Liz grabs me by the shoulders, staring into my eyes as she speaks. “If this is what you want, I need a solid answer. I need to put things in place and make a lot of calls. Once this starts, it can’t be stopped. There are too many moving parts. So tell me now. No take-backs, no do-overs. Do you want to stay and fight?”
My mind immediately races back to the day on the porch, in the rain, with Brody. I couldn’t open my mouth that day because I knew a different word would come out. But my answer now is the same as it was back then.
“Yes.” I tell her, putting every ounce of conviction I have into the one tiny little word.
“Then grab a seat, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
We’ve never been in a position where I could stay and fight the battle that I’ve run from almost all of my life. And hell, maybe the truth is that we’re still not. But I’ve lost too much already. Brody has too. And now Ruger…
I can’t keep letting people get hurt because of what I’m running from.
This shit ends now.
Chapter Eleven
Brody
Remi’s hands fiddle with the end of the dress that skates across the top of her thighs. I can feel the nervous energy that’s pouring off of her. She keeps checking over her shoulder, biting the corner of her lip. Her eyes look so worried that I can practically see all the thoughts she’s drowning in, racing across her face.
“Hey, talk to me.” I say, cupping my hands under her chin so that my thumbs can rub circles on her cheeks. It’s a gesture that I’ve learned calms her down when she gets like this. And I’m always grateful for a reason to touch her.
“I… I’ve never worn a dress before, Brody. I feel like I’m wrapped in a tablecloth. I feel naked.” She whispers shyly.
A small smile escapes my lips at her confession. There’s still so much about her that I don’t know. There’s so much that she keeps to herself, never letting me chip away at the layers of walls that she’s built up to keep the world out. I’ve never let it get to me, knowing that she shares more with me than anyone else, but I’m a selfish bastard. When it comes to her, I want everything. Each time she gives me a little more of herself, I get high on it.
I’m fucking addicted to this girl.
“Look at me.” I say, nudging her chin up so that I can stare into her mysterious eyes that never give me any of the answers I search for. “It’s just dinner with my boring family. They’re gonna love you. Almost as much as I love seeing you in this dress.”
I pull her into me so she can feel the length of my admiration that’s currently pulsing against her stomach. I’m so fucking hard that it hurts. I’ve never seen this side of her before. She normally dresses like the badass boho biker chick that I met on the beach. And don’t get me wrong, I love it. I’m obsessed with it actually. It’s perfect because it’s so her. But when she stepped in front of me wearing this deep wine-colored dress that caresses her body like a glove, I thought I was going to die from blue balls immediately.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” She says.
Remi has a tendency to disappear on me. Like a loose feather blowing in the wind, she takes off when the breeze gets too harsh. She never leaves a trace of her behind, vanishing like the dreams you never want to wake up from.
I’ve always been worried that it’s because I pushed too hard, asked too many questions. Got too serious. And I’m worried that the nerves coursing through her aren’t because she’s worried about meeting my parents, but nerves that she’s steeling so that she can run again.
“Promise me you’ll be here tomorrow.” I blurt out.
“What?” She asks, completely confused by my response.
“You’ve got that look in your eyes that you always get right before you disappear.”
My grandfather used to tell me stories about my grandmother when I was a kid. He idolized that woman. She could do no wrong in his eyes. She was above reproach and nothing would change his mind. But she was a wild card. He knew it when they met, and he never once tried to get her to be something she wasn’t.
He described her as a beautiful wild bird, flying around with all the majesty a woman could possibly possess. When he described her, he held no animosity when he would say ‘You don’t put wild birds in a cage, my boy. They’re not meant to be tamed. They’re meant to spread their wings and be free. We’re only here to marvel in their glory and love them for showing us what it means to fly.’
I never understood what the hell that crazy old man was talking about until I met Remi.
She places her lips on mine and I hold on to her as tight as I can without hurting her. I wish I could fuse us together, never having to let go.
My kiss begs her to stay with me. Or at the very least, let me go with her the next time she takes flight.
The front door opens, my grandpa smiling like that cat that ate the canary. I ease my hold on Remi, but keep her tucked close to my side, needing to have her as close as I can for as long as I can.
“You must be Remington.” My grandpa says.
“Please, call me Remi.” She says as the crazy ass old man envelops her in his arms, pulling her out of mine.
He happily drags her into the house, leaving me standing on the porch without so much as a hello to his favorite grandson. Yeah, I have brothers, but fuck them. I’m the favorite and we all know it.
Just as I knew they would, my family loves her. I warned them not to ask too many questions, knowing how she would be. I didn’t want to give her a reason to run again. I just got her back after the last time she took off.
Loving a girl with a gypsy soul is hard sometimes. You have this illusion that you’re taming the fucking ocean, in all its glory. You feel this power in the wake of her love, knowing that out of all the sappy bastards in the world, she chose you. The love of a gypsy soul is the realest and purest thing anyone could ever experience.
It’s a lot like the intro to a Taking Back Sunday song. The one they took from the movie Beautiful Girls.
