by Anthology
Real love, Maggie, means going past the fear of being hurt and rejected and realizing that you only become more real when you test yourself. When you trust and love beyond your wildest fears—in spite of those fears. The real risk isn’t in being hurt. It’s in never putting yourself in a position to be hurt.
Tyler made me want to try.
And I kind of hated him for that.
“But I—”
I held my breath. Whatever came next out of his mouth was like a ripple in time. Like some kind of separation between seven years ago and now was being breeched. Shaken. Smoothed out.
He sighed through his nose, lips pursed, and let go of my hand. “You know what? Let me talk while you drive. It’ll keep you awake. I’ll tell you what happened.”
My belly button made an ominous sound.
“After one last bathroom stop,” he sagely suggested.
We dispatched with the necessaries quickly and resumed our drive, the relationship between us forever altered.
Not that I knew what this relationship even was, but it was something.
And I felt like we were about to find out what something was.
Chapter Eight
Tyler
Compulsions come in a lot of different forms, but I’ve never had a compulsive need to do or say something good. Talk about a massive mindfuck. Touching her hand felt so right. Letting go felt like breaking.
All that shit I said about her fear? A total guess. A shot in the dark. The fact that I was right was written all over her shocked face.
It made me proud.
Like I gave her something back.
Maybe I should sleep with her. What if that’s what I could give her, to show her how much I appreciated all that she did for me? Not a pity fuck. Hell fucking no. I don’t do pity fucks, and I don’t receive pity fucks. I meant a thank you fuck. A let’s-be-grown-ups fuck.
A wipe-the-slate-clean fuck.
Maybe giving her the chance to make love with someone would—
Hold on.
Make love?
When did I ever call it that?
I realized she was looking at me from the corner of her eye. Expecting me to say something. Problem was, I was imploding in the passenger seat, reeling from—
Make love.
I was falling for her. That’s why it never occurred to me to ditch her. I could have. It wouldn’t have been hard to find some trucker and hitch my way to L.A. In fact, maybe I should do that right now.
Stop this before it all went any further.
I grabbed Lena’s guitar and started playing Trevor’s song, “Random Acts of Crazy”, then dug in to the lyrics:
Your Mama told you to watch out for me
Your God told you to walk away
Your Daddy said nothing, for he was gone
And you weren’t sure what to say
“Ha ha,” Maggie said with a laugh.
I continued:
The night you found me, wandering and lost
Naked by the side of the road
My guitar shattered, my body bereft
You fought everything you were told
Her face went serious.
When a naked soul finds you
You don’t have a choice
You have to stop and pause
You can turn away and never look back
But it will yank you back, because
Random acts of crazy draw you in
Random acts of kindness draw you in
Random acts of love draw you in
Maggie
It was like being serenaded without being serenaded. Odd and haunting, his voice filled me with a deep longing. I fought to keep my eyes on the road, and increased my speed. The sooner we arrived in L.A. the sooner I could untangle myself from this weird ball of twine in emotion form, our separate threads rolled into a ball that we needed to unravel in order to make use of ourselves again.
He moved immediately into “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer”. I hadn’t joined in when he sang the first song, though I’d memorized the lyrics. He didn’t know that. He especially didn’t know I could play the music from memory in my sleep.
His voice was gritty and nuanced, full of smoke and memories. When Tyler sang he brought you with him to a place where the words told a real story. This was no ordinary melody made into a catchy tune. He painted the world with notes and sighs and a kind of raspy caress that took you somewhere you needed to go.
He sang:
Oh, I wasted
my only answered prayer
on a woman
who didn’t believe in God....
We were coming up on Oklahoma City by now and as the buildings became more dense and the lanes widened, I detached from his singing, hating that I had to. The road demanded more attention from me than I could spare and also be emotionally attuned. That ability to push my feelings behind a barricade came in handy in moments like these.
The rest of the time? Not so much.
At one she walked away
At two she said no
At three she said please
At four she said more
He finished the second song and before I could say anything, went right back into “Random Acts of Crazy”. Tyler was driving me crazy. The promise of his story faded as the soulful song made me tearful. I fought back a sob that began in my chest and ended somewhere in the space between us.
What the hell was this? What was I feeling? Was he feeling it, too?
I wanted to respect him, but when he started on “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer” again I reached out and tapped the guitar. He jumped like I’d lit him on fire.
“What?” he gasped.
“It’s great. Really. And I know you need to practice, though you’re not the singer. Trevor and Liam are. You’re avoiding talking to me about what happened to you this morning. C’mon. You promised. You’re the kind of guy who always keeps his promises.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
“You sure?”
I paused, mulling that over. “If I’m wrong, I’ll take that chance.”
