by Liz Crowe
“I can take care of us, Mom. You don’t need to make him come all the way out here for a week.”
But she’d hugged them both, holding Zach as long as he would allow it—about three seconds. “I’ll take you next time, honey.” She kissed Tanner’s cheek. “I need to go do this thing for Aunt Alicia.”
“I want to see him again, too,” Tanner whined, still hovering around as she rechecked her purse for her passport, wallet, and other stuff she was terrified of forgetting.
“Leave her alone, Tanner,” Zach snapped. “The sooner she leaves, the sooner we can invite all those people over we talked about.”
Tanner wiped his eyes. “What people?”
His innocence nearly broke Melanie’s heart. She shot her oldest son a fierce glare. Zach leaned on the doorway to the kitchen, tall, handsome, his face a mask of “I don’t care.”
Heart aching, she stared out into the purple darkness high above the clouds between Amsterdam and Istanbul. What was she doing? Why did she even think she could help? She hated the man and everything he represented. She needed to be home, running her business, trying to convince her older son not to hate her guts. But the plane kept flying. Her second trip to Turkey in her life, the first having been the stressful, but memorable visit for her sister’s wedding.
After gathering her bag, she spotted Metin’s mother—imposing and striking in her chic black pantsuit, dark hair scraped back into a severe bun. Memories flooded in, nearly choking Mel at the sight. She closed her eyes, then opened them, determined not to let embarrassment or anything else get in the way of the mercy mission, or whatever the fuck brought her here.
“Melanie! Canim! I’m so happy to see you.”
She tolerated the woman’s embrace. Feyza had lost a ton of weight and her face had lines Mel didn’t recall. Shoving away the evil visions of the last time they’d been together, at the funeral, she smiled and pulled away.
“I am very happy to be here, to see you again,” she managed in rudimentary Turkish.
Feyza burst out laughing and Mel frowned. A tall man in a dark suit took her suitcase and led the way out to a waiting Mercedes.
“I forgot you learned my language,” she said, patting Mel’s knee once they were ensconced in the back seat together. “So very admirable. But you always were smart.”
Her stomach flipped over as the driver lurched out into the exhaust-filled line of traffic. The discomfort level she always maintained around her sister’s in-laws pressed in on her, so many memories upturned by the woman’s presence, Mel nearly gagged on them.
“So, how is he?” she asked, jaw clenched.
“My son is a crushed, ruined shell of himself. But you know that, I think.”
She trained her gaze on the flat, industrial landscape around the airport as the woman kept talking, filling her in on Metin’s failed attempt to play for one of the bigger Turkish teams since being cut from Real Madrid, then a lesser Spanish team, and left to flounder in his own booze-filled agony. He’d played two games and gotten himself ejected with a red card after ten minutes into the second for leaping up on an opposing player and pounding the other man nearly unconscious with his fists. It had been the talk of the soccer world, the brisk decline of one of their superstars. Mel hated it, hated him, and hated herself for even coming there.
“I don’t know what I can do really,” she whispered to herself and the ghost of her sister, Alicia. “Why do you think I can help him?”
“I don’t know if you can, my dear.” Feyza’s voice broke. “But when the men from the new club in America contacted me, I suggested they reach out to you. Because at this point, I’m willing to try anything to save him.”
“Mrs. Sevim, have you forgotten how we parted? The funeral? I know I haven’t, and I doubt he has either.” She tried to keep frustration out of her voice.
The woman’s dark eyes filled with tears. Mel bit her lip, unwilling to even go near the memories that hovered on the horizon. It had been the worst possible ending, the most awful, drama-filled, bullshit. With her and Metin at the core of it. She still heard her own screams when Metin had shown up, drunk off his ass. She’d shoved him into a huge bank of flowers, before he’d come at her, well-earned fury in his eyes. She felt the bright red rage she’d experienced, as if it had happened an hour and not nearly two years ago.
That and the pain when his elbow connected with her nose as she tried to yank him to his feet and force him out the door. An accident, but it had not helped matters, not one bit.
