Diving In (Open Door Love Story) (11 page)

“You hear that?” Gabe says to the woman. “I hope there’s some sort of ribbon or plaque involved.”

“Nope,” I say, shaking my head. “Just a DQ coupon for a kid’s cone, sorry.”

Gabe’s eyes go wide. “And all the ketchup packets my heart desires.”

“Hoarder.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Have a Merry Christmas, Randy! We’ll see you after the holiday,” Gabe says. I wait until I hear the jingle bells on the door before safely coming out of my hiding place.

“You missed the most magnificent collection of men’s underpants I have ever seen.” Gabe leans over like he’s going to retrieve them from the bin. “Shall I show you?”

“I think I’ll take your word for it.” I shudder, imagining what he could be talking about.

“Ah, but I see that curiosity in your eyes. Just one pair. You will thank me.”

I cross my arms over my chest, bracing myself for the horrors. “Fine. Show me.”

Gabe gingerly picks up the undies between his thumb and crooked index finger and holds them aloft for me to see.

“My eyes!” I shout and throw my forearm across my face, breaking into a fit of laughter.

“In case you didn’t look closely enough, why, yes, that is plastic mistletoe glued to the ball sack area of these sparkly red and green polka dotted g-string unders.”

I lower my arm. “Those are clearly not for everyday wear.”

Gabe nods matter-of-factly. “Yeah, that plastic plant is pokey in all the wrong places. It’s gotta chafe the inner thighs.”

“I totally bet Randy was one hundred percent committed to the look though. For whoever he was trying to impress.”

Gabe smirks. “What if he hasn’t worn these? What if he just puts things in the bag that he thinks you’re into?”

“Dude, no one is into that.”

He scrunches up his face. “Hmmm. And yet they exist.” Gabe holds the underwear in front of his face and takes a tentative sniff.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask, afraid of where this is headed. “You could be sending jock itch microbes straight up your nostrils.”

Gabe shakes his head. “I don’t think he wears this stuff. It reeks not of ass or pee or ball sweat.” He grins at me great big. “I’m trying them on.”

I block the way to the back. “You are doing no such thing!”

“Oh, yes I am and you’re gonna looooooove it, baby.” He charges forward, knocking into my knees, causing me to fall into him. “It’s gonna be soooooooo sexy,” he whispers in my ear in some unidentifiable accent.

“You sound like Borat.”

“Sooooooo sexy.”

I stand up and get out of his way. “Fine. Try them on. Crush my libido at the tender age of nineteen, you cruel, cruel, manchild.”

“Sooooooooo sexy, baby,” he hisses as he rolls toward the bathroom.

“I’m so not kissing you under the mistletoe!”

A customer comes in and I immediately switch my smile from “goofing around with my boyfriend” to “customer service.” There are a lot of smiles contained in my one mouth.

“How can I help—” I start before really noticing who the person standing on the other side of the counter is.

“Hey, Brynn,” Izzy says. “Can we talk?”

I don’t really want to talk to Izzy, not ever, but I figure if I don’t throw her a bone she’ll be after me until the end of time. I look over my shoulder. “Gabe works here, so we should make it quick.”

She approaches the counter and sets her folded hands on top of it, like she’s walked up to a podium and is about to give a speech. “Okay. So, I guess you haven’t said anything to him?”

“No, and I’m not going to. He’s happy with his life and himself as it is. I don’t want to set him back. I don’t want him to feel like it’s happening to him all over again.”

“But that’s what’s going on with me.” She ducks her head and closes her eyes. “I can’t get it out of my mind, but all I have are these blurry images and this overwhelming feeling that I was a part of something awful. And then Travis comes up to me out of the blue, and I know I’m afraid of him, but I don’t know why exactly, and he’s telling me that it’s okay if I want to press charges against him!” She sucks in a shuddering breath and looks right at me. “Did he rape me? I would know if he raped me, right?” Her voice goes up an octave. “But I can’t ask him that and I can’t remember. All I know is that I was at a party at his house and I have flashes of the pond and of him kissing me and of Gabe being there, yelling. And then I’m in the woods hiding behind a tree and I watch you pull Gabe from the water and Travis says something to you and then you run and I guess I did too because I woke up at home in bed and have been pretending like everything is fine when it is so not fine for the last three years.”

