Fortitude Smashed

by Taylor Brooke

“You’re not a burden to me, Aiden,” Daisy whispered. “We just have to find a way to fight back, that’s all. Don’t apologize for not knowing how yet. We’ll figure it out together.”

  “What if there isn’t a way to fight?”

  “There’s always a way,” Daisy said.

  It was quiet as the world turned. Aiden tried to smile at her; she tried to smile back.

  “Your birthday’s coming up.”

  Aiden nodded. “I know.” He gathered Mercy into his arms, holding her snug against his chest. “Your timer goes off soon.”

  Daisy nodded. “I know.”

  The world turned, and Aiden could breathe, and spring was in full bloom, and for the first time in seven years, Aiden wasn’t waiting for fate.

  Fate sent Shannon, and fate sent Daisy, and fate sent him a war Aiden wasn’t sure he could win. But if living was a battle, Aiden was ready to fight.

  Spring was laughter. Once the beach stopped shivering from autumn’s chill and the quiet of winter started to lift, Laguna Beach began to unwind. Soft purrs, windy giggles, sing-song notes, and buzzing bees carried melodies through rustling palm trees and patches of opaque tulips. It was new, and it was bright, and it was great, and Shannon didn’t know what came next.

  Whatever it was, he would be ready for it.

  “He came over?” Karman lifted her martini glass to her lips.

  Shannon nodded. “Yeah, he did. He was… he wasn’t all right, but once I got him to sleep, it was better. He woke up. We talked. It was fine.”

  “You should be careful with him, Wurther. People with conditions like that are unpredictable. I saw him that night. He was in a bad way.”

  “Everyone deals with things differently. It isn’t his fault, Karman. Having depression isn’t a choice.”

  Karman pursed her lips. “Everyone makes a choice to be a certain way,” she said, condescending her way under Shannon’s skin.

  “Oh, and how’s that going for you?” Shannon gestured loosely at her right hand. “Not everyone can shut it off like you do. Aiden lost both his parents and he blames himself. It isn’t his fault he goes through what he goes through. He isn’t unpredictable, he’s sick.”

  “He’s messed up,” Karman said plainly. She lifted her hand and waved it, dismissing whatever Shannon had to say before he said it.

  Karman was rarely wrong, but when she was, it was a deep cavern of wrong that she could not crawl out of—such wrongness that it was a sore thing, the kind of wrong that made him ashamed of her.

  “He’s…” Shannon huffed and rolled his eyes. “He’s fine. He’s got some shit to deal with; we all do. Why do you feel the need to come down on him so hard? What did he say to make you react like this?”

  “Nothing. I tried to get him to come out of his funk, that’s all. He spits venom like a cobra, I’ll tell you that much.” Karman paused, sipped her drink, and added very quietly, “I didn’t know you told him about Jay.”

  “He’s my Rose Road, Karman. Of course I told him. He’s not a cobra. He’s a person who has an anxiety disorder, which comes from his chronic depression, if I haven’t mentioned that already.” Shannon didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but it was that or anger, and he didn’t have the patience to be angry with her.

  “Well, anyway, be careful. I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed if something happened.”

  “Anyway.” Shannon nodded as a dry smile spread across his lips. “That’s what it always is, isn’t it? Anyway, let’s change the subject. Anyway, Karman has no issues. Anyway, let’s pick everyone else apart. Anyway, Karman gets to pass judgment whenever she pleases, because she got hurt once, too.”

  Karman straightened in her seat. She flipped a clump of curls over her shoulder and snorted with her brows arched high on her forehead. Shannon had struck a nerve; he saw it spark within her and he caught her snuffing it out.

  He waited for her to lash out and scold him, but instead she nodded and ordered another martini.

  “People like him are volatile,” Karman said. That was her way of being petty, Shannon knew. Dismiss the obvious, circle back to any problem that wasn’t hers, and chew on it.

  “You’re a bitch,” Shannon snapped.

  “I know that.”

  “Jay is gone, and it’s not your fault.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I’m not going to love him any less because he’s got baggage.”

  “Good for you.” Karman shut down. Her voice was low; her gaze was lifeless and long-gone.

