by Hall, Marie
“Liliana?” she mumbles.
Smiling through the tears, I press a finger to my lips and then crawl into Mama’s bed, and hug her, wrap my arms and legs around her and cry into her dress, staining the mauve cloth. Grabbing her hand, I rub it across my shoulder and pretend it’s her, pretend she’s holding me back, telling me everything will be okay. That in the end, love always conquers all, that I’m not alone… never have been.
Finally, I fall asleep.
***
Ryan
Heading into the kitchen, I grab the kettle and put some water to boil. Alex is staring at me. Just staring, with determined eyes.
I hate that look.
“What?” I snarl and scratch my back. “You’re looking.”
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?” I snap, grabbing a bowl and mug out of the cabinet.
“It’s Valentine’s Day next week,” he finally says.
Pouring my cereal, and grabbing a chamomile bag, I shrug. “So?”
“So what’s the plan?”
Slamming a hand down on the counter-top, I take a deep breath. “Stop trying to always save me, Ryan. I’m going out. Same thing I do every year.”
“Aren’t you tired of this? Sick of it. Look at you, man? Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror for a while? You look like shit, like you’ve gone a hundred rounds and you still don’t quit. Why won’t you stop? Fuck man, I’m exhausted.”
I do look at myself.
All the time.
My face is always swollen and black and blue. It isn’t pretty, but I don’t want to be. I don’t want any other woman to look at me the way she had. I don’t want to feel what I had. I want to be numb, and I am.
During the day.
Nights are another matter.
My dreams are a frightening amalgam of Valentine’s Day mixed in with Christmas. His eyes in her face.
“I’m not gonna off myself, okay. So just chill. I’m done playing the martyr. I’m done caring, this is my life, I’ve accepted it, why can’t you?” I stalk to the opposite end of the table and dump my bowl on it, not caring that most of the food winds up on the table instead.
“Because I love you, man.” Alex shakes his head with a look of sheer exasperation on it.
Digging into the dregs of my oatmeal, I snort. “Then stop. Loving me is a cancer. Haven’t you learned that by now?”
“Have you talked to anyone?”
Lifting a brow, I shovel a spoonful into my mouth. “Yeah, I talk to the heavy bag, and my training partner’s face.”
“I’m serious!” He slams his fist on the table. “I told myself the day you left, the day you went away, that if you ever came back I’d stick by your side. I’d do whatever it took to make you human again, whole again, and I meant it. I still do.”
Rolling my eyes, I swallow my tea. “Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. You can’t fix someone that doesn’t want to be fixed, Lili, learned that. She left.”
First time I’ve talked about her since that night, it was still hard to think about. I missed her every day, craved her touch like a junkie with his hit. But she isn’t coming back.
“Maybe take a page out of her book, better for everyone that way.”
“She called last night.”
The spoon hovers over my lips as I swallow hard. She called? Him? Her voice was in this house?
My lashes flutter.
“What did she say?” I ask, glad I sound calm.
Drumming his fingers on the table, his look is hard, cold. “She asked me about you. She still loves you, man.”
“She told you that?” I hate that my words sound so rushed and breathless, that hope stirs. Sitting the spoon down, I clamp my jaw together, forcing myself to breathe in and out.
“She doesn’t have to. I hear it all over her voice. She was crying man, a wreck.” He closes his eyes.
“What did you tell her, Alex?” My voice goes dangerously low as adrenaline buzzes hot and liquid through my brain.
“The truth,” he glowers, “that you’ve turned into a dick and I can barely stand you.”
I can’t help chuckling, he’s right, I keep hoping that maybe he’ll get a clue. But the sick bastard refuses to leave.
I wanted to ask more, everything, for him to give me a play by play, in graphic detail. What her voice sounded like, what her questions were. But she’d called him, not me.
I would have picked up, I would have talked, I would have… Squeezing my eyes shut, I get up and walk the bowl to the sink. “I’m going to the gym.”
“Fine, what the hell? You go do that, tell the next guy to take out your tongue this time. Or maybe,” he pops his knuckles, “you’d like to just throw down here, let me kick your ass for once. It’d be real satisfying.”
Flicking the peace sign at him, I walk to the door, grab my keys and bag and slam the door shut behind me.
I’m so ready to just run back to her, ready to beg her forgiveness to tell her anything she wants, and it makes me sick.
Because I know Alex is lying.
Know he’s baiting me, trying to get me to think there’s hope when there isn’t any. Lili had always been honest with me, if she’d really wanted me back, she’d have called me. She’d have told me.
So I go to the gym, and I drown her out. I fight until I can’t stand anymore, can’t think, can’t see her smiling face haunting my dreams.
