Delivering Decker

by Kelly Collins

  “Wow,” he said. “I could do that all day.”

  A tingle spread from my lips throughout my body. Decker was the paddle that held the exact voltage to bring my love-dead heart back to life.

  “If all your kisses are like that, I’d let you.”

  We held hands and walked farther along the path. The earthy smell from the recent rain and Decker’s cologne filled the air. A perfect heady mix of man blended with nature. Visions of us lying in the fallen leaves with his body on top of mine heated my insides. Thoughts of his lips and tongue trailing over my skin puckered my nipples.

  “Was that all you wanted to tell me?” His question was an ice bath to my arousal.

  “No, I wanted you to know—”

  His phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and growled, “I have to take this.”

  “What’s up, John?” Muffled words filled the surrounding silence. “Is this it?” Worry was etched in each line of his brow. “I’m thirty minutes away. I’ll come right now.”

  Chapter 11

  Decker

  “I’ll give you money for a cab once we get there.” I rushed Hannah out of the woods and into my car without a word. Only when I was racing toward Boulder did I explain. “My dad is dying.” My hands gripped the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. “They’ve taken him to the hospital because he’s in liver failure.”

  She reached over, pried one of my hands loose from the steering wheel, and held it in her warm palm.

  “I’m so sorry, Decker. What can I do?”

  “Nothing, Hannah.” She didn’t deserve the sharpness in my voice, and I softened my tone slightly. “I know it’s in your nature to fix things. You can’t fix this.”

  “No, but I can stay and support you.”

  “Don’t waste your time.” I was spiraling into a dangerous place where I pushed back and away to become an island. Erected the walls. Put up the barbed-wire fences. Drank myself into numbness.

  “You’re not a waste of time.”

  My head snapped in her direction just in time to see her mouth stretch into a thin line.

  “You don’t know what I am,” I said with less anger and more resignation. “But I do, and I’m probably a waste of your time.”

  “I should get to choose,” she murmured loud enough for me to hear.

  The silence following swallowed us. The closer we got to Boulder, the tighter my chest felt. The weight of a thousand failures pressed down to suffocate me. This whole date was a mistake. I liked Hannah—a lot—but I didn’t deserve her. She needed someone who could be there, and that wasn’t me. My entire life after Dad’s death was already mapped out, and it didn’t have room for a blonde slip of a girl with big blue eyes and kisses that could bring me to my knees.

  I swallowed several times to soothe my sandpapered throat.

  The glow of the harvest moon hid behind the clouds and cloaked the once bright sky with darkness. A single parking space sat open as if waiting for me. I pulled to a stop. The engine cut, and I took off with Hannah chasing after me.

  The scent of antiseptic and death assaulted me the moment I entered the lobby. John sat in an industrial blue chair, weariness etched in his drawn, pale face.

  “It doesn’t look good,” he said. He rubbed at the shadow of whiskers on his face.

  An employee of Riley Realty, John had been around longer than I had. It had occurred to me more than once that the man Dad depended on for everything made a better son than I. John never disappointed anyone. He was born to serve, and I was born to sever. How funny that the same letters could be used to create such differing meanings.

  “Is he going to die?” I asked.

  John’s silence told me more than his words could. Dad wouldn’t walk outside again. He wouldn’t inhale the scent of freshly mowed grass. Smell the crisp first snow. Feel my mother’s lips against his.

  A hand rubbed lightly at my back. “Everything will be okay.” Hannah leaned against me, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.

  “Nothing will ever be okay.” She had no idea the turn my life would take the minute Rip Riley took his last breath.

  I reached for my money-fattened wallet. Money I’d made selling the properties Dad demanded. His words galloped through my brain: In the end, son, he who has the most, wins. I wondered whether he felt the same now. Dad had everything. He had money and property and a devoted woman by his side, but money couldn’t stop death. Would he trade it all for one more day? Probably, but he’d use that time to make more money. That was his way.

