The Bust

by Jamie Bennett

  We drove slowly and carefully into Traverse City, and a trip had never seemed so long, not even two winters before when I’d had to help push a VW bus we’d been hitching in from Chanute to Iola, Missouri.

  “Roy?” I kept saying. “Roy, talk to me!” He’d swear just a little, or maybe only grunt, and the lack of angry comments scared me so much that I struggled to stay inside the lines even more than I usually did. Which was already a lot. “What’s wrong with you? Roy? What are you sick with?” I asked over and over, and that didn’t get any response at all.

  Finally I found the hospital, and I got him out and into the emergency room, and I drove the car mostly into a marked space in the parking lot before hurrying back inside. Roy was just getting taken back for treatment but he already had more color in his face, and when he talked, I knew he was feeling slightly better, because he said a lot more than he had in the car:

  “Give me my keys. You’re a terror on the road.”

  I handed them over. “I remonserate that. I did a good job driving! You’re here in one piece, aren’t you? I’ll call Sal and Dexter now to let them know—”

  “Don’t you call anyone. No one knows I’m here, get it? No calls. Go home!” he told me, then he was gone behind the doors to the doctors and nurses. I stood in the waiting room, realizing that I was freezing in my “I drink at Roys” t-shirt and no coat, and also that I had left my bag behind at the tavern, so I didn’t have my wallet or my phone. So I did have to call someone from a phone they let me use at the desk, and lucky for me, he answered. I sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs and breathed the medicine-y air and waited.

  Then Kayden Matthews walked through the sliding doors, his hair messy because I’d woken him up out of a dead sleep and because he didn’t have a lot of extra money for haircuts after what he’d spent on groceries for us and cleats for Jamison. His face had a wrinkle across the cheek, which tipped me the clue that he’d been smashed on one side of the bed with the pillow scrunched up, because Emma had been there with him. He wore an old t-shirt underneath his coat instead of a fancy shirt, and old sweatpants instead of the jeans that fit him perfectly.

  He was the best thing I’d seen in a long time. Maybe even in my whole life.

  “Hey. Hey! Are you all right?”

  Because I’d rushed over without even realizing what I was doing and thrown my arms around him, burying my face against his chest.

  “You didn’t get hurt or something too, did you?” he asked. Very carefully, his arms went around me also.

  “No, it’s just Roy. Something’s wrong with him but he still wouldn’t say what. Or he couldn’t, because he was in a lot of pain on the way. I drove us here in the Olds.” I’d briefly explained the situation on the phone, but Kayden had seemed confused, asking what I meant when I’d said, “I drove.”

  “You drove here,” he said now. “You, yourself, in that motorboat of a car?” I nodded, rubbing my cheek against his soft shirt. “And you’re not hurt,” he repeated, and again I told him no. “Didn’t you wear a coat? You’re freezing.”

  But I wasn’t, not snuggled up to him like this. I was warm, and comfortable, and lordy, I was about to cry. “I was a little scared. I don’t enjoy emergencies,” I explained.

  “Does anyone? Come on, let’s get home. Em was really pissed that I disturbed her by leaving.” He stepped back from me and I managed not to cling like a brown-throated sloth. He took off his own coat and put it around my shoulders, and then tilted his head, like he was studying me. “Not bad. Better than the garbage bag.” He frowned and brushed his long index finger gently under my eye. “Were you crying? I’ve never seen you cry.”

  “I’m not crying, but this was…something. Emergencies make you so tired, and I really, really hate being in hospitals. If I hadn’t been wearing only my uniform, I would have waited outside in the parking lot.”

  He looked down at my t-shirt, and his eyes seemed to linger for a second over the O, the circle around my boob. But what he said was, “No, you’re not wearing enough to stand in the snow. Keep my coat on.” And he put his arm around me, too, as we went out to the Bentley.

  “That’s twice, now,” I commented as Kayden steered the car home.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s twice that I’ve called you and you came for me.” I reached across the car to pat his leg. “Thank you.”

