Now or Never

by Victoria Denault

  “Ty is not Eli,” I reply and try to make a joke to keep it light. “And besides wait until you’re over ten years in. Knowing you, you’ll be build a she shed in the backyard to get away from him. Unless you two dummies are still in that shoebox you call an apartment. Then it’ll be a murder-suicide thing.”

  “Ha. Ha,” she replies. “Actually, we’re looking at bigger places now. We want a second bedroom I can use as a home office and a guest room. In case you and Ty ever come back here.”

  “Look at you growing up,” I say with a smile.

  “Yeah, well it was bound to happen.” Dixie laughs but it stops as quickly as it started and her voice gets heavy. “I miss you, by the way. It’s hard enough not having Dad here, but not having you here either makes it harder.”

  Her confession makes my heart ache so painfully my eyes water. “That’s why I couldn’t move back to San Francisco. I couldn’t be there without him. I couldn’t be around all of you and not have him there.”

  “Oh Win, it’s got to be harder on your own,” Dixie says softly. “We’re helping each other through it here, and we’d help you through it.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to,” I whisper back and fight the overwhelming need to cry. “Alone is better for me.”

  “Alone with Ty,” Dixie corrects and I let out an audible sigh. “You are with Ty…right?”

  “Are you concerned about me or about Ty?” I snap.

  “Whoa. What the fuck, Win?” Dixie says, offended. “We shouldn’t be fighting. Why are we fighting?”

  “I’m sorry,” I reply. “I just…I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she replies and pauses. “Is this about the letters Dad left us?”

  My heart pinches painfully like it suddenly doesn’t fit in my chest. She hit the nail directly on the head. My dad left each of us letters, which my mother gave us the morning after he passed. None of us knew he was going to do that, so it was a shock and it was also bittersweet. We had one last chance to have some of his humor and wisdom, but he was candid and open even more so than he’d ever been in life, at least in my letter. I didn’t ask what he’d written to my siblings. I didn’t want to know and I didn’t want to share my letter with them. This was my little piece of him to hold on to alone forever. And now that she’s brought it up, I can’t take a deep breath and I can’t respond to her even if I wanted to, which I don’t. Dixie being Dixie just talks for me. “I know Dad said a lot of really amazing things in mine, but he also said a lot of things that were so insightful they were almost painful.”

  “Yeah,” I whisper, managing to get my voice back just a little. “He gave me a lot to think about.”

  “Me too,” she replies softly. “Winnie, if things don’t feel right in Toronto with Ty…come back. Anytime. Please. You are not alone.”

  “I’m good where I’m at,” I reply vaguely so I’m not technically lying to her. “I mean it’s hard. It’s the hardest time of my life. But I’m where I need to be to get through it.”

  “Okay,” Dixie sniffs and I realize she might be crying. “We all miss you, Win.”

  “I miss you guys too,” I confess and it’s the truth. I just know that I need my space right now. “I’ll call you soon. Love to everyone.”

  “Love you too. Hi to Ty. Bye.”

  “Bye,” I reply and hang up.

  I instantly regret not telling her I broke up with Ty and came back to the cottage. But I know that I would regret it more if I did tell her. She would tell everyone. Mom would be worried. Sadie would be calling me all the time. Jude would take this as some kind of project—fix broken Winnie—like he used to do when we were kids and I was self-conscious and painfully awkward and he would always try to make me feel better. Jude’s easy confidence always made me feel like it made my awkwardness more evident and I think he felt guilty about that. I love them all—desperately—but I need to find my own way through this. Through my dad’s death and my failed relationship and my feelings about the rest of my life.

  I take a sip of wine and stare out at Holden’s dark trailer. Guilt fills me again. I was an ass to him when he was just trying to help me. I have been an ass to him since I saw him, not that he didn’t deserve it. Ugh. I take another sip of wine and tip my head back. My stomach growls. I decide to order some pizza and as I’m on the phone with Bill’s Pizza I spontaneously order two large pies. One with my typical cheese blend and one with pepperoni, pineapple and mushrooms—the pizza Holden always ordered when he was a kid. I remember it because I thought it was a weird combination and because, to me, pineapple on pizza is a blight against humanity. I don’t know why I remember that about him, but I do.

