Release (29 page)

I’m over-happy with this
choice of Dane’s. To think that I’m always on his mind and that I drive him
crazy. That makes us even, because that’s exactly what he does to me.

In these moments it’s us,
the rhythm, and the words. Anything outside is non-existent. No past. No
future. Just now. Just us.

The song comes to an end.
“No more dancing,” Dane states, gently in my ear.

I turn to him, fake pouting.
“I’m not ready to sleep yet.”

His right brow arches. “Sure
about that?” I nod. “I know something we can do, then. Take a seat.” He’s
smiling, relaxed, and we’re in a good place. I feel good.

Sitting down, I play with
some strands of my hair and wait whilst Dane fiddles with the DVD player. As he
approaches me, his grin has me raising an eyebrow, mimicking his expression
from a moment ago. There’s something about the way he’s– my eyes widen and I
gasp in absolute horror!

There’s only one woman who
can be responsible for what I’m seeing on the TV screen.

“Where is everybody?” I ask, walking into Saffron’s
kitchen.

The place smells of honeyed
ham and a radio talk show provides the entertainment.

“Joe’s with Jack and
Nathaniel in the backyard, the boys have developed an interest in snails so
they’re looking for one. Adam’s upstairs putting together Nathaniel’s new bed.
I’m surprised you’re all even with it after last night.”

“We weren’t that bad.” I
walk over to the patio door and look out to the backyard, and sure enough, the
two boys and Joe are crouched down by the bushes, looking in the mud.

“Heard all about the
shenanigans,” Saff says.

“What, Brooklyn and her
friends thinking they were the new Charlie’s Angels?” 

She stifles her laugh,
knowing I don’t find it funny. I wish I could. “Getting caught up in an almost
cat fight was quite erotic according to Gerard. He crashed here last night.”

“I doubt Kayla would agree
with him.” I glance back out at the yard. “Looks like they’ve had success,” I
call to Saffron.

She walks over and stops
beside me and smiles when she sees Joe holding up a snail for Nathaniel and
Jack to inspect. Their little faces are eager and curious.

“I would love to be their
age right now,” I say. I’d like to have a simple thing like a snail to focus
on.

“I often think that. Where’s
Brooklyn?” she asks, turning her gaze up to me.

“She’s sleeping.”

“Is she at your place?”

“Yup, and so will I be once
I’ve spoken with you. Adam said you’re worried – even after I told you you
don’t need to be.”

“What was up with you
yesterday? You barely spoke to Brooklyn or me after your talk with Elizabeth.
Then I hear you’re out on your own with the guys – that wasn’t the plan when I
left you. We never hide things from each other, and I know you’re keeping
something from me. Talk to me, Dane.”

We do usually share all the
important stuff, but some things are better left alone. I really would rather
go hunt snails.

 “Look, there’s nothing
to be concerned about. I’m just trying to get this right, but it isn’t easy.
Last night I let her go home to try and give her space, instead of keeping her
with me at every opportunity, and look what happened there.”

Turning away from the door,
I head over to the dining table and pull up a chair. Saffron sits with me.

“At least you’re trying,
right?” she says, understanding.

“Sometimes I think I should
let her go. I figure sooner rather than later. At least it’d be on my terms.”
That’s what I keep trying to convince myself to do.

Saffron laughs at me. “Let
her go? You’re pointlessly torturing yourself if you’re thinking like that. No
way could you end it, you’re way too into her.” 

“I didn’t say it would be
easy, but I’m not good for her. Not with the way my mind is working. I don’t
know how long I can fight with myself, it’s constant and it’s driving me
insane. Six weeks. Just six weeks and we’ve already reached a depth I feel like
I’m drowning in and I can’t seem to find my way up to the surface. How the hell
did this all happen? I didn’t want it. I still don’t.”

The patio doors open and Joe
walks in, his fingers muddy. The boys are lingering at the door with excitement
all about their faces. They have a snail each. Useful timing.

“Whatcha got there?’ I ask,
grabbing my getaway. Standing up from my chair, I know Saffron’s unimpressed
with me for being evasive. I walk out to the kids to check out their
fascination. Crouching down to get nearer to their height, I take a closer
inspection.

