by Libby Austin
I’d never seen somebody laugh so hard. The longer she kept laughing each time she tried to calm herself down, the funnier it got.
“I,” laugh, “just,” laugh-gasp, “can’t,” laugh, “stop,” laugh-gasp-laugh, “laughing,” laugh-snort. “My,” laughing, “giggle box is turned over, I guess.” Her lips pressed together and she appeared to be counting, if her head bobbing was any indication.
Barb walked up carrying our plates. “She okay?”
“I think so. She hasn’t turned blue or anything, so I guess she’s getting plenty of oxygen.”
“Well, let’s hope she doesn’t choke.” Barb set our plates down then reached to set the syrup and butter on the table. “You need anything else?” Her question was directed at me since Layna was still attempting to smother her laughter.
Even as her body shook with the effort not to laugh out loud, she reached for the syrup and began to drown her waffle.
“You want some waffle with your syrup?” I sarcastically referenced her soy sauce question from the other night, but either she didn’t get it or she didn’t care.
“Only when necessity requires that I have some.” She smiled. “Sorry, I just couldn’t stop laughing once I got started.” I didn’t point out she was still giggling.
“Obviously. I never knew I was so funny. Maybe I should try stand-up as a second career.”
Straight-faced, she said, “Only if you use the stage name Handy Brandy,” and then she was laughing again. It was a low chuckle compared to before. Every now and then she’d reach up and wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.
I began eating because it seemed pointless to just sit there and watch her. Thinking of it as dinner and a show, I ate without tasting anything. Taking her in took up all of my brain’s attention, leaving no room to process anything else.
“How did the other guys get their names?” she asked out of the blue a few minutes later.
“Are you sure you can handle it?”
“I promise.”
“Forgive me if that isn’t reassuring.”
She held up two fingers and promised, “Scout’s honor,” then leaned forward to take a drink of chocolate milk.
“Okay, well Touch’s name is Micah Touchstone, and he’s always seemed to have the magic touch, and back in college he never hurt for, uhhh, company of the female persuasion. Touch is short for Touchy Feely McGheely.
“Joker’s name is Joseph Kerwin. Joe Ker became Joker because he has a very dry sense of humor, so it’s more of a sarcastic nickname.
“Bow’s name is Ty, and he went through a period in college where he wore bow ties every day, and we came up with Bow Ty that drunken night. Now, it’s just Bow most of the time.
“Ruff’s name came from—well, I can’t talk about Ruff’s name. He threatened us with bodily harm if we ever told. The last time one of us slipped up, Bow found himself in hot water when his very devout Irish Catholic mother received an email announcing his Vegas elopement.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Oh, I wish I were. He was called before the inquisition of the Fitzgerald family court. Bow’s dad is a judge, but his mother is the executioner. We were all cross-examined about when and how we knew. I think Bow’s mom may have been the head inquisitor in the Spanish Inquisition in a past life. I’m pretty certain we’re still not in her good graces. The other guys keep hoping he and Danelle will pop out a kid, ‘cause we all know that will go a much longer way to soothe his mom’s ruffled feathers than a Johnny-come-lately wedding party.”
“Wow, that’s harsh. Y’all play dirty. And Ruff said Bow held a grudge.”
“Ruff is one to talk, but Ruff and Bow have been friends a long time. They grew up together, so if anybody should have known better than to test Ruff’s threat, it was Bow.” In truth, I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for Bow. His getting married was the beginning of the end of the way life had been for the past decade. It created some kind of fucking domino effect where all the guys were suddenly ready to settle down and fall in love and all that bull-fucking-shit.
“So, what have you been up to the past few days when you weren’t answering your door or anything? Did you come up with some good stuff for your next album?”
There it was: the topic I most wanted to avoid. If I told her the truth, she’d probably rat me out to my mom. But keeping lies straight gets difficult after a while.
“Sometimes I get in the zone and everything else gets tuned out. I forget to eat and sleep, or even what day it is. Things just blur together when I’m focusing. It’s like my mind can only devote itself to the creative. And I had a disagreement with my brother, which didn’t help matters.”
“Oh, do y’all fight a lot?” she asked while continuing to chow down on her syrup with a side of waffles. “My siblings and I fought all the time growing up, but now that we’re older, we get along much better, as long as we don’t have to share a room or a bathroom.”
“Not so much anymore. We did when we were younger. Then we didn’t talk for a long time.” My truth-telling danced a fine line. One conversation with my mom about Barrett and me having contact and everything would come crashing down. I loved my parents, but I couldn’t let go of Barrett again, not even for them.
“What made you, or him, get back in touch after not talking for such a long time?”
“Umm, well, uhh, I guess somewhere around the time Bow and Danelle got married, the dynamic of the band started changing. There was just a lot going on; Joker and Ruff stopped trying to kill each other and started fuc—dating each other, and then Touch met Kaitlyn and all of their shit went down, and I realized that even though my band had been my surrogate family for years, I needed my real family, my blood and my best friend since the beginning. So I began trying to reach out to Barrett, and one day, he responded.
