One Percenter (Entangled Embrace)

by D. R. Graham

  Chapter Twenty

  Aiden smiles with relief when I say that I still love him. He tries to reach for my waist to hug me, but I know I’m going to end up kissing him if I let him, so I slap his hands away and fling his bedroom door open. He and Zeke follow me down the hall toward the kitchen. When I sneak a glance over my shoulder, he’s still grinning. God, I’ve missed him so much—the way he makes me laugh, calls me on my bullshit, and would literally die for me. I have complete faith that he would be here for me, always. It really is simple. I love him, I have always loved him, and I can’t imagine not loving him. The question is, do I want that?

  When he sees that he’s got me contemplating things, he slaps my ass.

  “Hey.” I scoot away from him and jog the rest of the way into the kitchen. His dad is standing in front of the stove flipping French toast on a griddle. I know better than to come out and ask why he thinks I’m in danger, since he doesn’t talk business at the house. There is a bowl of fruit salad on the table and scrambled eggs with salsa and avocado sizzling in a frying pan. It smells delicious. Out of habit, I open the fridge to see if there is any orange juice. Not only is there orange juice, it’s organic. There are also apples, organic milk, cheese, and a rainbow of vegetables. “Wow, did you guys go on some sort of health kick since I was here last?”

  A snort-like laugh comes from the living room. A guy who is at least six-six and three hundred pounds is asleep on the couch. His back faces me, and he’s fully clothed with his collection of patches on display. Another guy is laid out spread eagle on the floor as if he passed out and hasn’t moved since he fell. He’s only wearing jeans and his cut with his bare torso exposed. The club tattoo on his forearm has six skulls above it. My dad’s club tattoo had four skulls above it. It also had the letters ANNA above the skulls.

  The only person conscious in the living room is a rough looking woman who can’t be much older than Aiden. She has bleach-blond hair, two beach balls for a chest, and tattoos on her knuckles. She looks at home in Randy’s armchair, which means she’s his latest girlfriend, or fuck buddy. He doesn’t date women seriously and hasn’t since Aiden’s mom died, but given the fact that this one looks as if she could easily beat Randy in an arm wrestle, she might be able to bully herself into the position of Old Lady, at least for a while.

  She smiles in a way that makes me feel unwelcome and says, “I wondered why Gylly was all eager to go grocery shopping yesterday.” Her voice is scratchy like she’s been smoking six packs a day and screaming for the past ten years straight. “I ain’t gonna complain if he wants to stock the fridge to impress some skinny chick.”

  I return a fuck-you smile to make it clear that, despite my four month absence, I was here first. She shrugs in concession and lights a cigarette. That was easy. Randy’s definitely not going to keep her around.

  I grab the carton of orange juice and bend over to whisper in Aiden’s ear as I pour him a glass, “What made you think I would be here for breakfast?”

  He lifts his eyebrows in a sexy way, but doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. That’s the whole point. He knew without a doubt that I would end up here and I hadn’t even admitted it to myself. I forgot how comforting it feels for him to know my thoughts and feel my feelings.

  Randy hacks for a second, then drinks from a bottle of beer to soothe his throat. “T Bear, that’s Connie.” He waves the spatula in the woman’s direction.

  She has the nerve to look me up and down, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth, before she goes back to flipping through a magazine. Randy saw her do it and I can tell that he’s not impressed. His jeans are unbuttoned at the waist and he’s shirtless. The tattoo of Aiden’s mom’s name, Isabella, is scripted in an arc across his chest from armpit to armpit. She was killed in a motorcycle accident that was Randy’s fault and he doesn’t ever talk about her. It happened when Aiden was seven, so I only vaguely remember her. The scar that runs from the inner corner of Randy’s eye, across his cheek, and down to just below his ear looks like it’s faded a bit. He got that scar in a different motorcycle accident that happened six months before my dad was killed. It was his tenth accident, so Aiden convinced him to start wearing his glasses when he’s riding. His goatee is a little longer since I stopped hanging out here but, other than that, everything looks the same.

