“Mom, I thought you told me today was your only day off for the holidays?”
“A nurse called in last minute. She’s part-time, so it’ll only be for a few hours. Might as well take my two favorite people with me, right?”
“You’d think the owner of the place could at least get Christmas off,” Viola grumbled.
“Addiction doesn’t take holidays, baby, so neither do I.”
Viola gave a hearty sigh. Gigi worked too hard, but no matter how many times the youth rehab center she’d founded tried to take her below the financial undercurrent, it was a labor of love that would never lose its luster in her mother’s heart. A labor of love that had forced her to miss too many holidays and Christmases to count. That year would apparently be no exception, except now Gigi was dragging her and Jon right down with her.
Twelve
The youth center was just as dreary and depressing as Viola had always remembered. Topped off with the lull of the Christmas music sneaking in under the doorframe—Mariah crooning All I Want for Christmas is You—and it was downright torture. Once upon a time, Viola had loved Christmas music. Always the neighbor who blasted it the loudest in her building—often prompting her less spirited neighbors to send the landlord—and sometimes even the police—knocking, just to get her to turn that “racket” down. She’d never been able to wrap her head around how such beautiful music could be considered “racket”.
Until that moment. At that moment, standing at the long snack table with her mother and looking upon the young kids seated in a circle in the youth center’s largest meeting room, Viola understood for the first time in her life why some people hated Christmas music so much. She understood for the first time in her life what it felt like to be reminded of someone in every song, every melody, and every lyric. She understood what a nightmare it was to be reminded of that someone—someone who would never care for her at Christmas time the way she cared for him. What a nightmare it was to know that she’d lost her sense of love and hope at Christmas through no fault of her own, but instead a huge misunderstanding. Instead of slow dancing to Mariah’s sultry voice and kissing passionately under the mistletoe, tasting the sweet remnants of eggnog on each other’s lips and tongues, she was instead staring longingly at Jon Baca across the room, knowing her biggest Christmas wish wasn’t just never coming true. It had gone up in flames!
Jon paid no mind to Viola as she gaped at him from across the room like a crazy person. Leaning forward in a chair that sat at the head of the circle, his blue eyes were instead riveted to all of the teenage addicts seated in the circle around him. Over the course of the morning, he’d made each of them feel special with individual conversations, asking them questions, and telling them a little about himself as well. Most of the kids were still in their pajamas, having raced out of their rooms only when the news that Jon Baca had come to the center for a surprise visit had spread. One of the kids had already gone missing—a young teenage girl who’d gone beet red the moment she’d walked in and laid eyes on Jon, turning on her heel and hightailing it out of there at the speed of light. Viola could only assume she’d be back within the hour in a face full of make-up and the tightest dress she could find in her closet.
“Staring pretty hard at your “boyfriend’s” brother there,” Gigi whispered, throwing up finger quotes.
Her voice snapped Viola out of her trance, causing her to jolt and turn to look at her.
“Forgot you were here,” Viola mumbled.
“I noticed.” Gigi began re-filling the pitcher of orange juice with her eyebrows raised and a knowing smile on her lips.
“He’s the only person in the room speaking, Mom. Who else am I supposed to be looking at?”
“You’re pining.”
“I am not pining.”
Gigi finished re-filling the punch bowl and moved onto the half-empty plates of crepes, bagels, and sliced fruit that had been set out next to it, making sure everything looked presentable as she took on a singsong tone of voice. “Mind telling me when in the last three years Milo decided he was Team Vagina, after all?”
“Please don’t ever say the words Team Vagina again. Thanks a million.”
“Mind telling me why Jon is the one who drove you to see me and not your…” Gigi made finger quotes again. ““Boyfriend”?”
Viola took a deep breath—her wide eyes trained to Jon once more.
