Keeping Seven

by T. A Richards Neville

  Bear was called Bear for a reason. He was tough and resilient even from birth, weighing a healthy 128 ounces and looking like he’d just been fed a three-course feast while Elena had been utterly exhausted from over twelve hours of labor. He’d only gotten bigger, too. Never fat, but that phase of losing weight most breastfed newborns went through surpassed Bear entirely, and his growth chart had been steadily on the up and up. Not at all like my baby brother lying in this hospital bed with pale, swollen skin and equipment to aid his breathing.

  I glanced up at my dad sitting on the rigid couch in front of the bank of windows, heavy bags of stress under his blue eyes that had appeared in a matter of hours. Flipping between pages and back again, he scanned through medical papers attached to a clipboard. He looked a worn-out mess.

  “Did the nurse say how it happened?” I asked. “Were they in the car? Was it a wreck?”

  “They were hit by a speeding car after it mounted the sidewalk, that’s all the information the hospital have been given from the paramedics and witness accounts who were at the scene. Police can’t speak to Elena until her surgeon gives the okay. I’ve got both their paperwork here. Elena’s been in surgery for renal trauma and a blood transfusion. Her pelvis is fractured.” My dad threw down the clipboard and shoved his fingers into his blonde hair. “I could choke the fucking bastard who did this.”

  Him and me both.

  “Renal trauma? What is that?”

  “Internal bleeding from the kidney. She took the brunt of the hit from the extent of her injuries. She would have been carrying him. He hates his stroller. Won’t settle in it.” He stood up, full of agitation. “They can’t expect me not to see my own wife. Will you be okay here with Bear for a minute while I talk to the doctor? I need to see her for myself. This is ridiculous.”

  “Sure. You go.”

  “I’m never letting either of them out of my sight again,” my dad ranted to himself. “I’ll apologize for my overbearing parenting when Bear’s older.”

  Sitting on the couch felt too far away, and I stayed by Bear’s bedside when my dad left, unable to look away from his peaceful, sleeping face. He was so beautiful. And innocent. Breakable. A fit and healthy toddler one minute, lifeless in a hospital bed at the hands of a dangerous driver the next. I couldn’t get my head around it. My mom had let me do what I wanted when I was little. I went to the beach alone, to the mall alone. I was out at night when she had no idea where I was or who I was with. And I’d always been fine. Bear was wrapped in love from two parents who adored the ground he walked on and look where he’d ended up? It seemed the more you loved someone, the greater at risk they were of being taken away from you.

  In the downtime, while Bear slept from his pain medication and the unit nurse checked his vitals and made sure he was comfortable in his slightly upright position, providing cool packs for his ribs, I pulled out my phone to find it had died on me, and I didn’t have a charger. It wasn’t until my grandpa arrived that I found out the Miami Dolphins had won the Super Bowl and Julian had celebrated his long-awaited victory without me.

  Late evening, three days later, I left Bear’s side to keep Elena company. With the pelvic fracture stable, she’d been prescribed painkillers and bedrest. So I headed to her room with three magazines, the latest crime-thriller bestseller, and a bar of her favorite dark chocolate. Her main concern was Bear, though, and not being able to look after him the way she was itching to do, her motherly instincts powering into overdrive.

  I knew she wouldn’t read what I brought her. But, still. It made me feel better knowing she had those things there if she changed her mind or decided to relax and stop beating up on herself.

  She’d been walking back to her car after taking Bear to Boston Common when the speeding driver lost control of his stolen car, too light on the breaks when he mowed into them. The steep curb, landmark signpost, and his hasty jerk of the wheel had probably saved Bear and Elena’s life, and the adolescent driver had been chased for over an hour before he was arrested and charged with reckless driving. Elena had been carrying Bear when it happened, the screeching tires and gunning engine her advanced warning to cover Bear’s body with her own before they hit the pavement and the car hit them.

