On Solid Ground

by Melissa Collins

  “Hey,” she dangles the greeting out there, waiting for me to take the bait. Instinctively, I look over at Dax and Tonka, sitting next to the jeep, soaking up the sun. Before I can even answer her, she asks, “Who is he? Anyone good?” There’s a hint of laughter, of playfulness in her question, hinting at all the John Doe’s I’ve seen, can’t even really say dated, in the past.

  Chuckling, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the normality with which our conversation seems to be happening. “Yeah, he’s good people.” After a momentary pause, I add, “The best actually. Better than I’ll ever deserve.”

  “Shut it.” She smacks me on the arm. “Beck,” turning in her seat, she rests her hand on my inked-up forearm, grabbing my attention, “you’re the best person I know.” With an audible sigh, she reclines on the bench. “Remember that time Mrs. Grossgold kicked me out of English in senior year. She tried to get ahold of Mom,” a cynical burst of laughter forcefully moves past her lips. “Even if she hadn’t died the month before that, I don’t think she would have cared. That old hag was always out to get me.” With Mom’s defense hanging on my lips, Nikki chooses to speak over me. “Stop,” she insists. “Even if Mom had been alive, she wouldn’t have been any good. At that point, I would have been expelled for sure. But you,” her eyes warm as they look over to me, “you talked her down from that crazy-as-fuck ledge she seemed to live on. Without you, I know for sure I wouldn’t have graduated.” With a much quieter, calmer air about her, she says, “If you hadn’t given up on everything you had going for you, I don’t think I’d even be alive.”

  Her words shock me to the core. Never, in all my years taking care of her has she ever once expressed any kind of gratitude for what I’ve done for her. If you’d have asked me, I would have said it was for nothing. If it wasn’t for the corpse occasionally staring back at me, I’d have nothing to show for my sacrifices—well, other than a corpse, of course. And really, at the end of the day, that’s never enough. Especially, when all I wanted was someone with whom I could commiserate. Someone who understood what I was going through, or at least who tried to care about it.

  But instead what I had was a drunk of a sister—a high school senior who couldn’t care less about her future. All I had was a burden of a human being who made me learn all too quickly what it meant to sacrifice. And then when Violet came along a few years later, my definition of sacrifice took on a whole new meaning. A much more innocent one that made me rethink my entire perspective on life. It’s because of her that I opened up my shop, grew the fuck up, stopped being angry at Nikki, and realized that a person’s past sins do not, in any way whatsoever, determine their future worthiness.

  With all of that shit weighing heavily on my mind, I pick up the conversation as if I hadn’t needed a few minutes to gather my thoughts. “Mrs. Grossgold was pretty old, huh?” I joke, wanting to bypass the whole, Yeah, you really would have fucked up your entire life if it hadn’t been for me conversation.

  Nikki apparently wants the same thing, because rather than pushing me further, she looks over to Violet. Tonka’s joined her out in the field, while Dax looks on carefully from the sidelines. “How is she?” she asks, a confidential tone to her words.

  “Better than you’d think.” Though I try to conceal it, Nikki doesn’t miss the accusation in my voice.

  “Look, I know I fucked up. I realize that now more than I ever have before.” She chokes on her words, fighting back the tears, trying desperately to find the right words to express what it is she’s trying to find. “I don’t expect you to believe it right now, but I hope sometime soon you will. I’ve changed a lot in here and I want the best for her. She deserves better than we ever had,” she says decisively, and there’s something in her tone that makes me believe her. It’s not simply because she’s my blood, my sister, and because I always want to look for the best in her. It’s because there’s genuine honesty in her words that have never been there before.

  Without warning, the scene that changed our lives forever flashes in my head, making cold shivers of hatred flush my body.

  “No!” harsh wails of pain tore out of her room, making my skin crawl with the putrid fear of something gone dreadfully wrong. “Get the fuck off me!” Glass crashed to the floor, tears following not too far behind.

  Standing on the other side of the door, I heard Nikki’s terrified shrills of fear crying out. “You’re a fucking scum bag.” Her words were pointless, falling on deaf and, even worse, evil ears.

