by Shen, L. J.
“Good,” I deadpanned. “We’re all fuckers.”
Silence hung in the air. I wanted her to leave. She wasn’t going to tell me anything about her parents’ relationship, about Gerald. This was pointless.
“Tell me something personal.” She rested her cheek on her shoulder. “Just one thing, Sam. It will make me feel better. Please.”
“Aisling, it’s time for you to go.”
“Why?”
“Because this is going nowhere fast. We fucked. It was a mistake. It’s time you move on. Whatever you think is going to happen, I can assure you it won’t happen. I don’t have a soul, or a heart, or a conscience. We had fun, yes, but women are all the same to me. I will never choose you above all others. If you think life with Gerry is a nightmare for your mother, imagine your father at his worst and keep going. That would be me.”
That was when it finally happened.
She finally cried in front of me.
It was just one tear. It rolled down her cheek, flying off her chin like a cliff, landing with a splash on her knee.
“Goddammit, woman,” I hissed, looking away, feeling … feeling. It wasn’t a big feeling, just a little discomfort, but I did not want to see her cry.
One time.
This would be the one and only time I was going to humor this infuriating woman. No more.
I stood up, snatching the whiskey bottle by its neck and taking a swig as I began pacing the room.
“When I was a kid, before Troy and Sparrow took me in, back when I lived with Cat and my grandmother, we had a painting in our house. Just the one. It was a very cheap painting. A faded old thing of a cabin on a lake—basic and not very good. Anyway, the painting was in front of the bed in the master bedroom. It had the tendency to fall from its nail onto the floor every time the door creaked or someone breathed in the house. Cat was the only person with a key to the master bedroom, and she hadn’t figured out I’d learned how to pick a lock.”
I stopped. Took another swig. Realized I was halfway drunk and put the bottle down on the coffee table, noticing Nix was fingering and touching more of the bullets in the jar, breathing the initials out with her lips. Like she was mourning those people or something.
“When I was a kid, Cat used to punish me by starving me. In order to do that, she made the spot under her bed a makeshift pantry. That’s where she kept all the food. Condiments, chips, pretzels, ready-made meals. Grams wasn’t strong enough to fight her on this. As you know, I was a shitty kid, so I was virtually in a constant state of punishment. That made me very hungry and very small for my age.”
She pinched her lips together, and I could tell she was about to sob again. It made me feel like fucking Bambi. I didn’t need anyone’s pity. I rushed through the next part.
“At some point, I figured I could just break into the room and grab Ramen or a bag of chips or something. And I did. Often. But Cat had the tendency to come in at the most inconvenient time. When I didn’t have time to run away from her room, I had to hide under the bed, buried beneath the junk food.”
I smiled bitterly at the bare concrete wall in front of me, feeling Aisling’s eyes clinging to my profile, eager to hear more.
“Cat was a whore, so more often than not, when she came home, she wasn’t alone. I stopped counting after the fourth time I had to sneak under her bed and felt the springs of the mattress digging into my back as someone fucked her above me.”
Aisling looked away, hissing, like my pain bled into her body.
“No,” she croaked.
“Yes.” I changed direction, walking toward her. “I felt the weight of my mother’s sins, figuratively and literally. They fucked her over my back. Again and again and again. While I shivered, dizzy with hunger, every muscle in my body strained so I wouldn’t make a sudden move and make myself known. My most distinct childhood memory is that stupid painting. Every time the headboard hit the opposite wall, it would drop, but not facedown, so I could always see the cabin and the lake staring right back at me, as if they caught me red-handed. We had a relationship, this painting and I. I felt like it was taunting me. Reminding me of my shitty life, and every time I looked at it, I could feel the blue and purple dents on my back from the rusty bedsprings digging into my skin.”
“You don’t have any paintings,” she said slowly, looking around the room.
I tapped the bottom of my cigarette pack over my bicep, and one cigarette popped out.
I fished it between my teeth. “Nope.”
