by Jillian Neal
“Okay, are we still going out tonight?”
She shook her head.
“Hope, come on. You tell me everything. What the hell is wrong with you?” Pain perforated his tone.
Yeah, I told you everything, and you never told me anything. She’d told him about the wreck, her parents, stupid stories from her childhood she’d never told anyone else. She’d trusted him with everything. Her body first and foremost. Her eyes closed in defeat. She had to say something. “Um,” she swallowed down another round of tears. “Hannah Powers came by the library.”
“I should’ve known.” He huffed. “What did that little bitch want at the library? I’m surprised she even knows how to read.”
“Oh.” Fury ignited in Hope’s chest. “Is that what you think? That if you can’t read you’re a horrible person, like Hannah. Is that it, Brock? Did you really think that I would not love you just as much if you told me?”
Brock slammed the truck into park in her driveway. “What the hell did Hannah say to you?” he demanded. All sense of concern bled into stubborn acrimony.
“She told me that you stopped her from doing something to me in school, or something like that. She told me about you and what happened with Coach Chaney and Principal Richmond and her father.” She stared him down.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Stop lying to me!”
His jaw clenched and horrifying pain clouded his eyes. “I think you need to go on inside. I’m not having this conversation with you or anyone else. This is over.”
“But …?”
“Just go.”
He wouldn’t even look at her.
“Brock!”
“I said go, Hope.” He would never forgive himself for any of this, but he was sure as hell not discussing any of it with her.
The truck door opened quietly, and she slipped out. “I love you, Brock, and I don’t care that you can’t read or that you used me that year in Biology, or that you’ve probably been using me for most of our friendship,” were the last words he heard before he backed out of the driveway and refused to look back.
Hope threw herself on the bed and sobbed until her body could produce no more tears. At nine, there was a timid knock on her front door. She crawled out of bed and raced to the hallway. Maybe it was Brock. Maybe he wanted to apologize and tell her everything. As renewed sobs quaked through her, she flung open the door, but it wasn’t Brock.
Julie, Jana, and Sophie all caught her as she fell forward into their arms. They moved in an odd group hug until they’d seated her on the couch. Then they loaded up her refrigerator with wine, ice cream, some kind of cookie cake, and other junk food Sophie dubbed break-up food.
“But, how did you know?” Hope shook her head at the offered glass of wine. She didn’t want anything to eat or drink. She couldn’t have tasted anything anyway.
“Brock called Kev. Asked if I’d come check on you. I called in reinforcements.” Julie gestured to Jana and Samantha.
“He did?”
“He sounded like he was crying, if that makes you feel any better.” Julie wrapped one arm around her shoulder.
“It doesn’t.” It made it so much worse. Her chin trembled and her hands refused to halt their incessant shaking. Her entire body rejected all reality. “What did he say?” Surely, he hadn’t told Kevin the truth.
“Just that you broke up with him.”
Clearly the tears were never really going to end. Her eyes were so bloodshot she could barely see, yet more were coming. That was precisely what Brock would have done. Made sure someone was going to check on her. Made certain that everyone thought she’d broken up with him and not the other way around. He would always take care of her. He just never wanted to speak to her again. She turned, buried her head on Julie’s shoulder, and let the tears consume her. She wasn’t capable of anything else.
“Hey,” Julie soothed a little while later when she managed to get Hope to blot her own tears and blow her nose. “I called Skye, okay? She’s on her way.”
“You called my sister?”
“Hope, I know she drives you crazy, but she loves you, and you need her right now. She has this whole history with you that none of us have, and together we’re all gonna get you through this.”
“What did he do, honey? If I’d have known he was going to do something worthy of you breaking up with him, I never would have told Matt that you wanted to sleep with Brock.” Sophie shook her head.
“What?!” Hope gasped. She lifted her head, but it took a moment for her to hold herself upright.
