Fall Guy

by Liz Reinhardt

  Evan 13

  “Believe it or not, it wound up being too much drama for even Evan Lennox.”

  I force myself to sigh dramatically, mostly to drown out the sound of Brenna’s gasp of frustration. We’re well into hour three of our Evan and Winch Relationship Dissection Marathon, and we’re both grossly worn out.

  “I just…I just don’t believe you,” she cries, her voice pitched high in preparation for a full-blown reality protest. “You guys had so many obstacles to get through, but you were getting through them. Giving up now just feels—” She breaks off and lets out an aggravated moan.

  “It was too much, Bren. It was too much! It never even got started, and then it would get messed up. We’d take a step forward and fifteen backward. Every amazing day would end with a crazy, stupid night. Every magical night would spin out with some weird, panic-filled day. Even I’m not this dramatic, and I can’t watch him self-destruct. I’m not going to do it. I’m just going to get through my last few weeks of community service with him, and that’s it. Winchester Youngblood and I are from two very different worlds. We won’t even have to try to avoid each other.”

  I squeeze the tears out of my voice and focus on the college applications I’m filing neatly in color-coordinated folders. “You were against me and Winch being together, remember? You said that you had a bad feeling. That he wasn’t good enough. Why aren’t you ever on my side when I need you to be?” I plead, plopping down in my rolling chair.

  Bren tsks like she’s my overworked governess. “Because once in a rare while, I’m actually wrong. And because I know how miserable you are. I can hear it. It’s breaking my heart.”

  I smile at her tendency to hyperbolize when things get bad. In the background, the chime of the doorbell echoes into my room and my grandmother’s voice calls my name.

  “Someone’s here.” My heart constricts and sings one steady, happy, hopeful song: Winch, Winch, Winch.

  Brenna squeals with delight. “I knew he’d come! Call me later!”

  I take a second to smooth my hair before I sprint down the hall and run at ankle-breaking speeds down the stairs to…

  No one.

  Gramma is holding an enormous bouquet in all buttery yellows and golds and creams.

  “Who in the world sent these, honey? Someone who knows flowers, that’s for sure. Are these from Eastmann’s? They are absolutely gorgeous! Do you have a secret admirer, Evan? Is it Margurite Holinger’s grandson? Did you hit it off after you two disappeared at the art show?”

  I’m listening to my grandmother’s questions without really hearing them and looking at the stark writing on the thick vellum card she left on the side table for me: You were right. About everything. And I don’t expect another chance. But you deserve an apology. These are the beginning. I love you.

  I force the sugared-up tween hopping from foot to foot in my secret heart to cut her happy dance short.

  I’ve heard Winchester Youngblood’s promises before. And I know exactly why reading this one breaks my heart all over again.

  He actually believes he can keep his promise.

  Even if it’s not possible.

  “They must be from Kieren,” I lie. Gramma’s head whips up and she studies me with slitted eyes, icy blue and deeply suspicious.

  “I know you’re lying like a rug, sweetheart.” She takes out a vase and begins a complicated, studious process of arranging each long-stemmed, fragrant bloom. “I don’t like seeing that gorgeous face in a frown. Spill the beans.”

  I pick up a piece of a deep green, broken leaf and twirl it between my fingers.

  “Was my mother always so weak?”

  It seems like I’ve changed the subject, but I’m only asking questions to support the Winchester Youngblood case that’s gone to court in my head. Unfortunately, I’m having a hard time knowing if I’m on the prosecution or the defense. Or maybe I’m the judge? Or jury?

  Or executioner?

  Gramma takes a deep, flower-sweet lungful of air and plumps the blossoms in the vase.

  “Yes.” My grandmother is only rarely so direct. And never so brief.

  I wait for more, but when no more comes, I ask, “Did you think she’d be a terrible mother?”

  “She’s not,” she snaps, her silvery bob swinging around her chin as she jerks another flower with enough force to snap the stem.