  John interrupted my thoughts. “You should go to him. Hannah can stay with me. It’s family only.”

  I pulled several twenties from my wallet and folded them into Hannah’s palm. “Call a cab. There’s no reason for you to stay here.”

  She opened her mouth to respond. The little I knew of Hannah told me she’d argue and want to stay, so I spun around and walked toward the ICU.

  I inched toward the room that had Riley written on the dry-erase board. Mom sat in a chair next to Dad. Her teeth worried the flesh of her bottom lip. Her hands cradled one of his.

  He lay like a corpse wired for sound. His skin took on the look of a spray tan gone bad. Machines chirped and bleated nonstop. Colors flashed across the screen like a video game on steroids, but there would be no winner here.

  “Decker, you’re here.” The calmness in her voice didn’t deceive me. The dullness of her eyes told me everything. A piece of her was dying with my father.

  She leaned forward and tucked the bed sheet below Dad’s chin. “They gave him something for the pain. He’s been sleeping ever since.”

  I dropped to my knees in front of her. In this position, we were face to face. She’d aged twenty years in the past one. All her worry had been kept inside because Rip Riley allowed no weakness and wanted no pity. Mother suffered alone because, like my father, she was stubborn. She refused to burden anyone with her woes. The woman in front of me was a fixer like Hannah. She took care of everyone and asked for nothing in return.

  “How are you, Mom?”

  She smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt. “I’m fine, honey.”

  “You’re not fine.” I rose to my feet and yanked a chair to her side. When I sat, the wooden legs creaked under my weight. “You don’t have to plaster on a face for me. I’m your son.”

  She mothered my hand with a pat. “This was inevitable.” She looked at my father and shook her head. “Stubborn man.”

  “I’d say it’s a family trait, threaded through our DNA.” We sat without words. The only sound was the constant beeping of machines that ate at my nerves.

  “I’ve been a huge disappointment to him,” I finally said.

  “He loves you, Decker.”

  “He has a funny way of showing it.” I wanted to yell and scream at the unfairness of life. How could I be born into a family with everything and feel so empty?

  “He showed it the only way he knew how. He took his weaknesses and turned them into your strengths.” Tears collected in her eyes. A tilt of her head sent them back from where they came.

  Dad stirred, and a weak cry left his lips. He opened his yellowed eyes and gave me a sad smile. “Decker,” he groaned.

  I leaned forward to hear him better. Gone was the hardness normally fixed to his expression. In its place was gut-twisting pain suppressed with a half smile.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  Was this the moment where he’d tell me he loved me? The moment when he’d say I’d been a good son? By all accounts, I’d inherited his virtues and vices. I was strong and determined but weak when it came to substances. If we measured apples to apples, I’d succeeded where he’d failed. He drank himself to death, and I’d sobered myself up to live. Maybe he’d finally acknowledge my successes rather than focusing on my failures.

  I leaned in closer, making sure I didn’t miss a single word.

  Rasping for each breath, he said, “The Conlin contract isn’t finished. You
need to get the closing documents to the bank by nine.”

  His words hung in the air like shards of glass ready to pierce my heart. All he cared about was work.

  “Honey.” Mom brushed the sweaty hair from Dad’s forehead. “This isn’t the time to talk about contracts. Don’t you have anything else you want to tell Decker?”

  His face turned from hers and zeroed in on mine. “Don’t look at me like I’m dead. I’m not going until I’m sure you’re not going to run the business into the ground. This is your time to prove yourself. I know you have it in you.”

  Sad but not surprising that some of his final words were about work. Sadder yet that they were the most positive thing he’d said to me in years. On the surface, they were proof that he believed in my ability to succeed. But underneath those words were the ones he really wanted to say. The ones I heard in my head all the time: Don’t screw this up.

