by M. O'Keefe
I laughed and shook my head. Nothing would have stopped me.
“I know,” she said with a smile. “But that was Miguel. He meant well.”
“In the end,” I said, “it just didn’t matter. Max didn’t want me around.”
“Some people are just poison to other people.”
Like you and Annie. You’re bad for her and you’re just too chickenshit to tell her.
“Are you going to be all right here?”
“Well, I’m living in a trailer park next to my dad, so I can’t say I’m moving up in the world.” I tried to make it a joke, but neither of us laughed.
“Why can’t you just come home?” she asked.
I thought of that cop and his chin and the way he didn’t look at Annie’s see-through shirt, the pink of her hard nipples. I thought of that book he gave her. Some survivor manifesto bullshit.
Yeah? That voice was getting uglier in the back of my head. And your method of fucking her into better mental health is going so well?
There were undoubtedly better people to take care of her. And maybe Annie was right; maybe she didn’t need anyone worrying about her. And I didn’t know how to live in this place, next to my dad, without going a little crazy. What happened at the swimming hole seemed proof of that.
“I will,” I said. But I didn’t know when or if I would be alone when I got there.
“Well, your cupboards are full,” Margaret said. “And you got some clean clothes.”
“Thank you.”
“I think you’re crazy staying here, but I get it.”
I let Margaret cluck over me. Mother me from the far edges of my life, because it felt nice, if not novel, to have someone do that. But there were boundaries. There had always been boundaries, since the moment I got out of jail and ended up in her home.
And I took those boundaries and I made them rules. Ironclad. For years.
But in this crappy little trailer, on the edge of a swamp, she smashed right through all of them and put her arms around me.
For a second I was stunned. Hugs just didn’t happen in my life. But as she squeezed me, careful of my stitches, I slowly lifted my hands and put them on her back. I awkwardly patted her shoulder.
“Thank you,” I said, and then it was over. She pushed herself away and picked up her keys and her purse and worked very hard not to look me in the eyes.
Because her eyes were filled with tears.
I didn’t have the slightest idea how to ease whatever pain she was feeling.
“I think I got everything you need,” she said. “Call if there’s anything else.”
“I will,” I said.
She grabbed the bag of food for Annie and I nearly told her to leave it. That I would give it to her, but I bit the words back. Margaret looked at me, one of her eyebrows raised. “Did you want to take this to her?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got some work to do. She’ll probably be glad to see you.”
“Did something happen?” she asked. “Between the two of you?”
“Nothing I’m going to tell you about,” I said with a forced and awkward smile that she saw right through.
Margaret left and I sat down with my laptop, pushing thoughts of Annie to the periphery.
Because I wasn’t sure if I was a good person who did some bad things or a bad person who’d done some good. I had no damn idea.
But Annie deserved someone good. And I used to think I could be the guy to give it to her. But it looked like that was only a dream.
ANNIE
Annie took the bag Margaret handed to her.
“Margaret.” She looked down at the overstuffed bag. “This is too much.”
“It’s hardly enough, but it will get you through the week.”
Margaret had a totally overblown sense of how much Annie could eat. But the generosity was awesome and she would not say no. Not when she could see chocolate chip cookies in a big Ziploc bag on top.
“Did you see Dylan?” she asked. “He’s right next—”
“I stocked his cupboards,” she said. “And brought him some stuff for work.”
How does he seem? she wanted to ask. Was he wrecked? As wrecked as me by what we’d done? By the way we felt?
She imagined that if he was at all affected, he was very good at hiding it.
And if for some reason Margaret knew that Dylan was wrecked or hurting, she would not tell Annie about it. Not one word. Margaret made it very clear where her loyalties sat.
“Do you want to come in?” Annie asked. “I have coffee.”
“No.” Margaret shook her head. She seemed very sad today. “I need to head on back. You take care of yourself.”
“Thank you.”
Margaret nodded and then stepped away, but then she stopped and turned back to face Annie.
“Remember what I said about Dylan,” Margaret said, hitching her purse up higher on her shoulder, “when I dropped you off here before?”
“You said to stay away from him. He’d been hurt enough. And that I would only get hurt, too.”
I should have listened, she thought. I wish I’d listened.
Margaret nodded, her lips pressed tight. “I was wrong,” she said. “Keep trying. It will be worth it. A man like him, he’ll push away everything he wants because he doesn’t think he deserves it.”
“Maybe he deserves more than me,” Annie said.
Margaret started to sparkle again. Just a little. Like whatever grief had been wearing her down was lifting off of her, one piece at a time.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
After Margaret left, Annie took the bag inside and set it down on the table. She was still shattered from this morning at the swimming hole. And exhausted by the thoughts in her head.
He’s pushing you away with both hands, he’s yelling stop at the top of his lungs, and you are ignoring it. And worse, you’re angry at him for having made the choice that doesn’t happen to be you.
