by Lola StVil
“And?” Lawson and Bot reply at the same time.
“I called; she still hasn’t gotten back to me. I don’t know…I’m trying,” I reply.
“Are you? Are you really?” Bot asks.
“Yeah, the nerd here is right. We’ve all seen how you can be when you want something. You are relentless,” Lawson says.
“Yeah, could it be that you aren’t giving it your all because you too are afraid? It’s okay, buddy. This is a safe space. Tell us, are you the one running, or is she?”
ARGH!
Next time, I’m gonna fly commercial.
***
“Call him!” Janet says as she throws a pillow at my head. I can’t blame her for being pushy. I have listened to the message Gage left me at least ten times. All I want to do is call him and tell him I’m sorry for running off like a petulant child. I want him to know that it was nothing he did or said that made me run away. But I don’t call him. I don’t because this isn’t a movie and I’m too broken for him to bother with.
“I told you it wouldn’t work—I’m just too broken.”
“No, you’re slightly damaged. But hey, damaged is the new sexy,” she lies as she pours me a drink.
“I’m sorry I ruined your night, Janet. I just marched in here and took over your plans.”
“It’s okay. I was supposed to have a date with some guy in the DA’s office—Don Waller,” she says, contorting her face with displeasure.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“The sex sucks.”
“Ouch, sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s my fault. I should have known it wouldn’t work. Don couldn’t find his way out of an Ikea parking lot, how the hell is he supposed to find my spot in the dark, after half a bottle of chardonnay?”
I laugh into the nearby throw pillow as Janet pops a strawberry in her mouth. The past three days have been hard, but Janet has been an angel, trying to make me laugh and convince me that things will work out.
“Poor Don,” I reply once I can breathe again.
“Poor Don? Poor me. Do you know how hard I have to work to get him to listen to me when we’re having sex? I try not to come right out and say, ‘Hey, wrong place.’ I adjust and shift accordingly, but he swears he knows the area better than I do.” She holds out her index finger and thumb, an inch apart. “I came this close to installing runway lights to help him find his way.”
“Then why do you keep seeing him?” I ask.
“He’s fucking brilliant in the courtroom. There’s something about the way he talks case law that makes me wet,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
“Janet!”
“Well, it’s true. Besides, it’s a short commute to his place.”
“That does sweeten the deal, I guess.” She goes to pour me another drink, and I stop her. I’ve had two, and that’s enough. I need to be clearheaded.
“What happened to the other guy—Mannford?” I ask.
“He made me work too hard,” she says, placing a flaky, honey-filled pastry on my plate. I nibble and smile as the bold, sweet flavor hits my mouth.
“What do you mean he made you work too hard?” I wonder.
“He has a small penis.”
“Janet, you left him for that?!”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest and arches a brow.
“Okay, how small are we talking?” I ask. “If a penis were a book, would his be a short story?”
She laughs. “More like a haiku.”
“Wow, sorry,” I reply.
“Well, actually I didn’t have an issue with that. I mean, there are other ways he could make up for it. But the part I hated—the part that was too much work—was him asking me to lie to him. We’d be doing it, and he’d ask, ‘Is this the biggest one you’ve ever seen? Is this the longest cock that’s ever been in you? Do you dream about this monster coming at you?’ And I’m thinking, ‘No. No, to all of those questions.’ I want to fuck, not get cross-examined.”
“Yeah, I can see how that could get old,” I confess.
“It’s worse than that. He wants me to be a cheerleader—Go, Mannford, go! Grow Mannford, grow! Two, four, six, eight, who has the longest stick, MANNFORD!!! I mean, it’s like come on, man; you have a small ‘thing.’ It’s okay. Now how do we get past it? How do we find a way to please us both? I’ll tell you what doesn’t help—Q&A during sex.”
“You are so terrible,” I scold, all the while laughing my ass off.
