Authors: Virginia Duke
Richard understood, "Well, y'all let us know if we can
help, okay?"
"Thanks so much, Richard. We appreciate it." She
smiled politely and kept digging, her heels clicking as her feet moved towards
the snack aisle in the back, calling back, "See y'all later."
She hated going anywhere for just that reason, she didn't
want to deal with strangers asking her questions, no matter how well-intended.
She had no idea if Michael's mother was serious about suing, she didn't know
many details about his condition, and even under ordinary circumstances it was
never easy to make sense of every exaggerated story and loosely strung together
piece of gossip that made its way through their town.
She slowed to scan the donuts, cupcakes and ding dongs,
needing sugar. She decided on a huge chocolate donut, a pack of chewing gum and
a roll of chocolate chip cookies from the shelf.
The front door bell rang again and people chattered
indistinctly on the other side of the store. She'd have to speed up her little
shopping trip if she didn’t want to talk to anybody else. Turning the corner for
the front, she dropped the chewing gum and knelt down to grab it, then
readjusted the purse strap on her shoulder, looked up and saw him there,
standing alone. The only other person in the aisle.
Dylan.
He hadn't seen her, he was looking down at his cell phone,
his free hand settled casually in the pocket of his heather gray pinstripe
slacks. The pink dress shirt was wrinkled where his suit jacket had covered it
earlier, his tie a bold blue with white pinstripes. The black shoes were
expensive, and so was his haircut. Professional, but long enough to see he
hadn't lost his rebellious streak, the light brown strands stained with blond,
he'd been in the sun over the summer. His hair always lightened when he spent
too much time outside. His clean, honeyed complexion was as flawless as she'd
remembered, and she shuttered, recalling the feel of her fingertips on the
smooth, hairless skin. Were his eyes still as blue?
Ding.
The front door bell. He looked up. Was that pain on his
face? Disgust? Why hadn't she turned and walked out before he noticed her?
She should flip him off and leave.
Too late. He slipped his phone into his pocket and started
towards her, bringing the other hand up to push his hair back. He was such a
cocky bastard.
She straightened her legs to stand, watched his small turn
of the lips, not quite a smile.
"Hello Rachel. It's nice to see you."
He was two feet away, but she felt his breath on her neck,
his voice in her ear.
Tell him he ruined your life, tell him you hate him.
He towered over her and she could smell him, a clean musky
body wash. She imagined her hands running through the soap on his chest. She
felt sick. Her hands shook, and she dropped the gum again.
"Rachel? Are you okay?"
Don't you dare sound concerned about me.
"Rachel?" he asked again, bending down to pick it
up for her.
"Yes. Hi. I'm sorry, how are you?"
"Do you need to sit down?" he reached for her
elbow to steady her, but her senses came flooding back, she didn't want him to
touch her.
"Fuck you!” she yelled, “Don’t touch me!"
She threw her breakfast on a counter and flew out of the
store, Richard calling after her, "Rachel, are you okay?"
***
Chrissy still hadn’t left the hospital. The attorney for
the district sent word they wanted to meet, the coaches and team wanted to
offer their sympathy and ask what they could do to support the family.
The players from both teams were still shaken up. But
Chrissy refused to go and he’d gone alone. It had given him an excuse to leave
the hospital. He hated being there, it made his skin crawl. Seeing Michael that
way, knowing the specialists would roll in any day and tell them to stop
praying, that it was all over.
Dylan knew it was bad, even if they hadn’t said it
explicitly, Michael wasn’t going to pull through.
Chrissy didn’t see it yet, she was still angry and
threatening everyone’s jobs, sitting with Michael and promising him all sorts
of motherly promises that only served to make herself feel better. He couldn’t
blame her though. Her heartbreak was his own, he understood what motivated her,
she wasn’t ready yet to see what he’d seen days ago. Michael was done here.
The district staff and the coaches had been polite,
sympathetic, but they’d spent most of the time fishing to see if they should
prepare for a lawsuit. Dylan assured them it wasn’t their intent, and offered
to find time to talk with the team in the next few weeks.
