by Stahl, Shey
Just as I was about ready to walk away, he grabbed my hand when I stood, the fire in him simmering down slightly. “I refuse to sit back and watch you get hurt. I won’t do it. I watched for years and I won’t anymore.”
He let me walk away and gave me some space. In the twenty minutes he sat outside, smoking another two cigarettes, his temper had calmed as did mine. Covered up to my chin in blankets and fully clothed, I laid there and stared at the ceiling as he moved through the room and eventually in bed beside me.
“Why Mercedes?” The words hung in the air, apprehension suffocating me. I felt tears slip from the corner of my eyes at the mention of the memory. First Eric and now Dylan. Was the reason behind him putting a baseball bat through Eric’s windshield because he was jealous of Eric and not me all along?
Dylan picked up the water bottle on the nightstand near the bed diverting his yes from mine. He didn’t make eye contact and I knew why. After taking a drink, he set the bottle down, still no eye contact. His expression remained the same, his eyes focused on the ceiling when he finally laid down beside me. “I’ve never given any thought to it. I woke up beside her and then left without another word.”
“When you saw Eric and her together, what hurt more, that she was with someone else?” My words came out choked as the tears flowed again. He knew then that I was crying. There was no hiding it now.
“Bailey,” he grimaced. He couldn’t even look at me. “She had nothing to do with it. I told her that I was upset that he was cheating on you.”
“Why her?”
Nothing was said for close to a minute. His palms pressed to his face, digging at his eyes and then he groaned dropping them beside him. “She was just a girl brown eyes. One that was willing at a time where I had no idea what was going on around me.”
“Were you high?”
“Worse, I was strung out at the time. Fucking tossed beyond belief. The only reason I know it happen was waking up naked next to her and the condom on the floor.”
My heart felt like a knife was stabbed through it and it was trying to beat around it.
Up until now I had no idea that Dylan had done anything worse than marijuana. How could I have though? Anytime we talked about that, the conversation quickly changed to something else.
It was times like this when it was easy to mistake his actions for inadequateness. That maybe he didn’t feel the way he said he did about me. I knew though. It was in his touch and the way he looked at me.
So he slept with Mercedes. I didn’t have any claim to him back then and wasn’t sure I really had any now. What scared me was the way it felt and how hearing that he had been with my best friend, and she knew that I had hidden feelings for Dylan growing up, and she still slept with him. And Eric. It was like she took everything I had or wanted. That’s exactly the way Mercedes was though. I knew that.
Dylan wasn’t going to let me go to sleep without feeling my skin next to his. It didn’t matter that we had a fight or that I was still upset with him, we had something between us that wasn’t going away.
“Take this off brown eyes.” He said tugging at his t-shirt I was wearing and the sweatpants too.
I did as he wasn’t wearing anything but his underwear.
Sure, I was easy to forget but Dylan was easy to forgive. His words still hurt, they did, but I was willing to forget them for now and be in the moment. I wasn’t sure what tomorrow would bring. What if this was the last night together? Did I really want to spend it mad at him? No.
Dylan moved, planting his hands firmly on both sides of my stomach and ran his nose against the side of mine. He brushed his nose and lips down my cheek, around the corner of my open lips, over my chin.
My head fell back. My spine curved up. I heard myself whimper and hum. He shifted onto his knees and glided his nose down my neck. It started there, under his teasing affection, and spread like wildfire. Every millimeter of my skin tingled and burned for his touch, his skin, and his kisses. He was apologizing.
The aching in my stomach spread hotter, all throughout me. The needful burning he lit in me prickled painfully under the surface of all my skin. I wanted him. I wanted him to show me his love in the most intimate way. The way he had with others only with me, it’d be different. We would be sharing something he hadn’t with others. Love. I knew enough about his encounters with those other girls to know he hadn’t been in love and it was just sex with them.
Dylan whispered and worshiped. I panted and pleaded for more, always needing, wanting, begging for more but he wouldn’t give in.
