by Cora Brent
I met Bran’s gaze and a long moment of silence passed as we appraised each other. I wondered if he was remembering the things I was remembering; the days of glory, the bitter bite in the autumn air, the clouds of frosted breath from the fans in the metal bleachers.
I wondered why I’d never admitted to him that I went to every one of his games from the time he got his varsity letters. I always went even though I despised football. I always went even though at the time I was still just a face in the hallway to Bran. Back then he didn’t look at me twice. We didn’t become something more until high school was over and both of our dreams had already taken a beating.
“Why are you really here, Bran?” I asked him. “And please give me the courtesy of a straight answer. What are you doing in Arizona? And at my university, no less.”
His posture had relaxed and he looked away, examining the darkness outside the glass doors before answering. “Maybe I just wanted to start over in a place that didn’t remind me of where I came from. I met a guy who hooked me up with a job. Plus I’ve always kicked myself for screwing up my college chances. Luckily the GI bill is generous.”
“Isn’t your dad still back in Hickeyville?”
Bran’s expression darkened a little and he lowered his head. “He is. The dealership closed but he and Nell are hanging on at the old house.”
Bran paused, as an unspoken name lingered in the air after the last statement. He hadn’t mentioned Nell’s daughter. Maybe Bran was waiting to see if I would bring her up. I didn’t.
He cleared his throat and continued. “And CAU has a decent geology program. The admission requirements at Arizona State were too competitive for my academic record.”
“Geology?” I echoed, thinking of Bran and his affection for rocks. His original plan had been to study geology while on a football scholarship. But when football disappeared so did his desire to have anything to do with college.
A smile crossed his face. “Yeah, geology. This part of the country has some interesting landscapes.”
I waited for a few empty beats before I asked an important question. “Bran, did you know I was here or not?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “I knew,” he finally said.
“I figured,” I sniffed, irritation creeping into my voice. “So where have you been hiding? Classes started a week ago.”
He fastened his eyes on me. “I wasn’t hiding. I knocked on your door.”
“When?”
“A few times. You weren’t there.”
“I have a busy life.”
Bran shifted his chair, drumming his fingers on his knee. When he spoke again he was apologetic. “Look, I’m really sorry it had to happen this way. I saw you from a distance a few times but it seemed like a bad idea to blindside you out of nowhere. I didn’t want to do that.”
“Good thing you didn’t blindside me,” I said sarcastically. “I would have been a little stunned to step out of my room to find you skulking around in the hallway.”
His mouth twitched. “Cess.”
“Wait, I just remembered. I did step out of my room to find you skulking around in the hallway.”
He frowned. “You never cashed any of the checks I sent you.”
“I didn’t want your money,” I spat, thinking about the bitterness of receiving those envelopes in the mail at random times over the years. The notes attached to the checks were short, scrawled in Bran’s nearly indecipherable handwriting. In stilted, brief sentences that seemed loaded with guilt he said he hoped I would use the money to fulfill my dream of art school. I always ripped them up, checks and all.
He nodded, looking troubled. “I still wish you would have taken it.”
I released a short laugh. “Seems like you might need that cash as much or more than I do. After all, you’re living in a freshman dorm. Why the hell didn’t you just get an apartment or something?”
Bran smirked. “Maybe I wanted the full college experience. Now I have a chance to see what I missed.”
“You can’t turn back time,” I said haughtily. “In case you didn’t realize it, you’re not eighteen anymore.”
His smirk faded and the look in his eyes became unreadable. “I’m not trying to turn back time, Cecily. I’m trying to fix something that’s broken.”
I didn’t have anything clever to say. I stared at my bare hands. I didn’t wear jewelry, not even a watch. The ring that had once circled the fourth finger of my left hand had been tossed from a moving vehicle seven years ago. It was thin, plain gold, not worth much, but I regretted tossing it away almost immediately. Maybe even then I knew it wasn’t so easy to get rid of important pieces of yourself.
“Bran,” I started to say but I didn’t get a chance to finish the thought. A nurse marched out from the triage area and asked if there was anyone waiting for Saffron Cleary.
I practically leapt from my chair, relieved put a few feet of distance between Bran and me as I approached the nurse.
“She’s being admitted,” said the nurse, whose bright nametag identified her as Anne McCann, RN. “Room 213 but I’m afraid visiting hours are over for the night.”
“Is she okay?” I asked anxiously, still feeling a twinge of guilt, as if I’d been babysitting Saffron and she’d been injured in my care. “Does she need anything?”
“We’re giving her something for the pain so she’ll sleep,” the nurse said, and touched my arm in a kindly manner. “Are you a friend of hers? Perhaps you could see to it that someone brings her personal items in the morning.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “ Thank you. I will.”
Anne McCann smiled and then briskly disappeared back into the depths of the hospital.
Bran was already on his feet when I turned around. I could have sworn from the direction of his gaze that he’d been checking out my ass but even he couldn’t be that crude in these circumstances. Regardless, I was vain enough to be relieved that I’d been lounging my room in sleek black yoga pants rather than ratty flannels.