  With a force I didn’t realize I possessed, I dropped my shoulder, driving it into the flimsy wooden door. Nothing could have ever prepared me for the scene playing out before me. My sister was splayed out on her bed, arms and legs pinned under the weight of a bloated drunk, his breathy stench floating over her face. “Shut the fuck up, you whore,” he spat into her face, nuzzling his dangling beard in between her exposed and bruised breasts.

  Incapable of believing what I was seeing, I actually tried to blink away the sight of him biting her skin. His teeth drew blood as she shrieked out in pain. Shocking the fucking shit out of me, he reared up on his calves and swung a drunken hand across her face, knocking a tooth out in the process. When Nikki spat back in his face, letting her blood drip across his cheek and down his chest, he formed a fist and knocked her out cold.

  It was in that instant that my body launched into action, shaking off its near paralytic state of disbelief.

  In his drunken stupor, the bastard hadn’t even seen me come into the room. With glazed eyes, he stared over at me, disbelieving my existence. “Get the fuck out of here, now,” I demanded, my voice steadier than it should have been.

  An ugly sneered smile split his face. Pointing a crooked finger at me, he laughed, “You’re her fag son, aren’t you?”

  That’s when my recognition dawned. He’d been here before. He was one of her “customers” or fellow druggies. That explained why he had no sense of respect to stay away from us on the night of her funeral. As if burying our own mother hadn’t already made today a monumentally fucked-up day, this was only making things that much more traumatic.

  Completely ignoring his question, I stepped closer to him. “I said get the fuck out.” At only twenty-two, I had filled out somewhat. My muscles, however, were no match for the weight of his beer gut. The only strength I had in that moment was the dire need to get him out of my house.

  With an uproar of cynical laughter, he moved from the bed, his pants dangling open, his gut hanging over the loosened belt. “And why should I exactly?”

  When I reached out to shove him, he locked my arms in a vise grip, twisting one up behind my back with so much force my shoulder actually popped out of its socket. “You’re a fucking riot,” he yelled, an evil humor shaking his words. “You think you can win?” Swiftly, he kicked my legs out from under me while simultaneously shoving me forward onto the bed.

  Using whatever leverage I could garner, I kicked backward, trying desperately to land a heel into his crotch. Flailing wildly on the bed did nothing but exhaust me, though. “Go ahead,” he sneered. Pressing a knee into my lower back, he lowered his filthy body on top of mine. “Fight me. Your mother used to fight back all the time.”

  Any anger that was left in my body rushed out in a furious rage. Bucking my body with as much strength as I could muster, I tried my best to get him off of me. The sound of his belt buckles clanging together as he pushed his pants down over his hips made vomit rise in my throat. With one hand, he pushed my head to the side, nearly suffocating me in the pillows on my sister’s bed. The only thing I could focus on was Nikki, laid out on the floor, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth.

  By the time he managed to remove any barrier of clothing between us, Nikki started stirring on the floor, her eyes slowly blinking awake. Biting my tongue so hard blood actually filled my mouth, I tried my best to keep my screams at bay. The physical pain of his body tearing through mine was nothing compared to the gut wrenching pain of watching my sister wake
up to the scene of her brother being raped by the man who had tried to rape her.

  When she woke fully, I tried to keep her calm enough not to move. The last thing I wanted was for her to draw attention to herself. My pain was survivable, but Nikki’s life had already started down the wrong path. She was already broken, having her body taken away from her was somehow worse than my own being taken from me.

  Tears of pain burned a path down my cheeks. When he shifted his weight or moved his hand, I gasped for air, desperately praying to stay alive so that if he chose to go after Nikki, I could at least be here to protect her.

