by Megyn Ward
Just when I’m about to ask him what he’s doing, he stands up straight and tosses the pencil back on my desk. Picking up the paper he comes toward me again.
“Don’t tell me what I like and don’t ever tell me what I want, Henley,” he says softly, all but shoving the piece of paper into my hand. “Because you have no idea.”
I don’t look at the paper in my hands until he’s gone. Out the window, the angry clang of his feet echoing off the metal ladder of the fire escape.
Uncrumpling it, I smooth it out flat across my lap to reveal a mathematical equation. One that’s light years ahead of our simple high school calculus class. I stare at it, try to grasp its meaning but I can’t. It’s nothing but a bunch of numbers and letters and symbols, grouped together in ways I can’t even begin to comprehend.
Twenty-four
Henley
2017
I hurt him.
I hadn’t counted on that. I knew he’d be angry. I’d been ready for it. Prepared to face him down and accept whatever he threw at me because I’d deceived him and deserved it, but hurt wasn’t an emotion I’d counted on.
I hurt him.
And then I punched him in the face and ran like a coward.
When I slid onto that barstool last night, I smiled at Declan even though my chest was so tight I could barely breathe, waiting for him to recognize me. When he didn’t, I was able to breathe a little easier.
With my carefully applied make-up, capped teeth and perfect nose, I look like a completely different person.
“What can I get you?” he says, tossing a napkin down in front of me. I remember the way he was, the restless, angry core that sat at the center of him that shown through from time to time. The resentment that was visible to anyone who knew how and where to look. He seems different. Less angry. Settled into his skin somehow. I wonder how it happened. How he found a measure of peace with who he was and aligned it with who he became.
A commotion erupts at the end of the bar, and I look. I have to.
I caught sight of him the moment I walked in, flirting shamelessly with what looked like a bachelorette party—shiny plastic tiaras and matching T-shirts—leaning into a heavily blushing bride, obviously trying to talk her into something she’s not so sure about.
He looks different. Harder. His smile sharper. His gaze calculating. I remember what he told me once—that most people are like ghosts to him. Transparent. How easy it is to figure out what they want.
Like he knows exactly what to do to tip the scales, Conner whips off his shirt. In front of me, Declan mutters a curse, the sound of it smothered by the collective gasp of every woman in the room. Tattoos, dozens of them, stretched over hard, rigid slabs of muscle. Not the kind of muscle you build in a gym, lifting weights. The kind you earn through hours of hard labor.
He shoots a devastating grin at the bride, who looks like she’s about to keel over and tosses her the shirt, saying something I can’t make out over the din.
“Excuse my brother. He’s a one-man circus,” Declan says, sounding more resigned than ashamed. “What can I get you to drink?”
I watch Conner turn toward the wall of booze behind him, choosing a bottle of top-shelf tequila while the bridesmaids behind him let out a loud cheer.
He boosts himself up onto the bar, the movement exposing the inside of his heavily muscled bicep. The tattoo running down the length of it.
I never drink. Even in high school, surrounded by kids who tossed back martinis and manhattans like they were chugging cheap beer, I never indulged in more than the occasional glass of wine. I was too afraid of letting my guard down. Saying or doing the wrong thing. Clueing the people around me into the fact that I was just a pretender. Not really one of them at all.
Sitting here, I realize I don’t belong here either.
“Shot of whiskey,” I say, finally tearing my gaze away from the spectacle of Conner Gilroy. Declan’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but he doesn’t say anything. Setting a shot glass in in front of me, he speed pours me a shot of Jameson. I reach for it before the liquor reaches the rim and toss it back, my eyes widening at the wildfire spread of heat that erupts in my belly.
Declan gives me a crooked half smile. “Another?” he says, brandishing the bottle like a knife, laughing when I emphatically shake my head no. Without being asked, he scoops ice into a glass and aims his mixer gun over the top of it, filling it with something fizzy before adding lime and a cherry. “Club soda.” He slides it in front of me before shooting a look down the bar. “You need something stronger, let me know,” he says, a knowing expression on his face, telling me I’m not the first woman to come in here looking for his brother.
