Conquering Conner

by Megyn Ward

  The door bangs closed, and I hear his boots stomp across the back porch and down the steps. The rusty slide of the detached garage door at the end of the drive being raised on its tracks.

  “He’s never slept well.” I look away from the door Conner disappeared behind to find his mother beside me. “Even as a baby. He never cried. Never fussed. But he was never still. Never quiet… if he closed his eyes at all, I counted myself lucky.” She shakes her head, scooping and dropping the last of the cookie dough onto the tray I started. “You could see his mind working. Moving. How fast he absorbed everything around him… how frustrated he was that he body couldn’t keep up with his brain.” She sets the spoon down and lifts the baking sheet. “We knew right away he was different, but we were young and stubborn.” She keeps talking, even though her back is turned and bent to put the last of the cookies into the oven. “We thought if we treated him like a normal kid, that’s what he’d eventually become.” The oven door shuts with a snap and she turns. “He wanted it more than anything—to be like his brother. To go to school and struggle. To make friends and fit in.” Her voice cracks and I realize she’s on the verge of tears again. “To feel and see things the way he thought he was supposed to.” She sits down at the table and stares at her hands. “When you showed up on our doorstep to tutor him, I thought you were just another way for him to pretend to be normal.” She looks up at me and smiles. “I was wrong.”

  I cross the kitchen. Feel like I’m floating toward her. Sinking into the chair across from her I grip the edge of the table to keep myself from blowing away. “What changed your mind?”

  “When I came up to get you two for dinner. You were sitting on the floor, surrounded by books and he was as far away from you as he could get, head resting on the edge of his bed, watching you read, and he looked so… still. It’s like his world didn’t spin as fast with you in it.” She smiles again but the warmth of dies quickly. “Before I understood, I told him don’t you hurt that girl. She has it hard enough… but I had it wrong. Backwards.” She reaches out to pry my fingers free of the table’s edge and holds them between her own, squeezing hard enough to hurt. “I love you, God knows I do. You’re like a daughter to me, but please don’t hurt my son.” She looks me in the eye and I notice for the first time that they’re her son’s eyes. Not Conner’s. They’re deep and blue, like Declan’s. “Not again, Henley—because you’re the only one who ever has, and I don’t think he can survive you twice.”

  Thirty-three

  Conner

  2010

  “Hey kid—you gonna get out or did we just drive out here, so you can stare at the place?”

  I aim a sidelong glance at the back of his head rather than meet his stare in the rearview mirror. He’s right. We’ve been sitting here at the foot of the driveway long enough to draw suspicion. A cab parked outside a building in Fenway barely gets a glance. A cab parked in front of a mansion in Manhattan gets the cops called.

  All I’m doing by sitting here is drawing attention and delaying the inevitable.

  I poke the second hundred-dollar bill through the hole in the partition and watch it drop onto the seat in front of me. “I’ve got your medallion number memorize.” I finally meet his gaze in the mirror, saying it in a conversational tone. “If you try to bounce on me, you’ll regret it.”

  “That a fact?” I can tell by the way he’s looking at me that’s exactly what he was planning.

  “It is.” I smirk at him. People are always underestimating me. “You’ll have to fake your own death and move to a non-extraditable country to get out from under the mountain of shit I’ll bury you under. I hear Moldova is nice.”

  I watch his dark caterpillar eyebrows shoot up, disappearing into his hairline. “You threatin’ me, kid?”

  “I’ve given you two-hundred dollars and we’ve reached an agreement.” I find the door handle and give it a jerk. “I’m simply telling you what’ll happen if you chose not to honor it.”

  “You’re a real charmer,” he says, finally shifting into park.

  “I’m also someone you don’t want to fuck with so just sit here and earn your money.” I step out of the cab and shut the door before he can answer me.

  I half expect him to take off on me despite the threat, but he doesn’t. Whether it’s because I scared him enough to stay or he had no intention of ditching me in the first place, I don’t know. I also don’t care.

