by M. O'Keefe
My brother is going to die, I thought. Not sometime. Not in the future. But soon.
And he knows it.
And I made him come back. In the Daniels family, the scales of justice were evil. And precise.
“You know, it’s too bad that you can’t remember when Mom was good,” Max said.
“I don’t remember because I don’t think it happened.”
Max nodded. “When she was pregnant with you and for, like, four years after. She was sober.”
“What was that like?” I asked, laughing, literally unable to imagine it.
“Well,” he laughed. “It wasn’t like she was Mrs. Garcia.” Mrs. Garcia was a woman who lived in the apartment above us. A single mom with two little girls we used to make fun of because they were always clean and did their homework and never got in trouble. We made fun of them because they were fiercely loved and we were so fucking jealous we couldn’t stand it. We would steal their lunches because they had things like cookies and leftover meatloaf sandwiches. And no matter what we did, they only pitied us.
It used to make Max crazy.
“But yeah…Mom was fun. We’d have picnics on the beach and she’d take me out of school to go to the movies. I mean it was still Mom, so there was always chaos, but there were also bedtime stories and dinner on the table. And she and Pops…”
“What?”
“I don’t know, man. They were happy. Like really happy. They were solid. It wasn’t all bad. It just…got that way.”
“Why are you telling me that?”
“Because all you knew was the shitty stuff. And the stuff before that was what me and Pops fought so hard for.”
We both drank again, but a sorrow had seeped into my bones and they ached.
“So, you’re really in some shit,” I said and belched. “Drug running for some meth-cooking cult leader?”
Max stared at me hard and then reached over with that big hand of his and started patting me down.
“What are you doing?” I said, dodging his hands.
“You wired?”
“No, I’m not fucking wired. Jeez.” Max just looked at me and I spread out my arms, lifted my shirt.
“Pants, too.”
I slid off the car, undid my pants, and dropped them to my knees.
Max laughed.
“Fuck you,” I said, and jumped back up on the hood of the car. But I was laughing, too.
“How the hell do you know all that?” Max asked.
“Sources, hermano,” I said. “I’ve got them, too.”
“You need to keep your mouth shut. Seriously.”
“Seriously. Who would I tell?”
“It’s a goddamn powder keg. This Lagan fucker…” He sighed, staring at the back door of the club. He looked old all of a sudden. Older than thirty-two.
“Why are you doing it?”
“Club needs money. The guys want it.”
“What do you want?”
Max laughed. “You fucking Oprah, now?” He got down from the car. I watched him go, felt him slipping away. “Thanks for the beer, Dylan.”
“Thank you,” I said. “For what you did for me. After jail, with Miguel and Margaret.”
Max nodded and then smiled, the small internal smile of a person who knew he’d done the right thing. “Worked out all right for you, didn’t it.”
“Yeah, it did.”
“Good. That’s…that’s real good.”
Max looked over at the door; there were some other guys out there now. Rabbit among them. He watched us carefully.
“You can’t come back here,” Max said.
“I can see that,” I said, raising my beer toward Rabbit. “How bad is it, Max?”
“Bad as it gets.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I made you come back.”
“She better be fucking worth it,” he said with a grin that came nowhere near his eyes. “Goodbye, Dylan.”
There was a hard lump in my throat, covered in barbs, and all I could do was nod. I watched my brother walk away, back to the life he’d chosen. The life I’d forced him back into.
Maybe it was because I’d watched Annie be so brave just a few hours ago, but I suddenly realized that for all his violence, leaving the Skulls was the only brave thing Max had ever done. This life, he didn’t choose it; he let it happen to him. Day after day he refused to make a choice, so the Skulls crept up on him like kudzu, until that was all he had.
And I was doing the same damn thing, up on that mountaintop with my money and my work. Day after day, I was making the easy choice. So easy it was barely a choice, it was something that just kept happening. Over and over again.
Annie, I thought.
It was a leap of faith. Scary as shit.
I got in my car.
ANNIE
Annie knocked on Tiffany’s door, the handles of the cloth bag she held digging into her palm. Finally, the metal door opened and Tiffany stood there, backlit by a lamp behind her, her eyes red-rimmed. Annie could hear the kids’ voices inside, over the sound of the television.
“Hey,” Annie said. “I didn’t want to bother you, but I figured maybe you’d want some food you didn’t have to cook.”
Annie held the bag out toward her.
“What is this?” Tiffany asked, taking the bag like it might hold a bomb.
“It’s some food Margaret made for me, but I can’t eat it all. It’s cookies and stuff—the kids will probably like it. And there’s…there’s a UNC undergrad course book, too.”
“College? What’s that for?” Tiffany asked, all hard edges. “You think I’ve got time to go to school with three kids?”
“I think you should just look at it. See what kind of opportunities you have.”
“Right,” Tiffany said, wiping her hand over her forehead. Her sarcasm was thick. “So many opportunities.”