  She puts the discarded tulip to the side, the creamy petals bright with a single stripe of orange in the center. I run my finger over the color, ashamed at speaking ill of my own mother, and understanding my grandmother’s fierce loyalty.

  Family loyalty that turns a blind eye to all evils? It’s part of my birthright and one reason it was easy to be with Winch despite his yo-yoing family obligations.

  “I apologize.” I pluck the petals off the tulip, leaving the tall, exposed pistil naked in the center, and whack the side of the desk with the torn flower. “I know my mother tried to be better.”

  Gramma’s fingers still over the flowers in the vase.

  “I wish that was the truth.” She braces her hands on the marble tabletop, her gold rings clicking the surface. “Your mama was a lovely girl. Lovely. But she wanted what she wanted. And she wanted things to be easy.”

  My grandmother looks at me, her light eyes swirling with hurt I can’t fully understand. “You can’t have it both ways. If she was going to marry your daddy, it was going to be work. I told her that. And, the thing is, your mama wasn’t cut out for work.”

  Her sigh starts deep in her chest and inverts her shoulders. “I’m not passing judgment. Your granddaddy and I were prepared to set her up for a life of leisure and ease. We knew our child well and wanted her to be happy, have a happy life. She would have done well with a nice young man from a good family. One of our choosing. But…she was stubborn. And it just broke her world apart when things with your father didn’t work the way she anticipated.”

  I’ve already had my wrist slapped for speaking against my mother, and I understand. My grandmother loves her fiercely, which is probably part of the reason my mother has always gotten away with such awful behavior; her own mother is always on hand to sweep her problems up, and her daughter has always known how to stand on her own two feet.

  “So, you think it’s better to be with someone who makes sense? Not necessarily someone you love, but know is from a different world?”

  The coolness seeps out of her eyes and she goes back to work making the already gorgeous flowers into something harmonious, true art.

  “I think your mother should have married someone who made sense. I think your parents couldn’t overcome all the difficulties true love seems to come booby-trapped with. But the two of us?” She winks at me. “Well, we’re cut from a different cloth altogether.”

  I inch closer, until the smell of fresh flowers mingles with the heady, rich scent of my grandmother’s perfume. “Did you want to marry someone who didn’t make sense?”

  “Good Lord, what kind of question is that?” Gramma exclaims, her mouth quirked in a half-smile. “Your fool of a granddaddy still doesn’t make sense, and that should be obvious to a smart girl like you.”

  She lifts her eyes from the petals, and they shine with a young dreaminess. “He was so far on the wrong side of the tracks, no one even warned us away from each other. A romance between me, the daughter of one of the oldest, richest families in Savannah, and Lee Early? Even the thought was a joke, and that’s how he wooed me. No one from my life or his could wrap their head around the idea of the two of us together, so we went unnoticed practically under their noses.”

  “But…I don’t understand? Granddaddy is famous. The Early name is famous. Everyone knows him. Everyone is afraid of him!”

  My grandfather is every inch a perfect Southern gentleman and respected businessman, and I remember back to the night of the party with Jace. All Winch had to do was say my grandfather’s name, and Jace disappeared without a word of argument.

  “Well now they do, love.�
� Gramma’s smile is every shade of triumphant. “But it’s fifty years since we met and started building our life together. The world is a different place now, and we’re completely different people. Back then, I had a hard time convincing him he’d have any future other than the one he thought fate handed him. Now?” Her chuckle shakes the most delicate flowers. “Now that man would forget he was ever humble, young, gorgeous-as-all-get-out Lee Early, factory worker and part-time sharecropper with nothing but his charm and work ethic to get him where he needed to be. That’s why I’m around. When he gets low, I retell the story of how he got where he is. And when he gets too full of himself, I remind him what a huge debt he owes his patient, brilliant wife for his success.”

  The truth of my grandparents’ story is so beautiful and romantic, it almost blots out the backbone-lacking tale of my parents’ marital failure.