  “This one scared me to death,” he said. “A call from a hospital in the middle of the night…I drove like a crazy person. I finally understood what I put my brother through.” He sighed. “Ben got a few of those from me, or about me. More than a few.”

  “What’s going on with your brother, Kayden?” I turned and leaned against the door so I could watch him. “I want to understand what happened today at the bookstore. Why were the Thor-guy and Hallie so mad at you?”

  There were enough streetlights in Traverse City that I saw flashes of his face and there was a whole lot of stuff there: anger, sadness, and shame. That was the emotion that stuck, and it seemed like an hour passed before he finally spoke. His words were very low, and he said, “I slept with his wife. With Ben’s wife.”

  If the door hadn’t been holding me in, I would have fallen out of the car. “What?” I managed to ask. “Can you repeat that?”

  “I slept with my brother’s wife.”

  “What…how…”

  “I was a freshman in college and I was, once again, fucking up,” he said. “I was using anything I could get my hands on, drinking from morning until whatever time I passed out, late to practice, failing my classes. Ben was already coaching then and he wanted me at his house as much as possible so he could keep an eye on me. And I guess that he and his wife were having problems, and one night I came over when he wasn’t home. I had already been drinking, probably a lot.” He paused. “Yeah, definitely a lot. I shouldn’t have been driving and I shouldn’t have stayed without him there. I never liked his wife, never wanted to be around her, but she wanted to talk, and she kept pouring me more drinks, and the next thing I knew, my brother was yelling. I was naked, and she was saying that we’d had sex. I have no memory of it, none. But I don’t doubt that it happened, because that’s the kind of bastard that I am. I would do that to the guy…” He stopped. “The look on his face is what I remember. I saw how much I hurt him.”

  Oh, lordy. Oh, lordy!

  “Not a lot to say to that, right?” he asked me, and I shook my head. “It gets worse.”

  How was that possible?

  “Ben forgave me. Mostly,” he corrected. “It’s not like you could ever be ok with your brother breaking up your marriage, right? He knew that I was sorry, that I hadn’t meant it, but things weren’t the same between us after that. For me, he was still the person I relied on the most even if he didn’t...he didn’t trust me anymore, of course. He didn’t love me anymore, which makes sense. Could you love someone who treated you that terribly? Who broke your trust?”

  He’d broken his brother’s heart, too. I shook my head, not knowing what I would have felt.

  “When I got released from the Rustlers, I didn’t know where to go or what to do. The only thing I could think was that I needed my brother’s advice, so I showed up at his house. But then I—” He stopped and quickly rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I never told anybody this, not at rehab when we were supposed to be confessing all our sins. Not ever.”

  “What happened?” My throat felt so tight that it was hard to get the words out.

  “His daughter’s nanny came into my room the morning after I went on a real bender. It’s not an excuse that I was still out of my mind, is it? That I didn’t know what I was doing? I thought that she was into me, that she was there to…”

  “You thought she wanted to sleep with you,” I filled in. This was appallous. “What did you do to her?”

  “I tried to kiss her. I held onto her and I didn’t listen when she said to let go. She kneed me so hard I had trouble walking for the next few days and I got the message.�
�

  “The nanny,” I said.

  “Not just the nanny. Gaby was more than that to Ben.”

  “So you mean, the nanny who was your brother’s girlfriend,” I corrected. It was just like The Duke Requires a Wife when the widowed Lord Wilcoxon fell for the penniless lady taking care of his five kids, even though he was supposed to marry the French heiress. It turned out that the governess was the daughter of an earl anyway and they were fine in the end but this wasn’t fine, not in any way. “Your brother’s girlfriend,” I repeated. “And she’s friends with the woman from the bookstore, Hallie. That’s why we got kicked out today.”

  “Yeah. Her name is Gaby,” he repeated. “I wrote to her when I was in rehab to say that I was sorry and that she didn’t have to be afraid of me anymore.”

