Love Will

by Lori L. Otto

  Why wouldn’t I absolve myself? Because I have always set impossible goals for myself–seemingly impossible, but never out of reach for me. I rarely fail. I don’t like to fail. But when I do, it’s big. It’s not fair to myself to not grant the same concessions and considerations that I do for both of my parents.

  Absolution. I linger on that word for a bit. I like the sound of the word, and repeat it in my head a few times. Absolution. Absolution. Absolution. Ab-SOL-ution. I grin, appreciating the word even more now.

  It wouldn’t hurt to have a constant reminder of it. Pulling out my phone, I search for an old email Livvy sent me with a watercolor she’d done at my request. It’s simply the sun. I’ve always felt connected to the sun. It’s hot and fiery with magnetic impulses. Full of energy and always going, never resting. All-consuming. Passionate. It symbolizes life. Strength. Immortality; no matter what happens in the world one day, the sun always bounces back, unchanged; a fresh, new day. It’s the center of our solar system. It’s our anchor.

  So many nights, when I was younger, I would think, “If I can just make it until I see the sun.” The corners of my mouth would rise with it in the mornings. My brothers and I had lived to see another day.

  Eyes to the sky.

  I’m powered by the sun.

  The sun. El sol.

  “I want to get a tattoo,” I tell Damon, finally answering his question.

  “Let’s go before you change your mind,” he says, getting up quickly. He’d asked me to go with him every time he went to his own artist back in Brooklyn. “I know just the person.”

  “Can he do this?” I ask, showing him Liv’s artwork.

  “Just that?”

  “And a word. Absolution.”

  He nods his head in approval. “Learned from the best. It’s about time, Will. Your pussy-whipped brother got his tat, what… ten fucking years ago?”

  “This wasn’t a competition. I was never quite sure what to get. This will have multiple meanings, so it’s perfect.”

  Once Peron, Tavo and Bradley find out where we are, they join us in the studio, and the four of them are suitable distractions from the pain while Heidi–Damon’s guy, who was actually a petite girl with blonde braids that fit her name perfectly, and shame on me for assuming it was a guy in the first place–works on my right upper arm. After the first story Tavo told, I apologized to her for his crudeness, but she joined right in and had her own stories to share.

  I could tell from Tavo’s inability to hide his lesser-than-human-emotions that he was completely infatuated with my tattoo artist. And she seemed pretty into him, too. Granted, she was seeing faux-Tavo. He was still in his suit, and well-groomed, for once.

  Damon goes to check on Heidi’s work. “Hey, Will, you know the S-O-L is in a different font?”

  “I asked for that, Damon, yes. I approved the design first. Sol means sun in Spanish.”

  “Ohhh,” he says. “I get it. You and your planetary shit. Makes sense.”

  “The sun is a star, but yes. You still approve?”

  “Hell yeah. It looks pretty badass. Told you she was good.”

  “I didn’t think you’d take me to someone who wasn’t. I trust you, man.”

  “Wait, wait, wait, Will. Wait a mother-fucking-God-damned minute.”

  “What?”

  The entire room gets dead-quiet. Heidi turns off the needle.

  “What is Shea’s middle name?”

  I look him in the eyes and smirk as I answer him. “Ophelia.”

  “Did you just get your girlfriend’s fucking initials tattooed on your arm, Will?” he asks me.

  “It’s the sun in Spanish,” I repeat myself. “Those letters are laid over the image of the sun.”

  “You got your girlfriend’s fucking initials tattooed on your arm!” He starts laughing. I smile at him, eventually nodding at him.

  “She’s the sunshine of my life, Damon, and that fucking genius Stevie Wonder stole my lyrics decades before I knew I’d need them.”

  “That is the corniest thing I’ve ever heard you say, Will,” Tavo says.

  “Did you seriously just do that?” Peron says, walking over to see the tattoo that Heidi’s started working on again.

