Brawler (14 page)

I smiled, but it was hard to hold onto. “Laney has never been here. All this time and she’s never shown up. She said she doesn’t like the neighborhood. She’s worried her car will get stolen.”

“Kellen, what she said tonight—“

“Is true,” I interrupted darkly, looking away. “She’s right. I’m poor white trash, Jenna. It doesn’t matter what grades I get or college I go to. I’ll always be poor white trash.”

“Those aren’t the same thing,” she said angrily.

“What isn’t?”

“Poor and trash. Those are two completely separate things and you know it. You’ve met some of Laney’s friends. Hell, you’ve met some of my parent’s friends. They’re rich as shit but some of them are straight up trash. People lying to each other, cheating on each other, stealing from each other. Money doesn’t make you a good person. If anything, it ruins you. Hey!” she snapped at me, seeing me start to shut down. To hide from the conversation because talking things out was never my strength. “Look at me.”

I brought my eyes back to hers and she pinned me down with her stare.

“When you look at me,” she asked, “do you only see a rich girl?”

I frowned. “No. Not at all.”

“Good, ‘cause when I look at you, I don’t see a poor boy. I see you. All of you. The boxer, the genius, the smartass, the know it all. You are who you are, Kel. You’re not the place you grew up in or your bank account. You’re you, and I happen to think that you are pretty fucking amazing.”

I grinned at her, amazed by the way she could do that to me. Buoy me up when I wanted to drown and fade away. “You’re pretty fucking amazing yourself.”

“I know. Now go do what you do until you feel like yourself again. I’ll wait.”

I did as she told me. For hours. I silently ran through my entire workout. I lost track of Jenna. I’d be working on the weights or the jump rope and she’d be in the chair when I started, but when I looked up at the end she was somewhere else. Moving around the room casually, like she belonged there. Like none of it fazed her. Not the anger in my eyes or the sweat on the floor.

I’m never scared when I’m with you.

I wanted to believe that. She had seen the animal before and she hadn’t run. She was seeing it now. She was pacing his cage with him as though nothing could touch her, and she was right. Nothing on this earth would touch her. Nothing could hurt her. Not while I was alive.

When I finished, she silently handed my shirt back. I watched her take it off, pulling it up over her head and exposing her narrow body that had been hidden underneath it, and my racing heart slowed to a near stop until I saw stars on the edge of my vision. When I slipped the material back over my head, it smelled like her. It smelled comforting. Familiar.

I took her the long way home, feeling content for the first time in too long. She leaned with me effortlessly, her arms wrapped loosely around my stomach even though I was a hot, sweat soaked mess. She never complained and she never shied away from me. Even at the red lights when she could have sat back, she stayed with me, and I pressed my hand over hers whenever I could to keep her there. To ground myself to her cool, clean calm.

When I pulled into the driveway, I felt like myself again. I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t nearly as angry. I was what I always was after a night at the gym – bone dead ass tired.

Unfortunately, sleep was a six hour drive away. I was considering calling Callum to see if I could crash with him when Dan appeared from the house.

Jenna leapt off the back of the bike and ran straight for him. “I jumped on the bike and refused to get off,” she said quickly. “It wasn’t his fault. I was worried he’d hurt himself driving away mad and I knew he’d be careful if I was with him so I went. I know I wasn’t supposed to but—“

“Jenna, it’s fine,” Dan interrupted quietly. He put his hand reassuringly on her shoulder, shaking his head. “No one is mad. Not at you.”

“Dan, I’m sorry,” I said sincerely, stepping off the bike. “I should have left her behind. I never went over thirty miles per hour, I swear and she wore the helmet the whole time.”

“I know you were careful. We’re not angry at you either.”

“But you’re mad at someone,” Jenna said slowly, reading between the lines.

He nodded. “We are. At least, I am. I’m angry at Laney for what she said.” He took a step toward me, his eyes full of regret. “Son, I’m sorry. It should be her here apologizing, not me, but when I told her she needed to make things right, she left.”

“It’s over between us,” I said heavily. “There’s no making it right this time.”

“And that’s fine. Whether you two stay together or split up, I don’t care as long as you’re both happy. But what I do care about is how she handled it. She owes you an apology and you’ll get it. Just not tonight, apparently.”

“That’s fine. I’m not in the mood to hear it tonight,” I said, running my hand over my face and thinking of all of the wrongs I’d committed that night against this family that I loved. “I owe Karen an apology. Laney as well. I shouldn’t have shouted like that and I definitely shouldn’t have used that kind of language in her house.”