  It’s the off-season, so Bill’s isn’t too busy and the order shows up, delivered on the back of a scooter as usual, by the same guy who has been delivering pizzas since he was sixteen. Then he was a pimply faced, gangly thing. Now he’s a heavy-set, bearded guy, but he still has the same thick New England accent.

  “Sadie, right?” he says as I open the screen door.

  “Winnie,” I reply and I hand him the cash in my hand.

  “Oops. Sorry,” he says. “I think this is the first time I’ve seen one of you without the others.”

  I try to give him a smile as I take the pizza boxes from him and wait for my change. “Tell your brother good luck this season. San Francisco Thunder is my favorite team.”

  “Yeah, I’ll tell him.” I smile again. I never tell him. If Jude knew how many times someone gives me a message about how talented, cool, hot he is, his ego would be bigger than he is.

  The pizza guy leaves and as his scooter starts away from the house, I notice Holden walking toward it. Well, weaving is probably a better description. Huh. Holden is drunk. This both disturbs me and fascinates me in equal parts, but it shouldn’t. It should only make me fearful because I remember drunk teenage Holden and he was mean. I remember it clear as day. We didn’t drink a lot as kids, mostly because everyone knew we were underage and we had to walk two towns over to find a place that would take our fake ID, but on the occasions we managed to get alcohol, Holden would end the night punching someone or something. Mostly it was people—he’d pick a fight with anyone. And if no one took the bait he’d punch trees, kick parked cars, knock mailboxes off their posts. He was just plain scary.

  I watch him as he stumbles, tripping over a slight lip in the sidewalk, curses and continues on to his trailer. It’s dark outside and he’s on a crash course for the lawn chair he left in the driveway so I reach over and flip on the outside lights. He stops and looks up, but he doesn’t say anything. He just stands there staring. He isn’t frowning or snarling, which is a good sign, so I open the screen door and hobble out and down the stairs, still holding the pizza boxes.

  I stop before him and hold the boxes a little higher. “I bought you a pizza as a peace offering.”

  His silvery eyes drop to the boxes and then slowly rise back to find mine. They’re glassy, probably swimming in tequila like the rest of him. I can smell it, along with the natural scent I’ve noticed is grown-up Holden. I can’t describe the smell only the feeling it gives me: a happy flutter deep inside my gut. The same feeling I get when I hear waves crashing or smell a salty ocean mist.

  “Peace?” he repeats skeptically but not maliciously. He raises one of his eyebrows. “I’m not at war, Winona.”

  Why does he call me by my full name? No one has, since birth. I was actually shocked to find out at five years old that my full name wasn’t actually just Winnie. I rearrange the boxes in my hand so the one with his pizza is on top and open it. “I’m sorry for being a bitch when you were just trying to help me with my knee. And I’m sorry that helping me messed up something for you. This pizza is my way of trying to express that.”

  He looks down at the contents of the box and gives me a big drunken grin. “Pineapple, mushroom, pepperoni?” I nod and his grin somehow gets even bigger as he reaches for a slice. “Shit, I forgot how much I fucking loved this.”

&
nbsp; He takes a huge bite, closing his eyes while he chews. I just stand there, leg throbbing, staring at him. Why am I so…mesmerized. It’s just a drunk childhood bully eating pizza. Yet I’m captivated and…well, a little enamored. He’s not mean drunk Holden like he was way back when. He’s actually kind of goofy. And cute.

  I jerk slightly at that thought. I just called him cute. He notices the movement and our eyes meet again. “What?”

  “Nothing.” I shake my head. “So where’d you go tonight?”

  “I went for a walk. Ended up buying some booze and drinking it down by the beach.” He takes another big bite and cocks his head toward his trailer. “Wanna come inside and grab a beer?”

  I nod again. Why am I nodding? This was not part of the plan. The plan was to hand him the pizza and go back to my cottage and finish my bottle of wine and cry some more. But I’m doing that every night, and it’s a habit I should be trying to break. He walks over to his trailer and opens the door, holding it for me to enter.