“Not tonight brown eyes,” he whispered when I tried to position his naked body where I needed it most. “I can’t do it because I need you to feel what I feel for you the moment it happens and right now, I’m not sure that you do. Not after a fight.”
Why did he keep saying that?
“I want you Dylan, right now.”
His expression didn’t change and he stared at me like I hadn’t said anything.
When I tried again, he moved from between my legs to beside me. “Brown eyes,” his voice was full of hesitation. “Not like this, not here, and certainly not after what happened earlier.”
“But…I want you,” my voice cracked without me wanting it to. “Show me you want me too.”
His gaze was on mine, taking in my responses to his touches, my words. “And I want you too…but not like this.”
His rejection hurt. I’m not going to lie. Deep down, I knew he had reasons for waiting. There was something untouchably deep about him and to see it, to really see it, you had to understand him. In a weird way, I did so I didn’t push it.
16. The Wade Brothers – Bailey Gray
There has always been a mystery around the Wade brothers. Drew was older than Dylan by three years. He was always into drugs as long as I could remember but when he nearly overdosed at sixteen, Ken didn’t take well to that, I assumed. I didn’t know the entire story and Dylan never felt the need to go into details.
All my theories were speculation. I never knew the truth and I wasn’t sure I ever would outside from what I learned from his uncles and the brief interactions Dylan and I had about him.
That weekend we arrived in Birmingham Drew was out of town. We he got back into town Friday night, I was afraid to go to the bar with him after what happened on Tuesday night at his friend’s house.
Since then things had went back to normal but we had yet to take things further sexually or talk more about what happened.
Dylan seemed nervous that afternoon and said little until we were in the parking lot. Even then, he said nothing to me but reached for my hand and held it as we stepped into the downtown Birmingham bar his brother now owned. A sign on the outside said The Joint. I laughed at the thought that it held somewhat of a hidden meaning. I’m sure it did.
Drew was in there, it wasn’t hard to spot his tall slender body slouched in a booth going over what appeared to be invoices. Drew looked very much like Dylan aside from tattoos. They were usually confused as twins when they were younger and could still pass for them.
When the bell sounded as we walked inside, cigarettes and dingy carpet engulfed us surrounded by dusty gold walls. Old kegs were used for tables with glass tops and wooden chairs. In the booths, the wooden tables had a gel coating over them with hundreds of coasters underneath the coating.
Dragging me along with him, we approached Drew. He stood, smiling at his younger brother.
Dylan smiled when Drew hugged him and it was easy to see they didn’t part on bad terms and still had a brotherly bond.
“You remember brown eyes, right?” Dylan asked pulling from Drew and gesturing to behind him to me.
Drew’s eyes seemed distanced as he tried to remember me. Years of using probably fogged his memories.
“Yeah.” He gave a smile, one that matched Dylan’s and reminded me of their mom. Drew had Dylan’s eyes, bloodshot and dark, but they had the same smoky ice blue to them. “You guys want a drink?” Drew nodded to
the bar over his shoulder.
Without waiting for us to answer, Drew walked through the crowd to the bar in the back.
We followed. Dylan reached back, his hand finding mine to guide me with him. It was still early in the night. The bar was scattered with about ten different people all-seeming to be lost in their own world.
“So runaways, huh?” Drew smiled up at me when we stood by the bar, both of us finding a seat on the wooden stools that surrounded the weathered wooden bar. “Where are you guys heading?”
Dylan took a shot that Drew pushed in his direction and then the beer. I did the same looking at Dylan as I did so. “We’re thinking of staying here for a few weeks and then we’ll see where that takes us.”
“You’re welcome to stay at my place.” Drew suggested taking a rag from under the bar and wiping down the wood in front of him. The smell of bleach rose above the beer in front of me. “I’ve got a girl staying with me but we have a spare room you’re welcome to use.”