  I remembered Kayden calling me that name when he’d broken into my house. “Gaby,” he’d said, “I’m really sorry.” I remembered him asking if I’d gotten the letter he’d written. I didn’t know what to say to him now.

  “I did that to Gaby, and Ben will never, ever forgive me. Not that he should. He hates me, for good reason.” He hesitated and then looked across the car. “Do you hate me?”

  “I…” I hesitated, too. “I’ve been that woman, Kayden. The one who some drunk guy tried to grab or touch or worse. A lot worse. I’ve been scared out of my mind, and hurt, and it’s not like that ends when he lets you go because you break a bottle over his head. That feeling that you don’t have any power over yourself, like your body doesn’t even belong to you, that feeling stays with you.”

  “I get it. I mean, no, I don’t, because I’ve never felt that way. But I’d want to kill someone who did that to you. And I’m that guy.”

  “I don’t think you’re that guy,” I said. “I don’t think I know that person.”

  “That’s me,” he said. “I’m him, and that’s all. That’s all there is to me.”

  We rode the rest of the way home in silence. I wasn’t sure what to say, and after we passed out of the town, I couldn’t see Kayden’s face anymore to know what he was thinking.

  ∞

  Kayden

  I looked over into the stands but I didn’t see her there yet, which I told myself was fine. She hadn’t said that she was going to be at my first game, and did it matter if she saw me play for this dipshit team? No. I repeated that in my mind, no, it didn’t matter at all.

  It would have been easy to spot her, though, because the metal bleachers on the other side of the field were nearly empty. I thought of my high school stadium, which had held a few thousand. They could squeeze a few hundred onto the seats here, but it wasn’t like there was a line of people waiting to watch the Junior Woodsmen play. More like fifty or so, probably only family and true diehards, and Kylie wasn’t one of them. I wondered what she was doing instead of coming here. I looked toward the spot where my dad would have sat, wondering what he would have thought about me playing for the Junior Woodsmen. He probably would have been too ashamed to come, too.

  “Matthews!” A football hit me in the chest and I looked up to see Rami Nour holding his helmet in his hand and frowning at me. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m coming,” I told him, and I joined the rest of the offense.

  We played as badly as I would have expected, right from the first possession when the halfback ran the wrong route and the right tackle fell over like someone yelled, “Timber!” It didn’t get much better, even with Rami going up and down talking to each guy while the defense struggled on the field. It didn’t matter what he said—this team was a joke. I had no idea how he’d managed to get to a winning record the season before with these losers. I watched the defense, who played slightly better than we had, but not well enough to stop a touchdown, a field goal, another touchdown. The quarterbacks coach and the offensive coordinator both talked to me about how to start us up and put some points on the board. But Márquez, the head coach, acted like I wasn’t even there.

  Halftime was a relief, even though I wondered how hard the coaches would ream us in the frozen locker room. At least the wind wouldn’t blow through there, even if the heat and water heaters didn’t work very well. I pulled my sideline cape tighter and started toward the old building.

  “Kayden! Kayden!”

  I looked across the field at a figure in the stands waving at me. Her voice had carried well over the frozen grass and it felt like a knot loosened in my chest when I heard it. Kylie hadn’t been speaking too much to me, not since I’d made my stupid confession to her in the car after Roy’s trip to the hospital. She’d been around the house a lot since he’d taken a few days off and closed the bar, but even though the place was as big as a pin, we’d managed to avoid each other. The only one left who liked me now was Emma, but judging by her increased “tummy problems,” she’d been upset lately, too. She must have picked up on how Kylie felt, which was most likely pissed at me and probably scared of me. I thought that I should have moved out and left them both the hell alone.

  But when I saw her waving, I found myself running across the field a lot faster than I’d moved in the pocket when we were out on offense. “Hi,” I called back, and, “Kylie, hi.” I crashed into the chain-link fence that separated the bleachers from the field, as if we’d get the fans excited enough to try to rush us.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she told me immediately. “I didn’t see the whole opening set because the bus was really behind schedule and I got a car but then that took forever and I missed so much. I’m sorry!”