“I’ve circled some stuff,” Annie said. “For me. You can ignore it.”
“You’re going back to school?” Tiffany asked.
“I’m…I’m thinking about it. I can’t go back to the farm.”
“I can understand that. Right now, I want to get out of this place so bad it makes my skin crawl.”
“Margaret and Blake, they could help you with that.”
“I keep wondering…how did I not know he had a brother? And a mom. I mean, we must have moved here to be closer to them somehow, and his brother must have gotten him the job.”
“It sounds like he kept a lot of secrets. It’s part of how he kept you here, you know. Kept you under his thumb.”
“He never told me lots of things, but I knew.” She shook her head. “Other girls. Money from dealing drugs he had squirreled away from us. He never told me about that, but I still knew.”
“I think it’s easier to think about and believe that bad stuff,” Annie said. “At least it was that way for me, living with Hoyt. Got so I couldn’t even imagine the good stuff, much less see it.”
“Yeah,” Tiffany agreed. “It’s like I’ve been living in a dark hole for five years. Anyway, thanks for this stuff—the kids will love the cookies.” From the side of the bag, she pulled out the bottle of red wine Annie had brought down from Dylan’s after that night they’d shared.
“This looks fancy,” Tiffany said, reading the label.
“So, it will probably suck,” Annie said, deadpan.
“Right, if it doesn’t come in a tub—”
“Or have a spigot.”
“It’s gross.”
They both laughed a little into the darkness.
“You want to come in?” Tiffany asked. “Have some crappy fancy wine and…I don’t know, tell me about this Margaret woman?”
“And Blake.”
“Yeah,” Tiffany sighed. “And Blake.”
Annie nodded and Tiffany stepped back, but before Annie could enter the trailer, Tiffany spoke.
“If I could change my part in what happened to you that night, I would. Like in a heartbeat.”
Annie nodded. “I know.”
“Is this…Can we start over?”
“Always,” Annie said.
Every day, if she had to, was a chance to start over.
—
A few hours later, Tiffany was comforting Sienna, who’d woken up from a nightmare, and Annie washed the coffee mugs they’d been drinking wine out of. She put the cookies and some of the other food she’d brought in the cupboards.
There was a little bit of red wine left, and she screwed the top back on and set it by the stove.
The phone in her back pocket buzzed, and her heart was in her throat as she fished it out.
Dylan.
Relief. Such sweet relief flooded her.
She let herself out of Tiffany’s trailer before answering the phone.
“Hello,” she said, trying not to sound too eager. Too relieved. You know, just in case he was calling to tell her it was all a mistake and he’d moved back to his house.
“Hey,” he said. “Did I wake you up?”
“No.” She walked down the path toward the rhododendron bushes and her trailer behind that. The moon was in the middle of the sky and she’d guess it was barely midnight. “I’ve been at Tiffany’s. You okay?”
“Isn’t that my line?” he asked.
He’s joking, she thought. It had to be a good sign if he was joking.
“I’m fine.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“Where have you been?”
“Talking to my brother.”
She paused with one foot on her first step. “Max?”
“He’s my only brother.” She heard a lot of emotions in his voice. Big ones. Hard ones. And she hated to think of him trying to carry them alone. Not when she so badly wanted to help.
“Where are you?” she asked. “Why don’t you come over?”
“I’m on the road back to the trailer park.”
“How far are you?”
“Twenty minutes.” She was inside her trailer now, the dark splintered by moonlight through the windows. “And this is better. I want to talk to you. And if I was there, we wouldn’t talk.”
Heat spread under her skin. “We could try.”
“Right. We both know how that will go.”
She didn’t know. Not for sure. Not after today. “Tell me how you think that will go.”
“With my cock buried inside you.”
“Dylan,” she sighed, restless and achy. “Drive faster.”
“What happened earlier…what you said?”
I love you.
“Dylan, if it’s easier, we can pretend I didn’t say anything,” she said, some of that nice achy and restless feeling evaporating under the bright, hot heat of her embarrassment. She’d really done that. She’d really told Dylan Daniels that she loved him. “I don’t want to ruin what we have.”
“Nothing is ruined,” he said. “Did you mean it?”
“Of course. But I don’t expect you to say it back. It’s just how I feel.”
“Your truth,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Bedrock.
He took a deep breath and she held hers.
“No one has said that to me.”
“In a long time?”
“Ever. My mom maybe, when I was young. But not when I got older.”
She tried not to pity him. Because there was nothing pitiful about him. Nothing that she didn’t respect. But even her mother had told her she loved her. And no matter how terrifying or stifling that love had been, at least she’d had that security. And could not imagine growing up without it.
“This afternoon,” he said, “that thing with Phil and Tiffany.”
“What about it?”
“We…were a team. Kind of.”
“You want to get some uniforms?”
He laughed, which was the point, but he quickly sobered. “No one has had my back since my brother,” Dylan said.