Dylan agreed, maybe to be closer to his brother, but I wasn’t one to argue. I didn’t really care where we stayed. Part of me liked the idea of staying with his brother as I would feel closer to Dylan.
We went out to dinner with Drew that night instead of staying at the bar. Most of the time Dylan and Drew talked and they did include me too but I spent a great deal of time watching the two of them.
Drew was mellow where Dylan was dauntless.
Dylan didn’t need to be loud to get his point across but in his own way, intuitive natured, quick to stand up for himself, speaking in sighs and motions, he did it with an edge you wouldn’t expect from an eighteen-year-old kid.
The next morning Dylan asked me if I wanted to go see his mom’s grave. The tenderness he displayed while asking was sincere and nearly broke my heart. He looked lost, sad, conflicted, every emotion a kid would feel while going to see his dead mothers grave.
Apparently, Dylan hadn’t been there since he was twelve and felt it was time. Why he wanted me there was somewhat terrifying for me.
Dressed in a black dress I borrowed from the girl staying with Drew, Dylan borrowed a suit from Drew and said his mom would be pissed if he went there wearing that shit he wears nowadays. Drew laughed and agreed. Apparently, he went there every Sunday. She died on a Sunday. Sunday was Drew’s day with her.
Dylan wanted to go on another day. He chose Saturday morning.
“I’ve never seen you wear a tie before,” I said when we walked through Drew’s house and to the driveway to get into his GTO.
“Yeah, well,” he gave the tie a tug pulling it from his neck to hang loose a little more. “It’s for her. Don’t get used to it.”
“You’re not much of a rebel looking like this,” I giggled when he climbed over the seat to his side. Still couldn’t open the door since the bull incident and it seemed the longer he went without fixing it, the more I understood his theory about memories.
“Stop it,” he said shaking his head with a laugh when he caught me looking at him. “You’re distracting me and I never claimed to be a rebel. Don’t put a label on something you don’t understand.”
When we got to the cemetery about a mile down the road from Drew’s house, I let Dylan be alone and stand near her grave by himself. Since it’d been so long since he saw her, I couldn’t see invading on his privacy.
Dylan was still affected by the death of his mother. Whenever he said his mom’s name, there was a tiny glimmer of pain he tried so hard to keep hidden, but I saw it. It was in the way his hands shook the entire way here and the distant look in his eyes when he got out of the car and slowly walked over, the setting sun around him was beautiful. It may have been wrong to do, but I took a picture of him walking toward her grave. Afterward, I pulled it up on my camera and stared at it. The sunlight had caught in the top right corner of the shot and casted rays of light at Dylan, walking, dressed all in black with his hands in his pockets, head down. In the corner of the left side of the shot was his mother’s headstone.
I snapped one more photograph when he knelt down beside the headstone and placed a lily near it, her favorite flower. He only bought one this morning, he said she appreciated simple gestures like that.
It wasn’t long and he motioned for me to come over, so I did, keeping quiet until he spoke. We both sat in the grass now, looking at the headstone. Around her name were three sparrows, the same sparrows around the tattoo on Dylan’s collarbone.
Dylan must have noticed me realize this and smiled. “Sparrows mean undying love and commitment to one person, or so they can mean that. If on your arm, they can mean that person values freedom over everything else, bound by no rules.” With a sideways smirk, he gestured to the headstone. “For sailors sparrows mean a safe return home. Drew chose sparrows for that reason.”
Nodding, I read the scripture placed upon it.
Lauren Wade
July 30, 1972 – December 14, 2003
No hand so soft and gentle
No heart so tender and true
No sorrow greater than us losing you
Dylan had told me the story behind her headstone as we sat there, it was something he wrote for her in school when they asked us to write a poem. It wasn’t exactly the same but they had decided to use it for her headstone because she loved it so much.
“The last time I was here was with Drew,” he said taking a cigarette from his pocket and then chuckling softly before putting it away. He leaned back on his hands, his legs kicked out in front of him. “She’d kill me if she saw me smoking that shit.”
