They scowled in unison, both pouting as theatrically as possible before scrambling for their clothes. Frank burst into my office, and both girls screeched, running for the door.
“What?” I slurred, not bothering to turn around as I tucked my dick back into my pants.
“Fuck, Keaton- how much have you had to drink?”
I stumbled toward the couch, dropping to the cushions. “Get out.”
“You’re drinking- and fucking- yourself to death. It’s been two months. It’s time to sober up. Either you’re gonna do it yourself, or I’m checking you into rehab.”
“Fuck you.”
“Keaton.”
I managed to turn my head, on the verge of passing out.
“You’re about a day away from becoming your father. I know you don’t want that. Let me help you.”
Frank’s voice sounded too far away to give two fucks about whatever was coming out of his mouth.
So, I passed out.
. . .
“Keat. Damn, you stink.”
I blinked, squinting one eye and trying to focus.
“Luke?”
“Shit. You smell like dad used to. Is that what you want?”
Well, if the intense throbbing in my head, the puke brewing in my throat, or the Sahara dry-mouth wasn’t enough to make me miserable, my little brother’s words did the trick.
“What are you doing here?”
“I flew here. You’ve been passed out for almost twenty-four hours.”
“Fuck. Did I… piss myself?”
“Smells like it.”
“I want to fucking die.”
“I can tell.”
“Luke.” I forced myself into a sitting position, raking my eyes over my brother. He lowered to the chair across from me, eyebrows raised. “I’m fucked up.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“What, withdrawal? DTs? I’ve seen this shit all my life. The tremors start yet?”
I lifted my hands weakly, noticing the shaking before I felt it.
“Yeah.”
“Frank called your doctor. Ten milligrams of Diazepam every four hours. You can handle this, Keaton.”
I gripped the bedspread, staring at my little brother.
“You know how I found her? Riding him. Straddling him, in our bed.”
He reddened, either with anger or embarrassment or a combination of both, forming fists at his sides. “That’s what the media said, but I was hoping it wasn’t true.”
“I pulled my gun on the guy. It was her boss. The ‘yoga instructor of the stars’ or some shit like that.”
“His career is fucking over.”
“I haven’t read anything about it. Frank has been keeping the press from me. What are they saying?”
Luke shifted uncomfortably, but I knew that I could count on him to give it to me straight.
“The asshole has come off looking like a giant... well, asshole. His career really is over. Kelsey looks like a slut. You’re getting sympathy. Some magazines are talking about all the women you’ve been sleeping with.”
I rolled my eyes, looking back at the window.
“Is Mom reading this shit about me?”
“No,” he assured me. “Robin is keeping it as quiet as possible.”
“How’s Robin?”
“She’s taking over Valley Video.”
I snorted sarcastically. “What, that video-store-trailer?”
“She wants her own business. I guess it’s a start.”
“She should have gone to college. She’s brilliant. I wish she’d take money from me.”
“You know that she’s too proud for that, Keat.”
I sighed, fatigue washing over me.
With Luke’s help, I somehow made it to my private bathroom. Granted, I threw up in the shower twice, but managed to at least clean myself up and put on a fresh t-shirt and shorts.
“Where the fuck did my couch go?” I demanded, the tremors progressively getting worse.
“You pissed on it, kid,” Frank snapped. “I’ve got a new one, it’ll be delivered tomorrow. Come on, we’ve got to get you home.”
“That’s not my home. It’s a fucking apartment. That fucking cunt is living in my home, the home I’m paying for,” I sneered, letting Luke tuck my arm over his shoulders.
“You’re apartment, then,” Luke agreed, leading me into the reception area. Kathy stood up from behind her desk, her hands clasping together nervously.
“Mr. Thane?” she asked, glancing between Luke and Frank.
“He’s fine, Kath,” Luke assured her, winking her way.
“Stop flirting with my secretary,” I growled, shivering.