  “What did your family say? What did Granddaddy’s family say?”

  For the first time, my grandmother’s smile falters. She shakes her head and squares her shoulders, but I don’t miss the glint of tears she does a really good job of hiding.

  “When you’re young and strong-willed, you have to know that you’ll wind up upsetting the people who love you. My parents were mad as hornets, of course, and his predicted the failure of our marriage and our future unhappiness every time we saw them until we came to our senses and stopped seeing them.” She plucks stray leaves that don’t meet her exacting bouquet standards. “But I loved your grandfather. Loved him with my whole heart, and we decided that the love we felt was going to have to be enough. Whoever couldn’t accept it would have to move aside. I can’t lie to you, love. It hurt. Sometimes I questioned if the hurt was worth it. But in my heart?” She puts one hand on her silk blouse, just above her heart. “I knew. I knew I made the right decision.”

  “It must have been hard.” My words are pressed small.

  “Nothing as good as what we have comes easy.” She squeezes my shoulder and kisses my forehead, then presses the vase of flowers into my hands.

  I take them up the stairs and reread his too-short note a thousand times. I lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. I call Brenna and tell her all about my grandparents and the flowers and, of course, she tells me to call him, but I can’t yet.

  I think about what my grandmother said as I squirm in my kilt in world history at St. Anne’s the next day. I think about it when I fill out my college applications, and I think about it while I take long, hot showers and cry against the cool white tiles, sometimes for reasons I can’t put a finger on.

  I miss him in a million ways every day. Part of me is grateful we only got a single night together, and part of me is so damn full of regret that I didn’t grab and yank and claw for more when I had the chance.

  I miss talking to him. I miss the sweet, slow smile that was so hard to pry out. I miss his honesty, his caring, his tough, in-control, always-loving ways. I know I have it bad when seeing Gramma’s chicken and rooster salt-and-pepper shakers makes me get a big lump in my throat because any happy couple, even little ceramic condiment-holding ones, make me weepy.

  But I keep going back to the way Gramma talked about her heart.

  How sure she was.

  How much they lost.

  How much it hurt.

  The thing is, my grandparents were strong enough and in love enough that their life together trumped their losses.

  And there’s the crux of my problem with Winch.

  He loves his family. I tried to accept the way they are. I secretly hoped I’d fit in. I wondered if he might walk away. But nothing worked; nothing was going to work. His family and I couldn’t accept each other, and I’d never ask him to choose.

  I kept coming back, over and over again to the reality of our situation: part of me would always love him, but we would never work.

  “That’s it?” Brenna’s voice crumples with defeat. I unbutton the hideous yellow uniform blouse and toss it and my plaid skirt into the hamper. I slide on pajamas and gather my knees to my chest and the phone to my ear.

  “I’ve thought about it all week, Brenna. It’s done. There never really was a way for it to work, but I couldn’t accept that.” I press my forehead to my knees and clamp my eyelids tight against the tears. “Now I can.”

  “You’re an idiot,” she cries. “You have to try to make this work!”

  “You told me it wouldn’t have worked. I should have listened from the beginning and saved myself all of this pain now.”

  I burrow under my covers and peek out at the creamy flowers, wilted and drooping. I’ll have to throw them out soon, but my heart clutches at the thought of getting rid of his last gift to me.

  “I was an idiot,” she protests. I can hear her clicking hangers up in her closet, thumping things from place to place, moving things around. She’s frustration-cleaning. All sounds suddenly stop, and her voice brightens like she’s had a revelation. “Tomorrow is Saturday. You still have community service.”

  The knot that’s been tying itself tighter and tighter in my stomach since the last time I saw him pulls again. “He might be there. Maybe not. I never replied to his note.”

  “He didn’t text or call?” Brenna asks, but she knows the answer. As much as I’ve tried not to obsess about this, Brenna is the one person I’ve unloaded ever Winch-related-detail of my life to. “You guys are so weird. It’s almost like you’re torturing yourselves. Just call him.”