Sophie glanced nervously from Jana to Julie. “Well, I was trying to help. I really thought you two were going to be it for each other. It just felt that way whenever you were together. I don’t know, maybe all of this Gypsy magic stuff is rubbing off on me. I sensed it, or I thought I did. I told Matt that you wanted to sleep with Brock. I knew you needed a little encouragement, and that he’d jump at the chance. I’m sorry,” she offered hopefully.
Hope pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. She willed all of this to be some kind of horrible nightmare.
“I’m really, really sorry. I swear I was only trying to help.” Sophie was approaching panic.
“It’s fine.” Hope shuddered. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Jana offered to sleep over on the couch, but Hope asked them all to leave around one. There was no reason for them to suffer with her. She regretted her decision around five when the realization that she’d not only lost her boyfriend, but that she’d forever lost her very best friend and would never get him back speared through the anguish that set on her entire body. Her muscles ached as if she’d been carrying something twice her own weight for a lifetime. Perhaps she had.
“Hope?” Skye’s soft voice carried to Hope just as the sun began to warm the tiny town of Gypsy Beach. Startled, Hope sat up in bed and turned to stare at her little sister. “Here.” She handed Hope her favorite coffee drink, a Mocha shake from Port City Java.
Unable to refuse food any longer, she drew a hesitant sip.
Skye kissed her cheek sweetly, just the way their mother always did if one of them was crying. “See, I’m not such a screw up.” She gestured to the coffee and offered Hope a slight grin. “Wanna talk about it?”
“I don’t know.” Hope’s strangled voice sounded foreign even to herself.
“Might help. Or we could just stay in bed and watch Little House on the Prairie like we did when we were sick and Mama let us stay home from school.”
By noon, Hope had finally confessed Brock’s deep dark secret and how it had torn them apart.
Skye never faltered. She remained steadfast, offering Hope tissues, a half of a piece of the cake Julie had provided, and a few bites of their mother’s crab chowder that she’d fixed to perfection while Hope laid on the couch, half-watching TV and crying.
“You know Mama and Daddy broke up once before they got married.”
“They did? How do you know that?”
“Mama told me the story a couple of days before the wreck. I remember it because I was only eight, and I was so shocked that they hadn’t always been together. Mom’s parents, and obviously her sister,” Skye sighed, “didn’t think Daddy was good enough. He was a Gypsy and all. Daddy thought they were right. Mama got so sick of him thinking he wasn’t good enough that she broke up with him. But they made it back together. All isn’t lost Hope, and my Gypsy side says things aren’t over with you and Brock. I’ve always thought you two would end up together.”
“How do you have a Gypsy side, and how do you remember stuff like that? I can’t remember anything. I need to remember. I want to remember them like that. It isn’t fair. How does everyone else seem to think that we’ll end up together, everyone but me?!” Suddenly, Hope erupted in fury. It just wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.
“You don’t remember because you let Aunt Cora take them away. You were so afraid of the pain, Hope. You were so afraid to f
eel the emotions. They were too much. They hurt too badly. You were so afraid to feel, you let them go. You let Aunt Cora have your memories, but I brought something with me I want to show you. Aunt Cora wanted to throw them out, but I hid them in my room, and I still have them. I just didn’t know how badly you needed to see them. You have to stop being afraid now. You have to be braver than you’ve ever been, because you have to help Brock not be afraid anymore.”
Skye raced out to her car and returned with a small shoebox of videotapes. Hope sobbed through the first one, her seventh Christmas; she’d gotten the full set of Little House books and a doll she remembered naming Charlotte, after the spider in Charlotte’s web. The videos gave her back a few of the missing puzzle pieces of her life.