Down the bar, the bride-to-be licks salt off Conner’s abs and use their mouth to lift a shot glass of tequila from the gap in his fly while their friends cheer and howl their approval. I’m about to signal Declan for a double when Conner levers himself off the bar, leaning over it to give the bride-to-be a quick, almost brotherly kiss on her cheek before collecting his shirt.
Pulling it on over his head, his lifts his arms and I see it again. The tattoo. A string of numbers and letters. Symbols and signs that don’t make sense to anyone else but me.
Schrödinger’s Equation.
I rationalized it. Conner Gilroy lives on whiskey, casual sex and more than the occasional bar fight. He’s not the boy I used to know. He isn’t going to care that he fucked me. He’d probably laugh about it.
But seeing that tattoo told me differently.
Told me I was playing with fire. That I was about to do something irrevocable. Cause damage I couldn’t undo. I felt myself wavering. Talking myself out of my barstool. I’ll go back to the apartment on Boylston. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and come back tomorrow. I’ll do this the right way. I’ll get to know him again. I’ll tell him how I feel. What I want.
And he’ll shut me down completely. Deny me, just like he did when we were kids.
I’m tired of being denied. Of living someone else’s life. I deserve to have what I want, don’t I? Just once. Not what I’m supposed to want. What I really want.
Conner.
I can do this. Take what I want. Be who I want, for once in my life, without my mother breathing down my neck. Chastising me at every turn. As relentless as water, eating away at who I was. Shaping me into something different.
I’ll spend the rest of my life, being who she wants. Who she needs me to be. Last night, I was determined to be who I was. Who I should’ve been.
I see it now. Knuckles stinging from where I hit him, chest heaving under the weight of what I’ve done. Who I did it to.
Having sex with Conner was a bid for freedom. It’s me, terrified of the course I’ve set myself on. Struggling against what I’ve become.
Twenty-five
Conner
Watching her leave, I think about the last timeI saw her. Really saw her. Standing in the middle of the street while her mother shoved her into the back of a sleek, black town car. The same black Town Car we watched her mother get out of a few months before. Henley didn’t look around for help. She didn’t fight or push her mother’s hand away. She didn’t cry or fight when she saw me.
She just looked right through me.
There were plenty of people watching. Ryan stood a few feet away from them, his face as still as stone. Hands and arms lank and lax at his sides. Mouth pressed into a thin, grim line. Kids from school, openly staring. Their parents, whispering to each other behind their hands. Mr. C and Tess. I can feel my own mom and dad behind me. Declan. Everyone is there, watching her get taken and no one does a thing.
I feel myself moving before I even realize it. I can’t let her leave. That’s all I remember thinking. I can’t let her leave. Beyond that, there’s nothing.
And then she shakes her head at me, the barest of movements, telling me no. My chest feels like it’s caving in on itself. My ribs crumbling to dust. I’m being buried alive by my own bones, and she’s telling
me no. Keeping me at arms’ length. Away from her because someone might see.
Know that I love her.
And that’s not allowed.
I didn’t chase her then, and I don’t chase her now. I want to, but I don’t.
“Am I seeing shit, or did Henley O’Connell just punch you in the mouth?”
I look up to find Patrick standing over me, a bottle of Jameson in one hand a couple of glasses in the other. The question has me momentarily panicked. I’m about to ask him how he recognized her, then I remember that he’s the only person I told that she was coming.
“That was her,” I say, touching the tip of my tongue to the corner of my lip. I taste blood. Wince at the sting. “Don’t let the crown jewels fool you—she hasn’t changed much.” Even as I say it, I know that’s not true. Sliding the paperback off the table, I jam it into my back pocket while Cap’n pours a couple of fingers into each glass before sliding into the seat Henley just vacated.
