When Sh*t Gets in the Way

by Ines Vieira

  “You want a word? Fine, then here’s your word and the reason why I left. Olivia. There’s your word,” I spit back at him. Just saying her name is enough to boil my blood and having Quaid immediately go stiff as a board with her name on my lips, doesn’t help lessen the fury heating my blood. I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hold onto to my tornado of feelings. I feel like I can cry one second and hit something the next. Pain and anger seem to have clutched their dirty nails into my very being, leaving scabs and open wounds behind each claw mark and scratch.

  “I see,” he exhales, and with those two words, my crumbling world shatters even further. He doesn’t jump to give me any explanation or tell me that I’m overreacting. He doesn’t come out and say that it’s all in my head, that I have nothing to worry about. He doesn’t tell me that my insecurities and my imagination have run amok. He doesn’t say anything, but ‘I see.’ So now I guess, now I do too. I hear my phone ringing in my pocket, but with Quaid’s lack of response, I don’t even register its insistent tone. It’s only when I feel Tony at my side that I’m brought back to the here and now.

  “Jess get inside. Need a minute with pretty boy to make it clear that his visits are no longer welcomed here,” Tony grunts pushing me further away from Quaid.

  “I’ve got this, Tony,” I tell him shuffling from one foot to the next. The last thing I need now is for Tony to do something stupid.

  “Jess isn’t going anywhere,” Quaid states rigidly, his stance not backing down from Tony’s glare. I roll my eyes because this was not how I wanted to get things straight with Quaid. Between Tony’s over protectiveness and Quaid’s adamant demeanor, I don’t know who pisses me off more.

  My phone goes off again, and this time, I answer it. Anything to get out of the watching these two alphas butt heads together. But when I see the name that pops up on my screen, a cold shiver runs down my entire spine. This can’t be good. Even though I expected this call sooner or later, deep down I wished for the latter.

  “Candi? What’s wrong?” I hear her sobs and panic before she even utters a word.

  “Jess, I need your help.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I’m scared. Hector is losing it. He’s calling me Evelyn and busting up the whole place. I keep telling him that it’s me. That I’m not his wife but he’s too out of it. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you?” My voice is pure panic, and I hate myself for not playing it cool. This girl needs reassurance and me freaking out is not going to help her in any way. Tony and Quaid are already looking at me as if they want to tear the phone away from me to know what the hell is going on.

  “I locked myself in the closet, but you know that won’t stop him.”

  “Shit! Ok! Ok! Just stay there. I’ll call the cops. Where do you live?”

  “NO!! You can’t call the police! Hector would kill me if he thought I called the cops on him. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have called you. This was a mistake.” And before I could even say another word, she hangs up.

  “Shit!!!” I explode and try to redial. No answer. She won’t answer the bloody phone now. Not when I threaten to bring the cops to her doorstep.

  “What the hell, Jess?! What is it?” Tony grabs my shoulders.

  Only then do I realize that I’m shaking like crazy. Hector has that effect. If he’s so drunk that he thinks Candi is Tia Evelyn than that girl is screwed. The hatred I saw in my uncle’s eyes when he kicked my aunt in our living room last year is something that will stay with me forever. I’ve never witnessed that type of rage in my life which means that Candi isn’t safe. A closet door will not slow him down. It will only sweeten the chase for him.

  “Jess!! Snap the fuck out of it and talk to us!” Tony yells, and this time he shakes me to my core.

  “It’s Hector. He’s going to do something to that poor girl.” I look into Tony’s eyes, and I see the blaze burning in them.

  “Get in the car!” he yells already running to his truck. It takes me a minute to understand, but as soon as I see him opening his door with Quaid on his heels, I run after them to catch up. I strap myself in the back seat before I realize we have no idea where Candi even lives.

  “Tony, will you hold up a second. We have to go to the police! We have no idea where they live!”

  “I know where the fucker lives,” he says already speeding off down our street.

  “What? How?”

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on him.” That’s all he says and as I lock eyes on him in the rearview mirror, a realization washing over me.

  “Why Tony? Why have you been keeping tabs on our dear psychotic uncle? Was it for my father?”

  His scrunched up face is all the answer I need.

