by LJ Evans
“Now, son, don’t be that way.”
And I couldn’t stop myself then. He didn’t have a right to call me “son”. He didn’t have a right to breathe the air I was breathing. I grabbed his ratty sweatshirt and pulled him so that we were nose-to-nose. “Get. The fuck. Out.”
He sniggered and pushed at me. I reached my fist back ready to slam it into his face, but my arm was grabbed from behind. I tried to shake it off, just as Mac’s calm, authoritative voice filled my ears.
“Let him go, Seth.”
I didn’t. But I didn’t hit him either. My dad was laughing still. Mac pulled us apart, and he looked down at my dad which was easy for Mac-the-Giant to do. “What you doin’ here, Carlos?”
“Why the fuck you care? He’s my son. Think he should make-up for the six years of my life he cost me by ponying up some of that money he’s raked in.”
Mac pulled out his phone. “Think it’s time for your parole officer to perform a random drug test, don’t you?”
Those words got him more than my anger had. The threat of a drug test was more of a deterrent than his son wanting to kill him. How messed up is that?
The dirt bag backed away. Scorn on his face. “Another time then, Seth. We’ll see each other another time,” and then he was gone.
Anger. So much anger wafted through me. At so many different things. At the fact that you weren’t coming back. At my piece of garbage dad being out. At the fact that he’d probably find some other fucking way to contact me. I wasn’t sure I could control the rage filling me. But I did what Mac and the shrink and the AA folks told me. I just breathed. Concentrated on the things around me. Concentrated on Mac. Concentrated on the fact that you were still out there somewhere.
“Give me two minutes,” Mac said, and he called Dad’s parole officer even though he’d already left. Maybe it would end up with my dad back behind bars, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
After, Mac and I sat down at the restaurant, my fury slowly eased. My breathing slowly came back to normal. And as the anger faded, the thirst kicked in. God, I wanted a drink. Or I wanted to lose myself in your skin.
But I couldn’t do either. Instead, I thought of Keith and Locke and Liv who had all been keeping me sane and sober. I thought of Becca filling the house with food and drink so that I wasn’t tempted to hit the grocery stores with the liquor aisle. I thought of Mac, stopping me from hitting my dad.
I had all these people taking care of me. Half of them had entered my life because of you. And even though you weren’t there, they were still looking out for me. And I knew I couldn’t let them down. It felt odd to have people in my life again that would be disappointed if I let them down. Abuela would like that. I even thought you would like that.
“You didn’t tell me he got out,” I said to Mac after we’d ordered, and I was calm enough to speak.
“Didn’t want you to think about the asshole.”
“The cops in L.A. didn’t have the same consideration,” I told him.
“What you doing talking to cops in L.A.?” he asked, worry creasing his forehead.
So I told him the whole story. You. Your family. The craziness with Michael. All of it. Even the part about falling off the wagon. And it felt good. To talk to someone. And I realized, I should have been talking to you like that. I should have been telling you everything I told you in these stupid letters in person at the time I felt them. I’m sorry that I didn’t.
We sat in silence after it all.
“You’ve weathered some pretty tough situations in your life. Your grandparents would be proud of you. I’m proud of you.”
I’m not a seventeen-year-old kid anymore, but sometimes, you need to hear that from someone you respect. That they’re proud of you. And I knew with Mac that it wasn’t some condescending bullshit. It was the truth. It was how he felt.
And suddenly I realized something.
There was something else I needed to do so that not only Mac could be proud of me, but that I could be proud of myself.
I had to truly let you go. Not just to New York. But for good. Forever.
There are a million reasons why I have to say goodbye to you, but there are three that I can put adequate words to so that you can understand. Three that are all evident as I reread this letter from the beginning.
Reason one is the fact that I threw my phone across an airport terminal. That I was ready to murder my father. I barely controlled myself today. And I’ll never be quite far enough away from the passion and anger that surges through me to be sure that it won’t ever bounce back and hurt you. I’d never hit you. I never should have hit Cam. I’d even known that as a stupid ass teenager. And I control myself better now than I did then, but even though I’d never hit you, even though I’d never hurt you on purpose, I still fight for control every damn day. I fight to control my anger as much as I fight my desire for alcohol and neither of those are good things. You deserve more than that. You deserve someone who is full of joy and not addiction.
Reason two is the asshole who showed up at the hotel. The asshole who threatened to see me again. I’m never going to be able to escape who my father is and who I am as a result of it. I’m a gang kid. I’m a drug addict’s son. He’ll always want money. He’ll always want a piece of me, and I won’t let him get a piece of you by association. I want to keep you a million miles away from his screwed up life. And I can’t do that if you are by my side where I want you, selfishly, to be.
Which gets me to reason three. I had to call Liv to try to see you. I don’t have your phone number on my phone. Why? Because I’m Michael. I’ve insisted that you're mine just like he did. As if I could own you and put a stamp on you. I’ve written you letters that are full of demands that you come back, that you come home, and threats to come get you if you don’t. I am Michael.