  Pent up with repressed anger, there was no quick release for my dad while his wife and baby’s needs had to be put first. I was the only one he showed his deep-rooted rage to, so escaping him for an hour to be with Elena was a small measure of relief. My dad’s equilibrium was extremely unsettled and had been right up until the day Elena came into his life. The threat of either Bear or Elena being taken away from him proved to be more than he could deal with. We would all suffer until they were both safe at home.

  I knocked on Elena’s door before walking in, my gaze swinging from her bed to the occupied chair beside it. My brain’s delayed response to Julian sitting in the chair left me hovering for a moment with my bag of mediocre goodies, assessing the situation.

  It wasn’t the first time he’d left me speechless, but it may have been the longest.

  After my phone died, my dad had circulated one message to Olivia, Julian, and Marilyn. My phone was still dead, Marilyn was staying with her boyfriend, Mario, through the postseason and offseason in Pennsylvania where he was playing for the Hershey Bears in the AHL, and I saw no reason to run around town buying a new charger just to bother Julian with calls and texts when he’d had the parade coming up in Miami.

  “Angel.” Elena sat with two pillows supporting her back and her head, the hospital bed raised for her upper body. Banged and bruised up, she still managed a weak smile. She looked thinner in the ninety-six hours she’d been here, her cheekbones more pronounced underneath shadowed, sunken eyes. “Can I ask a small favor?”

  “Anything,” I said, wavering between her and Julian, who sat silently watching me. There was something different about him. The mystical air of a recent Super Bowl champion. More a sensation, a presence, than what could be seen or touched. His indifference to my walking in here unnerved me, and those calls I hadn’t made and the messages I hadn’t sent glowed like flares of guilt in my vigilance to speak first or go to him.

  “I’ll need clean pajamas and underwear from home, if you could take my bag. It’s on the floor by the bed here. Bear will probably need a few things,” Elena said. She looked just as wary as me, if not more so. Then again, it could be exhaustion. Worrying about Bear and not being able to go to him.

  “Anything in particular?” I asked as I walked to the other side of the bed and picked up her bag, putting mine in its place.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “There’s a book in there and some magazines. A bar of chocolate. You want any of it now?”

  Elena drowsily shook her head, looking ready for sleep.

  “Okay.” I leaned down and gave her a loose, gentle hug, my gaze easing over to Julian as I straightened with the bag in my hand.

  “I’ll come with you,” he said, standing up and stretching out his long legs. “Glad to see you’re doing better,” he said to Elena. She took his hand in hers and then we said our goodbyes. I wasn’t sure whether the atmosphere was really as impenetrable as it felt or if it was all in my head.

  As soon as we stepped out of the room and into the hallway, Julian’s hand hit the back of my neck, his thumb stroking behind my ear. “How’s Bear doing?”

  “Good, I guess. He’ll stay in for observations, but he should be home by the end of the week.” I turned my face into Julian’s hand, practically melting into his touch. Three words and the cloudy atmosphere had cleared.

  “Poor kid. He’s been through it.”

  “Where’s Taj?”

  “At home.” Julian turned his graphite hat to the back, mainly staff around the hospital this late, and none of whom were likely to ask for an autograph or a picture. “The little shit told me to get myself out here the minute the parade was over.” I laughed at Julian’s honed look of can you believe that kid? “I would’ve left right after the ga
me if I could. I wouldn’t have waited this long if it had been up to me.”

  “It was an awful feeling, leaving without getting the chance to speak to you first. I wasn’t ruining your game, though. There was nothing you could’ve done, anyway, other than win. And you did that. When Elena comes home we can watch the game together, all of us. This must be a real dampener, huh?”

  “I just won the Super Bowl. My feet haven’t touched the fucking ground yet. But it’s time you get it out of your head that you and your family aren’t more important than football. You thought I’d be pissed, didn’t you?”

  Small crowds loitered outside the hospital’s entrance, and Julian repositioned his hat, our footsteps picking up the pace as we headed for the parking lot.

  “I did, yeah. And you would have had every reason. I just didn’t want you to lose focus.” I hoped that didn’t sound like an excuse, because it wasn’t one. “When did you get here, anyway?”

  “Landed this afternoon. My mom picked me up and I dropped her home and took her car.”

