With Gabby’s hair in her hand and a comb in her mouth, Christina could only nod her agreement. Sighing mournfully, Gabby said, “We knew, but most of our information came from Dad. It seems so sad and kind of romantic, but also really, really tragic. Then Mom died so young so we couldn’t really ask her for more information - so, so sad.”
********************
Riley
Riley waited outside Gabby’s room listening to her theatrical account of the Martin family history. He didn’t want to interrupt her because it would have been rude and also, he wanted to listen. He knew the Martins had Native American ancestry, but he didn’t know they had African-American as well. It was pretty cool. He didn’t know much about his ancestry just it included, English, Scots, possibly French, and Irish from all sides. He guessed you really did learn something new everyday. Taking a large sip of his coffee, he walked into the room and nearly choked.
********************
Christina
Christina had finished combing and brushing Gabby’s hair when she started a fishtail braid. She always loved playing with Gabby’s hair and it was even better when she was distracted, and not complaining. She put the brush down and still had the comb between her teeth, tying the end of the braid when Riley walked into the room.
********************
Riley
Riley was literally choking and his eyes were watering. The coffee had gone down the wrong way and he couldn’t catch his breath. He made wheezing, rasping sounds trying to expel the stuff out of his lungs. His hands were full, which meant he was spraying liquid onto the floor.
Jed came over and hit him on the back. “Are you alright, mate?” When he didn’t respond, Jed took the coffee and food off him, handed it to Gabby and then went back to help his friend.
********************
Christina
Christina didn’t fare much better. She drew in a sharp breath, which brought the comb further into her mouth and made her drool. She made a slurping, choking, gargling noise as the saliva started running down her chin. She pulled the comb out of her mouth and wiped the excess slobber away with her sleeve as quickly as she could, hoping no one saw.
Gabby looked at her with feigned innocence asking, “Dina, are you okay?”
Riley and Christina stared at each other in horror, and barely concealed loathing with: “what the hell are you doing here” type looks. No one said a word until a grinning Gabby shrieked, “AWKWARD.” It made Christina flinch and they both dropped eye contact and looked away.
Even Jed seemed uncomfortable and at a loss for words. He looked from Riley to Christina, like they were two big dangerous dogs that had wandered onto his property. He went to say something and then thought better of it.
Unfortunately, Gabby wasn’t lost for words. Leaning forward she looked first at Riley then Christina. Gabby’s eyes narrowed in concentration then an evil grin stretched her mouth wide. Blurting at what seemed like a 100 decibels in the close confinement of her room, Gabby screeched, “OH MY GOD. You two slept together. Didn’t you?”
Christina and Riley both yelled, “GABBY” in unison, making Jed burst out laughing. He tried to turn it into coughing, but failed. Taking his coffee and food, Jed headed out into the hallway to get away from them all. He was paid to protect Gabby and he wasn’t getting in the middle of this. Strangely, the Martins were turning out to be his most favorite assignment ever.
********************
Riley
Riley tried not looking at Christina and she followed suit. It didn’t happen often, but he felt himself go red. Glancing up he saw Christina had her arms folded as was looking out the window. Her face was bright red in large circles on her cheeks. As she turned her head toward him, he looked away and down at the floor. All he could think of was getting out of here as fast as possible.
********************
Christina
When Christina looked at Riley, she was surprised to see that he was as embarrassed about the situation as she was. She’d always thought he’d missed the shame gene because nothing much bothered him or he just shrugged it off. She was the one that descended into shame spirals, not him, but not this time. He was looking down at the floor and he was red along his cheekbones.
He looked up at her and they briefly made eye contact, until she turned her head away. She kept as far away from him as possible and he did the same. He didn’t even come near Gabby in case it brought him too close to Christina. She decided this was too uncomfortable and she would make her excuses to leave. Just as she was about to say something, Riley beat her to it.
