by Beth Rinyu
“Bree, there’s no need to thank me. I’m glad I was able to help you out. That’s what friends do for one another. They’re there at the best times and they’re there at the worst times. Relishing in the happy moments and pitching in to help during the bad ones.”
Her words resonated deep inside my heart. I hadn’t had a real friend since Nathan. Once I lost him, I closed myself out to the rest of the world, never expecting to have that bond with anyone else again, but now I did. Hannah and I were such an unlikely duo, but we were friends. It was a word I didn’t throw around lightly, and one I valued more than any amount of money in the world. Hannah was here for me now when no one else was, and not out of a sense of duty, but because she truly cared. The tears I had been holding back in the hospital and during the cab ride home spilled from my eyes and down my face. But they weren’t ones of self-pity. They were ones of gratitude. Thankful for escaping the mess I was in last night with just some bumps and bruises. Even though they were going to take a while to heal, I knew eventually they would. But most of all, I was thankful to the woman who was a stranger not so long ago, and now the most compassionate and genuine friend I could ever ask for—just when I needed one most.
Chapter 20
A little more than twenty-four hours after I had been released from the hospital, and I still wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, I felt worse. The doctor had warned me it would happen, so I did my best to muddle through. Every time I replayed the night’s events in my head, I became angrier—angry at Senator Stevens, angry at myself, and angry at Margo. She had totally set me up, knowing exactly why Kylee refused to work with him, sending me into the ambush instead. There was no doubt in my mind now that I absolutely despised her.
Hannah had been such a godsend to me. She had stayed with me the entire day when I got home, ensuring I was okay, and was currently on her way back to spend her Sunday afternoon with me. Even though she had insisted upon it, I felt like such a bother, and I hated it.
I looked down at my phone, ignoring my weekly call from my brother’s partner, Trey. As much as I wanted to get an update on my family, I wasn’t in the mood to talk at the moment, fearing he would sense dismay in my voice. Not that it would make a difference—Trey would be the only one who cared if he were to find out what happened. My father and brother would probably both agree that I got what was coming to me. I was happy when the call finally went to voicemail, ceasing any temptation I had to answer it.
I hobbled to the door to let Hannah in.
“How are you feeling?” she greeted, with a smile on her face and a bouquet of beautiful flowers in her hand.
“I’m hanging in there.” I opened the door wider and let her in.
“Hopefully these will lift your spirts,” she suggested, looking down at the flowers.
“Oh, Hannah, they are absolutely gorgeous.” The sweet, fragrant lilies overpowered the rest of the flowers as I pressed my nose into the arrangement. “You didn’t have to do that.”
I shuffled into the kitchen and was scolded by Hannah when I reached into the cabinet to get a vase. She shooed me away and got it down with ease, filling it up with water and arranging the flowers for me.
“Where do you want them?” she asked after she got done positioning them to her liking.
I looked around, trying to find a spot where they would always be in my view. “How about right here?” I pointed to the coffee table.
“Perfect.” She smiled, placing them down.
“So did you bring your book stuff with you?” I asked.
“Oh no, I didn’t think you’d be much in the mood to do that today.”
I shrugged, actually wishing that she had. I needed to escape into a fictional world for a while to forget about my dreadful reality. “Well, then how about a chick flick?” I suggested.
“Oh, I love chick flicks.” Hannah grinned.
“Cool!” I pulled up Netflix and we scrolled through the movies, finally deciding on The Wedding Planner. “Popcorn?” I asked.
“Oh sure, that sounds good. Just tell me where it is—” She started to get up, and I stopped her.
“I can make it for us.”
“Bree, the doctor said you need to take it easy.”
“Hannah, if I take it any easier, I’ll be dead. I actually feel better when I get up and move around.”
She let out a reluctant sigh but didn’t put up a fight, allowing me to make my way into the kitchen to prepare the popcorn on my own. Once the microwave beeped, I transferred the popcorn into a bowl, poured us some drinks, and placed everything on a tray.
“Bree!” Hannah exclaimed, jumping from the couch and taking the tray from my hands as I entered the living room. “The doctor told you, no lifting!”
“Relax, I think I can handle a three-pound tray.” I couldn’t help but snicker over the heightened sense of alarm that a little TV tray caused her. I plopped back on the couch, trying to conceal that my quick little task in the kitchen had caused me to become out of breath.
“See, I told you! You’re doing too much!” Hannah reprimanded, obviously catching on to my breathlessness.
We started the movie, and for the next ninety or so minutes we were transported into our own little happy world of a picture-perfect romance and a happy ending. If only real life were like that.
“I used to think Matthew McConaughey was so hot back in the day,” Hannah sighed.
My swollen eyes widened as best as they could. Her words had brewed a deep, boisterous laugh inside of me that I was unable to hold back.
“What’s so funny?” She creased her eyebrows.
I shook my head, trying to curtail my laughter without much success. “It just seems so weird to hear you say someone is hot.”
“Just because I’m a nun doesn’t mean I’m blind.” She batted her eyelashes and pulled in her bottom lip, unable to hold back her laughter.