  The front of the silvery gray Range Rover came into view as we crossed the lot. Standing at the passenger side, Julian tipped his hat back and pulled me against him with one hand on my waist. His familiar brand of citrusy cologne mixed with his potent masculinity triggered the flutters from the tips of my toes, his soft, hungry lips and the lingering taste of peppermint on his tongue a lethal combination in short circuiting my brain and handing over the reins to my body. When I was with Julian, I felt everything. Drowning in a sea of sensation, furiously treading water to barely stay afloat and not sink at the deep end.

  The first opportunity to leave Miami, I was on the flight. Relying on other people to chauffer me places—even my mom—didn’t work for me, and I’d never made for the best passenger. But messing around with a rental company and hanging around the airport where I’d be recognized sooner or later would’ve taken up time I didn’t have. Loaning my mom’s car for the day was the reasonable solution.

  I had messages on my phone from every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Congratulations and meet-up requests from old friends in the neighborhood, and I kept it to myself that I’d touched down in Boston. Then I’d given my social media account passwords to Angela to send out scripted replies, like I wasn’t another overpaid athlete asshole with no patience to take two seconds out and say fucking thank you.

  The protective bubble from winning the Super Bowl had popped the second I’d saw the conflicted look on my mom’s face when she came down to the field, Angel noticeably missing from the intimate celebrations. The worst had gone through my mind, and the parade on Tuesday had been a chore that never seemed to end. I pushed back all my other public engagements and team parties to come to Boston, where I could just fucking picture Angel tiptoeing around telling me why she’d skipped the game, always so goddamn conscious of upsetting my schedule or anything to do with football.

  I drove her to her dad’s to pick up Elena and Bear’s change of clothes, promising her on the way I would stay with her in Boston as long as she wanted me there, and I’d go when she asked, and she’d given me a look of gratitude like we’d been dating for a few months and not almost four years.

  At her dad’s house on Beacon Hill, I stood in the doorway of Angel’s bedroom while she pulled stuff out of Bear’s diaper bag, taking stock of what needed to be replaced. “Mom said you can sleep at her house tonight if your dad’s staying at the hospital. She’ll make you dinner.”

  “That’s nice of her, but I don’t want to leave the house empty. Having their things around me is comforting. I feel like I should be here.”

  I shrugged. “Your call.”

  “Hey, Julian?” she said abruptly. “Could we go for a walk somewhere? I haven’t slept more than an hour since I got here. I need to wear myself out.”

  I could think of other, more creative ways to wear her out.

  “Sure. It’s snowing out, though. Grab a coat or a warmer jacket,” I told her. “You got a hat?” She’d flown straight from Minneapolis, the least she should have with her is a hat.

  She held up a chunky, pale pink knit cardigan from a messy pile at the foot of her bed. Slipping her arms through the huge sleeves, it didn’t even have any buttons.

  “You got anything else? It’s a light fall for now, but that could change any minute.”

  “I don’t know where my coat is. Maybe I left it in the hospital, or my dad’s car. Go in my dad’s room there—” she pointed to her bedroom door, and she could have been talking about any room upstairs “—and pick any of his work jackets or hoodies out of the closet.”

  A quick scan of Michael’s and Elena’s clothes, meticulously hanging on his and hers sides of the closet, I settled for a BU Lions windbreaker with a thermal lining. I could have picked one of Elena’s coats, but they looked too sensible for Angel, and I wasn’t going to be the cause for destroying her cashmere in the snow while she was doped up on pain meds in the hospital.

  Angel’s room was empty, and I found her in Bear’s nursery, folding a sleep romper into his bag. I gave her the coat and took the bags. Downstairs, in the kitchen, Angel pulled together some snacks to give to her dad, telling me between opening and closing cabinet doors and scouring the fruit bowl, he won’t eat them but that won’t stop her.