“You alright?” he says, tipping his glass toward him to stare at his whiskey.
The way I feel about Henley has never been a secret, and neither is the fact that losing her took me apart and put me back together wrong. Having her gone made that easy for everyone to ignore. Made it easy for me to pretend that who I am now is who I’ve always been.
Staring her in the face, eight years later makes it impossible to keep believing the lie.
So, no.
I’m not alright.
“Dandy, Cap’n,” I say, lifting my glass to my mouth to drain its contents, liking the sting of it when it hits the cut on my lip. “I’m fuckin’ dandy.”
My shop is only a few blocks from the bar, so the walk home only takes a couple of minutes. Even before I see it, I can hear it. Tools clanging against the cement floor. The heavy clank of the hoist chain. The phone ringing. Tess’s questionable music choices floating through the open bay door.
Once it comes into view, I feel a momentary swell of pride. The sign above the door says Gilroy’s Garage. It’s mine. I earned it, and no one can take it away from me.
I remember the doorknob-sized ring Henley hit me with, and that sense of pride falls flat. I could own a hundred grease-pits, and I’d never be able to afford to give her something like that.
“Hey,” Tess calls out from under the Chevy in the main bay as soon as she sees my boots. A moment later she pokes her head out from under the truck. “You’ve got company—think it’s your whale. Tried to get rid of her for you but she won’t leave.”
I immediately look to my left. Sure enough, there’s Henley. She’s perched on an upturned crate inside my cramped office, hands clutched around her purse, looking like she’s afraid to touch anything.
I look down at Tess to see if she’s fucking with me. She and Henley had been best friends until Henley moved away. No shit-eating grin. No smothered urge to laugh. No what the fuck were you thinking glare. Tess has no idea the woman waiting for me is Henley. The fact that she didn’t recognize her made me feel better.
“What happened to your face?”
Without thinking, I reach up and touch my mouth. Swollen. Cut. Probably bruised. “How long has she been here?”
The curiosity upticks into mild concern. “About a half-hour. What happened to your face?”
“Take the rest of the day off,” I say to Tess without answering her question.
“What?” Tess says. “No. The Chevy is scheduled for a 10 AM pick-up tomorrow, and you’re gonna need—”
I hook the toe of my boot around the frame of the creeper she’s on and pull Tess from under the Chevy. I finally look down at her. “Take the rest of the afternoon off, Tess.”
She stands before dividing a look between me and Henley who notices us looking at her through the window like she’s an exhibit at the zoo. “Was it her husband?”
I tear my gaze from Henley and fix it on Tess.
“What?”
“Little Orphan Annie in there—” Tess tips her chin in Henley’s direction. “Was it her husband who wrecked that pretty face of yours?”
“He’s not her husband yet,” I say, way more defensive than I have a right to be. “And no. She did it.”
Tess’s sharp hazel eyes go wide. “The hell you say,” she says before letting out a sharp, one note laugh. “That lady hit you?”
“See you tomorrow, Tess,” I say, taking the socket wrench out of her hand before pulling her coveralls open to reveal her usual tank top and jeans underneath.
“You’re usually smarter than this, Con,” she tells me, stepping out of them while craning her neck so she can see into the office over my shoulder. “I’ve never known you to bring your work home with you.”
“Haha,” I say, stooping over to pick up her discarded coveralls. “Work home with me… I get it.” I wad them into a ball and throw them in the corner with the rest of them. “It’s funny because I’m a whore, right?”
My tone must’ve been sharper than I thought because Tess stops in her tracks. “That’s not what I mean,” she says even though we both know it’s exactly what she meant.
“It’s fine,” I tell her, even though it doesn’t feel fine. It feels like shit. I take a quick look through the office window. Henley’s standing now, watching our exchange. “Tomorrow morning, okay?” I smile at Tess, trying to reassure her.