  Eventually, he smiles at me as if he’s missed me and turns back toward the stove. He coughs and asks, “How’s the head, T Bear? You were hitting Grandpa’s sauce pretty hard.”

  “Not bad. I don’t remember anything, though.”

  “Ah, that’s the beauty of Grandpa’s sauce.” The toaster pops and he reaches for the two slices of bread. “It’s nice to have you around again.” He pauses after opening the peanut butter jar and rubs tension out of his neck, as if what he’s going to say next is difficult. “I just wish it wasn’t because of Cooper’s funeral.”

  Oh my God. I’ve only seen Randy upset twice in my entire life—once when Aiden was in surgery after he crashed his bike, and once when the dog they had before Zeke died of cancer. Randy doesn’t show emotion like a normal person, but I know him well enough to recognize it when I see it. If Randy can’t even keep it together, how will I ever be able to?

  “I need air,” I say, gasping as I rush to the back door.

  Aiden lunges to catch up and leads me out the screen door onto the back porch where we sit on the top step. He hugs me and runs his hand over my hair. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “No.” I start bawling. Not unless you can bring Cooper back.

  “Maybe if you talk about Cooper you’ll feel better.”

  “I can’t talk about him. I don’t want it to be real. Nothing can make me feel better.”

  Aiden tightens his arm around my shoulder and rocks me. He rubs his thumb over the back of my hand and it feels comforting.

  I pull my hand away. I don’t want to be comforted. “Please, don’t be nice to me, Gylly.” He frowns, as if I slapped him, and I soften my words. “I mean, thank you for everything, but I can’t do this right now.”

  He nods with the understanding and patience that he has always shown me, and it just makes me feel worse for pushing him away. He rests his elbows on his knees as he stares at the maple tree in the back yard. After a while, he sighs and asks, “Do you remember when we used to climb that tree? It was way smaller then.”

  “Yeah.” I angle my head back to look up at how tall the tree has grown. The first time I ever climbed it, I was about six years old and he said I wouldn’t be able to do it, so I proved him wrong. The last time I ever climbed it, I was twelve years old and accidently witnessed him kiss a girl on his back porch. I was completely devastated and refused to talk to him for at least a month. He never found out why. “Do you remember when Cooper and I ran away from home and we sat up there all night?”

  He nods as the memory flickers in his expression.

  It feels so familiar to be here and, in this exact moment, I can’t remember why I ever left. I lean against his shoulder. We sit quietly and I listen to the sound of his breathing. “Gylly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “If you knew what happened to Cooper, you would tell me, right?” He sits up a little straighter and the muscles in his arm tense under my cheek. He doesn’t answer, so I lift my head to check his expression. “Would you tell me?”

  His jaw looks like it was chiseled from stone and the intensity in his eyes sends a shiver through my body. “If I knew what happened to Cooper I would take care of it.”

  I rest my head back on his shoulder and reach over to hold his hand. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t need to thank me. I would do anything for you. You know that.”

  I turn my head and kiss his cheek. “I know, but you’d have to beat me to it.”

  He knows I’m serious, and my reckless declaration doesn’t impress him, but he also looks fairly confident that I would never beat him to it. With the club working on it, I have to admit it’s probably tr
ue they will get to the guy first. If the chance presents itself, though, I won’t hesitate.

  “How have you been?” I ask so he’ll stop worrying about what kind of stupid trouble my impulsive anger might land me in.

  He’s quiet for a while. “Do you remember when I tried to break up that fight Mickey was in?”

  “The one when you got stabbed?”

  “Yeah. Do you remember how much pain I was in from the collapsed lung?”

  I nod and cringe from the memory. The night he got stabbed, someone told me he was hurt and, when I got to him, he was writhing in horrific pain. He couldn’t breathe and his face had turned blue. I was hysterical. Thinking about it gives me a crushing feeling in my chest.