“Do you blame Drew for leaving?” I asked. We hadn’t talked about Drew much since we got here and I was curious about his thoughts on the situation. They both acted like they had never parted, throwing insults at each other and reminiscing about their childhood.
“No. Drew had it bad.” Dylan picked at the grass ripping pieces apart in his hand as a distraction. “I’m glad he left. He needed to. Drew took a lot of shit from my dad.”
“Are you mad at him for leaving?”
“No.”
“You’re not?”
“No. Bailey you think too much.” His eyes found mine and I nearly gasped when I saw that they were glossed over. He didn’t want to be talking about this. “He had his reason and they’re just that, his reasons. I have no right to hate him for leaving. Did it suck? Yeah, it did but that’s my own shit, not his. You can’t get wrapped up into what happened in the past or what others did to you. Being mad at him would be a waste of energy.” When he spoke the words, it felt like he was trying to convince himself of that more than me.
“But you were sad?” I reached for his hands in his lap when he leaned forward. He took mine and intertwined our fingers together.
“Yeah, I don’t know. I have regrets and things I wished would have turned out differently.” He looked at our hands and then back to the grave. “It’s not something I’m going to dwell on. What I think about it is in the moment, right now, what I can control.”
“Yeah.” I thought for about a half a second and then said what I was thinking. “Sometimes it feels better when you admit to yourself that you hold resentment.”
I held resentment for a lot of things, mostly for my parents and the way they controlled everything I did.
“Jesus, this shit isn’t complicated and I don’t need you to analyze me,” Dylan snapped letting go of my hand and standing. His hand found his hair and tugged at the ends. “It’s just shit. Shit that doesn’t mean anything.” His eyes soaked in sadness, inside my heart though his words were harsh. “The sooner you realize that people are fucking liars, dishonest deceitful pieces of shit, the better off you’ll be.”
His words held truth, they did. I didn’t know it at the time but he tried to warn me. He did.
And then he said, “Bailey, you hear what you want to hear sometimes.” There was tenderness to his smile, he wasn’t trying to hurt me, and a hunger in his eyes that spoke truth beyond the words. “Sometimes memories are j
ust what they are…memories.” He gave the grave another look before walking away, a warm comfort in a knotted chest.
Dylan was nearing tears and didn’t want me to see him cry I assumed but then we sat in the car for close to an hour, talking. He couldn’t leave. I wondered if this was why he came to Birmingham. Was it to see his mom and his brother? Was that why Drew came back here?
Since their mom was born here, her family asked that she be buried near her cousin and dad. Their grandma, Lauren’s mom, was still alive and lived in Montgomery.
We eventually left and headed to the bar where Drew had live music going on. Thankfully, no questions were asked about our age and we got in without hassle. After being at the cemetery for close to three hours, I would have done anything to get Dylan’s mind off his mom as his anger surrounding the situation seemed to escalate when I pressed.
We sat at a back table that had a clear view of the stage. Drew was singing tonight.
“Drew taught me everything I know about music. He and Eddy were always playin’ shit when I was younger, like barely old enough to hold a fucking guitar let alone know a goddamn thing about it.” Dylan’s eyes lit up. “I remember them doing an acoustic version Midnight Rider…man,” he sighed at the memory and watched Drew take the stage, “those were some good times. Those are the memories you want to remember.”
17. Stupidity – Bailey Gray
After being at Drew’s a week, I was starting to feel like I could move in with him and Dylan and be perfectly happy. They were entertaining and exactly what I needed. I loved that they didn’t shelter me and shield me from their insults. They tossed them my way too and I slung ‘em right back.
Drew’s girlfriend, Megan, was very nice and I enjoyed having a girl around at times. One that wasn’t a backstabbing cunt. Drew tried to say she wasn’t his girlfriend but you could see it in his eyes. He loved that girl and her quirky attitude.