Somehow, Luke got me into his rental car and “home” to my apartment.
The next forty-eight hours were torturous.
As I sobered up, I thought of Kelsey. I realized that I’d never taken any clear-headed time to allow myself to feel what she’d done to me, and I quickly learned that going through detox while your heart is breaking was only double the torture.
I wanted a fucking normal family. Was it too much to ask? I was almost twenty-five, when most successful men my age wanted a million gorgeous women on their arm, and all I could dream about was a family. A loving and devoted wife, a couple of adorable kids, and a marriage that meant more than designer bags and bottomless bank accounts.
I finally started feeling like myself again after two days, attempting to eat some soup that the at-home nurse-dash-warden served to me on a tray.
Luke dropped to the chair next to me, stretching his long legs out. “Guess what.”
“What?” I asked, looking his way.
“I asked Madeline to marry me.”
Grinning weakly, I rested my head against the pillow once more. “Congratulations, little brother. I’m not the best one for advice, but Madeline sounds perfect. It’s always good not to marry a fucking whore.”
Luke laughed, his shoulders shaking as he rolled his eyes. “’It’s always good not to marry a fucking whore.’ I’ll need that embroidered on one of those frilly pillows, okay?”
“Consider it done.” I sighed, blinking back the unfamiliar moisture in my eyes. “Thanks, Luke. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
His face fell, and he met my eyes. “Are you done drinking, Keaton?”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” I replied, turning away to look out the window of my penthouse apartment. “Less disappointment that way.”
“Fair enough.” He sighed, slapping his hands on his knees, over his jeans. “Well, I need to get home. I’ve been gone for almost a week.”
“Madeline’s lucky,” I replied. “Make sure she knows that.”
“Will you be my best man?” he asked, and I was immediately taken back to our childhood by the young hopefulness in his tone.
“I’d better be.”
“Not ‘till July. And you’ve got to come home. I’m getting married in Pittsburgh.”
I sighed, nodding. “I think it’s about time I came home.”
He clasped my hand, and I pulled him down into a tight hug. “Things are going to change for us, Keaton. For you. You deserve better than this. Than what she did to you. I love you, brother.”
“Love you, Luke.”
I watched him shift his bag over his shoulder and leave my room before I turned back to the window.
I did manage to clean myself up, but I didn’t stop drinking completely. I was a functional alcoholic, according to my therapist. She also fed me some bullshit about “Possessive Personality Disorder,” which I interpreted to mean that I wanted to be the Master of the Universe.
Since that didn’t sound so bad to me, I agreed with her and refused treatment with a sarcastic eye roll.
Upon reflection, I realized that I’d hit what I considered to be rock bottom.
I’d fucked two girls in my office, passed out, pissed my couch, and had to detox. Yep, rock fuckin
g bottom.
I swore to Frank that I had my shit together going forward. “I owe you, man. I don’t know where I’d be right now without you.”
Frank shrugged, gesturing to my desk. “You’d be dead, that’s where you’d be. You’re welcome.” He sighed, looking down at his feet. “Keaton, I have bad news for you. They yanked the script. You had to know this was gonna happen.”
Lowering to my desk chair, I scowled and raked my hand through my hair. “I can’t believe that, just a couple months ago, I was trying to decide whether to take a chance on a Fourth of July blockbuster. Now…” I looked down at the several envelopes on my desktop. “Well, what are my options here?”
“You’ve got another documentary, this one on some worldwide treasure hunt people do online- sounds boring as hell to me. A terminal illness drama, a shitty legal thriller, and a suspense-horror.”
Tightening my jaw, I shook my head. “Give me the horror. I’ll read that one first.”
“Keaton?”
“Hmm?”
“There’s someone out there for you, kid. Someone needing you as much as you need her. I love my wife, and I have for thirty years. They’re not all like Kelsey.”
I gave a half-gracious smile, reaching for an envelope. “I know.”