Her confession socks me in the gut. The fear of not remembering would have driven me insane. “He didn’t rape you,” I say, knowing I owe her more than that. “He was getting aggressive and you weren’t saying no, but you were acting like no and Gabe had seen Travis act this way before and had come down to the pond to stop him. I’d been swimming and was hiding under the dock because I didn’t want to interrupt you and Travis doing whatever and I got stuck there. I wasn’t drunk, I was a little stoned I’ll admit. Travis and Gabe got into it briefly and when Gabe tried to help you walk away, Travis punched him in the jaw and he lost his balance and he hit his neck on the edge of the dock.”

“Okay, but how’d he end up in the water?”

I cringe, recalling the look in Travis’s eyes. “This is why Travis wants to turn himself in – I don’t think what went on between the two of you can really be considered anything criminal, but what he did to Gabe...” I suck in a breath and let it out. “Travis lost his shit and pushed Gabe in to make it look like an accidental drowning.”

“Oh, God.” She shakes her head. “And you pulled him out of the water?”

“Initially. When I told Travis that Gabe was alive, he went nuts and took Gabe from me and began administering CPR. He told me to get out of there and that he would handle it and that if I ever told anyone what happened that day he would spill my brother’s secret.”

Izzy balks. “Which is out now and hardly anyone cares, lots of people think that’s really cool of Liam to be doing … you know, what he’s doing or whatever…” She trails off. “So, Gabe is who’s keeping you from talking then?”

I nod. “Yes. Completely. Like I was saying, I don’t think it would be good for him to drag this all out. The outcome is the same. He’s still in a wheelchair and the three of us all need daily psychotherapy.” I smirk. “Of course Travis is the only one who can afford it.”

Izzy apparently doesn’t find my sarcasm about our crumbling mental health all that amusing. “That’s the thing, Brynn. My dad can’t pay for me to go to rehab again and I’m so, so afraid of relapsing that it makes me want to relapse. I don’t know if you can understand that. These short little stints that I go for, two weeks at a time, a month if I’m lucky, they’re not working. And AA is a bunch of bullshit. It’s not for me. I just wonder if having some closure would help. If pressing some sort of charges against Travis, if having you tell someone what happened that day and just knowing that the fault is placed on someone besides me …  think it would help me.”

I wrap my hands around hers. “I get it Iz, and I wish that I could help you, but you’re stronger than you think. Ruining Gabe’s life all over again isn’t going to make yours any better. We’ve all got to keep living with that day and learning how to make the best of it.”

“Is the coast clear?” Gabe calls from the bathroom.

“No,” I holler back. “And I hope it never will be!”

“So, you’re not going to support me, Brynn?” Izzy says, her eyes boring into mine.

I shake my head.

“Fine.” She rolls her shoulders back, standing up straight, and turns to walk out the door. “We used to be friends.”

“That was a long time ago. We grew up.”

The door jingles and I hear Gabe telling Junnuen to toss him a blanket and avert her eyes.

She giggles uncontrollably and Gabe says, “Don’t pee your pants now, that’s literally all on you.” She laughs harder.

Gabe rolls out to the front and parks his chair at a jaunty angle. He’s bare chested and has a blanket draped over his lap.

He looks out into the parking lot. It’s dead, only Izzy’s car pulling out onto the street. Gabe throws the blanket off. “Ta-da!”

“Oh dear Lord, it lights up!”

Chapter Sixteen

In an attempt to rouse my brother, I kick his leg that’s hanging off the side of the twin air mattress I have graciously provided him with. “Dude. The end is nigh.” Liam has been home for three days, but we’ve waited until Christmas Eve morning to buy our gifts.

“But I don’t wanna,” he whines and covers his eyes with his forearm.

“I thought you liked shopping now,” I joke. In reality, my cross-dressing brother is about as girly as I am, which is not much.

“I am a specific shopper. Don’t think our esteemed parents are going to want anything that I picked out.”

“Hey, Mom might surprise you,” I say. “Maybe she secretly loves Hollee’s taste? Too bad she’s not doing chemo, you could send her to your wig guy.”

“Too true.” He scratches his chest. “I have a fake boob guy too that might have come in handy.”

“No pancreas or spleen guy, though?”

Liam sits up and scrubs at his. “Unfortunately, no.” He holds his hand out to me. “Gimme my phone?”

I turn around, take four steps and unplug his phone from the charger in the kitchenette, and toss it to him. “Coffee, I assume?”

“This is the one time you would not be making an ass out of you or me.”