“You are not like anyone I know, Maggie.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words.
“I mean it. And that is a vote of confidence.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, but it won’t get you out of telling me what happened.”
He laughed and snapped his fingers. “Damn.”
Traffic thinned out enough for me to get up to sixty-five miles an hour from the creeping forty we’d been doing for a while. As I sped up I looked at the fuel gauge.
“We need gas.”
“The last thing we need in this car is more gas,” Tyler cracked.
“Ha ha. I meant gasoline.”
He grunted.
I found a gas station at the next exit and Tyler jumped out before I could even reach my handle.
“I got this,” he insisted, walking into the gas station store. Two minutes later he came back and began pumping gas.
“I have a credit card, Tyler. I can just charge it and you can pay me back later.”
He gave a tight head shake and said nothing, finishing the tank filling and walking around the car. Then he went back into the gas station and came back five minutes later carrying two hot pizzas, some soda and bags of chips and carrots.
“Dinner’s on me,” he said. “We can eat while we drive.”
I stretched, the feeling a luxury, and realized most of the daylight was gone. We were barely a quarter done with our journey.
The driving journey, that is.
The journey of the heart was just beginning.
Tyler
I knew I promised I’d tell her what happened, but as she drove and we got out of Oklahoma City and into the rural section of No Man’s Land until we hit the urbane metropolis of Amarillo, Texas, we were left with nothing but time.
And she expected me to fill it with words.
But I couldn’t tell you why.
If we weren’t compatible, then why lead her on? Why take her down a road that would lead to nothing but frustration and heartache in the end? Why open myself up to her and just end up disappointing her?
It was better to stay closed up.
Let the music make a wall.
I didn’t have that many songs in me, though.
“Tyler,” she said in the voice of a teacher telling you not to do something you know is wrong.
“Yeah?”
“Talk.”
I almost said, “About what?” but what the hell. Why not tell her? It’s not like it mattered any more.
“I woke up at my house and someone stole my phone, my wallet, and all my instruments.”
“Your house was broken into?” she gasped.
“No.”
“Huh? Then how—ohhhhhhh.” She started and stopped talking two or three times, making nonsense sounds, until finally she said, “Your dad?”
“Brother.”
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry. Isn’t he just a teen?”
“Eighteen. Turned eighteen a couple weeks ago. Just in time for Dad to go back in.” I was practically vibrating as I said those words. If felt like, well—farting in front of someone.
“Back in...to prison?”
I closed my eyes and just breathed in.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Why would your brother steal all your stuff?”
“Why do you think?”
“Drugs?”
“Yep. Not a drug deal gone bad. More like a junkie needing a fix.”
“And you were the victim.”
“I really hate that word.”
“Doesn’t change the truth.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like the word.”
“Got it.”
Good. I was glad she got it. I, on the other hand, felt like a tuning fork being banged against a gong over and over and over. Even if she understood everything I said and accepted it as fact, I was still nothing but one painful nerve ending being poked to infinity.
“So you came home yesterday—God, was it just yesterday?—woke up this morning, had no wallet, no phone, no instruments, and you...found me?”
“I went to the library to use their computer to get on my email. Got ahold of Darla. Man, she answers messages fast. She gave me your address and told me she would call you. Took a bus and walked the rest of the way to your house.”
“That took a lot of ingenuity.”
“When you’re desperate, you do what you can.”
She stared straight ahead and we passed a few minutes in silence. I took in the dark night. As we drove further from the city the night sky glittered with stars above. If we weren’t rushing to L.A. and going eighty-two miles an hour, and if I hadn’t just cracked my breastbone open and showed her my beating heart, I’d probably have taken a minute to appreciate the beauty outside.
Instead, I appreciated the beauty inside the car.
“I’ve never had to be that desperate, Tyler. I’ve never had to worry my sister would steal from me, or that my parents wouldn’t be there in a crisis.”
I held my breath. Not sure why.
“You called me Princess earlier and I don’t think that’s quite fair—”
“It wasn’t. I was being stupid—”
“But I’ve never had to scramble like you did. I’ve never had no one to turn to. I’m sorry your parents put you in that position.”
“Mom’s dead.”
She jolted, like I’d slapped her. “Your mom is dead? Oh, my God, I’m so, so sorry. No one should have their mother die when they’re so young. How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
I watched her throat spasm suddenly, like an invisible hand seized it and squeezed.
“You were so little,” she whispered.
Little. No one had called me little in a very, very long time. Not sure I ever really was little, actually. Not the way Maggie meant it.
“And your dad. Is he, um, in prison a lot?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you mind if I ask for what?”