It was so foreign to me. There I was watching romantic comedies and discussing hot guys. I had missed out on that part of life when I was a teenager, and getting to experience it with Hannah was actually fun. I looked at the woman sitting next to me, my polar opposite, yet so much the same. It was then that it dawned on me: she had listened to me wallow in self-pity about my family, but I didn’t know anything about hers.
“Do you have family around here?” I asked.
“I think I have family just about everywhere,” she chuckled. “I come from an Irish-Catholic family, so needless to say I have a rather large family. I’m one of seven.”
“Wow!” My eyes widened. “It must be nice though...to have all of those brothers and sisters.”
She shrugged, and her smile faded. “I’m not really close with any of them.”
“Really?”
She shook her head. “I was number six out of the seven. By the time my mother had me, she was spent. When my youngest brother came along a year after me, she was completely done. There’s a big age difference between myself and my oldest and second-oldest brother, so I was never really close with either of them. One lives in upstate New York and the other lives in Florida. Then comes the third born, my sister Jana. She’s on husband number four, and the last time we talked I think she was ready to dump him and move on to number five.”
I covered my mouth in shock. “Wow, she’s a real Elizabeth Taylor.”
“That’s for sure.” She shook her head and smiled. “My brother Patrick is next. He’s normal, for the most part. He’s a cop, married, three kids, wife who doesn’t appreciate him.” She sighed. “Then there’s my sister Bridgette, she’s a pediatrician.”
“Oh, so you have a doctor in the family? That’s cool.”
“Hmm...I suppose.” She seemed unimpressed.
“So, you mentioned you have a younger brother. What’s his deal?”
Her face paled. “Brendan,” she whispered. “He’s—he’s in jail.” She turned her head and met my gaze with pain shooting through her eyes.
“Oh.” I tried my best to appear
unaffected. I was the last one to judge someone for their wrongdoings. “What did he do? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Drugs, then robbed to get some more drugs.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah.”
“Well, he’s better in there than out on the streets. I pray every day that he’ll turn himself around and get out before the best years of his life are behind him.”
“And your parents? Are they still around?”
“Yes. They live in Connecticut. That’s where I’m from. My mother drinks a little bit too much wine, and my father—he drinks a little too much of everything else. Always did, and my mother just ignored it, allowing him to disappear for days at a time while he was off doing god knows what. Sometimes when he’d come home drunk, he’d get mad at us kids for the dumbest of things and smack us around. It didn’t seem to bother my mother in any way. All she cared about was that he would bring home a paycheck every week.” She shook her head. “Hard to believe that they will be married for forty years in June.”
“Well they certainly raised a wide variety of children.” I raised an eyebrow, neither of us able to hold back our grins.
“Yes, they did. I suppose that’s why I admired the nuns at school so much. They were more like mothers to me than my own. I sought refuge from my dad’s drinking and my parents’ constant bickering by helping out around the convent, eating dinner with them almost every night while they helped me with my homework, anything I could do just to avoid going home. The sad part was, my parents didn’t even realize I was gone half the time.”
Her childhood was a lot different from mine, but at the same time so similar. I didn’t have all of those brothers and sisters, my father didn’t drink excessively, he never laid a hand on me, but he did like to pretend I didn’t exist, and sometimes that’s worse for a child than being abused. Hannah was looking for an outlet from a bad childhood and found it by becoming a nun. I found mine in a much less desirable way.
“I’m sorry, Hannah.” I sighed.
“I’m not.” She shook it off and smiled. “It made me who I am today. I couldn’t be happier with that person I see when I look in the mirror.”
I nodded, coming to the realization that even though our childhoods may have caused us to seek solace in different ways, Hannah was at peace with her choice while I was finally coming to the realization that I’d never find contentment in mine.
Chapter 21
My phone had been blowing up all morning long with text messages and voicemails from Margo to which I refused to respond. I was pretty certain it was to ream me out for missing my morning appointment with my client. I was done with her and her business, but I was just way too angry at the moment to even talk to her and let her know. After spending the previous day with Hannah and seeing how she had made the most out of her lemons, I was ready to do the same thing with mine. I had some money put away to help get me by while I figured out the next chapter in my life; I just wasn’t sure where to begin.
I rubbed the side of my neck and took one last sip of my coffee. I was still feeling crappy, but the longer I sat around feeling sorry for myself, the longer I was letting my anger over the whole situation grow. I stood up and scurried into the kitchen, placing my empty coffee cup into the sink and trying to find the courage to head into the bathroom and finally look at myself in the mirror.