  “Drunk adult Holden is not what I expected,” I blurt out as I walk up the steps and into his trailer. I’m as surprised as I was the first time I came in here to take a shower. It’s so clean and well kept and smells like pine and lemon. I was expecting some dank, run-down thing that smelled like stale beer and mildew. He slips past me, placing a hand on my hip like it’s not big deal. It isn’t. It just feels like one.

  “Have a seat, gimpy,” he says casually and points to the built-in couch at the end of the countertop. I shuffle that way and sit. As he opens his fridge, he says, “You expected me to be the same ranting, rage-filled drunk I was as a kid, right? Sorry to disappoint. I can go outside and punch something if it will put you at ease. Wanna head to the beach and watch me tip a lifeguard stand?”

  A laugh bubbles up from my chest and escapes, making a light cackling sound. I haven’t laughed in literally months. It feels as awkward as it sounds. He hands me a Sam Adams and reaches for another piece of pizza. I open the other box, grabbing a slice and taking a bite.

  “I’m not that guy anymore, Larry,” he replies and I snap my head up to see a feisty grin on his face and he winks at me. I smile. “Careful now, you almost look like you’re happy.”

  “I’m not,” I reply firmly. “But I’m working on it.”

  “Wanna finally tell me why that is? Or do you want to just keep crying and bitching like Emo Barbie until I figure it out?” he says with a teasing smile.

  I slowly swallow down a bite of pizza, take a deep breath and say it. “My dad died.”

  It’s like someone hit a pause button. He stops chewing, stops breathing, stops moving. The only thing that changes is his expression. The cheeky, self-assured drunken glimmer in his eye and smile on his face disappear and are replaced with pure and simple sympathy.

  “Winnie, I am so—”

  “Please don’t offer condolences,” I say as tears prick the back of my eyes. “I don’t want to cry again tonight. I’m not handling it well at all. Obviously. I’m in a very dark place, but that didn’t give me the right to be a bitch to you when you were helping me out.”

  He pauses to take another bite and wash it down with some beer. “You have every right to be in a dark place. I was in a dark place for a very long time after my mom died when I was ten.”

  That information is completely new to me. I knew his mom wasn’t around when he was younger. He never talked about her or where she was but he would constantly mention his dad’s girlfriends and how much he hated them. I thought maybe his mom had just left the family.

  “Is that why you were such a dick as a kid?” I ask boldly because I’m tipsy myself and this whole day has turned me upside down emotionally. I’m not sure where my—our—boundaries are and I’m wondering if we have any. “Because your mom died?”

  He nods. “Mostly. I mean there were a lot of factors, but that was the trigger. She was no Randy Braddock, but she was the best thing I had.”

  I feel winded by that statement. By the fact that he lost someone who clearly meant everything to him and by the declaration that he, a relative stranger, knew my dad was something special. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “One March we had one last blowout storm, as we do here in New England,” he says, winking at me. “My dad ran the trailer park in the summer but in the winter he ran a snow- removal company and he was out all night clearing driveways and roads for his contracts, but he didn’t bother to clear ours yet. So my mom went out there, at like five in the morning to shovel the driveway. I don’t know why she didn’t wake me to do it. I always shoveled. But she didn’t. And she slipped on some black ice, fell and hit the back of her head on the steps. And she died. Just like that.”

  “Oh my God,” I whisper. He nods.

  “Yeah. It was so stupid and so fucking random.” The bitter quality in his voice that he had in the past is back, as if it never left. He takes a long, deep breath before speaking again, his eyes on the floor of the trailer. “I handled it as badly as anyone possibly could have. But you know all about that.”

  I blink and he looks right at me. “I could handle it a hell of a lot worse, trust me.”

  “That statement wasn’t a challenge,” he replies quietly with a small smile. “It’s not a hold-my-beer moment. I’m just saying, it’s clear you’re struggling. And I’m not judging that. I just would hate for you to make mistakes, because you’re so blinded by grief, that you live to regret.”

  “I’m not doing that,” I reply. “I’m doing the opposite.”

