Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5)

by Krista Ritchie

  “You want me to go home?” he snaps and then grinds his teeth. Something’s going on. I think it might just be more long-distance relationship angst.

  “I want you to not speak about what-shall-not-be-named inside my brother’s house, and if you can’t handle that, then yeah, you can go home.”

  “Lo!” Lily gapes at me.

  I close her mouth by pushing up her chin. I have a hard time not smiling. “Lily.” I pout at her.

  She pokes my chest. “You’re not being nice.”

  “Because I’m not nice,” I remind her.

  She clasps my cheeks between her hands, and whatever speech she planned just leaves her eyes. They absorb my features with layers of sex and toxicity. I want to pull her closer, but I know I can’t. It sucks. It always sucks, but I’d rather have healthy Lily every day than horny, compulsive Lily.

  While holding my face, Lily is in the deepest internal battle. To make it easier for her. I reach over to the counter, setting my salsa and chips aside, then I clasp her hands in mine.

  We keep some space between us, but it’s hard on her and me. We both want to be all over each other. I end up wrapping my arm around her waist, and she holds onto me and then nods like I can do this without sex.

  When I focus back on Garrison, who still sits on the counter, he opens a cupboard near his head. As he reaches for a cup, his hoodie rises, showing part of his abs and—

  “What the hell?” I say mostly beneath my breath, too shocked to scream it. I raise my voice. “Garrison.”

  He hits his head on the cupboard as he turns towards me. “Shit,” he curses, rubbing the spot. His hoodie falls back down with his arm. “What?”

  I’m not the type of person to go at him, lift his hoodie up without asking, and pry deeper in his life. I’ve always waited for people to open up to me. I don’t like poking, but this…I have to poke at this.

  I don’t think Lily saw.

  I lower my voice so it’s just between the three of us. “Where did those bruises come from?” Welts, purpled and yellowed and the size of a baseball, blemish his ribs.

  His face falls, and he shakes his head. His eyes flit to Lily for a second. “Lacrosse. Drop it.”

  I don’t believe him. I had this feeling that I let go during last year’s Halloween. Something about…his brothers. The way he talks about them has always been off to me, but I didn’t pressure Garrison to talk about it. I never have, and maybe that’s on me.

  Lily senses something too, especially the way that Garrison is more uncomfortable with her hearing this. Maybe she thinks whatever he says, she’ll tell Willow. Even though I’m her brother, the girls share more between each other.

  “Oh look—Moffy,” Lily says, so obvious, so adorable. I pinch her shoulder on her way to the couch. I would’ve pinched her ass, but timing, place, people—all of that. I’m more aware today than other days.

  Lily squints at me.

  She’s trying to glare. “Be nice,” she reminds me.

  “Yes, my Hufflepuff.” I give her a partial smile, and it fades as soon as she turns her back. I rub my neck and near Garrison a bit more.

  “Honestly, it’s lacrosse,” Garrison starts again.

  “It’s been Christmas break,” I say, my voice edged. “When were you playing lacrosse?”

  “I don’t know…I just was…I was.” He hangs his head, his hair falling over his eyelashes. He holds onto his bulky headphones on either side of his neck. “Let me be.”

  I hear myself speaking to Ryke.

  Get off my back. Let me be. Leave it alone.

  I’m new at being a hardass. I don’t always like it, but I know sometimes people need it. I also know Garrison, and sometimes reminding him that we care helps. I hand him my bowl of salsa, and I hold the chips. I pass him one, and he stares blankly at me.

  “What is this?”

  “Chips and salsa. If you don’t like them, we can’t be friends anymore.” I pop one in my mouth.

  “We’re friends?” he asks like he’s unsure.

  “Jesus Christ, do I need to make friendship bracelets for you to believe it?” This isn’t the first time he’s asked like that.

  “Fuck you,” he snaps, and I watch him hesitantly dip his chip into the salsa.

  “Don’t be pissy because I’m prettier. It’s just a fact you’re going to have to get used to.”

  Garrison swallows. “I thought the tall one was supposed to be the prettiest.”

