Love Scars - 3: Stop (3 page)

The living room was empty. Scarlett must have taken Holly to see Mom’s studio. I took in a breath of air and blew it out. I wasn’t going to be an ass about this. Brad was still my best friend, and Holly had obviously chosen me.

I headed across the lawn toward the garden to tell Brad we were leaving. I’d just say goodbye and leave it at that. Take the high road. I wouldn’t tell him I was on to how he felt. By the time I reached the maze that led to the garden, I was over it.

Holly loved me. She had my ring on her finger, and I couldn’t see her taking it off. I wasn’t mad at Brad. I felt sorry for the poor bastard.

As I walked through the hedge-lined path, Holly’s voice filtered through the vegetation. “I’ll marry J.D. and then divorce him in a couple of years.”

I stopped moving. I couldn’t have heard that right.

“I’ll be rich after the settlement—he’s so in love, he’ll never think about a prenuptial agreement. Don’t you see, Brad? Then we can be together.”

I felt socked in the gut. A gigantic rhododendron hid me from their view, and the conversation went on.

“Holly, you’ve got it all wrong,” Brad said. “I don’t love you. In fact, you pretty much disgust me.”

“But Brad…”

“I never told J.D. how you’re always coming on to me because for some crazy reason the dude does love you, and he’s my best friend. I just wish he’d figure you out before it’s too late.”

“No, Brad. You love me. I know you do. I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

My chest was a mass of pain where my heart had been ripped out.

“You’re embarrassing yourself, Hol,” Brad said. “Go away now. Please.”

I didn’t go back through the maze. I crashed through the hedges and made a straight line to the house. I stood on the lanai for a few minutes to catch my breath. A seagull flew over, and its scream sounded like mocking laughter.

All the way back to Seattle Holly didn’t talk. She was lost in her own thoughts with no awareness I’d already cut her out of my life. She seemed a bit surprised when I dropped her off at her folks’ house. She’d been spending most nights with me at my high-rise
condo
on Union Street. But she didn’t argue. At the door she raised her lips for me to kiss her.

I wanted to vomit. I forced myself to kiss her on the forehead.

“Goodbye, Holly,” I said.

I got all the way to the car before she said, “J.D., is something wrong?” I didn’t say a word. I didn’t turn around. I opened the door of my Corvette and smiled. I know the smile was bitter.

The next morning I bought Brad a black and silver Range Rover—a late birthday present, I told him—and that night he drove us to the Seahawks’ opening game. I told him I wasn’t going to marry Holly after all, that I’d caught her sexting with Mike, the football player she’d thrown over to go with me to the prom.

“Jeez, dude. I’m sorry,” Brad said.

“Yeah, well,” I said. “Good riddance.”

I never told Brad what I’d overheard on Orcas Island. There was no point. I look back on it ten years and countless women later, and I laugh at myself.

But I don’t laugh at the pain. Maybe being so young made it worse. I was so fucking vulnerable then. I never wanted to feel that pain again.

“Dammit!” Brad’s editorial comment reached the kitchen from the TV room.

Poor bastard. I knew what he must be going through now with Lisa. And worse because that Frank guy didn’t deserve her. Everybody loved Frank. Maybe it was just loyalty to my friend, but I suspected Frank was secretly an asshole.

I brought out the rest of the six-pack and some more chips. The Mavs racked up eight points in three minutes in high-definition gorgeousness on the ninety-inch screen. It was as bad as being there.

“What’s Nora’s story, anyway?” I said. “Has Lisa ever told you what happened to her folks?”

“Not Lisa,” Brad said. “Stacey. The kid told me about it when I was showing her some Toasty stuff in her Mortal Kombat collection.”

“The niece,” I said. “They act like she’s made of rice paper.”

“She’s stronger than they think. Way stronger than her Aunt Nora. And they haven’t noticed, but she’s not a kid. She’ll be eighteen on Wednesday.”

“But you’ve noticed. What happened to your mad passion for Lisa?”

“It’s not like that, dude. Stacey’s my sister’s age.”

“Veda would be eighteen now?” I said. “I didn’t realize.” Brad’s little sister had been killed in a car accident five years ago.
 

“Yeah, well,” Brad said. “Maybe it looks weird that I take an interest, but it’s like having Veda around again. And Stacey needs a big brother figure to balance those clucking hens that overprotect her.”

“That’s cool, Brad. Really. So back to my question,” I said. “What happened to Nora’s folks?”

“Not just her folks,” Brad said. “Her entire family except for Stacey. Her mom and dad and little brother, and Stacey’s parents—Nora’s older brother and his wife. All murdered.”

“Shit.”

“They were at their cabin in the foothills for the weekend. Everybody was outside around the campfire when the dog got away. Nora and Stacey went after the dog, and while they were gone they heard the screams and gunshots. Some guy with a semi-automatic was spraying everybody with bullets. Somehow Nora got Stacey up into a tree house without the guy seeing them. She made Stacey cover her ears and close her eyes. You can imagine how that helped.”

They’re all dead.
That’s what Nora had meant. She must have been having a flashback or something. I couldn’t stand it. Every part of me cried out to go to her and hold her and tell her everything was going to be all right.

But it would be a lie. Nothing could ever be all right after something like that. “So she watched her family die.”

“And the dog.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I told you it was horrific. The dog raced into the middle of the carnage to attack the gunman, and the asshole killed it too.”

“Jesus God.” Compared to that, I had no right to carry the damaged chip on my shoulder. I had to stay away from Nora. The last thing she needed was a lying asshole adding his petty grief to her life.

“Hey.” Brad looked at his iPhone. “Speak of the devil and my angel appears.” He grinned at me. “A text from Lisa reminding me about Stacey’s birthday dinner Wednesday. She says to bring you.”

