by Anne Leigh
Her head was down, her arms folded across her chest, as she paced in small steps in front of the TV.
“Honey what’s wrong?” I inquired, wondering what was going on with her. Was she this upset because I was disqualified? Did she believe the rumors?
I placed my hands on my legs, and sat upright, waiting for her to tell me what was going on.
She was moving, her steps were small, but steady, and then she gazed at me. “I love you, Kieran.”
I remained in place with my eyes locked on hers, I replied, “I love you, too. Now, come back here.” I tapped my right hand on the space right beside me. “And, tell me what’s going on with you.”
Her head shook sideways. “No. I need to tell you this... with a mile of distance between us because I don’t know how you’re going to take it.”
Okay? What was she about? Didn’t she realize that the day had held enough drama for me to last a lifetime?
“Just spill it honey.” I encouraged. “I’m a bit tired from today, you know?” A small laugh followed my statement, but it came out sarcastic and somewhat condescending.
She inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, and exhaled again. Was she performing some breathing exercise right now? With her voice shaky, her eyes muddled, and her arms lowered to her sides, visibly shaking, she uttered one word, “Milo.”
It took me a moment to comprehend what she meant. A moment to realize the message that she was trying to convey, but that very moment quickly passed, and my anger grew instantly hotter than fire, pulsating through me. The force almost made it hard for me to speak. Almost.
“What the hell did Milo do, Brynn?”
Her body crumpled on the side table haphazardly situated in the middle of the room. With her eyes, almost blue-black in despair, she explained brokenly, “He’s talking to the officials now, Kieran. He’s confessing to them what he did. I talked to him and he’s telling them what he did...”
My body vibrated, hummed, and then exploded in fury. “What the hell did he do, Brynn?” I was now standing in front of her, forcing her look at me.
She hiccupped, and was sobbing, but she continued, “He found out that you eat breakfast with me so after the night he discovered about us, he put powdered poppy seeds in my pancake mix because he knows that it can affect your random urine test results.”
As an athlete, you knew the foods that you had to avoid, especially when drug testing was a constant part of your sport. Poppy seeds could cause false positive results for opiates like heroin. Sure, it would depend on the individual’s body to synthesize the chemical, and Milo probably didn’t know how it would affect me because sometimes it took days for a person’s urine test to show any positive results. Just my luck, it showed right away. False positive, but a positive result, nonetheless. And, none of my own creation.
“Dammit, Brynn!” I yelled, my chest shaking with fury, “This is my career. This is something I’ve worked for my whole life. And, your brother just freaking messed it all up with his stupidity and unreasonable jealousy of some girl that I fucked once!” It was harsh, deliberate, but it was the truth.
She didn’t answer. She just sat there. Tension filled the room, and we both knew that one word from either one of us would spark the insidious fire that now separated us.
“It’s not just about Dia...,” she started, her voice small, shame-ridden by her brother’s actions. “It’s because he loves me Kieran. I don’t think you know what it’s like to love someone like that, Kieran. It’s hard to understand his actions—”
“Shut up, Brynn.” Her face cringed and her shoulders shook at the brutality of my words.
I didn’t let her finish, I just couldn’t. My own anger ruling my head, short-circuiting the connection between my mind and my heart. This time I wanted her to feel it. Feel every freaking hurt and pain that her brother has caused me.
I breathed in and let everything out. “You don’t dare tell me what love is, Brynn. You have no right to call me out on it. I’ve known what it’s like to love someone since I was eleven.” My voice sliced through the air between us as my heart tried desperately to rebel the memory of what it had long forgotten. Now, it was being forced back into the present. “Do you know what love is?” I asked rhetorically, not waiting for her answer. I continued, “Love is wishing the best for the person that you love. Watching, waiting for her to finally look at you differently. It’s constantly hoping that today will be the day she sees you as someone whom they could love, the way you love her.” My breathing got harsher. Just as I thought I had said it all, I still found the voice to say, “Love is trying to find happiness when she has found her own. Even when that is not with you, especially, if it’s not with you ...” I stopped, letting my words trail from my lips as the pain in my chest pressurized, making it harder to breathe. “So no, Brynn, you have no right to judge me, or tell me that I don’t know what love is. But you’re right about one thing, I don’t understand his actions, because I would never, EVER do what he did to me! To me, no matter the consequence, you don’t hurt the ones you love as he has done. That isn’t love, Brynn. I can tell you that much.”
She stared at me for a long time, her mouth wide open, and before she could say another word, I pointed at the door. “I need you to leave right now. It’s hard for me to process everything when I’m staring at you, knowing that your brother has purposefully ruined my career.” She looked at me, her eyes begging, pleading, and trying to find a reason for me to tell her otherwise. I shut down. I just couldn’t deal with her right now. I thought she was my solace, but instead she had a direct link to the person who had just robbed me of one of the most significant achievements in my career—at the world’s stage, no less.
I saw the pain, the hurt in her eyes, but I was hurting, too. So, I said what my mind knew but my heart refused to acknowledge. “Please leave, Brynn.”
