“That’s terrible.”
“Aye.” I bite my lip. “And his little brother, who should have been right there beside him, well every time I’d run and hide under my bed until it was over. I’d just stay there, huddled and shaking, until I’d hear the door to the room we shared scrape open and he staggered in and collapse on the bed. I’d scramble out from under and help to clean him up. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad. Sometimes it was bad. And every time, I’d say, ‘Oh, Aiden. Oh, Aiden I’m sorry. Next time I’ll be there. I’ll hit him with my cricket bat.’”
She lays her head on my shoulder, and I can feel her body shaking against mine. “Oh, Sean, you were just a baby.”
“So was he. And the hell of it was, while I’m sitting there on the bed with him, wiping the blood off his face, he’d just be grinnin’ like a mad fool. And I’d say, ‘What the hell are you so happy about, you bastard?’ And every time—every time, mind you, even the time he busted up his hand—he’d reach up and ruffle my hair and say, ‘He didn’t get you, you wee fucker. I did my job.’”
Something comes loose inside me then, and my vision goes blurry. I cough out a great, wracking sob that almost folds me in two at the waist. The wetness flowing down my face feels too hot to be tears. It has to be blood I’m crying. This goes on for a minute, and Theresa wraps her arms around me, pulls herself close in. The heat and softness of her are something I can fall into, a safe place to go to pieces.
“They’d play the WFA fights at the pub down the street, and Aiden would drag me down there every time. They weren’t live—the pub couldn’t afford the live fights—and Aiden always knew who won because he’d read it in the papers, but it didn’t matter. He had to see it. And because he wanted to, I wanted to. We were too young to be in the pub, of course, but the Old Bradshaw, the owner, knew how things were for us, and he’d let us stand in the kitchen and watch from there as long as we stayed out of the way.
“It was all Aiden wanted out of life. To be a fighter.”
“And he was.” It was such a simple thing she said, but in hearing it I knew she understood me. At least a little.
“Aye, he was. Much more than I. Nobody braver ever lived.”
“What happened to him?”
There he is, staring down at me from the ceiling. His hand stretched out. Come on, Sean, ye have to see this!
“He died.”
I would have followed you anywhere, but you had to follow me, didn’t you?
Theresa kisses my cheek, trails her hand across my neck.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
But I want to. The story’s started, and now it’s developed so much momentum I don’t know if I could stop it if I tried. “We were on holiday. Mam didn’t have much money, but she saved it all up for three years just to take us somewhere to do something new, to see a place we’d never seen before. Wasn’t much. A cheap hotel in a cheap town. But they had a strand—that’s a beach, to you Yanks—and that was better than a trip to Disneyland to Aiden and me. Sand and cliffs and seashells. I’d never seen the ocean. The first time we got out on the strand I just stood there, staring out at it, looking for the end of it. Never found it. It’s mystified me ever since, the sea. Vast and beautiful and unforgiving. It’s like God, that huge water. It gives life, and it takes it.
“Aiden went on a quest for shells. I had my fill of shells early. I said, ‘They’re all the same, Aiden. Do you think you’re going to find different ones?’ And he turned the one in his hand this way and that, watching colors shift. He grinned at me. ‘Get on, then, if you don’t like them. You don’t have to be in my back pocket the entire holiday, do you?’ And we laughed at that. I’m glad we did. He slapped me on the shoulder and turned around and jogged off down the beach, looking for those damn shells.”
“What did you do?”
I killed my brother; that’s what I did. “I went off exploring. Poking around in tide pools. Wandering on those tiny dunes and wondering how the hell sand could get piled into hills like that. Heading north along the strand, there was a spit of rocks that jutted out into the water. It was a long way, must have been almost a quarter of a mile. ‘Now that,’ thought I, ‘is a fine place to go exploring.’” I feel myself smile and relax for a bit. “It was, too. Just a fine jumble of stone, like a giant had gathered them all up and strewn them there. They were wet and slimy and I climbed them and I would almost slip off and fall.” I laugh. “If I’d fallen I would have surely broken my leg. I knew it then, too, and it made the journey out much more meaningful. I loved it. Loved the danger. Climbing on those rocks, I felt like I could do anything. I could run faster than anyone. Probably fly. I could fight alongside Aiden when Mam’s boyfriends got bad. I’d never felt that way before. Free.” And I never will again.