Where the Heart Is
V
Dear Matthew,
You just went left the hospital room. The nurse says I need to stay another day here, but I don’t want to.
I don’t want to be here anymore.
I have to tell you how I feel. If you hate me after you read this, I’m sorry.
I wish that Rory hadn’t lived for two whole days.
I started to feel hope.
I held him. They took out the tubes and needles and gave him to me. He was warm. The nurse told me today that they let me hold him because he was gone. He wasn’t sleeping, he was gone.
They lied to me. They lied. You lied. My parents lied. He wasn’t breathing, and I couldn’t let myself believe it.
I spent hours holding our son, even after he was gone, believing that I’d be taking him home with me. I kept looking at the clock, thinking that every minute was another minute that he was growing stronger because of me. Because I loved him. That the doctor let me hold him to make him better with my love.
But he grew colder.
So did I.
You should have told me. You had to have known.
I shouldn’t be alive. I spent nineteen years here in this world, and Rory spent two days. It was up to me to protect him. It was up to us to protect him. You should have chosen him.
The doctor said that my heart stopped twice. I feel like it never started again.
I don’t feel like your home is my home. I don’t want to be near my parents. I need to go, to be away from all of this, from you, from this place.
God I can’t go back there and see his nursery. I can’t see the little clothes I washed. They all smell like baby powder. Clean it up before we leave. Please Matthew.
I can’t marry you. I should have died.
You should have let me go.
-Vivian
“Vivian?”
I turned away from the window of our bedroom, watching Matthew appear in the doorway.
“What?”
“When were you going to give me this letter? You wrote it in the hospital. That was almost a year ago.”
His eyes were swollen and bloodshot; I knew he’d been crying, and I glanced at the notebook paper in his hands.
“Where did you find that?”
“In your overnight bag in the closet. I was cleaning it out.”
“Just throw it away.” I turned back to the glass, watching the rain pour through the late May sky.
“Vivian, reading this… Jesus Christ, it broke my heart all over again,” he murmured, lowering to the bed.
I traced a raindrop’s path as it slid down the window pane. “I don’t feel that way anymore, Matthew. Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? What way do you feel? Do you feel at all?” He tossed my letter to the bedspread, staring at me with his painful gaze. “It took you months to leave this room. You barely look at me or talk to me. You refuse counseling, and I don’t even know where you go every day while I’m at school. I know that you go somewhere, because I’ve stopped home on lunch, and you’re gone.”
“I just drive.”
“Vivian.”
“What? Is it money? You want me to get a job? I’ll get a job,” I snapped, whipping my eyes to his.
“No, I want you to heal. To live. Let me hold you. Let me make love to you. Where are we?” he demanded.
“Where are we? We’re nowhere, Matthew.”
“Nowhere? What in the hell does that mean?”
I stood, rushing to the closet. “I’ll leave. You’re right. You don’t deserve this.”
“Vivian. Vivian, stop,” he ordered, standing and reaching for me. “Just stop. I’m not trying to upset you, I’m trying to… get you help. You can’t live like this anymore. Rory is gone, and neither of us can change that.”
I turned to stare at him.
I knew this day was coming.
He was right; I’d lived for almost an entire year in a state of numbness. Cold, emotionless, and at a distance from the handsome man before me.
He slept on the couch downstairs, I slept in the bed. When he’d come to me and try to hold me, or touch me, I’d freeze, waiting for him to stop.
He always stopped. My patient, devoted Matthew.
Suffering.
“I can’t do this to you anymore. I can’t look at you,” I cried, covering my mouth with my hands. Tears formed and unformed like condensation, and I fought them away. “His face was your face. He looked like you. How could a baby look so much like his father? How?”
A tear slid down his cheek, and his shoulders stiffened as he brushed it away beneath his glasses. “I know.”
“We could get married and make a million babies, and none of them would ever be that perfect. None of them would be him.”