Ignoring her and focusing on Gabby, Riley said, “I, agh, gotta go. I’ll catch up with you later, Gabby” and left the room. Christina breathed a sigh of relief.
“Wow,” Gabby said. “That’s really interesting.” Christina ignored her, but Gabby was on a roll. “I like the way he won’t look at you, except when you’re not looking at him and vice versa. I also like the way you two won’t go anywhere near each other in case bad Voodoo things happen – right there - on the floor.”
Christina felt herself go redder, trying to tune out Gabby’s running commentary about star-crossed romance, true love and destiny. When she got a chance, Christina was going to take the iPad off her so she’d stop filling her head with romantic nonsense, porn, and Country-Western music. If Gabby needed aversion therapy: Christina would happily administer the medicine.
********************
Riley
As Riley passed Jed, he shook his head. Jed said, “Brother, you’re a hold out. You told me about the fight, but not the most interesting part. All good sagas need some decent sex scenes” and then he laughed until his shoulders shook.
Riley rolled his eyes and kept walking to the elevator. He ignored Jed’s shout of: “wait” and got into the lift. As Jed made it to the elevator, Riley flipped him the bird and hit the doors closed.
Jed watched the elevator doors close and shrugged. He’d tried to tell Riley that Christina would be staying tonight, but he hadn’t given him a chance. As far as Jed was concerned, his conscience was clear. He supposed he could text him, but that would just spoil the surprise. Besides, Riley had given him the finger. So right back at you, mate.
Chapter Twelve – Flight paths
Christina, Seattle, The Present, Monday 8 October 2012
Christina felt like the top of her head was going to leave her body. She knew Gabby was recovering from life threatening injuries, but she was really tempted to smother her with a pillow. If she said: “Oh my” or “oh wow” or “oh fricking anything” - one more time - Christina was going to stuff a sock in her mouth. She came to the foot of Gabby’s bed and stared at her until she went quiet. It was like watching the batteries run out on a wind-up toy.
“He’s like my second favorite big brother in the world. You know – the first time I ever got drunk and threw up Riley came, and got me. No one picked on me at school, because everyone knew Riley would beat the shit out of them. I love Riley, Dina. I wish you two could work it out… I’m just going to shut up now.”
Christina glared at her saying through gritted teeth, “THAT would be EXTREMELY wise.”
Straightening herself up and smoothing her covers down, Gabby adopted a wounded persona saying stiffly, “Well there’s no need to be uncivil.” Silence had never been Gabby’s friend and after a bit she said, “I’m sorry, Dina. I didn’t mean to embarrass you or Riley.”
Christina held eye contact with Gabby until her little sister looked down. Putting some menace behind her words, Christina retorted. “Yes-you-did and you better not blab to Johnny or anyone else.”
Gabby started looking at her bed covers as if they held answers to the universe. Giving Christina surreptitious looks out of the corner of her eye and realizing she was in no immediate danger, Gabby put on her best innocent baby-face. “It’s just that, well, I don’t know what happened?”
Christina snapped. “Well, it isn’t rocke
t science, Gabby, more like human biology.”
Gabby groaned. “I don’t mean this weekend. I kind of figured what that involved. I mean about you and Riley. No one ever speaks about it. It’s taboo.”
Christina was actually pleased to hear that and just as she was about to respond Jed came back through the door. He noticed her hesitation and smiled sympathetically. “If it’s alright with you two, I’ve got a couple of things I need to take care of. Since you’re here Christina, can I leave Gabby in your hands? I should be back in an hour or so.”
Christina smiled at him and mouthed. “Thank you.” He gave her a wink and left the two sisters alone. Looking at Gabby, Christina glared at her sister. “What do you want to know? This is a one-time only opportunity. So hit me up.”
Gabby glanced up at her. “Can you not look at me so intensely? How about sitting down in the chair? You know to get comfortable or something?” Christina almost snorted. This conversation would be the opposite of comfortable, but she grabbed a chair and softened her death stare.