  I snuck up behind her while she inspected a Granny Smith apple. The slope of her frown in profile as she swapped the perfectly edible piece of fruit for a different one. Call it greed, selfishness… lack of personal restraint or leftover endorphins from Sunday night, but I had to have her. Right now. It couldn’t wait. I couldn’t wait. And I’d felt she’d needed it to, too, at the car when I kissed her. Angel was just too polite and proper to say.

  Well, there wasn’t a polite bone in my body, and I took the waxy apple from her hand and put it back in the ceramic bowl. Turning her around to face me, I lifted her up and sat her on the farmhouse countertop.

  “You’re always wearing these tiny tops and tight leggings. Might as well be naked,” I said, my hands coasting her outer thighs. “It’s all on display for me.”

  Angel smiled, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Should I start wearing something looser? A sensible pair of mom jeans?”

  My thumbs met at the apex of her thighs and I slid her forward, my hands roaming her hips and traveling over her back. She lowered her head to mine, curly scraps of hair from her high ponytail tickling my jaw.

  “Tell me the truth, Julian. You were mad I wasn’t at the game, weren’t you?” She rubbed the tip of her nose on mine, and a man could get lost in those eyes.

  “Was I mad?”

  She nodded, more dark curls trickling over my face.

  “That’s one way of putting it. I’m only human, what can I say? But that doesn’t mean I’m holding grudges. You went where you needed to, and that’s one of the millions of reasons why I’m in love with you. You get shit done. No questions, no explanations. Just lose the guilt and own it.”

  “Wow.” Angel laughed, and I tugged her closer, eliminating another grain of space. “I am not at all like that.”

  “Yes, you are. Soft around the edges, a hard-ass in the center. Now take these stripper leggings off before I use force and do it myself. I promise this won’t take more than ten minutes.”

  An hour later, after Angel left the clean clothes with her dad at Mass General, I’d parked on the Boston side of the Charles River, fat clumps of snow swirling through the night as I walked along the Esplanade with my arm around Angel. The spontaneous bursts of her dad’s cologne from his athletics jacket were off-putting as hell, and there was roughly ten spare inches of material that puffed out around Angel’s body. She felt smaller tonight, the worry over her brother and Elena shrinking her spirit

  I broke the silence that had snuck its way back in. “Are you cold?”

  “No.”

  I took my arm away and picked up Angel’s hand instead, threading my fingers through her gloved ones.

  She looked at me sideways
. “I guess the real reason I didn’t try and call you was because I thought you’d do this.”

  “Do what?” I knew what. I just wanted to hear her explain the logic behind her reasoning.

  “Drop your life for me before knowing if it’s warranted.”

  “Why wouldn’t I do that? There’s nothing and no one before you, Angel.”

  “Being in that hospital since Sunday, and then seeing you with Elena so soon after the postseason… I finally get it. When we were on the plane out of Minneapolis, we weren’t prepared for what we were walking into, how bad the accident was. Once I knew neither of them were on death’s door, I just kinda slumped. Completely shut down with relief. Angry that a person was capable of doing that to them and then just driving off while Elena and Bear laid there like rags.

  “And then I felt out of place. Like I’d landed in the middle of someone else’s family time. And I know that sounds incredibly childish and bratty, but Bear and Elena are my dad’s real family, the family that he wanted, and… that’s okay. He loves me, I’m not saying he doesn’t.”

  I frowned. “Yeah? Then what are you saying?”

  Angel broke stride and slowed to a standstill, the wind and snow flurries attacking the loose hair that had escaped her hood, her ponytail destroyed when I ravaged her on Michael’s kitchen counter. Lips reddened and swollen from the biting cold, I would have bent down and kissed them had she not looked so damn serious.

  “He is so in love with them I can’t even hold it against him or be jealous. His wife and his son are his family now—his cocoon. But you, Julian, you’re my family. It doesn’t matter how low I get, or how bad I feel, you are always there. I don’t have to ask or say a word, you just know.”

  Call it shit timing, but there never seemed to be the right time with us, anyway. I wanted something? I didn’t stop until I had it. And that wasn’t changing today.

  “Angel, let’s just fucking do it. Not for anyone but us. I don’t give a fuck about a wedding. All I want is you.”