After they’d watched a few, Skye turned the television off and held Hope’s hands in her own. “Don’t you see, Hope? Brock is terrified, too, and he’s ashamed. Shame is a horrible thing to feel. I’m sure he’s been scared that someone might find out that he can’t read or how he was even able to play ball all through school every day of his life. And that worst part is that trophy isn’t just his. I know Brock; not as well as you do, but I know what kind of man he is. If it had just been him, he would have given it back, but it wasn’t, it was the whole entire team’s trophy. They all rode on him never telling his secret. That has to have affected him, Hope. It has to. Give him a little time to get used to the idea that you know about what he sees as a major failing. Give him a little time to figure out that the ability to read isn’t what made you fall in love with him all those years ago, okay?”
This time Hope leaned on her sister’s shoulder. The little sister she’d always taken care of was now the one giving her the will to go on. “How’d you get to be so smart, anyway?”
Skye hugged her tight. “I had this completely amazing big sister that raised me.”
Hope lifted her head and stared into Skye’s emerald green eyes, duplicates of her own. “Skye, I want to go talk to Molly Montgomery. She knows about Brock, and she can help me. I just know. Will you come with me?”
“Yes! There’s my big sissy. Let’s go!”
Skye drove them to the coffee shop, since Hope could just barely make out shapes in front of her through her tear-stained, swollen eyes. It didn’t occur to either of them that the coffee shop might have other customers. Quickly deciding that she didn’t care, Hope scrubbed her hands over her face and went on with what she’d come to do. The piercing pain in her chest never dulled. It gripped its icy claws around her lungs with every sharp inhalation of breath, but having Brock back in her life was the only thing that would ever ease the pain. She had to do this.
She allowed her sister to guide her through the front door. Mac and Molly immediately shared a concerned glance as they rushed towards her. “My sweet, sweet Hope. Come back here with me. We’ll set this to rights.” Molly drew her into her capable embrace and guided Skye and Hope into the kitchen area of the shop.
Mac and Molly somehow seemed to know most of the story, so Hope only added what Hannah had done and how Brock had reacted.
Mac was pacing and shaking his head. “I knew as soon as his good-for-nothing daddy got him down here that it was all but over for the poor kid. His legacy followed him from his middle school in Nebraska. All he ever wanted to do was go back to that ranch that raised him. By the time he got here, he didn’t know whether he was washin’ or hangin’ out to dry. Now, look at what their greed has cost Brock. He’s so confused he’s pushed away the one that was meant to be his.” Mac held out his hand in exultation to Hope. “I couldn’t understand why the winds brought him here. He was never supposed to be off of that ranch, ‘til one day I saw you two hanging out after school, and then I knew. The fates brought him here for you.”
“He hasn’t lost me.” Hope shook her head. “I just have to figure out how to get him back. That’s why I came here. I know you can help me. You can tell me what to do, Molly. You know everything. I don’t know anything, but my dad was a Gypsy. Doesn’t that kind of mean I am, too, at least part way? Don’t I have Gypsy magic somewhere?”
“Hope, my sweet girl, you are a Gypsy, and I could string Cora Davidson up for letting you forget your own heritage. Gypsy magic isn’t some ridiculous notion you pull out of a hat, sweetheart. It’s a feeling, a certainty, a guiding force. We go where the wind takes us because we know that’s where we’re supposed to be.
“You and Brock are meant to fly together, maybe away from everything you’ve ever known. Close your eyes and let the emotions and the energy around you inside, Hope. Don’t be afraid to feel them. They will lead you home. You can’t have the joy unless you’ve had the sadness or the satisfaction without the work. All of these tears you’re crying, my sweet girl, they are wounds in your heart you never let heal. You have to have them, so let them come. The universe wants you and Brock together. It’s trying to help you. It’s reaching out to both of you. Hopefully, he’ll realize this before it has to go to extreme measures.” Molly glanced up at Mac. The look in her eyes frightened Hope. This isn’t at all what she was expecting. She’d been hoping for some kind of chant, or a tonic of sorts, or that a trip to the wishing well would fix her and Brock, but she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Hope, you have to remember that Brock has spent most of his life trying to weave truths out of lies. He’s so ashamed of a deal he had nothing to do with. Shame is such a bitter thing to carry. It weights you and gets heavier and harder to manage with every passing day until you’re consumed with hatred. He hates himself. And you have the hardest job any person can ever really have. You have to show him that all of that shame he carries, all of the self-loathing he bears, that he can lay it down with you. That all of the regret can die in your arms. You have to show him that you want him in the daylight and in his darkness. You have to be his light, Hope, and that’s not an easy thing, because he doesn’t believe he deserves to lose the shadows that consume him.