“Look!” Nathaniel says,
holding up his new little friend.

“That’s awesome, dude,” I
reply, over enthusiastically. Regardless of not wanting my own, and even though
I’ve seen it to be challenging, kids are fun. A lot of fun.

Joe comes back out with a
plastic container in his grasp. He kneels down next to me.

“Are they keeping them?” I
ask him.

“For now, not forever,” he
answers, emphasizing the last two words for the boys’ sakes. “They’ve named
them,” he tells me.

“What’ve they named them?”

“Dad and Dad,” he says, with
humor in his eyes.

I laugh. They’ve named their
snails after their dads. Now that’s a complement, I’m sure Joe and Adam always
wanted to have slimy snails named after them. I chuckle again, so does Joe.

I watch the kids put their
Dads
in the container and then they add soil and grass. It’s like one of those
miniature gardens in a tub. Glancing behind me, I see saffron standing at the
patio doors and I know I need to speak with her. The last thing I want to do is
talk, but I can’t leave her concerned.

“You may as well get it over
with,” Joe says to me, fully understanding the situation with Saff.

“I know.”

“Brooklyn cool?”

“Yeah. Thanks for taking
care of the other stuff.” Handling the situation with that piece of shit last
night.

“No probs.”

After sliding the doors
shut, I sit down with my sister.

“You’re being too hard on
yourself. You’re not exactly forcing Brooklyn into anything.”

“I know, but I’m using her
insecurities to my advantage. That’s not right.”

“It works for you both. For
your own reasons, you both need things to be the way they are. Personally, I
don’t see the harm, not if the two of you are happy with each other. And you
are, regardless of anything else.”

Fuck it, tell it like it is.
“I can’t deal with L.A., Saff.” I look at her, and her gaze moves from me. I’ve
got her on this one.

“It’ll be fine,” she says,
with less of her usual determination. “It won’t be easy, but it will be fine.”

We sit in silence, which
isn’t ideal, because it’s giving me time to think. I stand up from the chair.
“I better go in case Brooklyn wakes up.”

Out front, as I mount my
motorcycle, Saffron approaches. Before I key the ignition she loops her arms
around my shoulders. I lean in closer, hugging her back. She always smells of
vanilla from her body lotion and Sunshine Fresh from her fabric softener.

In my ear she whispers
softly, but confidently. “Everything is going to work out perfectly. Please
believe that.”

“I feel like I’m going
crazy, Saff.”

Her arms tighten around me.
“Stop being so closed to me. Don’t keep it all in your head, let it out. Please
don’t fail to see how happy you and Brooklyn make each other.”

“The older you get the more
like Elizabeth you sound. The more you kick my ass, too. The ass kicking is
definitely payback, right?”

“For sure, big brother, it’s
my turn now. I’m gonna keep on kicking that butt of yours until you’re right
where I want you to be. You’re headed for it. Just keep going and let me and
the rest of your family be there for you when it gets hard.”

I arrive home from work, ditch my jacket, helmet and
boots at the door, and head straight for the kitchen to grab a beer from the
fridge.

Sitting on the sofa, after
sucking some down, I hold up my half-empty bottle and weigh up how wise it
would
not
be for me to lose myself to this shit tonight. I’ve got a
bunch of Buds in the fridge and some quality bourbon, unopened, so it wouldn’t
be a hard thing to do. But it’s not wise. It’s Monday and I have work again
tomorrow.

Ten minutes later, I’m on my
second Bud. I have to stop soon. Fuck, I wish I had something other than
tobacco to smoke. Come to think of it. I reach for my cell.

Two hours later, I’m out on
the balcony with Joe sitting on the chair next to me. I didn’t have weed, but
he did, so here we are, each with a joint in hand, and the aroma of some
satisfying marijuana surrounding us and a semi-euphoric state setting in.
There’s a chill in the night air but, with sweaters and jackets on, that’s no
issue.

Parting my lips, I free the
smoke within my lungs as I sink lower down into this hard, plastic chair, and
ask my buddy, “How often do you think about Callie?”