She slowly stood up, her right hand brushing away the tears on her face. I fought the urge to hug her close to me and tell her that everything was going to be okay. She righted herself, and fixed the shirt she was wearing that had crumpled from her bunching it in her hands to wipe the copious amount of tears she had shed within these past few minutes. I clamped my fists to stop them from reaching out to her and holding her in my arms. I could smell her vanilla scent and it took all of the resolve that I had in me not to ask her to stay. I loved Brynn. Right now, I just couldn’t be with her. Everything about her just reminded me of him, and it just hurt too damned much. From the soles of my feet to the top of my head, I felt pain. It’s pain that comes from loving someone and fighting to choose not to. It is that reminder of what I had lost before and after she came into my life.
An hour after Brynn left, another knock pounded on my door. My mom had texted me that she and my dad were still with coach, trying to resolve the issue. I texted back to ask if I was needed and she responded with, “Just stay put.”
I opened the door, expecting my brothers but found the guy who was probably the last I would expect to come. Not because he wasn’t a friend, but because Ace would come see me before him, or they would be together.
Zander nodded his head. “Is it cool if we talk?”
Well, it would be rude to say ‘no’ so I replied, “Yeah.”
He answered before I could ask, “Sedona’s with Brynn. We were walking in here when we saw Brynn rush outside, crying, so we walked with her to her room, and Sedona’s still with her.”
Zander sat on the couch. I sat on the small chair to his left.
“So, you know then?” I asked, thinking that Brynn had spilled the beans about the shameless act that her brother had committed.
“Yeah,” he answered, as he took off his baseball cap and sat it on the table that Brynn had sat on an hour ago.
No one said a word for a few minutes. Finally, I stood up. “Listen Zander, I need to get started on packing so, while I’d love to chat, I don’t think it’s a good time right now.”
He processed my words, and nonchalantly asked, “
Do you love her?”
I knew what he was asking. Was he trying to become Dr. Phil between Brynn and me? Oh, come on. He knew nothing about my feelings for Brynn.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business, man,” I answered curtly.
He ignored me, and asked again, “Do you love her?”
I assumed he was not going to leave until I answered. Ace married a stubborn guy. Who knew? I thought he was the most levelheaded person in the world, but I guess I was wrong.
In an exasperated voice, I replied, “I think I do.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You either love someone or you don’t. You either hate them or you don’t.”
What a black and white way of thinking. Just like Ace.
He proceeded, “Do you know what it’s like to lose someone you love, Kieran? Not to another person or to another guy, but to something that you can’t control.”
He was talking about Ace’s car accident. “Yes, I have an idea.” I almost lost Ace to that car accident. That day was one of the most horrific times in my life. To hear her voice on the phone, the sounds of the car screeching and crashing, the silence that followed on Ace’s line. I barely recalled what I did after talking to a random person who had picked up Ace’s phone after she had dropped it on the pavement. My memory had blocked everything out. I just remembered feeling so scared, helpless, and rendered utterly powerless. How I gathered up the strength to contact Zander and Ace’s family would forever perplex me and something that I hoped to high heavens would never happen again.
Zander’s huge sigh invaded my unwanted flashback. His face was held so tight as if just the thought of the accident was painful enough. “When I thought I lost Sedona in New York, after her accident... I kneeled by her side and prayed to someone higher than myself, than anyone in this world. Someone who could listen to my prayers and answer them. I prayed for her and our baby’s lives.” His eyes shifted, his voice slightly breaking. “Kieran, when you are left with nothing—that’s how I felt when Sedona and Sofia’s lives were hanging in the balance. You appreciate every single fucking thing you have, and you become a different man.”
“What are you trying to get at?” I was exhausted from his analogy. I have already had a rough day. I had the swim of my life, and then got disqualified from it for having opiates in my system, and confronted Brynn because of her brother’s idiotic actions; so yes, I was exhausted. I didn’t have time to spare and think in circles. After all, this isn’t an episode of Batman, and I’m sure as hell am not the Riddler.
He calmly began, “When you love someone, Kieran, no matter what they do, you learn to forgive. I’m not saying that you’re going to forgive every single mistake they commit, especially if they’re cheating on you or if they’re plotting your murder. But, you learn to accept that being with that person matters most, and above anything else. When the time comes,” he almost choked his words out, “that Sedona and I are taken from each other by natural causes, she and I would know that every single day of our lives, we have shown each other just how much we meant to each one other. Like you, my football career is important to me. I work my ass off every fucking day to make sure I’m the best at what I do. But, if it was all taken away from me, the pain and suffering that I would feel would be negligible to the pain I felt when I thought Sedona was gone.”
I breathed out. Zander might be the sappiest guy in the whole universe, but he had good points.
“It wasn’t her fault, Kieran.” After a lengthy, winded explanation of his love for my best friend, he was now finally getting to the point of his ‘little visit’ with me. “It wasn’t Brynn’s fault that you got DQ’d. She made her brother go talk to the FINA officials, threatening him that she would forever cut him out of her life if he didn’t. She loves you, man. I don’t know much about her, but the woman I saw crying on my wife’s shoulders looks like a woman who has just lost someone who meant a lot to her. She didn’t say one bad thing about you. All she kept saying was that it was her fault that she let it get this far, that she forced you into hiding your relationship from Milo, that she regretted ever putting you in this position... And maybe, you would have been better off without her.”