  I couldn’t take Dad’s pain away. I couldn’t cure his cancer. But I could allay his fears about the company. His last days on earth didn’t need to be stress filled. I alone held the power to make it so. I hated real estate, but I’d learn to love it if it made Dad’s final days easier. Right then, I made a pledge to be more the type of son my father wanted and needed me to be, even if it killed me.

  I swallowed my regret and stood tall, shaking the weight of his disappointment from my shoulders. “I’ve got it.” A fake smile spread across my lips as acid flooded my gut.

  My lips pressed to my mom’s cheek. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.” I left the room with my head held high and my back as stiff as rebar. Hopefully, there would be a tomorrow.

  Chapter 12

  Hannah

  Decker walked away and left me with John. “You’re the driver, right?” I plopped in the chair next to him and let out a long sigh.

  “That is but one of my duties.”

  “You knew my name.”

  John turned to face me. “Knowing things is another one of my duties.”

  I twisted my neck. “Are you like a spy? A bodyguard?” For an older man, he was in prime shape. Not sexy shape like Decker, but mafia hit-man shape.

  John’s laugh rumbled through his broad chest. “No, I’ve never offed anyone…yet. I’m an everything guy.”

  I nibbled at the hangnail on my thumb. “Decker called you from the diner the night he crashed. Are you on call all the time?”

  John stretched his long legs out in front of him and leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head. “I’ve been with the Rileys since I was a kid. Back when they had none of their own.”

  “Oh, wow, so you came before Decker?”

  “I was here before Decker was even a possibility.” John let his arms fall and rolled to his feet. “I’m going to check on the family. You should catch that cab.” He disappeared down the long bright corridor.

  Everyone kept trying to push me away, but I had no place to go. I wasn’t ready to deal with another drunken night with Mom, and Stacey was a whole other set of obstacles. She was in the middle of finals and should be in her dorm with her face shoved in a book. Instead, she was home for a visit with a duffle bag that I was positive held every piece of clothing she owned. Then again, that was Stacey’s mode of operation. She’d always been an all-or-nothing girl.

  Like John, I was restless. I wandered the hallways until I came upon the nursery. Eight little bundles were nestled in acrylic bassinets behind the window. Five girls and three boys all wrapped tight like burritos.

  What were their parents like? Were they loving and caring? Wasn’t that how all parents began, with the best intentions and the worst outcomes?

  My mind filled with visions of my future family. I wanted it all from the white picket fence to the husband and the two-point-five children, but I was a realist. I’d probably spend my life schlepping blue-plate specials and coming home to soak my bunions and rub the aching varicose veins on my legs. Life hadn’t been too generous with me.

  On my way back to the waiting room, I found the vending machines. I punched B-3 for M&Ms and slid over to the coffee vending machine and punched E-7 for tea. Boy had this evening turned out different from what I’d planned.

  I was supposed to be sipping Moroccan Mint tea at Dushanbe while I ate lamb kabobs and couscous and looked at Decker’s beautiful face. Instead, I was pulling a cup of generic tea from a machine, staring at matching white walls and floors, and breathing in the scent of sorrow that seemed to fill hospitals. Life really sucked sometimes. I turned down the ER corridor on my way back to the waiting room.

  Suddenly the emergency doors swung open, and the hallway became a triage center. The EMTs raced a gurney down the corridor. Drops of blood fell from the injured man and marred the pristine floor.

  I watched with fascination as the doctor and nurses gathered round to assess the situation, all the while continuing to move at a pace close to a run.

  One nurse squeezed the IV bag while another shouted out vitals. The doctor yelled above the talking nurse, and somehow it all worked together like a finely choreographed dance.

  A hysterical woman raced past me. A small child collapsed to the ground in tears, left behind by a woman whom I assumed was her distraught mother.

  I tossed my empty Styrofoam cup in a nearby trashcan and ran toward the child. “Come here, sweetheart.” I picked her up and cradled her to my chest. Her breath hiccuped over her cries. “I’ve got you.” The poor little thing couldn’t be more than three or four. “What’s your name?”

