Page 22

Indy

Friday arrived, and little had changed.

Loren never did pick back up on the Truth or Dare game, and he steered clear of our bed.

I had spent too many nights like that after getting out of rehab.

Tossing and turning in mental turmoil about all the things I didn’t know or understand.

Now that I had the answers I’d been so desperately seeking, the whole thing pissed me off.

It was punishment for sure, and Loren knew exactly what he was doing.

So, I wore lingerie, doused myself in perfume, and pranced around the trailer with my ass out like a dog in heat.

I didn’t want sex per se, but I would let him rail me if that’s what it took to thaw the icy wall between us.

When solicitation didn’t work, I changed tactics.

I answered the silence with noise.

I blasted old country music and put Rhinestone on the TV.

Then I found my commemorative DVD from the Saddle Studs show and played it on a loop.

I was so obnoxious I irritated even myself, but Loren didn’t crack.

He managed to make our tiny trailer seem vast, bloated with tension and our opposing stubbornness.

Sully was wrong. He was mad at me, but that was better than resigned.

As for the hellhound hunt, Nero and his witch, and Evander, little had changed there, either.

So little that I didn’t worry about venturing to the community center and leaving a note on the fridge to let Loren know where I’d gone.

Since I’d spent the past few days giving him hell on earth, he was probably grateful for a break.

I found parking a couple blocks away and checked the area for bloodthirsty hellhounds or stalker angels.

The passing pedestrians appeared to be mundane, so I joined the stream of foot traffic headed toward the community center.

Being late was only fashionable at parties.

At Anonymous meetings, it was tacky.

If I was going to be tacky, though, at least I looked good doing it.

In a pleated tennis dress and white trainers, it was little wonder I drew stares when I walked in and stopped by the refreshment table for a macadamia nut cookie and a cup of lemonade.

The moderator recited the minutes of the last meeting like we were a bunch of businessmen instead of jittery crackheads.

I tuned him out while I guzzled my first serving of lemonade.

Since the Styrofoam cups weren’t much bigger than shot glasses, my thirst was far from quenched.

I was going for a refill when teddy bear Travis sidled up to me.

“Hey, Indy,” he greeted while stacking a napkin with a trio of assorted cookies.

I grunted and trained my attention on the lemonade pouring from the pitcher.

I’d shut him down once already; maybe I’d been too kind.

“I’m a taken man, Trav,” I said.

“Spoken for. Committed.”

Travis blushed through his bearded cheeks.

“I know. I just thought you might want someone to sit with. There’s an open chair next to mine.”

He gestured with his cookie-bearing hand to the back row.

All five chairs were empty, and they were the only ones.

Full house for free therapy tonight.

It might have been awkward to sit next to my not-so-secret admirer, but I didn’t really want to do this alone.

So, I flashed a crooked smile and followed Travis to our seats.

With the minutes revisited and the Serenity Prayer recited, the moderator opened the floor for personal sharing time.

I had yet to participate in that, and I didn’t intend to start tonight.

My story was not one that could be doled out to a crowd of strangers who would think I was crazy.

Or high. In the case of about half of the meetings I’d attended, they wouldn’t have been wrong.

No one else volunteered, and I didn’t trust the moderator not to start calling names, so I stuffed my mouth with cookie as an excuse for my silence and waited for the show to start.

“Anyone?” The moderator scanned over the crowd.

“This is an open forum. We’re all here to show support. I promise you will be understood and accepted.”

Scuffling feet and clothes swishing against metal chairs answered him.

I tipped my lemonade cup to my mouth, so I couldn’t see much of anything, but I heard footsteps entering from the hall, and the moderator issuing a canned greeting.

“Welcome. Sit anywhere; we’re just getting started.”

Since the only available chairs were next to Travis and me, I was not surprised when the stranger settled beside me.

I was surprised—make that stunned—when I glanced over and saw that it wasn’t a stranger at all.

He faced forward, studiously fixed on the moderator pacing the front of the room and avoiding eye contact with me.

Loren.

Dark hair spilled over his shoulders in gorgeous, glossy waves.

Olive skin blanketed his sharp nose and cheekbones and framed lips that were so, so soft.

His clothes were soft, too.

Touchable, and I wanted to be bundled up in him.

I ached for it.

