by Tracey Ward
Sam and I sat silently staring at him, neither of us sure if we could ask the big question. Bryce looked back at us patiently, sipping his coffee. Finally he realized we weren’t going to man up and ask so he spoon fed it to us.
“Alcohol.”
“Oh.”
“Ah, I’m so sorry.”
“Anyway,” he said, ignoring our awkward responses, “my wife didn’t know. I hid it really well, which is the sure sign of an addict that knows he’s an addict. You don’t hide things you don’t see a problem with. But I hid it from her and about a year into our marriage she caught on. It was getting out of control at that point and she tried to get me help but I refused. I wasn’t ready to give it up. Not for her, not for anything. Then she got pregnant and she told me she was leaving. She didn’t tell me she was leaving if I didn’t get help. There was no ultimatum. She was straight up leaving and she was taking my kid with her. I told her fine, fucking go. I didn’t need her or that kid.
“After she was gone, I spiraled out. It got ugly. I almost lost my job, I lost a lot of my friends, and my family was fed up with me. But I hadn’t hit bottom yet. That didn’t happen until she sent me a sonogram in the mail. No note, nothing from her at all. All it said was what had been printed on the screen. Addams, Boy. I was having a son. And that kid, with his tiny unformed fingers and fat little misshapen feet, had a real piece of shit for a father. This was his shining example of what it was to be a man – a selfish loser on the floor eating three day old pizza and drinking his breakfast from a warm whiskey bottle while his wife went through the scariest, most emotional and difficult experience of her life alone. That’s the moment I saw myself and saw what I was. It didn’t make sense to me what everyone was bitching about until I saw it through my child’s eyes. That’s when I decided to get help. No one could have pushed to me to it, no one could have loved me more and made me want it for them. It was just a moment of pure clarity where I saw my life for what it was and it was crap.”
“Wow,” I said inadequately. “Congrats. You know, on getting clean.”
“Thank you. It wasn’t easy and there are still times, even now years later, when I make mistakes or I feel like I’ll fail. But I want it. I want to be clean for me because I want to be the right kind of father for my son and the husband my wife deserves. But don’t get me wrong. I’m selfish. Most addicts are. I’m not doing it all for them. I do it so I can look at myself in the mirror in the morning and not want to put my hand through it. That’s the difference. You can’t ask someone to change for you. They have to want to do it for themselves because they’re fed up with how their life is going. Maybe this guy loves you, maybe he always has, but whether or not he can handle all the ins and outs of being with you, that’s up to him. You can’t make that happen for him.”
“So I should walk away,” I said, feeling like it was the right choice. The smart decision.
“Is that what I said?” Bryce asked, sounding annoyed. “No, I said people can change. Find out if this guy has.”
“Okay, but the only way to find out is to have sex with him and see if he stops talking to me.”
“Well, there you go,” he said, tipping his cup to me.
I frowned. “That has got to be the worst advice I’ve ever heard. You were doing so great with the inspirational story about your son and overcoming your addiction and then you dive-bomb into ‘fuck him and find out’? Are you kidding me?”
“Admittedly, I make a great cautionary tale,” Bryce said, standing to head for the door. “But my advice is worthless. Anyway, mail is here. Later.”
“What the hell?” I muttered, watching him go outside into the sunlight.
“I got him a flask for Christmas last year,” Sam said glumly. “Now I feel like a douche.”
“Well, we didn’t know.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I told her firmly. “He’s still engaged to Laney. I’m not doing anything or making any decisions based on one grope fest four years ago and an ill-advised make out session in a bathroom. Kellen Coulter is he who is and until I see otherwise, I’m assuming that old dog doesn’t know any new tricks.”
“Ooh, speaking of tricks and dogs, I read about this position where you have a dog collar and you take a squeaky ball and you—“
“I’m not listening to this.”
I nearly ran for the back of the store.
Chapter Twenty-Three
My first indication that the old dog was up to some tricks came from Laney herself. I thought I would hear from Kellen at some point but he’d gone silent and I wasn’t about to reach out to him. Not after the way things had gone. I still felt like a slut and a terrible sister and talking to Kellen, even if he had always been my closest friend, seemed shady to me now. So I stayed out of it. Whatever he had rambled at me in the bathroom was his business.
But I didn’t have to wait long to find out what part of it meant.
“Jenna!” Laney screamed through my door. She pounded on it furiously five or six times before screaming brokenly again. “Jenna!”
“I’m coming!” I shouted, falling out of bed and stumbling through my apartment.
I’d taken Sam up on the rain check for drinks last night and I was feeling a little rough this morning. Especially when I spotted the blurry numbers on my microwave. 7:30 in the morning. You gotta be kidding me.
I collapsed against my door, wincing when Laney screamed into the seam around it.
When she finished, I cleared my throat and called sweetly, “Who is it?”
“Open the damn door, Jenna!”
I unlocked my door and swung it open. There she stood in all her perfect glory. Matching outfit, styled hair, and flawless makeup. Despite all her beauty, her face was pinched in rage.
