CHAPTER 43 SEVEN NATION ARMY
SEVEN NATION ARMY
Caleb
Even with the snow melting, the afternoon traffic was slow enough to catch Caleb’s attention with each jingle of the doorway bell.
Well, hell’s bells. He did a double take at a dark-haired woman shaking snow off her boots as she entered the shop.
Not that her pleather leggings, biker boots and army surplus jacket seemed out of place here.
More surprising was that the last time he’d seen Orchid’s familiar face was while screaming into it.
She looked around, swiped her smooth locks out of her eyes, and spotted him. He pushed himself out of the consultation chair at the back of the shop and made his way to her. No sense pretending he hadn’t seen her.
“Orchid,” he acknowledged.
“Caleb, how are you?”
“Fucked up, as usual,” he answered calmly.
“Me, too,” she answered. He eyed the bandage on her forehead, wondering if it was the reason for her self-deprecating sigh.
She looked different, her expression serious, as if she only recently had matured from a girl into a woman.
He didn’t think it was only a matter of the wound.
There was some determined emphasis in her stride. He sensed she was on a mission.
“If Mom were here, she’d say I owed you an apology.”
“Because you yelled at me for wronging your brother, even though it was the other way around? Because you thought I’d be shallow enough to avoid him after his accident, when I didn’t know anything about it?”
“Somethin’ like that,” he replied.
“Okay, I’ll take that acknowledgment as an apology. Thanks.”
“What are you doing here?” he asked, changing tacks, loyalty sitting squarely with family.
“I need to apologize to Phoenix.”
“You’re fishing for an apology from me when you owe one to him?” He shook his head. “Tell him yourself.”
“I would, except he doesn’t return my texts.”
“So you came to ask me? Maybe there’s a reason he’s ghosted you, darlin’.” He wandered back towards his table of paperwork.
Orchid ignored his last remark and stayed planted like she owned the place, from the black-and-white checkered floor, crisp linens on tables, and walls covered with photos of body art.
“Wow, so . . . pretty,” she said turning towards the pictures. “No, more than that. Evocative, powerful.”
He glared at her with suspicion as she studied the wall of tattoos of people’s faces. “Jack Nicholson, Marilyn Monroe, Johnny Depp . . . ”
Walking slowly toward him, gazing at the myriad pictures, she appeared to be a young gallery visitor.
A laugh of pleasure burst out of her, pure and innocent.
“Children and animals!” She turned from the pictures of pugs, cats, and chubby-cheeked toddlers executed in the blue-green of tattoo ink and faced him.
“Children and animals are a surefire way to pull at heartstrings in advertising.”
“Phoenix teaching you tricks of the trade, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said with earnestness. “He taught me a lot.” She flopped onto one of the hulking black vinyl tattoo chairs.
“He taught me about kindness, what it means to be a gentleman, how to use humor no matter how bad the situation looks.”
She grew quiet. He continued sorting papers, one pile for unpaid bills, another for invoices to be mailed, junk tossed right into the recycling bin.
“Is your shrink away?” he asked, using sarcasm to try to harden the vulnerability on her face. He didn’t want to get sucked in. It was hard to avoid because whatever she was thinking, she was being real.
She laughed, a pretty sound, unlike the raucous ribaldry that often ran through his place.
“You’re the shrink I need, because you know him better than anyone else.” Brown eyes looked at him full of hope. His hands paused over the piles of paper, stilled by feeling like he was the hero in an un-filmed action adventure.
Knows him better than anyone else? Christ, am I really that person for another human being?
She leaned forward, one elbow on his workspace. When she rested her chin onto the palm of her hand, she pulled back, surprised. “Ow! I keep forgetting,” she said, putting one hand up to her bandaged forehead.
Caleb drew himself straighter. Phoenix would want him to protect her, just as he himself had tried to protect her.
“What happened?” he asked, drawn in despite himself.
“Have you ever been to his agency?” she said, answering his question with a question.
“Yeah.”
“I crashed through a glass case there.”
“What?” He stood, chuckling darkly. “You want a tattoo of that?” he asked.
“Very funny,” she said.
“Why’d you do that?” he asked, sitting.
“I didn’t mean to, I tripped. After his admin threatened me.” Her face fell and then she jutted her chin up, like a little girl acting tough to get herself through a difficult spot.
“Tiny little Liv?”
“I think he let her think that I’d been a bitch to him, too.”
“And you’re sure you haven’t?”