And it was awesome to make choices, after years of having none, but what happens when your choices hurt someone else? she thought. Where is the pride in that? Or if your choice doesn’t choose you?
That thing he wasn’t telling her…she didn’t know what it was. But she could feel that it was bad. And the worst thing she could think of was that it was over between them.
Stop, she thought, you’re going to make yourself crazy.
There was a thick book tucked down the side of the bag and she pulled it out. Something about her had people giving her books these days, and she wasn’t complaining.
It was a UNC undergraduate course book.
College.
She sat down on the settee and flipped it open. The pictures of smiling kids smiling at one another didn’t do much for her, and neither did courses about comparative political thought.
But Introduction to Developmental Psychology did. And Human Behavior in the Social Environment. And she wasn’t totally sure what Racial Justice & Cultural Intersectionality of Oppression was, but she wanted to know.
There were religion courses. Lots of them. She flipped through pages.
She’d always wondered about Buddhism.
College wasn’t something she’d ever considered. It had never been an option for her. Ever.
Now, suddenly, it was. It was something she could do.
Annie’s plan for the afternoon had been to go into town for groceries, but thanks to Margaret she didn’t need to shop. But she would go in to the library and look up some real estate agents back home. She could start selling off the acreage and make a decision about the house later.
With the money, she could go to college.
Law school!
The phone she’d set on the kitchen counter started to buzz and her heart leapt at the sound. Dylan, it pounded. Dylan.
But the number on the face of the phone was not Dylan’s. It said unknown.
“Hello?” she said, holding the phone to her ear.
“Annie? Is that you?�
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“Joan?” She collapsed backward onto the settee, excited and comforted by the familiar sound of her friend’s raspy voice.
“Well, well, you’re back at that shit hole.”
Annie laughed and realized all the things that Joan didn’t know. About Hoyt and Dylan. Even Ben and the cancer. “And you’re not. We have a lot we need to catch up on.”
“Yeah, we do. Can you meet me?”
“Sure. Are you still working at The Velvet—”
“Listen, I don’t know if you and Dylan are still doing that kinky phone sex shit, but listen to me: do not go there.”
“Okay, but—”
“It’s dangerous. Like bad dangerous and I’m not kidding. Don’t go there. Don’t let Dylan go there and try to be a hero.”
“A hero?”
“Don’t go.”
“Fine. Fine, but where do you want to meet?”
Joan gave her the name and address of a diner in Cherokee. “Tomorrow morning?” Joan asked.
“Works for me.”
Annie hung up and thumbed through the screens until she got to Dylan’s number. But she didn’t call. Instinct told her to call him, that whatever Joan had to say would affect him, too.
But in the end, she put the phone down. Afraid of hurting him when she only wanted to be close to him.
—
Annie didn’t know what time it was when there was a knock at her door, but she had graduated from reading the course book to actually circling classes. She was creating a course load for a college she had not even applied for.
She put her pencil in the spine so she wouldn’t lose her place and ran to her door to answer it.
It was Dylan out there in the twilight and her heart squeezed. Her heart squeezed so hard she felt like it might be breaking. He was freshly showered and she could smell his soap on the breeze. He had keys in his hands, which he flipped back and forth around his finger.
Flip, flip.
He looked like a man on his way somewhere.
A man who was leaving.
It’s okay, she told herself, applying pressure to a sudden internal pain. You never really expected him to be able to stay here.
It didn’t have to mean they were over.
Except it felt like if he left now, they might be.
“Hi,” she said and pushed open the door to step outside. The wide world felt crowded with everything they weren’t saying, and she couldn’t imagine being in the trailer with him.
“Hey. You all right?”
Annie forced herself to smile. “Fine. Margaret brought over this college course book and I’m just reading it.”
“Yeah? Anything good?”
“Did you know you could take archery in college?”
His chuckle forced her to look away, up at the stars. As far away as he was.
“You going to be an archer?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Anything else in there look good?”
Yes. All of it. Every course looks like an opportunity. A chance I never thought I’d have.
“There are a few things,” she said, holding back her enthusiasm, pulling herself away from him one small piece at a time. Just for safety. Just until she knew what was happening. “Psychology. Social work. Law, maybe.”
“Law?”
“Well, only if the archery thing doesn’t work out.”
They both chuckled. And he flipped that key again.
Flip, flip.
“Did you go to school?” she asked, suddenly trying to make him stay. Even if it was just to talk to her.
“College? Hell no. I got my GED in jail.”
“Where’d you get so smart about cars?” she asked. “And business.”
“When I was a kid, Pops always had something up on blocks. I learned the basics from him. And the first few months of juvie they had a program for guys to learn a trade, and this mechanic would come in and show us how to change oil and rotate tires. He saw that I had a knack and taught me some pretty advanced stuff.”
“It stopped after the first few months?”
“You had to be on good behavior. Those fights I was getting in made it so I couldn’t go.”
“That must have been hard.”