“My house must be very triggering for you.”
I chuckled, lighting up the cigarette. I sprawled beside her on the couch, careful not to touch her, exhaling a trail of smoke to the ceiling.
“I don’t have triggers.”
“Everyone has triggers,” she argued.
“Not me. I let hate fester and redirect it into ambition. I welcome my weaknesses and don’t shy away from them.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder, pressing her palm to my heart. I froze.
This was new.
And unsolicited.
Still, I didn’t move. Her hand on me felt good. Right.
“Is this why you hate women?” she whispered. “Because Cat wronged you so much?”
“I don’t hate them. I just don’t want much to do with them,” I groaned.
“Well, I want something to do with you.” She looked up, blinking at me with owlish eyes. Our gazes met. The thick humming of our pulses filled the air. I drew away from her, pressing my thumb to her lip.
“No.” I smiled viciously, standing up. “Here. You got it off of your chest, and even got a little bonus with my sob story. Now get the fuck out, Nix. And don’t come back.”
“But I—”
She started, but I turned away, taking a drag from my cigarette and looking in the other direction.
Through the floor-to-ceiling window, I could see her standing up, dignified. She made her way to the door, her chin held high, her back straight. The minute she closed the door behind her, I let out a breath, dropping the cigarette into the half-empty whiskey bottle.
Charging to the bathroom, I all but kicked my slacks down my knees, turning on the shower spray and stumbling inside before the water turned from cold to hot.
I braced one arm over the tiles, let the water pound over my body, and started jerking off—with my dress shirt still on.
“Shit …” I hissed as I rubbed my cock mercilessly, pumping fast. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Her mere presence in my apartment made my balls tighten.
I came and I came and I came inside my fist. Liquid, white gel coated my fingers, and I wondered when was the last time I masturbated.
Probably when I was sixteen.
No, maybe fifteen.
Fuck you, Aisling.
I plastered my forehead against the tiles, groaning as the red-hot needles of water kept lashing my face and hair. I wasn’t her savior, I was her monster. These late-night calls, me following her, her seeking me out … they had to stop.
Before I did to her what I did to that painting.
Because I didn’t tell her the whole story.
Years after I’d moved out of Cat’s apartment, I came back. Paid the owner a large sum of money to get a tour around the place. I found the painting. The new tenants hadn’t gotten rid of it. I stole it, burned it, and tossed the ashes in the Charles River.
I didn’t know how to keep things.
I only knew how to break them.
It was time to break Aisling once and for all and ensure she would never, ever seek me out again.
Stop choosing what isn’t choosing you, mon cheri, Ms. B’s voice rang between my ears as I burst out of the door of Sam’s building on wobbly legs, the harsh whip of the wind slapping my cheeks.
I gasped for air, but no amount of air could satisfy my lungs.
Sam, Sam, Sam.
Broken, scarred, marred, imperfect Sam. Molded in the hands of an abusive mother, a mobster adoptive father,
and a ghost of a biological dad he knew tried to kill his adoptive mother.
I wrapped my coat around my waist and jogged to the Aston Martin waiting around the corner from Sam’s building, slipping into the passenger seat. The minute I slid in, I grabbed the thermos waiting for me there and took a greedy gulp of coffee.
“Well?” Cillian asked from the driver’s seat, raising a skeptic eyebrow.
He didn’t believe Sam had anything to do with Athair. Neither did Hunter. I could tell Cillian was now looking at me, trying to see if I had sex with Sam. Any telltale sign to find out if we did something sordid. Puffy lips. Flushed cheeks.
My brother didn’t trust me not to throw myself at Sam.
I shook my head. “Couldn’t find anything, and he didn’t volunteer any information.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Because Sam has better things to do with his time than to mess with Athair for no apparent reason.”
“He was the only person at the table capable of poisoning one of the guests.”
