by Leanne Davis
She laughed outright when he mock-scowled. She had walked again along the trail and wore baggy sweats with a coat. It was freezing outside. So… there was no prancing or sexiness. He then leaned his forehead resting on hers and sighed. “I have to get back. I’d invite you… but there are no spouses. Just all managers. It looks like it runs into dinner… so…”
She shook her head. “I’m fine, Tristan. I don’t need a babysitter. Remember? The reclusive me? I’d rather be alone than in there with that crowd. I’ll go get dinner. Just text me and I’ll let you know where I’m at.”
“I know, you’re the lowest maintenance girl I know. But…”
She kissed his mouth quickly, looking up at him. “Go. I’m enjoying being here. It’s a pretty town. The downtown reminds me a lot of Marsdale, except of course the giant river.”
He sighed, glum. “Okay, I’m going. Later. Don’t forget to check your phone. I have no idea what time it’ll be.”
She headed out along the sidewalks as darkness settled over the city. The night was clear, all stars up above. But cold enough her breath made smoke-like in front of her. The main thoroughfare was crowded with people out for the night. Restaurants were bright and hopping. There were regular streetlights and a clean, safe feeling to the downtown. She eventually sat at a restaurant and got a drink, ignoring the food and wishing she could order alcohol. Maybe later they could have some at the room. It was a fun, startling, and grown-up feeling. Traveling on business. Kylie almost pinched herself. Who’d have figured it of her? She answered Tristan’s text when he announced he was done. He found her a half hour later. He sat down with a kiss and tired sigh as he started working at the tie he wore. He got to order a drink and dinner and believed her when she said she’d already had some. He ate with a relish she liked to watch. He enjoyed every bite as if it was a pleasurable gift. He had relaxed by the time he started on his second drink. He went on a long rant about some of the managers were being callous about the welders and fabricators who worked for Tamasy. How the welders and fabricators were the lifeblood of the company and half the corporate suits could learn a thing or two about work ethic from them.
It was nice, she thought, sitting back, listening to him. Being there with him.
“Bored yet?”
“With what?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Waiting around for me. Me in general. Come on, you saw what I do. It’s standing around talking, pretty much. Dull. Not exactly the fun you were having at college before you met me.”
She reached forward to touch her fingers to his. He rarely, oh so rarely, expressed such obvious insecurity with her. “I told you, I completely enjoy my company. I don’t need anyone else. There was tons to see and do, and come on… it’s a free vacation for me. Not many college juniors get that. And you don’t bore me, Tristan. You intimidate me, you make me unsure, unbalanced, un-everything. But dull? Never for a second.”
He sighed. “And the parties?”
She shook her head and said in a quiet voice, “Tristan, I’d much rather have sex with you than anyone else. It was just what I did before I met you. But I’m ready to have met you. I think I’m even kind of ready for a relationship.”
“Boyfriend, you mean?”
She smiled as she dropped her head. “Yeah, maybe.”
He grumbled, “How much longer am I going to have to beg for you to let me be your boyfriend?”
She put her hand out and stood up. “I already call you that. Let’s go use our hotel room.”
He nodded and threw some money out to cover the bill the waitress had left. They started down the street. An inner-city park was just outside the hotel. It had a large clock tower in the center and old trees provided a canopy over it. Little plaques commemorated Lewis & Clark’s expedition that passed through Vancouver in 1805.
As they were passing, there were dark spots in the lighting and a transient came up to them. He pushed a rusty grocery-cart piled high with miscellaneous stuff. “Excuse me. Can you spare some change?”
Tristan pulled her closer even though he was already holding her hand. But she pushed off him and spun towards the man. He was older, with a graying beard and half bald. She reached into her pocket. “Here.” She pushed a twenty dollar bill towards him. It was all she had left of the thirty she’d shoved in her pocket to go to dinner.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He reached for it, with his gloves with holes in the fingers.
On impulse, she shrugged out of her coat. “You look cold. Here.”