  I always start to smile when he calls Connor the tall one. “Shh, we don’t like to tell him the truth. It ruins his allure.”

  Garrison nods, his shoulders sinking forward.

  I can’t believe he’s already twenty-one. I was so messed up at that age, and I hate that sleepless circles are beneath his eyes and that it looks like he hasn’t eaten in a whole week. I wished I noticed sooner.

  “So what are your brothers like; you have three, right?”

  “Yeah. Mitchell, Hunter, and Davis. We’re all two years apart from one another.” So twenty-three, twenty-five, and twenty-seven.

  I wait for him to add more, but he just stares at his hands.

  “Which one’s the worst?” I ask, too edged to be coy.

  Garrison eyes me up and down. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

  I could lie. I’m a great goddamn liar, and I have years of proof hiding an addiction and romance to prove it. But I don’t, not to this guy. “Am I right?” I ask, a breath imprisoned in my chest. I gesture to his ribs. “Did one of your shitty fucking brothers do that?”

  His nose flares. His throat bobs. He turns his head left and right for a way out of his own pain. I get it. I so fucking get it.

  “They’re just messing around,” he says so quietly I almost miss the words.

  I clench my teeth, my blood boiling. My instant reaction is retaliation. Hurt them the way they hurt him, but I breathe in, breathe out, and I settle enough to think first. “Can I see it again?”

  Garrison glances at the living area, but everyone is seated on the couches, most of their backs turned and focus directed on the children. As his head swings to me, he lifts his hoodie, his bare skin visible.

  The bruise spiders up his side, the deepest purple area around his ribs. Fractured. They’re fractured—I can tell because I’ve had rib injuries many times. I peek at his back, more welts on his lower spine like someone kicked him. Jesus…a rock lodges in my throat. I never realized how responsible I felt for Garrison, not until this moment.

  I’ve seen this guy a thousand times since he was seventeen, but somehow I never saw this.

  “Let me check out your other side,” I whisper, two seconds from being choked up.

  He’s shaking, but he shows me his left side. The bruise across his abdomen looks faded, older. Like this has happened multiple times. I have to tilt my head towards his lips to hear his next words.

  “I’m the little brother. They just pick on me. It’s what older brothers do.”

  I’m the little brother too, and Ryke would never do that to me—but I can’t say that to Garrison. I hear the malicious rebuttal that I’d spout if I sat in his place, well aren’t you a goddamn lucky bastard.

  So I say, “Your ribs are fractured.”

  A tear rolls down his cheek. “Yeah, I know.” He aggressively wipes the tear away.

  “It’s happened before?”

  He shrugs tensely. “Whenever I see them, they like to play rough, so whatever…”

  “Which brother?” I question, my eyes murderous at this point.

  Garrison lifts his head, his chin quaking, and his voice cracks as he says, “All of them.”

  My chest collapses, and very softly, I say, “I’m not going to let them hurt you anymore.”

  Garrison tries to cover his face. He slides off the counter to stand, but his legs buckle, his back slipping down the cabinets until he’s on the floor, forehead pressed to his bent knees.

  I don’t touch him because I know that touch really isn
’t his thing. Now it makes more sense why.

  I kneel nearby, and I have to ask, “Does Willow know?”

  He nods. Keeping his head down, he mumbles out, “It’s not her fault…for not telling anyone. She thought it stopped. It did…for a while, but when I went back for Christmas break, they were all there…” He starts shaking again. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

  I’m really quiet as I ask, “Will you stay at my place, at least until Willow comes back?” Lily won’t mind having Garrison with us for an indefinite amount of time. I know she won’t.

  Shock freezes him. “That’s years.”

  “So?”

  He looks up at me, eyes reddened, cheeks tear-streaked. “Willow could break up with me by then.”

  “You’d still be a part of this family.” I gesture in a circle. “I wouldn’t kick you out because of it.” Long before he became Willow’s boyfriend, we all knew him as Garrison Abbey: the rebellious, teenage neighbor.

  “I have an apartment in Philly.”