  Climbing the steps, I raise my fist to knock but before I can, the door opens in front of me. Henley’s mother is right in front of me, like she’s been standing here, waiting for me. She is not happy to see me.

  “What do you want?”

  “Hello, Mrs. O’Connell,” I say, my tone as polite and courteous as I can manage. “Is Henley home? I’d like to speak with her.”

  I’m sure she’s about to slam the door in my face. Tell me to leave her daughter alone. Instead, she moves aside, opening the door wide enough for me to pass through.

  “Come in,” she says, sweeping me in with a wave of her hand before shutting it behind me. Before I can say anything else, she starts walking toward the back of the house. Leaving me no chance but to follow. “We may as well get this over with.”

  She leads me into a spacious kitchen where a pair of uniformed maids are bustling around. The entire back wall is made of glass, offering a pretty spectacular view of a small garden and the East River behind it.

  It’s not the river I’m looking at though, it’s Henley. All I can see is the back of her head, her wild, bright red hair pulled into one of those loose braids she always wears to tame it. She’s wearing a school uniform, legs bare under a knee-length plaid skirt, the sleeve of her crisp white shirt rolled up. I can see the cluster of freckles—the one that looks like Mickey Mouse—from here.

  She isn’t alone.

  Beside me, Henley’s mother starts to talk. “I’ve known about you and my daughter for quite some time, Conner.” I can hear it in her voice, how happy she is that I’m here. That she can show me this. “While she claimed to be at the library, she was with you, doing god knows what.”

  I think about the hammock. Her feet propped on my chest while I count the freckles on her ankle.

  Sitting on the floor of my room, her head on my shoulder while I read to her.

  The wide leather chair in my dad’s den, her wide eyes aimed up at me when I gave her my ring.

  Beyond the window, I watch the guy sitting next to Henley flick a quick look at the window, his gaze landing on me before he drops a casual hand on her bare knee, his thumb sweeping along the inside of it while he says something to her and gives her a besotted grin. I can hear her laughing from here. He flicks another glance at me before leaning over and kissing her. As soon as he puts his mouth on her, I feel my gut clench. My lungs seize and sputter in my chest. My heart stops, mid-thump.

  He’s kissing her.

  He’s kissing Henley.

  And it takes every shred of self-control I have to keep myself from charging through the door and ripping his fucking head off.

  “His name is Jeremy Bradford. His father is James Bradford, of Bradford Energy. They’ve been dating for nearly seven months…” she keeps talking but I tune her out.

  Seven months.

  Henley moved on from me before she even had time to unpack her bags.

  For some reason, I look down and find a young girl of about ten staring up at me from the kitchen table, a plate of raw vegetables and a glass of water in front of her. She looks like someone just kicked her puppy through the uprights.

  I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the roll of cherry Lifesavers I bought at the train station.

  They’re Henley’s favorite.

  I offer them to her and wink, even though I’m having a hard time keeping it together. The little girl swipes the candy out of my hand before I can blink, jumping up from her seat at the table to run out of the room before her contraband candy can be discovered and confiscated.

  �
�… better than you in almost every way.” Henley’s mother finally stops talking, turning toward me with what I think is supposed to be a sympathetic smile. “I know you have feelings for her, Conner—though I can’t for the life of me understand what you saw in her.”

  What I saw in her? Like who she is now is lightyears away from the girl I knew. Like the girl I’m looking at now is a complete stranger. Like the girl she is now is somehow better.

  “I don’t have feelings for her. I love her.”

  I don’t even realize I said it out loud until I hear her mother laugh at me.

  “Love her? Don’t be childish.” She pats my arm. Her fingers feel like claws. When I shift away from her and out of her grasp she gives me an irritated eye roll. “It’s time to set that aside and think about what’s best for you both. Move on.”

