The Years After (20 page)

Before leaving his warehouse apartment, he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. His clothes were new. He never wore anything like these clothes before because he never went anywhere nice enough to need them. He dragged a comb through his hair and the dark strands sprang forward. Leaning on the sink, a second wave of guilt weighed down on him. The burden of his lies and cheating was gradually eroding his sense of being. Especially when he thought how much he would ultimately hurt the only person he ever loved. And there he went again. Staring at the few stray hairs still clinging to the scratched-up sink, he had to resist the urge to text Olivia he wasn’t coming. He should end it here and now. How could he survive tonight? Why would he willingly do it? Meeting a pair of parents he would never see again after this. How many more months could he keep up his facade? Not much longer. The incessant demands of trying to pursue a double life was finally starting to bother him. And more importantly, he was tired of lying to Olivia.

There was so much riding on her parents’ impression of him. Her abrupt departure yesterday fully hammered home that point. He got moody whenever the shittiness of what he was doing to her reared its ugly head. Then he detested himself and grew silent, refusing to seek the comfort of Olivia’s funny, little smiles, or the soft way she touched his face, or his hands, or how she kissed him… There were myriad methods she used to make his miserable, two-timing life somewhat better, and that’s why he couldn’t ever totally stop caring about her.

When he got into those foul moods, she usually let him alone. Whether he was quiet, or curt, or just ignoring her, she patiently waited until he worked himself out of it. Until yesterday, they had never parted company without kissing each other goodbye, and endlessly.

He let his fingers relax, and dropped the phone back into his pocket. He was
not
calling to cancel tonight. Even if all it did was lead him deeper and faster into hell.

He pulled into her dorm parking lot and walked through the door. Several girls giggled as they waved their hellos. Kylie was leaving with a group and yelled hello to him too. He was distracted and nervous when he finally knocked on Olivia’s door. He never remembered his hands sweating as badly as they were now, or his mind forgetting anything rational and normal to say.

She opened the door, and was wearing her formal, long, black skirt and a crisp, white blouse that she always wore to her concerts. Her hair was spread out over her shoulders and chest in a long straight fan of black, and the deep bangs framed her face, and even made her sweet smile and eyes seem bigger and more luminous, if that were possible.

She didn’t leap against his chest or display her usual exuberance when she greeted him as if they hadn’t seen each other in months, instead of the mere hours it usually was. They nearly lived in each other’s back pockets, or as much as his lousy, shady dealings allowed them to. He didn’t sleep much, since he could only catch up on it while she was attending her classes.

His gaze shot past her to a tall couple behind her. His palms beaded with sweat as a mild panic climbed up his neck. No way. No way could he do this. He wanted to step back, flip around, and flee. Forever. From Olivia. From her parents. From their goodness and normalcy. From her love. From the chances of hurting her. From the total destruction of her belief in the world as she once knew it.

But he did not. He held his ground and stepped into her dorm before she shut the door behind him. He was introduced to a couple that literally towered over him. The man was inches taller than the woman, who easily had four or five inches on Derek, exacerbated even more by the heels she wore. The man wore well creased slacks and a button-up shirt; and had his arm on his wife’s lower back.

She stepped forward first and put out her hand with a gentle, soft smile. “Hello, Derek. I’m Gretchen, and this is my husband, Tony.”

He took her hand. She had long fingers with nicely polished nails. Her pencil-thin skirt hit her below her knees and the jacket she wore fit snugly around her. Her figure was the polar opposite of Olivia’s, along with her coloring of blond hair and green eyes. “Hi,” he mumbled in a tone far less articulate and refined than Gretchen’s.

Then he had to meet Tony. The man looked mean with a scowl that conveyed dark, scary thoughts and actions. He stepped back, scrutinizing Olivia. “Dad. Be nice.” Olivia tilted her head and widened her eyes as she spoke to him. Her dad’s mouth finally twitched as he stepped forward, extending his hand. “Derek, it’s nice to meet the man dating my daughter.”

