by Cora Brent
Why couldn’t I stop thinking about Stephanie? There were plenty of sweet, uncomplicated girls out there, girls who would revel in getting all dolled up for the promise of a romantic night out. Hell, I could see one coming toward me right now. She was a round-faced brunette who was nicely put together, complete with tits that looked like they would be fun to play with. She saw me staring and gave me an expectant grin but I just nodded briefly and moved on because I didn’t want her. Noooo, that would be too easy. Instead I wanted Stephanie with her ratty clothes and wild hair. Stephanie, who was all wrapped up in her own repressive sexual frustrations and thought I was a pig no matter what I said.
Just as I was working myself up into enough annoyance to harden my heart to her, I remembered the shy way she’d looked at me as she finally allowed me to remove her shirt. Then she bit her lip nervously and insulted herself while I unhooked her bra. I had to walk more slowly as my dick got hard at the same time my gut grew soft, knocking the wind out of me a little. I didn’t know what to make of Stephanie but I did know I wasn’t going to get her out of my head anytime soon.
“What the hell are you muttering about?”
Creed was standing on the patio of our apartment, leaning over the stucco wall and glowering as only Creed could glower.
I tossed my backpack over the patio wall and hopped over.
“I’m considering majoring in psychology so I can more closely examine my latent masochism.”
My brother blinked. “What?”
I leaned over and picked up my backpack. “Just trying to figure out my own shitty choices.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You made one today.”
“Other than replacing the empty milk carton in the fridge I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Where’s Truly?”
“Inside, talking to Saylor. She doesn’t know.”
I kicked at the leg of the weight bench. “Know what?”
“Don’t play dumb, Chasyn. It pisses me off.”
“Sunlight and oxygen piss you off, Big C. You’ll have to narrow it down.”
He let out an exasperated hiss. “You fucked Stephanie. Is that narrow enough for you?”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “I did. Now I remember.”
He pointed to my backpack. “You left the evidence in the living room. Truly didn’t see it.”
“You know, you interrupted some good stuff with your untimely arrival. I should be angry.”
“Dammit Chase. I told you to let that one go by.”
“Hell with you. Stephanie doesn’t need you to protect her from me.”
Creedence hit the roof. “Jesus, you think I’m worried about Stephanie? Aside from the fact that she matters to Truly I couldn’t give two shits about her. It’s you I’m worried about, asshole. You know what kind of trouble that crazy girl is into?”
“Well today she found some more.”
He glared at me. “You could do better.”
I bristled, feeling defensive of Stephanie. It was ironic, since she probably wouldn’t argue with anyone who sneered about what a lowlife I was.
“You don’t even know her.”
Creed sighed. “Look, I’ve seen enough of her to know she’s not as much of a sullen brat as she seems, but she comes with an airplane hangar full of baggage.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Like what? I mean, besides her role as a sports gambling overlord?”
“Chasyn, isn’t that enough?” he said quietly and I saw the earnest concern in his face. Creedence wasn’t trying to be a dick. It had been painful for him to watch me start down the path of self destruction. Addiction. Despair. It was what ruled our mother. When he and Cord had told me they would follow me into the darkness if they had to, my brothers were speaking the truth. They would sacrifice themselves before they would let me get swallowed up.
Truly abruptly poked her head outside. “Hey,” she called. “I’ve got to get going to work.”
Creed nodded, his eyes still on me. “I’ll come with you, babe.”
She smiled and then turned her attention to me. “Chase honey, where have you been keeping yourself the past few days? Seems like I haven’t seen you since Vegas.”
“I’ve been getting busy,” I told her with a slow grin. “Keeping busy, I mean,” I corrected myself when Creed threw me a hard glare.
“Will we see you at the show tonight?”
Creed had a gig tonight, singing at the country western bar where he’d first gotten together with Truly. It seemed like a lot of time had passed since the night he went out on the prowl to try and push away the terrible dread of his upcoming fight, but it had only been two months. Creed had been drinking way too much and I dragged him out to try and focus his attention elsewhere. I had just wanted him to find something to have a good time with. Instead he’d found Truly Lee, probably the one girl on earth who had the power to rock Creedence Gentry’s world.
“I’ll stop by,” I promised, and waved as they left together.
Saylor was alone in the kitchen. Her hair was up in a ponytail and she was grimacing while scrubbing the sink with a soapy mound of steel wool.
“Can I help you with that?” I asked, holding my hand out. “Has Cordero’s passion for cleanliness overcome you or is this the nesting phase?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed, throwing the steel wool in the garbage and running her hands over her belly. “Just restless I guess. Place always seems like it’s filthy.”
“It is filthy,” I said, amused. “You live with three men, kiddo.”
Saylor smiled a little and shuffled over to the couch. She looked tired. I followed her.
I pointed to her stomach. “They kicking around in there yet?”
“No.” She rubbed her eyes. “They’re still too small. All of my copious internet research says it might be another month before I feel anything.”
