Wrong Question, Right Answer

by Elle Casey

  Lucky’s always had what seems like a really great life, on the outside. He’s a smiling fool and has been since the day I met him downtown, standing in an empty lot where an old building had been knocked down months before. He was there using a BB gun to blow holes into junk, and Thibault and I were anxious to give it a try. Until the day Lucky showed up, nobody we knew under the age of fifteen had one of those. We were both eleven at the time.

  I never knew much about what went on at his house, since Lucky preferred to be at ours or out on the streets hanging around, but I always got the feeling that it wasn’t great. He never invited us over, and, being kids, we never questioned it. It impressed me that despite the situation, whatever it was, he was always happy. Or at least he appeared to be happy. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe he’s just as miserable inside as I’ve been.

  I go through the motions of making dinner for two. It’s not much, just spaghetti with defrosted meatballs, but it’ll do. I’m not much of a cook, which is why I love eating at Ozzie’s place. It doesn’t matter that I’m the defrost queen tonight, though; I’m sure neither Lucky nor I will taste much of this meal.

  A sound behind me makes me jump. I spin around, my wooden sauce spoon in my hand. I still picture Charlie coming at me whenever someone sneaks up on me. Ozzie says it’s post-traumatic stress disorder, but I’ve always been a little high-strung.

  Lucky is standing there, his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I go back to stirring the sauce, making sure it doesn’t burn. It came out of a jar, so I just need to heat it through. “No big deal. I’m just finishing up here.” I snag a noodle out of the boiling pot with a fork and pinch it. Perfect. After turning off all the burners, I reach up into the cabinet next to me and pull out two plates. “Grab yourself a drink.”

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can watch me eat.” I’m not hungry either, but I’m going to force myself to eat this food. It’s better than trying to find the right words. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be saying right now so I settle on recruiting him into service. “Grab the forks and spoons out of the drawer, would you?”

  Lucky has been in my kitchen enough times to know where I keep everything. I hear banging around and know he’s following my orders as I dish out the pasta and then cover it with sauce and two meatballs each. If he doesn’t finish his, I’ll bring it to work and give it to Sahara and Felix. Then I’ll die laughing inside when they both get horrible gas and make May leave the room with her nose pinched.

  “What do you want to drink?” he asks me dully.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  The fridge opens and the clang of bottles tells me we’re both having more alcohol. I hope that’s not a mistake.

  I bring the bowls of pasta over to the kitchen table and sit down across from Lucky. There’s only room enough for four people sitting in close quarters, so it’s intimate. I’m glad there are no candles on the table, or he’d probably think I’m trying to turn this into a date or something. I sit down, staring at my bowl and the steam coming up from the sauce.

  Here’s where I normally say grace, but it seems like there’s something a little extra special in order. I chew the side of my cheek trying to decide what to do. I don’t want to upset Lucky by bringing up Sunny, but the little guy in that bowl deserves a mention.

  “Do you mind if I say a prayer?” Lucky asks.

  I fold my hands over my bowl, resting my elbows on the table, relieved we’re on the same page. I tip my head down, putting it on top of my knuckles. “Go ahead.”

  Lucky lets out a long sigh before he begins. “Dear Lord . . . thank you for this delicious food that I don’t think I can eat but it smells really darn good. And thank you for my beautiful friend Toni, who’s patient with me when I know patience isn’t exactly her strong suit, especially on a day like today when memories of her past are probably kicking her ass. Thank you for Sunny and thank you for my sister. And I’m sorry I’m flipping out and letting you down. Help me to be stronger tomorrow.”

  “Amen.” My heart is in my throat. He remembered what this day means for me. He didn’t forget like Ozzie did. And I feel so terrible for him, but I don’t know what to do. I lower my hands and look up at him. He’s still resting his forehead against his clasped fingers, and his shoulders are shaking.

  I have never seen Lucky fall apart like this, ever. I’ve never seen anyone on our team fall apart like this. Hell, I’ve never seen anyone outside the movies fall apart like this. It feels like my world is caving in on me.

  I do the first thing that comes to mind as a solution. What do I do when shit is falling apart? Whatever I can to try and hold it together. Abandoning my seat, I go over to Lucky and get down on my knees next to his chair, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Lucky. This sucks. This really sucks. Please don’t be sad.” I squeeze him hard.

  His arm drops down and wraps around my back. He holds me firmly too, so I grip even harder. We cling to each other in my little dining area, Lucky sniffing and shaking, and before long, I’m crying, too.

  I wish I had thought to put music on earlier so he wouldn’t hear me now. I feel cold and callous because I mocked his fish before. I’m not doing it now, but I still feel bad about what I said to May and what I thought in my head about Sunny. I should’ve known what it meant to him. I should’ve asked more questions. I should’ve been more involved in his life.

  It’s been too easy, blaming everything on Charlie and the messed-up place I was in as his girlfriend, but Charlie’s been gone for five years, and I’ve been out of prison for two. I was released just before Lucky’s sister died, but even while imprisoned I could have kept in better contact with him, asked more questions, told Thibault to intervene when I sensed something was off.

