Fearless

by Lauren Gilley

  “Why?”

  He sighed through his nostrils and gave her a withering look, like he couldn’t believe she was acting this way. “You call me, because I’m your–”

  “Your what?” she interrupted, feeling grim and triumphant. “What am I, Mercy? Because I’m not your girlfriend, and I’m not your old lady, and I’ve never been anything but someone to look after, an assignment, for you. Don’t think, after last night, that I’m your whore–”

  He covered her mouth with his hand, gently but solidly. His eyes fired black. “Stop that.”

  She glared at him as he withdrew. “I’ll stop being ‘rude’ to you, when you figure out the answer to that question. Your what, Mercy?” Then she stood and brushed past him, going to join Maggie in the kitchen.

  “Can I help?”

  Maggie handed her a bag of baking potatoes. “You can scrub these.”

  It was a healthy chore, given her mood, scrubbing at the brown skins with a clean brush under the running tap, working out her aggression in short, choppy strokes.

  “You’re doing a good job,” Maggie said quietly as she cut a white onion into long, thin slices.

  “It’s about the only kitchen chore I can handle.”

  “No, I meant-” Maggie tipped her head toward the living room, voice dropping to a low murmur. “He’s old enough and smart enough to know what he needs to do here; he just needs the right push from you.”

  She gave her mom a questioning look.

  “Make him reach for it,” Maggie said. “He owes you that.”

  They were having chicken cooked in a white wine sauce from one of Maggie’s original recipes and the baked potatoes. The dish called for something lighter, a vegetable, Maggie said, but the potatoes were what she had, so that’s what they were eating. The lid had just gone on the skillet of chicken to simmer when the growling of Ghost’s bike reached their ears. Ava heard Mercy get up from the couch, the old frame creaking as his weight lifted.

  She stiffened without wanting to when he came into the kitchen to trash his beer bottle. She kept her gaze fixed on the potatoes as she pried each one open with knife and fork and loaded the steaming innards with big dollops of softened butter.

  “I’ll see you ladies tomorrow,” he said, gathering his jacket off the rack by the door. “Thanks for the beer, Mags.”

  Ava felt her cheeks warm when he leaned over and kissed her on top of the head, a silent farewell.

  Maggie smiled to herself.

  Ava felt something like panic as Ghost entered. It was like that morning, by her truck, Ghost and Mercy together, with her there. She didn’t begin to know where club politics ended and fatherhood began in this situation.

  “Hey, you’re leaving?” Ghost asked as Mercy shrugged into his jacket and cut.

  There was a careful note to Mercy’s voice, a caution afforded for dual reasons. “Thought I would. Since you’re home.”

  “Stay for dinner,” Ghost said. He clapped Mercy on the shoulder and smiled a cold, not-at-all friendly smile. “Mags always makes plenty.”

  “Oh, God,” Ava whispered. She screwed her eyes shut tight, hoping that when she opened them again, this would all be gone, a dispelled hallucination.

  “What’s wrong?” Ghost asked.

  “Nothing,” Maggie answered for her. “She’s just starving is all. You boys go wash up. No dirty hands at my dinner table.” She shooed them away with a clap of her hands and began laying out the place settings.

  “Mom,” Ava said when they were gone, turning helplessly to her mother, butter knife clenched so tight in her hand she thought she might bend the stainless steel. “Why is he doing this?”

  Maggie sighed and shook her bangs out of her eyes as she folded napkins into neat triangles and wedged them under forks. “This is between them. This is the dick-measuring part of it. Just keep your head down and suffer through it.” When she glanced up, her gaze was warm and reassuring. “This would happen no matter who you picked. Be glad Merc is strong enough to butt heads with him, instead of running away.”

  “But I didn’t pick him!” Ava protested. “I didn’t…I just…this is all so terrible.”

  “Hush,” Maggie said, as if talking to a child. “Bring the potatoes over and stop worrying.”