  “You know…” Shannon paused to laugh, short and sarcastic. He had sharp teeth, too, and sometimes she needed reminding. “I hope Marcus doesn’t give up on you as easily as you give up on everyone else. God forbid he sees through that mask you wear and figures out that you’re just as broken as his brother.”

  Karman’s face hardened. Shannon watched her jaw flex, hollowing the space beneath her bronzed cheekbones.

  “See you at work.” Shannon grabbed his messenger bag, slid on his sunglasses, and walked out of the Whitehouse.

  00:00

  Shannon thought about Aiden’s birthday, and he thought about the Mortez case, and he thought about his bitter conversation with Karman last week. He sat cross-legged on his bed with a science fiction book, reading lines and rereading them, trying to absorb the content and failing miserably.

  Shannon thought most about what Karman had said. People like him are volatile.

  Aiden shuffled around the loft, searching for an old band T-shirt he’d left months ago.

  “Babe, what even is this?” Aiden held up the remnants of a sock, torn at the toe and with a hole in the heel. His face scrunched and his septum piercing caught the afternoon light. “I’m throwing it out.”

  Shannon ignored the book and tilted his head to take in the Aiden Maar that was no longer predatory thief, but domesticated bartending photographer: bare feet on the wood floor, jeans unbuttoned, looking as out of place as the bed or the television or the microwave or Shannon.

  “Do you think you’re volatile?” Shannon waited for a laugh or a snide snarl.

  Aiden shrugged and dropped the sad excuse for a sock in the trash can. “I guess, yeah. I don’t know. Do you think I’m volatile?”

  “No, I don’t.” Shannon arched a brow. “You responded well to that. I thought you’d be offended.”

  “We’ve already talked about me being a disaster, Shannon. Volatile is just a fancy added description.” Aiden dug through one of Shannon’s dresser drawers until he found the shirt he’d lost. He exclaimed how pleased he was in a flutter of foul language. “Why’d you ask?”

  “Just curious. Describe yourself in three words.”

  “Catastrophe. Tall. Hungry.”

  Shannon laughed. Aiden did, too.

  “Your turn, describe yourself,” Aiden said. He tossed his tank top on the floor and tugged his newly found T-shirt over his head.

  “Over-analytical. Sophomoric. Also, tall.”

  Shannon dog-eared the page he hadn’t finished reading and set the book on the nightstand. The blood rushed back into his legs as he unfolded them and rose to his knees. He stretched, listening to cracks and pops from his back.

  Aiden sauntered closer. Cloud-filtered light beamed in through the poorly dusted windows. It crawled over his shoulders, skipped across his arms, and painted him a curious, breathtaking thing. Seven months had passed, and Shannon still marveled at him, at all that he was and would be.

  Shannon smirked when Aiden gripped his face and tapped long fingers against his temples, and fell when Aiden tossed him down against the comforter.

  Everyone makes a choice to be a certain way.

  “What’s wrong?” Aiden said gently. He propped himself on his elbow and touched Shannon’s cheek. “What aren’t you saying?”

  “You’re okay, right?” Sha
nnon swallowed, unsure if he should continue. “You won’t… You’re not still…”

  “Shannon, I’m fine,” Aiden said.

  “Do you still feel like dying?”

  That, Shannon knew, was the question he’d wanted to ask for months.

  Aiden’s playfulness dimmed. He exhaled and tried to smile. Shannon heard him hold his breath. Silence wasn’t always a weapon; sometimes silence was a secret. Secrets, to Aiden, were hoarded masterfully, locked away, and distributed at opportune moments or not at all. When something was his and only his, he kept it.

  That, Shannon knew, was what Karman feared in Aiden. His dance with death, his obscure relationship with the concept of living, his inability to smother his emotions beneath heaping piles of lackluster responsibility—all of Aiden, all of his war, Karman saw in herself.

  But Shannon didn’t fear it anymore. He only feared the chance that Aiden might not live, that they might not live, a together, a home, a something. Shannon was terrified of losing a future.

  Shannon was terrified of losing Aiden.