My gaze fixed on the sky,
I’m aware of Joe looking at me now. He wasn’t expecting me to ask that. I
wasn’t, either, it just came out almost as soon as the thought arrived. This is
a topic we never really discuss these days. Nothing like a little weed to bring
whatever’s going on in your head to the surface. Hopefully it’ll all stay the
fuck out after. Yeah, right.

“Every damn day,” he
replies, as he puts his joint to his lips. The crackling of the weed and paper,
as he inhales, becomes the only sound.

“How do you do it? It’s got
to be hell.”

“I’ve lost count of the
number of times I’ve come close to getting on my bike and riding to Scottsdale.
Or getting on the first plane out there, just to be there sooner. It’s not
really an option, not if she isn’t ready to accept Jack.” He shifts forward,
resting his elbows on his knees.

“I don’t know how you do
it.”

I never did, but now I
really don’t understand it. The woman he loves is a single flight or a
motorcycle ride away. But then, that little man of his comes with a connection
I can’t even begin to relate to.

“How
I
do it?” he
asks, looking at me over his shoulder. “After what happened with you and Nadine
you say that?” He leans back in his seat, gazing at me.

“I had no choice after she
stopped being mine.”

“Fuck,” Joe mutters, finger
combing his hair back from his eyes. “Fuck, man.”

I sigh, contemplating how to
express where my head is at. “The end of Nadine and me was the end of me and
anybody else until seven weeks ago. It was so easy disconnecting emotionally
from every single female I’ve fucked, because I didn’t want to go there again.

“With Brooklyn I haven’t
been able to do that and all I can feel, instead, is this brutal need to keep
her and do whatever’s necessary to make that so – prevent anything that might
get in the way of that. I didn’t even want her to go to fucking L.A. If her
dancing wasn’t so important to her, I probably would’ve found myself demanding
that she stay here. When she’s with me it’s like I have some control over the
situation, but with her there, or anywhere else, I can’t do shit.

“I guess that’s why I don’t
know how you do it when Callie’s so close. But you’ve got Jack, so maybe I do
get it.”

Joe exhales smoke, slowly.
“He’s number one ahead of everything, so I don’t have a choice. I can’t make
Callie take him on. It isn’t easy, not going to her, but my boy makes it
possible. I don’t even give a fuck that she’s with another dude now, I’d still
go to her, but the situation will stay as it is until she’s ready to change it.
I understand her decisions, but I was fucking pissed at her for a while after
she first left.”

Now I’m the one staring at
him, the same way he just did me. “For real? You didn’t show it. I wouldn’t
have thought you were capable of being pissed at her.”

“It was mostly when I was
drunk, man. Hell, I did a lot of drinking for a couple months. I wanted it all
out of my head – the baby, Callie and how fucking close we were to making it.
Instant fail, dude, inebriation didn’t do shit – in fact it did the opposite,
it gave me time to think. The last thing I wanted was to talk about it, though,
so I didn’t. And I was mostly pissed at myself – I’m the one who fucked up.”

“Why do we always do this?
After all these years it’s the same crap, we have shit going on and don’t talk
about it until way later. Gerard, Adam and me, we should’ve been right there
getting wasted with you, man.”

Joe chuckles. “The
responsible approach. Getting wasted
with
me – not stopping me. I like
that. Maybe that would’ve worked better, sure as shit I wouldn’t have had all
that time to think.”

 “And right there’s my
point. Nothing like getting hammered in the company of friends to keep the shit
out of your head that you don’t want there.” I’d be getting drunk right now if
I didn’t have work tomorrow.

He laughs again. “Instead of
Saff always holding us together. That girl is mean. I got totally wasted one
night and the next day she was right there poking me. Fucking poking me. She’s
like, “Enough is enough, if you don’t get your butt up and in the shower and
shave, I’m calling your mom and she’ll come kick your ass instead. No, I’ll go
one better. I’ll get Julianne here, and you know what she does to hungover
boys.””

Oh, hell, I laugh so damn
hard. I almost fall off my fucking chair. “Hungover
boys?
Mother fuck.
Leave it to Saff, right?” Where the hell did my joint go? My gaze sweeps the
ground around me, searching.