  Numbly, she transferred the food to serving plates and carried them to the table one at a time, bringing big spoons for the chicken and tongs for the potatoes, the covered basket of dinner rolls and the butter on its glass plate.

  If this went well – and she couldn’t imagine that – then what? Then Mercy got the stamp of approval and they were just together? She may have loved him – he may have even said he loved her – but she wasn’t ready to trust and forgive him yet. The pain was too old and deep to have mended so quickly.

  She heard their voices coming down the hall from the bathroom and a fine sweat broke out all down her back, gluing her shirt to her skin, heating her all over until she was breathing irregularly.

  “Ava, stop,” Maggie said, voice calm and gentle, right before the men stepped into the kitchen, the two of them making the room seem inadequate, like these flimsy walls couldn’t possibly contain both them and their aggressions in such a small space. They were talking about bikes, were even smiling, but Ava could feel the undercurrents, taut lines of threat and suggestion.

  They sat down across from one another. Mercy linked his hands on the table and waited, a show of respect as Ghost made the first reach for the food.

  Maggie made a sharp gesture Ava could only take to mean sit down, and complied with hesitant movements as her mom settled in on the opposite side, bringing out her brightest, most convincing fake smile.

  “I would have planned the menu better if I’d known we would have company,” she said, taking a roll and passing the basket.

  “So you woulda made better food for a guest than you would have for me,” Ghost said.

  “Yep,” Maggie said, without a trace of apology.

  “It looks good,” Mercy said, before Ghost could fuss anymore.

  Ava accepted the potatoes as her dad passed them to her and selected a small one. Ghost regarded her without expression a moment.

  “You feeling alright?”

  “Fine,” she said through a tight throat.

  “You look sick.”

  “Nah, she looks alright,” Maggie said. “Just tired, right, babe?”

  Ava nodded.

  Ghost pulled a sour face. “Tired. Yeah. That’s one word for it.” He sent a discontented look across the table to Mercy.

  “I think she looks gorgeous,” Mercy said.

  Maggie smiled down at her plate.

  Ava felt her cheeks warm, just like she felt the fast rush of Mercy’s fingers gliding down her thigh under the table, a brief touch of comfort and reassurance.

  Ghost grunted to himself.

  “So Merc,” Maggie said, voice too loud, plowing ahead with shoveled-on cheer. “Have you found a place yet?”

  He made a face as he cut into his chicken. “Nah. Haven’t really had a chance to look for one.”

  “Plenty of time for other things, though,” Ghost said.

  They ignored him.

  “Your old place is available, above the bakery,” Ava said, before she could catch herself. For a fleeting second, she let her mind go back there, to his cozy little spot with the paperbacks on the shelves and the lamplight falling in buttered puddles across the old boards. She allowed herself to envision him, barefoot, in jeans and old thin undershirt, one leg hooked over the arm of his chair while he read Tolstoy with the cover folded back, the look of easy concentration on his face that transformed him from biker to inquisitive student. He liked to learn things; that trait was sexier than all the tattoos and the motor oil and calluses.

  She gave herself a shake, banishing the memories, and saw Mercy studying her, a faint spark of wonder in his dark eyes. He’d let his thoughts wander down the same path hers had taken, she realized. He’d thought of the old place and he
’d hoped, for a moment, that maybe the rooms above the bakery were a sign being handed to them. A chance to start over, go back to what they’d started, without those awful five years in between; without the devastation of his leaving.

  “Ronnie looked at it,” she said, forcing her eyes down to her plate. The chicken was giving off this heady olive oil and wine smell, the potatoes sending curls of white steam up to whisper against her face. “When he was shopping, he went by and saw it. It might not be available still. That was last week.” Why couldn’t she stop talking? The words just kept coming, waiting for someone else at the table to cut her off. “It’s a nice little place. Not that expensive. Someone probably snapped it up already. It–”

  “I can call the agent,” Mercy said, his tone gentle, like he knew she was stumbling. “I’ll do that in the morning.”