“It’s been nice catching up with him and talking about all the things I’ve done with the band and stuff. He kept track of it all. We talk pretty much every day now, except when he’s pissed at me.”
“Does he ever come to visit? Maybe I’ll get a chance to meet him while I’m here. If he’s half as pushy as you are, I might like him,” she claimed with a smile, but panic rose inside me. Not because she thought I was pushy or she might like him better—Barrett and I had never been the type to compete or fight over a girl—but she wanted to meet him. Total no-go situation.
“Yeah, he probably won’t make it anytime soon. He’s got other obligations right now. But, uhh, but I need you to promise me you won’t tell my parents or your mom about Barrett.” My hands clenched the hard bench seat and my legs bounced up and down nervously. I didn’t know why I couldn’t keep my mouth shut around her, or just stay the fuck away from her.
“Why’s that?” By now, she’d stopped eating and was focusing on me, studying me, looking at me as if she could see the thoughts ripping through my head like a natural disaster in the making.
“They don’t talk to each other. My parents have, uhh, they have a different view of Barrett. He doesn’t want contact with them, and it’s just easier for everyone if they don’t know he’s talking to me. I don’t want to hurt them.”
“Do you think you could help them heal their rift before it’s too late and it can’t be fixed?”
“It’s already too late. The only thing I can do is try to salvage what I have left and not cause any more damage or harm or pain to anyone else.” I stopped and thought for a moment before I said anything else. “I shouldn’t have even told you; something about you makes you easy to talk to. But I need you to promise me that you aren’t going to repeat the things we talk about or that you see to my mom, your mom, or anyone else for that matter. If you can’t promise that, we can’t be friends—or even friendly neighbors.”
Layna looked me directly in the eye. I’d always been told a person’s soul and true intentions showed through their eyes, telling you if their intentions were good or bad. The look in Layna’s eyes told me her intentions were good.
I took her promise at face value. What I should have remembered was the saying about good intentions and the road to Hell being paved with them. I knew all about good intentions, and I knew all about Hell. I’d lived in my own personal tormented version of the inferno for over a decade.
OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, Layna and I hung out together more and more, playing Band Jam mostly. She’d become obsessed. She was fun and easygoing. There wasn’t much she didn’t laugh over, even herself. Hanging out with her was … nice, comfortable even. Since I hadn’t received any urgent phone calls from my mother and she wasn’t beating down my door, I felt it was safe to assume Layna kept my confidences, and I relaxed a little more.
Despite my attraction to Layna, the fears it induced, and my steadfast denials of both the attraction and the fears, Barrett encouraged me to get to know Layna better—to ‘get out and have a life again,’ as he put it.
“You like this girl,” Barrett stated, not bothering to act like he didn’t know me better than I knew myself, even after all the years we were a part.
I ran my hand through my hair out of habit. I’d never quite been able to break myself of it. “I think I do like her.” Taking a deep breath and blowing it out, I admitted, “More than I should.”
This time it was Barrett who made a loud noise as he blew his breath out. “Brand, it’s okay to like her. It’s okay to move on. Punishing yourself by staying alone isn’t the answer.”
“It’s not about punishing myself,” I denied, “although I deserve to be punished, to be unhappy; it’s about protecting myself and those I care about. You, of all people, should understand that. Look at what my selfish actions did to our whole family, not even mentioning the other lives that were wrecked by my carelessness. Everybody paid the price because I was too fucking blind and self-centered to see what was going on around me.” I stood up and began pacing my living room, switching from wrapping my hands around the back of my neck to shaking them at my sides. It was as if I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to trap all of the things I was feeling inside myself or fling them away and hope they never returned again.
“Look at you, Brett,” I said, slipping back into the familiar habit of using his childhood nickname. His name came out Brett when I tried to say Barrett. It’s what I’d always called him growing up, even once I could pronounce Barrett, until I lost him because of my own self-absorption. After that, it didn’t feel right to use his nickname. I wasn’t sure why I slipped into using it then, because I was anything but comfortable. “Can you honestly say you’re okay with how things turned out? Are you happy, Brett? You wouldn’t change the way things went down? You wouldn’t change the fact that you can’t come home or that you’ve virtually been written out of our lives as if you never existed?” I was yelling at the top of my voice by the time I stopped.
Barrett remained calm. He’d always been the levelheaded one of the two of us. “You done, or is there more shit you can’t change that you want to throw a tantrum about?”
“I’m not throwing a fucking tantrum,” I screamed before dropping to the couch. My posture—back bowed, head down, arms hanging limply between my open legs—showed how dejected I felt. I couldn’t balance the thought of moving forward and being happy with the wake of disaster I’d left behind me.
“It doesn’t matter what I wish I could change about my life. I’ve made my peace with how things turned out. There have been times when I was lonely and sad, and there have even been brief moments when I blamed Mom and Dad for the life they chose, but I never wallowed in those feelings. I didn’t want to be drug into an abyss I could never escape.
“That’s what you’ve been doing all these years, Brand. You think you’ve been happy, and you made everybody else think you were, too, but it was all a sham. The way you never let anybody see past your façade is a prime example. Touch is your best friend in the world, but he doesn’t even know your real name. You’ve done such a great job of convincing everyone you had everything you ever wanted, you even convinced yourself it was enough.