“Smaller stuff. Possession. Petty crimes. ‘This guy’ crimes.”
“‘This guy’?”
“Yeah. You know. ‘This guy showed up and left the drugs here,’ or ‘This guy showed up and took your wallet out of your purse,’ or—”
“Oh. Got it.”
“It’s always someone else’s fault.”
“I see.”
“Didn’t take me long to figure out who ‘this guy’ really was. He always told me exactly what he had done, only he expected me to believe it wasn’t him. And you had to play along, or it was even bigger trouble.”
“And your brother is following in his footsteps?”
If she’d kicked me in the head she couldn’t have hurt me more. Holy fuck. With one question she cut me in half.
A dull roar of a chant began in me, the words so clear. My fault. My fault my fault my fault. If I’d been a better brother, Johnny wouldn’t be a junkie. If I’d stayed, he wouldn’t be a junkie. If I’d gone to social services, he wouldn’t—
If if if. The world was fueled on ifs.
“I guess.”
She straightened up and looked at me. “Did I say the wrong thing? You look like you’re about to hit something.” Maggie said it without fear, though.
I realized my hands were gripping the cardboard box of crackers Lena had packed. I’d torn the box along one edge.
“Yeah. No. I mean...I don’t know.”
She held up her phone. “Do you want to call your brother?”
A blinding sense of paralysis made it hard to answer. My hand answered for me, taking the phone and dialing my own number. Instinct kicks in when nothing else is left.
Three rings later and voicemail picked up. My own recording greeted me.
“Voice mail,” I said tersely. Johnny either wasn’t answering, had sold the phone, or just – who knew? A wave of exhaustion hit me. I’d put Johnny on the back burner of my mind when the L.A. panic had hit.
I really couldn’t give him any mental real estate right now.
And yet I worried.
“Sorry.” She frowned. “You’re different from them.”
I whipped my head up, narrowing my eyes. Where was she going with this?
“I am?”
“You have something inside you that tries to be better.”
“I don’t think I’m better than them. I just don’t go looking for trouble. Or meth.”
“I don’t mean that you think you’re better than your Dad or brother. Not like that, Tyler. I meant that you strive for something. Your dad and your brother don’t have that in them. I mean, I don’t know them, but I know you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I want to know you.”
“You wanted to know me Biblically.”
“Now I want to be your friend.”
“I’m not a charity case.”
“I never said you were. I don’t make pity friends.”
“And I don’t do pity fucks.”
“Is that all I am to you?”
Ah, God. She did it again. My breastbone felt like it was twisting.
“No. I haven’t fucked you.”
She sighed, a deep, heavy sound of resignation that made me think I’d gone too far. And then:
“Why do you really think I wanted to sleep with you?”
I knew she was just worrying this topic to death. Yammering about it. Talking until none of it made sense anymore and she could just put the issue to bed out of sheer exhaustion.
“I already told you. Now you tell me.”
“I already did.”
<
br /> “Then tell me about the rape.”
Chapter Nine
Maggie
“Why do I need to tell you any thing? You said you already Googled me. That’s all you need to know. The basics are highly searchable if you know what you’re looking for.”
“I don’t want the basics. I want the full story.”
I began to shake inside at the same time that a resonant calm filled me. No man had asked this question. I’d dated here and there for the past couple of years. First dates. Only first dates. Because Googling a potential partner is about as commonplace as making sure you have condoms in your purse or wallet for a date, most of them found the info.
The really weak ones just bagged out on me. I always knew that was why. The others were a mix of codependent assholes who wanted to rescue me, insensitive bores who just wanted to rubberneck, and genuinely nice guys who just weren’t compatible with me.
The codependents and the rubberneckers had researched my story so much that they didn’t ask me to tell my story. They seemed to revel in what they already knew.
When you’re a media sensation for all the wrong reasons...
“What do you want to know?” I asked carefully, wondering what he was fishing for.
“Anything you want to tell me.”
Shock tended to get people to back off, so...
“I was one of the lucky ones. My rapists were stupid enough to do it in front of a ton of security cameras and to leave DNA evidence. Their friends tried to make up fake alibis but one of them actually dropped his wallet and the cops found it under me.”
He flinched.
“Filled with blood,” I added, instinctively reaching up to touch the scar on my face.
His eyes closed. I saw his throat spasm, but he stayed silent. Not so fun to hear the truth, is it, buddy?
Tyler sighed, then said:
“I want to know how you mentally withstood two hours of steady torture like that and came out it as normal as you are.”
Huh?
“What?” Most people asked how I kept my wits about me, or whether I don’t walk alone at night any more, or asked if I was worried about getting pregnant, or whether I had permanent scars or...they don’t bring it up at all.