“He can’t see his way out of this without hurting you, and his friends, and disappointing an entire town, a town where he never belonged. You see, Gypsy magic isn’t confined to this seashore. It’s everywhere. The winds carried Brock Camden here, but his daddy took him so far off course he can’t find his way home. He needs you, Hope. You’re the only Gypsy that he’s ever let see into his soul. He needs you to accept his scars and his fear, but he’s terrified to let them go.” Mac’s soft intonation brought her a slight sense of peace and a little bit of hope. “He needs you to guide him home.”
“But I don’t know how to do that.”
“What did Daddy always say would bring us home, Hope? Remember. Just remember. I know you do,” Skye urged, her eyes now masked with tears as well.
Hope closed her eyes and forced herself to remember her father. His kind black eyes and jet black hair. His soothing intonation. The way he would lift her off of the ground and swing her in the air while he sang silly songs about Princess Hope, the ruler of reading. She let the memories and the pain come. They overwhelmed her. She could hear him. Inside the sadness she reached for the elusive … “Love. He said love would always take you home.” She remembered.
“Right. So, just believe Daddy. Believe that Brock loves you, too, and somehow that will bring him home.”
“I’ll try.” Hope needed that to be true as badly as she needed Brock to come back to her now.
Fifteen
By Monday morning, Hope had grown despondent. She couldn’t see anything in front of her. None of it mattered anyway. She’d started to text Brock a dozen times before remembering that he wouldn’t be able to read it and that would only make this worse. Another round of desperation worked through her as she forced herself to acknowledge how difficult even the simplest things were for him. She’d worked up the courage late Sunday night to call his cell instead. It had gone straight to voicemail. Kevin and Matt confirmed that they’d been trying to reach him as well, but that he must’ve turned his phone off.
A
storm had blown in late in the night, and Hope had sobbed as she realized that the bookstore roof was fixed. Brock wasn’t going to call and check on her. He wasn’t going to come by and help her set up buckets. He wasn’t going to respond at all. He no longer had to.
Out of the despondency grew desperation. The store was scheduled to re-open at 9:00 that morning, but she didn’t care. She drove to his apartment instead, but his truck wasn’t there. Marching up the steps she pounded the door with pent up agony. He didn’t answer.
Clinging to Skye’s words and Molly’s instructions, she sorted through the drowning emotions. She had to do something. If Brock was at work, she’d have to wait until he got off that evening. Having a showdown in front of his crew would likely end in disaster.
Urgency swam in her veins; it pooled in the continually binding terror that kept her stomach roiling. She had to do something. Half-crazed with anger and blinded by the anguish of not knowing when and if she’d ever get him back, she turned her car and drove. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she knew where she was going, but she was beyond any ability to reason her way out of this.
Brock stumbled out of his truck, blinking rapidly trying both to rid his eyes of the cloudy haze of liquid emotion he’d finally given into when he’d left Hope at her house Saturday night and to clear his head of the sheer amount of beer and whiskey he’d consumed on Sunday. He’d thrown the alcohol out and had spent hours mentally abusing himself over turning to liquor just like his old man would have done. He’d never do it again. He’d just exist with the blistering, blinding pain that grew more excruciating moment to moment. At least it was something he could feel. Exhaustion had taken him over. He couldn’t sleep in his bed, not with what they’d shared there. Not with things like the book she’d been reading, a stray pair of panties, and a can of Cheerwine with the imprint of her beautiful lips made in pink lip gloss on the side littered around his room.