My blood ran cold. Did she know? Had Kellen told her we’d kissed? That rat bastard! I wasn’t angry over the honesty, but a little head’s up would have been nice.
“What’s up?” I asked carefully.
“Let me inside before I get mugged,” Laney demanded.
She pushed past me into my apartment.
I swung the door closed irritably. “Laney, I don’t live in the ghetto. Give me a break. It’s a nice neighborhood.”
“Our definitions of ‘nice’ are very different.”
“Did you come here to judge my home or yell at me? Cause it sounded like you were going to yell at me.”
“No,” she said, her voice suddenly soft. She spun around to face me and I sighed when I saw the tears forming in her eyes. “I came to cry on your shoulder.”
“What happened?”
Her lower lip quivered. She breathed in shakily through her nose, snorting slightly. “He left me!”
“What?”
She breathe/snorted again. “Kellen left me! He broke off the engagement!”
I stared at her in shock. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it when they got engaged and I really couldn’t believe that he had called it off. Part of me soared inside as some kind of sick hope took hold of me while another part plummeted, dropping like a heavy stone of dread in my gut.
“What happened?” I asked softly.
“He’s lost his mind, that’s what!”
“Okay, stop yelling, sit down and tell me what happened.”
She collapsed on my couch, only giving it a vague look of disdain. Ikea wasn’t her thing, I knew that.
“He’s been different since the accident. You’ve seen it.”
“Yeah, he’s not quite himself.”
“Well, I thought it was just a phase. That it would pass. He’s been going to rehab and working on building his strength back. They’ve been working on his mind too. He was so worried he couldn’t practice law anymore. He talked about quitting!”
“Yelling,” I reminded her, wincing again.
“Sorry. But he’s been getting so much better. He’s not exactly where he was before but he was a freaking genius before. He can stand to
be a little…”
“Dumber?”
“No. But less intelligent. It doesn’t make him stupid. He’s still smarter than most people out there. But he doesn’t want to hear it. He said he’s quitting law. He said it isn’t what he wants to do with his life anyway.”
I chewed on the inside of my lip, feeling nervous. This was a huge life change for him. He’d spent years in college and who knew how much money working toward this goal. He was already a member of my dad’s firm. I was shocked and amazed that he was going to give it all up. But then again, he’d given up boxing too. I was beginning to worry if he didn’t stop quitting on things there’d be nothing of him left. But maybe that was the plan. Maybe this was what hitting the reset button looked like.
“Well, if he isn’t happy doing it then that’s a good thing, right?”
“No!” Laney cried. “What is he going to do now? Work at McDonald’s?”
“I doubt that.”
“Who knows? I don’t think he even knows. I asked him what he was going to do instead and he couldn’t answer me. He just shut down. Went silent. Finally I asked him if there was anything he wanted to do. Anything that he liked anymore because it seems to me he hates everything lately. Do you know what his answer was?”
“Boxing.”
She stared at me for a moment, surprised, though I didn’t know why she would be. To me the answer was so obvious.
“Yeah,” she finally muttered. “He wants to box again. I told him fine, whatever, go back to the gym and get back in shape but you can’t make a career out of that. How is that going to pay the bills? He said he doesn’t know, that’s not why he wants to do it. That he’d find a full time job doing something, but that his free time was going to be spent boxing again and he’d never have that free time being a lawyer. So just like that he’s making minimum wage and we’re living in a place like this—“
“Thanks for that.”
“And I’m clipping coupons and making Ramen Noodles. Who can live like that?”
I raised my hand silently but she ignored me. I let it drop by my side.
“That’s not what we had talked about. It’s not what we had planned.”
“Plans change. His whole life changed the day he was in that accident, Lane. If you love the man, you have to love all of him. And this is part of him. A big part.”
“But this isn’t the man I was going to marry,” she says weakly, wiping tears from under her eyes.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be marrying him,” I told her gently.
She laughed harshly. “I’m not. He broke it off. He said he cared about me and that he always would, but he wasn’t ready to marry me or anyone. He said he had a lot to figure out and he didn’t think we were right for each other. You know what? I don’t think so either! I’m not marrying some boxing bum working at Denny’s with no life goals and no…”
“Money?”
She glared at me. “It matters, okay. It matters to me. Some people care about religion, some people care about politics, I care about money. I want to know I’m financially safe, how is that a bad thing?”
“You could make yourself financially safe, then it wouldn’t matter if the guy is.”
“I went to college,” she snapped, standing suddenly and sliding her purse over her arm. “I’ll get a job. People need to leave me the hell alone about that. Look, I have to go. I have an engagement ring to sell. Maybe I’ll have it turned into earrings or a necklace.”
I stood as well, surprised that she was suddenly leaving. “You’re not going to give it back to him?”
“He doesn’t want it. He said it was mine to do what I wanted with. All the furniture we bought together too. It’s the least he can do. Dad already bought my dress and we’re losing money on deposits. This break up is costing a fortune.”
