Passion Rising

by JA Huss

  At this point, I’m still more worried about getting the gun out of his hand than I am about drowning or bleeding out or any shit like that. I don’t think I’m gonna bleed out, and I really don’t think I’m gonna drown. I was in the fuckin’ Navy. And even though most of my work was terrestrial, I had plenty of water training and I know that my lung capacity is solid and more or less how long I can struggle under water before I’ll need to take in air. I’m sure I can outlast this cocksucker.

  I’m sure I can.

  So, at present, my strategy – if you can call it a fucking strategy – is just to keep him pinned down so that the gun isn’t pointed my way and so that he can’t get out from underneath me until his fucking chest fills with water and he goes to sleep. Then I’ll crawl out of here, find Maddie, make sure she’s OK, and then get us to a goddamn motherfucking treehouse where nobody can find us! Fuck!

  At least, that’s my plan until he knees me in the ribs again, and when I yelp, I take in a whole, big-ass mouthful of water and swallow it down. Shit. Well, so much for outlasting him. Fuck me.

  OK.

  Plan B.

  MADDIE

  Ow. It fucking hurts to walk. So good thing I’m not walking. I’m in a full sprint, running naked through the house to get to the pool. I tear down the hallway and make it to the indoor portion of the indoor/outdoor space. Looking out onto the deck, I don’t see anything right away. No Tyler. No nothing. Which worries me.

  And then I see something that worries me more.

  There’s little slivers of dark color in the water being illuminated by the lights from inside the pool. And the water itself is churning and splashing. Just underneath I can see two bodies. Tyler and someone who I can’t make out to determine for certain, but who is one hundred percent undoubtedly Logan.

  I just know it.

  When I asked Tyler if he was sure that Logan had died in the fire, he assured me that he had to have. And right then and there I knew, I just felt it in my gut, that we would see him again. I didn’t say anything because I was hoping against hope that I was just being nervous and shell-shocked. But inside, intuitively... I knew.

  The fight I see happening is bizarre. I can’t really make everything out. Just enough to see that Tyler is on top and that it looks like... he’s winning? Maybe? It’s impossible to know. It’s also impossible to know where the blood is coming from. Who’s bleeding, I mean. But the one thing I do know is that I’m not just going to stand here debating with myself about it.

  And as I’m at the edge of the pool, about to jump in...

  I hear the shot.

  TYLER

  I struggle with my left hand to pull the gun from his right. But he’s fighting me, boy. He’s hanging on for dear life, that’s for sure. Cockroaches and Logan. Hard to friggin’ kill. Son of a bitch.

  And now things are starting to get dark. Which I mean literally. My vision is really getting cloudy. I don’t know if it’s loss of blood, oxygen, or probably a combination of both, but the lights are going out at Casa Tyler. Fuck me. Is this really how I’m going to die? Seriously? Drowning? Not getting shot, or blown up, or burned up, or anything like that, but in almost the exact opposite way? Man. Ain’t that some shit?

  And with the last bit of energy I have left, I open my mouth once more and howl a muted and strangled cry of rage and desperation, taking in what feels like a river of anger into my lungs, and I wrench the gun from Logan’s weakening hand, point the barrel towards his chest, and fire.

  The muffled cough of the bullet leaving the pistol thuds in the water as the slug pierces Logan’s breastplate. It’s hard to tell immediately if it did in fact make the contact that I think it did, because the burgundy of the tracksuit masks the emerging stream of blood. But quickly, it becomes clear that it did find its target, because Logan stops fighting and his eyes stay open in an expression of terminal shock.

  Sorry, Logan.

  No. That’s a lie. I’m not sorry. We all make choices in life.

  And Logan made his.

  And now I see the trickle of blood seeping out from the wet velour, and I realize... he’s gone. He’s really, really gone. There will be no mistake this time. No uncertainty. No last-minute surprises. He’s gone.

  Fuck you, Logan. Fuck you straight to hell.