  “You live alone.” And I think you need someone right now. I pause. “I’m going to be blunt like my brother. You look like shit. You’re a little gaunt, and man, you smell like you’ve been spraying cologne instead of showering.”

  “I’ve been busy,” he snaps, already defensive. “I have a job, and it’s the only thing that keeps me from…”

  “From what?”

  He shrugs. “From feeling like a stupid loser. Like I have no purpose, alright? I have something outside of waiting for a girl. I have something…and I need to put time in it. I shouldn’t even be here. I should be working—”

  “Hear me out,” I cut him off, just as his voice cracks. “I have this little kid who’s a big pain in my ass because he keeps begging for a sibling. Every day I have to hear, ‘but Jane has two brothers’ and if he just saw you in the house, he’d be happy. But most importantly, you’d save my goddamn eardrums.”

  Garrison lets out a short laugh. “The important things.”

  “Damn right.”

  He pinches his eyes. “Stop crying,” he says beneath his breath. That’s me. I see and hear so much of my past torment in his aching words.

  “I get it.”

  “Do you?” he snaps.

  “Your brothers call you a pussy for crying? They tell you you’re not a real man—suck it up, Garrison. What are you, a little pussy, a little girl? What kind of goddamn man are you?”

  Surprise coats his face again, and he’s about to swing his head towards my brother. Since we’re on the ground the cabinets block our view.

  “It wasn’t my brother who told me to just stop fucking crying,” I grit the words because I feel them like thick, black scars inside my lungs. Returning to that place hurts to breathe.

  Garrison frowns. “Who?”

  “My father.” And the scary part: I really love that man.

  I always will.

  He stops profusely rubbing his face, letting the tears just come.

  I just want to reach in and tell him something, so I scoot closer and I breathe, “You’ll be okay. You won’t see it today, maybe not even tomorrow, but one day, you’ll wake up and you’ll want to live.”

  “Are you sure?” His voice breaks.

  “I’m goddamn sure. Look at me…” I wait for him to raise his head, his hair partially concealing his eyes, and I say deeply, “One day at a time. Can you do that with me?”

  Garrison is quiet for a long moment, but then he nods repeatedly, letting this sink in. “…will you do something for me, if I move in with you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He deadpans, “I want you to kill someone.”

  I glare. “You joke, but have you met me?” Could I kill someone? I don’t know—push me enough, and maybe, I think I could. It’s not a talent to boast about. It’s a huge character flaw, and I’ve been keenly aware that it exists inside of me.

  Garrison erases the dry sarcasm this time. “Two days ago, I told my brothers that I’d never see them again. I don’t know whether they believed me. They rarely take anything I say seriously, but I told them. I just don’t want to talk or see them ever.” His throat bobs again. “So two days ago…I also left my parent’s house in a hurry and accidentally forgot one of my hard drives there.”

  “You want me to get it for you?”

  “Yeah…but just don’t…” His chest rises in a sharp inhale.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t hurt them. Alright. I know it sounds stupid as fuck, but they’re still my brothers. Even if I never see them again, I just don’t…just don’t do it.”

  Don’t hurt them. Somewhere in this kitchen, I see my twenty-one-year-old spiteful self. Mad as hell. That guy would break Garrison’s promise without a second thought. He’d open this cruel book of retaliation and revenge.

  I can sit here and I can think, I won’t do that because he told me not to. Because I know it’s wrong.

  I wonder how many people meet the person they once were and feel like they’re staring at a stranger. I’m happy my son will never meet that man. I’m happy Lily has the husband she deserves. And I’m happy for me.

  Because I finally love who I am.

  “I won’t,” I promise Garrison, and I’m going to keep this one. “Give me your phone. I’ll go get your hard drive now.”

  Garrison passes me his cell.

  “What about your parents?” I ask him. “Do they know?”

  “I’ve told my mom, but she just says it’s boys being boys…and my dad likes Davis the best. They don’t care about anything except making money, and ever since I got a job with Cobalt Inc., they stopped hounding me about ‘doing something with my life.’ If I never checked in, never returned their calls, they’d just think I was too busy for them, and they’d probably be proud.”