‘A beautiful girl can make you dizzy. Like you’ve been drinking Jack and Coke all morning. She can make you feel high. Full a single greatest commodity known to man. Promise. Promise of a better day. Promise of a greater hope. Promise of a new tomorrow. This particular aura can be found in the gait of a beautiful girl. In her smile and in her soul. The way she makes every rotten thing about life seem like it’s gonna be okay.’
But loving her back? Fuck, that’s the pin in the grenade right there. Because when the winds blow her away, out of your reach, you’re reminded that although she chose you…
She needs no one.
When she’s gone, you’re left with an ache that doesn’t fucking heal. She’s the only one who can save you from the unremarkable world without her. And it’s depressing as hell. Because you forget who the fuck you were before she was there, filling you with everything you didn’t know you were missing.
When you have her, for however long she lets you, you allow yourself to drown in her. Getting drunk off of everything she is and all that she gives you. Because you never know how long you’ll have her for. And you want to get your fill before she slips between your fingers once again.
Because she will. And there’s nothing you can do to change it. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. The girl with the gypsy soul always leaves.
So after dinner, when she’s cuddled into my side on the couch as we play Pictionary with my family, I tell myself that she’ll be here when I wake up. I lie to myself because I can’t handle the reality of her leaving again.
And as she smiles up at me with all the adoration her yellow eyes can muster, I tell myself that this is enough. That I’ll be happy with what I get. Because I love her too goddamn much to take anything less than what she’s willing to give me.
I’m pulled out of my dream, and memories of a past life, with a sharp intake of breath. Fucking hell, that woman hasn’t been back in my life for five minutes and she’s a
lready in my blood as if she never even left.
I sit up and attempt to rub the sleep out of my eyes, but my hands are stopped short by crunching against something stuck to my forehead. I pull it away, confused as hell.
I see Remi’s handwriting.
For a moment I’m taken back to the day she ran in LA, and my body goes ice cold. I don’t know if I can handle whatever the fuck is in this letter. If she’s gonna be here, she needs to be here. If she’s gonna leave, she needs to stay gone and never come back. I can’t handle this flip-flop bullshit anymore. It’s too fucking much.
Sighing, I open the letter expecting the worst, because let’s be honest here, anytime I wake up to a letter from this girl, it only means one thing.
Brody,
“Morning will come and I’ll do what’s right. Just give me ‘til then to give up this fight.” -Bon Iver
It’s going to rain soon…. Did you know that?
I love the Rain, Brody.
You wanted answers. I’m ready to give them to you.
910-555-2254
-R.
I look around the room as the memories from last night flood in, mixing with all the good memories of days of Remi in the rain. Some of the best memories we made together happened with the skies cracked open over our heads.
I notice that all of her stuff is still here, the only things missing are her and her gun. Her clothes are still here, and I know she still couldn’t leave town on that mangled heap of metal she calls a bike. I grab my phone that’s still in my pocket from the night before and text the number.
B: Are you still in town?
R: Brody?
B: No, it’s the pumpkin king.
R: Funny guy. I’m still here, just had an emergency come up that apparently couldn’t wait.
B: More important than an explanation for the last eleven years?
R: It’s the only thing that is.
I toss my phone on the bed, dropping my head into my hands. I don’t even know who the hell this girl is anymore. Maybe I never did. I can’t rationalize her choices and I can’t keep putting my fucking heart on the line for her anymore.
I pick up the letter again, reading over the first lines. It’s Bon Iver lyrics but it’s a song that I’ve never heard before. Grabbing my phone once again, I type the words into the search bar and click on the YouTube link that pops up.
As Bon Iver’s fingers dance across the screen, I immediately get tingles across my arms. A chill takes over my entire body as he sings with such an overwhelming amount of longing and pain that I can feel it through the screen.
It matches my own.
‘Cause I can’t make you love me if you don’t. I can’t make your heart feel something it won’t. Here in the dark, these final hours, I will lay down my heart.’
The song fucks with my head, with my heart, in only a way that Remi can do. I don’t know which way is up and which way is down with this girl. She’s a goddamn enigma that never makes a lick of sense. I’m starting to think that’s her intention. She just wanted to keep me confused and running in circles so that I never get a chance to ask the questions that she obviously doesn’t want to answer.
But that shit ends today. She’s not going to sleep tonight until she tells me the fucking truth and explains why she’s holding my sanity hostage in her tiny little hands.
I throw my boots on and make my way out of her room, trying to make my way through the labyrinth hallway in the back of the bar. As I make my way into the dimly lit bar, I run into Henry. A startled sound escapes him and then when he realizes who it is, confusion masks his face.
“Brody, how did you get in here? We’re not even open yet.”
“Oh, I uh, I crashed in Remi’s room. I was too drunk to drive.”
“How do you know my little Remi-girl?” He asks with the air of the father figure that Max told us she was immediately drawn to.
“Uh, Rem and I go way back. Once upon a time, we almost got married.”
A weird sense of understanding dawns on his face as he slowly nods his head at my words.
“So you’re the mystery guy that she’s cried about all these years.”
