Paradise Hops (23 page)

Eli stomped his feet, tried to restore feeling in his legs as the dog pranced around, jumping and panting like an idiot on Lori’s front porch. He pressed the doorbell again. “I know you’re in there Lori,” he called through the window, shading his eyes against the glare from the early February snowfall. Nothing but silence greeted him. Hopster whined, pressed his nose to the crack between the door and the exterior wall. Eli patted him distractedly.

“God damn it,” he muttered, walking around the side of the small bungalow. The last four months had been a blur of agony that he buried in work. After they’d brought Lori back from Germany he’d expected her to show up at the brewery at some point. Construction had begun on their massive expansion. The board had unanimously approved the money the day after Garrett’s death, and the project was well underway, utterly screwing up Eli’s world in the process.

The entire brewery floor was in chaos as they had to move all the storage tanks out of the existing cooler to make room for destruction of walls. Every single day he wished for nothing more than to see Garrett’s calm face, hear his oh-so-even-keeled voice bestowing method to the madness. He missed his friend. He found himself drinking way more than usual, waking on his couch at times, dry-mouthed and head-achy from too much beer.

As it was, Lori’s father had stepped back into a daily management role, and Eli had to suffer pressure from the sales force with no smiling, be-suited buffer. Plus, the scowling general contractor kept insisting that he, Eli, be responsive to his team’s need for more space for their tools and shit in his brewery space. Fucking insufferable is what it was. He needed someone who could help him sort it out. He needed Garrett. But Garrett was dead. So he had counted on Lori to help, had hoped the focus on the brewery could help ease her grief somewhat.

She had closed in on herself in way that alarmed everyone. Even her best friend for many years had been summoned from the west coast to help, but no one could seem to pull her out of her funk. After ten days of talking to her through closed doors, and the occasional, brief face to face encounter, the woman—Kristy something Eli barely recalled—had given Ron a hug, smiled at Eli and caught a plane back to her family in California. “I don’t know guys. I gotta get back to my kids. I’ll keep trying to call her. But this thing…well, I’ll be back in May for sure.”

Eli peeked into her back window. The kitchen looked like a tornado had swept through it. Dishes, empty pizza boxes, food, lay strewn around. He watched Hopster traverse the small yard, stop, smell something and take a casual dump. Eli banged hard on the back door. “Open the fucking door, Lori, or I’m calling the cops. I am not kidding.” He squinted and strained his ears, would swear he heard footsteps. Finally he took a seat on the top step, willing to wait it out, wondering if anyone had a spare key to the place. Hoping she had not done something really stupid.

He put his chin in his hand and watched the oblivious dog trundle around the yard, chasing phantom smells. Ron Brockton had come into the brewery a couple of days ago, his face haggard from stress, long hours and worry about his only child. “Can you help me son?” He’d leaned against one of the giant sixty barrel fermenters. Eli had ignored him as long as you could ignore the man who signed your paychecks.

“I’ll try,” he’d grunted, distracted by yet another crisis on the floor, yet more bullshit between his brewing staff and the construction crew that he had to cope with for another six or seven months. His chest tightened. The newly empty space Garrett had briefly occupied as a friend hurt like a toothache. Making Lori confront the new reality of her life held zero appeal. “No promises.” The older man had put a hand on his arm, forcing him to turn and face him.

“I don’t need promises, Eli. I need Lori, and I think you are the only one who can get her back for me now.”

He’d shut his eyes against the onrushing emotion, the visions of her smiling face, then the abject agony he’d seen in that hospital in Munich. The funeral had been, in a word, horrific. Eli shuddered, remembering his own reluctance to attend, to face family that he’d only heard about. He’d found a coat and tie and mostly unwrinkled dress shirt, pulled them on and shown up at the brief ceremony in a nearby chapel.

 Garrett’s sisters had arranged it all after having his body cremated. The service was followed by a reception at the Brockton Pub. What a cluster fuck. He put a hand over his eyes, willing the memories to fade, but like most bad ones, they wouldn’t.