“All of it was hard, Annie. Hard is what I know.”
And that right there was the truth of Dylan Daniels. Hard was what he knew, so easy was something he couldn’t trust. Soft and tender and careful—those things had no place in his life.
“Officer Davies,” she said, and his attention on her focused. Sharpened. He watched her so carefully, as if she were something he could read. But she didn’t know what he was looking for. “That cop that was here. He brought me a book, too. About surviving post-traumatic stress.”
Flip, flip, went those keys.
“That’s good. Probably real good.”
Every instinct was telling her not to broach this subject with him, that it would not go well. That it would, in fact, be disastrous. It already looked like he was looking for a reason to leave and this conversation would give him that reason.
But after what happened at the swimming hole and last night, she wasn’t sure what she was preserving by keeping her mouth shut.
And she was done keeping her mouth shut.
“Maybe you should read it, too.”
His silence seemed like a straight arm to her chest. A bright flashing sign for her to stay away. To keep out.
I do not want you here, so stop pushing your way in.
Flip, flip.
“I’m going to The Velvet Touch.”
She blinked. “The strip club?”
Her face must have shown her horror, the hurt that sank down deep into her bones.
“It’s not what you think,” he said quickly.
“Then what is it?”
“You told me you didn’t want to hear this. Not today.”
Breath shuddered out of her body. “Well, today is almost over, isn’t it?”
Flip, flip.
Annie grabbed his hands. Stopping the keys. Her nerves tautened to the point of snapping. The contact felt good, though. His hands were warm and rough. Familiar. And so she kept holding them.
“Yesterday, a guy named Rabbit came to visit Ben.”
“His name is Rabbit?”
“No, I think his name is Ryan Abbot, but he’s been called Rabbit for as long as I’ve known him.”
“And this rabbit, is he soft and cuddly?” she asked, reaching for a joke, anything to snap this tension between them. Nothing had been right since coming here and she didn’t know how to make it better.
“No. He’s an unstable sociopath.”
“But does he like carrots?”
“This isn’t funny, Annie. Rabbit and Max are in the Skulls together and Max has gone missing.”
“But your brother was here, at Ben’s trailer. Five nights ago.”
“And he’s been gone since.”
“And this Rabbit guy, he’s worried?”
“That’s one way of putting it. Also, homicidal and unpredictable and fucking nuts.”
“What does this have to do with you? You said you haven’t heard from your brother in years.”
“Rabbit wants me to find him, make him come back.” He took a deep breath and pulled his hand from hers. “And if I don’t, he’s threatened you and Margaret and Blake and everyone else in my life.”
For a second the words didn’t make sense. Like at school when they’d do a tornado drill and the siren would go off. For a second it was as if the noise paralyzed everyone.
Dylan’s words were like that—paralyzing. But only for a second.
“Oh my God, Dylan—” She reached for him, but he stepped back. Away from her. And she stopped. Trembling on her bare feet, she stopped.
“I called Max last night and I think he called me back this morning. Apparently they hang out at The Velvet Touch and I was there last night—”
“Last night?”
“
Before…you came over. I lied to you. And I’m going again tonight, but…I don’t want to lie to you. Not after today. And I need you to take this.” From the back of his pants he pulled a gun. Annie jerked back so fast she tripped over her feet, but he grabbed her hands and pressed the gun against her palms.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not taking this—”
“I need to know you’re safe. And if you won’t leave, you have to have this.”
“Ben—”
“Is an old man who couldn’t protect you the first time.”
He curled her fingers around the cold metal and held them there like they might stick with enough pressure. “For me, Annie. Please.”
She swallowed. “Okay,” she finally said, and he let go of her hands. The gun was heavy.
“Listen,” she said, staring down at that gun. “I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For…” She swallowed. “For earlier today and for last night. Ignoring you when you said no. For forcing you into something you didn’t want.”
“Are you talking about sex?”
“You didn’t want it. I mean, in the end, I guess, you wanted it. But—”
“You guess?” His smile, crooked and endearing, was a balm to her insecurity.
“Dylan. I’m trying to say I’m sorry for forcing the issue.”
“Baby, I’m going to want to have sex with you until the day I die—I just don’t know if it’s a good idea.” He took a deep breath. “That cop…Officer Davies? He seems like a nice guy.”
Every hair on her body stood up. She knew what he was about to do, could see the words forming in his head. And after what he’d told her about Rabbit and Max, she even understood that it made sense to him.
“Dylan!”
“No, listen to me. You say you care how I feel and what I think, so that means listening to me even when you don’t want to. That cop who brought you the book, he’s the kind of guy you should be with. The kind of guy who would give you the life you deserve. Treat you the way you should be treated.”
“Why aren’t you? If you are what I want?”
“Because I’m the guy who fucks you without a condom and shoves his finger in your ass.”
Just the words made her crazy. Her body got hot, wet in an instant. For him. Only him. “I liked that. I liked all of that.”