Fallen Angel, Part 1

by Podger, Tracie

  ****

  The following morning I woke to the smell of bacon, good old Sam. Bacon sandwiches for breakfast, a staple back in the UK. With a headache, I walked into the kitchen. Scott had already left for work and on the table were a glass of orange juice and a packet of Advil. I gulped down two pills and the juice, and I let Sam wait on me. Munching our breakfast, we discussed what we wanted to do that day. I didn’t want to talk anymore about Robert and Sam respected that. I wanted to get back to normal and carry on with my holiday.

  Showered and dressed, we headed off out. I would have to arrange for my purse to be collected, my credit cards were in there. Sam thought about calling Robert’s PA, we knew he would be in New York and she might give us Evelyn’s mobile. I could ask if she would have them sent to me. However, opening the front door to the block, we were met by Evelyn.

  “Oh, hi,” I said. “I was going to see if I could contact you today. I left my purse at the house last night.”

  “I have it here,” she said, eyeing Sam suspiciously.

  “This is my friend Sam, we grew up together. He’s why I came here, to visit.”

  “Brooke, do you think we can get a coffee or something?” she asked.

  “I don’t know Evelyn, I’m sure you have better things to do right now than take care of me,” I smiled.

  “Please, just a half hour,” she looked a little nervous.

  “Well, I guess that would be okay,” I said, looking at Sam.

  “Why don’t I meet you for lunch? You go and talk and we’ll meet up at that restaurant we went to yesterday,” he gave Evelyn the name and address.

  I squeezed his hand in thanks and climbed into her SUV.

  We arrived at a small Italian coffee house. It was quiet and obvious Evelyn was known there. After being shown to a booth, a pot of coffee and cups were placed on the table without her asking for them.

  Pouring the coffee, Evelyn said, “Brooke, I don’t know what happened last night, I don’t want to know, but I understand you left upset and I wanted to see that you were okay.”

  “I’m fine, really, you shouldn’t have bothered. I’m sorry for crying all over Travis, I feel a little stupid about it now.”

  “You know, he was in bits when you left,” Evelyn replied.

  “Whenever he’s stressed, he calls me. I guess I’m the only person, other than Travis that he can talk to. He’s like a little brother to me. He said that he’d hurt you, physically, and that devastated him. He wanted to come to your apartment last night but we thought it best that he didn’t.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t, Sam might have hit him with a pillow,” I laughed. I wanted to try to make light of the situation.

  “I’m going to tell you some things I shouldn’t. Rob is a really private person, he has history that he’s not proud of and doesn’t necessarily want made public. I think you need to know something, so you can understand why he is the way he is. He knows what set him off, the question about his aunt,” she glanced around.

  “I’m not sure you should be telling me this, if he’s that private,” I said.

  “Hear me out, I have to do this, for his sake and I know I’m taking a gamble here.”

  She reached across the table and took both my hands in hers.

  “Three nights ago he came home in a fantastic mood, not his usual self. It was good to see, he’d been a bit down lately. Problems, and the latest bimbo he was seeing was shooting her mouth off all over the papers because he’d finished with her. All she wanted was the money and the trappings. Twenty something, dressed like a hooker, the usual,” she began.

  I interrupted, “What do you mean the usual?”

  “Rob doesn’t believe he’s good enough for anyone with any decency, so he hooks up with the bimbos of the world. He normally takes them to a hotel or the apartment but never to the house, they start to complain, wanting more from him so he finishes it.”

  She paused to take a sip from her coffee cup.

  “He doesn’t know how to be respectful. He finds it hard to let people in, to look after him, so he normally goes for women that he would never fall in love with or get close to. But something’s changed and he can’t deal with it. He doesn’t know how to love or trust people. Other than us, he feels everyone around him have always let him down, abandoned him. His parents left him in a house on his own when he was a child. They did that often, but this time there was a car crash and they never came home.

  A neighbour took him in for a couple of days until the authorities placed him with foster parents. They tracked down an aunt who thought there might be money in it so she brought here.