  Aiden didn’t answer. He bracketed his legs around Shannon’s waist. They kissed like the first time, questioning and then colliding. Aiden’s lips brushed Shannon’s mouth, gasoline, and Shannon craned his neck to catch them, a match striking. Aiden made a wounded sound. His hands glided over Shannon’s cheeks, his temples. Shannon cradled the back of Aiden’s neck with his palm.

  His hair was longer, Shannon noticed. He twirled it between his fingers, strands of gold and dirty snow. His other hand swept across the tattoo beneath Aiden’s shirt. Black-feathered phoenix, burning and alive.

  Aiden said Shannon’s name on a tentative breath. It wasn’t an answer, but Shannon let it go. He latched his arms around Aiden’s waist and pulled. The force caused their teeth to knock, but neither of them bothered arranging themselves in a way that would prevent it. Closeness was their sanctuary; it always had been.

  Shannon remembered the beginning, when Aiden was a ghost manifested out of peculiarity, haunting and dangerous.

  You’re beautiful. I’ve never been scared of anything until you. I might love you, someday.

  Someday, someday, someday.

  “I feel alive,” Aiden said suddenly. Shannon’s lips were on his throat, and Aiden’s hands wound in the sheets. “I feel alive with you.”

  “You are alive.” Shannon’s hands smoothed up Aiden’s back, pressing on jutting bone, counting piano keys, dragon spines. “You’re alive,” he said again. “Things like you can’t die. The world would die right along with you.”

  “Someone told me I would eat the heart of the world one day,” Aiden said. He leaned back, only enough to rest his forehead against Shannon’s. “I’ve always loved the world, but I never thought I’d find the heart of it, the best of it, the center of it. I did, though. I found it,” he added quickly. “Or it found me, I’m not sure which.”

  “I don’t know either, but you’ve completely consumed it.”

  Aiden offered a shy smile, one of his gentle rarities, and he kissed Shannon again.

  41

  Shannon looked at his phone, debating whether he should answer. Karman’s name flashed on his screen with the cartoon image of a video recorder below it. He chewed on his lip, going over every conversation they’d had since their argument at the Whitehouse. Other than work, they hadn’t spoken in three weeks.

  He slid the tip of his finger across the screen. Karman’s face popped up.

  “We never FaceTime. What’s the occasion?” Shannon asked.

  Karman rolled her eyes. “We can’t keep ignoring each other, and you don’t have anything to be sorry for, which means I’m the one who needs to apologize. So, Shannon, I’m sorry. You’re right about everything, you always have been. I don’t know how to deal with my shit, which makes it hard for me to accept when other people are having trouble dealing with their shit.”

  Shannon nodded. “Go on.”

  “I don’t have the excuse Aiden does, not that it’s an excuse, but you get what I mean. I have complete control over my situation and I refuse to do anything about it. It bothers me, which makes me angry, and I say things I don’t mean. So, there. Yeah, sorry. I’m a bitch.”

  “You’re a total fucking bitch,” Shannon gritted. “You basically told me to prepare myself for Aiden’s suicide, you get that, right?”

  “Why do you think I’m apologizing?”

  “Well, try again!”

  Karman grabbed the phone and held it close to her face. “Shannon Wurther, I am your best friend and I love you and I am sincerely sorry for what I said about Aiden. He didn’t deserve that and neither did you. I’ll take you guys out sometime this week to make up for it.”

  “I have to go, all right? I’m meeting him in an hour for his pre-birthday thing.”

  Karman lifted an eyebrow and tilted the phone awkwardly. “You gonna give him the overpriced flower thing?”

  “Yes.” Shannon rolled his eyes. “You’re coming to dinner tomorrow, right?”

  “The Wicked Witch is still invited?”

  “Yes, you’re still invited.”

  Karman grinned. “Then yes.”

  Shannon flashed a grin at his phone before he hit end, stashed it in his pocket, and headed out the door.

  Seated on the couch with Aiden on one side and Mercy on the other, Shannon clicked up the volume on the TV. Boxes of Chinese takeout and beer bottles crowded the coffee table. Aiden gave an impressive impersonation of Jabba the Hutt with his mouth full of chow mien.

