Levi #5
It was a cooler day, though, and the sun hadn’t peeked out much, so it was quiet, and I could only see one person on the lower cliffs.
My feet, however, carried me up a steep slope to one of the tallest cliffs in the area.
It had always been my favorite. There were fewer people, and I enjoyed the harsh weather whenever I needed to sit and think about my life.
Considering how much my life had changed, along with the recent unwelcome addition of seeing the one person I’d tried to avoid, perhaps a little reflection was in order.
After fifteen minutes of steady climbing, I found a familiar rock and sat down with a smile.
There were a lot of things about the city that had changed, but some things didn’t change.
Not that someone couldn’t have come along and ruined this cliff or moved the rock, but it was nice to see no one had.
The wind wasn’t cold enough to bite into my skin, but there was enough to make me draw my jacket closer.
“What am I going to do with myself?” I wondered aloud, the sound muffled by the wind.
It was a good question, and one I’d been asking myself off and on for years.
I had mostly accepted that this was the life I was going to have, and my feelings were irrelevant.
There were, of course, lingering regrets over my choice, but I didn’t dwell on them.
If there was anything I’d learned about regret, it was a lot like shame; if you weren’t quick, it would breed out of control and start filling all the spaces until there was little room for anything else.
The best thing you could do was to stomp on its head and grind it into the dirt before it could even think about breeding, then see what lessons you could pluck from the corpse.
But...regrets were inevitable, and even when you killed them before they spread, some were capable of crawling back out of the grave.
My life since I had left Cresson Point had been a game of mental whack-a-mole with those resurrecting regrets.
If I had known back then what I knew now, I would never have left Cresson Point, and I would have taken the window I didn’t realize at the time existed to get out of this life before I got in too deep.
Yet I hadn’t, and I was stuck with the consequences of my choices.
There was no getting out; I had made as much peace with that fact as I could.
Over the years, I had occasionally indulged in the ever-dangerous ‘what if’ game when I was alone, but it had been years.
Sitting around, considering what my life might have been like if I had made a different choice at seventeen was as tempting as it was damaging.
There was no going back, so giving the what-ifs too much energy was dangerous.
The problem with being back in Cresson Point was that it gave more life to those what-ifs, and to the regrets that followed hot on their heels.
Even being here, on this cliff, watching as seagulls rolled and tumbled through the air, was dangerous for my mental equilibrium.
It begged the question, just what had Augustine expected by sending me here?
It would have been one thing if he’d given me the job and expected me to operate out of Portland.
It would have been harder, but I would have been mentally stable.
Being here in Cresson Point was...unsettling.
It felt like trying to walk, but the room was slanted, making me think carefully about each step.
I couldn’t afford to be off balance, but how was I supposed to change that?
The only way to solve the problem would be to leave Cresson Point, to leave its memories and influences behind.
Perhaps I should have risked operating out of Portland instead, even if it would have made the job much harder.
It was my goal to operate in Cresson Point in the short term, with the hope of shifting to Portland, so I didn’t have to stay here much longer.
That was still up in the air, and I had no idea how long ‘short term’ would be.
Trying to move operations out of Cresson Point too quickly, when I was already establishing it as a new hub, came with a breathtaking amount of risk.
Setting up a new base, like I already had, was difficult enough, especially with the feds crawling all over the place.
To then shift it all back to Portland simply because it would make things emotionally easier, opened up the possibility of creating gaps in defenses, stretching something that was already thin into something so threadbare it was non-existent.
Typical.
I groaned. “Oh, what now?”
Instead of actually, you know, dealing with your problems, you shrug off what you can by telling yourself the past is the past and there’s nothing you can do about it.
“Which is the truth.”
Totally ignoring that you can learn from your screw-ups and do better. And for the rest? Just focus on how much you have to do, because then you don’t have to think about anything that might matter.
“My success is fairly important.”
Funny. You didn’t need to come to one of your old stomping grounds, an old thinking spot, in the first few weeks you were here. No, no, it’s only after you get a blast from your past that you suddenly feel like you have to come here? That’s just a coincidence...right?
“Everyone knows the world is a lot smaller than we’d like,” I grumbled. “I saw him, so what?”
Oh, Levi, I’ve always told you the most dangerous and destructive lies are the ones we tell ourselves.
Had she ever told me that, or was that something I’d come up with on my own and just...attributed to her after the fact? In truth, I couldn’t always remember if what she’d said came from actual memories or if I was just assuming that was something she’d say if she were still around.
Does it matter? You have company by the way.
My body stiffened, my hand stealing to the gun inside my coat before I realized my body was reacting to a threat my conscious mind hadn’t noticed.
I forced myself to relax even as I chided myself for getting lost in my thoughts so easily.
..again. It was stupid not to pay attention, even if this was once a place of safety and refuge for me.
It hadn’t become a problem for me yet, but other criminal groups operating in Cresson Point were displeased that The Family was taking a more active role in the city.
They might not have made any real moves beyond the occasional fight, but that didn’t mean they would pass up the chance to take me out if they figured I was vulnerable and could get away with it.
“Going to shoot me?” a voice, painfully and terrifyingly familiar, asked lightly.
I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and I sighed as I turned to face the cliff, briefly considering trying to leave but knowing there was no way I could get away cleanly this time.
He was, as he had always been, bigger and stronger than me.
My only guaranteed way to get away in one piece would be to use the gun and.
..well, we both knew I wasn’t going to, even using it as a threat was pointless.
Other tools at my disposal were useless too; my position in The Family, my personal power, money, everything was utterly useless in the face of my former best friend.
“If I killed you, you’d just find a way to come back and haunt me,” I grunted as I pulled my hand out of my jacket, leaning forward.
I refused to look at him. That was the only defense I had against his effect on me.
If I looked at him, everything I was, everything I had become would disappear in a heartbeat, and I would be a teenager all over again.
I didn’t want to be that scrawny, terrified, heartbroken kid, so I sat there, resolutely looking forward, and chose to watch two birds fight over something.
“Geez, someone’s gotten morbid over the years,” he said with a chuckle, and I fought to keep from closing my eyes in response to the sound.
His voice had deepened slightly since the last time I’d heard him, and his laughter had always seemed to rumble out of his chest like little earthquakes even back then, and now the quakes were that much deeper. “Just gonna jump right to killing me?”
“Shooting someone in the leg is a lot harder, despite what idiots who’ve never shot a gun at another person think,” I said with a shrug.
“You’re too close for me to get off a comfortable shot, and a single missed shot gives you time to take the gun from me.
Which you could, because you’re bigger, stronger, and we both know you’ve spent a lot more time learning how to fight. ”
“Kept up to date on me?” he wondered.
“Don’t read too much into it,” I said quickly. “You may not be involved in the most popular sport in this country, but it’s popular enough, and up until last year, you’ve been doing really well.”
“Mmm, I love how everyone keeps bringing up last year.”
“Are people supposed to pretend it didn’t happen? There’s probably parts of the past people would love to try to forget. But we don’t do that, do we? The cheaters don’t get forgiven because ‘that was last month,’ and murderers and rapists aren’t magically forgiven because it was last year.”
“Are we going to talk about my career and how people don’t want to think about the past, or what?”
“I’m fairly sure that not thinking about one’s past is rather relevant right now.”
“What, have a few things you’re trying to avoid?”
“A few.”
“And clearly one of those things is standing right next to you. Especially since you won’t even look at me.”