  “Huh,” I say. “They sound like dicks.”

  He chokes out a laugh. “Yeah they are.”

  I scroll through his contacts. Garrison has a shit emoji next to the names of every brother. Three shit emojis next to Hunter’s name.

  He’s the worst. I hover over his name to call him.

  I think better of it and call Mitchell instead. As the phone rings, I ask, “Will they answer?”

  He nods. “And miss an opportunity to pick on me?” It’s the nice way of saying to beat me up.

  I get what it’s like not being able to use these specific words that turn you into a victim. Feeling like that word doesn’t fit your situation just right.

  Abuse? No, not me.

  Never me. It’s just this…it’s not that. It can’t be that harsh, raw thing.

  But it is. And then what?

  I put the receiver to my ear, and the line clicks. “What’s up?” Mitchell asks first. He sounds easygoing. You’d never think, this guy beats on his little brother.

  Garrison watches me closely, his whole body tensing up.

  I can’t change my voice, but I don’t go searching for words that’ll scalp Mitchell. “This is Loren Hale, from down the street.”

  “Oh…oh wow, hey.”

  I’m his famous neighbor. “Garrison left his hard drive at your parent’s place. He really needs it soon. Can you swing by and drop it in my mailbox?”

  “Yeah, I’m on my way out tonight, so I’ll drop it in your box then. Does he know where it is?”

  I cup my hand over the receiver, “Where’s the thing?”

  “Basement table.”

  I put the phone back. “Basement table.”

  “Cool—oh yeah, I see it now…” he trails off for a long moment, maybe a full thirty seconds.

  “Do you want to say something?” I ask.

  He clears his throat. “Was…was he serious about the whole never speaking to us again thing? Is that why he had you call?”

  Be like Ryke right now. One goddamn word response. “Yep.” I literally bite my tongue.

  Mitc
hell is quiet on the line. “Can you tell him…tell him I’m sorry, and that I think this is a good idea for him?”

  Another lump lodges in my throat and I swallow every other nasty comment that chews at me. “Sure.”

  We both hang up, and I toss the phone to Garrison.

  “What’d he say?” he asks.

  “He’ll drop it in my mailbox. He’s sorry, and he thinks you never speaking to all of them is a good idea.” I shake my head at Garrison, confusion written across my face.

  “You called Mitchell, didn’t you?”

  “What is he—the nice one?” I know he’s only two years older than Garrison.

  “Mitchell could’ve stopped them,” Garrison says. “He never did. Does that make him nice?…I don’t know. I never stopped my friends from breaking into your house. I never stopped myself from pranking you. We’re all the same. We’re all shit.”

  No.

  I lean forward, and I say as clear as I can, “This guy in front of me isn’t shit, and I’ll still be here when you finally believe it too.”

  { 11 }

  February 2019

  The Hale House

  Philadelphia

  LOREN HALE

  A little body catapults on my king-sized bed, undulating the mattress and stirring me from sleep. Christ. I rub my eyes. The black chandelier with candles stays motionless above the bed. It’s too high for a rambunctious three-year-old to hit, but I still check to see if it swings.

  “Wakey wakey! Eggs and bakey!” Moffy sings jubilantly and crawls towards me, dressed in blue and yellow Wolverine pajamas.

  Lily dives further beneath the champagne comforter, burrowing like a frightened animal. I reach down for her, but she scoots towards the foot of the bed. Lil.

  Moffy doesn’t notice the giant lump. He wobbly stands on the mattress and starts bouncing higher and higher.

  I tug his pajama shirt, and he falls to his butt.

  Sitting up, I position my deep red pillow against the headboard, the red top-sheet missing. Lily must’ve grabbed it.

  I yawn into my bicep. “Moffy, what’d we say about knocking?”

  “Umm…” His brows furrow in contemplation. His dark brown hair sticks up on the side, but my bed-head is probably worse. I watch him gawk at the ceiling, searching for some words. His baby-soft face reminds me of Lily, but she put my toddler picture beside our son’s as “evidence” of how much he resembles me. It was an eerie match, despite our different hair and eye colors.