  It’s been two years since Lucky lost her, but I get how something like that can stay with you and feel fresh even years later. I just accepted Lucky as this person who seemed okay on the outside, and never bothered to find out that he was tortured on the inside. He must have felt so let down by me. It literally hurts me to realize that about us. And it makes me see that I need to try harder to be a good friend to him, listen to him, talk to him, find out how he’s really feeling.

  “She was too young,” Lucky says through his sobs. “Why did she do it?”

  “You’re right. Maribelle was too young. But I think she did it because she couldn’t think of any other way.”

  “Any other way to do what?” His sobbing stops for a moment.

  “Any other way to escape. The pain. She just wanted to get away from it. She was a teenager. She was really sensitive. Everything hit her twice as hard as it hit everyone else. I didn’t know her that well, since she was so much younger than us, but I do remember that. She cried a lot. I remember how she bawled when she read about those animals being euthanized at the shelter. She went nuts over that, remember? She was only seven or eight at the time.”

  “Yes, I remember.” He looks up, his face ravaged by tears.

  I wipe one of his cheeks with the backs of my fingers. “She had a tender heart. She was born with it.”

  “It didn’t help having the parents we did.” He looks at the ground, his jaw muscle twitching.

  “None of us had a safe haven to go home to. That’s why we spent so much time shooting your gun in that empty lot.” My heart twists in my chest. Lucky helped save me. I wonder if he knows this. I don’t want to say it, though; he’ll think I’m crazy.

  “But she was too little to hang with us,” he says, oblivious to my internal melodrama.

  “Yeah. And guns weren’t her thing.”

  He gives a sad laugh. “She was a pacifist from the word go. She hated my BB gun. She was always suspicious that I was using it to shoot birds.”

  I frown at the idea. Lucky’s always been an animal lover, just like his sister. “You would never have done that.”

  He shrugs.
“You and I knew that, but she was suspicious of everyone. She had a hard time trusting people, even me.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Maybe I’m asking more than I should, but I’m hoping this is the way to get him to a conclusion he can live with about his sister. He blames himself, but he shouldn’t. He didn’t have anything to do with her death.

  “I don’t know. Our parents were assholes. I wasn’t there.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t accept that. You were there with her a lot. You dragged Maribelle around in a stroller, for God’s sake.”

  He smiles sadly. “It was easier when she was younger. When she got older, we grew really far apart. It’s like I didn’t even know her anymore.”

  “When she got older, she started reading the news and seeing the outside world. I think it was too painful for her. She saw too many bad people, too many animals being hurt, too many kids being abused. She fixated on that stuff. It’s like she couldn’t see the happy things because the sad things took up all her head space.”

  “Why, though? What made her do that instead of focusing on the good?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Some people are just drawn to that darkness, and they can’t let it go.” I don’t tell Lucky the whole truth: that I get where his sister was when she decided to take her own life, and that if it hadn’t been for the team and Ozzie, I might have considered a way out like she had. The difference between her and me is that I was open to getting help, and I had a very strong connection to the guys on the team. She never had much of a connection with anyone; she always lived in her own little world. Even her relationship with Lucky seemed like it was only on the surface.

  Lucky slowly lets his arm drop away from me, so I release him too. He rubs his swollen eyes. “I just don’t get it,” he mumbles. “Why was she in so much pain? Why didn’t she reach out?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. There’s no way for us to know. Just life, probably. Sometimes shit happens, and you fall apart over it. Not everybody can be strong a hundred percent of the time.” May’s voice is like my conscience now. Goddamn.

  Lucky bangs his fist on the table, making the cutlery jump. “But I should’ve been there for her! I’m her brother, for chrissake!”

  “Exactly.” I use the most soothing tone I have in me. “You’re her brother. You’re not her parent, you’re not her guardian angel, and you’re not God. The stuff she went through, the way she tortured herself over the world’s problems, was not something you could’ve solved for her. You couldn’t have changed who your sister was, and that was the only solution to her problems. She was who she was, that’s it. Just like you are who you are and I’m me. We all have our own demons, but hers overwhelmed her. We’re fortunate; we manage to keep them at bay . . . most of the time.”

  He shakes his head, staring off into the distance. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe I couldn’t have helped her fight those demons.”

  “I know you don’t. You need therapy.”

  A smile haunts his lips for a second before it disappears. “That’s funny.”

  I give him a half smile. “What’s funny?”

  “You telling me I need therapy.”

  I shrug, not disagreeing over the irony. “Yeah, well, I’ve got experience in being seriously fucked up. What can I say?”

  Lucky reaches down and caresses the side of my face, finally looking into my eyes. “Come on, don’t say that. You’re perfect exactly the way you are. I wish you would stop being so mean to yourself.”

  I put my hand over his for a few seconds before pushing it away. It feels strange to have him being so gentle and touchy-feely with me. Not that I hate it or anything, but it’s weird when he’s never been like that with me before.

  “Don’t try to butter me up,” I say, trying for a more lighthearted mood. “There’s only one piece of tiramisu in my fridge and it’s mine.”