  “What do you think Carrie thought when she saw the outfit for the first time?”

  Shannon shrugged.

  “Do you think she thought it was sexy or stupid?”

  “I don’t know, probably a little bit of both.”

  Aiden scooped more noodles into his mouth and nodded. “Speaking of first impressions, what’d you make of me, Detective?”

  “You aren’t an article of clothing,” Shannon said matter-of-factly.

  Aiden rolled his eyes and waved his hand in a circle. “Yeah, okay, you know what I mean.”

  “I was trying to arrest you at the time, so.”

  “You’re no fun. Tell me…” Aiden snapped his chopsticks in Shannon’s face. “Did you think I was sexy or not?”

  “Was I not clear enough with the dozen hickeys? Of course I did, even though you were a criminal at the time.”

  “It’s weird hearing you say it like that.” Aiden plucked a piece of shrimp from Shannon’s white takeout box. “Using past tense. It’s still strange not stealing, you know.”

  “What made you start? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.” Shannon held the box to Aiden as he rummaged through it for another piece of shrimp.

  Aiden shrugged. “My mom painted, not professionally or anything, but she was always working on a canvas, sketching, buying supplies, repainting murals on our kitchen wall every summer. When she died, I wanted to keep that part of her, but I couldn’t look at any of her work. It… hurt to acknowledge, I guess. So I stole. The first time I took something, it felt dark and powerful, like a secret. I thought it was exchangeable with living—the exhilaration—but I was wrong. It was just adrenaline.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “Sometimes.” Aiden shrugged. He pointed his chopsticks at Shannon and lifted a brow. “I still steal, Detective. Small things, though. Things you’d never notice.”

  Shannon smirked. “Don’t tell me what they are.”

  “Didn’t plan on it.”

  “Do you want your gift?”

  “That depends on what it is.”

  “You can’t eat it, it isn’t alive, but I wrapped it.”

  “Will it break if I shake it?”

  “Do not shake it.”

  Aiden set his box on the table and nodded. “Fine, yes.”

>   “Don’t shake it,” Shannon stressed. He walked to the kitchen counter where the square-shaped gift sat beside his keys and sunglasses. “If you do, it will break, and I will kill you.”

  Aiden curled and uncurled his outstretched fingers. “Okay, whatever. Give it.”

  An irritating scratch formed in the back of Shannon’s throat. His grip tightened around the corner of the square, wrapped in bright orange paper decorated with cartoon balloons. He’d been waiting a month and a half to give this to Aiden. This, Shannon thought, was something too personal to be simplified as a birthday present. Beyond the wrapping paper was a piece of their past framed and centered, the first of Aiden’s many truths—a beginning that started in a state of complicated reverence.

  Reminds me of myself.

  Shannon handed it to him.

  A pleased, raspy hum built in Aiden’s mouth; his smile stretched thin. He tore the paper open. Stopped. Looked up. And Shannon froze.

  “Shannon, what is this?” Aiden said, quick and clipped.

  Aiden’s smile ruptured. His bottom lip twitched; the tension between his brows deepened. It wasn’t anger, Shannon realized. Aiden was bewildered, and like all things Aiden, his state was interchangeable with many others. Anger took precedence, even if it wasn’t the cause.

  Shannon chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Open it.”

  Aiden’s movements slowed. He peeled back the paper, carefully breaking the tape on each side, and tossed it on the floor. Long fingertips investigated the glass front of the frame, and he saw the painting within.

  “This is a Nichole Scott,” Aiden whispered.

  “Yeah, it is. Fortitude Smashed was sold, but that one was available along with some others. It seemed fitting.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Catalyst.”

  The Nichole Scott painting wasn’t in the nicest frame, but Shannon didn’t think Aiden would mind.

  The piece, all lavenders and mauves and bursting apple reds, sat in a sea of blue pollen. Tendrils of ivy and dandelion stems coiled into orbs. A merlot calla lily, black at its base and rich purple at its tip, dominated the canvas’ middle. The swirl of blossom was separated from the stem, which was an inch lower, and accompanied by tiny spherical vines and bursting tulip buds.