  The aunt was as batty as anything, believed he was a bad Christian and that’s why his parents were killed. She made him feel it was his fault. She spent four years beating him and preaching the bible at him. She said she was trying to out the devil in him.

  One night, he took all her bibles, the belt she hit him with and he set fire to them in the basement. He thought he could control it but the flames took over and the house burnt to the ground with her in it. He has issues with that, obviously. We have told him that it was an accident; he wasn’t to blame. He hadn’t intentionally set fire to the house, but he got scared and he ran. Brooke, he was eleven years old and he ran to live on the streets.

  He met with Travis and the two of them did what they had to, to survive. They stole, they committed crimes, and they survived the only way they knew how. There’s a lot more, Brooke, but I don’t want to put you off him,” she chuckled.

  “I just want you to understand a little about him.”

  While I sat, dumbstruck, she continued.

  “That first night he met you, he came home. I asked him what he was so happy about and he told me ‘I’ve found her’. I was shocked, Brooke. I’ve never heard him speak that way and I’ve known him for twenty five years.”

  I just sat in total silence. What was I to make of that? I didn’t know what to say, how to respond. The strange part was, it hadn’t shocked me to hear him say that he had found me. Yet, I didn’t know why it hadn’t.

  “Evelyn, he has known me for two days, three meetings, that’s all,” I saw her face fall and decided to be honest.

  “I have to say, there is something about him. I want to be with him and I’m scared because I know I could fall in love with him. I’m only here on holiday and I know it will break my heart to leave him. He scares me, he intimidates me, but I can see past that. I can see the lost boy, the vulnerability, but I don’t know what I can do about it,” I said.

  “There’s something else Evelyn, I have this sense of familiarity when I’m around him. It’s as if there’s a reason I should be with him, but I don’t know how,” I added.

  I closed my eyes and sighed, it was just so typical. Robert was a man, fucked up and dangerous but underneath, someone I could love, someone I felt like I already knew. Right at that moment my life was one big screw up.

  “Evelyn, thank you for telling me this. I need time to think this all through. I don’t want to hurt Robert and if I let this continue what’s going to happen when I have to leave? This is just such a mess,” I said.

  “I really must go, thank you for bringing back my purse. Perhaps I could call you, check he’s okay when he gets back? I’m not sure if I can speak with him right now, I need to get things sorted in my head, for both our sakes.”

  We exchanged mobile numbers and she drove me to meet Sam. Before I left, I hugged her.

  “You really are a remarkable woman, Evelyn. I guess you’ve told me this because you care for him, deeply, and I promise not to repeat a word of it.”

  I would call her, I wanted to check that Robert was okay but I just didn’t know what to do. Something deep inside me was terrified at the thought of not seeing him again but the rational part of my brain was trying to knock sense into me. I was unsure about what I’d been told. Should I have been told that? I had known him two days that was all. I’d been given information I doubted Robert would
have wanted shared and that troubled me.

  I entered the restaurant and saw Sam waving from a table in the corner. He was desperate for news but as much as he was my best friend, I didn’t tell him everything. I just elaborated on the things I’d already divulged. I was torn a little; Sam also worked for Robert. I didn’t know that if he thought Sam knew too much, would his job be in jeopardy? As Evelyn said, he was an immensely private person; he had a history that might cause embarrassment to him.

  Changing the subject, Sam and I discussed what to do for the afternoon. I wanted to go to Arlington Cemetery and once we’d paid for our lunch, that’s where we headed.

  It was a lovely and sobering afternoon. We walked around looking at the names of soldiers killed in various battles, seeing the ages. Some were just kids, seventeen, and eighteen. We sat in the amphitheatre and stood by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  I was glad that we had visited, probably not for everyone but important to me. My brother had been killed in action, in the Army. He was younger than me and I remembered the day his posting to Iraq came through, how proud he was and how scared the rest of us were. He never came home, well, his body did, but not him.