  A God I most certainly did not believe in must have felt pity for us in the moment. By some stroke of luck, Nikki lost consciousness again—or maybe she could no longer watch what was going on. When he’d finished with me, he rolled off the bed. After rearranging his clothes, he shook me against the mattress, making sure I was still alive. For no other reason than for good measure, he pulled me up by the collar. Though I tried my best to keep my eyes closed, to keep pretending like I was out cold, fear made me open them. “You keep your fucking fag mouth shut about this, you understand.” With a loud crack, he pummeled my jaw with his fist with such force that he actually punched me out of his other hand. I flew back against the bed, scrambling wildly to gain leverage when I saw him bend down to pick up Nikki. Her limb body sagged lifelessly from his hand. “You say a single word about any of this and I’ll come back for her. And maybe more of you too,” he added with a maniacal twist pulling at his lips.

  All I could do was nod, watch him walk out of my house, and hope we’d never see him again.

  “Hey, you okay?” Nikki’s words shake me out of my horrid flashback.

  Shaking my head, I try to refocus on whatever she was just saying. “Yeah, I’m good. Sorry. What were you saying?”

  Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she turns to face me, pulling both of my hands into hers. “I need to start over when I get out of here. Since I don’t have the money to do it on my own, I’m going to need help. You’ve already done so much for me, that I hate to ask you for more, but can we . . . you can say no, if you want . . .”

  “Nikki,” I squeeze her hands. “Whatever you need, just ask. I’m here for you and Violet. No matter what.”

  After taking a deep breath, I could see the resolve set in on her face. There was some kind of renewed determinism in her personality and I couldn’t help but be excited to think that maybe my sister was returning to me. “Can we move in with you when I get out of here? I don’t–”

  Cutting off whatever explanation she thinks she needs, I pull her into my arms, squeezing the life out of her. “Of course you can. No questions asked.” We won’t all be able to fit in my tiny apartment, but getting a new one to help my sister is an easy decision. Sure, helping Nikki in the past meant that I was always the one who was burned, but no matter how many times she’d screwed up, I would always be there for her. In my heart, I had a good feeling that she had truly changed this time.

  “What about him? Will he be okay with it?” she asks, tipping her chin up over my shoulder to Dax tossing Violet up in the air. Tonka is jumping around them in a circle, wanting in on the fun. When Dax puts Violet down on the ground, she wraps her arms around Tonka’s neck, hugging him as if her life depends on it.

  Warmth spreads through my chest. Of course I don’t know what the future holds for us, if we even have one to begin with, but I do know Dax would never let anything get in between my family and me—not even himself. He’s too good, too honest, and too humble to ever do something like that. With a certainty I feel in my bones, I say, “Yeah, he’ll be fine.”

  In the span of just a few weeks, my life has been turned upside down, the ground ripped from under my feet. Nikki’s arrest and stint in rehab, along with fighting for and being awarded temporary custody of Violet have done more to shake me than anything I’ve dealt with in my past. But looking out to Dax, Violet, and Tonka as they walk toward me and Nikki, I feel put back together in ways I never thought possible. Some people say they feel uneasy when their pasts and presents come colliding together.

  On the other hand, I could not feel more at peace.

  “I told you not to let her ride that Tilt-A-Wheel after all that cotton candy,” Beck jokes as I wash the throw up off my sneakers. He gets himself into such a fit of laughter, he actually has difficulty getting the rest of his words out.

  “Real funny, ass!” Wadding up a paper towel, I toss it at his head. He moves out of the way despite his laughter.

  Chiming in from Beck’s side, Violet laughs too. “It’s funny! Sorry about your shoes.”

  After wiping the tears out of his eyes, he leans in for a kiss. The movement is so natural, so accustomed. He doesn’t even think twice about the fact that we’re in public, or that Violet is right next to us.

  Me, on the other hand, I let the rigidity set in my spine. Awareness of all the eyes in the crowd falls on me, and I pull away. Though it’s not my intention, I see the hurt in Beck’s eyes.

  “What?” he asks, his tone defensive.

  Dropping the vomit-covered paper towels in the trash next to us, I pick up Tonka’s leash and wrap it around my wrist twice, reveling in the pinch of pain. “Nothing,” I defend, walking away from the bench.

  “Nothing, my ass.” His hand falls to mine. “You’re the one who pushed this.” His hands move between us. “And now you don’t want to be seen in public with me?” His voice is cynical and mean, his words poisonous bits of anger flying toward me.

