by Hall, Marie
Just looking at my baby.
He’s so strong.
A born fighter.
So many odds stacked against him, and still he pushes on. Fought through it all. Brushing away his curls, I lean in and kiss his soft forehead.
Was that why he liked Ryan so much?
Because, in so many ways, they are similar?
“Javi, I don’t know what to do, baby? I don’t know what to do?” I pour my heart out to him, say all the things I haven’t said to another. “I love him so much, and I know he loves us. But he’s so broken, he’s so messed up, and he won’t let me in. How can you fix something that doesn’t want to be fixed?”
I wait, praying for an answer, a miracle. For him to open his eyes, look me in the face and tell me, Ryan will be okay. He’ll snap out of it, just give him time. Because everyone knows time heals all wounds.
But he doesn’t open his eyes, and the words never come.
“I’m losing him, Javi. We’re losing him.”
Fighting the tears, I kiss my fingers, touch his cheeks, and then get off the bed, closing the door behind me.
Maybe I should just dress, and go home.
But I didn’t come in my car.
Go back to the bed and pretend nothing’s happening? Fall back asleep and wake up tomorrow morning and not talk about it.
I think that’s what Ryan would prefer I do.
But I won’t..
Stopping in front of the bathroom I debate whether to knock, but know if I do he’ll just tell me to go away.
Opening the door, steam swirls around my ankles and a horrible sense of déjà vu takes hold of me, making me sick. Tripping over my sheet, I rip the shower curtain back and for a second I see the blood, see his body laying still and pale.
When I blink, he’s looking up at me, a little boy staring through a man’s face. Water fall’s down around him, soaking the pants he’s wearing to his red, raw skin. His hands are tucked beneath his legs.
“Lili,” he croaks and I can’t see through my tears.
I don’t know how, but I fall into the shower with him, grab him by the shoulders and haul him to my breast, wrapping my legs as tight around his body as I can.
His fingers dig into my back as his body shakes.
I hold him.
I hold onto him, closing my eyes and praying to God that he won’t fall, that he’ll keep fighting, keep getting up and battling, that someday he’ll conquer, someday he’ll look at me and tell me everything.
“I love you, Ryan, I love you.” I pat his head, repeating it over and over; hot water mingles with the tears from my eyes.
“Don’t leave me, please God, don’t leave me.”
If he hears, he never says.
***
Ryan
Today’s Christmas. We haven’t talked about that night, like we don’t talk about so many others. I’m beginning to think that Alex is wrong after all.
Lili has seen me; she’s seen the blackest, foulest part of me and doesn’t ask.
If she’d really wanted to know, she would have asked.
He’s wrong.
And if she wants to pretend, I’m good with that. I feel freer than I have in a while. Because now she knows and she still stays.
She does love me.
Opening my dresser drawer, I pull the small black box out and crack the lid open, heart stuck in my throat.
Yesterday, I’d helped her set up the tree in her house. Kind of late to be putting up the Christmas tree, but she’d assured me her family always put it up Christmas Eve.
We didn’t cook a meal, Lili had said it wouldn’t feel right with her mother not able to participate. So we’d sat around the tree, her, Ade, Javi, and I and opened a few small gifts. I’d gotten her a bottle of perfume I liked and thought smelled like her. Javi had made out like a bandit, Lili and I had hit up a comic book store last week and bought the entire stack of used Spiderman comics.
In five hours I have a fight, an hour after that I will be dropping to my knee and proposing. My mouth is dry, I’m nervous as hell, but excited too.
A sense of urgency takes hold of me. Our lovemaking is still intense, but I feel something happening between us. Something foul and it makes my stomach ache.
Maybe it’s all in my head.
But her smiles never seem to reach her eyes anymore. We hang out all the time, she still caresses and tells me how much she loves me, but those green eyes of hers I love so much don’t sparkle.
Mama’s doing worse.
She barely leaves her bed anymore and that’s probably the real issue. Not me, not that night in the tub, me moaning against her shoulder as the terror churned hot and sick inside, demanding I remember.
I tuck the box into my shorts, and slide the drawer shut.
Heading into the kitchen I find Alex already at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. He doesn’t bother glancing up.
“Hey,” I say, and get some water to boiling for my tea and oatmeal. “You coming tonight?”
All I get in response is a non-committal grunt.
Whatever.
Turning around I grab a spoon and bowl out of the drawer.
“You still doing it tonight?”
Licking my lips, I roll my shoulders. “Told you I was.”
“Yeah.” Standing, he scrapes the chair across the floor and dumps his cereal into the sink, then leaves without saying another word.