Stacey called from her friend’s house in Fair Oaks. They were home from Disneyland but exhausted, and could one of us go pick her up? Good old Frank volunteered since Lisa and I were busy doing another run over the yard, still cleaning up after Friday’s party.

I picked up another empty Heineken from the lawn and tossed it into a black plastic garbage bag. “Next time, no green bottles,” I said. “It’s too easy to miss them in the grass.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time.” Lisa was up on the deck. She poured a little vegetable oil on a paper towel to use to light the charcoal in the grill. She learned all kinds of neat tricks like that working at the restaurant. “I’m ready for a new phase. Small dinners and sophisticated people.”

“Sophisticated. Right,” I said. “Aren’t we barbecuing hot dogs tonight?”

“You know what I mean. The kind of people who don’t top off a party by barfing on the lawn.”

“I’m all for that.” I picked up a blackened banana peel and added it to the bag. “Seriously.
A banana peel
.”

Lisa got the fire going with the charcoal and brought another garbage bag down to the lawn to help search for missed crap. We worked in silence, moving toward the garden path.

After a few minutes she said, “Do you ever regret not going to Stanford?”

“What? Where did that come from?”

Lisa was the only one who knew about Stanford. Not that I wanted it to be some big secret. I just never talked about it, and as the years went by it had become just another piece of trivia about my life:
I was once accepted to Stanford University.

“What you said about Stacey’s SATs got me thinking. I wondered if you regretted giving it up for her.”

I’d been thrilled when the email came the first of April my senior year, and when the official letter arrived later with the information packet, my mom framed it. She was even more excited than I was.

“I don’t regret keeping Stacey out of foster care,” I said. “That’s what would have happened if I’d gone.”

“She’s been lucky to have you,” Lisa said. “You gave up more than Stanford for her.”

“She doesn’t know about that,” I said. “And I don’t want her to. It was my choice. I do regret getting rid of the acceptance letter. It would be nice to have it now, proof that I made the cut.”

“Why don’t you have it?”

“Remember when I swore off sex and purged all my stuff?”

“After the shower creep. Of course I remember,” Lisa said. “We had that big bonfire we had when I moved in.”

“I threw the letter out in the purge,” I said. “I took it out of the frame, and it went into the fire. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

We finished cleaning the path to the gardens, finding only a couple beer bottles and plastic cups in the driftwood. The veggies were already put to rights. Lisa had taken care of that yesterday. The topiary bunny was gone, but the alpacas were basically upright and stable, and the ivy was more or less evenly redistributed.

The fountain in the flower garden was running, and I squatted down behind the iron fairy to switch the water off. I thought of the rose left with the fairy, and again J.D.’s voice came to me:
You’re an American Beauty
.

Gah! I sat down on the bench. I had to stop feeling sad every time I thought of him. In fact, I had to stop thinking about him. He made it clear he wasn’t interested in me. Why torture myself wanting something that was never going to happen?

Lisa dropped her garbage bag next to the bench and sat down. “I talked to my manager at work last night,” she said. “I can get you and Stacey both on at the restaurant.”

“Oh, god.” My stomach turned at the thought.

“What? It’ll be fun. We can give Stacey a hard time while we both keep an eye on her.”

“I don’t know…” Lisa’s restaurant was always busy from the minute they opened their doors.

“You would never work at night because of Stacey. Fine and good—but she’s done. Baked and browned, out of the oven. You did a good job, Nor. Now you’re free.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “The truth is I don’t think I can handle the people and the noise.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Lisa said.

“I should have majored in accounting,” I said. “Something where I could work walled off in some cubicle away from people. Why did I pick humanities? What was I thinking?”

“You were looking for the big answers.”

“There are no big answers. And now I have an unmarketable degree, unless I go on for a PhD and try to get a teaching job.”
 

“We’ll have two doctors in the house,” Lisa said. “Dr.
Frank,
and Dr. Nora.”

“And neither of us real doctors,” I said.
 

“Yikes! Don’t ever say that to Frank.” Lisa grinned. “He hates it when people find out he’s a vet and they say
Oh, then you’re not a real doctor.
”

“It must be irritating, after all that work.”

“A lot of things irritate Frank,” Lisa said. “So you’re still going to do the internship?”

“I’ll decide for sure after I talk to Steve,” I said, “but I think I have to try. It’s not only about the money. When I snapped the other night, it was horrible. A real flashback. As if the last six years never happened. I was there, watching that bastard…watching everything happen all over again.”

“God, Nor. That’s awful.”

“I need to conquer this. Go back to the scene, confront my demons. It might be just what I need. Who knows? If it works, then I could take that job with you and Stacey.”

“At least you won’t be alone at the dig,” Lisa said. “Brad will be there.”

“Maybe,” I said. I doubted Brad would actually take the internship since Lisa turned it down. He told me he didn’t need it himself. “I’ll ask him Wednesday if he’s still going.”

“Stacey’s birthday. That reminds me.” Lisa took out her phone and sent a text and grinned at me. “I just told him to bring J.D. on Wednesday.”

Crap.
J.D. would probably think I asked Lisa to invite him. Now he’d really think I was pathetic. “He won’t come,” I said. “Besides, I don’t have time for a relationship right now. You guys didn’t need to set me up in the first place.”

“In the first place,
we
didn’t set you up. Brad did. I didn’t know he brought J.D. for you until he told me when we were dancing on the grass. And B, if you don’t have time for guys now, Nora, you never will. You’re the one setting yourself up—for a lonely life full of nothing but obligations.”

“Jeez. That was harsh.”

Was this a theme in my life? I’d heard something like that before, something Steve said.
Always choosing between can’t and have to
.