“No. I will never forget it. Nor will he. But you are here now, are you not? So you must think he is worth saving.” The woman grabbed her hand and clenched it. “Please, try. For Alicia and Ayden’s memory. This may be his last chance at… something normal.”
“I will, and it is for them. And no one else,” she said through clenched teeth.
They were silent the rest of the way to the Sevim family estate.
Mel passed an awkward evening in the company of Metin’s parents, two brothers and sisters-in-law, the mood subdued, but polite. Conversation topics included pretty much everything under the sun except the reason she sat there among them, the pariah, the bitchy sister of the woman their beloved son had adored and married.
When the pressure building behind her eyes became too much, she finally interrupted the Sevim patriarch talking about the Greek financial crisis or some other shit, making everyone stop and stare.
“So, where is he? I should go see Metin. To try and get him to agree to take a coaching job in America. I can’t… I’m too….” She lowered her eyes. A tear hit her clenched hands.
There was general throat clearing.
She glared at each of them in turn. “Listen, I realize we all parted… badly. That funeral was god-awful, and I take my part of the responsibility for it. But he….” Her voice broke, pissing her off. “He didn’t have to show up blind drunk, you know. I mean….”
“Melanie,” Metin’s father intoned. “We are as embarrassed by that as you were. It was unseemly and immature of him.” Metin’s oldest brother started to push his chair from the table. His father put a hand on his arm. “No, Bulent, you know I am right. Metin was, and still is, acting like a child. He must be the man he is meant to be. It is tragic and horrible, this thing that happened. But he has to move on now. If it takes moving to America to coach a professional team, so be it. He has certainly ruined himself for playing in Europe. Soccer is the only thing he has now. If it will save him, then we must try it.” The man took a sip of his tea. His voice and dark, serious eyes mesmerized her. “I miss my grandson so much, I ache every day for him. So I can only imagine what Metin is feeling. He was—is—a very emotional boy and has let that rule him too much as a man. No matter how you,” he glared at Mel, “or I, or Metin’s mother, felt about his marriage to your sister, we must now help him get past her loss.” He rose. “Excuse me.”
Metin’s brothers kept their eyes on their plates. Mel blinked, processing his last words. Metin’s family had been so loudly supportive, so openly adoring of her sister, it shocked her to her core to find out they hadn’t liked the arrangement any more than she had. A wave of protectiveness rose in her. How dare they? Alicia was perfect, smart, talented, a wonderful mother. These Turks could all kiss her ass. She got to her feet.
“Okay then, now I know where we all stand. Will someone tell me where the man of the hour is, so I can find him and drag him into to the light, or whatever, and then get back to my life?”
Timur, Metin’s next oldest brother, the one who resembled him the most, got to his feet. “I’ll take you there now.”
Chapter Four
They pulled up to an all glass and steel building in Etiler, one of the more exclusive neighborhoods on the European side of the Bosporus. Mel sat, clutching the key card Metin’s brother had handed her before driving her in utter silence across the bridge and fighting his way through traffic to this spot. They sat in the large SUV, getting honked at, until she took a breat
h and put her hand on the door handle.
“Good luck,” Timur grunted, still not meeting her eyes.
“Listen, I’m sorry about… everything, I guess.” She desperately wanted him to accompany her up to the top floor. But he seemed fairly entrenched behind the wheel.
He finally met her gaze, the agony on his face clear. “Just…. Get him out of there, if you can. Thanks.”
But she sat, frozen with indecision, fearful of facing Metin after so much time, and still unable to comprehend what these people thought she could do for him. “Why do you think he’ll listen to me?” She addressed the windshield, sweat gathering above her upper lip. “I mean… we didn’t exactly part on good terms.” She’d be damned if she let this whole thing get to her in any way. And the almost backhanded way Metin’s father intimated he hadn’t approved of Alicia and Metin’s marriage still niggled at her. “Did you guys…. I mean, did you not like Alicia? Or….” She let the question die out, weak, inwardly cursing.