“Listen, you know what makes sex great—he’s got to go in there with one mission: pleasing you. And you go in with one mission: pleasing him. If that’s not the case, it’s bound to go wrong.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I reply as a flash of Gage kissing me pops into my head.
“I saw that!” Janet says, standing up and pointing like a kid. “You had a sex flash, and I want details!”
“It’s nothing.”
“You smiled so brightly you blew out my damn retinas. Talk.”
“It’s just…when Gage and I were kissing…he could sense the slightest hesitation. He was so tuned into my body.”
“Then why’d you run, honey?”
“You know why. I’m scared.”
“You have every right to be. But the only way you can get through it is to talk to him. Look, the guys I date are for fun. But when I’m ready to get serious, I hope to God to meet a guy who puts his lust aside just to look into my eyes and ask me if I’m okay. That’s what Gage did. You know he wanted to fuck you—badly. But he didn’t just want your body; he wanted all of you.”
“That’s just it—there is no ‘all’ of me. I’m something broken and dark. What if he can’t handle that part of me?”
“Well, honey, maybe he can’t. Maybe he’ll run away from it. But talk to him. Tell him who you really are and let him figure out if he wants to stay or go.”
“I know that’s what I have to do.”
“It’s been five days, why haven’t you done it yet?”
I polish off the last of my wine. “I don’t know how to handle the possibility that he could walk away,” I admit.
She downs her drink and says, “No, you don’t know how to handle the possibility that he’ll stay…”
I held up my end of the deal with Shelby, and I didn’t call her again. It’s been two days since I left that message, and well, maybe she’s done with all of this. Maybe I’m in this alone like I feared. I remind myself that guessing is torture and that the best thing to do is to wait and see how it plays out. The fact remains, if she wants to stay away, I can’t make her come back.
I’m glad work keeps me busy, although work itself is a new source of frustration. We have narrowed the field down to two senators and we are hoping to get information to help us figure out which of the two men we need to take down.
We spend time going through call logs, mountains of paperwork, and financial documents. Bot follows a trail of data that I can’t make sense of until he explains it to us. Lawson isn’t doing well; he’s hit a wall when it comes to patience. He’s ready to kill anything or anyone at this point.
“What the fuck is the damn holdup? You’re supposed to be the genius around here, why don’t we have the traitor yet? How much longer are you going to be dicking around here, nerd?!” Lawson says as he grabs Bot by his chest and lifts him a few inches off the ground. I rush over and try to talk some sense into Lawson, but it’s not working.
“No! I want this asshole to do his job,” Lawson shouts.
“I…I…sorry. It takes time to—”
Lawson cuts Bot off and starts to shake him.
Goddamn it!
I yank Lawson off of him and quickly place him in a choke hold. He struggles, but I can outwrestle him, and he knows it. I drag him off to one of the conference rooms just as the boss makes his way over to us.
“He’s good, boss. I got him. He’s fine,” I say. I drag Lawson into the room and hurl him down onto one of the chairs. “What the fuck is wrong wi
th you? Bot’s on our side, did you forget that?”
“Me! What about you? Did you forget that our partner was killed because of some fucking rat?”
“No! I didn’t. But that’s not going to help.”
“So tell me what will. Because so far nothing is working. And you just stand there being your natural calm and collected self. Never lose your cool, and never let it get to you. Well, fuck you. I’m a goddamn human being, and sometimes shit gets to me!” he says as he hurls the chair across the room.
“You think this shit is easy for me? You think I don’t want to nail this guy?” I shout.
“Then let’s go do it. Let’s just go get both of them. Why the fuck do we need to narrow things down to one person? Let’s go for both.”
“If we aim for the wrong guy, that’s it! We’re finished! You know that. Look, just try and calm down,” I reply as I try to reach out to him. He pushes me out of the way and storms out of the room. I can feel rage and irritation building deep inside me. It took all I had not to knock Lawson out, but I know he’s just trying to deal with losing his friend. Still, I’m on the fucking edge and it’s looking really bad right now.