Images shot across his brain. One of Garrett’s nieces crying and telling her mother that Uncle Garrett should come out of the little box now that the game was over and it wasn’t funny anymore, of her father having to take her away from the group. The sounds of her heart wrenching sobs as she came to terms with the non-game nature of the proceedings still echoed through his psyche. Lori had dragged in looking like a refugee, gaunt with deep purple rings under both eyes, holding her elbows and staring across the room at Garrett’s cadre of women. Three sisters, four nieces and a small, China-doll like woman who showed up late, dressed head to toe in black with giant sunglasses covering her face had stood in a tight circle. Eli had noted their quick looks across the room to Lori who stood, alone, tears streaming down her face.

He’d let his protection mechanism kick in then, put an arm around Lori’s quivering body, tried to provide support, had whispered nonsense, comfort words in German. She’d flinched and moved away from him, staring at him as if he’d asked her to go down on him in front of the crowd. He’d stepped away.

Lori’s friend Kristy had been there that day, had shoved him back towards her. “Don’t let her push you away. She needs you.”

After the brief ceremony, where a couple of Garrett’s old friends from school had spoken, he stuck by Lori’s side, determined to help her through this even if she thought she didn’t need him. The petite, shockingly beautiful woman he’d noted earlier made her way over to them. He’d gotten Lori a cup of coffee, but her hands shook so badly he’d taken it from her and found her a seat. The entire staff of Brockton Brewing had turned out and was more or less gathered around her. The woman had strode up, taken off her sunglasses revealing bloodshot dark brown eyes. She’d ignored him, knelt in front of Lori’s chair.

“You’re Lori, right?” The strong southern lilt to her voice made Eli tense. He’d heard the ex-wife story and figured Lori knew it, as well. She’d barely nodded. The small woman had gripped her hands. Eli had stepped closer as if he could somehow shield Lori from what came next. “He loved you.” The woman stared into Lori’s eyes.

“Y-y-yes.” Lori had stammered. Eli had put a hand on her shoulder, glared at the model-perfect ex-Mrs. Hunter. She continued ignoring him.

To his surprise, the woman had leaned in and pressed a kiss to Lori’s pale cheek. “I should have never let him go, but I’m glad he found you. He deserved happiness.” Lori had stood and stumbled out then. And had not returned. But everyone had let it go, as if it were to be expected. The sisters had turned out to be pretty cool, and the ex had chatted with him a bit. She left after about an hour, put a hand on his arm as she headed for the door.

“Take care, Eli.” She’d given him a social hug. “Take care of her. She’ll need you.” She’d glided out, leaving a breath of expensive perfume and sorrow trailing behind her.

Eli gulped back anger. Damn it
he
had to get up every day and work. Lori needed to get a fucking grip. It was the only way to get on with it, to move forward. What were the options? He stood, yanked open the storm door, and bashed in the small glass partition over the door knob, using his gloves as defense against injury. The noise of breaking glass was loud and definitive. He reached in and flipped open the deadbolt, whistled for the dog, and went inside.

Lori opened her eyes again and stared at the same ceiling, the same four walls of her bedroom and felt the same dull pain in her chest—the space Garrett would always occupy. That distinctly empty area hurt so badly it put her through periods of breathless dismay alternating with murky black bouts of pure fury. He had a fucking nerve, just … dying on her like that.

She put a hand on the hard bump that had developed under her shirt. A weird feathery sensation brushed against her hand. She gasped and sat. It happened again—a sort of eyelash like flutter, the bat of a butterfly’s wings, the whisper of leaves against a window.

“Oh.” She stood, hoping to dispel the thing. To make it stop. To ignore the inevitable. The nausea that had gripped her for weeks had released its chokehold. Her appetite had not returned. She was lucky to remember to eat. And did it lately mainly to feed the thing inside her. The baby, she forced herself to call it that.
It
. The one thing she had of Garrett, but she found herself hating
It
, resentful that
It
was here and
he
was not.

But, until this moment, she could think of
It
as just that. As nothing. As something that made her want to puke twenty four seven. As the thing that made her dizzy, made her trip and fall. Made Garrett rush to the airport. Made him fucking dead. The thing inside her had no form, function or purpose.
It
was just there and essentially not there. Like clouds. Or fog. Or poisonous gas.

