by Callie Hart
“Damn you, Sully Fletcher,” I whispered. “Damn you all to hell.” Quickly I got up and got dressed, trying not to disturb him. I was fully clothed about to tiptoe my way down the spiral staircase when his voice stopped me.
“Lang, wait.”
Crap. I turned, and Sully was sitting up in the confusion of sheets, chest bare, light shining down on him through the huge windows overhead. He had a frown on his face, but his eyes were soft. Not angry. Just slightly disappointed, perhaps. “This isn’t going to work for me,” he said.
“What isn’t?”
“You sneaking off in the early hours of the morning, fully intending not to come back. Right?”
I looked down at my feet.
“Lang?” He sighed heavily, rubbing his face in his hands. When he looked up at me, I could see the hard set in his eyes. “I want to meet them,” he said. I jerked, not sure I’d heard properly. Did he mean Connor and Amie? He couldn’t, surely. Not after being so violently apposed to the idea in the first place. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You don’t want to get too involved with me because of the children?” he continued.
“I don’t want to get too involved with you because I have to go soon, and I don’t want to be a shell of a person when I get back to L.A., Sully. I thought you wanted to keep this simple, too.”
He blew out a frustrated breath, bowing his head. “Maybe that’s what I wanted. At first. But now... I don’t know. Would it be the worst thing in the world if I wanted more?”
“I didn’t think you were capable. That’s what you said.”
“I don’t even know if I am. But I want to find out.”
I shook my head slowly. “Sully, I can’t risk hurting the children, confusing them, purely so we can figure out if we’re meant to be together or not. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I don’t just want to meet them because of us,” he said quickly. “When I saw Connor up on that stage the other night…” He sighed, glancing down at his interlinked hands. “I wanted to come and find you when it was all over then. It was like looking back in time, back to when Ronan and I were little. I couldn’t believe it. And Amie. She’s so small. So perfect. Seeing her actually terrified me. Neither Ronan nor I ever did anything to deserve such a perfect little girl. I felt so protective over both of them that it felt like I’d run head first into a brick wall. I couldn’t fucking handle it. But then over the days that followed…I don’t know. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So I made them the presents. I saw you guys all playing in the snow yesterday morning, and…” He shook his head, refusing to look at me. “I thought, I’m meant to be a part of that. I don’t know how I fit into it, but I know that I do somehow.” Rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, he looked like he was fighting for the right thing to say and coming up short. “So, it’s not just about you, Lang. It’s them, too. Do you understand? I’m not promising anything. I’m not saying I’m gonna take them or anything. I just…want to meet them.”
I was a lot of things all at once: Excited. Overjoyed. Anxious. Protective. Could the children take meeting Sully without being completely overwhelmed? It was a lot to take in. Ronan and Magda had never mentioned Sully to either of the children. They had no idea their father had a twin brother. The resemblance was going to freak them out, especially Connor.
But still. This was what Ronan had wanted. He had wanted Sully to be the children’s legal guardian eventually. He certainly would have wanted Connor and Amie to meet Sully in any case, despite the fact that he never got around to introducing them when he was alive. I squeezed my car keys in my pocket, making up my mind.
“Okay then.”
Sully looked up quickly. “Okay?”
“Yes. But they’re so young, Sully, and they’ve been through a lot. Don’t fuck them over. I swear to god, if you do, I’ll castrate you and hang your balls out to dry. Do you copy?”
He flashed his teeth, probably smirking at my use of one of his favorite phrases. “Copy. I promise I won’t fuck them over. And Lang? Just so you know, I don’t plan on fucking you over, either. I promise that, too.”
******
“So, he looks just like him then? He’s exactly the same?” Connor hadn’t glanced up from his book since I sat him and his sister down to talk about Sully, but he was clearly paying attention because he was asking a lot of questions. “How come we didn’t know about him?”
“Your dad and Sully had a really bad argument, and they weren’t friends for a very long time. Your dad came here to make friends with him again, though, and he really wanted you to get to meet Sully.”
“I heard Mommy say Sully in her sleep,” Amie announced. “She was sad. She was crying in her dreams.”
“No, she didn’t,” Connor snapped. “That never happened.”
“That’s okay.” I put a hand on Connor’s shoulder, trying to cut that line of conversation off before he could grow agitated. “All I want to know right now is if you would like to have Sully over to the house?”
Connor closed his book and put it down on the arm of the chair. “What if we don’t want him to?” he asked.
“Then that’s okay. He doesn’t have to come here at all. I think you would like him, though.”
“I want him to come,” Amie sang. “I want to say thank you for my dinosaur.” I’d confessed that Sully was the one who’d sent them the gifts at the beginning of the conversation, and Amie’s eyes had lit up. Likely she was planning how to obtain even more dinosaur skeletons from this stranger so she could start up a proper collection.
“What about you, Connor?” He was silent. “Connor?” I went and sat down next to him. “I mean it, you know. It really is okay if you don’t want to meet him. I get it.”
“Why hasn’t he come and seen us before now?” he asked.