“Margaret and Blake—”
“Not the same,” he said. “I don’t know why, but it’s not. Well, that’s not true—I do know why. Because I never allowed it. After that shit went down with my family, I didn’t let anyone in. Not even them. But that thing with you today, I felt like I used to with my brother.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“Well, it didn’t turn out so good, did it?”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Dylan,” she said.
I love you.
“Do you promise?” he asked. Whispered, really. “Do you promise not to hurt me?”
She closed her eyes, tears hot under her lids. “I promise.”
DYLAN
After the fire, recuperating from the burns, my nerves were so badly damaged that everything was in pieces. I would feel everything, and then I would feel nothing. The slightest touch on one part of my body would make me writhe in pain, and yet a sharp nail being dug into another part wouldn’t even register.
I lived like that for the better part of a year, unable to trust what my body was telling me. Unable to believe anything I didn’t see with my own eyes. That’s how I landed on my mountaintop. In an environment I could control.
Right here, right now, I was fishtailing out of control.
“I’m still ten minutes away,” I told her. Which was good—ten minutes would give me time to pull myself back together, so I didn’t get to her exposed and wild and end up hurting her.
It was one thing for her to give lip service to taking me any way she could get me, but the reality of that wasn’t something I wanted to test. Because I was a stranger to myself right now. Her verbal promises weren’t enough, and I wanted sworn oaths from her flesh.
“Keep talking, baby,” I said, watching the exits fly by on the highway.
“About what?”
“Anything.”
“Okay, Truth or Dare.”
“What?” I laughed, changing lanes.
“We’re playing Truth or Dare.”
“I haven’t played that since I was in seventh grade or something.”
“Do you need me to explain the rules?”
“No.”
“Truth or Dare.” The sound of her teasing laughter slowed me down, evened me out, and the wildness I felt, it settled down a little.
“Well, we’ve kind of had enough danger for a while, haven’t we?” I said. “Let’s go truth.”
“Ah, you don’t know the trick, do you? Truth is always more dangerous than dares.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Church lock-in when I was eleven. Very high-stakes game of Truth or Dare. Here comes your question: What did you like about race car driving?”
“I think we played very different games of Truth or Dare. You’re supposed to ask me if I think you’re sexy. Or if I like you—”
“I know the answers to those questions,” she said. Her confidence was a turn-on. “I want to know what you liked about racing.”
“Going fast.” She laughed, and the sweet sound of it made me smile. “You think I’m kidding?”
“I think nothing is that simple.”
“Racing is. I mean, not just going fast, but going faster than anyone else. I liked going faster and being better than anyone else.”
“You’re such a man.”
“I am, honey. I am such a man.”
“How did the crash happen?” she asked.
For a moment the physical memory of the car swinging out of my control, the tire destroyed, the force and speed—it rocked me. I felt, again, that horrible tilt, the wild spin.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You don’t have to answer.”
“Dirty air,” I said. “That’s the term anyway. Cars going so fast create air turbulence. Really unpredictable turbulence. I was drafting the leader and I adjusted a quarter of an inch, swinging to the outside, and I…I just kept swinging. I couldn’t get it back. The car behind me drove me into the wall. That’s when the explosion happened and I got ping-ponged into the infield.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s just part of the life, baby.”
“Dylan—”
“So it’s my turn. Truth or Dare,” I said.
“Dare.”
“What?” I cried.
“I think I’ve told you enough truth.” Her voice was soft and it pulled at me, slipped under my skin, softened nearly every last bit of resistance to her I was clinging to.
It was ridiculous that I had even considered, for a moment, that I would let her walk off with that Hero Cop, that I would allow anyone to touch her but me. Anyone to talk to her like this, unguarded and soft and sleepy.
Even if he would give her some kind of idealized life without danger or darkness.
She was a creature of light, and that did not happen without darkness.
And she was mine.
I could not fight it any longer.
“Go to church with me,” I said.
“What? That’s your dare?”
“Yep. There’s a good chance a lightning bolt might be involved. But I’ll risk it for you. Next Sunday. Come to church with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to take you. I want to do that with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know. You’re Catholic, right?” he asked.
“I was. I mean, it’s not like it was a choice. It was just where we went.”
“Got it. Leave it to me. Church next Sunday.”
“Where are you?” she whispered. I could hear how turned on she was.
“I am…” I braked to take the exit to the campground. “Three minutes away.”
“Truth or Dare.” She was breathing hard, and that sixth sense of mine kicked into gear. Something inevitable and dangerous was coming my way. But instead of dreading it, I opened myself up to the possibility of it.
“Dare,” I said.
“That thing you said…at the swimming hole. Where…you know…the place you wanted to fuck me.”
I pushed on the gas. Heart in my throat. Oh God, baby, don’t…don’t do this to me.
“Come over here,” she said. “And do it.”