“She’ll get over it,” Dan assured me with a faint grin. “But for now it’s late. Jenna, why don’t you go inside and get to bed. Kellen, you’ll stay the night in the pool house.”

“That’s alright. I’m going to drive back home.”

Dan stared at me hard with his courtroom eyes. “No, you’re not. It’s too late for a drive like that tonight and you already look exhausted.”

“No, I really—“

“Get your ass to the pool house, Kellen.”

I smiled, nodding slightly in defeat. “Yes, sir.”

Dan nodded in satisfaction, then headed for the house. “Goodnight, you two.”

“Goodnight,” we both called back.

When he was gone, Jenna looked at me with nervous eyes. “You’ll be gone in the morning, won’t you?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “I’ll get a few hours of sleep but then I’m gone.”

She nodded, worrying her lip between her teeth. Finally, she whispered, “Remember that you promised me.”

That you’ll never quit on me.

I shivered at the thought of that afternoon. The day that had set something off inside of me that I still didn’t totally understand and that I knew I wasn’t ready for. “I remember,” I said gravely.

“You’ll keep it, won’t you? Even with you and Laney splitting up.”

I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her to me gently. “That has nothing to do with you and I, Jen.”

Jenna and I – we were more than family. More than friends. Something separate from the ghetto and the golden hills. We were a bond that should never be broken. Something that was worth fighting for.

She took a shaky breath against my body as she knotted her fists tightly in my sweaty shirt that still somehow smelled of her. “You’re my best friend,” she whispered.

I closed my eyes and rested my head against hers.

“You’re mine.”

We stood there for a long time like that. Just Jenna and I and the sea salt on the air, the gentle roar of it in the distance. With the workout under my belt, the animal sleeping soundly, and Jenna in my arms, I felt good. The most at peace, at ease, and at home I could ever remember feeling and I never wanted to let her go, but I knew I’d have to. In the morning I’d leave before the dawn and I didn’t know when I’d come back. I had no idea when I’d see her again, but I knew that I would. Whatever it took, no matter how much time and awkwardness I had to endure to get this Laney shit behind me, I’d make my way back to Jenna again.

Because with Jenna was exactly where I was meant to be.

Laney called me a couple weeks after the incident and apologized. Sort of.

“I said some things that I shouldn’t have,” she told me, sounding like a broken record I’d heard a million times before, “and so did you.”

“Did I?” I asked skeptically.

“You called me a brat and said my best friend was horse faced.”

That girl wasn’t her best friend. Not before our fight, but now for the sake of the strength of her argument, they were sisters.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that,” I admitted.

I should have said she was a frigid bitch with a voice that only dogs should hear.

“So we were both wrong and we admit it.”

“Yep.”

“Good. We’re good?”

“Broken up, but, yeah. We’re good.”

She hesitated. “We’re broken up?”

I closed my eyes against the growing tension headache this conversation was giving me. “That’s what I said when I left.”

“I thought you were just angry. I didn’t know you meant it.”

“Well, I did.”

“Kellen,” she complained quietly, her voice hurt and breaking.

“Don’t do that, Lane. It’s not going to work.”

“I don’t want us to be over.”

“And I don’t want to get back together.”

“Ever?!”

“No.”

She started crying then. It was weird. She didn’t do it very often, and when she did, it was usually only to get her way on something. Hearing it now didn’t make me feel like an asshole the way it had every time before. It didn’t leave me wondering if I was making a mistake and if we shouldn’t give it another try. I knew it was right to end this, finally and forever. She wasn’t good for me, and I definitely didn’t feel like I was any good for her.

I eyed the painting on the wall, the one Jenna had done of me in the ring when the animal took over, then I saw a gray shirt on the chair underneath it. It was the same shirt I’d worn to the gym with her. The one she’d put on that stilled smelled lightly of my sweat and her perfume. A shirt I hadn’t realized until then that I hadn’t washed.

I listened to Laney cry over the phone, answering her whimpered questions when she posed them, but I never wavered. I didn’t give in and in the end she hung up calmly and quietly, her tears miraculously dried up.

Two months later and I still hadn’t gone down to see the family. My birthday came and went. I turned twenty one, old enough to drink, but still I stayed away from alcohol. Maybe the thrill had been killed for me, but I think I was still worried. I was still afraid of what could happen to my life if I stepped out of line even for a second.