His head pounded after the meeting, he stopped at the
pharmacy on his way back to Houston to grab a bottle of water and something for
the headache. He was walking down the pain relief aisle when his phone buzzed
and he slowed to read the texts, but then the front door chimed again, and he
glanced up instinctively.
His jaw shut tight and the hair on his arms stood up, an
emotional electricity shooting through him at the sight of her. Seeing Rachel
that night, seeing her face in the paper, and then here she was again just days
later?
It had to be now, when he was at his most vulnerable? What
kind of a cruel joke was the universe playing on him? He hadn’t imagined he’d
run into her again this soon, he wasn’t ready. He could’ve been ready for the
gala, but he wasn’t ready to do this with her now.
He wanted to reach over and yank her by the hair, pull her
face to his, curse her for all the pain she’d caused. Curse her for moving on
with her life and starting a new family, for finding love somewhere else.
He wanted to punish her, make her understand, show her what
true suffering really felt like. It wasn’t the tears she’d cried over her
parents divorce or having to put her fucking horse to sleep. It was the torment
he’d felt after losing her, it was the tragedy he was living through now. And
she deserved to experience it for herself.
But like an ambush, his chest tightened, and his body
betrayed him, a magnet pulling him in her direction. He needed to be nearer to
her, holding her. Smelling her, touching her.
Rachel.
The long brown curls brushed against her bare arms as she
stood to greet him with cruel green eyes, and he nervously reached up to push
his hair back, desperate not to lose control, to reach out and hurt her.
Or touch her delicate pink mouth, her ivory skin. Would she
still feel as soft against him? Had she always been so beautiful? No, she was
more beautiful now. And he was bewildered by how the sight of her still managed
to hold him hostage.
This was the same bitch who destroyed him, and when he'd
finally found a restful place where she wouldn't pervade his life, when he'd
finally stopped looking for her everywhere he went, stopped imagining how
things could be now- she'd shown up again.
But she was different now. She seemed afraid, wounded. And
she screamed at him.
Fuck me?
Then she ran out, left him again with his grief and a
renewed promise of a life filled with loneliness and heartache.
***
Rachel ran the entire way to the car in her heels, jumping
over the cracked, uneven concrete on the sidewalk. It took her ten minutes to
catch her breath as she drove to Houston, straight to the Galleria where she
could disappear into a sea of people, smell the fried chicken coming from the
fast food shops, hear the laughter of the children on the ice rink, and maybe
get her hands to stop shaking.
Running into her piece of shit high school boyfriend hadn't
been on her agenda today, but she felt pretty good about it since she’d yelled,
“Fuck you,” when he tried to be nice to her. Even if she’d run out like a spaz
after she’d said it.
She was still shaking though, she needed to pull it
together before lunch.
Rachel couldn't afford to screw up lunch with this
potential donor. If they agreed to sponsor the fundraising gala, she might be
able to bring in enough revenue to break last year's record, and they really
needed to hire somebody to help coordinate the volunteers. Rachel didn’t want
to do it anymore. She’d started the ReachingOut website to help victims who
didn't have anywhere else to go, nobody to call, no way to talk to people who'd
been there and done that. The internet was the perfect forum for people to
share without the fear of their neighbors learning their dirty secrets, without
having to show people the bruises, without having to listen to how stupid they
were for staying. She'd lived and breathed that organization for ten years. But
she couldn’t listen to the damage that poured into her office anymore. She was
burning out, but she’d never leave, so if she was going to build out her
organization the way she dreamed, she’d need more help.
If she could just focus on the administrative side of
things, that would be manageable. They needed new blood, somebody who could
deal with the late night emails, stories about women losing their children to
abusive husbands in divorces, people being thrown through sliding glass doors,
broken arms, rape.
No wonder she never slept. She used to feel like she was
making a difference, but for every woman she knew who escaped a violent
relationship, she'd known six who hadn't. It weighed on her, and seeing Dylan
had pushed her too far outside her comfort zone.