Clearing her throat Gabby started. “There were just so many rumors about you two, you know. I didn’t know what was fact or fiction.”
Christina could imagine, but she kept her face passive. “Like what?”
“Did you, two, um, have a suicide pact like Romeo and Juliet?”
“A suicide pact? Seriously? No,” laughed Christina. “If we did, we failed didn’t we? But, the police did suspect me of killing him once. I was questioned and everything.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah,” grimaced Christina. “There’s a funny story about that. Actually, it’s not funny, not even a little bit.” If the subject was ever brought up, Christina quashed it as quickly as possible.
“It’s just that everyone thought you were like Romeo and Juliet,” sighed Gabby. “Or Patrick Verona and Kat Stratford. You know - some kind of really great, romantic, tragic love story.”
“Hmmm. No,” snorted Christina. The thought was ludicrous. “If we’re going Shakespeare probably more like Hamlet and Ophelia. If we’re talking pop culture: Kurt and Courtney or Buffy and Angel – when Angel lost his soul, and went to hell.”
Gabby looked down and then up at her sister. “Um, did you guys make a sex tape?”
Christina stared at her and said, “NO,” vehemently. “We didn’t realize they had security cameras in that part of the building.”
“So there was a sex tape?”
“By accident! We didn’t set out to make one. Riley had to go get it. He beat the crap out of the guy until he handed it over. He hadn’t made any copies thank god. They hadn’t gone digital and it was before EVERYTHING got uploaded to the Net.”
Gabby’s mouth turned down in displeasure, and she asked stiffly. “Did you have sex in the Park? When Dave and Mandy got married?”
“NO. We didn’t have sex in the park. Technically, we had sex AT the park in Riley’s truck. We started fighting and then making up in the park, but we finished in his truck.”
“People saw you,” shrieked Gabby.
“No they didn’t,” Christina said calmly. “The windows were pretty steamed up. Maybe the movements of the truck gave it away, but they didn’t see us-see us. You make us sound like we’re perverts.”
“Perverts? No - just people who were completely crazy about one another. I remember some of it, but not all of it.”
Christina shrugged her shoulders. “I doubt anyone knows all of it - not even me and Riley. He has his perspective. I have mine. We were young, dumb and…”
“Full of cum?”
“I wasn’t going to say that, Gabby. More like: we were young, dumb, and in love. We weren’t mature enough to make it work. Love just wasn’t enough. If it was, we’d have lasted.”
“So what happened? Did he cheat on you? Beat you or something?”
Riley may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t a cheater or a beater when they were together. Christina found herself in the odd position of being defensive of the slight on his character. “God no,” Christina said. “We didn’t cheat on each other when we were together-together and there was no beating. I did hit him in the balls once and slap him, and throw stuff, but no. Riley isn’t like that.”
Gabby had a particular gift for uncovering secrets and honing in on points in discussion that no one wanted to talk about. Staring intently at Christina, she asked, “So you beat on him?”
“I did not beat on him!”
“It sounds like you did. I don’t understand…” said Gabby.
“Well, it’s complicated…”
“Which is usually code for making shit up to justify bad behavior.”
Christina looked at her sister and laughed. “You may have a point there. Gabby, it is complicated okay and it was really intense. It’s painful too – you know. We drove each other crazy. I couldn’t live with him. He couldn’t live with me. We just ended up fighting all the time. It wasn’t a happy time. No one was happy with us marrying. Mom especially, she wanted me to do something more with my life than be a teenage housewife.”
“You mean like Mom was?”
“Mom wasn’t a teenage housewife.”
“Well, she was close,” said Gabby.
“No she wasn’t. She was in her early twenties when she and Dad got married. Johnny came two or three years after.”
“Did Mom persuade you - to break up with Riley?”
Christina’s shook her head, “No. She. Did. Not. That’s unfair. I know he thinks that way, but she just highlighted my options.”
