Bound by Lies (5 page)

Ever since the moment he crossed into town, passing old landmarks, places he’s visited too many times to count, it’s been like falling back in time, or being caught in a place where the year doesn’t matter. Past, present and future are all tangled up together. Shrugging his duffle bag off of his shoulder and letting it fall with a soft thump to the hardwood floor, he digs out his phone and stares at the little icon indicating that he has a voicemail message waiting. It’s from Andre, and it’s been waiting to be retrieved for three days now.

He draws the silence of the eerily familiar room around him like a shroud and lets his misery soak deeper into his bones. The longer he’s in his old hometown, the more days that pass, the more the old feelings take hold. The guy he thought he was in Miami—lifeguard, bartender, and friend-with-benefits—flakes off of him like a dried up, shedded skin. It’s not just the weight of his childhood traumas pulling him down into a funk; he’s mourning the future that could have been. All Brayden wants is to live up to his responsibilities and be left alone. He’s not a kid anymore. He hasn’t been a kid for a long time. Living in Miami taught him to be himself, unencumbered. He was outgoing in ways he never was before, but the pain of relinquishing so much of his own happiness so fast is making him bitter and withdrawn again. And the more he withdraws out of resentment at the turn his fate has taken, the more he feels like the old Brayden—tragic boy who was always too quiet because of the loss of his father and a lingering sense of the unfairness of it all. Now he’s lost again, and the situation still stings, but he tries to tell himself he doesn’t have to be that person. He can try to be better.

The doorknob turns slowly. He watches it rotate soundlessly from a few feet away and tracks the edge of the door as it inches just as slowly open.

“Hey, squirt.”

Big green eyes—very similar in color and shape to his—get even bigger, startled at being discovered.

“Oh. Hi, Brayd. I was just, um…”

Emma Leah’s small, feminine voice brings an unbidden smile to his lips and melts some of the hard shell around him. The phone is returned to his pocket and he waves her in. “Come on, it’s okay. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I didn’t want to bother you. I just wanted to let you know that Nan’s making fried chicken for dinner. You like chicken, right? You’re not, like, a vegetarian?”

He shakes his head, his smile filling out, more of his true self coming through the fog.

“Oh. Good. ’Cause you look like you might be, you know… a vegetarian.”

“Are you calling me a hippie? Just because I have long hair,” he says with mock-offense.

“Shit no!” She claps her hand over her mouth as if to catch the cuss word and swallow it back down. Brayden laughs. In her smallest voice yet, she asks, “Don’t tell Nan?”

Crossing his heart, he tells her solemnly, smile temporarily stifled, “No problem.”

“So, did you find a job yet?”

“No,” he sighs, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on the back of a chair. “The Y wasn’t hiring and it wouldn’t have been enough pay to make it worth it anyway. It would have been nice to keep lifeguarding, but whatever. I’ll find something else.”

Emma Leah wanders farther into the bedroom, drawn to the huge surfboard propped against the far wall like a moth to a flame. She studies it, her light brown hair falling in a fine curtain of silk down her back, the lenses of her glasses catching and refracting fragments of sunlight filtering in through the window. The family resemblance is noticeable. They could almost be siblings. Brayden always wanted a brother or sister growing up. He always seemed surrounded by grown-up problems and grown-up drama without anyone with whom to sneak away and have carefree childhood adventures. He wishes, fleetingly, that the age gap between them wasn’t so broad, and that he had Emma around when he was her age. This train of thought causes him to realize the way that she has been hanging around him whenever he’s home, trying to talk to him or studying the fascinating things he brought up with him from Florida, which is practically a whole other planet to someone who has never been out of state.

She’s lonely. Of course she is, living in this house, alone, not with her parents but an elder, a guardian and her only relative, besides Brayden. There is Lara, of course, his long-absent mother. Funny how he doesn’t even count her anymore. Lara’s become an afterthought.

That drags him down, makes him start to feel awful again.

Emma’s tiny hand quests out toward the waxed-smooth surface of the board, not daring to touch, but getting close. It hovers there, like a bird.