Derek momentarily wished he weren’t. As he shook Derek’s hand, he stared right into his eyes and smiled as if it were a polite greeting, but his vise-like grip was tenacious enough to make Derek nearly whimper. For an old, disabled guy he was freakishly strong. He raised his eyebrows as if daring Derek to tattle to Olivia and Gretchen.

Instead, Derek sucked it in and said, “Yup.”

Olivia crossed the room and picked up her backpack, the one she first dropped at his feet in the park.

“Should we leave? If we’re getting dinner first, we’d better hurry.”

Yeah, just what he needed, rushing to the place where he’d have to sit in their critical presence for dinner. He rarely ate out at real restaurants. Could he really do this?

The older couple left first. Olivia hung back and kissed his cheek. “Relax. They aren’t that bad. My dad’s just not used to seeing me dating. He’ll chill out. Don’t let him intimidate you. That’s his thing.”

“He’s good at it,” he said, taking her hand as he naturally always did. He thought better of it and dropped it, however, when her parents glanced back while waiting for them. He followed Olivia and got into their car. When was the last time he rode in the back of a car? He probably never did with anyone’s parents. He might have with Quentrell’s crew for some reason, but certainly not to go out to dinner and a band concert.

Dinner was excruciating to Derek. The conversation was awkward at best, with their most banal questions and his most evasive answers. He didn’t know how to make polite conversation. Being out with her father, who kept eyeing him up as if to see if he should dismember him, nearly made it impossible for Derek to act normally.

The bread and salad accompanied a nearly total silence. They had already exhausted Olivia’s schedule of classes, band gigs, and working with her tin whistle. They also covered what Derek did, but he couldn’t leave that subject fast enough. He replied with a lame excuse: he was temporarily employed until he could figure out what to do next. He cleverly made it sound like he just graduated high school and was preparing for his next move.

At one point, Gretchen got up and so did Olivia. He was left alone with Tony, who, once again, eyed him up. “So, you’re eighteen?”

“Yeah.”

“You ever meet a girl’s parents before?”

He shook his head, already puzzled at where this was going. “You say, ‘yes sir’ whenever you address me and call me Mr. Lindstrom until I allow you to call me Tony, and you always, without fail, open the doors for my daughter. Always. Pull her chair out. Show her some damn chivalry. Didn’t your father ever teach you that?”

How many lies could he spin? Instead of fabricating another, he scowled and said honestly, “No. He was murdered before I started puberty.”

What the fuck?
Why did he just say that out loud? And in such a rude, brisk, mocking tone to Olivia’s scary-ass, one-armed, former Army soldier dad? Tony’s gaze held his, but his facial expression didn’t change. Derek tried to stare him down, but he couldn’t take the merciless scrutiny and finally dropped his head.

“I’m sorry, I had no idea.” Derek’s head jerked back up to find Tony again watching him.

He bristled. “Why would you?”

Tony nodded and seemed to regard him with an intensity Derek could not understand. “You’re right. I’m predisposed to disliking you. You’re dating my daughter. You’re eighteen years old and you’re a
guy
. But I guess that’s not really your fault.”

He didn’t have a clue where that left them. Fortunately, Gretchen and Olivia rejoined them and started a conversation again, with added smiling and laughing. Meanwhile, Tony seemed to regard him differently than when the meal started. He shifted around.
He knew. Tony knew or saw something.
Maybe Tony would be the one to finally tell Olivia what Derek was too scared and too rotten to tell her. Maybe his dad-senses could see the real Derek while Olivia could not. He almost hoped so. The brick on his chest that was suffocating him made his ears ring before the table conversation started to fade from his consciousness. He was losing it: his mind. Standing up quickly, he mumbled, “I’m going to the restroom.”

He literally escaped by nearly running into the men’s room. His chest hurt and his breathing was too tight. He pulled on the collar of the ridiculous shirt he wore and leaned down to rest on the sink. While contemplating the inside of the sink, he realized the magnitude of what he’d been doing to Olivia and what he was about to lose. Running the faucet on full, he took handfuls of cold water to splash his face and sucked some into his mouth.

