by Tracey Ward
He took two deep, satisfyingly ragged breathes, his eyes sparking with black fire. Then he closed the distance between us. When he kissed me it was unlike anything that had happened before. It wasn’t passionate or desperate. It wasn’t wrong and it wasn’t forbidden. It was soft and it was slow. He barely touched me but with his lips and he took his time, moving with breathless, heart wrenching ease.
It was so right kissing him. It felt like coming home. Like being safe and sound in your bed in the middle of a storm that banged on your window and burst with electricity around you, yet you were untouchable. And I thought maybe this wasn’t going against what we had agreed on. Maybe it was exactly what we had said. We’d agreed to see where it went with us simply being us. And this was us as we were, as we wanted to be, as we always should have been.
When his lips left mine I was sure they would stay closed. He wouldn’t say it back and it wasn’t because he didn’t feel it, it was because it was a promise. One he didn’t know how to keep yet. And I’d rather be met with silence than a lie.
He ran his fingertips down the side of my face.
“If I get anything in this world right,” he whispered, “I swear on my life, it will be you.”
Call me crazy, but I would take those roughly whispered words over three little ones any day of the week.
***
“I can’t believe you’re still friends with him,” Laney said bitterly.
“I can’t believe you can’t believe it.”
“He was a complete asshole to me.”
I raised my eyebrows at my mom at the end of the table. “Nothing?” I asked. “No comment on her language.”
“She’s a grown woman,” mom replied placidly, skewering a chunk of broccoli. “Besides, she’s hurting.”
“Unreal.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Laney insisted. “You have to stop speaking to him.”
“Well that’s just not going to happen.”
“How can you do this to me? I never want to see him again.”
“So don’t.”
“If you’re friends with him, I’ll see him.”
“Really?” I asked incredulously. “How often do you see Sam?”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is exactly the same thing.”
“Stop speaking to him.”
“No.”
“Jenna!”
“Laney,” dad said calmly, his eyes tight, “you can’t ask her to do that. She was friends with him before you ever started dating him.”
“Dan, let’s not choose sides,” mom told him. “Let them work it out.”
I frowned at her. “How is it that by saying neither of you should choose sides, it feels like you’re taking her side?”
“I can’t control how you feel, Jenna.”
“No, but you can sure try.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Can I be excused?”
“No. What did you mean by that?”
“She means she thinks you’re controlling,” Laney chimed in.
Traitor!
“Is that what you think?” mom asked, sounding hurt.
“A little. Maybe. Yeah,” I admitted, thinking of New York and her telling me I was ‘sad’.
“Well that’s the thanks I get for caring, I guess.”
My shoulders sagged as the guilt set in. “I don’t mind you caring, mom, but I don’t need you to weigh in on every single thing I do, say, or wear.”
“I’m your mother. I’m supposed to be all up in your shit.”
Every eye at the table shot to her and hung there, frozen.
“Did you just…” I whispered, unable to finish.
“You heard me,” she replied. “I know you think I’m awful sometimes but that’s part of being a parent. I’m not your friend, Jenna, I’m your mom. I want the best for you and I worry about the decisions you make. I don’t know anything about tattooing. I don’t know if there’s a future in it for you, if it’s a good career choice, if it’s dangerous in some way. I can’t help you with any of it because I don’t understand what you’re doing. That scares me. So yes, I micromanage you sometimes on the things I do understand because I’m worried.”
It was a shockingly legit explanation for years of behavior that I had always interpreted as my mom simply not liking me very much. When I had been a kid we’d been better. So much better. But ever since I started college and told them about tattooing, everything had changed. And now it made sense, at least part of it. She didn’t hate me. She was scared for me. Maybe a little bit of me.
“If you came to the shop I could show you what I do,” I told her slowly, carefully. I was afraid of spooking this open and honest moment away. “I’d love to have you come see me work.”
“Oh no,” she said forcefully, “I am not watching you work.”
And the moment was gone.
“Fine.”
“She hates needles,” dad explained.
“Really? Since when?”
“Since always,” he said, scooping mashed potato into his mouth. “She vomits when she sees them.”
“Not with your mouth full, Dan, honestly,” mom complained. “And no, I don’t care for needles.”
“Is that why grandma took both of us to get our ears pierced?” Laney asked.
Mom’s brow pinched. “No, she did that because you girls were too young, she never liked me, and she knew it would make me angry. And it did.”
“She liked you just fine,” dad told her dismissively.
“Dan, she told me on our wedding day that it wasn’t ‘too late’, that I could still ‘save us all the trouble and hit the bricks’ before the ceremony.”
“She thought you were a flight risk. Once we were married and you obviously weren’t going to cut and run, she warmed to you.”
“I’m never getting married,” Laney muttered glumly.
“Of course you will, honey,” dad said consolingly. “You already bought the dress.”
“I can’t wear that when I get married.”
Dad scowled at her. “Then why did I buy it?”
