Authors: Isabelle Aren
Jane
moved her hand away from her face, she tried to focus on the tile over her head
but all she could think about was the eventuality of her current situation.
Suddenly, paths weren’t as important as patterns, and more than anything she
didn’t want to end up like that woman who dies with a needle in her arm.
17.
Harper stood in the middle of the apartment, her
clothes all around her. She was separating them into piles and
throwing them into the suitcases when she heard a familiar knock on the door
followed immediately by a very masculine voice asking, “You in there?”
“No,” she responded and waited for the door to open.
Riley didn’t make her wait long. Maybe three seconds but since he
had a pizza box in his hands she figured she’d let it slide.
“There’s a rumor you’re packing up and heading out.” He asked.
Harper tossed another shirt into her case and made up the only
excuse that didn’t sound like an excuse. “You’ve got a lot of people. I figured
you’d need the room.”
“For Mom and her entourage?” Riley laughed derisively. “Those
people don’t bunk with mere mortals. They’ve got the top floor of some downtown
hotel booked for the rest of the week.”
“What happens after that?” She grabbed a dirty pair of jeans,
rolled them up and threw them into the biggest case.
“Dad shows up and moves them to a different hotel.” Riley placed
the pizza down on the coffee table and motioned for Harper to sit on the couch.
“It’s kinda what this family does.”
“I noticed.”
“She’s not with them. If that’s what you want to ask.” Riley sat
on the chair across from her and doled out the paper plates and napkins. “And I
don’t think I’m supposed to be talking to you.”
“But here you are,” Harper remarked. “With a pizza.”
Riley smiled at her across the small expanse of space that
separated them before flipping the top of the pizza box. Bacon and hot peppers.
Harper’s favorite. “So, you gonna tell me why you lost your shit and dumped
her?”
“I suppose it all boils down to me being an idiot,” Harper ran her
hands through her hair. “I went over to her apartment but Lily wouldn’t let me
through the front door. Apparently Jane has run away and no one will tell me
where she is and all I want to do is find her. “
“So you can apologize?” Riley placed a slice onto one of the
plates and handed it to her. “You are aware that you’re going to have to
apologize.”
Harper plucked a piece of bacon off the top and ate it. She
figured she’d go for the jalapeño next as a form of self-flagellation. “I was
stupid.”
“That’s a decent place to start but I doubt it’ll be enough.” Riley
announced as he got himself a slice. “You know how when you really like someone
and they totally screw you over and it sorta hurts more than when your average
asshole hurts you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what you’re up against.”
“She did lie to me,” Harper reminded him. “And she ran out on me
two days in a row and didn’t tell me what was going on. I think I had a right
to be angry.”
“Hey, I don’t need the play-by-play. I’ve heard all about it.” Riley
held his hands up in mock surrender before going back to his pizza.
Harper took hold of a pepper and compared her need for forgiveness
against mouth searing pain. She decided to give it a few more minutes and put
it back on her pizza slice. “Alice said all that stuff, and I freaked out when
I saw her with Robin.”
“Well, that’s the problem with Alice.” Riley let out a deep
breath, the kind that sounded like it’d been held onto for too long. “She’s
very convincing until you realize that she’s just out to hurt Jane.”
“Jane?”
“Alice’s favorite target.” Riley stretched out his long legs,
crossing them at the ankles. “It’s a holdover from our childhood that Mom still
likes to encourage since she’s not allowed to hurt Jane anymore.”
“Wait,” Harper paused to get her bearings now that she’d
officially been knocked off her high horse. “Say that again.”
“Iris uses to get Alice to hurt Jane because she isn’t allowed to
do it anymore.” He said the words with the slow, care of someone who wanted to
be heard. “And, just for the historical accuracy, Alice isn’t her daughter.”
“Seriously?” Harper felt herself stumbling with each new piece of
information set down in front of her.