  “António Maria Gomez da Silva Lorenzo!! You little shit!!! It was for Isaac! You’ve been keeping tabs on Hector for Isaac! You know where he is! You fucker! Where is he, Tony? Where the hell is my cousin?”

  I’m so pissed off that if he wasn’t driving like a man on a mission, I would beat his head in. I still can’t help myself and give him two hard punches on his right arm. Asshole is lucky I don’t have better access to him while sitting in the back of his god-awful truck. I kick away the blanket that is at my feet which probably seen more STD’s than any normal gynecologist has witnessed.

  “Jesus prima!! Really? You have to bring out my whole fucking name?” he says while eyeballing Quaid, daring him even to try and repeat what he just heard. But Quaid is too focused on the road ahead to even give my little reveal a second thought. Tony is kind of pushing it with the gas pedal.

  “Just watch where you’re going and answer the fucking question! Where the hell is Isaac? Is he with Aunt Evelyn? Are they alright? Where are they, you big gorilla?!” I hit him again and again until he freaking answers my question.

  “They’re far away from him. That’s all you need to know,” he mumbles.

  All I can think about is how this whole family has been on pins and needles since they disappeared. How my best friend in the entire world has been a total ghost since Isaac vanished, and all along my douche of a cousin knew exactly where they were and never said a word. After whatever we find up at Candi’s house, I’m going to kill him!

  I’m so angry that it takes me a bit to register that we are already on the outskirts of town. Where the hell are we going anyway? But then Tony takes another turn and I know exactly where we're heading.

  Plymouth’s own white trash residence. An empty plot with nothing but rundown trailers with their washed-out residents. This is the place that hope and dreams come to die. Fitting that Hector ended up here. He’s the murderer of all that’s good in the world, so it makes sense he would settle down in this place.

  Still, Candi doesn’t deserve to be here. If there is anybody that deserves a chance to leave this cesspool, it’s her.

  All the trailers look the same. Dirty and rundown with their makeshift patio furniture in what I suspect once resembled a front yard. It all reeks of desperation and broken dreams, and as much as I should probably feel remorseful that there are people living in such squalor, all I can do is link their current living predicament to what my uncle deserves. Even this is too good for him.

  I try and look at all of them wondering which one the devil is taking up residence in, but too soon I have my answer.

  The devil lives in flames.

  Tony stops the truck right in front of a white mobile home with a green stripe around it and smoke coming out of every window it has, which from where I’m sitting looks too few to enable oxygen to the girl that not ten minutes ago told me she was hiding in a closet.

  Before I can even open the door of the truck, both Tony and Quaid are already running around the trailer, trying to find some way to get in.

  My feet can’t move. They are stuck in the ground as I hear her scream. I hear her pleas for help and it’s like someone is choking the life out of me. I’m going to watch a young girl die and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I’m paralyzed with crippl
ing fear as each and every high- pitched howl stabs into my soul.

  Just as I thought that this nightmare couldn’t get any worse, I see Tony grabbing the blanket he had in his truck and running up the three white steps that lead to the front door.

  Now there are two girls screaming.

  Chapter 27

  Quaid

  Before I can even stop him, Tony is already barging into the mobile inferno. The lucky SOB could have been seriously burnt just by trying to open that door alone, but I see him drop to the floor fast enough to avoid the flames that rush out.

  When I see Jess run after Tony, that’s when my adrenaline finally kicks in. Apparently, tonight the only thing I can do is to minimize the death toll, so I grab onto to Jess as hard as I can. You would think that as small as Jess is that she wouldn’t be able to put much of a fight, but then again this is Jess. She is struggling against me so hard that it takes all of me to keep her tied down to my chest. She’s kicking and clawing at me, and all I can do is hold her close as she watches the flames pick up their tempo and probably kill two innocent lives in the process. Jess is howling the night away. Screaming for Tony. I can barely hear Candi’s screams anymore. Jess’s agonizing yells overlap every other noise in this godforsaken place. Her cries are like daggers in my heart and I have no idea how this small, fearless girl will survive this night.

  As the minutes pass, Jess’s cries are no longer the only thing I hear. Sirens. Thank God. Someone must have called 911. Shit! That should have been the very first thing we did when Candi called Jess earlier. Why the hell didn’t we?