  “It says ABSOLUTION,” I announce. “I wanted the word as a reminder. Yeah, it happens to contain her initials, which also happen to spell the word sol, which happens to mean sun in mother-fucking Spanish, you dickholes.”

  “I love it even more now,” Heidi says. “And I already loved it when you told me the meaning behind it when you came in.”

  “You’re the expert,” I say. “Obviously your opinion is the only one that matters. Thank you.” I peer down my arm to see her working on the final letter. I can’t believe how vibrant the sun is. Just like the real thing, and just like Livvy’s painting. “It’s fucking incredible.”

  “Alex wants to know where I am,” Bradley announces.

  “What time is it, anyway?” I ask, since Heidi was using Livvy’s picture on my phone for reference.

  “Four-thirty.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “Our flight’s at six-thirty,” Damon says.

  “Almost done here, guys,” Heidi says.

  “Tell Alex we’re on our way,” Peron says. “Ten minutes, tops.”

  “You’re,” I correct him. “Not we’re. Don’t get him riled up about all of us. He’d shit bricks if he knew we were all twenty minutes away, not packed, and nowhere near ready to head out.”

  “Yeah,” Damon says. “You can be our sacrificial lamb.”

  “Thanks, newbie,” Tavo says, patting Bradley on the back.

  Heidi cleans off my arm and checks out her work, then offers to take a picture of it with my phone. She hands it to me to take a look. “Looks exactly like the sketch, and you got Livvy’s painting perfect. I’m very impressed. Thank you.”

  “I’m glad you like it. I hope it helps you.”

  “Thanks… thanks a lot.”

  Heidi carefully places a bandage over my arm, and I dress quickly in my button down and jacket before paying her and adding a generous tip. This is money well-spent.

  The five of us leave the establishment together, still telling stories about our night. Damon and I fall behind the others. “Feeling better?” he asks me, putting his arm across my shoulders.

  “It’s stupid, but I am. I messed up, you know? But I have to move on. You’re right. I’m flawed. I’ve got to allow myself to be that sometimes.”

  “All this time you spent killing yourself over this cash… you know what you didn’t do tonight?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t pay an ounce of attention to that girl who was throwing herself at you while we were at the regular tables.”

  “Who?”

  He laughs. “Who? Really?”

  “Yeah…”

  “The one who stood behind you all night. The one you hit in her girly parts.”

  “Her?”

  He nods. “Her name was Natalie, by the way.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Because you didn’t ask.”

  “No.”

  “She was hot, Will. She was smart, too. And sober. And very into some Will Scott.”

  I shrug my shoulders. “I was playing cards.”

  “You were resisting your natural instincts, whether you realize it or not. The old Will used to stop studying when a pretty girl fluttered her lashes at him. He’d walk away from running the table in a game of nine-ball at the mere suggestion of a little loving–even if there was a twenty at stake and he needed lunch money for the week. You lost some money tonight, but you never considered the slightest bit of action with this girl or any girl tonight. And that, my friend, is such a monumental success in your world that you should have gotten a huge tattoo on your back that just read, ‘I DIDN’T FUCKING DO IT!’”

  I laugh at his idea.

  “I’m not kidding. You’ve come a long way. If I were you, I’d be focusing on that a
ccomplishment instead of dwelling on the other bullshit.”

  “I’m not dwelling on it anymore. I’ve been absolved,” I assure him.

  “Well, then just celebrate. Let yourself be proud of this, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Now, how the fuck are we gonna get all our shit together in fifteen minutes?”

  “Just throw stuff in suitcases and we’ll sort it out in Idaho.”

  “Deal.”

  We barely make it into our first-class seats, and Alex is pretty frustrated with all of us this morning–it may have something to do with the fact that he got no sleep last night, and didn’t have as much fun as the rest of us did. Damon takes the seat next to him to talk business and to assure him that we’ll all be ready for tonight’s show.

  “Here,” Tavo says, giving me his phone where a picture of a mainly-black puppy is looking back at me.