But now. She gasped and gripped her stomach again acknowledging its new and not insubstantial heft under her palm. It had certainly sprung to life in the last thirty minutes.

She shut her eyes and let tears flow. How in the hell did she even have tears left? Could a person cry themselves dry?

She kept remembering Garrett’s house the day after the complete torture of the memorial service. The overwhelming memories had suffocated her as she drove up, parked, gripped the steering wheel. The pain coiled like a live thing, beating in her chest. How could she possibly walk up there? Go in that door? The “before and after Garrett” division in her brain had already cut a deep groove. She did not want to go near it.

She’d startled when someone knocked on her car window. A small girl with Garrett’s deep green eyes had stood there, hands on her hips. “Who are you?” She’d demanded. Lori had climbed out, made her apologizes, stumbled up to the front door, nearly gagging on the throat closing agony of need for him. She’d rushed through introductions refusing to commit his sisters’ names to memory, agreed to arrange for the piano to be removed, and wandered into the kitchen. When she saw the photo pinned under a magnet on the fridge she’d nearly fainted.

The sisters had sobbed a lot, laughed some, then sobbed again. A strange emotion resembling righteous jealousy had surged through her. Those women had known him for his nearly forty one years. She’d gritted her teeth at the totally inappropriate emotion and glared at the picture. Then had slumped against the counter and tried not to crumple the image of Garrett’s laughing face in her fist. God damn him to hell and back. What was he thinking? Since when did he text and drive? Christ.

Lori recalled the exact moment when the lights started to flicker at the edges of her vision. One of the sisters had handed her a glass of water. Lori had stared at like it had been a vial of arsenic. “I’m pregnant.” Her voice had cracked, broken, and she’d sobbed as the women gathered her in, soothed her, promised to stay in touch, to give her anything she wanted out of the house. As long as she got rid of that piano of course.

She’d wiped her eyes. “Garrett told me one of your daughters used it. Liked it.” The women had looked down, but one of them met her eyes. “Take it.” She mumbled. “I can’t. I just…can’t.”

She’d rushed out of his house, photo shoved in her pocket, nausea rising, making her sweat, needing fresh air. A hand gripped her arm as she reached for the front door. “Lori. Stop, please.”

She’d turned, her vision completely obscured by yet more fucking tears.

“Here,” the woman pressed a business card into her hand. “We loved him so much. We really want, I mean, we need to know his child, if that’s okay with you.” Lori had nodded at the unnamed sister, and jumped in her car without a word, like a coward. Some part of her knew they knew—that she had betrayed their brother her last days here in Michigan. She had hidden at home since.

She emerged only to go to the doctor, to listen to the eerie swoosh-swoosh of a heartbeat, to watch as the doctor’s lips moved saying words about eating, exercise, water, Lamaze classes, all sorts of shit Lori refused to accept. Then she’d go home, gulp down some tea and collapse, letting her tangled dreams of Garrett, Eli, babies, hop vines, breweries, tumble around in her head until thirst forced her up into the kitchen again.

The wild movements under her hand continued, followed by a rush of painful, ravenous hunger so intense she moaned. She rose and stumbled into the kitchen the exact moment a gloved hand punched through her back door fumbling around for the lock and pushing the door open. She frowned at the sight of Eli, the one who still lived, standing in her messy kitchen, judging her.

She watched him breathe in, breathe out taking in what he saw. Her kitchen looked like the aftermath of a bad college party. Her wild, dirty hair lay in snarls around her face. She floated in sweats, the hard bump under her hand hidden by folds of fleece. Her voice was creaky from disuse.

“Get out.” She muttered, making for the fridge. “Now.”

“No.” He stood, arms crossed over his chest. “Let’s get this cleaned up. Time to get it together.”

“Fuck you. Go away.” She pulled out a suspicious looking container of yogurt, then tossed it in the bin. Her stomach growled so loud the dog whined at the sound. She grabbed one of the many containers of food people had brought her, tossed it in the microwave and poured a huge glass of milk. The thought of milk made her salivate so hard she was concerned that spit might leak out of her mouth. She gulped it down. Poured another glass. “Why are you still here,” she muttered, facing away from him. “I don’t need you.”