Sometimes I still couldn’t believe that Cord was going to be a father. It wasn’t fair that he’d never had a role model to show him how it’s done. Our own father, Benton Gentry, was nothing short of vile. I tried not to think about him but when he did cross my mind it wasn’t usually the memory of sickening physical pain I thought of first. There were beatings. They were painful. They were frequent. They also weren’t the things that appalled me the most about our childhood in that rotten section of desert eighty miles away. No, it was the way he’d always made us feel like we were lower than low, beneath the status of even the bottom-feeding Gentrys. He’d never wanted the three of us and told us so every day.
“Don’t,” said Saylor, frowning at me from across the couch.
I raised my eyebrows and she sighed before explaining.
“You look just like Cordero when he starts dwelling on memories better left untouched. Don’t do it, Chase.” She paused and folded her hands together in her lap, across her swollen belly. “I know a thing or two about silencing the anger for the sake of your own sanity.”
She did know about it. One hot spring night Saylor had run from a man who had hurt her. She stumbled around in the dark until she ran into another man who had hurt her in a different way, a long time ago when he was only a boy, before he understood that a man ought to be something other than callous and awful. I had been a part of that history. Saylor McCann had forgiven me before she became Saylor Gentry. Still, I felt like I hadn’t come as far as my brother had. I worried that I would always have one foot stuck in Emblem.
“I’m not silencing my anger,” I yawned. “I’m embracing my inner torment so that I may appropriately channel it into a beneficial conclusion.”
“What the hell kind of double talk is that?”
“Rehab speak.”
“Oh yeah? Because it sounds like bullshit you made up on the spot.”
“It’s that too.”
Her mouth twitched. She was trying not to laugh. I could always make Saylor laugh. “Are you embracing Stephanie along with all of this inner torment?”
Even the sound of her name caused everything
inside of me to tense. “I tried.”
“Not very hard,” she muttered.
“What? Did she pour her heart out to you?”
“No. Stephanie keeps it close to the chest. You know that. Even Truly has trouble breaking through.”
I grunted. “Well she’s not shy about letting me know what a lousy fucker I am.”
Saylor nodded. “Yup, you can be.”
“What?” I was surprised, insulted. “Thought we were kindred spirits, you and me.”
“Chase,” she sighed. “You know I love you. I mean, you do know that. But you can come off as a total unserious man whore. Yeah, I get it,” she continued when I started to sputter an objection. “You’re trying not to be, but Steph didn’t just meet you last week. She’s been able to watch you for a while. You’ve got to show her that you’re better than you seem to be.”
I thought about the way girls were always draping themselves over me in class, whether I invited them or not. The last few weeks, even before Vegas, Steph would spin around in her chair to shoot me dirty looks now and again. Then after class I would catch up to her for a short bout of profane banter. It had pleased me in a sick way, her evident jealousy. Maybe I should have considered how much damage my cocky bullshit was doing. Instead of answering with a madcap grin I should have gone and sat beside her, like I wanted to, like she’d done for me once.
But today I was still feeling the sting of rejection. I’d offered to be a good guy and she’d insisted it was impossible. I crossed my foot over my knee and scoffed. “Chick’s got issues, Saylor.”
“Who doesn’t?” she challenged. “You? Me?”
It made my heart sore when I remembered how timid Stephanie had been about sex. Even if she wasn’t a virgin, something was holding her back.
I told Saylor about it, feeling mildly guilty because I’d promised Stephanie I wouldn’t spill the beans to anyone else besides Cord. But I needed someone to be honest about whether I was wasting my time here. I didn’t like getting smacked down over and over again, especially now that there were other moments, sweet moments, mixed in there to make me think about Stephanie Bransky in a tender way.
Saylor listened carefully and then sighed when I stopped talking. “So she’s never talked to you much about her past?”
“Much? Girl could have hatched from an Easter egg for all I know.”
Saylor gave me a sympathetic smile. “Did you ask?”
“No,” I admitted slowly. “I didn’t.”
“So why don’t you start asking? Maybe there are a few things she’d like to ask you too.”
I was quiet for a minute. I hated the idea of getting another door slammed in my face. I almost hated it as much as I hated the idea of never being inside Stephanie again.
Saylor was waiting for me. “Think about it, Chase. Is she worth it? Forget about what everyone else might think or say. Is Stephanie worth the effort?”
I made up my mind quickly. “Yes. For some crazy reason I believe she is.”
Saylor only smiled with serene triumph. I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Thanks, sis.”
She shoved me. “Go get your girl.”
As I showered I thought about what Saylor had said. I thought about the flashes of vulnerability I’d seen in Stephanie before she had time to cover it with something else. I might go over there in a little while and get shot down again. The idea made me nervous and I got nervous about as often as I took a girl out for an event that didn’t end up horizontal. Which was to say, never. The best I could do was to keep it honest.
When I was toweling off I noticed the scar running down the middle of my abdomen. Sometimes I forgot all about it. Truly had once told me that the scar would fade, as scars do. Truly was right. I also had a faint line along my right cheek and my nose was slightly crooked from having been broken. That had been some cowardly bullshit. I was blindsided, jumped behind the gym one sunny afternoon four months ago by a couple of snotty punks who were pissed that Cord had gotten the better of one of their buddies in a fight. There never was any justice over it, other than Creedence scaring the piss out of one of them before Cord pulled him back. I was all right with that. I could do without vengeance if it meant my boys and I would get to come home every night.