“There was an end to them, those rocks. One was the very tip, jutting out toward the west. I came on it almost at a dead run, leaping over gaps and skidding over seaweed that was lumped on the stone. I nearly went right into the Atlantic. That would have been a terrible thing, because I couldn’t swim. I would have just floated away, food for fish.
“ It must have been up a good eight feet from the water, but the waves beat like hell on the base of that rock and sprayed up and soaked me. It felt good. So I sat down there for a while and looked out over the ocean. The sun was getting red down toward the horizon and I’d never seen something so fine. Didn’t know it at the time, but I was looking toward here, toward the US. I suppose that was a sign, but you never know those things unless you’re looking back.”
“And here you are,” she says, her fingers twining around mine.
“Aye. Funny thing about that rock,” I go on. “After I sat on it a while, letting the spray wash over me, I looked down at the ocean again and it looked much closer than it had before. Where I was sure it had been eight feet below me when I got out to it, now it was, maybe, five. I had forgotten, you see, about tides. It wasn’t something I’d had any experience with, and I just didn’t think about it.”
Her fingers tighten.
“I look back the way I came and I see that the water has come up. That now some of them—a good stretch of almost a hundred yards—was almost covered up. Well that sent me into a panic, I can tell you. I stood up and started back toward shore. To my credit I didn’t take that return trip at a dead run. The light was getting bad and I had to pick my way very carefully over those stones or I knew I was a goner for sure. Of course, by the time I got back to the low rocks they were covered by the waves. I tried stepping onto one, but the water grabbed at me and tried to pull my feet out from under me. So I got up a little higher and tried to think what to do.
“Then, over the waves, I hear a sound coming from south, down the strand. It’s Aiden, calling my name. ‘Sean,’ he calls. ‘Sean, where are you, ya wee fucker?’ So I stand on my rock and I holler to him. Really, I’m screaming my lungs out because I’m terrified I’m going to die out here on these fucking rocks. Aiden doesn’t see me right away, but as he gets closer he hears me yelling, and then right after that he turns and sees me, jumping up and down on this slippery rock, waving my arms like hell, stranded.
“Any other kid would have run to get help. Not my Aiden. He just starts running. ‘Hold on, Sean, I’ll get you.’ Because he was a strong swimmer, my brother, and not afraid of fuck-all. He dashes out onto the rocks, much faster than I had, more sure. Like a damn mountain goat, that boy. He just skips along those rocks like they’re a sidewalk. And when he gets to the end, sees he has a good hundred yards of water between me and him, he just plunges right in. Steps off and starts swimming.
“He almost makes it, too. He’s maybe ten strokes from my little island, arms and legs going like mad. And a wave comes up. Not a big one, just a few feet high, with a curly crest atop it. And it picks him up and knocks him against one of those submerged rocks.”
“Oh, Sean.” Her voice, soft, tells me that she is still here, that I am still safe.