“I only found out about his accident four days ago. So how could I have been a bitch about it?” Her voice hardened and she looked out the window, fingering the frayed piping of her army jacket.
“But?” he encouraged.
“I guess I said something insensitive when I last saw him.” Her chin dropped.
“After you knew about his—”
“Yeah. After I cut myself, he went with me to the hospital. And I guess I was worried about how my face looked. I think I called it hideous and disfigured.”
“How’d he take that?”
“He left.”
Good. Smart man.
“If that’s the case, seems damned straightforward to me. What’s the point of chasing someone who doesn’t want you?”
“But that’s the thing,” she insisted, straightening. “I don’t think it’s so straightforward. My stupid comment didn’t mean anything. I’ve got to let him know that we should try again.”
Damn, she’s tenacious.
“Don’t you freak out over every little scratch?”
She ran a hand through her hair. Her eyes grew large.
“He probably thinks I do, but I swear, after the initial shock of seeing his arm, he was just Phoenix to me. All I could think was how I’d missed him.
I mean, I feel terrible for him, but it’s not going to freak me out.
” Her fist pounded the armrest for emphasis.
“You’ve seen us together. What’d you think? ” she pressed.
“Yeah, I guess you had something. At that triathlon, and down the shore. But that was all before, you know.” He was surprised he couldn’t name the time that dominated his life last fall. He looked out the window at piles of shoveled snow. He worried about Phoenix taking a tumble.
“I don’t know. Tell me what happened,” she said, her eyes growing even more expressive.
He stood to stretch, looking up, thinking. Only with Sascha had he shared the images and regrets that still dogged him. A pressure built. He wanted to unload the memories. Not for her. Rather, for himself. He talked while he paced.
“Freakin’ call came to my shop in Jersey,” he said, remembering the day. “I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t even drive, I was so messed up, so Sascha drove me. Mom said I needed to come say goodbye, just in case.”
Orchid appeared to have forgotten to breathe, eyes frozen wide.
He stopped, gazing at the pattern of the black-and-white checkered tiles on the floor, his mind elsewhere. The whine of a siren whizzed by and faded, reminding them of the city past the clear glass door.
“Then I saw him, and it was him, but he looked bad, not moving, tubes and shit. Scary, you know?”
She nodded, even though she hadn’t been there and couldn’t have known.
“I didn’t know you could be hit by a train and survive.”
She yelped.
He strode, pacing around the shop in the darkening shadows of late afternoon, agitated. “What? You didn’t know?” He stopped walking, hands on his hips.
“So he really was hit by a . . . train?”
“Yeah, saving a homeless guy. He woke when I was with him, and I had to tell him. He was so broken up, I didn’t know what to say.
Then Mom came in and she told him it was okay.
But I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t make him feel better.
I still can’t.” His voice cracked, having stated the worst part, the part where he’d let his brother down.
“Saving a homeless guy?”
Emotional when he didn’t want to be, and suddenly aware of responsibilities he didn’t know he’d held towards his brother, he headed to the shop door. He turned around the sign so that, from the outside, it read CLOSED.
“It’s after five, I’m closing up.” He moved around, locking up the safe and cash register.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, getting in his face to make him look at her. “I think we have something special. I think he thinks I can’t deal. I think he thinks he’s protecting me.”
“Yup. Sounds like him.”
Caleb wrapped a scarf around his neck against the cold wind and shrugged on his warm, lined leather coat, relishing the smell that reminded him of rides in open air.
Stomping one booted foot, she put a hand to her forehead. “So, are you going to let your brother sacrifice himself for no good reason? When he has a chance to be happy?”
“You sure you can make him happy?” He infused her romantic dreams with some reality. “That’s some tough shit,” Caleb warned. “He’s not the easiest guy to live with, and he’s probably even more ornery now.”
“Because of his arm?”
He grabbed his keys. “Vamoose,” he told her, indicating the door.
“Just do this, Caleb. For me . . . for him. Find me a chance to see him so we can talk.” She followed him out, buttoning her coat. He swung onto his bike parked at the curbside, revving the engine.
“I’m outta here but I’ll think about it.
And to answer your question, yeah, probably missing a hand makes him ornery, but how come you aren’t giving any credit to his missing leg?
” He accelerated away from the curb in a wide arc, pulling a U-turn before the oncoming traffic reached them.
“Ciao, babe,” he called to the gape-mouthed beauty staring after him.