“That’s true, they wouldn’t be Rory, but they’d be ours, and they would be perfect, Vivian,” he argued brokenly.
“Not to me. Nothing is ever going to be perfect again. My heart won’t stop breaking. I waited. I waited and waited. Time heals all wounds, blah blah blah, that’s bullshit! Fucking bullshit!” I raged, all of the fury that I’d buried deep within my heart settling on the surface and corroding my throat with thick tears. “I don’t want to heal! I want to forget!”
“Don’t scream at me,” he hissed, shaking his head. “Don’t you dare scream at me like that. I’ve been nothing but patient. I’ve waited. I’ve given you time, and love, and taken care of everything, every horribly difficult thing since he died. You stayed up here hiding while I arranged for the funeral. You refused to see anyone who came here to pay their respects to us. You made me deal with it all by myself. You need to grow up, Vivian! Never once did our age difference become so apparent until now, until you just stood here stomping your fucking foot on the ground, screaming at me because our son looked like me!”
I had no air to breathe.
He’d never raised his voice to me, or said such unbearably cruel things to me before.
Tears, uncontrollable and unwanted, streamed down my face in agony. “You’re right. You’re right,” I sobbed, scraping at the dampness on my face. “Come on Matthew, make love to me right now. Let’s make another perfect baby, just like Rory. Come on,” I urged, my words dripping with sarcasm. I threw my arms around him, rising to my tiptoes to force my mouth to his. “Come on, touch me. Kiss me. Tell me everything will be perfect, that we’ll have a house with a white fucking picket fence,” I growled between kisses. “Fuck me hard, right now, make me a baby-”
He groaned, his tongue sweeping over mine as he lifted me up and against him. I tore at his shirt, ripping it away from his muscular arms as my fingernails scratched his bare chest.
“Stop. Stop,” he s
narled, shoving me away from him. “You’re suffering, and you’re taking it out on me. I’m hurting too, why can’t you see that?”
I stood there, desperate and crying and panting from our kiss, turning back to the closet.
“I’m leaving. I’m sorry I put you through all of that alone. You’re free now, Matthew.”
“Vivian.”
I ignored him, shoving as much clothing as I could into my suitcase. Half of the closet was filled with maternity clothes, and I pushed them aside, searching for my small tank tops and shorts.
I made it down the stairs to the door, and he followed, continuing to call my name. “Stop. Please don’t drive away like this. Let’s talk this out, okay?”
Bursting through the front door, I jerked my trunk open, slamming my suitcase inside. I had no idea if my old Pontiac would make it to Gram’s or not, but that was where I was headed. Her house in Pennsylvania was about three and a half hours away, and it was the only place I could think of to go.
Rain cascaded in sheets from the sky, and a clap of thunder startled us both.
“Vivian, please don’t leave. Don’t go, not like this,” he half begged, half ordered, standing across from me in the driveway.
The simple, white sundress that I wore was completely soaked. My hair was plastered to my skin. I gasped a sob, running to him.
He caught me in his arms, lifting me completely off the ground. I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding on to the remnants of what we’d shared, of the love we’d had.
His kiss drowned me in the rain, smothering me, stealing the last essential beats of my breaking heart. His bare chest pressed against my skin, and I cried out, struggling until he let me free again. He lowered me to my feet.
“I have to go,” I whispered, aching. “Away from this, away from it all. Please just give me time,” I begged, backing toward the car, my lips tingling and swollen from the force of his kiss.
He pulled his glasses away, brushing his hand over his face to watch me go.
“I’m waiting for you, beauty. I’m waiting, no matter how long it takes. I love you. I will never stop loving you.”
“Stop loving me,” I cried brokenly, shaking my head. “Don’t wait. I’m not worth waiting for.”
Before he could say another word, I fell into the car, backing out of the driveway and pulling away.
On Heartbreak Ridge: Movie Trilogy Prequel Novella (The Movie Trilogy) Page 7