  “When I heard that you slept with that Crofton asshole after only knowing him for a couple weeks, it hurt more than getting stabbed. Only this time the pain hasn’t gone away.”

  What is he talking about? Whoever was tailing me got it all wrong. “I didn’t sleep with him.”

  He frowns and looks directly in my eyes accusingly. “Don’t lie.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Gylly.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I shrug, too tired to fight. “You can believe whatever you want. I didn’t sleep with him.”

  “Why not?”

  I blink hard and pick at the paint of the porch step. “I knew you didn’t cheat on me with Leah.”

  He exhales, and the relief releases tension from his muscles. “Why did you take off, then?”

  How am I supposed to tell him I left because I don’t believe he can give me what I want? I don’t answer. I refuse to crush him like that.

  “Was it the ring?”

  The ring. The club. My entire messed up life. Where would I even begin? It takes a long time to work up the courage to say, “I got scared.”

  “You could have just talked to me about how you were feeling.”

  No. All that would have done was make it crystal clear that I was unhappy. Nothing else would have changed. He deserves an answer, I know, but it’s cruel to twist the knife that I left impaled in his back.

  “You didn’t need to run away.”

  “Yeah, I did.” I didn’t want to have that conversation then and I don’t want to have it now.

  “Why?”

  Because I could already feel the pull of this world sucking me down, enticing me to give up on my dreams, and luring me into a suffocating trap with people the real world despises. “Because I love you so much.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “I know.” I stand and step down into the backyard. “Do you mind taking me home?”

  “Stay for breakfast.”

  “I can’t.” I can’t stay. I can’t tell you the truth. I can’t do any of this.

  “If you don’t want the ring, I’ll take it back.”

  I clutch my fingers around it. “I don’t want to give it back.”

  “What the hell, Ti? Just tell me what’s going on in your head.”

  The tears pour down my face again. I have to bend over and prop my hands on my knees to hold myself up. “I can’t deal with this right now, okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay.” His voice deepens with frustration. “You say you still love me, you want to keep the ring, you claim that you haven’t slept with anyone else, but you don’t want to be with me. Just say it. Admit that you’re ashamed of me.”

  I shake my head and close my eyes. I’m not ashamed of him. I’m ashamed of who I was. “Please, don’t.”

  “Tell me why you left.”

  “No.”

  He stands and grabs my shoulders firmly, but still in complete control.

  “Let go!”

  “You can’t keep avoiding this. I deserve an answer.”

  “Leave me alone, Gylly.”

  “No. Cut the bullshit. Tell me.”

  My jaw clenches in a last ditch attempt to prevent the words that will slay him from spewing out, but it’s too late. “Fine! You really want to know the truth? I don’t want to end up like my fucking mom, okay? I don’t want to marry some charming lowlife outlaw when I’m eighteen and watch my future get sucked down the drain. I actually want to know that my husband isn’t going to end up facedown in a river somewhere with a bullet in his head. I actually want my kids to see their father once in a while, and it would be really cool if they could look up to him and maybe want to be like him one day instead of hating his fucking guts. I also don’t want to take my children to visit their dad in prison or at a gravesite. Most importantly, I don’t want my baby girl to have to feel the pain of losing her brother because he was a pawn in a stupid turf war that had nothing to do with him. I don’t want that life.”

  His chest rises and falls with rapid, adrenaline-fueled breaths as the impact of what I’ve said sinks in. “I’m not your dad, Ti.”

  “Yeah? You look like him. You talk like him. You act like him.”

  “You know that’s not true. I’m going to school. I don’t do drugs. I don’t even have a juvie record.”

  “So what? If it all leads to the same place, six feet under with your cut framed on the wall at the club, what does it matter?”

  A Harley engine rumbles down the alley and a second later, Mickey pulls up to the chain link fence. “Gylly! Something’s come up. We gotta go.”

  Aiden reaches for my hand and steps in closely to speak in my ear. “I have to do this.”