But he was mad at me, and I was mad at him.

Or mad at myself. Or the universe.

Or, fuck all, I didn’t know.

So, I stared at him like I hadn’t seen him an hour ago.

Because I’d spent every free moment this week trying to get as close to him as I was now.

“Hi, baby,” I whispered.

My hand hovered in the air between us, reaching toward him but not daring to touch.

He’d come this far, unasked and uninvited.

I wouldn’t risk driving him away.

I was absorbed in him, though.

Sniffing for his cologne like I was the hound and deaf to the rest of the room until a voice piped up on the other side of me.

“Guess it’s my turn.”

I looked over to find the pudgy bear of a man on his feet, clutching his mini tower of cookies.

“Hi, everybody,” he said to the room.

“I’m Travis.”

“Hi, Travis,” came the programmed response.

He smiled sheepishly.

Visible nerves were crawling all over him.

“Uh, where to start?” he mumbled.

No one answered the rhetorical question, which left him shuffling and shifting the cookies until he began at last.

“I’ve been clean for a year and a half, but getting here wasn’t easy.” He scrubbed his blunt nails against the side of his head.

“It started with painkillers after my back surgery. I was laid off work and kinda depressed. The pills made me feel better. Not just physically.”

When he looked over and caught me staring, his cheeks splotched red.

“I-I got a new job but couldn’t keep it,” he continued, a little unsteady.

“Then, I got another. Lost that one, too. After six months, my wife moved out. Said she’d come back when I got my shit together.”

It came as a surprise that bicurious Travis was married.

But, more than shock, I was horrified that Loren was privy to this sob story.

If Travis’s wife gave up after half a year, how did Loren feel after putting up with my bullshit for decades?

I wanted to clap my hands over his ears so he didn’t get any ideas.

Or grab him and drag him out the door.

NA meetings were for addicts, anyway.

Not their partners. He didn’t need to hear this shit.

“That’s when I hit rock bottom,” Travis continued.

“I couldn’t afford the rent on our apartment, so I got evicted. Lost everything. Been living with my buddy ever since, and I finally got clean long enough to hold down a job. I rebuilt my savings account and told my wife I was gonna replace our stuff. She told me to go ahead and replace her, too.”

He said the last bit so casually that I would have missed it if Loren wasn’t right there .

If we hadn’t spent the last week wordlessly bickering and sleeping apart.

My stomach flipped, and I clenched my empty fists.

Shut the fuck up, Travis.

Shut your sad mouth and sit down.

Travis finished his story on a happier note, but it sounded off-key to me.

Eighteen months of sobriety had earned him nothing but a spot on his friend’s couch, a shitty minimum-wage job, and a future filled with lonely nights.

While everyone else applauded, I sat still.

I didn’t even finish my cookie.

After the meeting ended, the room began to empty, but Loren and I stayed seated.

My plans to capitalize on a moment of privacy were foiled when Travis stood and leaned around me to thrust his hand toward Loren.

“Hey, man. Haven’t seen you before. Are you?—?”

“This is the guy I was telling you about.” I chased Loren to standing, then hooked my arm around his.

“My boyfriend.”

“Glad you came,” Travis said.

He seemed to mean it.

“Support is so critical, you know? Sobriety is hard to do alone.”

My jaw tightened.

Guilt and anger tumbled around in my brain like laundry in the dryer.

I wasn’t alone. Loren didn’t leave me; I left him.

Freshly fucked and sleeping, tucked in bed where he finally felt safe.

I was the one wasting everyone’s time with rehab and meetings when I’d never quit and was growing increasingly worried I never would.

The dumpster juice ruining my slippers was the definition of karmic justice because I was trash, and I wouldn’t blame Loren if he wanted to dispose of me.

Replace me. Shit.

I bobbed my head to Travis’s statement and used my grip on Loren’s arm to tug him toward the exit.

“Great story, Trav,” I said over my shoulder.

“Real brave and all that.”

We were nearly to the door when Travis’s voice rang out.

“I’d like to hear your story sometime, Indy. Whenever you’re ready.”

My story?

I didn’t even know where it began.

Where I began. Or which version of me was the right one.

I was different yet the same, changing by the decade while somehow not changing at all.

Having perspective on my lives didn’t mean I had a grasp of them.

