Inside Out (15 page)

When she should have been manning the phones for a swim team fundraiser, Angie was calling her friends. She tried to get Tracey, who had been distant since she and her brother broke up. When she didn't answer, Angie called her brother.

“Hey, Rett.”

“Hey, Angie.”

“You sound wiped.”

“What time is it?”

“You don't know? God, Rett, what are you doing asleep at the apartment in the middle of the day?”

“What?”

“Wake up!”

“Stop yelling!”

“Listen, I just tried to call Tracey—”

“Who?”

“That perked you up, didn't it? Yeah, I want to know why y'all aren't together anymore.”

“Were we ever together?”

“Hey, hey now, bro. Just a month ago you were in love. You were trying to get it in the Sunday paper, you were so in love. So what in God's name changed that?”

“None of your bus—”

“Okay, okay. I see there's no point in asking you anything about it right now. But I tell you what. No matter what either of you says, I know it's complete BS and when I see either of you—”

“Angie, you've got several people on hold. We were hoping you would show some responsibility while we—”

That was Mark, the peppy leader of this failed fundraising effort and Angie's coach.

“Sounds like you gotta go.”

“Wait.”

“Bye, Ang.” Rett hung up.

* * *

Rett went through graduation in a fog. For months he hadn't seen or heard from Tracey. He knew through Angie that she had left school to finish her thesis from home, which almost guaranteed he wouldn't see her. So he spent his time studying, working, and drinking. If he allowed room for anything else, he allowed room for time to think about Tracey and the baby he would never have.

It hurt. Hell, it hurt
a lot
. So he sought numbness. After graduation, he went back to his parents' house. He'd accepted a job with a firm near them and he thought maybe being home would help him forget. He went about his daily routine doing what was expected of him, but he was numb.

One morning he went out for his usual run.

Before starting, he squatted and wrapped his arms around his thighs. He straightened his legs. He exhaled and closed his eyes. This stretch hurt. He stood and raised his arms over his head, clasping his hands together. Then he let his arms down and let his whole body go limp. He shook his limbs out.

He breathed deeply two times, then pushed off. He liked to begin with a sprint and end with a sprint even if that wasn't the right way to do it. He started his run, got his weight centered, and pumped hard with his thighs to thrust himself forward. He was running as fast as he could. Running and running until he felt something just… it felt as if something burst inside him. And then it was her face in front of his eyes. Tracey's face right there. And then he lost the ground and let out a grunt. He felt his head, shoulder, and hip scrape across concrete, burning his whole right side.

Garrett had always treated pain by concentrating on the pain, thinking about it, embracing it. He tried to analyze what was so unpleasant about it. And somehow, from the time he was a kid, the process had always worked to make the pain, whatever it was, go away. At least pain on the outside. Rett lay there for a minute making sure no serious damage was done. He then pulled himself up and began to make his way slowly back to the house.

“Oh, my God, Big. Look at your son!” Rett heard before he saw his mother push open the screen door in the kitchen. She came out and put her shoulder under his arm.

“Momma, I can walk just fine, thank you,” Rett groaned, though he let her go ahead and lead him into the house.

“No, you are not fine! You're covered in blood. What happened?”

“Mary Margaret, move out the way now,” Big commanded and scooted her to the side. He sat Rett down at the kitchen table.

“You all right, boy?”

“I'm fine, Dad. I just took a tumble when I went jogging this morning. Scraped up my side pretty good, but it's nothing to worry about.”

“Hell, son, you haven't seen yourself. Go on, get cleaned up. Make sure that's the case.”

“All right,” Rett answered and slowly rose. He exited the kitchen listening to his mom talk about how he always had been the most accident-prone boy on the block.

In the bathroom Rett realized why she had been looking at him as if he were from
Night of the Living Dead
or something. The whole right side of his face was covered in blood. He looked at his clothes. His T-shirt was ripped, with gravel still stuck in it, and splattered with blood. His knee was torn open and looked like hamburger meat. Rett chuckled to himself. “You got me good this time, Trace.”

He started to fix himself up.

* * *

“What got hold of you today?”

“None of your business, Angie,” Rett answered his sister, who'd just gotten back from her internship. He bent low over the pool table to take a shot. Satisfaction settled over him because he had avoided the wince that came with the stretch. His body still hurt like hell.

“What happened? Did you get into a fight?”

“Yeah, with a stretch of sidewalk. I'll kick its ass if I come ‘cross it again.”

“I'm serious, Rett.”

“I lost my footing when I went runnin' this morning.”

“Tracey would die if she saw you like this.”

Rett pulled up from the table and looked at her. “You want to not say that name?”

“Why? You don't want to talk about her here, you know, your own personal Cheers?” As if to punctuate that remark, a couple walked by waving and smiling at him. Everybody in that bar knew him from way back.

