Coming Back Down
COMING BACK DOWN
CAM
The second I stepped into my house, I threw my keys on the counter and stripped out of my dress clothes, throwing on a T-shirt and shorts. Images from the day swirled in my head. The wedding, seeing my father, watching Roman’s world get shredded in front of all those people, Britt losing her fucking mind.
Wait, that was the good part.
The spiral of those images in my brain took me back to my wedding day. All the feelings I had successfully stuffed down into the recesses of my body bubbled up in me like white-hot molten lava.
And then I’d left Rachel standing in Mom’s driveway after losing it. I buried my head in my hands. I couldn’t bear knowing that she lost her job as a result of attending Roman’s wedding with me. Whether she said it was her choice or not, if I had never insisted she go as my plus one, she wouldn’t have been put in the position to choose between me and her family business. I should never have agreed to our pact and dragged her into this mess. I pulled out my phone, typing, then deleting as I tried to craft my apology. My fingers were still grazing over the keys when my doorbell rang.
My vision blurred for a second. If it was Rachel, I was ready to spend the rest of the night explaining and apologizing. The door swung wide when I opened it, and I blinked at the figure standing there.
“Hey, Cam,” Roman said.
Every muscle in my body tensed. “Roman.”
He stood on the porch, kicking at nothing with his hands in his pockets, and in that moment, he looked like he did when he was fifteen years old and we’d just had a fight.
I wanted to go back there. Go back to when we were kids looking for scorpions in the desert with a black light. Go back to us playing football together. Go back to before Britt Matthews ruined both our lives. At the same time, I wanted to hate him, I wanted to punch him in the face and pummel him to the ground for what he did to me, to my life.
But he was still my brother.
He had been my best friend.
And at the moment, that’s all I could see.
He grunted when I threw myself at him. I squeezed him and he squeezed me back as he patted me on the back. “If I spend the rest of my life saying I’m sorry, it’s not going to be enough,” he said. “If you can ever find a way to forgive me?—”
I released him. “Come in, let’s have a beer and we’ll start there.”
Silence drifted between us. Roman plopped down in one of my bar chairs. I slid him a beer after popping the top. We both took long pulls in unison. After rubbing his red eyes, he finally spoke. “So do you want to hear what I have to say now, or would you like to deck me in the throat first?”
I pursed my lips. “Beating the shit out of you does sound tempting.”
“I deserve it. Just try not to mess me up too much so I can still operate on people.”
“What if I break both your legs? Can you still work from a wheelchair?”
“I think so.”
We both managed to smile.
“Before I execute your beating of a lifetime, why don’t we talk first, and you tell me what really happened?”
Roman nodded and ran a hand through his mop of hair. “How much beer do you have?”
“Just bought a case.”
“That’s probably not enough, but it’s a good start.”
We moved to the couch and spent the next two hours talking. Well, Roman mostly spoke while I listened and finally got the full story of how Britt slowly wormed her way into Roman’s head. She showed up in Roman’s ER with bruises, claiming I’d given them to her.
“Man, I know you’re trying to make this right, but how could you possibly think I would do that?” I said, after Roman paused. “I think that’s what hurts me the most. You should have come to me.”
Roman sipped his beer, looking past me for a second. He shook his head slowly. “Britt had this way of making me believe things. She begged me not to tell you and she insisted there would be repercussions if I did.”
As angered as I was by this, I understood that’s how Britt operated. She had done it to me. She said the last guy she was with had abused her, and she played on the hero complex I had. Britt was always up for a challenge. I guess the biggest challenge of all was to fracture the relationship between Roman and me.
“After walking on the beach with Rachel at Jill’s wedding, I started doing some research and spoke to some colleagues about Britt and her behavior. I think I’ve narrowed it down to either a form of narcissistic or histrionic personality disorder.”
Roman continued unburdening himself and we compared notes about the many insane things Britt would do. Each time we felt crazy, each time we were scared to go home to her because we weren’t sure what to expect, and each time we avoided confrontation to keep her calm so we could get through the night.
And yet neither of us had been brave enough to leave.
We talked for hours and drank ourselves into a stupor and then, of course, decided to wrestle out our frustrations in my living room, where I quickly got the upper hand. During the melee, my elbow accidentally made contact with his face, gifting him a bloody nose. I hadn’t done it on purpose, and even though we laughed it off, it did feel somewhat cathartic to punch him in the face.
Roman crashed on my couch, and I finally turned the lights off at 2 a.m. In the morning, I was first to wake, and with my head pounding, I trudged to the kitchen to eat a bottle of Tylenol. My older brother by two years was snoring on my couch with his leg hanging off. All the pain, hurt, and anger I felt toward him was still there, simmering under the surface, but last night helped to ease some of those feelings. We had a long road ahead, but this was the first step on the way back to being brothers and friends.
My thoughts then drifted to Rachel. She was the reason this first step had happened. A smart man would have called her, driven to her house, and thrown himself at her, begging her to forgive him for having a meltdown and leaving her at his mom’s.
But, once again, I am not a smart man.
I’m a dumbass.
A thud sounded in the living room, followed by Roman’s howl.
“Oh man. Oh, I’m so hungover,” he said, coming up onto his hands and knees. “Why did I drink so much?”
I bent down as he flipped over on the floor and leaned up against the couch. “Good morning.” I handed him a cup of coffee. “Still like it black?”
“Yeah, thanks.” He took a sip and rubbed his head. “And thanks for last night. Well, except for the elbow to the nose.”
I plopped down in a chair across from him. “You deserved it.”
“Can’t argue with you there.”
“Tell me you aren’t trying to save lives today?” I asked.
“Ahh, no. Off today. Going to see if I can get a police escort to get some stuff out of my house.”
Roman snatched his phone off the coffee table, scrolled through with wide eyes, and then set it back, face down.
“How many times has she texted you?” I asked.
“Sixty-eight times. Nineteen calls. Probably best if I throw my phone away.”
“Where are you going to stay now?”
“Looks like I’m a thirty-six-year-old man who’s going to move into his mother’s basement.”
“That’s probably the safest place,” I offered. “Britt won’t mess with Mom.”
“I still can’t believe I missed Mom leveling her out.”
I laughed and took a sip of coffee. “And how do you feel today?”
Roman drew in a long breath, sucking in his chest, and then blew it out. “I feel like I’ve just woken up from a nightmare. It’s like a weight has been lifted. Anyway, what are you going to do?”
“Same old?—”
“No,” Roman insisted. “I meant with Rachel.”
I swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
“You know … because you’re in love with her?”
“I’m … she… it’s not?—”
“Cut the crap, Cam. You were gushing about her last night. Never seen you like that. You wouldn’t stop talking about her. Frankly, I’m not sure why you’re sitting here with your scumbag brother and not running after Rachel.”
“It’s not a good time for me right now.”
“A woman like that is not going to wait around for you forever. She is one in a million, and she must love you to have risked so much yesterday. It was all for you, Cam. All of it.”
“That’s what scares me. I’m not sure I’m worth it.”
“I’m talking about your heart,” Roman said, pulling himself up from the floor. “You better call her and explain yourself. Either surrender fully or let her go.”
I wanted to yell at Roman and tell him that he was the last person that should be giving relationship advice, but he was right. I was about to get up for more coffee when my doorbell rang again.
Roman glanced at me. “What if it’s … Britt?”
“Relax. We’re two grown men, what can she do to us?”
“A lot. There’s a lot she can do to us,” Roman said, coming to stand behind my kitchen counter.