by M. O'Keefe
So church it was.
She changed her clothes and went where Dylan led. A small Catholic church just outside Cherokee.
And it was…everything she remembered. Everything calm and quiet. It was order and community. Sunshine through stained-glass windows and off-key voices singing as loud as they could.
And it was made perfect by Dylan sitting beside her.
She didn’t care much for the priest; he had a funny voice, and all she could think about was that priest from The Princess Bride who talked about “mawwiage,” with that awful lisp.
But Dylan listened. Leaning forward, his hands between his knees, his eyes focused on the pulpit. Dylan listened with his whole body.
Annie smiled, thumbing through the hymnal for the next song. He didn’t sing, so she sang loud enough for both of them.
They left the church holding hands.
“What did you think?” she asked.
“Tuuue wuv,” he said in perfect imitation of the priest voice from The Princess Bride. “You want a donut or something? Mom always used to bribe us with donuts so we’d go to church with her. It’s hard to break that kind of association.”
She agreed to donuts. Right now, looking at him, she would agree to anything he wanted.
“You worried about Max?” she asked as they drove toward downtown and a bakery on the main strip.
“He made his bed,” he said, pulling into a parking spot.
“Yeah, but are you worried about him?”
“I’m always going to be worried about him. I don’t think I know how to stop. Or if I should, you know. I mean, shouldn’t Max have someone on this earth worried about him, instead of trying to kill him?”
“I can’t believe Joan lied,” she said. “Is that…like is she a con artist or something?”
Dylan laughed, a dry humph. “A survivor, I’m guessing. Just like the rest of us.”
Annie stroked back his hair, her fingers tracing the edge of his ear. “How did you get so kind?” she asked him.
He grabbed her hand and kissed it. “There was this girl,” he said. “Who answered this cellphone she found in a shitty trailer. She taught me.”
Annie doubted that was true, but she didn’t argue.
“What are we going to do about Ben?” she asked twenty minutes later, as they got onto the highway heading home to the trailer park. She had a pink box filled with a dozen donuts. Dylan had gotten a little carried away with the cream-filled.
“Hope he’s changed his mind,” Dylan said, changing lanes. “But if he hasn’t, I feel like we need to respect what the guy wants.”
“Even if it’s alone and awful?”
Dylan nodded and shifted gears. His powerful, capable hand moved from the gearshift to her knee beneath the only skirt she had. She’d caught him admiring the skirt all morning, even in church, which had seemed incredibly sacrilegious. If not incredibly thrilling.
“Do you want to move in with me?” he asked, out of the blue. “I mean…is that a choice you want to make? If we strip away all the drama we’ve lived through, is that what you really want?”
“It’s what I really want,” she said, leaning across the seat to kiss his cheek. The corner of his mouth. “But,” she asked, “what if without the drama we realize we’re boring.”
“Boring?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. “Do I need to remind you of what you asked me to do to you this morning? Before church?”
She blushed at the memory, delighted and happy and turned on.
“Naughty girl,” he said.
“I love you.” She expected a delay, a second, while he got his head around the words again. But there was no delay. No pause.
“I love you, too.”
“Do you really want me to move in—”
“Yes. That’s all I want. Is you with me.”
There was no better answer.
At the trailer park there was a police cruiser in the parking area in front of the office. Grant was stepping out of the office, Kevin behind him
“What the hell is that guy doing here?” Dylan asked, lifting his hand from her knee so he could shift the car as they slowed down.
“He must be here about the explosion,” Annie said.
“Right.” Dylan rolled to a stop. “That cop liked you,” he said.
“He asked me out once,” she told him. “In front of the library.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s a nice guy, but I don’t like nice guys. I like bad boys with secrets and tons of money and luxurious compounds on mountaintops.”
His hand snaked out and caught the back of her head, pulling Annie in for a fierce, thorough kiss. It felt like he was marking his territory, but she didn’t mind.
Dylan broke the kiss, leaving both of them panting. “You want to talk to him?”
Talk to whom? Her mind was wiped clean by that kiss. She couldn’t remember what they were talking about.
“Hero Cop.”
Right.
“You want me to?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want you anywhere near the guy, but he’s probably going to know more about what’s going on. And it would be good to know what happened to Rabbit.”
Very true.
She slipped the donut box to the backseat and leaned over to kiss him real quick. And then again because she loved him so much, before jumping out.
Dylan drove away to park near their trailers.
“Hello, Annie,” Grant said as she walked closer. He had sunglasses on, so she couldn’t see his eyes, and his smile was reserved. He’d seen that kiss and she could feel herself blushing.
“Grant, are you here about the explosion last night?”
“Just asking some questions.”
“I called 911,” she said. “What…what happened?”
“Someone put a bomb in the back room of the strip club. Three dead. A dozen or so injured.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped.
“Yeah, we’ve got DEA here and FBI. Apparently this was some sort of drug bust or something. We’re still trying to put together some pieces. You haven’t seen anyone or anything suspicious, have you?”