“Well.” God, this was going to be difficult. “You remember how you felt when your dad died, don’t you? Sully felt the same way. He’s been very sad. It’s taken him a long time to feel better, but now that he does he would really like to see you.” It would have been far too complicated to explain it any other way. Connor nodded a little and sniffed.
“Okay. He can come over. But if I don’t like him, I’m not going to talk to him.”
“That’s all right, buddy. It’s totally okay if you change your mind.”
I could imagine it all too well: Sully showing up and not knowing what to say or how to act. Connor feeling uncomfortable and running for his bedroom. Odds were that was exactly what was going to happen, but it was better than the alternative. It was better than Connor never meeting Sully, and it was better than Sully always wondering.
There was only one way to find out.
******
“Are you ready?”
“Not really. This is more intimidating than going before a military court.”
“You went before a military court?”
“No. Kind of. Not really. Are you sure they’re not going to flip out?” Sully clearly didn’t want to talk about the military court comment, however I was all too interested. Another time, though. I rubbed my hand across his chest, trying to reassure him.
“They might at first. But it’ll be fine, I promise. They’re good kids. You might just need to give them a moment to adjust is all.”
“I’m the one who needs time to adjust,” he said. “What if they call me Dad by mistake? I’ll lose my fucking shit, Lang. I’m not joking.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll remind them your name is Uncle Sully, and you’ll cut them some slack. This is just as hard for them as it is for you. Harder. You knew they existed, after all. You’re completely out of the blue to them.”
He looked unconvinced. I’d been so sure he was going to call and bail this morning, but when he’d actually shown up at ten o’clock sharp, wearing a smart, ironed shirt and a pair of clean black jeans I’d had to give him credit: he was a man of his word. A terrified man of his word, admittedly, but still.
“Come on,” I told h
im. “They’re waiting for you.” Leading him through to the kitchen, both Connor and Amie were sitting at the table, gluing down pictures I’d been cutting out of magazines for them all day onto huge pieces of craft paper. Amie was covered in glitter, her fingers absolutely plastered with glue to the point where she couldn’t spread them apart anymore. Connor had small, white fragments of paper down the front of his shirt and in his hair, which was curling like crazy all over the place.
When Sully and I walked into the room, the children fell silent, and Sully froze—a rabbit trapped in the headlights. The three of them looked at one another, staring and I began to wonder if this wasn’t just a huge mistake. Connor was the first to look away. Slowly, he picked up a cut-out picture of a soccer player and began to rub his glue stick over the back of it; the tips of his ears were practically glowing, but his cheeks were pale, pale, white, like he was in shock.
“Whoa,” Amie breathed. She looked at me, sweet little face full of confusion, as if checking in with me—is this really happening? “You look just like my daddy,” she whispered. I’d warned them both that Sully was more than just a little bit like Ronan, that he was exactly like Ronan, but Amie couldn’t be blamed for being surprised now. The resemblance was unnatural.
Sully shifted from one foot to another, clearing his throat. I’d never seen him so out of sorts. “Yeah, well. People say that a lot,” he replied. “It must be weird for you, huh?”
Amie nodded gravely. “It’s really weird.”
“I get that. I’m sorry…I haven’t come to see you before.”
Amie nodded. “Feelya said you were sad, so it’s okay. Are you still sad now?”
“I think I might be a little bit,” he said. “But I’m getting better.”
Was he telling the truth? Was he getting better? Did he hate Ronan a little less every day, and miss him a little bit more? It was so hard to tell with him. As soon as anyone mentioned Ronan’s name, it was as though a heavy, metal roller shutter was slamming down in front of him. He didn’t want to talk about him. He didn’t want to reminisce. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even want to think about the fact that he had a twin a lot of the time, which made it difficult to talk freely about the situation we were in now. Sully glanced around the kitchen awkwardly. I could tell that he didn’t really know what to do with himself, which made me unreasonably proud. This was such a huge step for him.
He paced slowly toward the table and stopped in front of Connor. “What are you making, man?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Connor replied. “A picture of under the sea?”
Sully tipped his head to the side, trying to take a better look. Connor leaned over his picture, hiding it from view, though. “Hey, that’s okay. Artists don’t like sharing their work until they’re finished, right? I’m sorry. I forgot.”
Connor glanced quickly up at him and shrugged. “I’m not an artist. I’m just a kid.”
“Well, you’re way better at art than I am, either way.” Sully shot me an anxious sideways look. He clearly thought he was drowning, making zero headway with the little boy; he didn’t realize just how amazing it was that Connor was interacting with him at all, though.
“Are you staying here for lunch with us?” Amie asked, clambering up so that she was standing on the seat of her chair, glue spatula in one hand and a dog-eared picture of Victoria Beckham in the other.
Again, Sully looked at me, worry lines forming on his face. “Ahhh, I’m not sure. I guess I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Maybe Sully will stay, depending on a few things,” I told her.
“What few things?”
“Well, depending on if you guys all like each other and want to hang out, I suppose.”