They were gapped and cracked with fissures so wide I could fall into them and be more lost than I ever was.

Leading Loren down the hall, I glanced at the braided strip of sweater thread around my wrist. That fragile tether held me together, but my pieces had jagged edges, and they were swiftly cutting through.

Cutting me and Loren.

Tearing us apart.

So, I cinched my grip around Loren’s elbow as he stepped ahead to open the door out of the community center.

I felt the need to say any of the things I should have said instead of making a menace of myself the last few days cooped up in the trailer.

But, when I opened my mouth, meaningful words escaped me.

“You wanna get something to eat?” I asked, echoing Travis’s offer to me the last time I’d been here.

“Sure,” Loren replied.

My heart fluttered. I could have hugged him for that one word.

For showing up here uninvited.

Because sobriety was fucking hard, and I didn’t want to do it alone.

We walked down the street, bathed in lamplight.

After a few blocks, Loren slid his arm free of my grasp and took my hand instead.

He didn’t say anything and kept his attention fixed ahead, but damn it if he didn’t keep coming back for me.

Lifetime after lifetime.

Fuckup after fuckup.

Without any kind of discussion, we somehow agreed on a place to eat.

We ducked into a little ice cream parlor about half a mile from the community center.

It was a family-owned joint we’d frequented over the years.

Besting Baskin Robbins by offering thirty- two flavors.

Inside, the walls above the white beadboard were pink and adorned with sprinkle decals in every shade of the pastel rainbow.

The air smelled like freshly cooked waffle cones.

Round tables and chairs were arranged down the long edge of the rectangular space, and the linoleum tile floor squeaked under my trainers.

I pressed my sweaty palm against Loren’s as we stepped up to the counter and perused the freezer cabinet.

The flavors ranged from ordinary to extreme and came in a rainbow of colors.

I could have recited Loren’s order from my shiny, new memory.

He was unfailingly predictable, and it made me grin when he told the employee exactly what I knew he would.

“One scoop of butter pecan in a cup, please.”

Since the 1960s.

Butter pecan. Thirty-two fabulous flavors, and he went for the one going freezer-burnt and forgotten by everyone under the age of sixty.

God, I loved him.

Forever the opposite, I tried something new.

Coconut Cream Extreme in a chocolate-dipped waffle cone.

Loren paid, then we made our way to a two-seater table where we scooted in until our knees knocked into each other.

Loren worked through his ice cream in small bites, dodging my gaze despite sitting directly across from me.

I licked around the top of my cone, catching drips and nibbling on strips of coconut.

It was like a date. A strained, silent date, and I found myself needing to talk again.

Pop the bubble of quiet and let out everything inside.

I could have started with thank you.

Or sorry. Instead, I mumbled, “Not our best run. This lifetime.”

Loren paused with his spoon nearly to his mouth.

He raised a brow.

“It’s been better than this,” I said.

“It usually is.”

Slowly, he rested his spoon atop the scoop of Butter Pecan, then stared at it, unwilling to hold my gaze.

“It’s always a little like this,” he murmured.

“For you?” I asked.

“For us.”

My lips bent in a frown.

I remembered joy. Laughter.

Cuddles and kisses on cozy nights.

I remembered the way he looked at me, the way he was trying not to look at me now.

Travis and his wife must have been happy at some point.

Blissful newlyweds who vowed to endure better or worse.

They were nice words until worse slapped you in the face.

Worse ruined things for a lot of people.

Coconut Cream Extreme ran down the side of my cone and puddled on the side of my finger.

I could have licked it off but, instead, I let it sit.

Cool and wet. Unpleasant.

It felt fitting for the conversation.

“Do you ever wanna leave?” I asked.

“Go farther than, yanno,” I shrugged, “the parking lot?”

“Leave you?” He didn’t hesitate nearly long enough.

It wasn’t a novel thought.

I nodded, and he shook his head.

“I don’t leave, Indy.”

You do.

That was the implication.

The same revelation I’d had at the community center.

I died. I left. I came back.

He stayed.

The ice cream kept melting, coating my hand.

I didn’t want it anymore, and Loren appeared to have similarly lost his appetite.

I motioned toward his cup.

“You done?”

He nodded and pushed it toward me so I could turn my cone upside down on top of his Butter Pecan.