  But, as with all things in life, there is a cost for this moment. Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens without sacrifice. And as the darkness now comes over me fully, and I can no longer pretend that I’m going to climb out of here and go with Maddie to a treehouse someplace, I have only two thoughts in my mind.

  And if you had asked me to tell you what my final thoughts would be when the time came, there’s no way I would’ve picked these weirdo ones in a million years, but...

  I think, one: Fuck. Now I’ll never find out Logan’s story. Like was his mother Carlos’s sister, or...?

  And two: Shit. This is way worse than Maddie peeing in the pool.

  MADDIE

  The water acts as kind of a silencer, so it’s not like the one I heard from the bathroom, but it’s loud enough to make me stop me in my tracks for a second. My entire body freezes.

  And then the worst thing that can happen does. The thrashing stops. The struggling abates. As activated as the violent frenzy of the fight I was just witnessing made me, the contrasting stillness is numbing. And now the tiny streaks of blood I saw turn into a full, rich pool. A pool inside a pool. A pool I jump into screaming, “NO!” as I leap.

  I swim down and wrap my arms around the heavy, scarred, lifeless frame of Tyler Morgan and begin trying to pull him to the surface. It’s hard. Because he’s big. And dead weight is heavy to lift.

  Dead weight.

  The words echo inside my head as I struggle and lift, trying to draw him out. I strain, and tug, and as I get to the edge and almost have him up, he slips from my grip and goes floating back down to the bottom. Shit! I don’t know if I can do it. I’m out of breath, and he’s heavy, and if I can’t get him up... What do I do then?

  I think about how he didn’t want me to go to the bathroom before. How he wanted me to stay here with him. And how cute it was, and how we gave each other shit.

  And it makes me sad.

  I go where you go, Ty. Wherever that takes us.

  It runs through my head, over and over and over again.

  I go where you go.

  And that’s the thought that propels me to kick off the wall and swim back down to the bottom. And try again.

  Because I don’t care what happens to me.

  I only care what happens to us.

  I go where you go, Tyler Hudson Morgan.

  I go where you go.

  Chapter Nineteen - Tyler

  “Hello, Mr. Morgan. Welcome back.”

  She’s young. Pretty. Dark skin and dark hair. Her eyes are almost as black as Evan’s, but not quite. Nobody’s are that dark, but hers are close. She wears a flowy, billowy, formless dress. Not diaphanous exactly, but comfortable-looking. The fabric has a complicated floral pattern. Flowers that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.

  She goes to put a lei around my neck and that’s when I look down and see that I’m not wearing a shirt. Just white linen pants that look kind of like pajama bottoms. Which I have never owned and am not sure how they found their way onto my body.

  But that feels secondary. Because what’s particularly noteworthy is not that I don’t have on a shirt. What’s particularly noteworthy is what else seems to be missing.

  My scars.

  She hands me a fruity-looking drink served in one of those resort-style, hourglass-looking drink glasses. The ones that start out as colored at the bottom and then get clear as they travel up the stem to the main part—the vessel, I guess.

  I let her put on the lei and kiss me on both cheeks, then I stand there, holding the glass as the frosty rivulets of condensation slide down the side and over my hand, and I say, “I’m sorry, have I been here before? Where am I?”

  She sm
iles and squints her eyes like she’s confused by the question. Then she tilts her head to the side, her smile widens, and she says again, “Welcome back.”

  She bows slightly. I bow in return, sort of reflexively, and then she glides away.

  I place the straw from the drink to my lips and sip, absently, as I look around to take in my surroundings. It’s tropical. Jungle-like. But there is also the evidence of a man-made footprint. There are two stone obelisks. Two giant pillars that lift well above where my eye can track, but instinctively, I have the sense that they are holding something up. They’re beautiful and ornamental, but simultaneously generate an aura of functionality.

  And there’s water everywhere. Oceans of it in the distance. Pools of it in the foreground. Droplets of it on my glass. A waterfall behind me. A stream in front of me. And everywhere, lush, rich, textured landscape grows and flourishes freely.