“Okay,” she says, casting another, decidedly more wary look over my shoulder before pressing her lips to my cheek in a very un-Tess like move that was half apology, half warning to the woman standing behind us. “See you tomorrow.”
As soon as she’s gone, I climb onto the creeper and wheel myself under the Chevy to finish the oil change Tess started. About five minutes into it, I hear the click of Henley’s heels coming toward me.
“You didn’t tell Tess who you are either, I take it?” I say as soon as the clicking stops.
“No,” she says over the whisper of silk like she’s nervous and fidgeting. “I have the feeling you don’t want people to know.” She sounds hurt by it, and I’m glad. I’m glad she knows what it’s like to be kept a secret. How shitty it feels.
“Do you live here?” she says, making an awkward attempt at small talk.
“Yup,” I say, thinking about my cramped apartment above my equally cramped office.
“Do you work for Tess’s dad?” she says, and even though I have the feeling she already knows the answer, I play along—because really, I don’t want to have this conversation any more than she does.
“I bought the place a few years back,” I say, fitting the socket wrench over the lug nut. “Tess works for me.”
“That must be hard for her,” Henley says. “I know she always figured this place would be hers someday.”
Hard for Tess. It’d devastated her, although she never said a word about it beyond a tight smile when I made the offer and a terse, I’m glad it’s you. Remembering it makes me feel bad. Like I stole something from her. I talk shit about Cap’n and his reluctance to take the money my dad gave him but to be honest, I know exactly how he feels.
“Look, I’ll cast a few lines,” I say without looking in her direction. “There’re only a few bars left in the neighborhood that still let him belly up so finding your old man shouldn’t be too hard.” Now I’m being an asshole on purpose, trying to make her feel bad by reminding her that her father is a lowlife drunk, but I can’t help it. I want her to feel as shitty about herself as I do.
“That’s not why I’m here,” she says it quietly, and I finally look over to see a pair of nude pumps about six inches from my face. I can see a light smattering of freckles trail along her ankle bone. They’re faint but not as faint as the ones on her face. The contrast makes me wonder what she did to herself to get rid of them.
Her freckles. Her nose. Her teeth. Her hair. Nothing is the same. None of it is her. It should make it easier for me to stay away from her. Keep her away from me. Instead, I find myself inviting her in.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I say while I pul
l the lid to the oil pan and set it aside. “Why are you here?
“I’d like to apologize.”
“You already did that,” I tell her even though I feel like I’m the one who should be apologizing to her.
“I’d like to do it again.” She sighs quietly. “And I’d like to explain… about last night.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” I tell her, trying to let us both off the hook. “We both had a good time so let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
“Please, Conner.”
I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s the way she says my name. Maybe it’s the word please. Whatever it is, it pushes me out from under the Chevy, and I find her standing over me, face angled down, her long fall of straight auburn hair casting shadows across her face. “I’m listening,” I tell her. Instead of speaking she reaches down and offers me a hand up. The ring I’d seen there earlier is gone.
“Did you get mugged or something?” I say, taking her hand before she has a chance to pull it back.
“Mugged?” she says like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “What—oh.” She turns her hand in my grip. “No.” She pulls me up, taking a cautious step back while fumbling in her purse to pull out a ridiculous lace-edged handkerchief. “It’s not even mine, really—”
“Not yet, right?” I say, throwing her earlier words in her face while I take the handkerchief from her and stuff it into the front pocket of my coveralls. “You said you want to explain.” I pull a worn bandana from my back pocket and start to rub at the dark smudges my hand left on her knuckles. “So, explain.”
“I took an earlier train,” Henley says, chewing on her bottom lip for a second before shaking her head. “I… I wanted—”
“How ‘bout we skip to the part where you came into the bar and failed to say, hey, Conner, it’s me, Henley before you let me bend you over the fucking desk.” I pull her hand toward me, focusing on its palm. “You lied to me.”