  “Oh, hell, Tav. It’s cute. So cute. So they have one?”

  “His name is Minnie. He was the smallest of the litter, but they say he’s not a runt or anything. He’s perfectly healthy and good-tempered, they said. He’s the only one they have left of this round of pups. He’ll be available in two weeks. If you want him, they’ll hold him for you.”

  “They named a boy dog Minnie?”

  “It’s a tradition for their kennel. They always name the smallest one Minnie. M-I-N-N-I-E for a girl, and M-I-N-I for a boy. This is Mini the twenty-first. You can change its name, you know?”

  “Mini’s kind of funny, actually. We met in Minneapolis? It’d be for Shea. For protection, while I’m gone. I want her to feel safer when I’m not there.”

  “I’ll tell them you want him, if you do.”

  “Will they hold him until the next week when we get back?”

  “For you, yeah.”

  “Sir, you need to turn off your cell phone,” the flight attendant warns me. I quickly hand the phone back to Tavo, looking completely innocent and shaking my head while I put all the blame on my friend.

  “Fuck you, man,” he mumbles, turning off his phone.

  “I definitely want the dog,” I tell him, nudging him in the side. “Whatever he costs.”

  “You better name him after me.”

  “You want me to call the dog Tavo?”

  He thinks twice about that. “No, man, I’m fucking tired!”

  “Take a nap… and I’m not naming the dog after you.”

  “Okay,” he says, stealing the blanket off my lap, even though he already has one.

  “It’s yours.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Chapter 28

  A heaviness has settled over the bus in the last hour or so. It’s our last leg of the road trip, and we played our final show last night. It’s good to know we have a little over a week of recording in LA, so our time together isn’t up yet, but the tour is over, and it’s a little melancholy to know we’re done playing like this for what may be a few years. This has been our lives for half a decade now. Granted, the first two years we played tiny clubs and local parties, but we played together and invented our sound and wrote our songs. Damon and I were already best friends, but we invited two other guys into that friendship, and I’m going to miss them all as much as I’ll miss my brothers.

  The decision to do what I love was easy. The decision to leave my friends behind was not. I’m just lucky in that I’ll get to come back and hopefully be part of the band again someday. Over the past few weeks, we’ve all decided that a four-man band sounds good, but a five-man band is the way to go. When I’m back, we definitely want Bradley to stay with us.

  My phone rings quietly in my pocket. I slip in my earbud and answer it after I check to see who it is.

  “Hello, Shea-soleil,” I answer softly.

  “Why do you keep calling me that?” she asks, clearly smiling. I know she likes the new moniker, and she knows what soleil means in French, but she hasn’t seen the tattoo yet, and I’m saving the full explanation until then.

  “It sounds pretty, just like you.”

  “Oh, you get sweeter and sweeter the longer we’re apart.”

  “I swear I’ll be like raw sugar the second you’re in my arms up until I have to leave you.”

  “I don’t want you to be sweet all the time.”

  “I’ll be whatever you want, then. Just say the word.”

  “Are you homesick?”

  “I can’t wait to see you. Nine days, Shea. Nine more days, and we can fucking live together.”

  “For a couple months.”

  “Until you’re sick of me.”

  “Never.”

  I sigh into the phone. “How’s the business? Still doing okay?”

  “It’s great, Will. I get more and more orders every day. We’re having to borrow Livvy’s uncle’s kitchen, too, so it’s kind of a blessing that they’re letting me stay here.” Matty and his husband, Nolan, have always been so generous to me and my family.

  “Shit… what kind of a place are we going to have to find, I wonder?”

  “Just a regular place, Will. Don’t worry about it. I’m looking into some shared-use kitchens. There are two in Long Island City, two in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx. I’ve already talked to all the owners. I just need to find some time to go look at the spaces.”

  “We may need a car…” I realize aloud.

  “A van…” she says. “I’ve been renting one.”