I started dating a girl at school named Savannah. She was sweet, funny, smart. I took it slow with her and she didn’t question why, something I wasn’t used to. Back in high school I had a reputation, one every girl expected me to live up to immediately. It was like every relationship had a roadmap already laid out for it and I was supposed to follow it every time. With Savannah, though, she didn’t know anything about me other than that I had just come out of a long, volatile relationship.

The new approach didn’t matter, though. Eventually she started accusing me of cheating just like they always did. We hadn’t had sex, I was emotionally unavailable, and so I must be having sex with someone else. I ended it the second the infidelity fights started. We had taken a different road to get there, but we ended up where I always did. Nowhere.

I started missing Jenna something fierce. It was like the first days when I went away to college and we didn’t know how often we’d see each other. There was a feeling like a clock was ticking and with each and every click, we grew farther and farther apart. I wanted nothing more than to sit on the floor of her living room with her the way we used to when I tutored her, watching her struggle through the French that came so easy for me and teasing her relentlessly about her pronunciation. I wanted to hear her laugh and feel it vibrate against me where our bodies met.

Weird thing was, when I pictured us together that way, it was never the Jenna I’d met. It wasn’t the thirteen year old that filled my memories. It was the woman with the husky laugh and the solid smile. The honest eyes and the long fingers forever smudged faintly with charcoal. That was how I saw her now, and it changed the way I missed her.

It changed everything.

Eventually I wrote her a letter. A snail mail, postage stamped letter written by my hand in my stunted words. Aside from my college applications, it was the first letter I’d ever sent.

And just to piss her off...

You wrote me in French?!
she angrily texted me the day she got it.

I chuckled.
Oui.

Ass!

Oui.

It’s summer! I’m not interested in doing homework.

Learning never takes a vacation. It’s an ongoing process.

Thanks, Yoda.

I think you mean ‘Merci, Yoda’.

You’re the worst.

Oui.

Three days later I had a letter from her. In French. It was spotty and a little confusing at times, but I got the gist of it and immediately turned around and sent her one in return. It was better than texting. It was slower, sure, but getting a physical piece of paper with her thoughts and handwriting all over it was a tangible connection to her, one I savored.

I should have manned up and gone to the house to see her, but every time I thought about doing it, I imagined running into Laney. I didn’t want to see how weird it would get. Not yet. I also didn’t want to find out if seeing her would change my feelings on the break up. Callum definitely thought it would.

“She’s got her hooks into you, dude,” he warned me one weekend when I finally dared to go visit him. His house was safer than the Monroe’s but Laney was still in the area. I had been looking over my shoulder all day. “I heard she’s not dating anyone else, like she’s waiting for you to change your mind.”

“I’m not going to,” I promised him.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“It’s over, man. The spell is broken. The fighting and shit was fine when we were kids but I’m going into law school this fall. I need to keep my head in the game and Laney is a constant mindfuck. I don’t have time to deal with it anymore.”

Callum shrugged, looking unconvinced.

That annoyed me.

“Whatever you say,” he told me casually, “but I had bets on the two of you getting married.”

I laughed, shaking my head in amazement. “No way. That was never on the table. Most of the time we weren’t even dating. We were fuck buddies at best.”

“She told everyone you two were in love.”

“If that’s love, Valentine’s Day should be more like a yearly funeral than a celebration. We were never going to make that situation permanent.”

“You were if you hear her tell it.”

“I bet. I never heard or said a word about it, though.” I looked around his parent’s house. At the boxes of stuff piled high. The empty walls devoid of all their art and family photos. “I don’t think I’ll ever get married.”

“Me either. Divorce sucks.”

“It looks like it. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t know exactly what to say after that, so Callum and I sat in silence staring at the TV quietly broadcasting from on top of an ottoman. The entire house was like this – in disarray. His parents were selling most of it and dividing up the funds evenly, then they were going their separate ways. His dad planned on using some of the money he would take from their split savings account to open a restaurant. Italian, I think. I wasn’t sure, because for a while it was Vietnamese, then Thai. He seemed to be having trouble nailing his new dream down. It was one of the reasons Callum’s mom was leaving him. She couldn’t handle the indecision.

I could sympathize.

I liked knowing exactly where I was going and what I was doing. I craved structure and plans. I loved having a path to follow, goals to meet, and a final destination in mind. I think that’s one of the reasons I got so frustrated with Laney. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with herself. She loved my plans for myself, but she never said what
she
wanted from life. Maybe she just wanted me. If that were the case, and it had seemed lately like it was, she needed to rethink her life. I wasn’t a star any girl should be hitching her wagon to.