  “No. Can’t. It would just be more stupid promises he can’t keep and me getting my expectations up. I have to face reality, Bren, even if it hurts. And trust me, it hurts like crazy. Like a thousand papercuts in a lemon juice bath.”

  I run my hand over the cool, empty expanse of my bed, then up and down the warm, empty curves of my own body.

  “You do want to see him, though, right? You’re not that insane, right?” She’s begging because she believes in true love and beating all obstacles and love conquering everything.

  It’s not that I don’t believe. I can see the beautiful kind of love my grandparents fought for and perfected right in front of my face. But that’s a love between two people. Not two people and one crazy, controlling family.

  “I do. I want to call him. I want to be with him. But you don’t understand, Bren. Every single time I think his family is as crazy as they can get, they up their insanity level. Without a break. And I had to stand there and watch while Winch got the crap beat out of him—”

  My breath hitches for a second, and I have to grit my teeth together and push back the images of all that blood and Winch’s battered body, and everyone sitting around that goddamn table not caring about what happened to him.

  “He takes the fall for Remy over and over. And when his little sister got a boyfriend, it wasn’t just like they’d give him the cold shoulder and try to keep them from getting too close. There was a freaking payoff scheme, Brenna! And he told me so calm, you know? Like he wasn’t remotely shocked and didn’t think it was weird. Which is weird right? Tell me I’m not just gunning for best drama in a dysfunctional relationship?”

  “It’s weird.” She blows out a long breath. “You know I had to deal with it with Jake. When his family came around with all their money? And it’s still kind of a thing, because his inheritance gets handed over the end of this year. And it’s not just, like, enough to buy a car. It’s like a trust fund. Like a serious trust fund. But it’s not just money that’s scary. It’s that power I guess?”

  I brace the bottom of my feet on the footboard of my bed and rub my thumb and forefinger against my temples.

  “Yep. The control? The millions of strings that are so attached. And it was that way with my parents, you know? Money turned into something that basically screwed up our life, and they let it. But it’s worse with Winch, because, with Jake, he can just take the money and give his family the finger. With Winch, it’s all about his family. It’s all about loyalty and doing anything for them. It’s just worse because they have enough money tha
t they have a lot of power. And ask him to do crazy, crazy things. Bren, if he gets in legal trouble again, he is going to jail, no questions. The judge at our hearing? She wasn’t playing around. And his brother is a total loose cannon. He’s not just going to calm down.”

  I try to regulate my deep, shaky breaths, pulling them in and out as evenly as I can.

  “You’re so worried about him. You care so much.” Brenna is just stating facts, but they core me. I press my fist to my mouth and almost lose the very tenuous hold on my self-control when she asks, “Why don’t you just talk to him? Isn’t there anything you can do? Isn’t there anything…you can say? I can hear how much you love him.”

  “I love him so much,” I rasp out. “And that’s why the one thing I refuse to do is watch him ruin his life and lose himself. If he’s going to throw away his future and get sucked under, that’s his decision. I refuse to watch him do it.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Brenna’s voice is warm and soft as a hug.

  Only because she’s my best friend and she’s seen me through everything and back again, I cry without caring that she can hear. First muffled little sniffles, then full-blown belly sobs.

  I cry in front of her because I sure as hell won’t do it in front of the boy I love and have to let go of. She stays on the line until I’m wrung out, damp, and calm. Her sweet words are the last thing I hear before I disconnect and sink into a long, black, dreamless sleep.

  Winch 13

  Andre didn’t take the money.

  I moved the amount up a few times, especially once I saw the falling-down trailer he was going back to. I knew my dad would be happy to have the money paid and the situation swept under the rug.

  Ithaca? It would take a while, and I predicted a lot of threats of ‘never forgiving’ us, but what had to be done had to be done, and, eventually, she’d realize it was for her own good and life would move on. It wasn’t always romantic and easy.

  That was the thing that Evan didn’t get.