he seemed to settle on bourbon as the best course of action.
Sobriety seemed pointless to the younger guys. And I was inclined to agree.
Instead of grabbing the bottle though, I sat bolt upright and then rolled off the bed and jammed my fist under my mattress to silence my vibrating phone.
I sat there on the floor for a moment, catching my breath. I had never moved so goddamned fast in my life, but a vibrating phone in my bunk was a dead damn giveaway that I was breaking protocols and I didn't really feel like dealing with a black eye on top of the heartburn and the lower back pain that had been plaguing me since we moved to this hellhole. Case and J. were still nursing their shiners.
I slid the phone carefully to the end of the mattress and looked at the number. It was a (973) area code. My heart quickened.
"I'm going to the john!" I yelled to no one in particular.
"Oh Christ, get the gas masks," I heard J. grumble. Good. If they thought I was taking a shit, they'd stay the hell away from the bathroom.
I waddled my fat ass to the closet sized john and shut the door. The phone number was still up on the screen and I jabbed it with my finger before I lost my nerve. "Yeah?" I grumbled low.
"Doc, how you doin'?"
A fucking bomb went off in my head, simultaneous explosions of relief and murderous rage. I had to grip the sink so I didn't put my fist through the goddamn wall. "Ben, you fucking idiot, what the hell are you doing calling me, are you insane?" I looked in the mirror and saw the tears of relief in my eyes. Fuck.
The little shit laughed slightly. He was nervous. I could practically see him running his hand over his bare scalp, running it through the hair he always forgot wasn't there. "Nah, I'm not insane. Teach wouldn't be such an asshole that he wouldn't let me talk to you any more, would he?"
I twisted the tap, running the water full blast to drown out the sound of my voice. My heart was hammering so hard in my chest, but I wanted to keep talking to him. "Listen up, you need to know this. Teach ain't in charge anymore, you get me?" I lowered my voice even further. "That dust-up with the cartel? Well, things went to shit pretty fast after that. We're in a fucking safehouse now, and Des Harrington is the one in charge. And he's a right number one asshole."
Crash was silent for a second and I hoped to hell I hadn't dropped the call. Reception was spotty as fuck out here in the boonies. "Holy shit, a safehouse?" he finally said. I couldn't tell if he was shocked, or regretful, or both.
"Yeah, and it's cramped as hell too," I complained, pushing against the claustrophobic walls of the tiny bathroom. My body must have had a delayed reaction because my legs suddenly wouldn't work. I turned and sat down heavily on the tiny toilet with the seat down. "J. and Case are going crazy about their girls and they won't stop fucking sniping at each other like a couple of high school chicks. Teach is always off in some bigwig meeting and seems to be turning into some kind of dictator. That kid Thorn seems to be going off into some dark place hanging out with the Storm MC a-holes and Mac just doesn't fucking talk at all anymore." I took a deep breath. "I fucking miss you, you stupid cunt."
I heard a heavy sigh and Ben's staticky voice sounded heavy with regret. "You were the only one who gave a fuck about me, Doc."
"Yeah, I give a fuck, you dumb shit," I swore. "I watched you get reborn!"
"Reborn." Ben seemed to be chewing on the word, rolling it around in his mouth to see how it tasted.
"Yeah," I choked on the memories. "I was there when you learned to talk again. I was there when you learned to walk. I taught you how to fucking ride again, remember?" I don't know why I was being such an ass, he knew all this shit. Maybe I just needed to remind myself. "I raised you."
I heard a sound on the other end but couldn't place it. Then Crash's mumbled, "You did."
It was more than he had ever said. A fucking tear slid down my face and into my beard and I hurriedly swallowed. "Yeah."
"I know that," he said. "I wanted to tell you that. I know it."
He paused and I felt something burst open in my chest. A tightly balled fist that suddenly unclenched itself and I no longer could taste the acid of my hear
tburn. I sat back against the cool of the toilet tank and felt fucking happy for the first time in a month.
Then I heard footsteps. Hurriedly I flushed the toilet and fiddled with the tap, grunting and swearing like I had just had the worst shit in my life. The footsteps passed but I couldn't be sure I was out of danger. "Doc?" I heard the staticky voice say again. I gripped the phone as hard as I could, holding on to it for dear life. I had to protect him. That's what I did; I looked out for him, even when he wasn't here for me to watch over. With the current mood around here, if they found out I was talking to the one they blamed for all this mess....
It was a risk I couldn't take. The fucking Hippocratic oath, first do no harm. My selfish desire to talk to him would do him...and me...some real harm
I tasted the tear that slipped to the corner of my mouth as I stared at the phone.
Then I shut it off.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Gabriela
I loved him. Thinking the words held a kind of defiance, so I decided to say them out loud too. "I love him?" I asked the bushes in front of the in front of Ada's apartment complex.
But saying it like a question sounded too wishy-washy, so I said it again. This time it was a declaration. "I love him," I told the azaleas with as much determination as I could muster. The azaleas didn't care, but I felt better for having said it. In fact, I felt almost giddy. Here he had kicked me out of his house not an hour past, but now all I could do was think about going back to him, and saying the words, right to his face.
They needed to be said. I might choke to death if I didn't say them. Now.
But instead I had to wait. After Ada put Sammy down for a nap, we shared another cup of coffee while the sun dipped below on the horizon. I half expected my sister to ask me to stay for dinner, and I was debating over whether or not I would accept, when we both heard the rattling wheeze of Manny's beat up old work pickup pull into the lot. I looked up and saw the tension on her face and rose to excuse myself. "I need to get home," I lied. "Early day tomorrow."