“Maybe I’ll teach you to surf sometime,” he ventures.

Her head swings around, and she blurts eagerly, “Yeah?! That would be so cool! I mean, I guess we’d have to drive to New Jersey or something, and I’ve never heard of anyone surfing in New Jersey, but oh my gosh, it’d be so much fun. I’d love that. I mean, you don’t have to. I know you’re busy, but oh my gosh.”

It’s a good thing I’m here
, he thinks, feeling the truth of it like a calming weight, anchoring him down, keeping his restless spirit tethered.
She needs me just as much as Nana does.

“I’m really glad you moved in,” Emma confesses shyly, as if reading his thoughts.

Taking her hand in his, small and delicate as a sparrow, he agrees, “Me too.”

“You’re her hero, you know,” Nana tells Brayden with a knowing glance. He steps up to the counter. It’s laid out with an impressive spread of food and all of the fixings for the chicken. The chicken sits in a bowl of buttermilk, fresh from the fridge. Beside it, his grandmother mixes flour, garlic powder and spices. A huge skillet waits on the stovetop.

“Nana, you really don’t have to go to all this trouble.”

“Nonsense. We haven’t had a proper family sit-down since you got here. It’ll be our celebration.”

His head filled with the savory scent of spices, Brayden lets his gaze draw up to the second floor where he knows Emma is doing homework in her room. “Yeah, well, maybe if the parents in this family weren’t so good at taking off when they shouldn’t, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.”

Ruth ‘Nana’ Clare, her grey-and-white streaked hair tied back, thick glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, slaps an open hand down onto the counter and lets out a tired sigh. “You should show more respect, boy. Besides, I like having my grandbabies here under my roof where I can make sure you’re both safe and healthy. It’s not a hardship, it’s a blessing.”

“If you say so,” he allows doubtfully. “I just don’t think it should fall to you to take care of us. We should be taking care of you.”

“I’m not that old. Yet.” Measuring him with a long look, after a moment she adds, “You are taking care of me. That’s why
you’re
here, isn’t it? Instead of down on the beach with plenty of pretty young ladies to distract you.”

“Nan,” he groans.

“But I suppose we have our fair share of them up this way too. Maybe you’ll meet someone nice. You seem lonely.”

“
Nan
.”

“I’m just saying, you look like a kicked dog lately and I don’t like it.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I will.”

“That’s the spirit. You don’t need to search the world to find happiness. Sometimes you just have to open your eyes and see what’s right there around you, waiting.”

The look she gives him as she says it underlines both of their feelings about his mother, Lara, and helps Brayden feel grounded.

“You smile more now. That’s good. That’s really good. You never smiled before. It’s not natural for children to carry that much sadness in their hearts. I don’t want you going back to those old ways. I want you to be happy here.”

“Yeah,” Brayden murmurs. “Me too.”

With a sigh, she confesses, “I did call her, you know. Lara.”

“Let me guess, it didn’t do any good? Big surprise.”

“Things are tough for your mother, and you know it. Don’t be cruel.”

“I was eighteen, Nan. She dragged me down there, to Florida, just to get away from all of the memories of Dad, here, and this town. But this was our
home
. I had no choice. But even
that
wasn’t enough for her. What was I supposed to do when she got on that plane without me and crossed a whole ocean just to get more space? How is that fair? How is that fair, on top of everything else? She’s the child now.
I’m
the parent. I’m twenty-two and I’m already more of a parent than she
ever
was.”

He waits for it, knowing it was one step too far.

There is no anger, though, no additional slap of Nana’s hand on the counter.

“Don’t be mean,” Nana entreats quietly, head bowed. “Meanness is what drove her from your father, before she lost him for good. Maybe you’re just stronger than she is. Think about that. You’ve got part of Anthony in you. He was a
good man
, meanness or no.”