  Silently, I continue walking. By the time we reach the parking lot, Violet about ready to pass out. The day really took its toll on her. Between the excitement of seeing her mom, the craziness of the carnival, and the chaos of getting sick just minutes ago, she didn’t stand much of a chance of staying awake for the ride home.

  “It’s not that,” I plea, but nothing meaningful follows. My words, lame though they may be, fall on angry, deaf ears. Essentially ignoring me the rest of the ride back to my place, Beck keeps his eyes on the road, and his focus off me entirely.

  When we pull into the lot, I see that Chloe’s car isn’t here. I dig out my phone and shoot her a quick text to see if she’s going to be out for the night. When she lets me know that she’ll be staying at Devon’s, I figure the least I can do is invite Beck in and see if we can straighten this out.

  “Come in? Chloe’s not here.”

  “Oh, good, then you won’t have to hide from her since she’s gone. Would hate for you to be seen in your own house too, you know since public isn’t an option either.” If I hadn’t upset him so much, his little fit would almost be comical.

  Reaching across the center console, I drop my hand to his thigh, squeezing gently. When he offers no reaction at all, I squeeze harder, letting my pinky graze his dick. “You won’t kiss me out in public, but a parking lot hand-job is okay?” Sarcasm drips from his words, his brows furrowing together.

  That earns a burst of laughter from me. “No, that’s not what I had in mind.” Pulling my hand back, I turn in my seat, and let my hand fall to his cheek. Angling his head to me, I search his face for just a little bit of something that suggests he’s really not as mad with me as he’s letting on. I don’t find it, but I continue on anyway, “There are some things I need to tell you. It’s not an excuse for what I just did, but it’s . . .” scrubbing my hand over my face, I stumble for the words I need to say. Thoughts of my family, of my college experience, of Delaney all fly through my head, sticking in my brain like shrapnel. “It’s n-not w-wh-what I meant t-to . . . ah f-fuck,” the words fall out of my head and Tonka nudges my arm from the back seat, his whines filtering through my initial panic.

  Beck takes my hand, probably out of pity. Tonka burrows his snout under our joined hands and within a minute, I’ve managed to calm myself down enough to take a deep breath. It’s not lost on me that the peace only descended on me when Beck took my hand.

  “Please, just come up so we can
talk.”

  Beck agrees, nodding over at me. Violet doesn’t stir one bit as he unbuckles her from her seat or as he carries her into the apartment. The place is bigger than Beck’s simple one-bedroom and, at first, he doesn’t know where to put her.

  “Here,” I extend a hand down the hallway. “She can sleep in Chloe’s room since she won’t be home.”

  After lying her on the bed, he tucks the blankets around her. Kissing her on her forehead, he tells her he loves her and it’s the perfect picture of unconditional love. Leaving the door open just a crack, Beck and I tiptoe out of the room. Tonka seems torn between staying with Violet and coming back to the living room with me.

  “He’s grown pretty attached to her,” I say, hoping to start the conversation off on a more positive note.

  “She is pretty awesome,” Beck adds as he flops onto the couch.

  “Can I get you anything?” I ask, tipping my head over to the kitchen. The living area of the apartment is one, large open space—the kitchen, dining room, living room, and small office area all blending together.

  “Nah, I’m good. The corn dogs, root beer float, and funnel cake were enough for me.” Rubbing his hands over his legs, I see his demeanor change. “Look, it’s okay you didn’t want to be seen with me.” His confession hits me like a blow to the chest.

  Sitting next to him, I pull his hands into mine. “It most certainly is not. I told you, there are things–”

  Cutting me off, he pulls his hands out of mine. “I know you have stuff to tell me, but I should let you know that I won’t be around here much longer.” Well, if I thought his previous words hit me hard, then there’s no accurate way to explain how that just felt. Finding myself speechless, I let Beck fill the silence. “Nikki asked to move in with me after she gets out. She wants to start over and she’s going to need some help. My place is too small. Hell, I don’t even have a room for Violet as it is now. Poor kid has to deal with my crappy apartment and I have to sleep on the couch.” He twists, stretching his suffering back.