It was on the tip of my tongue to offer Bran a ride back to school. Then I changed my mind. He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. There were a lot more unanswered questions between us but I didn’t have the will to deal with any of them tonight.
Bran saved me trouble of a decision. “I think I’ll go for a jog and then head back to campus.”
“A jog?” I said, a little scornfully. “It’s dark and it’s still around a hundred degrees out there.”
He pounded his chest once, like a caveman. “I’m in good shape.”
Yes, he was. The longer he stood there the more I noticed it, but only because I was staring.
“How’s your knee?” I asked quietly.
Bran looked startled. Then he stared down at the right knee that had cost him his football scholarship and kept him in Hickeyville after high school graduation.
If that car accident had never shattered his knee he would never have stayed in town.
If he hadn’t stayed in town, Bran and I wouldn’t have gotten together.
In fact we probably never would have seen each other again, except maybe at some distant reunion where we might have half heartedly waved to someone vaguely recognized from childhood.
That knee had changed a lot of destinies. No wonder why he stared at it for so long.
Bran suddenly slapped his thigh and flashed the easy grin that I remembered so well. “The knee’s fine. I wouldn’t have made it into the Army if it wasn’t.” He dropped his grin and searched my face, those sharp brown eyes trying to decode silent messages I’d rather keep to myself. “But I’d be glad to abandon the run if you’d rather go have a cup of coffee and talk.”
“No!” I nearly shouted. “I don’t want to go for coffee tonight. And I don’t want to talk. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
I also had to manage a private freak out session but I didn’t want to let Bran know just how flustered I was, especially since he seemed rather nonchalant. But then, he’d had time to get used to the idea that so
oner or later we’d run into each other. He’d breezed into town already knowing I was here. He’d gotten himself a goddamn room in a building where he knew I lived.
“I’m sure you do,” he said easily and then headed for the exit. He held the door open and waited for me to walk through it. I felt a little shaky as I headed for the parking lot. Then I realized Bran was shadowing my steps so I whirled around.
“Why are you following me?”
Bran held up his hands. “Take it easy. I just wanted to make sure you got to your car safely.” He gestured to the dark parking lot. “It’s late. And the world is full of creeps.”
I felt my eyes narrowing and my jaw hardening. “I know it is,” I said pointedly, hoping he understood the dig.
He did. He scowled. “You really want to get personal out here in the hospital parking lot, Cess?”
“No. If I was getting personal I would have flat out called you an asshole.”
Bran took a step back and shoved his hands in his pockets as he examined a nearby blue pickup truck. “I know why you think that,” he said softly.
“Of course you do,” I fired back. Bran had the grace to lower his head and I swallowed, ignoring the sudden lump in my throat. “This is too much, Bran,” I choked out. “Too much old hurt, too many years have passed. You came out of nowhere and I don’t know what the hell you expect.”
Bran reached out and set a hand on my shoulder but I recoiled and he backed off.
“Cecily,” he said and I could tell it hurt him to say my name. I didn’t blame him for everything. I knew that we should never have gotten married in the first place and that part was as much my fault as his.
But there were other things that Branson Hickey was entirely to blame for.
“Are you honestly going to stand there tonight and tell me I’ve got it all wrong?” I challenged him.
He took a long time to answer. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you that tonight.” He sighed, raked a hand through his short black hair and then pointed. “That’s your car over there, right?”
“Yes.” I turned my back to him, stalking over to my car.
The driver’s side door picked an unfortunate moment to stick and I had to yank on the handle three times before clumsily managing to fling it wide open. The momentum caused me to stumble slightly but Bran’s rock hard body was right there. He steadied me with ease and the feel of his strong hand on my back was a shock to my system. I clenched my fists to keep my hands from shaking as I climbed behind the wheel.
Bran was holding the door and he hunched down, peering curiously at me. “I’ll see you soon,” he said and I had no idea if that was a promise or a threat.
Then Branson Hickey shut the car door and jogged away into the darkness. If it wasn’t for the fact that I couldn’t breathe properly I might be able to convince myself I’d never seen him tonight.
I felt like the peaceful cocoon I’d wrapped myself in ever since I left Hickeyville, Ohio was unraveling and I was suddenly naked. After all, I’d spent a long time weaving that protective layer, working myself raw in Pittsburgh before finally scraping together enough resources for a real fresh start far way. Here in Arizona, a place that had nothing whatsoever to do with Branson Hickey.
In the space of one evening everything in my world had been thrown terribly out of sync. Feelings I’d kept buried for years were threatening my heart again.
Now that I knew Bran was going to be around I wondered how long I’d be able to ignore them. And him.
I was afraid it wouldn’t be very long at all.
CHAPTER THREE
Branson
Once I knew I was out of Cecily’s sight I stopped running. During my years in the Army I’d done enough fucking running for six men and anyway it would have looked like I was up to no good, some muscled dude in blue jeans sprinting away from the hospital late at night. I didn’t need any trouble. I had enough of that inside my own head to keep me busy.