I pour him a cup of coffee and set it on the floor next to the mattress. He’s texting Dani. I can tell because he’s got a kind of pervy smile on his face.

Does Gabe make me perv smile, I wonder? Surely he does.

“Thanks,” Liam says, distracted and a few moments too late.

“You’re welcome. Tell her I say Happy Christmas.”

“Because you’re suddenly British?” He smirks and takes a drink of his coffee.

“You know it. Just wait until you see what I have in store for Boxing Day.”

He chuckles. “Dani says, mele kalikimaka, mate.”

“We’re so international.”

Liam scrunches up his eyes and shakes his head. “You know Hawaii is a state, right?”

I kick his leg again. “Will you kindly get the fuck up and go to the mall with me now?”

~

We stand on the top step, neither of us really wanting to go inside our parents’ house.

“I’ll go first,” I say finally, putting my hand on the knob.

“Thanks. I didn’t know I was going to feel so … utterly unwelcome.”

“Maybe it’s the wreath,” I point out. “That sonuvabitch is one utterly unwelcoming Christmas wreath. I think she got it from the Boy Scouts.”

Liam nods. “That explains the judgey Evergreen vibe.”

“Shall we stop stalling and get this over with?” I square my shoulders.

“Lead the way, B.”

I push the door open and step into the foyer, dropping my shopping bags on the floor while I hang my coat on the rack and toss my purse onto the entry table. “Merry Christmas Eve,” I call out, my ears searching for signs of life in the house.

Liam comes in behind me and does the bag dropping, coat hanging routine as well before going over to the den and peeking his head in. “Dad?” he says in a low voice.

“Parents? Your children are here,” I say, giving them one last chance to come rushing down the stairs to embrace my brother and welcome him home. No such luck. I go to the garage. “Both of the cars are gone.”

Liam looks at me and shrugs. “Guess we should put our presents under the tree?”

“Sure, might as well.” We take our bags into the living room. The artificial tree is up and there are lights wrapped around it, but the star that’s usually on top isn’t and there aren’t any ornaments hung. There also aren’t any presents.

“Mom is probably too tired to do her usual decorating,” I say, feeling hardcore guilty. I should’ve been here helping her.

“Yeah, the lights look like a Dad job,” Liam says, giving me a wan smile. “Are we awful? I feel like we’re awful.”

“Same,” I say. “We can fix this … you know, the tree at least.”

We set our bags down on the fancy living room couch that no one ever sits on except for Christmas morning to open gifts, and then head back out to the garage. Liam stands in the middle of the garage and jumps up, grabbing the rope that attaches to the attic door in the ceiling. He tugs on it once and it opens slowly, the ladder unfolding halfway. Liam pulls the ladder all the way down and locks it on the sides before starting up.

“I’ll hand stuff down to you, okay?”

I wait for the familiar red and green plastic bins to appear. You know my mom has that shit color coordinated.

Liam hands down two green and then one red. “Do we want to go all out?” he asks.

I know for a fact there are probably six more bins up there. “Yeah,” I say, my voice breaking.

My brother sticks his head through the opening in the ceiling. His eyes are wet. “Let’s make it count.”

What we’re not saying, what we’d both just realized is that this is Mom’s last Christmas. I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me. Maybe I haven’t dealt as well as I thought. Just because I can make a joke doesn’t mean I’m fine. I’ve gone and pushed my feelings down again. Liam has done the same thing.

Mom is leaving behind quite a legacy. Still, she is the only mother we’ve ever known.

We finish getting all the bins down from the attic and bring them inside. I start taking the lids off while Liam gets to work fixing the lights on the tree. Dad’s only used one strand and Mom usually crams at least four on. She likes the lights to be dense. I pull three strands from a red bin and toss them at Liam’s feet.

“Wanna go with the red and gold theme?” I ask.

Mom has several themes that she rotates through, hence the number of bins, and it has been a few years since red and gold has made an appearance.

“I like that one or blue and silver the best,” Liam says. “But since there’s already gold lights on the tree, we might as well.”

“Okay, that will eliminate a couple of bins.” I close them up and take them out to the garage, stacking them by the door to the kitchen.

While Liam finishes putting the lights up, I fish out the gold blinking star and set it on the coffee table. Then I locate the white, gold, and red striped tree skirt and the red velvet bows that are to be tied on the tree, and like, every available tieable spot in the entire house.