I swear, I feel like I’ve woken up in the twilight zone. Nothing is making sense to me today and I feel like I’m still drunk on confusion.
“All these years?” I ask as he nods. “Henry, how do you know Remi?”
He smiles like a proud, but concerned father, slightly shaking his head. He ushers me to sit at the bar as he pours a cup of coffee and places it in front of me. I take a sip, ignoring the burn on my tongue, wanting to be as alert as possible for this conversation.
“Ah, little Remi has been friends with my daughter Elizabeth for quite some time. Liz is very protective of her, sometimes traveling across the country to help her out when she’s in trouble. I’ve asked a lot of questions but never got a lot of answers.”
“Join the club.” I scoff, taking another large sip.
“I don’t know what all has happened to that girl, but she’s not had an easy life. I feel like I live in some type of criminal television show sometimes when she’s around.”
“What do you mean?”
He scoffs, lifting his eyebrows. “I don’t know how many times that poor girl was bleeding out on my couch as Lizzy and I took turns pulling a bullet out of a new part of her body. I’ve stitched that girl up more times than I can count while she cried in Liz’s lap.”
What. The. Fuck. Did he just say?
“A lot of those times she was crying, I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. But I helped her as much as I could. I always kept the little secrets I knew and helped find her cash-paying jobs. I even told Liz to have you boys help out with that mangled motorcycle she has laying out in the back of the bar.” He says as he points a dishtowel in the direction where I know the bike is sitting since it was removed by someone else after I left the motel.
“Did you ever wonder why the hell she would show up so badly hurt?” I ask, my mind racing a mile a fucking minute at this new information.
I guess my earlier thoughts were right. I don’t even know who Remi really is…
“When it comes to Liz, I don’t ask a lot of questions. You learn not to after a while with a girl like my daughter.” He chuckles.
I swallow the rest of my coffee, Henry filling it up as soon as the cup hits the countertop.
Bullets. Stitches. Crumbled bikes… What the hell is Remi into?
“She sure does love you though.” Henry says, smiling at whatever memories are floating through his mind. “I didn’t know it was you at the time of course. Now that I do… Boy, you did a number on that girl.” He whistles through his teeth.
“She’s the one who walked away, Henry. Took off in the middle of the night.” I say, accusation evident in my tone of voice.
“Oh, I’ve gathered that over the years. But for whatever reason she did, it was never something that brought her any happiness. I’d pop in for a visit to see Liz, and there’d be little Remi-girl. Curled up on the couch, bawling her eyes out, clutching pictures to her chest. I never got a good look at the fella in those pictures, but after everything I’ve overheard through the years, there’s only ever been one guy for that girl.”
I stare at him with my mouth hanging open, not knowing what the fuck to say to him. My mind is racing and my heart is pounding in my chest. Everything I thought I knew, mixing with everything Henry just told me… None of it makes any sense at all. There’s no fucking way we’re talking about the same girl. He’s got to be getting confused in his old age.
I pull my wallet out and hand him a photo.
“Are we talking about the same girl? This girl? The girl that stays in the back room here at the bar? They’re all the same person?”
I know I sound like a lunatic, but what the hell else am I supposed to do to gain clarification? The things he’s saying… They just don’t make any sense!
&nb
sp; He takes the photo from me, smiling when he does. In the picture, Remi and I are smiling at the camera, my arms wrapped around her waist, keeping her as close as I can. She’s leaning into me like I’m the reason she wakes up every day, and I know the smile on her face is the one she used to reserve just for me.
We were happy back then.
“One and the same. That scar on her arm there.” He says, pointing at it in the photo. “That’s my piss poor attempt at being a doctor. Poor thing had a bullet lodged in so deep I could see bone by the time Liz pulled it out.”
I take the photo back and stare at it until it blurs underneath my scrutiny. My fingers graze over the scar in question, reminding me of all the other scars littering her body. All the bruises I saw last night. All part of the paradox that is Remington.
I blink my eyes rapidly, trying to clear my vision before tucking the photo back in my wallet, right next to the letter, and the ultrasound of Oaklynn that I always carry with me.
He talks of Remi with such familiarity, but of stories that sound so foreign about the woman I’ve been in love with for over a decade. I can’t figure out what the hell I’m supposed to think or feel right now.
I’m… Fuck, I’m lost.
“Are you able to take that bike of hers and fix it up? Liz and I will cover the cost, I know Remi can’t afford it. But she needs it to get around. She’ll have to leave before too long and I’d like her to have a reliable way out.”
“What you do you mean she has to leave again?”
“Well when she got to town and came to see me, she said she was only here because she got into that bad wreck. She can’t leave ‘til her bike’s patched up.”
“There’s no patching that bike up, Henry. It’s scrap metal now. But I can have it hauled off.”
“Damn, well I guess Liz and I will have to help her get a new one. She’s had that one so long, I’m surprised it lasted through whatever chaos she gets herself into. I’ve tried to get her to trade it in for a car or anything else that’s safer, but she said it’s got some sentimental value.” He shrugs, not knowing what I know.
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