He took it. Luckily she wore an oversized one that was unisex and black. He smiled at her, his teeth half missing and showing signs of either terrible hygiene or drug use. “It fits!” he exclaimed. It was like she’d given him a car.
“It does. You look good in it,” she said, smiling back.
He gave her a nod. “Most people don’t take a moment. You know, because I’m…”
“Remember most people are just scared. They don’t mean to be assholes.”
The man laughed. “Assholes! You’re a funny girl. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled at his smile. The entire time, Tristan stood stoic behind her. She felt him step toward her when the man had leaned in to take the money. But he didn’t interfere. The man started to shuffle off. She turned and found Tristan scowling at her.
“What?”
“Would you have done that if I wasn’t standing here?”
“Done what?”
“Given him all your money. He’ll probably go buy drugs or drink himself stupid, all on your dime.” The disdain was thick in Tristan’s tone.
She shrugged, her face puzzled in response. “I don’t know, I won’t ever know. Maybe he’ll take it and buy himself a decent meal and a hot cup of coffee.”
“More likely not. Why waste your money?”
She shook her head. “He needed it far more than I did, Tristan. Obviously. I have warm bed tonight and any kind of food I want, right?”
Tristan shrugged out of his coat. “And freezing your own ass off now,” he grumbled as he held it out to her. She refused it, crossing her arms over her chest, ignoring the goosebumps quickly rising as she strove to prove her point.
“Why do you care so much? It was my money. My coat. I don’t expect you to reimburse me or something.”
“I care because what if the whole thing was to mug you? You constantly talk to random strangers in the dark of city-streets. I don’t get it. It’s like you don’t know what can happen. Girls get attacked, Kylie. They get raped. Sometimes it’s like you don’t get what basic safety precautions are.”
“I know!” She suddenly whipped around to screech at him, then more calmly she said, “I know girls get raped.”
“But you don’t seem to get it can happen to you. You walk all around Marsdale at all hours of the night. I don’t understand your total and complete comfort in middle of city streets in the dead of night. And I think even if I wasn’t here you’d have done just what you did. What if one time these, these…these…”
“These what, Tristan? People? This man? This down on his luck and homeless man might rob me? And get what? My cell phone at the most. But even if he did, I think I figure, they really need it a lot more than I do. I just don’t think most are looking to hurt me. I think they are just people like you or I. You don’t know his story. Or what’s wrong. Maybe it’s drugs. Or he’s a drunk. Or a war veteran who can’t assimilate. Or maybe his entire family was killed one night and the grief drove him to the streets. I honestly don’t know. But to assume he’s a piece of shit looking to rob me? I just don’t think like that. And I don’t let fear stop me. It bugs you, not me, to walk in the city. I love cities. I love this one, and I love Marsdale. I don’t think I’ll ever move back to Calliston. It’s so nice there. So perfect and pristine in its small-town front. But me? I’m none of that. I like the dark and the secrets of the city. The bright spots and people and excitement. I won’t start fearing a homeless man asking for a little bit
of kindness.”
“Or a handout.”
She sighed. “Or a handout. Whatever, he’s far worse off than you or I. I don’t get the disdain people feel for the homeless or runaways. I just don’t get it. You never know how they got there or why. And mental illness is rampant in the homeless population. Something they can’t help. I have sympathy, Tristan, not stupidity.”
He dropped his head. “Social services, right?”
“What?”
“Your major?”
“Yes.”
“This is what you’re going to do, isn’t it? Work with homeless or runaways or something.”
“I don’t know, but a little compassion and understanding and even just a conversation sometimes goes a lot farther than turning your back and nose up at someone in need.”
He shook his head. “You’re not going to stop, are you? You really don’t get scared out here at night. Here. Marsdale. You don’t mind it.”
“No. I don’t. I’m sorry if it bothers you, but it doesn’t me.”
“I just… I don’t want anything to ever happen to you.”
“But don’t you see, Tristan? Things can happen anywhere. You can’t control it. And I refuse to quit having a little bit of kindness towards another.”