  With each tear that falls on Jess’s face, I replay all that I could have done to prevent them from falling in the first place. We should have called the cops. We should have called our parents. We should have done a number of things, but somehow, I think that it would all have played out the same way. Someone was going to get hurt tonight. I just never thought that someone might die, too.

  I know that it has been mere minutes that Tony went into those devouring flames to try and save that poor girl, but it seems like hours. Every second that we don’t see any movement, any resemblance of life in that blazing hell, seems like a lifetime is passing by us.

  Through my peripheral vision, I can see that firemen and an ambulance followed by Plymouth’s finest have finally arrived. But Jess seems oblivious to all of it. Her voice is now so raw from all the screaming that I know it must hurt her to continue on. But she does. Screaming out Tony’s name over and over again. She should be tired from fighting me, exhausted from trying to break free from my arms. But not once does she quit. It takes all of my strength to lock her tight against my chest.

  This is Jess, in all her painful glory. My little fighter. Feeling her pain with every punch she is able to land on me, every scratch on my forearms, every kick to my legs, is killing me in a way that I never thought possible.

  Here is a girl that would fight to the end for the ones she loves, and I couldn’t even let her. If I let her go, then not only would I be killing her, but I would be killing me too, because if she went willingly to her death to save her cousin, then I wouldn’t think twice about following her there.

  “Is there anybody in there?” I turn to the side to see a crowd of people behind us, watching the terror unfold. Where were they five minutes ago?

  “Son, did you hear me? Is there anyone inside?” the fireman shouts out at me again. I nod gripping Jess’s body closer before opening my mouth.

  “Two. There are two people inside.” He nods and I see him point two fingers up to the rest of the rescue team, but before they even get close enough, that’s when we see them. A dark figure surrounded by smoke and flames carrying a body wrapped in a blanket, out of the hellfire. It takes two seconds for the paramedics to relieve Tony of the girl in his arms and another second for Jess to break free from my grasp and run to him.

  “You asshole!! Don't you ever do that to me again!” She grips him tight and in a tiny flash, I see the regret in his eyes for scaring his cousin, but then it’s replaced by something else entirely. Worry and love. He cradles her in his arms as he shushes her and comforts her in a way I couldn’t have done two minutes ago.

  “It’s okay, Jess. It’s okay,” he whispers.

  She’s still crying and punching his chest, but all her fear has evaporated as soon as she was able to put her arms around him.

  “You scared the living shit out of me, Tony! What the hell would I be able to tell your mother, your brothers if you got yourself killed, you big idiot?!”

  “Aw cuz, that’s easy. You would have told them that I was just being stupid as always!” He smiles and tenderly kisses Jess on her forehead. He’s covered in soot from head to toe and as he cleans Jess’s tears away from her eyes, he leaves black streaks all over her gorgeous face.

  “Was he in there? Is it over?” she looks up at him, pleading with her eyes for the confirmation that I know Tony won’t be able to provide. He looks down at her and squeezes her tightly before he shakes his head.

  “It was him, then? He did this, didn’t he?” I cringe a little when I hear the venom in her voice.

  Tony just stares at the ambulance looking at the broken girl that he saved from his uncle’s wrath. It’s hard to tell how badly burnt she is as the paramedics are all over her trying their best to fix something that is probably unfixable. Candi’s burnt flesh is probably nothing compared to the trauma she will have to overcome.

  These are the moments that define a life. When you’re faced with how cruel humanity can be and the damage it can inflict. When you’re placed at a crossroads where either you can overcome the shit that’s been handed to you, or wallow in your own bitterness. Will she be strong enough to forget this nightmare and fight her demons? I sincerely doubt it. I’ve never been able to overcome mine and they happened to me years ago. But I have learned to live with them. I just hope this is true for Candi as well.

  The next couple of hours pass in a blur. Tony and Candi are carried away to the hospital with us right behind them. Jess is still too out of it when the cops question us both, while we wait for news on Candi. I was able to give my statement as accurately as possible and also added my first encounter with Hector Silva. There was no question in my mind he was responsible for Candi’s injuries, and if the girl hadn’t reached out for help the way she had, maybe he would have been responsible for her untimely death, too.