“Athair had an oopsie visit to the hospital. Give that pretty head of yours a rest, Ash. Sam is innocent—in this case, of course. In general, he is probably responsible for every other bad thing that happened in Massachusetts since 1998. Case closed.”
When I said nothing, he groaned, lowering his head on his headrest, closing his eyes.
“Tell me you’ll drop it. I have enough on my plate as it is. I don’t need to extinguish another fire.”
“Fine,” I bit out. “I won’t sniff around him anymore.”
“Promise?” he asked.
“Promise.”
It was stupid. Childish, really, but old habits died hard, and I found myself crossing my fingers in my lap like a kid, between the creases and folds of my dress.
It was far from over.
Sam might be playing me, but now I was playing him, too.
I was going to find out the truth about what happened with my parents.
If it was the last thing I did.
A week had passed since I’d visited Sam’s apartment.
A week of radio silence from his end, and my brothers trying their hardest to restore something resembling normalcy to our household.
They visited after work a few times a week to check in on Da, convinced the poisoning was either Mother’s doing or Gerald’s unspoken mistake.
I played along, showering Mother with attention, watching her with hawk eyes to ensure she didn’t try to harm herself, but the truth was, something had shifted within me, rearranging itself into a different shape. I was beginning to change, and I didn’t know how or why but the past few weeks had a lot to do with it.
Outwardly, I went through the usual motions. I caught up with Persy, Belle, and Sailor at an up-and-coming Indian restaurant downtown. I even pretended to muster an amused chuckle when Sailor frowned at her phone with a long-suffering sigh and showed us a picture of Cillian. “This is his version of sending me dick pics.”
“But it’s not a dick.” Persy had blinked, not getting it.
“Not an anatomical one, anyway,” Belle had murmured, tearing a piece of naan bread and dunking it into a mint and mango dip. Persy had protested us calling her husband a dick, but of course we all knew that he was—to everyone but her.
Mother continued moaning about how horrible my father had been to her, yet every time she ventured out of her den and he had tried to speak to her, she would make a sharp U-turn and dart back to the master bedroom, leaving a trail of tearful accusations echoing over the opulent hallway walls in her wake.
Da was still sleeping in one of the guest rooms, floating in and out of it like a ghost, his disheveled white hair sticking out in every direction, unshaven and haunted by the state of his marriage.
It didn’t help that he started getting mysterious, cryptic messages threatening to drain his secret bank accounts in Switzerland—accounts that according to Da no one knew about.
The first couple days after the messages started pouring in, my father had made it a point to shower, get dressed, and go into his office. He had left his door ajar and sat there, motionless and quiet, waiting to hear my mother’s door flinging open so he could talk to her.
Once he’d realized Mother was truly uninterested in talking things through, he had retreated to his current state of shambles, hardly leaving his own room.
And that, I realized, was the difference between this time and all the others. Normally, my parents entered this tango, a dance of sorts; it was difficult to follow and only they knew all the moves to it.
My father would screw up, my mother would get mad, and he would win her back. Snatch her into alcoves in the house or steal her away to the butterfly garden, whispering sweet nothings into her ear. He would court her. Make her feel desirable. Shower her with gifts and compliments. Send heated looks from across the table at dinnertime. Watch as she chipped before breaking completely and taking him back. Then he’d whisk her off on a lengthy vacation, make all these promises they both knew he couldn’t keep, and superglue their relationship back together, even though it had chunks missing and was hollow from within.
Only this time, it hadn’t worked. Da had been poisoned. He blamed my mother. My brothers suspected her, too. I guess Mother had decided she’d had enough and cut them out of her life. She refused to see Cillian and Hunter whenever they visited.
Which brought us to where we were now.
To the annual charity event my mother hosted.
“Aisling, could you be a darling and ask your brothers to go say hi to Mr. Arlington? He made such a substantial donation to our charity tonight, and I know he’s been vying for Cillian’s attention for a long time. He needs advice about his new offshore company.” Mother elbowed me sharply as we stood in the ballroom of the Bellmoor, a boutique hotel in the West End.