Timur frowned then turned to her, his dark face intent. “No, it wasn’t that we didn’t like her. It was more a concern about Metin. He is so….” He flapped his hand, seeming at a loss for words. “He gets so attached, so quickly, without thinking, usually. He….” The man stared at her, and her heart pounded. “He is our parents’ favorite, the youngest, the famous soccer golden boy. And he’s, I don’t know—immature. I guess. And we figured Alicia for another in a long string of women. Different, yes, because she played his game, but we honestly thought it was, um, like a fad for him. That he would outgrow… her, or something. I’m sorry. I’m not making this sound very good.”
The fury Mel had sustained for so long, a comfortable, almost easy chair-like thing, faded ever so slightly. She’d felt the same way about Metin—that he had been a fling, something different Alicia had latched onto for some strange reason and would grow out of, hence Mel’s aggravation about the pregnancy and her eagerness to rid her sister of the excuse to stay with him.
She put her hands flat on her legs. “I understand. I know how you felt. But I guess they fooled us all.”
“Something like that.” Timur grabbed her arm, startling her out of a haze. “Help us get him back. Please. You and he clashed from the start, but you are the last thing we know to try. The last person on earth he would expect, maybe. And perhaps the one he’ll listen to and emerge from this… this… shit.”
A small corner of her heart seemed to flex, like an atrophied muscle, at the sight of how upset the man was, at the thought of losing his little brother to the sort of heartbreak that none of them could truly fathom. She put out a shaky hand to touch his face. He clutched it, hung on as if she were the last life preserver on the Titanic.
The intensity of his gaze brought ever-hovering tears to the surface. He looked so much like an older version of the very man she had harbored such hatred for in the last few years. She had exactly zero business here, in their country, a teeming foreign city, making this intervention, or whatever the fuck this was. She wanted to go home.
“Thank you for coming here Melanie and for agreeing to help us, to help him. I know how you feel about him, and sometimes I understand it. I’m his older brother… I resented the shit out of that kid from the minute he was born and my mother decided he was the chosen one, you know?” He let go of her hand, taking the steering wheel in a death grip again.
Mel smiled. “We are more simpatico than you might think,” she said under her breath. Then she got out without another word and wiped the moisture from her forehead. Istanbul in September felt like the inside of an oven, with extra car exhaust piped in.
Approaching the building with a pounding heart, she flashed the key card to the doorman and entered the giant elevator. She slid the card into the slot to allow her access to the upper floors. The lift shot silently upward, way too fast for her nervous taste.
When it stopped she stood, frozen once more, not even sure what she’d find or say when she found it. She had spent so much energy blocking anything and everything about her sister’s husband from her brain that it felt odd to acknowledge she wasn’t sure she’d know him if she saw him. Every single time she’d laid eyes on him, there had been some sort of conflict, some way that she, Mel, ended up playing “bitchy older sister.” She had absolutely no idea what she would do when she did lay eyes on him.
The long hallway revealed two large doors. Outside of one, a tall, barely-dressed woman screeched at the top of her lungs, interspersed with bouts of kicking and beating on the dark wood. Mel noted the number on it was the same one she’d been told to open with the key she held in her sweat-slick palm.
She approached the woman having some sort of fit. Watching as she pulled at her long hair, sobbed and called Metin’s name.
The woman reeked of booze, cigarettes, and the distinct underlay of sex. She whipped around fast, gibbering in Turkish, her face beautiful but tear-streaked. Good to know he hasn’t lost his taste. Amused and angry at the same time, Mel held up her hands, unsure how to progress or if the crazy cow would launch herself at her and start ripping out her eyes.
“English?” she asked.
“Who the fuck are you?” the woman spit out with a slight accent. “How do you have a key? Metin! Metin! Goddamn you, son of a pig fucker,” she screamed and kicked at the door some more, then slid down the wall, crying.
Mel ignored her. But as soon as she inserted the card into the slot, the bitch pushed her down to her hands and knees in her haste to rush inside. Shaking her head, Mel got up, noting the chaos that bordered on squalor of the expansive space. She touched the toe of her shoe to the pile of clothing nearest her and wrinkled her nose at the stacks of plates and glasses and empty bottles on the large table in front of the leather couch.