If the world was going to stop coming to a standstill
everytime Rachel was faced with conflict, she would have to establish new
boundaries.
"Mrs. Daniels?"
She looked up from where she sat picking her fingernails,
and smiled at the middle-aged woman standing over her. She had a friendly face.
That was a good start, the Valium wasn’t working yet.
"Hello, yes, I'm Rachel Daniels.”
"I'm Nancy Taylor, I recognized you from the photo in
the Courier," and nodding to her companion, "One of my partners,
Edward Billings."
"It's so nice to meet you both, we appreciate you
wanting to hear more about ReachingOut," Rachel said, reaching to shake
their hands. Her hands were too sweaty, they would know she wasn't confident.
"A pleasure, may I call you Rachel?" Edward asked
politely, removing his suit jacket and placing it gently across his arm.
"Absolutely, please. Are y'all ready to eat? I'm
starving!"
She tried to remember Jake's big pointers on asking people
for money.
Start by disarming them with a trivial admission about
yourself, it makes you more likeable
.
A hostess showed them to their table and Rachel's guests
both ordered gin and tonics. It wasn't even noon. Her face must have shown her
surprise because Nancy laughed openly and placed her hand over Rachel's to put
her at ease.
"Don't worry, Rachel, we'll only have one. We don't
normally start with gin at a noon meeting. At least not on weekdays. We're
celebrating, we just settled a year-long civil litigation case we all thought
would drive us to early graves. I hope you don't mind."
"Of course not," Rachel said uncomfortably,
"Work hard, play hard, right? Let's hear about this big case."
And they did play hard. Rachel grew up around Texas
lawyers. Her father, Jameson, all of their lawyer friends worked long hours and
stayed up late boozing, telling war stories and ribbing one another about their
alma maters. It was what killed her father, working hard and playing hard.
"You got it, work hard, play hard," Edward winked
at her, "This one was profitable, but too time consuming, a disgruntled
government organization threatening a billion dollar company, regulatory
oversight bullshit. But I'm tired of talking about it, death to the disgruntled
government! Let's talk about ReachingOut. Our partner shared the article from
the Houston Courier and told us to write you a big check, but I hate to part
with my money unless I know there's a fishing trip or a hooker in it for me
somewhere."
"Edward," Nancy shot him a dirty look,
"Don't be an ass. Sorry, Rachel, he sometimes forgets himself in the
presence of ladies."
"That's because I never hang out with any,"
Edward laughed, "Sorry, Rachel. Let's hear more about what you're
doing."
Rachel smiled and took a deep breath, nervously reaching
for the rubber band on her wrist under the table and snapping it against her
skin. It helped keep her grounded when she was feeling nervous, a trick she'd
picked up during her stay in that pleasant mental health facility Savannah
liked to call, "the extended stay spa and resort."
It had already been a rough morning, and Rachel knew her
lack of enthusiasm would make this a hard sell. She reached over and took a
long pull of Edward's gin, launched into her pitch and lost herself. The Valium
and the gin worked, she explained the concept for ReachingOut, talked about the
fundraiser, outlined her vision for the next few years, and it only took twenty
minutes.
They listened intently while she spoke, Nancy asked a few
questions, Edward asked none.
"So, any assistance your firm may be able to offer in
sponsoring our annual fundraising gala would be a tremendous help," she
concluded.
She reached for her iced tea and waiting for the inevitable
refusal to help because they thought she was neurotic and had no business
managing the organization she'd started herself more than ten years before.
Nancy watched her thoughtfully, Edward picked at his cheesecake. She considered
thanking them for meeting with her and offering to follow up in a few weeks,
but then Nancy spoke up.
"Rachel, can I ask how you got involved in this kind
of work? Where did you get the idea for the web-based support groups?"
She hated explaining why she was in this line of work, but
people always asked. It had taken her a long time to outline an answer that
didn't make people feel uncomfortable.