I go to check on Bot. He says he’s okay, but I can tell he’s shaken by what just happened. His face still has not returned to its natural color. I can almost hear his heart beating from where I am standing. I’d like to calm him down and tell him things are okay, but I don’t know if I really believe that shit right now. It turns out I don’t need to find something to say because we’re interrupted by the boss, who informs us he’s sent Lawson home.
I go to object because it’s a bad idea to send a guy like that home when he’s so enraged. He’ll end up in a bar fight or something and make things worse. But before I can voice my thoughts, I get a call—from Wyatt.
“Yeah, what’s up… What? When? I’ll be right there,” I shout into the phone.
“Everything okay, Gage?” Bot asks.
“No. Nothing’s okay,” I bark as I make my way to my mother’s.
I walk into the house and make my way to the back of the mansion. My mother squats on the ground, frantically ripping all the plants and flowers out of the ground. My mother loves her garden. She started it with Rose, and ever since she got sick, my mom has made it her duty to care for it. She won’t let the gardener or anyone else touch it. But now she’s wrecking it as fast as she can.
Wyatt is trying to stop her, but anytime he touches her, she fights him off. So he backs off, fearing that she might actually hurt herself. She’s screaming that the flowers are useless “because Rose isn’t here to smell them anymore.” She’s moving with the fury of a hurricane and there’s no way to slow her down without touching her. I come into the garden beside her.
“Mom, it’s okay. You don’t have to do this. It’s okay.”
She looks up at me with large drops of tears rolling down her face. “It’s not okay. She’s gone. It’s never going to be okay. It’s never going to be okay again.” She sobs in Wyatt’s arms. My dad comes outside and sees what’s going on, and without saying a word, he takes his wife into his arms and walks her back inside.
“I gotta go,” I announce, fearing that I will blow up.
“Wait, you’re just gonna leave, right now?” Wyatt demands.
“I can’t do this right now.”
“She needs all of us.”
“She needs Rose! She needs her daughter, and I need my sister back. I don’t know how to do that. Please, tell me how to do that!” The rage I’ve been holding at bay hits the surface. No going back. Wyatt steps towards me. I step away.
“Gage,” he says softly. I shake my head. I can’t let all that grief in now. I’ll never survive if it takes over now. “No, man; I can’t…I gotta go. I will check on Mom later…just let me go.”
I fear he’s going to argue, but he doesn’t. He nods slowly and signals it’s okay for me to leave. I walk towards the car and take out my cell. I call her.
“Hey, it’s me…I…I need you.” I hang up the phone, rake my hands through my hair, and hurl my cell down to the ground. “FUUUUUCK!” There’s so much anger coursing through me, my hands shake.
God, please. Please give Rosy back to us…
Fuck the car, I call a cab and find a bar. I order whiskey, neat. And I drink. And drink. And drink. By the time I get a cab back home, I’m so fucking drunk I see things that can’t possibly be there…
***
The moment I got his message I made my way to him. His cell kept going to voicemail. Something was wrong. When I got to his place, I knocked but no one was home. So I waited and waited. I thought maybe he was hurt. And now as he stumbles out of the cab, I realize I was right; he is hurt.
I rush to help him out of the cab so he doesn’t fall on the sidewalk or the steps.
“You’re not here,” he says as he touches my face. “It’s my mind. My mind is broken. Shelby, you broke my mind.”
“Gage, I got you. Come on. Let’s get you inside.” I am able to get him to tell me where his keys are, and we enter the house.
I take him over to the sofa, and he laughs and says that he can’t fall for me because he’s already in love with someone else. “Her name is Shelby. She’s the best.”
“She’s lucky to have you,” I reply as I give him two pills for the headache he will soon wake up with and a bottle of water. I take off his shoes, put a pillow under his head, and place a blanket over him. He sleeps for the rest of the night and doesn’t make a sound.