“Answer me something. Has isolating yourself and living the way you have made anything better? Did it right all of the supposed wrongs you think you’ve done?”
Keeping my head buried, with my chin tucked to my chest, I answered, “There is no way to make it better.”
“But what you have to accept is that you didn’t do anything wrong in the first place. You can’t hold yourself responsible for the actions of others or the consequences of those actions. If we traded places, would you want me to live like you have and be the loneliest soul in a crowded room? Did you ever wonder why taking a break from the pandemonium of touring and recording bothers you so much? Or why you haven’t moved out of this building when you could have years ago?”
I knew why I hadn’t moved. I liked having people close by but not so close I had to interact with them. It was the same reason I sat by myself in a crowd.
“If you can’t do it for you—” Barrett began, but I had no intentions of letting him finish.
“Of, fuck no, you can’t use that shit. It’s not fair!”
Barrett was undeterred. “Oh, but I can and I am. So, if you can’t do it for you, do it for me. Go out and have a life. Have fun. Live a little. Get to know a girl. Let someone in. Let them inside that crazy head of yours and possibly even a little corner of your heart.”
Shaking my head, I argued, “Nope, not going to do that. You can’t blackmail me into hanging out with her. It’s not going to work.”
“Okay, here’s the deal: next time we talk, I want details about what you two have been up to. You don’t have any details, we don’t talk. And I’ll know if you’re lying. I know you better than you know yourself, remember?”
My glare was all the answer he was going to get to his question.
“I’m giving you two days to figure out some way to go out and do something fun with Layna.”
“What happens in two days if I don’t meet your demands?”
Silence was the resounding answer to my question, and I knew what the consequences would be if I ignored Brett’s ultimatum.
I NEEDED TO COME UP with a fun outing. As I ran through a list of possibilities, I crossed each one off my mental list.
The beach? No, she has a cast. Can’t imagine getting sand in there would be fun.
The amusement park? No, too much walking, and it was doubtful they would let her on the rides.
Go-cart racing? No, go-cart racing was something kids would do, and she was in a cast, so I wasn’t sure they would let her race.
Mini golf? No, she couldn’t play mini golf on crutches.
The arcade? There were games she could sit and play, but no, that was too immature.
Everything I came up with seemed like stuff teenagers would do. Because you haven’t dated since you were a teenager. What do adults do on dates? Wait, this isn’t a date, just something to get me out of the condo. Not. A. Date.
Layna’s assertion that Google knows all came to mind, so I picked up my phone and let my fingers do the walking. Once I settled on an idea, I called to make reservations, and then texted Layna.
Me: Hey! Do you have plans tonight?
Her response wasn’t long.
Layna: Nope.
Before I could type a response, she sent another text.
Layna: Why? What’s up?
It was now or never. I’m doing this for you, Barrett …
Me: Want to go do something with me?
Smooth. It looked even worse on my phone than it had sounded in my head.
Layna: Sure. What’s on the agenda?
Me: That part is a surprise. Dress comfortably in something you don’t mind getting a little messy. Be ready at 5:30.
Layna: Now I’m really curious. Should I be worried?
Me: Trust me on this one.
I don’t know why I expected Layna to trust m
e when I didn’t even trust myself. Flying by the seat of my pants was a new experience for me. Not that everything had to be the same every day, but I liked having a routine. Routines were the way I survived chaos.
Layna’s next text made me laugh.
Layna: Okay, but if it involves hurling myself off a bridge with nothing but a glorified rubber band to stop me from going splat on the ground below, I’m backing out.
I’m not an adrenaline junkie, so she was safe in that respect. What the hell was I thinking? She was safe in all respects when it came to me. This was nothing more than friendship. I would treat Layna like I did the guys. Absolutely no difference.
No difference at all. As long as I didn’t think about the curve of her ass, which I couldn’t keep my eyes off of and had to quell the itch to rest my hand on, or the way she liked to wear her purse with the strap across her chest, drawing attention to the lush, handful of breast that had a little bounce to them—not that I had been paying attention to their movement. And I certainly hadn’t noticed how good she smelled. No, the soft, sweet scent that I couldn’t quite put my finger on didn’t cause my blood to stir.
Ugh, I hated Barrett and his stupid damn ultimatum!
This was just mind over matter. I could do this. I’d done the same thing for years. Yes, but you’ve never been tempted by someone you felt a connection to either, so abiding by your self-imposed rules wasn’t a challenge, I reminded myself before I promptly told myself to shut the fuck up and sent Layna a reply.
Me: No bridge jumping involved. Promise.
Layna: Okay. I’m trusting you. But don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Me: Did you just reference The Incredible Hulk?
Layna: Maybe …
Me: Way to pack on the pressure. Although the thought of seeing you turning green and busting out of your clothes has a certain appeal.
Approximately a millisecond after I hit send on the last message, I realized how what I typed could come across and immediately began typing an apology-slash-retraction, which went downhill the more I typed.