When I left Callum’s house that night it was still pretty early. I had time to drive back home and get there before two in the morning, but something held me back. All day I’d been worried about being so deep in Laney’s territory, but suddenly as I hopped on my bike and cruised through the familiar neighborhood of Ranchos Palos Verdes, I got home sick. I knew if I didn’t stop by the Monroe Mansion on my way out of town and take a chance at seeing Jenna and Dan, I’d regret it for the next six hours. Probably for the next six weeks.

I pulled into their driveway slowly, worrying I should have called first. Maybe I should have texted Jenna and made sure Laney wouldn’t be there. Lights were blazing from the north side of the house where the kitchen was and music was pumping from inside. I could tell from the beat alone that it wasn’t Laney’s kind of music, so I took my chances.

I knocked hard on the door but I wasn’t surprised when no one heard me. I rang the doorbell three times, but no one answered. I pulled out my phone and tried calling both Dan and Jenna, but that too got me nothing. Finally, feeling a little awkward, I used my key to open the lock on the front door and pushed it open slowly.

“Hello?” I called.

Nothing.

I followed the music back through the dining room to the kitchen where it got louder and louder. Inside the white sanctuary was chaos. Aside from the thumping music, every surface was covered with dirty baking utensils, bowls, spoons, and cooling racks filled with different kinds of cookies. In the middle of it all was Jenna.

She was dancing slow and steady side to side to the music with her hands slightly raised, one holding a cream colored spatula. Her hair was down and loose. She wore a pair of dark yoga pants and a deep purple exercise tank with a racer back and plunging neckline. Her long, thin body moved fluidly over the floor, spinning and dipping in ways I’d never seen before. Some of it looked like ballet, but most of it just looked like freedom. Like sheer, personal comfort and joy. It was incredible to watch.

Suddenly her eyes snapped to my face as she spun and she screamed loudly.

“Jenna, it’s m—“

She threw the spatula at my face. It was a good shot. I was just able to dodge it without taking the slatted surface in the eye.

“Dammit, Kellen!” she shouted, seeing it was me. “What the hell?!”

I bent down the pick up the spatula. “That’s what I was thinking! Why are you throwing things at me?!”

“Because you scared the shit out of me!”

“Can we turn this down?!” I asked, glaring toward the hidden speakers in the walls.

Using the remote, her face still adorably sour, she turned the volume down to nearly nothing.

“What are you doing?” I asked, surveying her mess.

“Rotating my tires. What does it look like?”

“It looks like your mom is going to be angry.”

“She’s not home.”

“Where is she?”

She held out her hand for the spatula.

I eyed her suspiciously. “If I give you this, is it going to end up in my back?”

“Don’t turn your back on me and you won’t have to worry about it.” I handed it over and she continued, “She’s on a trip with dad. They took a cruise to the Mediterranean. Dad had a really ugly case recently and he needed a break and mom wasn’t about to miss a couple weeks on a cruise ship.”

Even though she was seventeen, I doubted Dan and Karen would leave Jenna completely alone for weeks. That had to mean Laney was there somewhere.

I glanced around nervously. “Was it just them or…”

“Laney is out for the night. Party.”

“You’re here alone?”

“Yep, just me.”

“You should have had the alarm system on.”

“The door was locked.”

“I know, I used my key. But you’ve got the alarm system. You should use it.”

She shrugged, unconcerned. “I’ll turn it on when I go to bed.”

“You should have it on whenever you’re alone in the house,” I reminded her. Just because she grew up in a good neighborhood didn’t mean robberies didn’t happen everywhere. I knew for a fact there was plenty of stuff in this house worth someone’s time breaking in for. I didn’t want Jenna here alone if that happened.

She rolled her eyes at me. “Alright, Kel, geez. Do you want me to turn it on now?”

“Just promise me you’ll turn it on when I leave.”

Her face fell. “Are you leaving already?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered.

It felt like I should. I’d been alone with Jenna thousands of times before, but something was different tonight. Her parents weren’t just at the store or at work, even in the other room. They were in another country and definitely not coming back that night. And then there was Laney. She wasn’t there, who knew when she would be, and we weren’t together anymore. Jenna and I being friends when she was a kid was no big deal. This woman standing in front of me now, though, that felt strange. It was like me being single suddenly made her more of a woman. Or maybe it made me more aware of it, cognizant of it in ways I hadn’t been allowed before.