“My parents have a very liberal view on what it means to be
married. They have rules that they follow, but monogamy isn’t one of them.”
“So, she’s Ander’s daughter?”
“Not biologically,” he said. “Dad adopted Alice after her mom,
Kayla, died. She was a groupie with a heroin problem. Alice, she was three when
she and Kayla moved in.”
“He moved his junkie girlfriend into your house?” Harper picked up
her plate and set it down on her knees. She wasn’t sure whether or not she was
hungry but she was anxious and eating usually fixed that. “Your mom was okay
with that?”
“My mom was on tour most of the time and my dad was starting to
settle into domestic bliss.” Riley told her. “He was happy raising me and Jane
and keeping us off the road. Kayla came along and she sort of fit into the
whole scene. Mom liked her and she adored Alice, so it worked for a while.”
“What happened?”
“Dad went on tour again,” he said after he swallowed his mouthful
of pizza. “He tried to take his happy little family with him and everything
kind of exploded. Kayla always had problems, and Alice was a real pisser of a
kid. There isn’t a whole lot to do when you’re on the road. Old ghosts have a
habit of whispering in your ear when you don’t have anyone new to talk to.”
“Heroin.”
“Everybody’s got something.” Riley looked down at his plate and
shook his head. “Kayla was more of a mother to Jane than our own mom ever was.
She was the one who found her. It was the ‘needle-in-the-arm’ nightmare that
people who’ve never experience like to talk about. Jane certainly never talked
about it after the cops showed up.” Riley looked past her shoulder for a moment;
it was as if he were remembering the whole thing. Every detail, every word,
every tendril of emotion flashing in front of his face one more time. “Jane
wasn’t the same after that. The rest of the tour was canceled, Dad brought the
three of us back here and Jane made him promise that she’d never have to go on
tour again, but Mom wasn’t having any of that. She told Dad that she’d never
made the promise so it wasn’t her word being broken.”
“Shit,” Harper whispered.
Riley’s gaze returned to her face, he nodded and took another deep
breath. “She had Jane back on the bus in two weeks.”
“Just Jane?” Harper wanted to close her eyes and have the
information wiped from her brain. She didn’t want this kind of insight into
someone without their permission. Jane was too private a person to have people
discussing her history behind her back.
“When she took Jane with her I didn’t understand what she was
doing but the older I got the more I understood my mother’s motivations. Iris
was pissed that Jane loved Kayla, so she punished her.”
“Emotionally?” she asked.
“And physically.” Riley told her. “I knew how to avoid getting
smacked around but Jane’s never had much fear of anyone. She fought back and
she paid for it. Bruises, broken bones, a few mysterious falls off the back of
the tour bus that no one wanted to explain. Had to get her jaw wired shut when
someone bounced her off the edge of a bathtub. A lot of people depended on our
mother for their livelihood so there was considerable effort to keep her abuse
of Jane out of the papers. She had money and she had connections so no one ever
asked what the fuck was going on.”
“How could they adopt another child if she was abusing the ones
they already had?”
“Like I said, Ander’s adopted her and no one was talking about
Jane.” Riley took another slice of pizza and slapped it down on his plate. “Iris
had her name put on the paperwork after Kayla died. They both thought that,
after every Alice had been through, she deserved to grow up with a mother and a
father. I guess they believed that they owed her some normality. What no one
anticipated was how Iris planned on using Alice against Jane.”
“That is fucked up.”
“Not as fucked up as Jane being programmed to take care of Alice.”
Riley shook his head. “That takes some serious mind-fuckery to accomplish.”
Harper put her slice of pizza back on the plate. Her appetite
disappeared as her stomach nosedived into her shoes. She’d been raised by some
pretty strange people but she never, for one second, felt anything but love and
pride coming from them so her basis for shitty parent comparison didn’t exist.
She knew Jane would never want her to feel pity for her so she
settled on sorrow.