I spread the tree skirt out and get to tying bows. “The bulbs are in the far bin.”

Liam starts affixing hangers to the gold bulbs, making a pile on the carpet.

We work quickly and efficiently and I can’t help but think that Mom would be somewhat, well proud isn’t the right word, but pleased with our decorating job.

I arrange our presents under the tree and Liam holds his hand out for a high five. “Not too shabby, B.”

“Seriously. You know what we should do now?”

“What?” Liam asks, going over to the stereo and slipping his phone onto the dock. He cues up what I can only assume is called Diva Christmas, because it’s all Whitney and Aretha and Xtina.

“Make sugar cookies.”

He nods in agreement and rubs his belly. “Let’s go see what ingredients we need.”

We check the cupboards and the fridge and serendipitously, we have everything we need to make cookies, even stuff to make frosting.

“Mom must have had the same idea,” Liam says and then his eyes light up. “Do you think she’s on the medical maryjane?”

I smile at the thought of our uptight mother smoking a joint. “God, that could change everything.”

“A Christmas miracle just might happen after all.”

~

It’s late afternoon by the time we’ve made four dozen and eaten one dozen frosted sugar Santa and bell-shaped cookies. A Diva Christmas has been played out and still no sign of Mom or Dad.

“I’m going to give Mom a call,” I say, trying to hide the fact that what I’ve been thinking all day is something horrible has happened while we’ve been making the house festive.

“Good idea. I’m getting worried.”

I hit send and not even a second later Mom’s phone starts ringing upstairs.

“What the?” Liam says and he starts for the stairs. I quickly follow behind, ending the call. The ring is obviously coming from Mom’s bedroom.

Liam knocks on the door softly. “Mom? Are you in there?”

I put my ear to the door and hear her bed squeak like she’s turning over in it. “She’s in there.”

As quietly as we can, we go into her room, the light dim except for the lamp on the lowest setting on her dresser. She’s sacked out in bed, snoring lightly, a huge bottle of pills on the nightstand beside her. Liam picks it up. “Fuck. She’s on morphine. No wonder she didn’t hear us.”

“Okay, but where is her car?”

“Had to leave it at work,” Mom mutters and clears her throat. She tries to sit up, but slumps back down again. “Can’t drive anymore ’cause of the drugs.”

“Do you want to lie down or sit up?” Liam asks, leaning over like he’s going to make her more comfortable either way.

She lifts her hand to his face and limply pushes him away.

“It’s the drugs,” I say, making excuses that my brother can see right through.

“I’m sure.”

“We’ll let you rest Mom,” I whisper. “Unless you need anything? A glass of water or a cookie? We made Christmas cookies.”

Mom rolls onto her side, turning her back to us. We leave and head back downstairs. Dad stumbles into the hall, headed for the den just as we hit the landing.

“Hey, Dad. You all right?” Liam asks, clearing the last three steps in one jump and catching Dad under the arm as he trips. “Whoa. Let’s get you to the couch.”

My father, the high school Spanish teacher, smells like he works in a Pabst brewery, not a private boy’s academy. Liam and I get him into the den, his shoes off, and onto the couch. I drape a blanket over him while Liam goes to fetch a glass of water and some ibuprofen.

“Nothing like both of your parents passed out on Christmas Eve to really put it all into perspective,” he says, setting the hangover helpers on the end table by Dad’s head where he is most likely to find them.

“Honestly, this has been one of our more calm holidays. Mom didn’t call either one of us ungrateful or disappointing. I’m going to put a mark in the win column.”

“And I’m going to pretend like she didn’t push me away from her like I was a disgusting piece of garbage.”

“She’s probably not going to change,” I say. “She’s probably not going to have an epiphany and realize that she’s been less than ideal.”

Liam sighs and then nods. “I had just the slightest bit of hope.”

I pull him into a hug. “I should have Gabe give you his ‘hope is bullshit’ speech.”

My brother kisses my temple. “Sounds epic and depressing.”

“Yep.”

Liam steps out of my embrace and checks his phone. “It’s five o’clock on Christmas Eve and I might go insane if I have to spend one more second in this house. We should go out.”

My phone pings a notification – a text from Gabe.

Bored as shit. My parents are going to church. I have declined to join them. We should go out.

“Looks like you’re gonna get to hear Gabe’s take on hope sooner than later. Do you have an idea where we can go?”

A broad smile spreads across my brother’s mouth. “Oh, do I.”