“I bought it to marry Kellen,” Laney told him impatiently, getting annoyed. “I can’t wear it to marry anyone else. It’s haunted.”
“It’s $20,000.”
“Tell Kellen! Or have Jenna tell him since they’re such great friends,” she said sarcastically, looking at me hard.
“You say it like an insult but it’s the truth,” I told her. “One I’m happy with.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“He sucks.”
“Then why are you so upset you’re not marrying him?”
She pinched her lips together in frustration. “I’m not upset I’m not marrying him. I’m upset because I’m humiliated. Every single person I know thought I was getting married. Now every time I see any of them, I have to explain that it’s not happening. Do you know painful that is?”
“No,” I admitted, feeling the weight of the guilt again.
“It’s the worst.” She turned to dad, her tone softening. “And I tried to return the dress, I did, but they had already started the alterations.”
“There’s always eBay,” I suggested.
“That’s insane.”
“Said the girl with the haunted $20,000 dress in her closet.”
“Maybe Jenna can wear it,” dad offered. Poor guy. I could see it in his face – that white dress was made entirely of dingy green dollar bills in his mind.
“She can have it,” Laney said flippantly.
“She doesn’t want it,” I argued. “First, we’re not the same size. And second, no.”
She glared at me. “What’s wrong with my dress?”
“Technically, it’s dad’s dress.”
“White isn’t his color,” mom disagreed. “He’s an autumn.”
“Why don’t you take it?”
“Me?” mom
asked, her face confused. “What am I going to do with a wedding dress?”
“You could get it died black or something. Use it as a ball gown. You have all those charity benefits that are formal dress. Wear it to one of those.”
“Or many of them,” dad muttered.
“I suppose I could,” mom mused. She looked hesitantly at Laney. “You really wouldn’t want to save it? Wear it when you finally do get married?”
“Finally get married?” she exclaimed.
“Jenna,” dad whispered, lifting his plate and looking pointedly at mine.
I nodded quickly as I grabbed my plate and made a dash for the kitchen, close on his heels. I could hear mom trying to talk Laney down behind me.
Dad and I finished our dinner standing at the island in the middle of the kitchen. He turned on the TV that mom hated and we silently watched the ending of some zombie flick playing on one of the major networks. It was ridiculous because of course all of the swearing and violence were cut out and once you’ve done that to an apocalypse film, what’s left? A lot of nonsensical crazy, that’s what.
“Ali, look at me. Really look at me,” the guy said, his voice quivering slightly. “I’m fine. Listen to my voice. I’m still me. I’m not hurt. Please don’t shoot me.”
“But…”
The girl’s hand shook, slipping the barrel of the gun over the guy’s temple.
“Huckleberry,” he said firmly.
She dropped the gun and scurried backwards, slipping over blurred out zombified corpses as she went.
“No, no, no!” she cried. “My God, I could have killed you. Jordan, I’m so sorry!”
“What the hell is happening in this movie?” I asked dad.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense. Huckleberry? Is it a zombie adaptation of Huck Finn?”
“I don’t know. Does she love him or hate him? Why was she going to kill him?”
“Not a clue.”
“This is stupid. Why are we watching this?”
“I thought you’d want to. Aren’t you into all of this? I thought you read these comics or something.”
“Zombies? No. I’m more of a vigilante justice, superhero type.”
“Batman?”
“Right. Batman, Green Hornet, V, Iron Man, Hawkeye.”
Dad chewed on that for a second, his eyes going out of focus as he thought.
“None of them have powers, do they?”
“Nope,” I said, snagging his empty plate and taking it with mine to the sink. “All regular people who made themselves extraordinary.”
“Why them?”
“Why them what?”
“Why do you prefer the regular guy heroes?”
I swirled the dishes under the hot water, thinking about it for the first time.
“I don’t know. I guess because they’re smarter. They have to be. They don’t have this innate ability to rely on. They kind of have to make their own luck. They have to work harder to be what they want to be. Superman and Thor, they were born that way. Batman and Hawkeye, they made themselves into what they wanted out of sheer force of will.”
“You like an underdog.”
“Who doesn’t?” I turned to face him, feeling anxious but like I needed to get it off my chest. “Hey, dad, I haven’t said it yet because I’m still not comfortable with it, but thank you.”
He frowned. “Thank you for what?”
I glanced nervously at the kitchen door. Laney and mom were still in the dining room talking softly.
“For the help. With the shop. I can’t believe Kellen asked you for me, I’m still a little mad about that, but I’m glad he did because I never would have asked and now that it’s happening, I know it’s what I really want to do.”
“Jenna, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What shop?”
“The tattoo shop. I haven’t said thank you yet, so thank you.”
Dad shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Suuuuure,” I said, dragging the word out and giving him an exaggerated wink. “Right.”
“No, honestly, I don’t know.”
“Wait, what?”
“We’re not burning it!” mom shouted from the dining room.
Dad groaned as he slipped off his barstool.