  “Well, if it’s gone, you can find something else for a steal,” Maggie chimed in. “This is a buyer’s market. Who knows” – her voice gained a note of excitement – “maybe you could afford an actual house. There’s this place” – she gestured at Mercy with her knife, little drops of wine sauce slinging down onto the tabletop – “not two streets over, and it has the cutest little front porch. It’s been on the market for a long time and–”

  “Mags,” Ghost cut in. “Stop.”

  She lifted her brows, questioning the interruption.

  “Merc has a lot of shit to get straightened out before he starts buying houses. Right?” Awful, chilly smile across the table.

  “I dunno.” Mercy smiled back. “I think I’ve got most of the shit straight. The important parts, anyway.”

  Ghost snorted. “Parts?”

  Maggie slapped her palm down on the table. The plates and glasses and flatware jumped, clinking against one another. “That’s enough!” she snapped, her eyes going scary-large, her jaw clenching up until the tendons stood out along her neck. “This is my table, boys. Mine. The table in the chapel? That’s yours. You can cuss, and insult, and rip into each other around that table all you want. You can butt heads at work, on runs, in the clubhouse. You just hate the hell out of each other. But this is my table, and I will not eat dinner with you two sniping across my beautiful chicken while I digest. So knock it the hell off!”

  Her eyes moved between the two of them, daring a challenge.

  The tension held for one long second, then both nodded.

  “Sorry.”

  “Sorry, babe.”

  Maggie pulled in a deep breath and calmed visibly, nodding to herself. She straightened her glass and plate and picked up her utensils again. “It seems,” she said in a calmer voice, “that there’s enough people out there who hate us all. We shouldn’t be arguing over the fact that we love each other.” She looked at Ava. “Seems stupid.”

  Ava took a deep breath and let it out in a slow stream through her nostrils. “You’re absolutely right, Mom.”

  “Of course I am.”

  And thus the queen had restored order to her kingdom.

  After dinner, Mercy and Ghost exchanged awkward handshakes and Mercy kissed Maggie on the cheek as he was pulling on his jacket. “Dinner was great.” He gave Ava the most unmistakable look before he slipped out the door.

  Ava plunged her hands into the soapy sink water and scrubbed at the potato pot.

  “Oh no,” Maggie said, plucking it from her hands, pulling it dripping from the suds. “You go on and say goodnight.”

  Ava stared at her mother. Would this disbelief never end? Or would Maggie continue to prove the most unmotherly mom in the world forever? “But…”

  “Don’t worry about Dad.” The TV rumbled in the next room; he’d settled in for a beer and some mindless channel surfing. “He needs to chill out. And you know you want to, so run outside and tell him goodbye.”

  Ava shook her head as she toweled off her hands. “You know how you always say you’re a bad mother?”

  “Watch it.”

  Though it didn’t seem possible, she felt a pattering of nerves against her heart as she slipped on her leather jacket and let herself out the back door. She smelled the smoke first, the cigs Mercy had never been able to quit. He didn’t smoke that often, but when he did, he took his time, savoring all the way down to the filter. She closed the door behind her, folded her arms against the chill, and left the patio, following the scent of smoke around the corner.

  Mercy was sitting on the ornamental concrete bench situated between two azalea bushes against the side of the garage, head tipped back against the siding, smoke pluming from his nostrils up into the air like dragon’s breath. His long legs were stretched out in front of him, hands relaxed on his thighs. The moon caught his profile, the ridge of his nose, turned it silver.

  Ava kicked at the grass with the toes of her boots as she made her slow approach toward him. “Get lost on your way to the driveway?”

  He didn’t answer, drawing on the cigarette and then holding it between bared teeth while he exhaled again, long streams of smoke leaving his nose. She found it wildly arousing, a delighted tremor starting in the pit of her stomach.

  “I never could see it,” he said, eyes cast upward.

  “See what?”

  “That hunter guy you talked about. The one with the belt.”