It’s nearly noon when he opens his eyes. He looks around, unsure of where he is and how he got there.
“Hello, Agent Hunter,” I reply, smiling.
“Wonder…you’re here. You came.”
“Of course I came. You needed me.”
He glides his hand along the side of my face as if afraid I might not be real. He smiles.
“You’re here,” he says again.
“I am. And I hope you’re good with that because I don’t want to be away from you like that again.”
“You love me,” he says as he studies my eyes.
“What? Who said that?” I ask, taken aback.
“Your eyes said that.”
I’m about to argue, but he has me dead to rights.
“Yeah, my eyes are telling the truth. Can you give my lips some more time to say it?”
“No. Say it.”
“Alright. Gage Hunter…you don’t suck.”
He laughs. My heart leaps. I do love him. He knows.
“What happened?” I ask. “I’m thinking whiskey happened by the smell of your shirt.”
He tells me about the night before and how powerless he felt to stop his mom from hurting. I listen and hold his hand.
“It was so crazy watching her break down. It’s been a year, and it’s almost like it happened yesterday. And I’m the only one, the only one, Shelby, who hasn’t even cried. What kind of brother am I? Why haven’t I cried? Does that mean I’m dead inside?”
“No, sweetheart. It means you loved her more than even tears can convey. You take your time. Cry when you want to or don’t. She knows she was loved. Nothing will change that.”
“I missed you, baby,” he says as he places his head on my lap.
“I wanted to come sooner, but I was afraid you changed your mind and didn’t want us to be a thing anymore.”
“What? Never,” he says.
“Yeah, I’m starting to see that.”
He groans as it all comes back to him. He asks to use my cell to call his dad.
“Are you sure she’s okay…what? No, no, Dad. You don’t have to cancel your trip. You need this, okay? Go and have a good time. We will be there…We got this. Okay? Good. When Mom wakes up, let me know…Okay. And Dad, when you come back, there’s someone I want you to meet. Who? Well, someday, she’s going to be your daughter-in-law.”
It should have sent me running hearing him say that, but it doesn’t. Strange. I feel like this is where I belong. That doesn’t
mean I’m not scared of what will happen; I am. But I can’t think of another guy worth taking a risk on.
“I’m gonna get in the shower. Will you still be here when I get back?” he asks, only half teasing.
“Haha, yes I will be here.”
Someone’s cell starts ringing. It’s not mine, and according to Gage, his is trash.
“It’s my old cell. I forgot I had that thing.” he says as he races to get the phone in the kitchen drawer. He looks at the screen and grins.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Work stuff. We’ve been looking for someone and now we found him,” he says, relieved. “I got to go in today, babe. This can’t wait. I’m gonna get cleaned up and then head to work. But when I get back—”
“I will be here,” I vow.
“And are we going to actually talk?”
“Yeah, we will.”
“I don’t care what you have to tell me, it won’t change what’s going on between us,” he says as he kisses my forehead. He heads towards the bathroom and turns back. “Babe, can you hand me the phone?”
“Oh yeah, sure.”
“But don’t look at the—”
It’s too late. I have already seen the picture on the screen of his second phone.
“Shit, that’s confidential, babe. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have—Wonder, what is it?” he looks at me as I stand still, gripped by terror.
“Shelby, what’s wrong?”
“Why is there a picture of my husband on your phone?”
I never thought that I would be sitting inside a CIA safe house, but here I am. I keep expecting Jack Ryan to come in at any moment. I look outside the window where a group of agents are having a heated discussion. I know three of the five agents: Gage, Lawson, and Bot. I only met Bot about an hour ago, but I already like him.
When I first got here, he came with flowers. He handed them to me. I said thank you.
“No, Shelby, thank you—for seeing through our thick walls and for piercing our armor. It’s not always easy to love guys like Gage and me. Yeah…we’re a hard one. But we’ve got our reasons,” he responded.