“It damn well worked,” Joe
says, picking it up from under my seat and handing it back to me. “She almost
got me with my mom, but Julianne? Hell no.”

We settle back down and I
light up again, taking a deep pull.

“It was all pretty messed up
with Callie and me from the start, but I guess a couple things have helped me
keep my head straight, in addition to Jack.

“That photography blog Su
told us about is my way of keeping an eye on her. There isn’t a single picture
of her on there, not that I fucking need one, but everything on that site is
her, because it’s hers – the pictures, the words she writes – and in a way that
makes me feel close to her. She’s always putting new stuff up. I felt like a total
freakin’ weirdo when I first started going on there.”

I can’t help chuckling at
that. “I know that feeling.
I
felt like a total freakin’ weirdo when
Brooklyn first came on the scene. Man, I watched
all
the stuff on
YouTube with her in it from the TV show she was on.”

All accept for the ones
which focused on her getting injured. Even then, when I didn’t know she’d be
mine, I didn’t want to see that girl in any kind of pain, physical or
emotional.

“That makes me feel better,”
Joe says, smiling. “Not so freakin’ weird.”

“I’ve checked out Callie’s
blog myself, several times. She’s still a part of our group until she confirms
otherwise. It’s more like a time out or something.”

“Right?” Joe says. “And
that’s the other thing. I don’t feel like we’re totally done. Maybe I’m
deluding myself, but I don’t. It can’t all have been for nothing. That’s why it
was never gonna work with Emily. It wasn’t fair to stay with her knowing that.”

“You did the right thing
trying, though, Jack deserved for you to at least give it a shot. I’m one
hundred percent sure Callie will be back. There’s no way she doesn’t still love
you, even if she is with another man right now. It all comes down to her being
ready.”

“You meeting Brooklyn’s not for nothing, either. In
fourteen years, and after fuck knows how many women, she’s the only one who’s
come along and smashed the shit out of your defenses – and that’s without her
even trying. No way is it for nothing; she’s yours for keeps, brother. Work
through this stuff, her insecurities and your worries. Do what you have to do,
and be together.”

****

In the drive, by the open garage door, I’m standing
with Ray’s Roadmaster in front of me, upright and supported by the kickstand.
It’s tan colored with two brown leather seats, the one at the rear fitted
by his own hands, specially for me.
Not a hint of
wear and tear
about this antique. You could easily believe it was only just built. Even in
the current times, people are customizing and restoring these motorcycles, so
they’re still around, but not many look like the one in front of me. I’ll make
sure it stays this way.  

“You did it,” Elizabeth
says, coming to a stop beside me.

I gaze down at her. The
smile on her face washes away the years. Whenever I look at Elizabeth I see
someone who’s conquered all that life has thrown at her. I never see age, but
right now she has a vibrancy about her that I haven’t seen since … I guess the
first time she saw Nathaniel, minutes after he was born.

The amazing woman standing
beside me is the greatest example of pure, unconditional love. I don’t even
like to imagine what mine and Saffron’s lives might’ve been like if she and Ray
hadn’t stepped in after we lost our parents. They really were the next best
thing.

If I’d known fixing the bike
would’ve put a smile like that on Elizabeth’s face, I’d have done it a long
time ago. It never occurred to me that she might want it fixed; she’s never
given me that impression. So selfless, and I wish
I
had been more
selfless.

“I’m sorry it’s taken me so
long.”

“I’m happy you finally
allowed yourself to do it. I always knew you would when the time was right. How
have the past couple of days been?”

“Busy with work.”

Beth doesn’t say anything.
That isn’t what she was asking.

“I’m dealing with it. Will
you ride with me?”

“I would love to.” She slips
her arm through mine, and I lead her into the garage, to the closet at the
rear.

Five minutes later,
Elizabeth’s all kitted out in the stuff she used to wear when she rode with her
husband. With that helmet, those goggles, the gloves, and the scarf around her
neck, she looks like something that’s just stepped out of a 1970s movie.
Beautiful.