“I like him,” she said. “And I like Connor, and I like you. I think we should spend all day together.”
“That’s very nice of you, Amie, but we’ll just play it by ear, though, okay?”
She accepted this with a tiny frown on her face, and didn’t push the matter further. “You can sit here,” she said, patting the table across from her. “Would you like some beers?”
Her offer surprised me since we didn’t have any beers, and I hadn’t had any in front of her. Ever. Maybe Ronan used to have a drink or two when he got home from work or something. “That’s all right, Amie. It’s ten fifteen in the morning. It’s a little early to be drinking beer,” Sully said, smiling.
“Daddy used to like drinking beers,” she replied. “Daddy had beer for breakfast all the time.”
Ronan used to drink beer for breakfast? Jeez. He’s lost his wife. He’d been fucked up enough to take his own life. The fact that he was knocking back a beer or two before heading out to work was pretty sad, though.
Sully looked like he was about to snatch up his jacket in the hallway and bolt out of the place, never to return, so I grabbed him by the hand and sat down at the table, sealing the deal. No escaping now. Normally Connor would have been surly and snappy if he found himself in a situation he couldn’t control. He didn’t seem that way today, though. He seemed too stunned to be anything but silent.
“Why don’t Sully and I make a picture, too, and you guys can tell us what you think, huh?” I picked up a couple of the magazines in the middle of the table and offered one to Sully. He took it gratefully and began to cut out pictures with the tiny kiddie scissors I’d been using earlier, his hands far too big to wield them efficiently.
An hour later, Rose let herself into the house and came into the kitchen to find Connor and Amie laughing raucously at the picture we’d just completed. We’d turned Lady Gaga into a nun, and some famous-right-now model had been given a makeover, transformed into a vampire, complete with drawn-in fangs and evil laser eyes, courtesy of Sully. In the middle of the page, a huge picture of some English boy band member was riding a stallion that Amie insisted was a unicorn, and the rest of the band members’ heads had been cut from their own bodies and glued onto the bodies of cats.
Rose stood in the doorway and took in the scene, her arms filled with groceries, amusement written all over her face. “Looks like I’ve been missing all the fun, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Come and draw with us,” Amie squealed. “I made a Triceratops! Look!”
Rose dutifully looked at the mess of images Amie had stuck down on the paper and nodded, telling her what an excellent job she’d done. She then turned to me and said, “O? Think you could help me put these groceries away for a second?”
“Sure.”
Sully was so engrossed in his conversation with Connor, debating with him whether or not a skinny bikini clad woman from one of the fashion magazines we’d cut up was actually an alien, poorly disguised as a human, that he didn’t even look up when I left the table.
Rose dragged me into the pantry and pulled the door half closed behind us. “What the hell is going on?” she hissed. She was smiling, delighted, but at the same time she seemed concerned, too.
“He asked,” I said. “I didn’t drug him and bundle him into the trunk in order to get him over here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t thinking that at all. But now I am!”
“There’s nothing to be worried about, Rose, I promise. I explained about Sully to them, and both of them agreed that they wanted to see him. The whole morning’s gone really well, actually.”
“Hmm. I don’t know. I never thought he’d change his mind. He’s not the kind of guy to go back on something once he’s sworn to it once or twice.”
“I know. I know.”
“Do you think he’s gonna do what Ronan asked and take them, then?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
“All right, O. But god, just be careful, okay? Sully’s a good man, and he’s definitely mellowed since he met you, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he freaks out on you after this. Just watch for it, honey. I’d really hate to see you or the children get hurt.”
******
Sully stayed fo
r the rest of the afternoon, and it was worrying. Worrying, because I spent the entire time waiting for the other shoe to drop. Amie was giggly and silly with Sully, playing with him and screaming at the top of her lungs when he chased her around the living room. Connor was quiet for a long time, but soon warmed up and joined in the fun. It was surreal. I kept getting hit with the strongest sense of déjà vu, back to the night before Ronan killed himself, when he was charging around the same living room, wearing that pirate patch.
Four o’clock rolled around, and Sully said he needed to leave. Amie looked like she was going to cry. “But I didn’t even get to ask for another skeleton,” she whispered.
“Well, maybe, if Sully comes back again another day, you can ask him then.” She’d spoken loud enough that he heard what she said anyway, and he winked at me. He seemed light. Carefree. Less like the world was weighing down on him from all angles. He’d changed so much over the past couple of weeks that it was almost hard to believe.
“Why don’t you go and relax for a little while, too?” Rose said, as I went to see Sully out. “I’ve got things handled here. If this is what happens to Sully Fletcher when he falls in love, then you two should definitely spend as much time together as possible.”
I nearly died. No one mentioned being in love. I hadn’t. Sully sure as hell hadn’t. Why would she say something like that? It felt like the ground was yawning open and about to swallow me up whole. I glowered at Rose over Sully’s shoulder, subtly trying to let her know how mad I was, when I saw Sully’s reflection in the mirror on the wall right next to us, along with my own, and realized that he’d seen every single frown and glower I’d sent her way. Perfect.