The kettle whistles before I move. Ripping the oatmeal package open, I dump it into my bowl and pour water over it. Taking my tea and oatmeal to the table I sit in silence, chewing, swallowing, chewing, swallowing.
A bad feeling lingers in the back of my throat, tickling like fingers with claws.
At this point I know she knows, know she’s pieced the pieces of the puzzle together. So why do I have to verbally tell her? What’s the difference?
Chew.
Swallow.
But her eyes, they don’t look at me the same. My gut clenches. I don’t want to tell her. Don’t want to confess every single gory, detail.
But the nights are getting worse.
As if my brain and body are telling me, forcing me to choose. I’m hitting a crossroads, an intersection with two arrows pointing in opposite direction.
Salvation.
And Death.
Swishing the tea around my mouth before swallowing, I get up, place my dishes into the sink and grabbing my bag, head to the arena.
Tonight my life is going to change.
I’m going to win, put that money toward a down payment for a house. It won’t be a huge amount, but enough to take care of her and Javi.
Walking to the car, I get in and drive off, pressing my foot on the gas, trying in vain to outrun the fear taunting through my ears that I’ve made the wrong choice.
Stopping at a red light, I suddenly know.
I am wrong.
Alex is right.
Lili does have to know and I will tell her. After we marry, once I’ve got the ring on her and know she won’t leave. I’ll tell her, I’ll tell her everything then. Every dirty, shameful secret, I’ll trust her with my life and soul, but not until she says ‘I do’.
Chapter 25
Liliana
The crowd is amped, the smell of sweat and beer fills the stands. Music pulses and throbs through the amphitheater, in the center a ring shields the fighters. This must be what a Gladiator match looked like. Men dressed in barely anything, muscles bulging as they move and prowl, looking for the perfect opportunity, that split second to strike and end it all.
I chew on the corner of my lip. Ryan is going to be the next fight.
He’d been fidgety before the fight, hopping around on his toes, trying to keep his body warm. His trainer had been there, eyeing me with a look that clearly said I didn’t belong in the waiting room.
But he’d asked me to come back, so I’d come.
Taking a quick water break, he’d taken me outside and hugged me. So hard I’d felt my bone
s rub.
“I love you, Lili. No matter what,” he’d said and I think somewhere in his heart he knows what I’m feeling.
Or at least he senses it.
Tonight is it.
There’s a choice to be made.
I can’t lie to myself anymore. I’ve tried, tried to pretend that night didn’t happen. But as the days roll by and I see that he has zero intentions of telling me what’s going on, I realize this is all it’s ever going to be for us-- me worrying to death, him shutting me out. And there’s just too much on my plate to deal with that anymore.
My mom is dying, my world’s already splintering, I can’t take anymore secrets or lies, or whatever the hell he’s doing. I just can’t. He either tells me everything, or I’m walking and that was the hardest decision I’ve ever made in my life.
Watching my dad leave had been so much easier. I hadn’t needed him to survive. But I need Ryan, he’s in under my skin, in my soul. I’ll never be okay again. Ryan is my world, my life and my heart, but I’m not going to just stand around and watch the man I love kill himself slowly either.
Suddenly music I recognize slips through the thoughts in my head. Silver Springs comes on haunting and melodic through the speakers, filling the arena.
Ryan walks out a side tunnel with a black robe on and a towel over his head.
I smile through the pain.
No, I’ll never be the same.
Getting up to the cage, he starts hopping around, eyes scanning the crowd and I know he’s looking for me.
But before he spots me, different music takes over the speakers and his opponent comes out, waving around a Mexican flag. Mariachi music blares annoyingly loud.
Beside me, someone high fives and starts chanting Ryan’s name.
My heart swells, filled with so much love I feel like it’s breaking me. Ripping me in two, turning me into pieces, fragments of someone I don’t recognize anymore.
“In the far corner…” the announcer roars, stirring up the crowd, screams and high pitched yelps buzz through my ears.
I don’t tear my eyes from him.
He’s so beautiful and he’s smiling and I have a feeling that tonight I’m going to strip that look from his eyes forever.
Am I making the right decision?
The pain in my heart says no, but when I think of Javi living with a man who tucks himself into a ball in the bathroom, throwing up and trembling under a shower spray for hours… I don’t want my baby to ever witness that.
I could help Ryan, I know I can.
But only if he’ll let me.
Clasping my hands together, I pray throughout the fight. “Please let me help, please, Ryan, please…”
Ryan wins with a quick uppercut in the second round, knocking his opponent to the ground with a dazed and confused look.