“Mind telling me why he’s pining for you the same way you are him?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m blatantly ignoring every question you ask and yet, somehow, they keep right on coming. Learn to take a hint, Mom.” Viola took a long moment, fighting against the words on the tip of her tongue. Losing the battle, she cut her eyes at Gigi, voice lowering. “He’s pining for me?”
“Unlike you, he’s much more discreet and doesn’t make it so blatantly obvious, but, yes. Every time you look away…”
Viola nearly screamed when Gigi didn’t finish her sentence. “Every time I look away… what?” she demanded. “Why do you choose this moment to stop completing your sentences? Might as well be speaking in Morse code.”
“You seem mad, boo.”
Viola hissed, on the dangerous verge of falling into a fit of profanities and stealing all the shine from Jon, who was still at the head of the room, speaking calmly to the group entranced by his every word.
“Isn’t it interesting how all of your questions have gotten answered but, curiously, none of mine?” Gigi asked.
“You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not in the mood to answer your questions after you spent all morning tag-teaming me with Jon back at the house. I still can’t believe how you two ganged up on me.”
“Well, at the time, I thought he was your “boyfriend” who was just teasing you the way “boyfriends” often do. Teasing that a “boyfriend” would never direct at his “girlfriend” in a serious way. Of all people, I thought you’d understand your “boyfriend’s” sarcasm.”
“One more finger quote and your knuckles are going to dislocate. And, no, Jon wasn’t being sarcastic. His hatred of me is actually quite genuine.”
“Which begs the question… why is he so passionately angry at a woman who’s not his?”
Viola drew in another deep breath and slammed her eyes shut, shaking her head softly as the Christmas music kept seeping under the closed door of the room, encasing her in a sadness that made it difficult to fight back the emotion burning her eyes.
“Milo’s gay, as you already know.” Viola’s eyes fluttered open as her whispered voice rose up to fill the silence. “He asked me to come down to Utah to pose as his girlfriend. To get his family off his back about never bringing a girl home. He’s terrified of them even suspecting he’s gay—let alone confirming it. I agreed to do it, but then I met Jon on the plane ride here. I didn’t know he was Milo’s brother at the time because—like someone else I know—Milo didn’t find it necessary to tell me. Now the only man I’ve ever felt a real connection to thinks I cheated on his brother with him. Now I’m almost certain to die alone and loveless. He liked me, Mom. He genuinely liked me. How I’ve managed to not kill myself in the last two days is…”
“A Christmas miracle?”
“Worst Christmas ever. My favorite holiday—forever tarnished.” She motioned to the door where the evil music was still filtering through. “Do you have any idea how depressing Christmas music is? How have I never noticed it until now? Who the hell are the sadists writing this crap? It’s cruel and unusual punishment.”
Gigi pouted at her, tilting her head to the side. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“Advise me, please.”
“I think you’re shit outta luck.”
“Terrible advice. As my mother, I demand you do better.”
“I’ve got nothing. Unless you’re willing to betray Milo.”
“Maybe I could still have Jon without betraying Milo. I’d take something casual over nothing at all.”
“But then would you even
still want him? A man willing to sleep with his brother’s girl behind his back? I don’t think so.”
“You’re right. That just makes the fact that he hates me so much harder to bear because it proves what a good person he is. God knows if he’d offered to ravage me anytime in the last two days I wouldn’t have hesitated… but he hasn’t. Just proves what a catch he is. What a terrible twist of fate all of this is. I lost a great guy through no fault of my own.”
“Milo’s friendship is much more important than a quick roll in the hay, baby.”
“Look who’s so full of advice all of a sudden.”
“Look who doesn’t want answers all of a sudden now that they aren’t the answers she wants to hear.”
Viola crossed her arms with a humph, pouting toward Jon. Her blubbery lips and sulky eyes dissipated, however, as Jon’s words reached across the room and encased her. In seconds, the torturous Christmas music still petering in, her mother’s whispered voice, and even her own thoughts faded into oblivion, and all she heard was him.