  “Orion.” She smiled as she remembered the night beside the James house, the stars the only witnesses to what had been so fierce and new between them. This moment now, bathed in starlight, felt plucked out of time, a hold on all the worry, a portal back to a simpler state.

  “Yeah. Him. Is he up there now?”

  Ava let her head fall back, scanning the bright pinpricks in the indigo velvet night sky. “There.” She pointed. “Those three stars are Orion’s belt. And those others make up the man himself.”

  Mercy stared. She loved the way the pale light played on the strong, exposed lines of his throat.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Yeah.” His voice: faint and faraway.

  Ava moved to stand in front of him, between his outstretched legs, drawing his attention to her face. “I really do feel terrible about what I did to Ronnie,” she repeated in a tremulous voice. “It was wrong.”

  His brows lifted, a smile threatening. “You did something to him?”

  “I cheated on him.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “No.”

  “And you broke up with him?”

  “Not just because you told me to. I did it because it was the right thing to do.”

  “But you did.”

  She sighed. “Yes.”

  “So what’s there to feel bad about?” He shrugged. “Things didn’t work out. He’ll find somebody else.”

  “But it wasn’t fair to him,” she insisted. “I brought him here to meet my family, and I ended up dumping him. Sleeping around on him. That’s so unlike me it makes me want to throw up.”

  A bit of anger came into him, tightening him all over, pressing lines between his brows. “So, what, were you gonna marry the guy?”

  “I don’t know…” She cringed. “Probably not.” Headshake. “No.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “No.” Emphatic and sure. She knew that much, at least. “Never.”

  “Then what the hell’s the problem, Ava?”

  She stepped over his knee and dropped down onto the bench beside him, hugging herself, chilled not from the air, but from the inside, rattled and uncertain. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” she said.

  “I think we’re sitting on a bench, looking at the stars.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He sighed. “I think regular people call it a relationship.”

  “A relationship for how long? A week? A month? Three months?” She turned to him, gaze pleading. “Merc, you said it would only hurt worse if you told me why you left. But how am I supposed to trust that you’ll stay if I don’t know why you had to leave in the first place? How long until you get tired of me again?”

  The
shadows lay harsh across his face as his head turned toward her. He pulled the cigarette from his lips and tossed it at his feet. The last exhale of smoke curled around his words when he spoke. “I didn’t want to leave,” he said, voice hard-edged. “I had to. It was what was best for you. You got to go to college; you got to grow up. You have got to believe me that it was for you, and not to hurt you.”

  She swallowed and glanced away.

  “And as much as I hate this fucking conversation, I’ll have it every day if that’s what it takes.”

  A lump rose in her throat. “What about my dad? Can you have that conversation every day?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “How are you paying for grad school?”

  “What?”

  “How?”

  “I have some grant money. A small scholarship.” She waved helplessly as emotion began to take hold of her, making her impatient. “Mom and Dad are paying for a little. And I’m living with them, obviously.”

  “If you had to stop going to school, if you all of a sudden couldn’t afford it – could you live with that?”

  She thought about it for a fraction of a second. “If I could live five years without you, I think I can live without anything.”

  His hand settled on her thigh and squeezed.

  The truth tumbled over her, thick and final, like molasses pouring. She didn’t gasp, didn’t reel. The truth brought a certain furious calm to her, a place to focus all her pent-up hatred and rage.

  “Dad,” she said, and knew from his face that she’d hit on it, finally, the real reason. “He threatened to cut me off if you stayed.”

  His hand squeezed again, and she knew she was right. “I am, and I will always be, a broke-ass mechanic. I can’t give you nice things, like Ronnie can.”

  She swallowed hard. “Apparently, you gave me a bachelor’s degree.”

  “Ava–”

  “What else?” she asked, voice thready. “What else can you give me, Felix?”

  He held her gaze a long moment. Then he offered both his massive hands to her, palms-up and silver in the moonlight, lined and rough and achingly familiar, etched deep with violence, empty and waiting to catch her.