Chapter 27
Liliana
It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m sitting in a bar. The Pink Lady, in the same booth I’d first met him, I’m watching Asia dance, swish her hips around and making all the men fall for her, but all I can do is blink and wonder.
Where is he?
I knew it was a long shot that he’d return to this bar.
Monique comes up to me, sliding into the seat beside me. Her brown eyes are quick to take in my appearance.
“You look like hell.”
I snort. “I feel like hell.”
“You want another drink?” She touches my empty glass of scotch.
I’d needed something hard tonight. I just hadn’t wanted to think too much. Hadn’t wanted to remember too clearly what I’d seen, the things I’d done. But I’d needed him so bad, needed to feel his presence and I’d hoped when I walked inside, it would all come back.
But it hadn’t.
Because nothing was the same anymore. This was just a place, full of people I don’t know, with a woman dancing on the stage and it’s all wrong. I could have called Alex, found out where he was going, made sure to follow, keep my distance. Anything to just catch a glimpse, but it’d seemed beyond pathetic and I was no stalker.
Besides, I was the one that’d walked away, not him.
“No,” I shake my head and point with the knife in my hand at the half eaten strip steak on my plate, “I’m good.”
“You sure? Because, girl, you look hella bad.” Her lips purse into a straight line, hugging me, she wiggles out of the booth. “You just let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“Yeah.” I don’t look back at her.
***
Ryan
“No, you’re not coming with me.” I shake my head at Alex who’s glowering behind me in the mirror. “I told you, I’m going out by myself tonight. You’re right, Alex, I’m done dragging everybody into my shit hole. I’m dealing with this on my own terms, you got it?”
Yanking his ball cap off his head, he snarls, exposing his teeth. “You can’t do this, man. You can’t just go. It’s not good, not right--”
I knew he was scared. Knew he was haunted by so many things himself, for years I’d believed I was the only one in this, but I knew that wasn’t the truth anymore. Alex might not bear the psychical scars, but the mental ones… they’re all over him.”
I grab his shoulder and look into his eyes. “I’m coming home tonight.”
His nostrils flare, steel gray eyes slice into mine. “Don’t lie to me.”
Ever
ything crashes down on me, all my bullshit, all of it. What I’d put him through for the last four years. I’ve never been anything but a dick with him, demanding everything and giving nothing in return.
“I’m sorry, Alex. For everything.”
His eyes grow huge. “Ah, fuck. No, hell no, you’re not going out by yourself, that’s the same shit people say right before they kill themselves, they apologize and they…”
Rolling my eyes, I shake him hard. “I’m sorry, okay. I am. And I love you too. There, I said it, first time in my life I’ve ever told a man that, but I’m doing this on my own tonight and you’re not stopping me.”
Clenching his fists, his entire frame shakes. “I hate you, you know that. You’ve been a thorn in my side since day one. It’s Valentine’s Day, you think I don’t know what happens? I’ve lived through three of them, I can’t… won’t just let you walk out that door.”
“You don’t have a choice.” I glare and then turn.
What I do tonight, he can’t see.
No one can, because tonight it’s going to be raw, and it’s going to be my last one. I’m tired of this, living with the pent up dread curling big, fat greasy fingers in my gut, telling me I’m worthless, nothing. He wanted me to fight, then I’d try.
But I’m not bringing anyone else into this. Not anymore.
Because the only one who can fight this battle is me. I know that now, Lily taught me that. Her leaving, it killed me, but she was right. If she’d taken me back then, nothing would have changed. My promises about telling her everything after we got married, just more lies. She was right not to take me back.
Grabbing my keys and wallet I walk to the front door. Ryan trails me like a little lost puppy.
“Think about Lili, man.”
I pause in the doorway, taking a deep breath. “I am thinking about her,” I finally admit, refusing to turn back, to even look at him, to acknowledge that I’d not cringed when he’d spoken her name.
Getting into the car, I head to a bar. Any bar. Doesn’t matter. Stopping at the first hole in the wall shit place I find, I get out and jog inside, tapping my finger on the bar top the moment I get there.
The bartender looks at me and the memories, they’re rushing in, threatening to swallow me-- to take me and drag me down. “Whatever’s on tap,” I murmur.
He comes back a moment later with a dark stout. Paying, I turn to find a seat. My fingers encircle the cold glass, watching as the sweat slides down its face, as the foam froths at the top, my throat working so hard, ready for the first cool taste, waiting for the numbness that follows soon after.