The room glimmered in French neoclassical style—all cream, gold and ornate chandeliers, and an Instagrammable stairway with golden railings.
Guests trickled in and out, drinking champagne and laughing loudly as they looked for their designated tables. Businesspeople mingled with each other, the men in tuxedoes, the women in elaborate ball gowns. Jane Fitzpatrick had an impeccable track record of throwing lavish parties, from debutante balls to charity events, and this one was no different, even if she knew her peers never quite recovered from the last headline her husband was responsible for.
My mother was the director of The Bipolar Aid Alliance, a nonprofit charity group, for which she threw events often. She wore a dignified gray dress, her hair pinned up in a bun. We had never spoken about the fact she had chosen this particular charity, above all others, to give all her attention and resources to, but I knew it was telling.
I’d come to learn nothing about my mother’s behavior was accidental. She was a calculated woman, and Cillian and I inherited that trait from her.
“I will, but for the record you’ll have to talk to them at some point,” I chided her, toying with my velvet gloves.
She stuck her nose in the air, examining her manicured fingernails.
“Have to? I doubt it. I have to speak to my banker at some point to settle everything ahead of the divorce. And my landscaper—the rosebushes need a proper trim. Oh, and certainly my hairstylist. But my sons? There is nothing I need from them. If I want to see my grandchildren, I can talk directly to their wives. I would actually prefer that as Sailor and Persephone at least treat me like their equal and don’t believe I poisoned my own husband.”
“Speaking of your husband, what about him?” I inquired, smoothing a hand over my cap-sleeved, dark blue gown. “Will you be talking to him anytime in the next century, or are you going to spend the rest of your life dodging him?”
“Your father and I seem to have reached a boiling point after simmering over the edge of disaster for decades. He’s become paranoid and wrongfully mistrusting. Quite vulgar, seeing as I’m not the one who pops into the headlines every few months with a new affair. I hate to say this, Aisling my dea
r, but we might have reached the end of the road. I don’t see us coming back from this particular crisis.”
“Well, then I suggest you speak to him before you hand him divorce papers.” I gritted my teeth.
“He won’t believe me.”
“Try him.”
“Just tell your brothers to do as I say,” Mother huffed, like I was a teenager rather than a grown woman, waving me off.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew people treated me like I was younger than my years because I let them. Because I was nice and timid and agreeable.
I shook my head, stomping over to Cillian and Hunter, who stood in a cluster with other men, smoking cigars and tutting loudly about the new tax plan.
You could tell they didn’t want to be here. Normally, they took their wives anywhere worth going. If they left Sailor and Persephone at home, it meant they planned an early exit and spared their wives of boredom.
They still, however, showed up to support my mother. I wished she could see this. How we all did what we could to support her, even if she behaved like a child.
I stopped by Hunter and Cillian.
“May I borrow you two for a moment?” I smiled politely.
“May? I’d pay you good money to get me out of here. Extra if you agree to put a bullet in my head,” Hunter whispered, taking a step away from the circle jerk he was engulfed in. Cillian, who had more finesse than that, threw an impatient smirk my way, but stayed put, a bevy of men swarming around him.
“What’s going on?” Hunter asked, sipping bottled water. He barely drank alcohol, and when he did, he limited himself to one drink. “The party’s in full swing and the donation box is jam-packed. Don’t tell me the old bat found a reason to be unhappy again. Let me guess, the flowers are not fresh enough or someone failed to compliment her on her dress—which, by the way, makes her look like drywall.”
I stomped on his foot, making him wince and clutch his toes.
“She asked if you two could introduce yourselves to Mr. Arlington, right over there.” Discreetly, I gestured to a plump, older man sitting at a table across the room, enjoying the shrimp cocktail much more than anyone should enjoy a shrimp cocktail, considering its foul taste. “He made a sizable donation and would like to ask you a few questions. Offshore business-related, I believe.”