He stepped forward and his arms wrapped around her. “I swear to God, you frustrate me, annoy me, and purposely drive me crazy…” He leaned back, his jaw locked, then shook his head. “And teach me, amaze me, educate me, and make me ashamed I’m not like you.”
“Funny. I often feel that same way about you.”
He shifted so his arm stayed around her but they could walk. “Let’s go before you catch cold or decide to save the entire homeless population of the city.”
Just before they drifted off to sleep, they were wrapped together, facing the sliding door of their hotel room. They’d left the drapes open so they could look out over the lights of the bridge and distant Oregon coastline. It was quiet, just the hum of distant traffic and the occasion boom and toot of cargo ships coming up and down the Columbia River.
“Kylie?”
“Hmm.”
“You ever think that compassion you showed the homeless man is the same you’d like to show your dad?”
She stiffened. She’d never, ever thought of it in terms of that. But something in her heart screamed Yes! Yes, she just wanted to forgive him. But no. How could she? Who could forgive a father doing what hers did to them?
Tristan’s arms tightened around her and he leaned closer, his lips touching below her ear as he kissed her again and then nuzzled her neck and whispered, “I know what you think of yourself. But let me tell you what I think. I think you are just about the most compassionate, sensitive person I’ve ever met. I think you were so hurt by Micah and he crushed something in you that didn’t fully recover. But I think it also made you understand what pain is. What not feeling good or belonging feels like, and you channeled that into becoming one of the most compassionate people I’ve ever met. And that compassion in you is stronger than any hate or retribution could ever be. Compassion that you want to express to your own father.”
She shuddered. “Your version of me is better than mine. I’m so weak and fragile and I’m such a doormat that anyone can walk all over me, hurt me, abuse me, and I’ll let them come back for more.”
“Is that what you fear so much about seeing him? You’ll somehow be claiming yourself as weak? It seems like a braver thing to forgive the unforgiveable than it is to easily hide in anger. And my version of you is pretty fucking clear and correct. Despite what you think I see you clearly.”
She didn’t answer. She felt him finally fall asleep. She didn’t sleep, not for hours. She laid there and laid there. Remembering. Remembering… her dad. Her family, her childhood.
Not remembering that he left. That he hurt them. That he stole and committed crimes. She laid there, for the first time in over a decade, and remembered her dad. She remembered rowing out in a little rowboat on the lake they lived beside and he’d sit there trout fishing for hours. Never really catching anything. But since she loved to row the boat and cast line, he let her do it. She remembered the Christmas dinners with him there, versus the harder ones when he wasn’t. She remembered him coming home late and tired from work, but each night he’d sneak quietly into her room and kiss her forehead, tuck her covers around her, and ask how her day was. He’d even wake her up to do it, always telling her it was so she’d not forget him. She remembered how it felt to hug him, the way his big hands would rub her back to soothe her. He always had such warm hands. Comforting hands. When she was little he’d often lift her up to ride on his shoulders when she couldn’t see or they were doing too much walking. She remembered the sound of her parents talking in low murmurs in the living room as she was in there watching TV or playing, and it was always so nice to hear them together.
She missed all that. All those memories of her childhood that no one but she, her mom, dad and sister could remember or understand. They were her memories. And for the first time in years and years she was seeing that the ending didn’t totally have to wipe out and undo and hurt and betray all the memories leading up to the end. That the journey to the end mattered too. The love she felt, the sense of family and identity that family was to her, still existed in her. It had shaped and formed who she was, maybe so she wasn’t as screwed up as many pictured she was. She appeared it, but there was a core in her, a core of decency, caring, and maybe even strength that came from the way her parents raised her together.
Something unleashed in her chest as she laid there in that shadowy hotel room, Tristan’s arms warm around her, his breathing even as she felt safe enough to finally explore the life she’d banished from her heart as if it didn’t matter.