His breathing was off and his head felt light while his chest kept tightening.
Fuck! Damn! Shit!
What was happening to him? Heart attack? Was he dying? Maybe. All he knew was, it was painful. His fingers and toes went numb and his vision seemed off. He thought about dialing 911 on his phone until the long, painful, confusing moments of overwhelming suffocation started to ease and release his chest. More minutes past before his vision cleared, while his head ceased its spinning and the pain receded.
Jesus.
What was that? He leaned down and drank straight from the faucet. Glancing at his phone, he realized he’d been gone for several minutes.

Wiping his hands, he tried to straighten his hair. He walked out of the restroom and stopped dead. There was Olivia. Standing there, she kept twisting her hands in front of her and her eyes were big with worry. She had her lower lip sucked into her mouth. She let out a breath when he appeared.

“Hey,” he mumbled, keeping his eyes averted by checking out the wood paneling in the foyer.

“Hey,” she said back in a soft, caring tone. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just needed a breather. The whole parental family thing, not really my scene.”

He barely held her gaze with one glance, and shied away from her hand when she reached towards him and sidestepped her as if he didn’t see it. He should have walked out of the foyer and left. There was nothing, no reason at all, to keep up such a façade. They would part paths no matter what he wanted. But if he touched her, he knew he’d just fall into her arms, as he always did, because it was the only place he wanted to be.

“Look—”

“Derek?” she interrupted. She sensed it was going to be his blow-off.

He turned towards her.

“You run.”

“What?”

“When you don’t like things, or you feel uncomfortable, you run. Stay here. Don’t run.”

“I just,” he lifted his fingers and threaded them through his hair. “I need to, Olivia. Your dad doesn’t like me, and he shouldn’t.”

She stepped towards him and put her hand on his chest. He flinched. “He actually doesn’t hate you. Pretty sound endorsement, considering the situation, and who he is. Something about your dad coming up? Well, it affected him. But then, you had a panic attack.”

“I what?”

Her eyes were large. “You started having a panic attack at the table. I saw it. They saw it. You weren’t very good at hiding it. You know what my mother does for a living.” Her arms stretched around his shoulders and she interlaced her fingers behind his neck as her mouth touched his, even though he tried to keep his chin tilted up.

A panic attack? What the hell was that?
Why would he have that? Because of randomly mentioning the father he killed? To the man whose daughter he loved and would surely end up destroying, for no other reason than because he was too selfish to tell her the truth?

“I have to go.”

“Please don’t. Just stay and finish talking about the weather with my parents, and watch me play music. Then we can go home together, okay?” she whispered into his ear. Her soft lips brushed the skin on his neck and cheek and around his ear as she showered kisses on him. His head tilted towards her voice and lips as he closed his eyes and relished her softness surrounding him. The warmth of her body against him. The clear, easy way her words calmed his brain and made him quieter, because he instantly felt better.

That strange, suffocating pain in his chest returned. It was guilt. It had to be guilt. What else could cause his stomach to tighten and his heart to squeeze in so much pain? Her lips traveled from his ear to his closed eyelids, which she kissed before resting her forehead on his. “Come sit down, okay?”

He finally nodded, but was unable to articulate a single word due to the knot of grief and confusion lodged in his chest. Her hand clasped his as she tugged him to walk with her.

He avoided meeting the Lindstroms’ puzzled gazes as he slid into his chair without a word or lifting his eyes to theirs. He poked at his food and brought it to his mouth, but was completely uninterested in eating it. They kept talking about their family members and trying to include him in the conversation by telling him funny, little anecdotes. He didn’t interject much, and didn’t feel required to. Olivia kept touching his hand under the table. She continued squeezing it while she participated in a bubbling conversation with her parents. The interminable meal finally ended and everyone got up. He had to suffer going back in the car with them and driving to where her concert was being held. Olivia kissed the side of his cheek, much to his annoyance, because Tony was right near them and watching them like a hawk. But she pecked him on the cheek and smiled before taking her backpack and heading backstage. He stared after, wishing he didn’t have to rejoin her parents and… what? Sit with them? He certainly couldn’t just wander off from them to sit alone. Even he had enough tact to realize that.