“He told me he wanted to stop,” Jon said, continuing with the story he’d been telling for the past several minutes. “But I wasn’t ready. And if I wasn’t ready… he wasn’t gonna be ready either. I wasn’t gonna let him leave me alone. To suffer alone. To keep falling into the bottomless pit alone. He was gonna fall with me. If the bottom of that pit ever came, he was gonna crash into it with me. If I was stealing my mother’s pearls to pay for the next hit, he was stealing his mother’s too. If my father was emptying his bank account to pay for rehab, his was gonna go broke too. I didn’t give a shit how badly he wanted to stop. About how much it was hurting him. His family. All I cared about was getting fucked up. All I cared about was myself—” He covered his mouth with a fist when his voice broke, lowering his eyes, and taking a moment to collect himself.
Silence encased the room as every soul waited for him to pull himself together and finish his story. Even the young girls who’d had stars in their eyes since the moment he’d arrived had sobered, watching him with stunned faces, most of them with their legs cradled on top of their chairs and their knees pulled into their chests, holding their breath as they gazed upon him with trembling limbs and watery eyes.
“He wanted me to take the first hit,” Jon drew in a breath, massaging the inner corners of his eyes for a moment before throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling. “But I knew I’d pass out the second it hit my veins, and I wanted…” He hissed, shaking his head softly. “I wanted to see him take it first. I wanted to make damn sure he didn’t skip out on me the moment I closed my eyes. To make damn sure he stayed right next to me, falling, into that bottomless pit.”
When he suddenly lowered his head and looked directly at her, Viola held her breath right along with him, as if their bodies had become connected across the room.
“I didn’t know it was a bad batch until he started seizing…”
Viola clenched her teeth as his voice split again. It took everything in her not to race across the room and encase him in a hug when he leaned forward on his knees and dropped his head, clasping his fingers together so tightly his knuckles went ghost white. He took several deep breaths before looking back up and holding his hands out wide as if still searching for answers he knew would never come.
“By the time the 911 operator picked up, he wasn’t breathing. Paramedics said he was gone the second the junk touched his veins.”
Viola’s brow furrowed and her chin began to tremble as her stomach tied itself in a knot that only seemed to pull itself tighter with each word that left Jon’s lips. Each moment of silence that left her alone with her thoughts and the path his words were rapidly taking them down. She gasped softly when the warmth of her mother’s fingers was suddenly around hers, not realizing how watery her eyes had gotten until she found Gigi’s face blurry beyond her vision. Gigi reached up and caressed Viola’s cheek, stopping the first tear that threatened her bottom lash before it had a chance to fall.
Viola gave her mother a soft nod, squeezed her hand, and then looked back to Jon, who was staring off into space. In a place so far away he seemed spiritually removed from the room completely.
“It was mine.” He bit his bottom lip while seizing two fistfuls of his t-shirt, as if seconds from ripping it away, shaking his head softly. “That hit was supposed to be mine. But I made it his. Because I didn’t want to be alone.” A lump raced down his throat. “I’ll never forgive myself. Never.”
Gigi squeezed Viola’s hand, but this time it wasn’t enough to tear Viola’s eyes from Jon, watching him with rapture like the season finale of Scandal, as a long silence fell in the room. Afraid that, if she looked away for even a second, she’d miss the heart-stopping ending. She didn’t want to miss a moment.
Jon, however, seemed to be done. Like the credits were already rolling in his mind. Leaving the kind of cliffhanger not even Shona Rhimes was cruel enough to bestow. Leaving every enraptured soul in the room desperate and hungry for more. His eyes went to such a distant place he didn’t appear capable of speaking, even if he wanted too.
A voice rose up from the circle. “What was his name?”
Jon’s eyes shifted to the voice, blinking rapidly. “Brock.” Regardless of the story he’d just told, it was as if the answer instantly manifested hundreds of beautiful memories in his head, spreading a soft smile across his lips. “Brock Baca.”
