Guarded Dreams

by L. J. Evans

  “Ava wants to know if we want her to bring Chinese or Mexican?”

  “Hell yes,” he said, sitting down in the chair.

  I laughed. I needed the laughter. “Which one?”

  “I don’t care. Food.”

  ME: Truck says bring food, any kind of food. But I don’t want you buying dinner every night. I’ll pay you back when you get here.

  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: Don’t be all alpha male. I’ve got dinner.

  ME: We haven’t even been on a date yet. I can pay for dinner.

  THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY: When we go out on a date, I’ll let you pay.

  The tension around my heart lessened. No matter what happened, I had good people in my life. I had Mac Truck. I had my mom and Leena. Now, there was the chance of having Ava. It wasn’t enough to make the ache disappear, but it was enough to get me through that night. I just had to take it a day at a time while I figured out how to swim without legs.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  I shifted on the table, the little saw that the doctor was wielding next to my skin making me just a little nervous. She looked up at me with a smile.

  “Don’t move. You’ll be fine. I promise I’ve never killed anyone with my saw yet.”

  It had been almost three weeks since I’d had surgery. Early March had turned into early April. Those weeks had drifted by with me seeing Ava almost every day. I’d needed the distraction of her to keep me from going insane. Many days, I made my way uptown and watched her in the studio at Juilliard where I focused on listening to her songs and her voice instead of my broken bones.

  When Ava and Brady were in the studio together, I saw glimpses of the Ava I’d seen onstage in Rockport, music flowing through her as if it was just an extension of the air she breathed. She was incredibly talented, but she was right that Brady was talented, too. He had a force to him that was addicting to watch.

  It had given me a moment of heartburn when I’d found out they shared a dorm room, but it was easy to see that what they had was nothing like what Ava and I had. Brady and Ava’s relationship was almost sibling in nature. The relaxed back and forth that flew between them as they worked out the kinks in a song eased the stress level of everyone in the room. And that stress level was high due to the jury exams that were only weeks away.

  Ava and I still hadn’t been on an official date. My screwed-up leg and her schedule made it seem impossible. The rare times that we were alone together, we spent with slow kisses and caresses, our bodies learning the curves and contours of each other as the hum inside us increased. It was as if we were slow dancing our way into whatever we were becoming.

  As the doctor pulled the plaster away, replacing it with a brace and a cane, I was making new plans. Some of the plans were for the real date that Ava deserved. Some of them were for my rehab. It was going to be a long haul, but I’d do what I’d always done: push my body until I’d made it into what it needed to be. It was the only shot I had at getting my career back.

  On the journey back to our apartment, my leg hurt like hell as I put more weight on it than I had in over two weeks—that pain being the first sign of what was to come. I made it into the shower before succumbing to the emotional pain that had come from seeing the leg without the cast.

  As the water ran across my back, I stared down at the mess of cuts across my skin with my gut wrenching. The scabs and scars were somehow more real than the cast had been. The cast had felt temporary. The marks on my skin made everything more permanent.

  Doubts raged through me as I stepped out of the shower. Staring at myself in the mirror, it was hard to recognize the person I saw. The bruise on my cheek was all but gone, only a hint of it left beneath my skin that was always tan from being out on the sea. But my hair had grown out, longer than I’d worn it in years, as if already telling me I didn’t need a crew cut anymore. I looked tired. Older. Worn.

  I shook myself out of the funk, refusing to believe that it was over. I’d get a fucking haircut. I’d get my body back in shape. I’d still be on deck and at sea before I knew it.

  There was a barber down the street that I’d been using. It was Friday. I could get my haircut and, while I sat in the barber chair, I’d figure out a new first date for Ava and me. I’d continue to focus on her instead of the shitstorm that was my leg and my life.

  I dressed in jeans for the first time in weeks, replaced the brace, and then pulled on a thermal Henley. Then, I grabbed my wallet and keys, heading out just as my phone rang.

  I looked down, ready to ignore whoever it was unless it was Ava. I saw Leena’s name and the side of her face like she had the phone pressed up to her ear. I rarely heard from my mother’s best friend—my second mom—unless she was with my mom, talking at me from the background when they put me on speaker at the bookstore or at one of their houses.

  I was pretty sure Leena didn’t realize she was FaceTiming me. I held in a laugh as I answered. “Hey.”

  “Hi, Eli, it’s me, Leena.”

  I couldn’t help the chuckle that I let out. “Yeah, I kind of figured it was you since I can see the side of your face.”

  “What? How?” She pulled the phone away from her, squinting at it.

  “You do realize you FaceTimed me?” I was still trying hard not to laugh, and once she realized she could see me, she rolled her eyes.

  “Now how the heck did I do that?”

  “Well—”

  She cut me off. “No, don’t tell me. I’ll never remember, anyway.” I just smiled at her, and she moved on, face turning serious again. My smile faded some.

  “You got your cast off today?” she asked, playing for time.

  I nodded. “Yep, look, free man.” I moved my phone so she could see the brace.