“Hide the matches, Jenna,” he called over his shoulder, leaving to go put out fires, both real and metaphorical.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Two Months Later
“Come on, Kellen!”
“Keep moving! On your toes!”
“Wear him down! You got this!”
I stood silently beside Kellen’s coach and another one of his students as they shouted at him in the ring. I didn’t say anything because it wasn’t my job and because it wouldn’t matter. Kellen didn’t hear any of it. I knew that and I think they knew that, but when you were bursting with energy and excitement at these bouts, you didn’t remember it. You were like the guys in the ring. You were all instinct and their instinct on this side of the rope was to yell.
I watched as Kellen moved around the ring gracefully, staying buoyant on the balls of his feet but always holding his stance to make sure he never faltered. He couldn’t risk taking a hit and falling back against the ropes or falling down entirely. He didn’t want to win the fight for the guy.
“Come on,” I breathed, my hands pressed together against my lips. “Throw that punch. Get it over with.”
He was avoiding hitting the guy, that much was obvious. He hadn’t taken a hit yet but neither had his opponent and it wasn’t because they were so evenly matched because they weren’t. Not by a long shot. Kellen had this guy dead to rights, had for years, but he was hesitating. He was holding back and I didn’t think it was because he was worried throwing a right hook would hurt. I think it was because he understood that the second he did, the entire room would know it had hurt. They would all know that Kellen Coulter had a weak spot and that was something he could not stand.
“They’re gonna know. Just do it. Just land it. You still got him.”
The smaller boxer got tired of waiting and lunged at Kellen. I watched in shock as Kel backed up, stepping away from the guy instead of hitting him as he should have. A year ago, the other guy wouldn’t have made such a bold move and if he had, Kellen would have made him pay for it. Now he ran from him.
“No!” his coach shouted, his face turning red with rage and strain as he slapped his hands down on the outside of the ring. “Dammit, no! Get at him!”
It was too late. Kellen took a hit to the face that he wasn’t able to block, then an uppercut to the abdomen. He nearly crumbled under the blow. It was painful to watch.
“Hit! Him!”
He didn’t. He let that other guy back him nearly to the ropes. He finally blocked him but he didn’t retaliate. I didn’t understand how this was better. How people not knowing his hand was still jacked was better than thinking he’d lost his edge. His skill entirely.
He took another hit to the face.
I couldn’t take it. I shoved past his coach until I was at the edge of the ring with my face nearly in the ropes and I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Fucking fight, Kellen!!!”
His eyes met mine for the briefest moment. His face was coated in sweat, pulling his hair down onto his forehead and plastering it in chunks over his eyes. I saw his nostrils flare. I saw his face go hard. I saw him snap out of it.
He shoved the other guy off him, throwing him off balance and getting the breathing room he needed. He moved quickly around the ring, making the guy chase him and wear himself out. It was to Kellen’s advantage that the guy thought he’d lost his mojo. He ran right into his space again. He ran right into Kellen’s fist.
Kellen finally threw that fateful first punch. The first time he used his injured hand in the ring for real and I felt it with him when the blow landed. It hurt. It was so obvious to the entire world that it hurt. He couldn’t use it again right away, but he didn’t
have to. He’d shocked the guy and rung his bell something awful, giving him the momentary opening he needed to use his left hand to further the damage. He went at him hard, making quick work of his sides, stomach and then face. The punches weren’t as strong or powerful as his right hand used to be, but they were thrown with that dangerous quickness Kellen was famous for. He wasn’t his old self, not by far, but he was finding out who he was now. So was the guy taking the blows.
And who he was, was still amazing.
He won the bout. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t by the large margin it would have been last year, but it was still a win. The second the bell was rung we knew it. We didn’t wait for the scores to be tallied and tell us. Kellen immediately headed for his corner, jumping down through the ropes and coming to stand in front of his coach as he berated him in a quiet, vicious voice. He nodded solemnly as he listened to every word. He didn’t argue because he knew.
“He’s got a lot to work on,” the other student told me.
I hadn’t realized he was standing beside me watching Kellen and his coach until he spoke. He was a shorter guy, at least by my giant standards, with short cropped black hair and perfect olive skin. He was probably a year or two older than I was, his body cut like Kellen’s and he had the warmest brown eyes I’d ever seen. I was a little surprised that a guy so boyishly charming was a boxer.
“He knows that.”
The guy chuckled, looking back at his stern faced coach. “If he didn’t before, he does now.”
“Are you fighting today?”
He was dressed for it but I hadn’t seen him warming up at all. His hands weren’t even taped.
“Didn’t you hear? I already won.”
“I didn’t see your fight, sorry.”
“That’s ‘cause I didn’t. I was the only one to sign up in my class. I’m a winner by default.” He put up his hands in mock celebration.
I grinned. “You don’t sound happy about it.”
“I came to play. You get all riled up and excited for this shit and then you stand around all day. Sucks. I’d rather lose a genuine fight than win by doing nothing.”