  She shook in my arms. “Wa…Wa…Weesa.” The sorrow in her voice twisted around my heart and squeezed it like a vise.

  We made our way to the waiting room where no one had waited for Lisa. It was another reminder of how shit happened when grown-ups lost track of what was important.

  I sat down and tried to place her in the seat next to me, but she grabbed my neck like she was in the deep end of the pool, drowning.

  “Don’t weave me,” she cried.

  “Never, sweetheart. I’m here.” I patted her head and rubbed her back.

  It took several minutes of talking and my bag of candy to stop her tears. I read her a magazine article about how to choose lipstick. It was the cleanest thing in the Cosmo left behind on the table.

  “What’s wip dick?” she asked. Her voice still wobbled from the earlier sobs.

  In spite of the somber situation, a giggle welled up inside me. “It’s lipstick, sweetheart, and it colors your lips.” I pressed a finger against her rosy reds. “Try to say it.” I broke the word apart. “Say lip.”

  “Wip,” she shouted, her voice echoing through the abandoned hallway.

  “Almost.” I smiled at her chocolate-covered face. “Now say stick.”

  “Dick,” she yelled.

  I looked around, hoping no one heard her. The last thing I needed was to get accused of teaching her bad words.

  She practiced until the word lip actually came out of her mouth. “Lipdick,” she called out around a mouth full of melty chocolate.

  “That is a thing, but you’re too young to understand.” I stood up and hefted her stocky body to my hip. “Let’s see if we can find your mommy.”

  She inhaled a choppy breath, and the tears built in her saucer-like brown eyes. “Daddy got shot.”

  My insides coiled. “He’ll be okay,” I assured her, and I wished for her sake I was right.

  “Where’s your daddy?” she asked.

  How did I tell a little one that my father abandoned his family when I was younger than her? That if he hadn’t left, my life would be different? “He’s on a trip.” That wasn't far from the truth. My mom said he packed up his shit and took off after Stacey was born. Two kids were too many.

  I walked toward the intake window. Just as I reached it, a woman came running out of the swinging doors. “Lisa!” she called, her voice full of panic.

  “Here she is,” I called back. I plopped Lisa onto her little sandaled feet and headed for the woman I assumed was her mother.

/>   “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” She pulled the little brown-haired girl into her arms, nearly smothering her with kisses. “I’m so sorry.” She looked at me. “Thank you.”

  I looked around the hospital. This was what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to marry ketchup bottles or cut pies. I wanted to help people. Today I had.

  “You’re welcome. I hope you don’t mind that I gave her chocolate.”

  “I’m such a terrible parent.”

  I wanted to tell her she wasn’t, but in truth she was. She’d abandoned her daughter in favor of a man. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t my mother, that he was probably the love of her life and not only a guy who warmed her bed.

  “It’s a good thing I saw her,” I said. She’d get no comfort from me. Comfort belonged to the ones left behind. The ones overlooked. The ones abandoned.

  “What do I owe you for the candy?” She reached into her purse and came out with a handful of change.

  “You don’t owe me anything. You owe her everything.” I kneeled before Lisa. “Hey, munchkin, take care of yourself.” When I stood, I ruffled her hair and walked back to where Decker had left me.

  “You waited.” Decker lumbered toward me, looking like he’d aged ten years since he’d gone to see his father. Tufts of his hair poked out in every direction.

  “I told you I would.” I smoothed his hair with the familiarity of someone who’d known him for a lifetime. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

  He cupped my face, and I thought he might kiss me, but he dropped his head. “I gave you money for cab fare.” His voice had that end-of-shift weary tone.

  I pulled the bills from my purse and handed them back. He lifted his head. A look of annoyance flashed across his face. “I don’t need your money, Decker. I needed to know that you were okay.”

  He looked at me like he wanted to hug me, and I wished he would.