He pumps his fists as he runs around the ring, again looking through the crowd. His left cheek is bruised an awful purplish color, a crack split’s his lip, but to me he’s never looked more gorgeous.
The announcer goes up to him and presents him the mic, all he says is, “This was for you, Lili. I love you, baby.”
Somehow, through the stupor and tears, I find my way to his waiting room. I’d waited for the crowd to start thinning, waited until I knew his trainer and most of the staff would be shuffling off, until I knew it would be just he and I.
His name is written on a piece of paper, tapped to the door. I run my fingers along it, tracing each bold, black letter, working up the nerve to knock.
But like I’ve done him so many times, the door flies open. He’s gripping a corner of his glove between his teeth, head down while he ties a knot in the strings at his pants.
“Lili,” he smiles, the one that melts me, makes me forget so much.
Snatching the gloves out of his mouth, he yanks me inside and swings the door closed, molding his body tight to mine. A hot shiver skates down my spine at the heated look he’s giving me. His lip curls, exposing the dimple I never can stop myself from tracing.
My fingers shake.
“Did you see me, baby? I felt invincible tonight, on top of it.” He pecks my nose and then steps back to finish stowing away his gear.
I don’t move from where he’d pinned me, heart fluttering as the phantom sensation of his body still impresses itself upon my own.
“He was fast though, damn I saw stars when he nailed me at the end of round one. But…” he continues to chatter.
His hair is freshly washed, the muscles in his back rippling as he grabs and stuffs. He smells so good. Like woodsy cologne and shampoo, a combination uniquely his, one that teases my senses, makes me crazy.
I love this man.
Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe he is getting better and I just have to wait a few more months.
Maybe…
He turns on his heel, one look at my face and he stops everything, standing slowly, head cocking and I bite my lip. If he’d only waited to look back another minute, I would have been able to smile, would have been able to clear the questions from my face. But he didn’t give me another minute.
“Lili? What’s going on? Is it Mama?”
My jaw trembles. “No.”
Eyes narrowing. “Javi?”
“No,” the word drops like a cannon ball, filling every inch of the locker room.
Blue eyes frantically search mine, and I spot the exact moment the truth dawns on him. His eyes get hooded; a dead look crosses his face, and then a tight swallow.
He’s so still. Not blinking, not twitching, as if the life has already slipped out of him and I let the tears come.
“I didn’t come here to break up with you,” I start.
Jaw clenching, he says, “Then what did you come here to do?”
I want to take it all back, want to restart this, knock on the door, hug him and tell him how awesome he’d done. How much I adore him, how proud I am… but it’s too late and now everything I’ve bottled up for months comes pouring out like a break in a dam running out of control.
“I need to know, Ryan. The truth.”
Nostrils flaring, he turns and walks to the table he’d sat on before the show as the trainers had worked his muscles loose, gripping it so tight the metal whines.
“Liliana, I love you. Why isn’t that enough? Why do you need to know this? Can’t you just accept me, and leave all that shit alone?”
Wiping my arm roughly across my face, I shake my head. “I could, yes, if it stayed away. If it didn’t touch our lives, but it is, Ryan. I can’t do this anymore.”
He twirls. “What the hell does that mean?”
Touching the tip of my finger between my brows, I press down hard, trying to figure out how to do this. How to not to devastate someone I love with the words I’m about to speak.
“It means, I need to know everything. I need to know, it’s the only way I can help you. What is going on with you, baby?”
Breath sawing through him, he starts pacing. “Why are you doing this, Lili? Why here? Why now?”
Why am I doing this? Because I love him so much it’s physically killing me. Because I can’t just stand by anymore and watch this happen, because if he doesn’t trust me enough to share his pain, than this relationship can never go further than it is right now.
“Because I need all of you. The Good, the bad, and the ugly. I need it.” I pound my fist, barely seeing him through the heavy fall of tears staining my cheeks. “Because I love you. I freaking love you, Ryan, and I can’t deal with what I saw the other night. Do you have any idea the thoughts that are floating in my head? The truth can’t be worse than that.”
Nostrils flaring, fists clenching, he marches to the large metal lockers at the back of the room and rearing back, throws a haymaker at it-- putting a huge dent in its face.
I jump, and cover my mouth.
I know he won’t hurt me, would never turn that on me, but it doesn’t mean it makes this any easier.
He twirls, and his face scrunches into a
n awful mask of fury, pain, and held back tears. “Don’t do this to me, Lili. To us, please…”