  I take another sip of my drink. Partially just because I’m holding it and partially because it’s motherfucking delicious. It tastes like all the fruits I like came together into one super-fruit and then instead of the mixture of flavors competing for dominance, they worked out some peace treaty to balance perfectly in what I can only describe as a flavor orgy. It’s like my mouth is being fucked blissfully into euphoria.

  I gotta get this recipe.

  I’m not the only one here. There are dozens of people wandering around. Maybe hundreds. Some look like me, a little dopey and confused, but sipping their drinks with an expression of “holy fuck, that’s good,” on their faces. Some look amused at the rest of us. Like they’ve been wherever we are for a while and they already know how fucking good the drinks are.

  I don’t see Maddie.

  Another dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty walks by me. He wears the same loose-fitting, billowy, not-quite-diaphanous dress thing as the other one. I call to stop him. “Hey, man, ’scuse me.” But he just keeps walking.

  I trot after him, trying again. “Sir? ’Scuse me.” Again, he keeps going. I try one last time, shouting, “Hey, friend?”

  And then he turns to see me. “Yes?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. I didn’t know if you could hear me.”

  “Oh, that’s fine. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were talking to me.”

  “Oh, I—”

  A hand rises to cut me off. “Happens all the time.”

  And then, for some reason I couldn’t explain if I had money riding on it, I understand why this beautiful creature didn’t stop.

  Because they are not him. Or her.

  They are not here. And they are not away.

  They are everywhere. And they are nowhere.

  They are all of us. And they are none of us.

  And in their company... I feel safe.

  “Cool. Well, still,” I offer. “My bad.”

  “It’s all love,” they say. And I believe it on about three different levels.

  “So, um, do you happen to know where my girlfriend Maddie is?” I ask.

  The expression that comes back my way is one I’ve never seen before, so I can’t describe it. It’s not one of amusement, or kindness, or wisdom, or comfort, or patience.

  It’s all of them at once.

  “We don’t keep inventory. But those over there might be able to help you.”

  And as I turn to look where they’re pointing, I discover that I have sharper reflexes than I ever knew. Because when my jaw goes slack and my grip loosens, allowing the glass to fall from my hand and go careening to the floor, I’m able to snatch it up before it hits the ground.

  The group I see is standing knee deep in a wading pool, all gathered around a circular table that comes just below chest height, talking and laughing and sipping their own drinks. My heart starts beating fast. Just like it did when I was in my kitchen on Halloween night and Maddie asked me what my real name was. Unlike then, though, I don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack. It actually just feels like my heart is... growing somehow. I don’t know if that’s even anatomically possible, but it’s how it feels. It also feels like it’s going to burst through my chest and splatter the surroundings in my fucking arterial spray.

  And as quickly as it feels like it started beating, it almost as quickly feels like it stops when the group, as one, looks over at me. They’re not laughing, but they are still smiling, and then they peel away from the table, en masse, to approach me.

  Which is fine. Because I’m frozen. I can’t move. Just like I couldn’t move those couple times in Mexico. Just like I froze up then. But this isn’t anxiety or some kind of weird flashback. This is just... stillness. A stillness that I want to live in.

  The members of the group fall into a single file line. A receiving line. They make their way across the pool to where I’m standing, and for the first time, I realize that I’m also standing about ankle deep in water. It’s cooling. Soothing. It definitely feels like water, but it feels like something else too. Something I can’t quite identify. If I had to put a word to it, though, I might call it... memory.

  The first one to step to me and take my hand is Jeff.

  “Hey, man,” he says.

  “Uh... hey. Dude,” I manage to work out.

  He takes a sip of his drink, and as he pulls it away from his mouth, he gestures with it to me and asks, “What’s yours?”

  “Uh... not sure.”

  “Yeah.” He nods. “It’s good though, right?” There’s a gleam in his eye. That same youthful, excited gleam he had when he told me that we’d be going to a strip club for his birthday. About ten percent more enthusiasm than is probably necessary over something like a fruity drink. Or maybe it’s exactly the right amount of enthusiasm. Either way, he raises his glass to me in a “cheers” motion, we clink them together, and he pats me on the shoulder and walks off, sipping happily.