  After the cops were done with us, I was able to call Carlos and within minutes it seemed as if the whole Silva Clan were stationed in the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital’s waiting room. It should surprise me that a monster like Hector could have come from such a loving family, but it doesn’t. Evil men and women can be a product of their environment, but some of them are just born that way. Programmed selfish with no regard for anyone around them but themselves.

  After a couple of hours, the doctors inform us that Candi is stable, although with some second and third-degree burns on the left side of her body and hands. The doctors had to perform a medically-induced coma. She needed to heal, and her trauma was so severe, that a coma was the only option. Before daybreak, an exhausted and disillusioned Carlos asks me to take his distraught daughter home and without much coercion, she comes with me willingly.

  This night has been bleak and unfortunately memorable, but as I drive my girl home. I feel the nightmare for me hasn’t come to an end yet. Jess has been quiet, which is unlike her. Apathetic to all the events that have taken place. Even though I want to push her to tell me why she left me back in New York, without a single word, her telling me that the cause was Olivia, dampened my eagerness to know more. Tonight isn’t the time to tell her my past isn’t as black and white as she believes it to be. My grandmother’s words still ring in my ear. I want to block them out, but the truth in them is too palpable for me to ignore. Jess deserves to know the truth, but does my mom deserve it just to tranquilize Jess’s fears. Is my word not enough? Is my love for her not enough?

  Once we fin
ally reach her house and I close the door behind me, I feel like I’m closing something much greater. With her continued silence towards me, heavily hanging above the both of us, I think I have my answer. Her face tells me all I need to know and her distancing herself from me feels as if it’s not only her body that can’t be near me, but her whole being needs the same space. Candi’s defining moment of survival happened on a dark night; mine apparently is going to be when the sun barely has greeted the sky. Just by the look in Jess’s eyes, I see my doomed fate as clearly as I see the distance she is putting between us. The woman I have given my heart to is two seconds away from throwing it at my feet, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

  Chapter 28

  Jess

  I can’t do this anymore. It hurts too much being near him and having to physically move away from him in order not to be tempted to forgive him and beg him to hold me. Whatever he’s keeping from me is tearing him apart, and it has been the nail that shattered us. I don’t trust him, and without trust, there is no love strong enough to survive. Even ours. After tonight's catastrophic events, I need to feel the calm after the storm. Forty-eight hours ago, I would have turned to him to provide me my escape from all the ugliness that surrounds me. But not this morning.

  “I need you to leave Quaid. I’m tired. I am physically and emotionally exhausted, and I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Jess, please don’t say that.” His voice is laced with pain and it hurts my very heart, that I’m the one that’s hurting him. But he hurt me too, and it’s a back and forth of suffering that neither one of us deserves.

  “I need you to go, Quaid.” I lower my eyes to my clasped hands and focus on the little strength I have not to give in.

  “Please,” I’m begging. I hear it and so does he. I’m begging that he’s strong enough for the both of us to just let me go. To end this tonight. I need him to still love me enough to let me go and end my pain. But deep down, I know that the moment he walks out that door, I will live with this pain forever. No one will ever come close to Quaid. He was everything to me. Everything that I never knew I wanted or needed. I was such a foolish child in thinking that I could play around with falling in love and not get bruised in the end. But it was so easy falling in love with him. I fought it. God how I fought it with all my might. I portrayed him as an arrogant prick to safeguard my heart. I portrayed him in every damning light I could, to not fall for him. But I did. I fell hard and now the broken pieces of my heart will never mend right. It will never be able to piece back together to its original beating form. My heart will always show the cracks that came from loving Quaid. I don’t regret it. I will never regret it because loving him was as close as I ever came to being whole. Being me without the worry of having to put up the strong façade to shield me from when I was scared or vulnerable. Quaid showed me that everything that I saw as a weakness was a gift. Being vulnerable showed my heart was still able to trust that I could lean on the people around me. Being scared meant that I had the strength to fight through it until I wasn’t scared anymore. He showed me that I could be strong on my own, but that I also didn't have to. In letting people help me when I needed them, and to be willing to ask for the help, showed that I was blessed with having friends and family that would always pull me up.