  “Of course you do,” I snap.

  “This conversation is not over.”

  I pull away from him. “Apparently it is.”

  His expression is pained, torn between me, fuming with my arms crossed, and Mickey, revving his bike. Finally he says, “This business is about Cooper. You know I wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t important. Please be here when I get back.” He kisses my cheek, then rushes down the path and hops the fence. He doesn’t look again before they take off, maybe because he’s afraid that I’m already gone.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I step into the Gyllenhalls’ kitchen through the screen door I see Randy, Connie, and the spread eagle guy eating their breakfasts in the living room. The giant who had been sleeping on the couch is now at the kitchen table. The denim jacket under his leather cut reeks of engine oil, gasoline, and exhaust grime. His skin is just as pungent with alcohol, tobacco, and sweat.

  He shovels a heaping forkful of scrambled eggs in his mouth and eyes me, wondering why I’m frozen. “What?”

  “You smell like my dad.”

  He laughs and makes a gesture to invite me to sit at the table with him. “Nasty?”

  “Yeah. It reminds me of him.”

  “I knew your daddy,” he says as he squirts half a bottle of ketchup on the hash browns. “I met him in prison and we rode together quite a few times after that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Wing Nut.” I nod as I remember some of the stories that included a Wing Nut character. “Bert was a good guy,” he says, as if it is indisputable.

  I make a snorting sound and roll my eyes in wholehearted disagreement.

  Wing Nut snaps his hand up as if he’s going to backhand my mouth. It makes me flinch, but then he relaxes and returns to eating. “Don’t sass your dead daddy.”

  They’re even more alike than I thought. “He wasn’t much of a dad.”

  “Listen here, I got eight kids spread all across North America and I ain’t even met half of them. Your daddy called and checked in on you and your brother every damn night.”

  “Big deal. When he called, my mom spent the entire time screaming and swearing at him for not being home. They never got around to talking about Cooper and me, and she usually threw the phone against the wall before we had a chance to say hi to him.”

  “At least he tried.” He sits back and pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his jean jacket. “I was with your daddy when he got the call that you’d got yourself into some trouble. He hopped on his bike and drove all night to get home if I
remember right.”

  “Yeah, he came home and whupped my ass. That’s real quality parenting.” A deep resentment boils inside. I don’t know if it’s because Wing Nut reminds me so much of my dad, or if it’s because I’m too exhausted to keep the bitterness buried anymore, but all the animosity I never felt safe enough to unleash on my dad starts to surface. “Is it chapter seven in the parenting handbook that states that a father should turn his fifteen-year-old daughter black and blue because she did something stupid to get his fucking attention?”

  “You didn’t need to fuck up to get his attention.”

  “No? Are you sure? I got straight As and that obviously didn’t impress him. I was the lead in three plays and he didn’t show up to watch any of them. I was chosen to attend a drama conference in New York and he didn’t send the check to pay for it, so I didn’t get to go.” My laugh is loaded with hostility. “I got caught stealing once and he tore home as soon as he found out.”

  “He was proud of those other things. He told me you’re a smartass and that you want to be an actress. Your mama must have videotaped your plays and emailed them to him. He had them saved on his phone.”

  Maybe he’s telling the truth, but I shake my head. I don’t care. It’s too little, too late.

  Wing Nut watches me for a while before saying, “My oldest daughter is fifteen and getting in some trouble. I wouldn’t mind hearing what you were going through at her age. Maybe you can help me understand her better.”

  Is he fucking kidding me? “You need to spend time with her to understand her. It’s simple.”

  Connie enters the kitchen with the stack of dirty dishes from the living room and places them in the sink that is already filled with soapy water. She spins around and props her hands on the counter as if she wants to hang out with us. Wing Nut growls, “Get outta here, woman. Can’t you see we’re talking?”

  “Oh.” Her cheeks blush and she quickly makes her way across the floor. “Sorry.”