  I watch him go. I have things I want to ask him, things I want to say, but he disappears before I get a chance.

  And then Pete approaches.

  “Tyler,” he says, in his Pete way. He’s still wearing one of his aloha shirts, which looks totally at home in this new environment. “You shaved.”

  Shaking my head a wee bit, I work out, “Hey, Pete.” We shake hands. His grip is stronger than I remembered. Then I ask, “Pete... What—?”

  But he stops me. “Don’t ask questions you already know the answers to. Makes you sound like an asshole,” he says.

  Fair enough.

  Then he waves to someone to come join him. A woman approaches. A pretty, slightly round, kind-seeming but also no-nonsense-looking woman. Basically, the female version of Pete.

  She steps up next to him, extends her hand, and I take it. “You’re Tyler?” she asks.

  I nod as we shake. “You’re Carolina,” I offer as fact. She nods in kind.

  “Pete tells me you’re pretty stupid,” she says, not joking.

  “Um, yeah. I mean, I have been. Yeah. He ain’t wrong.”

  She nods, thoughtfully. “No wonder you two get along so well.” She looks at him and smiles. He smiles back. Then he bends to her and they kiss.

  I smile at them both. This is the only time I’ve ever seen Pete approaching anything that resembles sweet, and so I take the opportunity to ask him, “You, uh... You like me, Pete?”

  Pete stops kissing his lady, lets his smile drop, and says, “Drink your fruity-ass drink and shut up, kid.” And as they walk off past me, they both stroke my shoulder.

  I drop my head as they walk away and let out an enormous sigh. I bend down into a crouch, steeling myself for what’s coming next. Leaving my drink in the pool of water, I stand back up again, lift my head, and in the next moment, before any words can even be exchanged, I am lost inside a hug with my old friend.

  I clasp my hand around the nape of Nadir’s neck and he grips the back of my head. We hold each other like that for what feels like a hundred years. And who knows? Maybe it is.

  When I finally pull away from him, I almost start crying. B
ecause he looks like him. Not the way he looked when I last saw him, but the way he looked in the moments just before that. Happy, and grinning, and joyous, and whole.

  I take his face in my hands, my own head twisting back and forth, unable to grasp that this is really happening.

  “Nadir...” It’s all I can say.

  “Tyler. Tyler, my friend,” he responds.

  There’s so, so, so much that I don’t know how to begin. So I decide to work backwards. “I’m, um... I’m getting your watch fixed.”

  “It is your watch,” he tells me, laughing. “I gave it to you.”

  “I know, but...” I run out of words. His smile widens.

  “It is good to see you,” he says.

  “Nadir, I’m so sorry. I—”

  He puts his finger on my lip and shushes me. “Tyler, shhhh. Being sorry requires sorrow. And there is none of that now.”

  “But—”

  “There is no need for explaining. There is no need for regret. Because here...” He gestures all around us. My breath catches in my throat. “Here,” he says again, “it is always morning.”

  And I can’t hold it anymore. I start to cry. And I begin stammering out, “But I didn’t do what I should have. Your family... The work you wanted to do... I didn’t...”

  “My friend.” He takes me by the shoulders, “There is no past, so there is nothing you didn’t do. There is only now. And now you are doing exactly what it is that you should. All is as it should be, my dear, sweet Tyler. You are a good man. And that is enough. Please. Know this.”

  I sniff back a couple of the tears and I hug him again. He hugs me back and laughs.

  “There will be much time for us to know each other again. Much time. If you wish it so. Will you stay?”

  I pull back out of the hug with him again. This is a question that I didn’t even know could be asked.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  He narrows his eyes in a gentle and thoughtful way and says, “Always.” Then he steps back and holds out his hand to the side, readying to slap his palm into mine in the same clasp of solidarity we used when we cemented our partnership all those years ago. I reach back and throw my hand into his, and we shake our unified fist.