  Arriving home, we decided on a night in. I wanted to cook for the guys, my way of saying thank you for putting me up. A traditional roast dinner was ordered, something Sam missed, and Scott had never had. I chose beef, made Yorkshire pudding with roast potatoes and we had a lovely evening, just three good friends.

  After dinner we sat in the lounge with our glasses of wine. Music played in the background.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do, I mean about Robert?” Scott asked.

  “I have no idea,” I’d told him about the meeting, the edited version, earlier over dinner.

  “Like I said to Evelyn, I have to go home at some point and I don’t want to hurt him any more than I want to get hurt.”

  “Well, you could always stay. I mean, what have you got to go home for? Two cruddy old parents you don’t get on with and a mangy cat,” Sam said.

  “Oh come on Sam, get real. I have a job back home and I’ve met Robert for such a short time. I can’t possibly think of leaving the UK and staying here. Two dates that’s all we’ve had, and not particularly great ones at that. You can’t base a relationship around sex and that’s the only good part about him. Anyway, George is not a mangy cat.”

  Sam was right about one thing; my parents and I had stopped having any kind of relationship when my brother had died. It had never been a secret that they had favoured him over me, and when he died, they died too.

  They had shut themselves off from the rest of the world, me included. Although he had been dead nearly ten years, they never got over it. I had tried, I visited on a regular basis, but as time wore on, they seemed to retreat further and further into themselves. I hadn’t seen or spoken to them for a year. One day I decided that if I didn’t call them, would they worry? Would they contact me? They hadn’t. It had devastated me at the time but I’d spent my whole life in my younger brother’s shadow, and even in death, he was still more important to them than me. I couldn’t change that; I can only distance myself to not get hurt anymore.

  ****

  Later that night and settled in bed, I replayed the conversation I’d had with Evelyn in my head. What a terrible start to life, but one question burned, how did Robert get from the eleven year old street kid to the business man?

  In fact, more than one question sprung to mind. Surely the authorities knew Robert was living with his aunt, had they just assumed he had died in the fire? Why had no one come looking for him? The more I learnt about him, the more confusing he became, and the less I really knew.

  I struggled to sleep and when I did, I dreamt of fires and little boys, dirty and hungry. I dreamt of the previous night, how aroused I’d been by the forcefulness of Robert, and how scared I was at my reaction. In the morning the sheets were tangled around me, and I’d made a decision. I at least owed Robert an explanation as to why I’d run. I didn’t want him to think it was something he had done, but my reaction to it that I was afraid of.

  I knew he would be returning home late that day, I didn’t know what time. I decided to leave him to settle in and arrange to speak to him after, if he wanted to of course.

  It was Saturday and I got to spend the day with both Sam and Scott. We took a cab and met with some of their friends for lunch. It was good to see Sam settled with a group of people, it was not like he’d had a huge circle of friends back home. He had struggled with his sexuality for a long time, his parents were bitterly disappointed that he would not marry, produce grandchildren. He eventually built a kind of relationship with them and although they would never accept Scott into their lives, at least they talked.

  Saturday night was club night. Dressed to the nines, we hit some local bars before heading off to a club, noticeably lacking in females. We danced, we drank too much, and we got home in the early hours of the morning. I flopped into bed with my makeup still on, and for the first time in a couple of nights, I fell into a deep sleep. If I dreamt at all, I certainly didn’t remember it in the morning.

  Having forgotten to pull the blinds, I was woken by bright sunlight blazing into the room. Groaning, I pulled the covers up over my eyes and made a promise never to drink again. We had consumed far too many cocktails and not only was my head sore, so were my feet from the dancing.

  I lay there thinking about Robert. I tried to decide if I should arrange to meet him or just send him a note. If I met with him, would that immeasurable pull I felt towards him, distract what I had to say?