The only difference between him and me is that I know now that you aren’t mine. You belong to the world. To shine and glow and burn brightly like the queen of the fairies should. Like Titania. Smart and beautiful and ethereal.
I told you in my first letter that we belonged together and that none of the other stuff that you worried about mattered, but some of it does, doesn’t it? I can’t possess you and love you. It doesn’t work that way. But I can love you and let you go. And I will. I am.
So, this is my last letter. From now on I will battle my desire to possess you as much as I battle the desire to absorb alcohol. I want you to be free of the ties that bind us. Don’t feel guilt or regret or self-loathing. Just be who you are, because I swear to God Bella, that you is enough to take the whole fucking world and put them in your pocket. I do love you. Will always love you but I truly get that I have to let you go. May all your unknown wishes come true. May all your dreams that you haven’t even dreamt become your reality. May you love and be loved in all the ways that matter most in this screwed up world.
Yours forever and always,
Seth
Real Life
PJ After Letter Eleven
“This is real life, this is real love,
This is real pain that I’m sure of.”
-Bon Jovi & Childs
PJ IS CRYING SILENT tears that fall in unceasing drops by the time she gets to the end of his letter. The letter he’d sent yesterday. The letter that got to her today because he’d mailed it from New York after she’d refused to see him.
Her tears are flowing because he is right, and he is wrong and she can’t tell him that in person now because he went home… Home.
He’s right that she never called any place home. It wasn’t a conscious thing. But he’s also right that it was probably because her home had been torn from her at thirteen. But what he doesn’t know is that the place she felt most like herself, the place she felt most comfortable, the place that felt most like home… was when she was in his arms. It didn’t matter the wood or metal or sand that surrounded them. It was still home.
She’d known that at the time, even if it was subconsciously. It was pr
obably the reason she’d run more than any other reason. Because she’d been afraid to call some place, someone, home. Afraid that she’d lose it all again, and so she’d been unwilling to let down that final wall that was keeping her heart and soul safe from the heartache of losing that person. That home.
It had been overwhelming that he’d tried to embed her into him like an arm or a leg that couldn’t move without his mind controlling it. But she also knows that the only person to ever make her feel like she was enough, the only person to love her with all her flaws after knowing them was Seth. He’d seen her when she was bitchy and kind and stupid. He’d even seen the emotional strength in her that she hadn’t known had existed.
It carves a hole in her heart that he thinks he’s Michael. Michael hadn’t known her. Like the Taylor Swift quote, he’d known the version of herself she’d allowed him to see. Seth may have cussed and swore and threatened to drag her home as his way of saying that he missed her, that he needed her, but he wouldn’t have ever done it. He wouldn’t have drugged her and stuffed her in a trunk and forced her to do the things he wanted. That was Michael.
Seth wanted her, but he also respected her. He wanted her to want what he wanted as much as he did. Seth would never treat any woman the way Michael had treated her. Sure, Seth wasn’t always a prince. He hadn’t always done the right thing when he was angry or drunk, but then again, neither had she.
Bottom line is that he isn’t that screwed up kid anymore. He’s a man, who loves deeply. Who knows what he wants and goes after it.
He isn’t Michael. She hates that she’s made him feel that way by not giving him her number. As if he’s a stalker that she has to hide from when really she’s just been hiding from herself.
She’s finally realizes that she’s never going to get any better because she’s missing the thing she needs most. Her home. And that home is with Seth wherever he is. And she isn’t there but needs to be.
She’d wondered before if she’d ever be able to get back what she’d run from. If she’d ever be able to make right what she’d done to him… to them. But she hadn’t done anything. Instead, she’d sat in New York waiting. As if it was all going to resolve itself like the universe wanted. But God gave us free will for a reason. The universe gives us paths to choose from, but you have to actively get on a path. You can’t just sit at the beginning and hope that someone will carry you to the end.
And she knows that it’s time. Time to stop running. Time to stop waiting for something to happen. Instead, it’s time to do something. Time to be the fighter that Justice and Seth both think she is. Time to fight for the thing that matters more than what she does for a living or what others think of her. Time to fight for the thing that will stay with her when she departs this world. The thing her parents had left behind. Time to fight for love.
Time to get a plane ticket.
And maybe, just maybe, it won’t be too late to get back what she might have lost.
Thank You For Loving Me
After the Letters
“I never knew I had a dream until that dream was you.”
-Bon Jovi & Sambora
THE PHONE RINGING BRINGS Seth out of a deep slumber. He hadn’t slept much in the four days since he’d returned from New York. A couple hours. Maybe six or seven all together. The sunlight is pouring through the blinds in his bedroom, but it could be six a.m. or one p.m. for all he knows when he eventually comes alive to the ringing noise.
When he’d landed at L.A.X, he’d turned on his new phone to find a message waiting from Mac. Mac said that his dad’s parole had been revoked. He’d been high and had both drugs and a weapon on him when his parole officer checked in on him. His shit-for-brains dad was going back to jail. Seth wanted to feel relief, but he hadn’t because he’d known that eventually he’d be out again.
He’d driven home in a dreamlike state to find that Becca had left a note and a chicken wrap in the fridge. He’d swallowed down the food, ignored the note, and headed into the studio.