“They talk about your he
art leaping into your throat, but not many people actually know how that feels. It feels like you have a fist,” and I hold up my knobby hand, bunched tight and white at the knuckles, “jammed down inside your throat. And it’s got hold of your heart, this fist, and it’s trying like hell to rip it right out of your chest. That’s how I felt when Aiden bounced onto that rock. One moment he was all crazed motion, and the next…limp. ‘Aiden!’ I scream. ‘Aiden!’ But he doesn’t move. Floats in the water. His face is down. And the water is moving him, see. It’s pulling him out. I crawl back down my rock because he’s coming closer to my island and I think, ‘Maybe I can get him.’ But the closer I get to the edge, the more I can see the water churning and it looks so, so deep. It’s night now, and the water is black. The tide is moving him so I could reach him if I crawled down another yard further. But I don’t, because I’m afraid. And he passes me, gets just out of reach. And that’s when he comes to, right there in the water. Lifts his head up and looks right at me. He tries to kick, but he’s weak, and so he holds out a hand to me. ‘Help me.’ Aiden never asked anybody for help. Just gave it out. And then he asks me for help and it’s too late. The sea already has him, and he’s moving away from my rock. ‘Aiden, I can’t get you.’ I do scramble down, then, to the water, and I hold out my hand to him. I touch his fingers. And then, of course, he’s gone. Pulled right out of sight.
“I got up and I ran out along the rocks looking for him, but I never caught sight of him. Don’t know if he got pulled under or just out. I screamed myself hoarse. Out of hope, out of grief, shame. But in the end I just crawled up to a high place on the rocks and waited. The tide almost made it to me. I stayed soaked the entire night. Nobody came looking. So I just sat on that rock, knowing that if I’d just taken that step down to the water, if I’d just been braver, I could have pulled Aiden to safety. But I didn’t.
“I killed him as much as did the sea.”
Theresa doesn’t say anything here, just pulls herself tight against me.
“Next morning the water was down. I got back to the strand and made my way back to the hotel. Mam was still asleep, and so was the guy in bed with her. The place smelled like gin.
“They found Aiden two days later, five miles away, washed up. And I never told anybody what really happened.”
“You’ve kept all this inside. For this long.” Her voice is filled with something like awe.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever admitted to that I was a coward.”
Chapter 6
Theresa
There is a flash of light through the curtains, and a rumble of thunder vibrates my chest. Or maybe that’s just my heart, caught up in a momentary sympathy with Sean’s, rumbling with an old grief that isn’t rightfully mine, but that he’s given to me nonetheless.
After he was talked out we made love again.
Made love. It seems to me a strange expression to describe the co-mingling of passions and bodies, thoughts and sounds and movement. The mutual strain toward a single, blinding goal.
Then again, maybe it’s the perfect way to say that.
It was gentler this time, less urgent. Sean’s body over mine, beneath mine, within mine, was no less powerful or insistent. But he seemed more contemplative and connected. His eyes never left mine. When I came I cried out his name and held him tightly as he finished. This time, after absorbing the catharsis of his story, it was I who wept while he held me and the first murmurings of thunder rolled off in the distance.
Now, he sleeps and I stare at the ceiling.
And realize I am not a true journalist. I guess I never have been. For me, it’s always been about exposing the bad actions of morally questionable people. It’s never been “just the facts,” because all the facts have been tinged with my own judgment.
Now, I have been handed the story of a lifetime. The true uncovering of the past and motivations of the world’s most cut-off, enigmatic fighter. It had everything: early conflict, tragedy, grief, triumph. Every sports fan in the world—hell, every fan of stories and victories and people in the world—would fall all over themselves to hear the true origin story of the great Sean Kelly.
My career would be made. With a story like this, I could write my own check anywhere. I could bid a not-so-fond farewell to SNM and Bill Thompson and B.O.-laden locker rooms. The career I have worked so long for now just stands at the end of a few thousand typed words.
But I’m not going to write this story. Before he fell asleep, Sean propped himself up on an elbow. “I told you I’ve never shared this with anyone before.” His hand stroked up my thigh.
I nodded. “Yes.”
His brow furrowed over the bridge of his nose. I couldn’t tell if it was in confusion, or just heavy thought. “I’m not sure, even, why I told you.” He cracked half a smile. “Maybe it just needed to come out.”
“It was the booze,” I said.
His smile widened. “Definitely the booze.” Then his face became serious. “I’m not ready to tell this story to the whole world.”
I had expected it, but I can’t say I didn’t feel the slightest drop of disappointment in my belly. “My lips are sealed, Mr. Kelly.”