Keeping to the shadows, I watched Cecily’s sputtering car pull out of the parking lot. Judging by my ex-wife’s reaction, I’d guess she was about as happy to see me tonight as she’d be to discover a tarantula climbing up her leg.
“Shit,” I swore and braced my palm against the metal base of a nearby street light so I could think for a second. I’d spent a long time wondering about how things would go when she and I were eye to eye again.
Cecily had reverted back to her maiden name and stayed away from social media but she’d been easy enough to keep tabs on over the years. A high school buddy of mine, Nick Carter, was now a married father and a cop in a small town about fifty miles away from what was left of Hickeyville. Nick was a solid guy who used to have my back on the football field. These days he was always willing to make a couple of phone calls and find out what my old flame was up to. I didn’t know how he got the information he was after and he didn’t try to tell me. He just passed along what he found out.
Cecily had spent some time in Pittsburgh, scraping by with various jobs before making a sudden move to Phoenix. I was glad to hear that she was in school. I lived frugally and money didn’t do me much good when I was in the Army so I often tried to send it her way, even attempting to route it through her mother in the hopes that she’d finally accept the help. But she never cashed the checks, not even once.
Nick had no way of getting the kind of details I was aching to know, like whether there was a guy in the picture or if Cess still hated me as much as she did the day she drove out of town. But just hearing that she was out there and she was okay meant I could sleep a little easier.
I thought maybe in time I would stop feeling so crappy about what I’d done to her. It’s such bullshit how you can convince yourself you’re acting in the best interest of someone you love. Only when it’s too late do you realize what you’ve done might not have been good for anyone.
In the Army I existed. I endured. I re-enlisted once, was deployed multiple times and when I got injured on my last tour I started to think I’d had enough. As the days of my enlistment drew to a close I started considering what life might have in store for me next. I chose not to re-enlist again. Nick offered to put in a good word for me with his boss but I couldn’t deal with the idea of spending decades writing out traffic tickets and maybe settling into a bland version of marriage with some nice girl who would wear herself out while futilely trying to measure up to the girl I’d lost, the girl I never could manage to stop being in love with.
The moment I finalized my discharge paperwork three weeks ago I decided I didn’t want to just go through the motions of life anymore. I’d been doing that for too long; keeping my head down, soldiering through the endless days and avoiding anything messier than meaningless hookups that briefly eased the beast inside of me.
Then something happened the night I got my papers. A few of my buddies hauled me out to a bar in a nearby college town with plans to get hammered and find something with tits to play with for a little while. Usually that idea would have suited me just fine. Yet now that I was free to make my own choices about where I’d spend tomorrow, some kind of switch had been flipped.
Instead of joining my friends around the pool table I fended off the company of several sorority girls and instead sat alone at the bar, nursing a single beer and blocking out the noise of the country music blasting out of the overhead speakers.
“You stationed at the base?” asked the bartender as he shined up some shot glasses with a white towel. The question was casual and I could guess that he probably asked the same thing six times a night since this area was an uneasy combination of military and college types. Even out of uniform I knew I looked like the standard soldier.
“I was,” I said. “As of a few hours ago I’m a civilian again.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How long were you in?”
“Seven years.”
The man turned over a glass and filled it to the top with my old unfriendly companion, Jack Daniels. “Compliments of the house,” he
said as he pushed it over.
I didn’t drink nearly as much as I used to but I didn’t want to be a dick so I took the shot. The familiar fire seared the back of my throat and I screwed my eyes shut for a second until it passed. When I opened my eyes again I focused on the colorful assortment of license plates hanging on the wall.
I pointed. “Looks like someone gets around. All those yours?”
He swiveled, glanced at the license plates and shrugged. “Naw, those belong to Jerry. He owns the place. Used to be a bit of a nomad but emphysema keeps him pretty confined these days.” He paused and tapped the corner of one plate. “This baby over here reminds me that I miss home though. I don’t find my way back there there nearly enough.”
“You’re from Arizona?”
“Yep. Grew up on the desert outskirts east of Phoenix. But I married a southern girl and she likes to be close to her family.”
I peered at the license plate. The bar was dim but I could make out the pastel colors. Somehow they made me yearn for serene desert sunsets I’d never seen outside of the movies.
The bartender moved away from the wall and started lining up shot glasses on a shelf. “So what’s in store for you now, soldier?”
“Driving to Atlanta in the morning,” I said, still staring at the word ‘Arizona’. “I’ve got a job interview.”
“You got family there?”
“Nope, don’t know a soul. I figure I’m due for a reset though,” I said casually although I was still unable to picture myself in the middle of metropolitan Atlanta. For the hundredth time I wondered if I should have just re-enlisted in the Army.
“Well, if you’re aiming to start over, I can recommend my part of the country,” the man said. “Arizona soaks up a lot of folks in search of something they couldn’t find elsewhere.”
It was an offhand comment but it got me thinking. I’d done a lot of that the past few years and it hadn’t gotten me anything except the certainty that I’d long ago lost the person who mattered the most to me. And try as I might, I couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for moving to Atlanta to manage security for a defense contractor.