  “You’ll get to start physical therapy now?”

  “Yep.”

  We were both quiet for a moment. “What’s wrong, Leena?”

  “That obvious?”

  “You never call me. You text and harass me like I’m still one of your students, but calling on your own doesn’t really happen. I usually only hear your voice with Mom’s.”

  “That’s sort of why I’m calling,” she said slowly.

  My gut twisted into a tight ball, and before I could ask what was wrong again, she kept going, in a rush, like she was saying it before she lost her nerve.

  “Look, she’s going to be angry, but with you not on active duty right now because of your leg, I didn’t think there was any reason not to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “She’s been battling breast cancer.” She blurted it out, grimacing at the phone, before stopping completely, breathing hard like she’d run a race.

  The air was knocked out of me, the knot that pretty much lived in my stomach these days enlarging until it engulfed my lungs and my throat, causing it to slowly constrict like a collapsing tunnel. My mom had cancer. No. Leena must be wrong. Mom would have told me.

  “Look,” Leena said again, her favorite word on display. “She’s going to be okay. They caught it early. It’s stage one with only microscopic amounts having spread to the lymph nodes. There’s like a ninety-nine percent cure rate or something like that. She’s had the cancer removed, and she’s pretty far through the treatments. She’s still sick, though, and still going through chemo as an adjunctive therapy. If you have the time, I know seeing you would help her.”

  When my breath returned, it came with a wave of anger. That mom and Leena would keep this from me. That the universe would mess with my mom when I already lost my dad. When it would mess with all of us when my life was already crumbling around me.

  “Why the hell didn’t she tell me?”

  “You know your mom. She doesn’t want to be a burden. Doesn’t want you to have things in your head that will distract you on your job.”

  “She hates my job.”

  “But the thought of you being distracted on the job…”

  She didn’t have to finis
h her statement. I got it. She didn’t want me to end up with a bullet through me like Dad because my head wasn’t in the right place.

  “Jesus Christ. I haven’t been at work for three weeks. Three! Someone could have fucking told me.”

  She was silent, eyes almost closed, evading the camera on the phone. I didn’t usually cuss around my mom and Leena. They never let me get away with it, and it was somehow disrespectful to the women who raised me. However, I was a little short on words to better describe how I was feeling.

  She took a deep breath and then said, in a wavering voice, “So, you’re coming?”

  “Of course. I’ll have to notify my command, but I’m on leave, anyway. They won’t really care.”

  “She’s going to hate me,” Leena said forlornly, and my anger faded just ever so slightly at the sight of a gray-haired Leena looking so tired and sad all of a sudden.

  “She could never hate you,” I tried to comfort her.

  “She’ll be mad.”

  We both knew this was the truth. Mom hated it when we did something for her own good behind her back. Like the time I’d arranged to have a new used car sent to her because her old one kept dying. I’d recruited Leena to help me, and Mom hadn’t talked to us for a week. But…she’d kept the car.

  “Just means Sunday brunch will be quieter than normal,” I told her, trying to make her smile, but she didn’t. She was still thoughtful. “I would have come sooner, Leena.”

  “We both know you would have tried. Who knows if they would have given you leave? Anyway, she didn’t want that.” Leena shook her head as if convincing herself as much as me.

  “Sometimes what you want and what you need aren’t the same.” And even as I said the words, it hit me how applicable they were for my own life, too. My want to be in the Coast Guard—to have that be my life—it was different from what I needed. What I needed was my family: Mom and Leena, Mac and Truck, and now Ava. Nothing else really mattered beyond that.

  I took a moment to acknowledge that I’d included Ava in that. That I could see her as part of my life even if there was no Coast Guard.

  “Don’t tell her I’m coming. She can be pissed at both of us at the same time,” I told her.

  Leena nodded, looking like she might cry.

  “Love you, kiddo.” She said kiddo like the Japanese did, like kee-toe. It still meant kid. It was what she’d called me since she’d found out about my love of manga and comic books. Since I was ten, and my dad died, and she’d practically moved in to our house to help us while Mom and I got used to a life without him.

  “Love you, too. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way.”

  She nodded her head and then clicked the off button. I sank down into the armchair, causing my knee to scream at the angle, and I quickly stuck it out in front of me.

  I let the knowledge settle over me. My mom had breast cancer. My mom had been battling breast cancer and was too nervous to tell me for fear that I’d end up dead from the distraction. None of that was okay—not even the slightest bit. Nothing about her choices or my choices were.

  Screw getting a haircut. I wanted to be with someone who could reassure me that, somehow, we’d make it through. Me. Mom. All of us. Truck was out on the cutter for a three-day op, but Ava wasn’t. Ava was a Lyft ride away.

  Before I could process anything else, I was out the door, calling the car, and waiting on the street corner for it to pick me up, shivering as a cold breeze picked up. I hadn’t grabbed a jacket, just walked out the door with my wet hair and a Henley, but it didn’t matter.