Shoving a pile of mail to the floor, she took a seat at the table, trying to shrink inside her clothing. The view out of the floor-to-ceiling windows caught her eye. Giant tugboats moved up and down the Bosporus, cars buzzed across bridges between Europe and Asia, all in complete silence, hypnotizing her.
Nearly thirty minutes went by before she heard anything else, and by that time she had strolled around the room and noted the distinct lack of photos anywhere. There were, however, plenty of dirty clothes, dishes, food containers, empty bottles of booze, soda, juice, and at least one mirror dusted with white powder. And what she finally identified as half a dozen used condoms which made her want to retch or punch the dickhead right in his stupid face.
The kitchen fared no better, with wine stains on the tile floor and a horrific stench that could only be weeks-old garbage combined with sour milk emanating from an under-counter garbage pail. Using a pair of tongs she found in a drawer, she picked up what appeared to be a pair of men’s underwear off the counter and tossed them to the floor. Then she saw a single photo—one of Metin, Alicia, and Ayden at the boy’s first birthday party. Shuddering, she stared into the eyes of her dead sister and nephew.
A yell of something that could be fury or delight made her drop the framed picture, shattering the glass covering it. Mel cursed as a shard of it went through the pad of her finger when she tried to clean it up, ignoring the sloppy kissing noises behind her.
“Metin…,” the girl whined then launched into a string of slurred-sounding Turkish.
She got to her feet, holding the photo, determined to take it and hightail the fuck out of the place as soon as she could. Metin was in fine hands. She had no responsibility to him. Not if he treated himself and his expensive condo like this. Something dark loomed in her, frightened at being in such close proximity to him again. The need to escape grew so strong it pounded against her ribcage like a drumbeat.
She heard him then, tears springing to her eyes from the various traumatic memories that the rumbling cadence of his voice evoked. He rounded the corner into the kitchen and stopped, mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open at the sight of her. She stood straighter, attempting to summon some self-righteousness. But he was so… thin, a clichéd shadow o
f himself. Her pulse raced, worry etching a small track in her brain. She gave herself a mental shake and tried to find words. There were none.
“Sorry,” she muttered, starting to move past him. “Mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. Carry on with… your party.” She gestured around to the disgusting mess that comprised his life now.
He grabbed her arm, his grip surprisingly tight. Mel’s face flushed, noting the mask of pure agony on his face.
“Metin… who is this?” Crazy slut woman inserted herself between them, wrapping her arms around his neck and forcing him to let go of Mel’s arm. His face morphed into something else, something Mel had never seen and didn’t like at all.
“I fucking told you,” he growled in English, “get the hell out of here and don’t come back.”
He peeled her off of him like a banana skin and marched her across the room. She tried hard to stay barnacled, but he shoved her out and slammed the door in her face. Mel froze, watching it, observing his bare, dark-skinned shoulders until he whipped around and pinned her with a look so full of hate she gasped and took a step away from him.
“And you,” he spit out, crossing his arms over his chest. “What brings you here?”
She stammered, gulped, searching for any sort of logical answer to a perfectly good question. Why was she there, in Istanbul, thousands of miles from her home, family, and business trying to help… him? She let the familiar Metin-inspired rage cloud the edges of her vision.
“Well?” he demanded, moving closer and forcing her farther back until her ass hit the wall. “Seen enough yet?” He gestured around. “The ruination of a star. The fall of football’s great one. The downward spiral of a man devastated by love. You must get off on this, huh, Melanie? Love seeing me like this?”
His dark eyes flashed with anger. He continued moving toward her until they were inches apart, and she stood face-to-face, literally, with the man she believed she hated so deeply she could taste it—a scary, coppery, metallic thing she’d once excused as righteous anger on behalf of her now dead sister. She took a breath, awash in his scent. He must have just taken a shower. The odd combination of citrus, sandalwood, and leather hit her brain.