It all mattered. The bad didn’t get to fully eradicate all the good. The end didn’t get to totally obliterate the beginning and the vast middle. That middle that she missed so much it ached in her chest. But it was there. She still had that childhood, that love, that family, that mother, and that father. She’d had it once. She had lost it, but there had been years and years where she’d had it.
Maybe she didn’t really want it to be all gone. Maybe she did need a different kind of closure than she ever considered giving herself.
When she woke finally Tristan was showered, dressed far more casual than yesterday, packed and sitting there reading a local newspaper, and sipping coffee. He looked so at peace she didn’t let him know she was awake for a few minutes. He was shifting the paper when he caught her eye. He set the cup down and came towards her, kneeling near where she lay on the bed. He pushed back some frizzy hairs that stuck up on her forehead.
“I think… I think I’d like to go to Bend.”
He smiled kindly as he leaned down and kissed her. “I think I’d be glad to take you.”
Chapter Thirteen
SHE KEPT KNEADING HER hands together. Back and forth. Her fingers locked and unlocked. Her gaze was fastened outside the passenger window as they traveled. It was a three and a half hour drive to the address Kylie had dug up from her saved emails. She’d kept the address all this time. Tristan believed it was a subconscious sign she needed to do this. And perhaps he had pushed and prodded her when he of all people had no right, but here he was, pushing.
He couldn’t stand how little she realized what she needed for herself. She always assumed her reaction was wrong, and therefore should not be the solution to anything for her. Yet everyone else’s solutions were completely wrong for her. The longer he knew her the more he clearly saw that. She didn’t like to talk unless she wanted to. She didn’t like people to hover over her with worry. He’d caught on to that right off. He could ask about her classes or art, but not to check in like he was grilling her about it. She didn’t like it if he said anything about when she worked or how she got there or got home. She didn’t like anyone around her all the time commenting on what she did. He had started to understand that her mother trying so hard to hel
p her as a little girl would have most likely frustrated Kylie. She’d understand the love and caring, but that wasn’t how she needed to be addressed. Space. Giving Kylie lots and lots of mental and emotional space was what worked.
He didn’t totally know her entire thought processes or emotions, but she did open up if given enough time and space and quiet to figure out what she felt and what she wanted to say. But if she was supposed to answer someone right then and there she’d tell them whatever they wanted to hear and they’d never know the truth.
She reacted this way especially to those who worried about her. Ally, her mother, Donny even. All of them had proven they didn’t totally trust her or see her as strong. She had not nor would she ever react how they thought she should, and by pressuring her to, they only made her shut into herself all the more. And tell them exactly what they wanted to hear.
Except for with him. He was pretty sure she was completely honest and real with him. Which made him doing what he was doing to her completely predatory. He was taking advantage of her belief in him. Why had he invited her to this conference? As he was asking her to come that evening in the café, he’d been shaking his head internally because it was such a risky idea. A terrible idea, actually.
She would find out he was a Tamasy. Taking her to a conference where most everyone knew him as Tristan Tamasy, was the same as a drug addict setting their drug of choice on their nose and then pretending they would never taste it. But he hadn’t been able to resist bringing her. He’d just known she’d love the city and enjoy herself… and he knew how much more he’d enjoy the dreaded trip… seeing her enjoy it. Somehow she didn’t press any boundaries, as he’d guessed she wouldn’t. She didn’t walk up to the counter while he was checking into the hotel using his first and last name. Luckily most of the managers and staff at this conference mostly referred to him as Tristan. He didn’t often stand on pomp and circumstance with employees and insisted no one call him Mr. Tamasy. It sounded too alarmingly like his grandfather and perhaps that’s why he thought he could get away with it, his predilection for insisting he be called by his first name. And crazily… it had worked. Though it made his stomach muscles contract in nerves when he was so relieved to get away with deceiving Kylie. He didn’t want to be… but he didn’t want to lose her either. So here he was, doing this odd dance of spending all his time with her while trying to keep her somehow separated from huge chunks of his life.