  “The band has one… but, uh… yeah, we should just buy one.” I won’t tell her what’s gone on in that van.

  “It would be a business expense. A tax write-off.”

  “It’s fine, Shea. We’ll work it all out.”

  “Nolan’s been helping me since Livvy’s kind of too pregnant these days to be on her feet that much,” she explains. So generous.

  “I’d love to help when I get back.”

  “You’ll be busy working and reading and solving problems. Nolan says he doesn’t mind, and I’m starting to make enough money where I could pay him a decent hourly wage. He says he won’t take it, but I have to do something.”

  “I’m sure I’ll have some time to help with some things. And yeah, we’ll figure out a way to repay Matty and Nolan. Matty got me interested in music the summer my mom and Max and I lived at the loft. I’ve been trying to thank him for that forever. Speaking of Max… I talked to him yesterday before my show.”

  “About your dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “He was upset with me about the whole thing until I mentioned Laramie and Harmon. I think Callen has talked about them to Max before, too. He seemed to soften a little, and I thought I was making him see that we should be there for them, to try to be positive role models for them, and then he shut me down again saying he wanted nothing to do with William’s family. I wish I had taken a picture of Harmon, though. If he could see how much she resembles him… I just think it would change his mind. I mean, I just see so much of him in her, when he was that age. I think that’s a huge reason why I want to help.”

  A little chirp notifies me of a text message. I pull my phone out of my pocket to see that Shea has sent me a picture. I tap on the message to open it, and it’s a photo of my sisters in the sandbox.

  “Shea…”

  “I didn’t know if you would think it was intrusive, so I didn’t tell you. But I thought you might want that some day.”

  I study the innocent smiles of my little sisters. Max had a smile very much like theirs. We shielded him as best as we could in those early years. My smile never looked like that, though. There was always a certain sadness in my eyes, even when I was that young. Jon’s, too.

  I think that must be the resemblance I see in my youngest brother and sisters.

  “This is just what I need. How do you always know what I need?”

  “That’s what a good relationship is all about: anticipating the needs of the person you love.”

  “Do I ever do that?�
�

  “All the time, Will.”

  “Thank you so much for this. I think I’ll save it for when I get home and talk to him in person.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. Listen, I’m calling because Livvy’s parents wanted to throw you a party at their house when you get home. She wanted me to make sure that was okay with you.”

  “It’s not necessary, but I’d love to see everyone again. Their house is big enough to hold everyone. Have you been there yet?”

  “No… I’m dying to see the Holland house, though,” she whispers into the phone.

  “It’s not what you think. They don’t live extravagantly. It’s not like the McNair mansion–or their beach house. Now if we ever get invited to those places, then you can get excited. They’re ridiculous.”

  “Still. Emi Holland has good taste and a lot of style. I bet it’s a lovely home.”

  “It is. I actually vandalized a wall there when I was sixteen when I got back from Utah. My mom couldn’t pick me up, so she sent Jack to get me, and since she’d caught wind that I’d taken my aunt’s car and snuck out of her house, she’d decided to ground me. Jack had to deliver the sentence, so I was confined to their basement for the night while Mom was out of town.”

  “That sounds a little archaic,” Shea says.

  “Oh, no. It’s a nice basement. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a home theater and a game room. If a kid’s gonna be grounded, it’s about the best place to be.”

  “And here I felt sorry for you…”

  “Yeah, don’t,” I tell her with a laugh. “In the corner of the game room, I took a Sharpie and wrote Will Rosser was here. I dated it, too. They’ve updated that room twice since then, but they’ve left that little mark of rebellion there.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Nope.”

  “You didn’t get in trouble?”

  “We’ve never talked about it. It’s behind a chair, so I doubt anyone else even knows it’s there. Jack and Emi are the parents every kid dreams of having. I always acted like a jerk when Mom made me go over there with my brother, but I secretly liked it. I was a teenager. The handbook said I had to be a jerk.”