  His smile is like a huge laser beam of sunshine hitting me right in the eyeball. He leans down until he’s just an inch away from me, our noses almost touching. “Trust me . . . if I want that tiramisu, you’re going to give it to me.”

  I cock a brow up. “I’ll wrestle you for it.”

  “Done.” And then his lips are on mine and we’re on the kitchen floor, rolling around and tearing each other’s clothes off.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Chair and table legs that get in our way are shoved aside. Shirts are pulled out of waistbands in seconds so our hands are free to explore.

  Our passion is different this time, not born of a simple schoolgirl crush and a few too many beers and teas, but one of two adults who find themselves drowning in myriad emotions that shouldn’t coexist: Sadness. Rage. Hope. Longing. Loss. Lust. It’s all there.

  It surges through me like an electric current, and I can’t understand why it’s not killing me but instead driving me forward. This is Lucky, the boy I’ve grown up with and treated as a brother for more years than I care to remember. I should be shoving him away and shouting at him, reminding him what a horrible mistake this is, how it’ll ruin everything for the team and destroy our friendship; but I don’t do any of those things. I welcome the darkness that’s sure to come from this mistake. It’s way more familiar to me than the light he’s pretending we can share together. I’ll deal with the nightmares tomorrow.

  “You are so beautiful,” he growls in my ear before biting my neck. The weight of his entire body presses mine into the floor.

  I reach up and grab his hair with both hands to get him away from my sensitive skin. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I tilt his head and go right for his neck so I can bite him back.

  I’m surprised into stillness when he stops everything, placing his hands on both sides of my face and staring down at me from two inches away. “Toni, don’t tell me to shut up. You are beautiful. I’ve always thought that about you.”

  I search his eyes, trying to figure out what he’s getting at. What could possibly be the point of showering me with compliments right now? He knows I’m going to sleep with him. I’m lost for words.

  He lets out a long sigh. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.” He puts his hands on the floor on either side of my head to hold himself above me in a pseudo-pushup.

  I give him a wry smile. “Of course we shouldn’t. It was a mistake the first time, and it’ll be an even bigger mistake the second.”

  Slowly, he grins at me, the devil in him coming back to play. “I’m pretty good at making mistakes. In fact, I’m better at making mistakes than I am at doing the right thing.”

  I urge him down to me by pulling on his upper arms. “Me too.”

  And then we’re kissing again. It’s just as hot, only this time it doesn’t feel quite as desperate. Now we know. We both know what we’re getting into and what this means. It’s a mistake, but we’re going to have some fun, anyway. Maybe this thing—whatever it is—will help us forget the other stuff in our lives that’s causing us pain. Even a short respite is better than none at all.

  Lucky pauses again.

  “What is it this time?” I ask, sighing exaggeratedly. He’s acting like a virgin, the way he keeps hesitating.

  He rolls over and pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. “At least let me put a condom on this time. Just to be doubly safe.”

  It takes a few seconds for his comment to sink in. While he’s busy pulling the birth control out of his wallet and unwrapping it, my mind is going haywire. I’m not even sure I heard him right.

  “What did you just say?”

  He sits up and pulls his jacket and shirt off his upper body in one movement. “You heard me. We need to be doubly careful.”

  He’s undoing his belt now, completely oblivious to my panic.

  “But you said you need to put a condom on this time. What the hell did you say that for?”

  His belt is unbuckled and so is the top button of his pants. He hesitates and looks down at me from his kneeling position. “I meant what I said. Last tim
e we forgot, but we should never forget again. If this is going to be a regular thing, we have to be careful. That’s all. It’s no big deal.”

  I shove him away from me and get to my feet, my whole body shaking. My voice goes up an octave. “Lucky!”

  He’s clearly confused. “What?”

  “Are you telling me that we didn’t use any birth control the other night?!”

  Lucky’s mouth drops open, but nothing comes out. The only thing I hear is the sound of the condom wrapper hitting the ground when it falls out of his loosened fingers.

  I back away, shaking my head. “No. That’s not right. We used a condom, I know we did.”

  He slowly sits down on his butt, bending his knees up to rest his elbows on them. The unused condom dangles in his right hand between his first two fingers. “Sorry, babe. I think we both got caught up in the moment. We didn’t use one.” He shrugs. “I figured you were on the pill, so I wasn’t so worried about it.”

  My hands go up to my head and my fingers sink into my hair, grabbing some by the roots and pulling as I try to wake myself up from this nightmare. I’m staring at his impossibly handsome face that right now I want to smash with my fist. How could he have been so careless? How could I have been so stupid?

  Lucky gives me what I used to consider an adorable look. “I guess I was wrong about that?”

  I slide my hands down onto my face and scrub it a few times. When I speak, it’s through my fingers. “Yes, you were wrong about that. I don’t take the pill or anything else.”

  I hear Lucky get to his feet. I sense when he’s close. “Why not?” he asks, finally sounding worried.

  I move my hands so I can see him. “Because that shit makes me crazy. I don’t do so well when doctors mess with my hormones.”

  He nods, coming off as very serious. “I can imagine that.”