And that’s where he’d pretty much spent the last four days.
He’d finished the chair. Her chair. The chair itself was twined metal broken all over and welded back together with strands of pure gold and silver that had cost him more than the motorcycle. The sheet of metal that was like a silken purple wrap, hung off the chair in a way that was graceful and unintentional as if it had just been flung there by someone in a torrent of passion. At the base of the wrap, like a brooch someone had forgotten, he’d embedded a deep purple flower that looked like the flower pen PJ still used when she wrote anything by hand. In the center of the flower, were Larimar stones that he’d handpicked so that they hinted of the gray and teal of her eyes.
It really was a simple piece. Like PJ appeared to be simple. A chair with a silk wrap. But, once you really looked at it, you could see that it was much more complicated than that. Like her, it was once broken by Michael and others, but it was fused together so that the pieces shone, the purple material soft and silky, yet strong and unyielding. PJ was unyielding. She didn’t bend when Seth draped her over him and asked her to stay.
When he was done, he’d felt a sense of peace that he hadn’t ever felt before. He still missed PJ, he still loved her, but he didn’t feel an all-consuming need to find her and tie her to him.
After it was done, he’d collapsed into his bed and slept until now with the phone waking him from his dreamless slumber.
“What?” Seth grouses.
“I need to see you,” Locke says with his own grumble.
“Why?”
“We need to talk about a few things,” Locke continues obscurely.
“Just spit it out, Locke.”
“No. I want to talk to you in person.”
“Goddamn it.”
“See you soon,” and Locke hangs up as if he’s afraid he won’t be able to hold Seth off if he says more.
But Seth doesn’t hurry. He takes a run on the beach to work off the shroud that covers his brain. And for once it doesn’t feel like he’s running from his demons. His obsessions. It feels like he’s running for him. For a future that may still be in front of him.
He showers, shoves his body into his jeans and a gray t-shirt, and carefully places the silk chair into the Porsche before taking his time up Highway One to the gallery. It’s nearly three o’clock when he finally gets there. Several hours after Locke called, but he’s there.
As he walks in, he sees that Locke’s secretary-slash-sales-assistant isn’t at her desk, so he just makes his way back to Locke’s office and enters without bothering to knock.
Locke jumps, almost flinging the phone across the room in surprise. “Jesus, Seth!”
He puts up a hand as the person on the other end says something. “Yeah. Yeah. Now is as good a time as ever. We’ll wait.”
Seth puts the chair down and then fights his way into one of Locke’s contemporary office chairs. “I hope you’re not expecting me to wait for anyone,” he rumbles.
Locke is staring at PJ’s chair. He gets up, runs his hand over the material, and pulls back in shock when it hits metal instead of cloth. “My God! How’d you do that?”
Seth doesn’t respond.
“It’s passionate and simple. Elegant and strong,” Locke goes on mesmerized by it all.
“It’s PJ,” Seth responds.
Locke turns back to him and then back to the chair. “It really is, isn’t it?”
“I’m meeting Keith at the gym. What’s up?” Seth persists.
Locke makes his way behind the desk and sits down with a sigh. “If I didn’t really know you, I’d be jealous of you meeting with my boyfriend at the gym at all hours.”
It makes Seth smile a lazy, snarky smile that he hasn’t shown in a while.
“See, right there!” Locke says in exasperation.
“What. Do. You. Want?” Seth repeats slowly, drawing it out.
“The gallery is going nuts. We’ve taken on quite a few new clients, and your work tend
s to absorb so much time these days, that I don’t have the bandwidth for everyone else.”
“So hire some help.”
“I have.”
Seth just shrugs. It isn’t really his business.
“I’m handing you over to them.”
This gets his attention, he sits up, leaning towards Locke. “Absolutely not.”
“Wait…”
“No. I signed with you not some useless wannabe,” Seth cuts him off. For once he doesn’t feel the anger invade him as it normally would have, but he still has no desire to be put in the hands of some stupid ass newbie.
Locke slides an envelope towards him on the desk.
“They wrote you a letter.”
“Who?”
“The useless wannabe who wants to represent you.”
Seth gets up from the chair and starts for the door. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Don’t be an asshole, read the letter,” Locke says, running his hand through his hair for the twentieth time since Seth walked into the room.
Seth grabs the letter and tears it open.
Dear Seth,
Once upon a time there was a girl, a very young girl who lost her parents in an unexpected accident. She was young in so many ways because her parents had loved her and sheltered her from a lot of the difficulties and cruelties of the world.
When they died, she lost everything she thought she had. She lost her home.
Seth looks up from the letter. His heart pounding like it hasn’t pounded since she left. Since he found her. Since forever.
Locke smiles and nods. “Read the letter, Seth.”
Seth turns his eyes back to the words, but his body is shaking. Hope invades his soul, taking the place of the peace that had just resided there.
She went to live with her brother. And it changed both their lives. But her brother loved her and did his best to take care of her. He did his best to make her feel that she had a home with him, but instead, she felt guilty that he’d given up his dreams for her.