  Set it aside? Move on. I want to ask her if she’s serious. If she even knows what she’s saying. Understands what she’s asking me to do. Instead, I state the obvious. “You’re not going to let me talk to her.” I’m not asking but she answers me anyway.

  “What would that accomplish?” She gives me what I’m sure she thinks is a sympathetic smile. “She’s happier without you—surely you can see that.”

  The bitch of it is, I can.

  I can see it.

  Fingers still gripped around the wrapped package I’ve been holding since I left my house six hours ago, I turn away from the window and see myself out.

  I’m halfway down the driveway when I hear him.

  “Hey.”

  I turn around hands gripped around the gift I brought for Henley. It seems stupid now. Living in a place like this, she probably has a million books more than she could ever read in a lifetime.

  “You’re Conner Gilroy.” He doesn’t offer his hand and it’s a good thing because I’d probably rip his arm off and beat him to death with it if he did. “I’m Jeremy.”

  “I heard.”

  He’s better than you in almost every way.

  He leans away from me, a puzzled look on his face, like he’s not used to being talked to this way and he’s not sure how to react. His confusion doesn’t last long. “You don’t belong here, Gilroy, and she doesn’t belong to you. Not anymore.”

  It bothers me that this asshole is talking about Henley like she’s a thing. Like he owns her.

  That she’d let him kiss her.

  I don’t say anything. I can’t. If I open my mouth I’m going to start screaming and I’m never going to stop.

  So I do the only thing I can.

  I just nod and walk away.

  Thirty-Four

  Conner

  Without a muddy, backyard brawl with my dickhead brother to distract me, changing the oil in my mom’s Bronco takes me about thirty minutes. I stretch it out for as long as I can, replacing her sparkplugs, checking her fluids, and changing out her fuel filter but that only adds another twenty minutes. Before I know it, I have nothing left to do unless I want to detail her car and rotate her tires.

  And I’m considering it.

  Quit being a pussy. She kissed you—big fuckin’ deal. You’ve literally fucked thousands of women and you go mental over a kiss. There wasn’t even tongue involved.

  But I didn’t have to ask her to do it.

  We were standing up and our clothes were on and my mother was six-feet away and like a big fucking girl, I can’t stop myself from wondering what it means. Hoping it means something I know it doesn’t.

  Can’t.

  Henley isn’t sticking around, genius. She came here to check on her drunk dad and to lose her V-card because she heard the stories of your sexscapades from her dumbass, big-mouth brother and wanted to know if you lived up to the hype.

  I slam the lid to my mom’s Bronco closed and cross the backyard, wiping the majority of the grease and grime off my hands on my way up the porch steps. Tucking my shop rag in my back pocket, I open the door, expecting to see my mom and Henley, still at it but the kitchen is clear. I can hear them in the living room, talking to my dad.

  Half relieved, half disappointed, I take the back stairs to the second-floor. Ducking into the bathroom I used to share with Declan, I take a quick shower, scrubbing away the dirt and grime before I dig out one of my dad’s old razors and scrape off about a weeks’ worth of facial hair. It’s not a particularly close shave but I feel marginally more human when I look at myself in the mirror.

  Now you’re shaving for her? What’s next? Mani/pedi? Gonna ask Cap’n if you can borrow one of his candy-ass suits?

  I never realized until now that my inner-voice sounds like Declan.

  The realization makes it easier to ignore.

  Slinging the towel around my hips, I head down the hall to my old room. I didn’t bring a change of clothes this time, but I have a few—

  Henley is sitting on the floor, in front of my bookcase, books spread out around her. Her head bent, face tipped over the one in her lap. A plate of cookies on the floor next to her. Completely and totally absorbed in the book in front of her.

  She used to do that sometimes. I loved it when she’d lose herself in a book. The way she chewed on her bottom lip when something in the story she was reading made her nervous. The way she leaned forward just a bit when it excited her. Sigh when it aggravated her. I could watch her for hours when she was like this. It was my form of meditation, way before Tess’s dad slapped a wrench in my hand.

