Chapter 7 #2
“Everything’s changed for you since we graduated,” she says.
She uses that tone like she knows what she wants to say, but she’s not sure if it’s a good idea.
I’m a little bit taken aback when she just goes for it.
“You’re crazy muscular, you’re all tattooed, you’re part of a biker club.
You were in the freaking military serving this country.
That’s all badass. Even back then, only the idiots and people who couldn’t get over being so jealous of you were the ones who couldn’t see that you were the kindest, smartest, funniest person ever.
You kept all the good stuff and added more good stuff.
Why wouldn’t you want to run into people? ”
She thinks I’m muscular? I mean, that’s just an observation, but I started working out and filling out years ago, but she never said a thing.
I caught her eyes scraping over me when I was perched on the tailgate, but I didn’t let myself get my hopes up.
She likes the tattoos? Fuck, my parents can’t stand the ink, and I only have a few on my arms. That’s nothing compared to most of the guys here.
“I meant I get why you feel that way.”
Her head snaps up. She’s obviously flustered. “Oh,” she breathes.
“You don’t have to go down the forgive and forget route,” I say between sips of coffee. “You don’t have to buy into the time heals all bullshit. Grandpa thought that was all bullshit, and I never heard anything he was wrong about so far.”
My grandpa wasn’t a big believer in fate or destiny.
He preferred to think that life was decided by a collection of our decisions, our actions, our words, and thoughts.
It made all of them so much more important.
The most important of all was how a person should treat another.
Grandpa had big ideas about that. Most people would probably say they don’t have a place in modern society, but they’d be wrong.
Grandpa thought that you should do the best you can, be kind, help when you can, and be as honest as possible.
Sometimes I wonder if he’d be proud of the man I became. He certainly was when he was alive.
I miss his company, his presence, and his advice more than anything in the world.
I wish I could have gone over to his house and stood out in his garden with him last night and told him everything.
He wouldn’t have told me what to do or how to feel.
He never did. He guided. Opened my eyes to things I couldn’t see. Provided perspective.
I could use some of that after spending an entire night asking myself if things would have been different, and if they had been, would we still be here or would we have turned into strangers who drove each other away?
Would we have got what we wanted out of life, or would we have been two lost souls butting up against each other?
Grandpa believed in timing. If something wasn’t right, no amount of pushing was going to change that.
Sometimes you just had to wait and be patient.
Maybe this was how it was all meant to be?
“I’m sure Hart’s different,” Esme murmurs. She’s finished her sandwich and is almost done with her coffee, all while I’ve been lost in my own head. “But I still don’t really want to go out there.”
“If you want to watch the fireworks, there’s more than one set of stairs in this place that lead up to the roof. It used to be an old flour factory, and they left some of the fire and maintenance stuff when the clubhouse was renovated.”
“I didn’t know it was an old factory. That explains a lot, actually.”
“It’s so strange that we never thought about the club growing up. They weren’t in our lives in a big way.”
“I mean, Satan’s Angels have been a thing for a long time, but if your parents weren’t in it or your grandparents, or someone from the family, I’m not sure why anyone would be thinking about it in a big way. It’s just like knowing the city has police or the fire department, or schools, or a bar.”
“Is it, though?”
She tips back her head and laughs. The sound bounces off the exposed ceiling beams and comes right back down at us. I love that I made her laugh. I used to take so much pride in that. The sound is just as pretty as I remember, and so is Esme when her eyes sparkle with true amusement.
I wish I could hold onto these couple seconds forever, but they’re fleeting. She stands, takes her dishes to the sink, and crosses her arms. “I think I’d like to go up on the roof.”
“Let me grab a blanket. We might get filthy up there otherwise. Meet you back here in five?”
Her smile is soft and almost shy “I’m not going anywhere.”
I take my dishes to the sink as well, then race off and grab a blanket from the storage room at the back of the building.
The place has a little bit of everything.
Blankets, tools, cleaning supplies, clothing, office shit, decorations…
It’s an entire room that was devoted to tucking away all the shit that no one really knew what to do with.
it’s tidy, with wire shelves that keep the space organized.
I race back to the kitchen. I immediately check my tablet, hyperaware that I left it unattended for a few moments. It might seem silly, but that’s generally more than I’ve ever left something under my watch in about as long as I can remember.
Esme follows me back down the hall. If she’s nervous, I can’t tell, even though I do steal glances in her direction every couple of seconds.
We exit out the back door and then climb the steel fire stairs up and up and up.
“Whoa,” Esme breathes when we finally crest the top and step over the roof’s ledge. It’s flat, and from up here, looks mostly industrial. Big metal boxes protrude here and there for the air conditioning and heating systems.
I pick a flat spot well away from the edge and spread the blanket out. It’s not all that big, so I scoot to the very edge so Esme doesn’t feel obligated to have to sit pressed right up against me. I wouldn’t mind, but as always, I’m very conscious about how she feels.
She takes the far side. I set the tablet and my two phones, screens on, between us. “Does this wreck the ambience?”
Esme glances down, then up at the dark sky.
“No,” she responds, a little breathless.
“I forgot what stars look like in Hart. In Seattle, most nights you can barely see them. The city is beautiful, but it’s a different kind of beauty.
It’s always moving. Maybe, the fact that it’s never quiet made me feel less lonely.
Maybe it made me feel like I could be less me there too. I could blend in.”
“I’m sorry, Esme. I never protected you properly when you were here.”
“What?” she yelps. Her mouth drops open.
Her eyes are shiny and wide with horror.
“No! It wasn’t your fault. None of it was.
You were the best friend I could ever have asked for.
I should have done it all different myself, but you’re for sure not to blame for any of that.
Maybe if I could have somehow just cared less.
Been less insecure. We basically had the same lack of parents, and not very many other friends.
We both had Reg. The difference was that you grew into such a confident, beautiful person. ”
Her words cut me in half. Everything that we had spills out of me, everything that I wished for, yearned for, thought about, all the things that never were… it all comes spilling out. “So did you.”
“Worst timing ever.” At least there’s a hint of humor in her retort.
She draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around herself.
She’s always doing that. I used to think it was for warmth or comfort, but now I wonder if she was always just trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible.
“I’m not kidding. I would never joke about something like that.”
“On the outside, maybe.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and tilts her face up to the sky.
The fireworks could start at any time. I half don’t want them to and half wish they would.
I don’t know how much longer I can sit here and keep everything I’m feeling from showing on my face.
The night is dark, but the clubhouse is well lit with lights all along the exterior and plenty of lighting in the compound and parking lot.
We’re surrounded by a golden haze. I’m not going to be able to hide a thing.
“You have everything inside of you that you need. I have faith in that.”
“You’ve always looked at me like you can see things that no one else does.”
Time seems to stop. We’re alone up here, suspended like we’re half in the sky and half off the ground. Trapped between two worlds. Haven’t we always been?
She draws a circle on her knee just like she did on the tabletop earlier.
“I feel like every insult and every comment, it was all meant to find my weak spots. It did. Forever. It’s stayed with me all this time.
I can’t even count how many people called my mom a whore.
They’d stop and say things like their dad was lonely because their parents were divorced, was my mom available to come over and cheer him up?
They’d ask James right to his face if he ever wanted to have a threesome with me and my mom, because she’d sure as shit do it.
She didn’t have an age limit. She didn’t have any limits. ”
“What the fuck?” How did I not know this? “Are you serious? Who said that?” Anger fizzles in me, as red hot as those fireworks that will be lighting up the sky shortly.
“I’m not giving you names.”
“Who? I’ll find them. If they’re not here anymore, I can still make them suffer.”