Zander’s words stilled me, penetrated through the haze of my anger, and seared into my heart. My life would be better off without Brynn? God no.
Brynn brought color into my life. She made me feel loved when I didn’t think it was in the cards for me. She chose me every single time. She gave herself to me completely. She was the strongest woman I knew. She battled cancer, survived tragedy after tragedy, and had the battle scars to prove it. And from what Zander was telling me, she fought for me, made her own brother admit to his own fault, and was trying to give me back what I rightfully deserved. She was a good woman, a great woman, and I was a bastard for doing the things that I just did to her.
I flexed my neck, the tension ebbing away from my body, the realization coming to me as clear as the reflection of the ocean waters on a sunny day. I admitted to the guy to whom I had lost the woman I loved in my childhood, and the guy who made me see how much I loved the woman in my present, “Yes, I love Brynn. Completely. Irrevocably. I would be lost without her.”
When Kieran ordered me to leave, the pain in my chest went from a slow boil to a full-blown wildfire. The look in his eyes was filled with unforgiving anger. Those same eyes that looked at me with tenderness and love had morphed into something that I would rather forget.
Remembering last night when he told me loved me caused the ache in my heart to constrict even more. How did I let this get this far? I had forced my brother into acting like someone I didn’t even recognize anymore. One who compromised his own principles because he couldn’t bear to see me with Kieran.
When I had confronted Milo, he flinched when I voiced that I knew he had something to do with Kieran’s disqualification. He finally copped to it when I threatened him that I would move across the country, even across the globe, to be away from him, if he didn’t tell me what he did and how he did it. He confessed to pouring the granulated poppy seed extracts into my pancake mixes. When I asked him how come his own random urine testing didn’t show any traces of heroin or opiates, he said that if I remembered correctly, he stayed away from the pancakes that I made and only ate the omelets. His face was set in stone during his confession, it only cracked when I regained my composure and told him to man up and admit everything to the officials. “I’m sorry, Bee.” He looked morose, his eyes dark and beseeching.
I replied tightly, “I’m not the one whom you should be saying ‘sorry’ to. I’m not the one whose career you put on the line. Make this right, Milo. You owe it to Kieran, to me, to the swimming world, and to yourself. And, from now on, keep this in mind; you are not the brother I grew up with. You are a shell of a man I once knew as my brother. You’ve become so lost in your own selfish world that you can’t see what’s beyond you. Kieran makes me happy and I love him. Whatever he did with Dia was in the past. You low balled him and took away his glory. He rightfully earned that win, Milo, fair and square. It was a competition between athletes, between abilities. You never should have made this about me. At least, I can say, if actions speak louder than words, yours have proven more than enough for me.” He rubbed his right hand against his neck, tensing up, and the rise and fall of his chest became more evident, more rapid, as his mouth was held in a firm, straight line. Before the last of my resolve dissolved, I warned, “Until Kieran forgives you, don’t bother calling or texting me.”
He just nodded his head and hugged me. I stopped myself from hugging him back. He did Kieran wrong. No matter how much he justified it to himself, what he had done was contradictory to the morals and values that our parents and our aunt had instilled in us.
I left the room before I completely broke down in front of him. Vivid images of my childhood with Milo filled my head. The countless moments he held me when we lost our parents. The day he shaved his head because I lost my own hair from chemo. The nights he hug
ged me until I fell asleep because I was so scared that the nurses would come in and start poking my veins to draw blood. The many times when he fought with the doctors when they told me I had no hope, even when he was just a child like me. The joyous occasion when I got selected for a new drug research trial for osteosarcoma. And the unparalleled happiness that he shared with me when my doctor said that the cancer was in remission. Milo was there through all that. He was the man I once lived for, and I was running away from him because he hurt the man I would fight for.
Sedona and Zander saw me rushing out of Kieran’s suite and they followed me to my hotel room. Sedona just hugged me. She didn’t say a word, and Zander, he just stayed in the living room with us. I explained to them what happened and they both just listened.
Finally, I asked Sedona, “Can you please call Ava?” I had left Ava in a rush to talk to my brother. I had seen Ava’s texts and calls on my phone but I ignored them since I had the talk with Kieran. Sedona texted Ava on my phone and within fifteen minutes, Ava was there. Zander excused himself and said that he was going to fix something, and would come back when Sedona called him.
After Zander left, I cried to Ava and Sedona some more. My tears were non-stop. Who knew that a person could cry oceans of tears in a day and not have their tear ducts dry up? Perhaps, this is what it truly means when a soul bleeds?
The two girls stayed with me. For how long? I didn’t know. I must have passed out from crying because when I woke up, Ava was slumped beside me and Sedona was passed out on the small couch across from us.
I reached for my phone on top of the coffee table and glanced at the clock. 2:15 AM.
There were several texts from my brother. The last one caused me to gasp out loud. It said, “I’m banned from swimming. FINA’s still deciding how long. Talked to Kieran. Flying out of the country now and leaving town for a while. Love you, Bee.”