  Stop staring, fuckface.

  I push the door closed before turning my back on her to dig through my old dresser. It takes a while, but I finally find an old pair of track pants with an elastic waistband and a drawstring that look like they might work. Dropping my towel, I shake them out and step into them, pulling them up and cinching the drawstring as tight as I can. I weighed myself yesterday. I’m still down eight pounds from my trip to CooCoo-Banana Land. I’m going to have to eat pancakes, morning noon and night for the next few weeks to—

  I hear a soft gasp behind me and my dumb cock jerks in response because it doesn’t know the difference between an ohmygod, I want you to fuck me gasp and an ohmygod, I hope he doesn’t think he’s going to fuck me gasp.

  Shit.

  I force my shoulders to relax, aim a look over one of them to find Henley looking up at me from her seat on the floor. She’s got her finger stuck in the book she’s reading to mark her place, face pale under her light brown freckles. Gaze glued to the number she did on my back. The welts aren’t raised or red anymore but there’re scabs scattered from my shoulders to my ass from where she pushed too hard and broke the skin. Made me bleed.

  Because you practically forced her to, you fucking psycho.

  “Sorry.” Pants secured, I turn my head and focus on finding a shirt and getting the fuck out of here. “Thought you were lost.”

  Don’t be weird, weirdo.

  She clears her throat. “Lost?”

  “Yeah.” I grab a shirt, one I haven’t seen since high school but at this point I don’t give a shit. I just need to put it on and leave. “You know—” I stop talking long enough to tug the shirt over my head. “How you used to get. Nose buried in a book—the apocalypse could start, and you’d never even know it. I used to watch you for hours when you were like that.”

  No, that’s not weird at all. Good job, fuckface.

  I smooth the shirt into place. It’s old. Worn thin. The collar is stretch out and the seams are tight across my shoulders. I immediately want to take it off, but I don’t. I keep it on because if I go downstairs without a shirt on, my mom will see my back and freak out on me.

  Jesus Christ, I’m so fucked up.

  I’m not staying for dinner. Fuck that noise. I’m going home where I don’t have to worry about messing everything up. Where I can be weird and awkward and alone, and I don’t have to worry about anybody worrying about me. I mumble something about seeing her later and reach for the door, to pull it open so I can get the fuck out of here, but she stops me.

  “Where are you going?�
��

  I freeze, hand on the knob, ready to bolt but I can’t. My feet feel like they’ve been nailed to the floor. “I didn’t mean to bother you. When I came in from the garage, you were in the living room, visiting with my dad and I thought…”

  “I came up here looking for you.”

  I feel my fingers tighten around the knob in my hands. Trying to pull it open. Trying to get out of here before I fuck it all up again by opening my mouth. “Why?”

  You know why.

  You know what she wants.

  What your good for.

  Just because you’re seriously fucked in the head doesn’t mean you don’t know how to use your dick.

  That’s what she wants.

  She wants you to fuck her.

  Make her come.

  She’s going to say it and you’re going to lock the door and you’re going to give her exactly what she wants. Because something is better than nothing.

  Because she’s not the only junkie here.

  “Because you told me to bring you cookies.”

  My hand goes slack around the doorknob and I feel myself turning to look at her. She’s still sitting on the floor. Book still in her lap. Books scattered around her like tiny, brightly colored islands. Plate of cookies in her hand, held out to me like an offering.

  Like a sacrifice.

  “You brought me cookies?” Jesus fuck, don’t you fucking cry, you big, weird baby. If you cry, you’re going straight out the motherfucking window.

  Head first.

  When I don’t move she sets the plate on the floor in front of her. “Yup.” She lowers her gaze to the book in her lap and opens it.

  I stand there for a while, hand on the knob, face inches from the door, considering my options. Weighing what I want against what I know I should do. Finally, I let go of the door and cross the room to sit on the floor, bracing my back against my bed to stretch my legs out in front of me. And I just look at her.