  Once I was out of the car and on the steps of Juilliard, I hesitated, unsure about bringing my mood and anguish to Ava. I didn’t have a chance to move away, though, because she saw me as she was passing through the lobby. It was chance—pure chance—but her eyes spotted me as we always seemed to spot each other regardless of the volume of people and objects between us.

  She came out the glass door, a smile on her face. “Look at you, cast-less.” As she got closer to me, her smile faded, reading my turmoil on my face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My mom has breast cancer,” I told her.

  “Oh, Eli.” She wrapped her arms around me before I could even blink, squeezing me tightly, her smell and her energy infusing me as they always did. “What do the doctors say?”

  She was still buried in my chest, arms tucked around my body, while I wobbled on my cane, and she seemed to hold me up—a six foot three wavering idiot.

  “Leena, my mom’s best friend, called. She said that it’s stage one. Extremely likely they got it all.”

  “She’s already gone through treatment?” Ava lifted her eyes up to mine, and I saw the same surprise there that I know must have been in mine talking to Leena.

  “They didn’t tell me,” I said it quietly. “Mom was afraid I’d let it get in my head on the job…”

  My throat closed up, a sob getting stuck there that I wouldn’t let out. I refused to be a blithering idiot on the steps of her college. Ava slipped her hand into mine and pulled me gently in the direction of the building that housed her dorm, but I didn’t know if I could handle being in a room right now. Closed. Without air.

  “I need air,” I told her, not letting her hand go but also not letting myself be led toward the building.

  She looked up into my face and must have seen the panic and fear and anger that resided there. “Let me grab my coat and my purse.”

  She brought my hand up to her lips and kissed the back of it before letting it go and taking off into the building. While I waited for her, I leaned against the wall and tried not to cuss my entire existence. Tried not to berate myself for the single-minded purpose I’d had to follow in my father’s footsteps no matter the price to anyone. I was good at the job. I was built for this life, but for the first time ever, I wondered if it was worth the sacrifices the people I loved had paid for it. I didn’t want the people I cared about to not tell me things because they were afraid of how it would affect me…how it could affect whether I made a life-ending mistake.

  When Ava came back to me, my expression must have read the self-flagellation that was raging through me, because she gave me a questioning look. I just pushed myself away from the wall and joined her.

  “Can you do the subway?” she asked.

  I nodded and let her lead me to the nearest subway station. When we finally emerged from the depths of the subway, we were at Battery Park—Ava’s favorite place in the city. The place I’d wanted to take her on our first date.

  We walked through the park until we got to the edge of the bay with the Statue of Liberty rising before us. My leg was killing me. I’d overdone it for the first day without a cast, but at the moment, I didn’t care. The breeze was ice cold coming off the water, and I still didn’t have a jacket. I shivered, and Ava wrapped her arms around me as we both stared out at Lady Liberty.

  My brain wandered back to my mom and the questions I hadn’t asked Leena, like whether she’d had a mastectomy or not. If she’d had to lose a part of who she was, yet again. This time a physical piece. We were both losing parts of what made us who we were. Life was so damn cruel sometimes.

  “Talk to me,” Ava said finally, pulling me from thoughts I didn’t want.

  “I’m wondering how it can be fair for so much to hit one family.”

  “Did you know that the statue gets struck by lightning several times each year?” Ava asked, seemingly so random, just like her talk of saddling dreams had seemed random.

  I shook my head. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Copper is a conductive metal.”

  “You’re missing my point,” she said with a quirk to her lip that caused my finger to go to the one side dipping in more. She moved to kiss my finger. “My point is…she gets hit all the time—by lightning, no less—and yet, she’s still there: Liberty Enlightening the World.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that my mom can handle it? You don�
�t even know my mom.”

  Ava shrugged. “I know you. She has to be strong to have raised someone as stubborn and dog-faced as you.”

  I smirked. “I’m dog-faced?”

  “Maybe more wolf.”

  I moved my fingers under her chin so that she couldn’t look away. “Wolf. Dog. I’m not sure if I should be offended or pleased that you’re telling me I’m animalistic.”

  My other hand tugged at the waves of hair at the back of her head. My eyes scoured her face, memorizing it again for maybe the hundredth time since we’d found each other once more.

  Then, I bent so that my lips could capture hers. It always stunned me, the feeling that hit me when we touched, but especially when our lips touched. The breathless feeling of being drawn into something more than myself. No matter how much I got, I was always craving more. More touch. More of her. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I had her all. Would my craving be sated, or would I just continue to desire her like an alcoholic needs his hundred proof?

  She removed her lips from mine and looked up with eyes filled with desire. “Eli?”

  “Hmm,” I said, lost in her and our lips and our touch.

  “Do you still need air?”

  I frowned, not following her.

  “If not, perhaps you could take me home?” Her husky voice was even huskier, filled with a promise that I couldn’t resist any longer. Ava and I were meant to be one.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ava

  HEAVEN

  “I couldn't dream this up

  Even if I tried

  You and me in this moment

  Feels like magic only

  I'm right where I wanna be.”

  —Performed by Kane Brown