“You have to suck the bitterness from life’s lemons before you can even think about making lemonade,” I whispered, offering myself some self-motivation. Mustering up the strength, I wandered into the bathroom. I had been avoiding my reflection ever since I got home, but I knew I had to face it if I was ever going to find the empowerment to move on. I flicked on the light and took a deep breath, opening my eyes to the girl staring back at me—a girl I didn’t even recognize. A girl I didn’t think it was possible to hate any more than I already did, but seeing the rings of black and blue marks encompassing my eyes and the purple blotches adorning my cheek, I despised myself even more. How could I have allowed this to happen? Did I really hate myself that much that I actually believed I deserved it? I flinched when I tapped the side of my face, wondering how bad I must have appeared a few days before, if this was how I looked nearly two days later. My eyes burned with tears, but I refused to let them flow. I wasn’t going to feel sorry for myself any longer. I was done making excuses. I was the one who’d put myself in the situation I was in at the moment, and I was the only one who could get myself out of it.
Hannah had been pestering me to speak to the detective about what had happened. She claimed that it would be part of the healing process, and maybe she was right. I knew it would shed an unwanted spotlight on me, but did I really want that happening to anyone else? I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the mirror, pondering if I was ready to take that drastic step, when I was startled by the knock on my door. My heart beat out of my chest while a cold sweat instantaneously shrouded my body. I immediately thought the worst. No one ever came to visit me. So who could it be on the other side of that door? Was it Margo—or worse yet, Senator Stevens, making sure that I didn’t get a chance to even decide if I wanted to talk to the police?
My stomach was in knots as I crept out of the bathroom, trying to be as quiet as possible, paralyzed by fear when they began to knock once again. Pull it together. Maybe it’s just Manuel, the maintenance man. I had complained about my hot water the previous week; maybe he was finally getting around to checking it out. I used that theory to enable myself to take the next few steps until I reached the door. My entire body trembled, but I finally managed to find the courage to place my eye on the peephole. The tears I had been holding back in the bathroom began streaming down my face. Without hesitation, I flung the door open, happy to find myself staring into Thursday Afternoon’s soft, caring emerald eyes on a Monday morning.
“Bree?” His voice was an equal mixture of concern and anger.
“How did you know where—” I sucked in a breath as I rested my head on the doorjamb.
“When I dropped Jack off at school today, Sister Hannah told me what happened.”
Damn it, Hannah!
“Don’t be angry at her, Bree.” Clearly my thoughts were written all over my face. “She thinks I’m good friends with your brother. Remember?” He raised an eyebrow. “She thought that maybe you could use someone else to talk to.”
“I’m fine. You didn’t have to come here.”
“I know I didn’t, but maybe I wanted to.”
“Why? So you could tell me ‘I told you so’?”
“No. That wasn’t my intention.” He shook his head and peered down at the floor. “Look, can I come in and talk to you instead of doing this in the hallway?”
I opened the door wider and he stepped inside. “I’m sorry if my place is a mess, and if I look a mess.” Closing the door behind us, I led him to the couch.
“You don’t look a mess, Bree.”
“Really? Because I was just looking in the mirror, and it was a pretty gruesome sight.”
He studied me thoughtfully. I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “Did he—”
“No.” I shook my head vigorously before he could even get that ugly word out. “I would have rather died before I let that happen.” I stared into space, taking a deep breath. “Look, I know what could have happened, and I know how lucky I am to have gotten out of it in one piece. I didn’t think it was possible for me to think any lower of myself until now.”
His eyes softened. “This wasn’t your fault.”
“Of course it was my fault, Simon. I made a living by having sex with men. Every single time I closed the door to that hotel room, I knew there was a chance of getting raped or killed. I’m no better than the hookers out on the street corners. I was naïve to think the men I deal with would be gentlemen just because they’re successful and wealthy. I know better now. I just hate feeling helpless. I hate looking at myself, knowing I allowed that bastard to do this to me.” I choked back a sob.
&nb
sp; He moved closer, gently moving my hair from my face. “Then don’t let him get away with it, Bree.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m not sure if I’m ready to deal with all that just yet. Besides, who are they going to believe? The girl who makes a living selling herself for sex or a distinguished senator?”
“Just one look at you and I think it’s pretty obvious.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure he’s got some hotshot lawyers who will rush to defend him and tear me down in the process. I just don’t know if I’m ready to put myself out there like that.”
“Bree, what he did to you was wrong. He can’t get away with it just because he’s someone of importance in the political world. The next girl he’s with may not be as lucky as you.”
I nodded, knowing he was right, but lacking the courage or energy to do anything about it at the moment. “I just need time to process everything.”
“That’s understandable.”
I blinked away the tears and focused on his strong jawline and kissable ruby-red lips. Why did he have to be so damn handsome? “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Yeah, I guess I was feeling like a bit of a hypocrite, lecturing you about your line of work while continuing to support it.”
“Well, now I know you were right.”
His eyes widened.
“I don’t want to do this anymore. I want a normal life. I want friends. I want my family back. I want myself back. I just don’t know how.” A loud sob escaped my throat, and I cried even harder when he moved closer and wrapped his arms around me.
“Everything is going to work out, Bree. You just can’t give up on yourself.” He kissed my forehead and pure contentment washed over me.
I rested my head on his shoulder, soaking up the calmness for a few moments longer.
“Can I ask you something?” I raised my head and looked up at him. “Why did you come here today? I mean—why do you care about what happens to me?”