Still, it was a source of humiliation to have been taken down so easily by some lousy pricks I could have certainly beaten had I seen them coming. Maybe that’s what started me down a bad road with the pills. Getting numb was easy at first. Then it became easier. By the time I realized it was a problem I was locked in the jaws of addiction. It was a horribly lonely place to be.
Back in my room I spied a book on my desk. It was quietly given to me the first day I stepped into the outpatient program. Getting clean was tough, at first. My dreams were full of terrifying things and I kept breaking into a cold sweat out of nowhere. A powerful sense of panic would find me at the oddest times. It’s a difficult feeling to describe. Saylor had asked me about it once, out of curiosity. I told her that every day was like walking a tightrope with no net underneath. Either you make it across in one piece or else the messy alternative awaited.
I wondered how much Stephanie knew about me. Given the fact that she was Truly’s roommate and girls are known to talk I figured she knew more about me than I did about her.
As I made a bit of an effort to look neat I examined myself critically in the bathroom mirror. Sometimes when I caught sight of my profile out of the corner of my eye I saw someone else. For a long time it would be one of my brothers and the idea would comfort me. But lately I’d been seeing Benton Gentry. Not as he was now, all beer-gutted and jowly, but the petrifying wall of muscle he’d been in his youth. I wondered about my father sometimes. I wondered if he’d been born a cruel bastard or if life had twisted him that way. If the same thought ever occurred to Cord or Creed they never said so. If they ever worried whether it was possible for any of us to go the same way they never said that either.
I took the keys to the Chevy from Creed’s dresser and headed out. I was almost at Steph’s place when I thought of something and made a U-turn. There were a couple of things I needed to pick up first.
Dusk was beginning to descend when I finally got to Stephanie’s door. I saw her Buick in the parking lot and figured it was unlikely she would have gone far without it. Of course, that didn’t mean she would answer when I knocked.
After a few short raps on the door I saw a shadow darken the peephole. I waved. The longest five seconds in the world passed. Then the door opened with a click.
“Hi,” Stephanie said, almost sheepishly. She leaned against the door frame and crossed one leg over the other. Her hair appeared damp and she was only wearing a long cotton shirt.
“Peace offering?” I held out the flowers I’d bought a few minutes earlier. She stared at them.
“Are we at war, Chase?”
“I don’t know,” I told her, hoping she would just take the damn flowers. “Sometimes it feels that way Stephanie.”
She took the flowers and our hands touched briefly, sending a current of electricity through my core. She had that effect on me. Only her. Standing there in an old shirt without a speck of makeup on she was still so fucking sexy I was sporting stiff wood in an instant.
“Thanks,” she muttered, her eyes down like she didn’t know what to do with this kind of attention.
I held out the other item I’d purchased. “A second overture.” I gestured to her wrist. “How’s it feeling?”
She glanced at the swelling. “I think I’ll live. I think so.”
“Does it hurt?”
“No.” Then she winced. “A little bit.”
I stepped over the threshold. “It’ll help if you immobilize it.” I started unrolling the bandage and she stepped back a little to let me all the way in before closing the door behind me.
Stephanie seemed clueless about what to do with the small bouquet of roses. She fussed and sniffed at the petals. I wondered if it was the
first time a guy had ever brought her flowers. If so, then we were even because I’d never done such a thing for anyone else.
“Here,” I said, taking them. “I’ll put ‘em in water.”
In the kitchen I found a tall plastic cup and filled it from the tap, dumping the flowers inside and placing the whole thing in the middle of the small kitchen table.
When I returned to the living room Steph was sitting awkwardly on the edge of the couch. She already had me going, especially with her shirt riding up to her thighs, but I was determined not to do anything about it right now.
I sat down beside her and gently took her hand, looking closely at her swollen wrist before I began wrapping it in the long elastic bandage I’d brought. I had to let her know something before we could talk about anything else. I cleared my throat and chose my words carefully.
“About that girl you saw me with today? It was nothing. I wasn’t touching her and I’m not into her. I should have told her that straight up.”
I thought Stephanie would mutter something sarcastic but she sighed instead and spoke in a quiet, regretful voice. “I overreacted. In class too. I’m not proud of it. But I figured you were teasing me.”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at her face. I was arrogant about girls and I knew it. I always figured I knew what they were thinking, what they wanted. But this one had the power to surprise me. Add our physical chemistry to that and I was starting to realize how much trouble I was getting into. I finished wrapping her wrist up before I spoke again. I leaned back into the couch, trying to figure out how to say something important.
“Stephanie, I’m full of shit more than half the time. I think you know that. But today, when I told you that I want you, that I need you, I wasn’t teasing.” I cleared my throat. “I wasn’t teasing and I wasn’t just trying to get you on your back. I was being honest.”