  I knew that I needed to put a stop to whatever it was between us and sooner was better than later. Maybe I was being presumptuous; maybe he wasn’t interested in seeing me again anyway. I mean, he knew Sam’s mobile number; he would have called if he were that worried about me. I was also conscious of what I knew about him. Would he see pity in my eyes? I felt terribly sorry for him and I doubted that he would want a relationship based on that, neither would I. Perhaps I should do nothing and just carry on with my holiday, return home. I should just put it all down to a couple of nights of great sex, a holiday fling, and an exciting break from my normal, boring life. I decided I seriously needed a shower. My hair was in knots and I could still feel the previous nights mascara sticking my eyelashes together.

  I stood in the shower and let the warm water wash the night’s excesses from me. I started to feel a little sorry for myself. I guessed a hangover, the thoughts of Robert and my messed up life bubbled up, all at the same time and I started to cry. I sat in the shower and hugged my arms around my knees, I let my head fall onto them.

  I heard a noise, there were voices in the hallway, and I was startled when the bathroom door was pushed open. Sitting naked in the shower, my tears mingling with the warm water, I looked up to see Robert standing there. He wore biker leathers and a white t-shirt that melded around every muscle on his body; he looked fucking hot.

  “I’m sorry,” Sam said, appearing behind him. “I tried to tell him you were still in bed but he insists on seeing you.”

  “Okay, Sam. I can sort this,” I replied.

  Sam left, not before scowling at Robert and closed the door quietly behind him.

  “Do you normally let your friends see you naked?” he asked.

  “Sam is my best friend and extremely gay with it. I have nothing he’s interested in,” I said, sarcastically. “Can you pass me the towel?”

  I turned the shower off and reached for the towel he was holding out. I noticed him look at my shoulder. Although now faded, there were still obvious bruises. I wrapped the towel around myself and covered my body.

  “Brooke, I’m sorry. It’s not an excuse but I just lost control,” he said.

  I sat on the edge of the bath and finally looked at him.

  “How was your trip?” I asked, deflecting the conversation.

  “Okay, I got done what I needed to,” he replied.

&
nbsp; “Would you have lunch with me today, let me explain a few things?” he asked.

  I sighed, “Robert, you have nothing to explain. I guess I’m the one that owes you an explanation.”

  He looked a little surprised.

  “I hurt you and I need to apologise for that. I need to apologise for the whole fucking evening really. Get dressed, we can go for a ride and have lunch, somewhere public. Put on jeans and a jacket,” he said.

  We walked to my bedroom and I left him sitting on the unmade bed. I popped my head into Sam and Scott’s room and told them, if they didn’t mind, I would have lunch with Robert and be back after.

  “Honey, just be careful and call if you need us,” Scott said, loud enough for him to hear.

  I sat on the bed and Robert watched while I dried my hair, got dressed, and applied some makeup. My eyes were still a little red from crying and I watched him in the mirror, watching me.

  “I’ve never seen a woman get ready before,” he said, quietly.

  No, I guessed he hadn’t. It didn’t seem like he’d ever had any normal relationships before. I was worried about whether he knew I’d met with Evelyn and whether he knew what she had told me. When I was dressed and ready, we left the apartment.

  Parked right outside was the most impressive and rare, low, black Ducati Diavel motorbike I had ever seen. With its chrome exhausts, it was sex on wheels. I recognised it immediately, bikes were something I knew about.

  He sat astride and handed me a helmet that had been attached to the handlebars. Fixing one on himself, he held out his hand and helped me climb on behind him. The engine throbbed, an emitted a low throaty growl when he’d started it. That bike was just so Robert, fast, powerful and sleek. He pulled out into the quiet Sunday traffic and opened the throttle. The bike surged forward and I clung to his waist, my fingers gripped the leather jacket he wore. It was the most exhilarating thing I’d ever done.

  He rode that bike like he lived his life. With such control but fast and dangerous, cornering so low to the ground that I screamed. He drove us to a park, somewhere I wouldn’t have expected knowing his need for privacy. Shutting off the engine, I climbed off the bike and my legs shook. Securing the helmets to the handlebars, he held out his hand for mine.