  He stops eating, pizza crust inches from his full, pretty mouth. His eyes look more silvery and wolfish in the fluorescent trailer lights than they normally do. And it’s making me warm in places that shouldn’t be—not over Holden Hendricks. I hate him.

  “Does your boyfriend think that?”

  “We broke up,” I reply tersely, take another bite of pizza and chew on it like I’m teaching it a lesson. “That hug you saw was a good-bye hug. That’s why he’s back in Toronto and I’m still here.”

  He has this way of staring at me that hasn’t changed in decades. He did it when we were kids too. It’s like my face is some kind of foreign novel he’s trying to translate. It’s annoying as all hell and makes me want to blush. When I was a kid I wouldn’t be able to fight the blush that came from his attention and then he would smirk, like he thought I was a joke, and laugh at me. Holden doesn’t do that now, but I also keep my cheeks from turning into flaming red balls. “So you lost your dad and your boyfriend at the same time?”

  “Not really. I lost Ty years ago,” I tell him and take a big swig of my beer. “Well, he lost me.”

  “Why?” Holden asks.

  “Because he fucked someone else.” I am shocked I just came out and said it. I’ve never told anyone what Ty did. No one. I was humiliated and blamed myself. But I always thought when I did tell someone it would be Dixie or Sadie and it would be with less cussing. “And I spent a year trying to forgive him, but I couldn’t. I decided I didn’t want to and that makes me a giant bitch, because I think he was really truly sorry.”

  “That doesn’t make you a bitch, Winona,” Holden replies firmly. “There’s some things that don’t deserve forgiveness and that’s one of them, in my opinion.”

  The conversation lulls. He finishes his beer and grabs another one. I keep sipping mine. I watch him move around the small trailer. He looks like he’s physically too big to be in here, yet he moves fluidly and gracefully.

  “Did you ever cheat on someone?” I ask softly, almost expecting him to ignore me.

  “Nope,” he replies easily. “I was too busy fighting, stealing and vandalizing.”

  He grins and it makes me laugh again and he laughs too. When our laughter dies it leaves a new, sexually charged energy in the room. This somehow now feels like a date, and I don’t like that I like it. I finish my beer and get up off the couch. I hobble toward his recycling bin and drop the empty bottle in it. He’s leaning his butt agains
t the counter between the recycling bin and the door.

  “I’m going to go,” I say.

  We stare at each other. I can’t fight my blush under his attention this time. He notices and his lips slowly pull up into a smile. Shit. He’s going to laugh at me just like he used to. I try to brush by him quickly, but he’s quicker and blocks the door with his broad frame. I take a step back and my butt is against the built-in dinette table. He leans forward, placing his hands on either side of me on the table. If this were younger Holden I would be a bit scared by the closeness, but with grown-up Holden, it feels exhilarating to have him this close, not scary. It feels good.

  “You know why I called you Larry when you were a kid?” he murmurs in a deep rough voice that makes my belly flip like I’m on a roller coaster.

  “Because you were an asshole.” Our faces are inches apart, nose-to-nose. He’s so close his ruggedly handsome face is almost blurry.

  He chuckles and nods. “But also because he was my favorite. And you were my favorite.”

  I used to spend hours—nights—stewing over that nickname and why he would give it to me and of all the possible answers, I never came up with something so simply sweet.

  “I was your favorite Braddock sister?” I ask in awe because it sure as hell didn’t feel that way.

  “You were my favorite everything.”

  I don’t take my eyes off him. I’m waiting for him to laugh, like this is a joke. Because it is. He hated me. He hated everything. I don’t know if it’s the trauma of losing my dad or being face-to-face with my childhood nemesis or just the alcohol I’ve consumed, or maybe all three, but my childhood insecurities are back with a vengeance. I feel awkward and uncomfortable—unworthy of his attention, like I’m still an oily-faced, fuzzy-haired, painfully thin girl he’s playing a joke on. I try to take a step away from him, but I can’t because of the damn table and his thick strong arms on either side of me. So instead, I say, “If you’re teasing me, remember, I can always break your nose again.”