“Hey sexy,” a woman drops into the seat next to me. Blonde with huge tits, she smiles up at me. Her eyes are blue as the sky, her nose delicate and her lips a bloody ruby red. Dressed in a short black dress and fuck me heels, she looks wrong in this place. Like she’s trying too hard to fit in.
This bar is a biker hangout, with old, rusted out license plates stapled to plywood walls and scribbled over with graffiti.
She exudes strength, fire… but beneath that, there’s something fragile. Something that reminds me of Lily.
I swallow.
Her fingers walk up my bicep, and she squeezes it hard, nail dragging along the length of muscle. “Buy me a drink?” She licks her lips and her intentions are obvious.
This is easy. No thoughts, no hearts, no nothing, just sex and a quick release and I could do this and for a while forget about flowers, about the button nose and the tiny cleft jaw, the three freckles spanning her nose.
“What are you doing here?” I finally ask.
She jerks as if taken aback by my question, the forced sultriness vanishes, replaced by a deadly intensity of hard, calculating truth. Ugly, unvarnished, stripped down and naked, shivering in the cold winter rain… something broken, not quite right… she has no hope left.
She’s a stranger to me, but in that second I read the same harsh truths in her that live inside of me.
“What?” she asks, voice sharp.
Turning in my seat with my hand still gripping my glass, I ask again. “What are you doing here?”
Fidgeting, she crosses her legs, turns aside, and gives me a completely closed off posture. “Look, if you don’t want what I’m offering, whatever.”
Curling her lip, she hops off, moving down the line, to another guy, another face and in that instant I know an epiphany’s happening.
She is me.
I am her.
Two sides of the exact same coin, we live in the world, but we aren’t a part of it. Closing ourselves off, offering nothing but crumbs and expecting everyone to just clap and sing our praises for doing it.
Pushing away from the bar, I leave my glass and race back to the car.
I’m lost, floating in the middle of a sea, hanging on to nothing, just drifting. Closing my eyes, heart pounding, I don’t know what to do.
I know what I want, what I need, but I don’t know if I’m strong enough for this. Starting the car, I go to find out just what I’m made of.
Thirty minutes later, I’m parked, staring at the huge gray stone façade of a cathedral. Large wooden doors stare back at me, daring me to take that step closer, to walk up to it, open it and trust.
Jaw working, I squeeze the wheel, pulse thumping so damn hard it hurts.
I’m probably the only one here. I don’t know what I’m even doing.
I don’t go to church, hardly ever pray, not really sure I even believe in a God, but here I am, because this is where everyone says the answers are.
I touch the keys, talking myself out of it, ready to turn the ignition, pull out and head back to that bar, to the seat I’d vacated and drown out the voices warring inside me.
But I grab the door and I get out, the night is chilly, a soft sleet is starting to drift silently around me. I’m not doing this for Alex or even for Lili. This is for me.
Throwing the door wide, I walk in.
The interior is massive and ornate.
Golden, candelabras stand guard on either side of the door. A dozen lit candles flicker within each one. Wooden pews sit empty, down the long aisle several rows of votive candles are lit, their light dancing mysteriously along the cool gray stone and stain glass window.
For a second, I don’t think I’ll be able to move. My feet feel locked in place. A dark shadow pulls away from the wall, startled wide eyes behind a thick pair of wire framed glasses gaze at me.
“My son?” he says, closing the book in his hand with a sharp snap. “May I help you?”
Licking my lips, I’m still not sure I should even be here. What do I say? Where do I start?
He glides closer causing his black robes to swish around his ankles. “Are you okay?”
I must look crazy, standing with my arms plastered to the door, legs braced and tensed, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
How do you fight?
Alex always tells me, stand up and fight. Face the demons. How do you do it? I don’t know.
Approaching warily, the man doesn’t stop until he’s standing inches from me. “It’s all right,” he says, “my name is Father Michaelson. What’s your name son?”
His voice is steady, quiet and soothing. As if he were used to my kind, those down and out rejects lost in the blackness and darkness, unsure of how to ever come out.
Somehow I find my voice. “Ryan.”
His smile is strong. Nodding, he gestures for me to come. “Would you like to talk?”
Not quite so panicked, I ease slowly off the door and shake my head. “I’m not sure.”
“Then why are you here?” He kneels on a pew.
My words have returned full circle. The blonde, she’d left, walked away and never answered… I remembered I didn’t want to be her anymore. I wanted to be me. Free of the shackles.
Squeezing my fingers together, I force myself to fight. Because some battles aren’t fought with fists, some are fought by just standing up and facing it, facing the truth,
learning that what others have done to you, they don’t have to make you who are you. Only you can do that, you have the power to say enough and walk away, truly walk away.