  “That’s ok. You actually didn’t miss very much at all,” I answered.

  She pulled up her sleeve and reached through the fence. “How is it going? You look so cold.” Her fingers brushed against my cheek.

  I put my gloved hand over hers. “Why aren’t you wearing those ugly mittens you made?” At least she had on my coat, which I’d left out for her in case she’d wanted to come. It went down to her knees and looked like she was wrapped in a sleeping bag, but it would keep her warm.

  “I left the mittens at home by mistake. I was nervous about today, I guess,” she explained. She let her palm rest against my face. “Are you ok? Really, how is it going?” Her eyes flicked to the scoreboard.

  “We’re playing like shit. Every single one of us,” I said briefly. “Me, especially.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can turn it around! It’s just like riding a bike, and I know you can do that. You can do this, too.”

  Maybe it wasn’t so useful to get football advice from the person who called the first half the “opening set,” but I nodded. “I wasn’t sure you were going to come. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t.”

  “I know you think I’m mad at you or something, but I’ve just been trying to figure this out,” she answered. “It’s really hard for me to think of you as the person who did those things, what you told me about…” She stopped.

  “Sleeping with my brother’s wife and assaulting his girlfriend.”

  Kylie winced. “I wish you hadn’t done that. I’m glad you’re sorry now, and you said that you’re still that guy—”

  “I am. That’s who I am.”

  “That’s the part that’s hard for me to accept. I just don’t see that, and maybe I’m wrong, but maybe I’m not. I don’t think you’d feel so guilty and ashamed if that was true.”

  “Ashamed. Yeah.” Maybe that was the name for the black, suffocating emotion that I felt in my chest when I thought about what I’d done. “I wish I hadn’t done it, too. I would do anything to take it back, if I could. Can you, uh,” I hesitated, not sure if I wanted to know the answer. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Me?” Her wide, beautiful eyes stared hard at me, confused. “You don’t need that from me, do you?” She rubbed her palm against my cheek. “Does it even matter what I think?”

  Yes, it did. I wasn’t sure why her forgiveness would mean so much to me, because it shouldn’t have. I opened my mouth to tell her no, or to forget it, but then I just press
ed against her hand and couldn’t say a word.

  “Matthews!”

  I turned away from Kylie to see which Junior Woodsman was barking at me now, and it was the same guy who’d been doing it the whole first half.

  Rami threw my helmet at me. “You’re not in the big league anymore. We have one equipment manager for the whole team, so you don’t have a personal butler. If you leave your helmet on the bench, it’s going to freeze. Why the hell are you over at the stands, anyway? Did you miss that your team is in the locker room?” His eyes went past me and lit on Kylie, and I moved in front of her, like I was going to protect her or something. Rami was a good guy and he wouldn’t do anything to her. It was only me that he wanted to kill.

  “I’m going there now,” I told him, and he mentioned that I should get my ass in gear. That prompted Kylie to speak over my shoulder.

  “I don’t know who you think you are, but you don’t get to talk to him like that!” she announced. “Why don’t you take your own ass to the locker room and you can shove—”

  I broke in, because I was fairly sure she wasn’t going to make a pleasant suggestion about what he could put there. “Kylie, it’s ok. He’s right, I have to go.” I took her hand, now clenched into a fist, and pressed it back against my cheek. “Use the app to open the Bentley and sit in the car for halftime, ok? Start it up and stay warm. I’ll take you to work after this is over.”

  “Ok.” She glared at Rami before nodding at me encouragingly. “I know you can turn this match around, Kayden. And you don’t need anything from me because you already have it. Do you understand what I mean?” She nodded again, dark eyebrows raised over her chocolate-brown eyes.

  I almost kissed her hand, but managed to stop myself and nodded back instead.

  “Who’s that? Girlfriend?” Rami asked me as we walked away. I also managed not to turn and watch to make sure she went to warm up in the car.

  “Roommate. Friend, she’s my friend,” I answered. “Thanks for bringing my helmet.”