“Less than a wedding followed by a divorce would have.”
“I guess. I’m meeting mom for breakfast before I go to the jewelers. Do you want to come?” She looked at my hair which I imagined was insane. She grinned. “I could wait while you shower.”
I chuckled, patting my hair down uselessly. “No, I’m not hungry. You guys have fun. And, Lane, I’m sorry. I know you must be hurting.”
“Yeah,” she agreed softly. “Thanks. Can I get a hug?”
“Of course.”
It was rare for us. I wasn’t the affectionate type but that day I hugged my sister tightly and told her as convincingly as I could that everything would be okay. And I believed it. I really felt like they were better off apart. I wasn’t thinking then of what that would mean for Kellen and I because I was sticking to my theory that people do not change. Just because Kellen had finally gotten tired of being told what to do and what to wear and where to go, that didn’t mean he was a changed man. That just meant he was a man. One that was taking his life back one chunk at a time.
***
“You heard the news?” dad asked.
I tipped my beer to my lips, nodding emphatically. “Oh yeah. Loudly.”
“She was yelling, huh?”
“As she so loves to do.”
Dad flipped through the channels lazily, never committing to anything. “It makes it more dramatic. I heard legitimate wailing the night it happened.”
“Poor Laney.”
“She’ll be fine.”
I looked at him, surprised. “You’re being very okay with all of this.”
“So are you."
“Maybe, yeah, but shouldn’t you be angry? A guy broke your daughter’s heart.”
“Normally I’d be furious but they've broken up so many times before, after a while you start to get used to it. The surprise wears off."
"I don't think they're getting back together this time. Since the accident Kellen hasn't been putting up with her drama."
"Hopefully not. I'd like to see them both move on. Stop the cycle."
"Yeah, I guess," I muttered.
Now dad looked at me with surprise. “You don't have an opinion on this?”
I shrugged. “Not one that matters.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Quit asking me that,” I snapped.
“Answer me and I will.”
I didn’t answer him. I stared at the TV and I sipped my beer wishing I'd lied. I was good at it by now.
I'm happy for them.
Congrats on the engagement.
No, we're just friends.
“Jenna,” dad said patiently.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Nope.”
“You’re in love with him.”
I closed my eyes hard, willing this world to go away. I wasn’t surprised he knew. He’d hinted at it over the years but he always left it alone. We all did that. Just let it lie there in the middle of the room where everyone could see it but no one talked about it. I was so tired. I was tired of wishing and wanting. I was tired of pretending it was okay, of being happy about things I hated.
“Jenna,” he said again.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Okay.”
I looked at him hesitantly. “Okay? That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Shouldn’t you say it’s wrong? That he’s Laney’s, or at least he was.”
“I don’t think it’s wrong, but it doesn’t matter what I think.”
“It does to me.”
Dad laughed quietly.
“What’s funny?”
“Nothing. Kellen said the exact same thing.”
“When?”
He glanced at me, a grin still on his face. “When he told me he loved you.”
I stared at him, shocked.
“He hasn’t told you that, has he?”
I shook my head.
“But you know it. You’ve known it for a long time.”
I shook my head again. Dad frowned.
“Yea
h, you do. Honey, I’ll tell you what I told him. No one knows what or who is right for you but you. I can’t tell you where to go or how to live. I definitely can’t tell you who to love.” He looked at me pointedly. “Neither can your mom. You’ve got to figure all that out for yourself and make your life what you want it to be. And you need to do it fearlessly. You can’t waste your time worrying what anyone else is going to think. You can’t be who or what anyone else wants you to be.”
“But what if I’m the girl in love with her sister’s ex-fiancé?” I whispered.
“Then that’s who you are and you need to own it. I’m not going to tell you that loving him is wrong and I’m not going to tell you that it’s right. But I will tell you this – it’s time to shit or get off the pot.”
I laughed shakily. “What?’
“It’s what I told him. You and Kellen have been dancing around each other for years. Pull the trigger or put down the gun, but it’s time to make a decision.”
“What did he say to that?”
Dad picked up his beer, a faint smile on his lips as he pressed the bottle to them.
“Bang, bang.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The smell of sweat hit me hard as it always did. I'd never get used to it. The rough men with the busted lips, swollen eyes and cagey stares, that I could handle, that I saw at the shop on the regular, but the smell was too much.
What hit me second was Kellen. He was a standout in the room, and not just to me. As the other men moved around the gym I could see them eyeing him surreptitiously. They were watching his workout, his moves, and his hits because he was the big fish in this piranha infested tank and he’d been out of the game for a while. Everyone was watching for a weakness.
I spotted him immediately in the crowd where he stood with his back to the door, his shirt off and sweat glistening off the muscles of his back as he worked a worn, black bag. I walked slowly toward him, watching as he moved, gauging his throws the same way the others were. He was at the end of the workout. He was getting tired. He was also holding back.