“No. I haven’t.” Annie lied to a police officer and she kept her mouth shut about Max and Joan. “I heard there was a motorcycle gang involved.”
“Yeah. An MC out of Florida.”
“Were they the ones killed?”
“Annie,” he sighed. “I know your…boyfriend’s family was involved.”
She was silent.
“You sure you don’t have anything you want to tell me?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “Dylan has been estranged from his family for years.”
“And yet…?” He shrugged. “Here he is. Twenty miles away from the explosion.”
“Are you accusing him of something?” she asked.
“No,” he said, his voice hard. “I’m just letting you know I’m not an idiot.”
Grant pulled a white card out of his breast pocket and scribbled something across the back of it. “That’s my cell. Call that. Anytime. If you remember something that might help.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Good luck, Annie. And not for nothing, you’re better than that guy. You’re better than this.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. “He’s the best man I know and I’m just trying to keep up.”
She tucked his card in her pocket and walked away.
Smiling.
DYLAN
I parked my car and looked through the windshield at Pops’s trailer.
Annie was not going to let Pops die here all alone. Anyone could see it. So, I had to either resolve to living in this trailer park or convince Pops to move in with me.
I hoped he still liked Boston creams, because I got him six.
I pulled open the top button of my shirt as I walked across the lawn toward his trailer. I’d forgotten what a drag church clothes were, but it was worth the discomfort to see Annie so at peace. And in a
skirt. The skirt was nice.
I knocked on the door and, predictably, didn’t hear anything.
The old man had not taken last night well. Though I don’t imagine there was a good way to take last night.
“Hey!” I called out. “You there, Pops?”
There was a sound from inside. A heavy thud. And I imagined him face-first on the bathroom floor. I knocked again. “You all right? Pops?”
“Go away!” Pops yelled.
“Come on!” I yelled back. “You’re freaking me out.”
I knocked again, but this time the door swung open, unlocked.
“How do the doctors feel about donuts?” I asked, stepping into the dim trailer. All the blinds were shut, the curtains drawn, and it smelled…off. “Pops?”
It took me a second, I don’t know why, but my brain could not process what I was seeing.
Pops was sitting on the settee, slumped over the table. His hand stretched across it.
There was a knife through it, keeping it pegged to the table.
The smell was blood. Rivers of it.
“Well, now, isn’t this another happy family reunion.”
And there in the shadows, covered in black soot, with a black eye and a split lip and an arm at an unnatural angle, was Rabbit.
DYLAN
Jesus. How did I not see this coming?
Because Joan said Rabbit was probably dead and I wanted to believe her. I wanted this part of my life to be over.
“Come in, come in,” Rabbit said, lurching toward me and the door. In his good hand was a gun. At that moment I would have done anything to have back the gun that I gave to Annie. “Shut the door. We wouldn’t want to draw any attention to ourselves, would we?”
I stepped in and closed the door behind me. I put the box of donuts on the counter. The pink box with its pretty writing and the smell of sugar coming off of it looked ridiculous in here with the blood and mayhem.
“You survived,” I said.
“Barely.”
“It was a bomb?”
“It was a fucking massacre.”
“The cops are here,” I told him.
“Exactly the attention we do not want. So, have a seat.” Rabbit pointed to the table with his gun and I went, slowly, taking note of all of his injuries. Bad hand. One black eye. Something was wrong with his foot—he was limping/lurching. And the way he moved made me believe he had a problem with his ribs.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked Rabbit, who sat down next to Pops. The old man groaned, lifting his head just enough that I saw the busted lip and fucked-up nose. Blood dripped from his nose onto the table. “Beating up old, dying men. That’s got to be a new low for you, Rabbit.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Rabbit said, dropping for a moment that weird jovial act he wore like a shit suit. He reached forward and wiggled the knife in Pops’s hand and the old man swallowed a scream. I felt my body contract, all my muscles fighting the urge to do something. Anything. “I’m looking for Max.”
“He isn’t with you?” I asked, keeping my face carefully blank.
“Nope. Not with me. Hasn’t been with me in a very long time, Dylan. For years, really. Max lost his shit about the time you got in that accident, fucked up your face.”
Do not respond. Give him nothing. Show him nothing.
“He’s not here.”
“That’s exactly what your father said,” Rabbit said. “I got to hand it to the old man, I thought he’d cave so much sooner. Loyalty was never his strong suit, was it? But nope. He didn’t say a word about Max. Wouldn’t tell me where you were, either. Or that sweet bitch—”
I lunged across the table, but Rabbit pulled up that gun and pointed it back in my face.
He tsked and smiled. His teeth actually looked white in his sooty face.
“I think maybe I’ve figured out a way to find out what I need. Why don’t you go get your girlfriend,” Rabbit said. “See if she knows where Max is.”
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“I think I can be the judge of that.”
I sat there. Unmoving. “Go,” Rabbit, said and pointed the gun to Ben’s temple. “Or I will kill him and then I’ll kill her.”