Thirteen
“You did a good thing today.” Gigi smiled softly at Jon across the round dinner table later that evening, spread with once steaming serving platters that now went empty. Her voice echoed through the small dining room and even humbler house. The low walls and tight spaces had barely been roomy enough for two during Viola’s childhood, let alone three. “Telling your story so honestly like that. The kids didn’t complain once. Do you have any idea how rare that is? Most of the people who come and speak to them spend more time making charts and graphs on the whiteboard than actually talking to them. The way you sat down and looked each of them in the eye. Telling them how you sat in their exact seat when you were their exact age… I think they could feel your genuine spirit. They couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas gift, and neither could I.”
Jon watched Gigi from the corners of his eyes in the seat next to hers. “Wish I’d had a proper story of triumphant sobriety to lift their spirits at Christmas. Still not sure what you think my presence accomplished except encouraging the false belief that they can still get high and get rich at the same time.”
“But you didn’t give them false encouragement. You told them the truth, which is all I wanted you to do. I still remember the days when you were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen… coming and going from the center, year after year, over and over again. I remember how down you were. The kid I knew back then could barely roll himself out of bed, let alone find the strength, the drive, or the fortitude to do something as simple as even learning a few strings on a guitar. But to learn the guitar, stick to it, and build it into something incredible, the way you have? Please. You’ve come so far, and you can’t even see it. Everything you’ve been through… how can you not see it? Sober or not, you are the triumph, babe.”
Jon studied Gigi silently, then his eyes shifted to Viola.
Viola’s gaze shot down to her plate the moment their eyes met, a little too quickly, in the embarrassing way that only confirmed how hard she’d been staring before getting caught. She stabbed her fork at her plate, which was already empty—fried pork chops and mashed potatoes long demolished—while trying to play it cool.
“Baby, if you jam your fork into that plate any harder you’re gonna crack the glass. You know I took out the good plates just for Jon and your life will be over if there’s even a scratch before they go back into storage.”
“So your good plates are more valuable than my life, Mom?”
“I’m so glad we understand each other.”
Viola rolled her eyes and cut a look at Jon. When she saw him giving her
a sideways smile, she straightened. Jon Baca? Smiling? At her? It was a phenomenon she’d been convinced she’d never experience again. A softness in his eyes that defused her all the way down to her very soul. Until she couldn’t even remember what she and her mother had just been fussing about. Until she’d forgotten her mother’s existence altogether.
As if he’d realized what a colossal mistake he’d made with just the simple act of letting the corners of his lips rise in her direction, Jon tore his eyes from Viola and stood from the table while clearing his throat. He picked up the empty serving platters in the middle of the table, careful not to knock over any of the water glasses, and stacked his own empty plate on top of them.
“Oh, sweetie, you don’t have to do that…” Gigi frowned as Jon began clearing her empty plate as well, followed by Viola’s.
“You went out of your way to cook an amazing meal. The least I can do is slap some soap on a sponge.” Jon began toward the kitchen sink without another word, with all of the dishes cradled in his hands.
Gigi watched him go with her mouth agape, waiting until he’d made it to the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet before throwing Viola a wide-eyed look across the table. Viola couldn’t tell what the crazed look on her mother’s face meant. Was she silently imploring Viola for living eighteen whole years in that house without ever having the grace to offer to slap some soap on a sponge the way Jon just had? Or was she silently imploring her to get her ass out of that chair and take what could be her last chance to have a true moment alone with him?
When Gigi widened her eyes even more and than cocked her head violently toward Jon—hard enough to make it appear seconds from snapping off her neck—Viola had her answer. One only had a few opportunities in life to seize the precious moments before it was too late, and that moment was being presented to Viola.
So she stood from the table, hands already shaking with nerves as she called into the kitchen. “I’ll help you!”
Refrain (Stereo Hearts Book 3) Page 15