“I talked to Chloe.” Riley’s voice sounded resolute while his eyes
spoke of something less certain. Harper had to wonder if he was just as
conflicted as she was or if he was desperately trying to patch things up so
they could all go on with their lives. “The thing with Robin wasn’t what it
looked like. Alice was listening in on their conversation-”
“Wait.” Harper held her hand up, cutting Riley off before he could
finish defending Jane with information she already knew. “She still lied to me.”
“And you lied to her,” Riley reminded Harper. “I think this means
you guys are even. What Chloe told me was that Jane had breakfast with Sarah
who, apparently, said all kinds of weird, fucked up shit and she wanted to talk
to Robin about it.”
“What kinds of weird shit would have her running out the door?”
“Sarah talked about cheating on Robin. I guess Jane felt like she
owed it to her to find out if she knew.”
“She could’ve just told me where she was going,” Harper replied.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but both of my sisters are
terribly decision makers,” Riley laughed. “If you’re going to be in her life
you’re going to have to learn how to roll with it.”
“And you didn’t tell me any of this before? Why?”
“I was hoping you’d figure it out on your own, but obviously you
need me to walk you through the whole damn thing,” Riley said with a kind smile
directed her way. “Look, Jane doesn’t forgive easily and I’m impressed she was
willing to get over the first round of bullshit. I suspect it means she really
likes you.”
“And that’s a good thing, right?” Harper was ready to grasp onto
any kind of hope Riley offered but she knew it wasn’t going to mean a tinkers
damn if Jane wouldn’t talk to her.
“It was until you fucked it all up,” he answered. “Like I told
you, the more you like someone the more it hurts when they break your heart.”
“Did Robin break her heart?” Harper felt the question building up
in her gut before her brain was ready to tamp it back down where it belonged.
“Only in a
very
seventeen
kind of way.”Riley
shrugged. “Jane’s a smart girl. She moves on. So you need to get yourself to
the Renaissance Hotel in Providence and you beg her forgiveness.”
“Is that my only options” Harper sat back in her seat and stared
up at the ceiling. She never minded admitting when she’d done something wrong
but suddenly it felt like there was so much at risk and all she was going to do
was make it worse.
Riley put his pizza back down on the plate and clasped his hands
together. He looked paternal and caring, like her dad the day she came out of
the closet. “Do you really need another option?”
Harper already knew the answer. She and Jane were fucked up and
terrible for one another but Harper didn’t want anyone else. The only question
that remained was if Jane felt the same way.
*****
Jane knew answering the door was a bad idea when she heard the
first knock but curiosity got the better of her and soon found herself
face-to-face with an anxious looking Harper.
“Please don’t slam the door in my face.” Harper held her hand out
to keep Jane from blocking her entry.
“I wouldn’t do that.” Jane gripped the doorknob and reminded
herself that she had told enough lies for one lifetime so she needed to
restrain herself.
“Can I come in?” Harper took a shaky breath and stepped toward the
door.
Jane bit down on the inside of her cheek. Her first instinct was
to tell Harper to go away and never come back but she knew it wasn’t what she
really wanted. “Sure,” she muttered and stepped aside to let Harper pass.
She waited until Harper was safely in the room to ask the day’s
most obvious question. “Who told you where I was?”
“Riley,” Harper answered. “He talked to Chloe.”
Jane decided it wasn’t worth reacting to something she’d assumed
would happen. Chloe had a big mouth and Riley was nosey, together they created
assholery of epic proportions. What did surprise her was Riley spilling the
beans and Harper taking action. “What are you doing here?”
“Apologizing and begging your forgiveness.” Harper put her hands
on her hips and stared down at the floor. “If you’ll let me.”
She went back to carving up the inside of her mouth as her brain
turned the situation over in her head. Apologizing wasn’t something she was
accustomed to, but she was willing to do it when her conscience needed
cleansing. “I was the one who ran around behind your back and told a bunch of
lies. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I the one who fucked it all up
because-”