“And Riley didn’t fit in with them?”
“Riley didn’t want to fit in with them. I asked him to come with me to D.C. and he said no.”
Gabby looked at her with eyes wide in shock. “No shit? I always thought you just dumped him and left.”
“Technically, he broke up with me – the first time. I asked for a divorce. He refused, and then he left me this horrible poem-letter thing - with freaky artwork –that was just so horrible. To this day I don’t know what he meant by it.”
“Sounds disturbing,” murmured Gabby.
“It was, but in those days he was right into that sort of stuff and it was always macabre... and scary. He was Mr. intense-freaky-guy.”
“Is that why you broke up with him because he was like intense and freaky?”
Christina giggled. “No. I really liked his intensity and passion. It was all the other shit – up close and personal when you live with someone – that drove me crazy. I know it’s stupid, but things like washing your man’s underpants when you’re 18. It’s a real romance-killer and he was sooooo messy. He was messier than Johnny.”
Gabby frowned. “So let me get this straight… you broke up with him because you had to wash his under things and he was messy?”
Christina groaned. “Noooo. I was being symbolic. I mean – what the hell, Gabby? Who would divorce someone over underpants? Seriously?”
“Well, it depends,” started Gabby. “I mean if they had ‘marks’ on them – I wouldn’t like that. That’s icky.”
Christina stared at her sister. This was an interesting revelation and a bit tangential for her liking. “Can we get off the subject of Riley’s boxers? It wasn’t about his underwear – for god’s sake. It was about a difference in what type of futures we wanted.”
“You know,” Gabby said with a frown, “your futures – or the lives you’ve got now, don’t seem too different to me. You’re a lawyer and he’s Mr. rich guy. You’re almost a matching pair.”
Christina gaped at Gabby. She’d never thought about it that way and she supposed it could be viewed like that, but you’d never have predicted this result from the paths they’d taken. She pursed her lips together and was careful with what she was about to say.
“Relationships or breakdowns of relationships, Gabby, happen in stages. At the time we broke up, Riley wasn’t like he is now. He wanted me to stay at home and join the band when it got successful. He was a lot more old-fashioned
than people realize. He wanted a house – kids – and life to continue pretty much how it was. I didn’t want to. I wanted something different. He’s different now, but that’s how it was then.”
“Are you saying he’s a misogynist?” Gabby gaped at her, “I find that hard to believe.”
Christina shook her head. “No. I don’t think he’s a complete misogynist or anything like that, although I do think he’s a pig.”
Seeing the look on Gabby’s face, Christina corrected herself. “Okay. That was harsh, but he was pretty fixed on what I should be doing with my life – without hearing what I wanted. He didn’t want me being on the road with him, but it didn’t stop him from going. He’d just leave me there – in the farmhouse. I thought I was slowly dying, watching my life slip through my fingers. Then, Mom got sick and I couldn’t have left even if I wanted to.”
“Wow.” Gabby breathed.
“Then Mom died and he wouldn’t come to D.C., so… I decided to go anyway. He didn’t want me to, so I kind of gave him an ultimatum and our own little private war began.”
“I wouldn’t call it private, Dina. It’s been pretty public and there were plenty of casualties. Well, what set it off?”
Christina sighed, got up and stretched. She turned her back on Gabby saying to the wall. “I pushed it too far. I served him with surprise divorce papers and he wasn’t, agh, very receptive to that.”
“Oh God,” whispered Gabby.
“Yeah. ‘Oh God’ is a good description for it.”
“You didn’t tell him they were coming?”
Christina’s eyes flicked to Gabby. Her sister was staring at her in disbelief. “Nope. I wanted to shock him into making a decision. You know, I think I achieved that.” Sitting back down in the chair, Christina gave her little sister a tight smile saying, “I really don’t want to lay any of this on you. You have enough to deal with and it’s boring.”
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