Brayden wipes at his eyes, seeing flickers of ghosts out in the yard, playing catch, hearing echoes of old laughter, old arguments too. If he tried hard enough, he could recall some of those fights, which drove Lara, with young Brayden in tow, out of their home, looking for a new one. When times got tough, she took him and moved in with her mother instead, leaving Anthony behind, though he still came around. Anthony was determined to be a father for Brayden, no matter where Lara’s head might be.

Then the cancer ruined it all, every last shred of chance that it could get better, someday. It took him, and took him fast. All of that unfairness has been Brayden’s supreme torment for as long as he can remember.

At least Nana understands some of the reasons for his heartache. He digs down deep to find a smile, and plasters it on. She returns it, encouragingly, with her fingers buried in the dry floury mix, sending dustings of powder floating through the air.

“Do you have any suggestions of where I should look for work?” he asks after clearing his throat. “You know the town better than I do now, and I’m having a hard time figuring out the best thing to do. I knew I should’ve gone to college. My skill set isn’t exactly in high demand up here. And entry-level pay at the work I
could
get isn’t going to take us far.”

“Let me think it over. I have some ideas. Right now, put it from your head and go wash your hands. Oh, and grab an apron so you don’t ruin your clothes. If you want to pull your weight around here you can start by learning some cooking skills.”

“Yes, Nan,” he grins.

“At least hire a goddamned maid, Parrish! This place is a pit!”

“Just like it is every day at ten a.m.,” Jenner adds tonelessly.

“That’s exactly my point,” Max huffs. “I ain’tcher maid, douchebag. And yet, here I am, scrubbing the floor and scraping shit off the walls.”

She leans heavily on the mop and glares at him; he’s standing behind the bar with a soapy dishrag. Between the two of them, they’re attempting to clean up to a minimal level of acceptability. The night before, there had been a big football game playing on the flatscreen installed over the bar and, as usual, the crowd got a little rowdy, more than a little drunk, and had trashed the place. At a little past midnight, it had even fallen to Jenner to forcibly remove a patron from the premises; his carefully-practiced jujitsu immobilizing techniques coming in particularly handy. Jenner can’t bring himself to feel too put-out, though. The bar had made a killing. Pockets metaphorically stuffed full with cash, he knows keenly that drawing the customers isn’t the problem. It hasn’t been the problem in quite a while.

“You are my maid,” he tells her with cool amusement as he works at scrubbing a nasty stain from the bar top. “That’s why I pay you. Waitress slash bartender slash maid. That’s your job description. Suck it up.”

Her eyes narrow and he waits to see if he’s pushed her patience too far this time and if, at any moment, she’ll decide on a projectile to hurtle at his head. There are plenty of handy objects in grabbing range for her to choose from. For a few seconds it’s a standoff. When he determines that her exhaustion is winning out over annoyance, he rewards her display of self-control with, “I have an ad in the papers. I have a sign on the window.” He gestures to it helpfully. “It’s just a matter of time.”

She sighs, scanning the room, glancing longingly outside through the one window to the fresh air beyond and mumbles, “I’d appreciate a maid more than another barkeep.”

“I think you’d have said differently last night,” he says, thinking of the swarms of people crowding up against the counter, barking orders impatiently.

“Mm,” she grunts. “There still coffee in the pot?”

“Help yourself,” he smiles.

Max rests the mop handle against a table and heads back to the break room in the rear of the building. He watches her go and when she’s gone from sight, he deflates, letting his own weariness show now that there’s no one to see it. He wipes his forehead with the back of an arm. It’s not something he would ever let on in front of his employees, but he agrees with them that they’re pretty much just treading water. The prospect of another long day being shorthanded and stretched thin makes him want to get out of there. The gym would be a good alternative; the gay fetish club, Manse, would be better. It’s been weeks since he was last there. A submissive with a nose ring and a pretty-enough mouth had sucked him off in the club’s recesses. He wasn’t Jenner’s type. He was too thin and too tall, but who cares when it’s that dark and the heat and thumping music are more tangible than the human being on his knees, ready to service? Jenner decides it’s time to go back, that a night of decadence, dominance and sex is what he needs to take his mind off of the things that plague him.