Grabbing a few napkins from the tabletop dispenser, I wiped my hands clean, then sat and picked at the hem of my dress while that bubble of silence refilled.

I hated it. I hated this.

And talking hadn’t fixed it.

Maybe the talking was the problem.

Maybe I needed to listen for once.

“You had a question, didn’t you?” I asked.

Loren peered at me past a lock of hair that had fallen across his face.

“At Sully’s,” I explained.

“You said you wanted the truth. What about?”

Loren braced his hands on the tabletop with his palms flat, fingers splayed.

When he looked at me, his eyes were round and guileless.

“Do you love me?” he whispered.

“What?” The word whooshed out of me like I’d been gut-punched.

I was glad to be sitting because otherwise the genuine uncertainty on his face would have taken my legs out from under me.

I recovered myself enough to say, “Why would you ask that?”

Loren squirmed in his seat, and his gaze fell into his lap.

“You haven’t said it. Not since I’ve been back. Not in this lifetime.”

I gawked, shocked and stammering, “That can’t be true…”

My head was full of too many thoughts, but I searched for that one.

The assurance that of course I’d told him I loved him.

I said it all the time.

Couldn’t keep it to myself.

But, somehow, in the days since he’d returned, I couldn’t recall it.

In the weeks before that when I hadn’t yet known him, I’d felt it.

I even swore to myself I would tell him as soon as I saw him again but, for as often as I thought it, dwelled on it, obsessed over it, I hadn’t spoken it aloud.

Before I could apologize or attempt to explain—there was no explanation, certainly no excuse—Loren continued.

“You remember me, you call me baby, you’ve slept with me, but you haven’t told me you actually love me.”

I let out a breath that could have been a word if I’d known what to say as he carried on.

“Maybe you don’t,” he said, and it sounded so final.

“Maybe you keep me around because I take care of you, and I look nice on your arm, and that’s it. Just your fuck buddy guard dog.”

A hundred years of history had brought us to this ?

How? What had gone so wrong to make him doubt me?

He was right to question a lot of things, but my love for him should never have been up for debate.

Reaching across the table, I grabbed his hands, and his eyes snapped up.

These moments of transparency were rare and brutally honest. They came as passing comments about the man who came before me or mentions of Moira and the way she treated him.

Feelings that had become part of his identity.

Like he was an object.

A status symbol. A pet.

My fingers tightened around his, and I shook my head vigorously.

“Lore, it’s not like that. I’m not like that.”

The wrinkles in his forehead deepened.

“I thought if you remembered, things would change, but?—”

“Baby, believe me,” I pleaded.

“I know now. I do remember, and it’s been better than this.” I was insisting now, talking louder as I went and drawing the attention of the customers gathered in front of the freezer counter.

“It can be better than this. I can be better. I can change?—”

“Okay.”

He cut me off while fighting a grimace.

His face said what he didn’t.

This was all too loud, too public, too painful.

I tugged on his hands, trying to draw him in as he started to pull away.

“I do love you,” I stammered.

Why hadn’t I started with that?

“I love you so much, I… I…”

“Okay,” he repeated, then stood.

That was the end of it.

Another chance at restitution had come and gone.

But this problem was bigger than I realized.

It couldn’t be fixed in one night, on one awkward date, and it couldn’t be mended with I love yous.

It would take work, and time and, despite being an immortal being, time was something I never had enough of.

I slumped in my seat while Loren took our leftovers to the trash can.

I waited, blinking my burning eyes and trying to breathe past the growing pressure in my chest. He walked to the door and waited until I rose and trudged after him, my sneakers squeaking through every step.

It hadn’t always been like this.

I was certain of that.

But, nipping at the heels of my confidence, was the truth in what Loren said.

It was always a little like this.

For him.

For us.

And I wasn’t sure if it was worse to think it might keep on being this way forever, or that it might stop.

That Loren would leave, and I would be alone because, like Travis had learned, things could be replaced but people could not.

I had lost my memories, my identity, and my life a dozen times over, but that man…

I looked over at Loren as he held the door for me.

I needed him, and I would give anything to keep him.

Even the drugs?

That was the question.

Would I sacrifice one constant in my life to have the other?

Of course, I would. I would give up the drugs and the high.

I wanted to.

I needed to.

But could I?

I hoped so.