He studied my face for a moment, as if looking for some sign that I was lying to him. Apparently satisfied, he whispered, “Thank you.”
This is how I know I’m not a journalist. Because a real journalist tells the story. A real journalist would do some basic research on the internet to verify the facts Sean told me, and then give the world what it wants, because it’s the story that matters, the truth, not the person.
But not to me. To me, the person always matters. For good or for ill.
In the euphoria of afterglow, I feel a sudden desire for us to have a connection, however tenuous, that extends beyond this room. I get out of bed, quietly so as not to wake him, and find his pants wadded up on the floor. His phone is in the front pocket, and I take it out. Not snooping. Just sending a message. I open it (What kind of famous person doesn’t have a password to access their phone? One who doesn’t give a fuck.), type in my own number, and text myself. “This is me.” My phone buzzes on the nightstand. Sean groans and rolls over. I reply, using my phone, “And this is me. Now our phones know each other, too.” I smile to myself at how lame, how utterly high school, the sentiment is. Press send. His phone, predictably, is silent.
Funny thing: if I’d been handed this information sixteen hours ago, just after the fight with Hendon and while I still hated the image I kept in my mind of Sean Kelly, I wouldn’t have hesitated. I would have sung while writing this story. I would have gotten up and danced when I was finished. I would have showed Bill Thompson just enough of it to know how good it was, made him kiss my shoe for the honor of continuing to employ me, and then quit SNM anyway and sold the story to the highest bidder.
And the bidding would have been very, very high.
***
The next morning, he fucks everything up.
I wake up groggy, whiskey and beer sour in my mouth. My stomach is queasy. But in general, I am relaxed and content. The night that I spent in bed with Sean Kelly was…whew. It was something to languor in for a while.
Apparently, he doesn’t feel the same way.
When I crack open my eyes, steam from the shower has fogged over the mirror in the bedroom. Opening my eyes wider, I see him at the side of the bed, tugging on his jeans.
“You seem in a hurry.” My voice comes out husky and low.
He doesn’t look at me. “Aye, you know. I’m a busy sort of guy.”
“I thought maybe we could go another round.” Actually, I hadn’t thought anything of the sort, but now that I see he intends such an abrupt departure some part of me wants to toss out the line to see if he could be enticed to stay a bit longer.
Sean looks up at me, and I can see something in his face. Panic? Shame?
“I would if I could. But I have…meetings.”
I collapse onto my back. “Ah. Meetings. I know how that goes.�
�� Bullshit. “C’est la vis, oui?”
He doesn’t reply. The bed dips when he sits to tug on his shoes, and then lifts again. He looms into my vision, tousled hair and big shoulders. “Theresa, I…”
I lock eyes with him. Run a finger down the side of one big hand. He closes his eyes, clearly taking in the sensation. I want him to know that he’s safe. That his story is safe.
But he doesn’t know that.
He opens his eyes again. “What I said last night…”
“I won’t print it, Sean.”
He looks worried. “It would mean…”
Now I take his hand, hold it in both of mine. “I won’t print it.”
His face loses some of its tension, almost as if he is relaxing into the idea of trusting me. But then he closes down, his face hardening, his eyes assuming that slate gray cast they take on when he’s staring down another fighter. A wall has slammed down.
“Aye,” he says flatly, taking his hand back
And then he turns and stalks from my room, leaving me to wonder just what the hell has happened to me in the last twenty-four hours.
Chapter 7
Sean
My heart is pounding in my chest. My feet are heavy in the carpeted hallway, and I find myself nearly running to the elevator. Even as the door closes to Theresa’s room I want to turn back, to tell her I didn’t mean what I said, or the way I said it. To just crawl back in bed with her and hide from my own fear. Part of me wants her to open the door, to say, “Sean, come back.”
But she doesn’t, and I punch the elevator button, then I punch it again when it doesn’t show up right away. There is a mirror to the side of the elevator doors, and in it my face is drawn and red.
Fearless: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 4