“Don’t.” Blood poured from Ben’s mouth. “Just run, Dylan. Run and don’t look back. I’m a dead man anyway.”
“Come on now, Ben,” Rabbit said, putting his arm around Pops. “We both know Dylan’s not going to do that. Seriously, dude, why you’re so fucking loyal to these assholes, I will never know. Now, go. Get the girl.”
There was no way. No way at all I was bringing Annie back in here.
But then there was a knock on the door.
“Ben?”
Jesus. It was Annie. Of course it was Annie. And in about three seconds she was going to walk in here.
Pops’s eyes met mine and it was like when I was a kid, sitting on the edge of some car, handing him tools before he could ask. In the span of a heartbeat, the plan was made.
I reached forward with both hands and yanked the knife out of Pops’s hand and tossed it to him. With his good hand he caught it—barely, and with all the strength he had in that dying body jammed it right into the joint of Rabbit’s shoulder.
Rabbit screamed. He didn’t drop the gun, but he was barely holding on to it, and I grabbed it, wrestling it from his weak grip. Once I had it I smashed it across his face for good measure. He swore at me, spitting blood and reaching for the gun with his ruined body, so I hit him again. And then again, until he slumped unconscious against the settee.
Pops spit on him and leaned sideways against the window, his bleeding hand cradled to his chest, blood all over his white tee shirt.
“Dylan?” It was Annie behind me. I didn’t even hear her come in. “What happened? Is Ben…?”
I turned and faced her, got between her eyes and the carnage of my father and the unconscious shithead beside him. I’d done this before. With Hoyt.
God, how many times did we have to live through some nightmare?
“Go outside,” I told her.
“What? No, Ben—”
“I’ve got this under control, Annie.”
She shot me a glare that was all fuck-you. “I’m calling Grant,” she said.
“No,” Ben gasped.
And my girl, my tough girl, she didn’t hesitate. She opened her phone, grabbed a card from her back pocket, and dialed a number.
“Grant,” she said, into the phone, her eyes locked on mine. “I need you to come back to the trailer park. I have something for you.”
She hung up and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I’m going to go outside and clear off Ben’s chair. You bring him out and we’ll get him comfortable and away from this mess.”
Annie was totally in charge and I was wasted with love for her.
She left, and I turned and grabbed Rabbit’s unconscious body and threw it onto the floor. And then, with the gentlest hands I was capable of, I helped Pops slide across the settee and stand up.
“I got you, Pops,” I whispered, my arm around him, nearly lifting him as we went down the stairs. Annie was there to help me, and together we got him into his chair.
She pulled the scarf from around her neck, the pretty one with flowers on it that she’d worn for church, and pressed it against Pop’s hand, then wrapped it around his fingers, helping the old man keep pressure against the blood.
Her weight rocked the chair forward and his head rested lightly against hers.
My instincts, my memory, my very will told me not to forgive. That forgiveness was the wrong reaction to all the damaging things my father had heaped onto my shoulders. But I could not look at him with the woman I loved and hold on to my hate.
It was that easy.
I loved her.
I had to forgive him.
It wasn’t for him so much as it was for me. For her.
For a future free of all this shit.
The sirens behind us wailed and Annie looked up. I d
on’t know what she saw in my face, what horrors or worries. But she reached for me, grabbing my hand with her own bloodstained fingers.
“We’re going to be okay,” she said, smiling as best she could through tears.
I felt like I had moved the last of the giant pieces, those rocks mysterious and unseen in my future, that I was so scared of, that were so inevitable.
They were gone now. Cleared out.
“Yes,” I told her, slipping my fingers through hers, holding on to her with a tether of hope.
Hope, that wild rebellion. That fierce force of nature. That giant raised middle finger in the face of my past.
That was my new truth.
My whole future.
Hope. And Annie.
Three years later
ANNIE
A woman with a clipboard and a headset, which made her official, wandered through the group of students and parents standing inside the student rec center and yelled, “We need all graduates to head toward the staging area for processing to Sherrill Center. Family and friends, please go find your seats or you will miss the ceremony.”
This was about the fifth time she’d yelled it, and people started to actually listen.
All around us, parents were hugging their kids, taking their last photos, wiping away tears.
Dylan didn’t move. And neither did I.
It was as if those words were for other people.
They did not apply to us. We were in this together. To the very last.
It was my graduation day.
He stroked back my hair. Red, again. And really curly. He said he liked it, but every once in a while I missed Layla’s white hair.
“Have I told you how proud I am of you?” he asked, holding my face in his hands. I held his wrists in mine and we were like a closed loop. A complete circuit.
The world went on and on around us, but we were…still.
“A thousand times.”
He kissed my lips. His smile kissing my smile. “I’m proud of you.”
I would take him with me up onstage if I could. Hold his hand while I took my diploma. Because we did this together. These last three years, the hard things, the easy things, the really hard things—we did them side by side. Hand in hand. Sometimes screaming at each other, sometimes weeping hard tears, but together.