“Yeah, Angie,” he agreed, “that's exactly it. I don't want anyone in here to know anything about her, or me, or me
and
her, so please just keep your mouth shut.”

“God, you are such a dick sometimes, Rett. I don't know how Tracey could stand it.”

“Oh, she could stand it, all right. That's about the only part of me she could stand.”

“Okay, now, I know you guys broke up, but you're being a real jackass about it right now. I don't understand what's wrong with you, but it's obvious you don't feel like sharing, so I'm going to go back next door.”

Rett's friends would never set foot in the bar next door. It was reserved pretty much for the freaks, and somehow his sister belonged to that group. Rett decided to have another drink. He beckoned to the waitress. Her name was Julie, and her older brother had played football with Rett back in high school.

“Julie.” He poured on the sex appeal, taking his time looking her up and down. “My, how you've grown.”

She was probably just now turning twenty-one, but it was a good twenty-one. “Why don't you get me another beer and play a round with me.”

“I can't. I'm working.” But she wanted to. Rett could tell by the way she touched her hair that she wanted to.

A wave of disgust washed over him, but it wasn't Julie's fault.

Rett considered that none of friends would hang out in the bar Angie frequented, except maybe Clay. It occurred to him that he had never set foot over there, either, so he went to find his sister.

* * *

His window open to the breeze, Rett lay back in his bed listening to the wind in the trees outside. His thoughts drifted to Angie. His sister had a big mouth. Too bad she had a heart that big to go with it. Cheers. Everybody in Nick's did know him. Or at least they thought they knew him. Hell, Tracey thought she knew him, too. The only person who really did was Angie. Well, Angie and Big. Tracey didn't want to know him.

And there it was. He was thinking about her. Again. Tracey was in his head, and he couldn't get her out. What he wanted to think about was that last time he had seen her and she had decided to hurt him more than anybody ever had. He wanted to think about the way she let him go on and on about how he was going to take care of her and their baby. He wanted to think about the rejection, but it wasn't in him to do it. Every time he psyched himself up with everything she had done to him, he started to see images of her smiling, of her being the woman that all the future women in his life were going to hate. He ran his fingers over the scratches at his temple. He couldn't sleep.

He got up and stretched. Then he walked quietly across the hall.

“Are you awake, Angie?”

“Yeah.”

“I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry for the way I acted at Nick's. I'm just sore from this morning and it's giving me a nasty attitude.”

“If that's the reason you want to give me.”

“It is.”

“Okay, I can accept it's got nothing to do with your breakup with that person whose name I'm not supposed to say.” She smiled wryly, then scooted over in her bed. “Come on in. Don't just stand there.”

Rett came in and sat beside her.

“You can't sleep?”

“No,” he admitted. “It's already hot outside.”

“Yeah, it is kind of warm, but I'm thinking that's not what's the matter. Come on, talk to me. You never took a breakup like this. Even Kim, and y'all were together a long time. Hell, I barely noticed she was out of the picture. I know you had real strong feelings for Tracey.”

“You could say that.”

“Right, but it's been months now.”

“How is she?” he asked slowly, quietly.

“Guilt by association,” Angie mumbled. “She won't talk to me, either. I miss her, too.”

Rett nodded.

“What happened with Tracey?”

“I don't really want to talk about it. Just understand that what happened between us cannot be fixed. I know you think I'm the jackass here, but I promise you that what she did goes far, far beyond anything I have ever done.”

“Well, tell me.”

He couldn't. “Even without what happened, Ang, it still comes down to the fact that I don't know how to be with her and she doesn't want to know how to be with me.”

* * *

Studying for the bar at his new firm, Rett was surprised by laughing voices outside his office door. His boss's nasal guffaw was unmistakable even though Rett rarely heard him laugh. The man never seemed to be amused by much of anything. He was a slim, pale, immaculate man who wore thousand-dollar suits and looked as though he were born into his profession. And he practiced as though he were born into this profession. It was one of the reasons this was a successful firm and Rett had accepted its offer.

Simmons poked his head in the door. “Come here, Rett. There's someone I'd like you to meet.”

Rett took a deep breath and smoothed his hand over the front of his suit.

Rett swallowed. He knew right off who this guy was: Travis James McAlpine. Even if he hadn't seen all those pictures Tracey had of them together at the house, they favored each other too much for it to be denied. Rett swallowed again. McAlpine wasn't as big as his own dad, but he was imposing nonetheless. And Rett knew his track record. Though he didn't practice anymore, McAlpine was a legal legend.

“Mr. McAlpine.” His voice didn't feel like his own. It sounded like him, but Rett didn't even feel as if he had said anything. What was even more irrational was that he wanted to impress the man as if he were his future son-in-law.

“Mr. Atkins.” They squeezed hands. “I've been hearing great things about your career.”

“Oh, thank you, sir, but I haven't gotten started yet,” Rett answered cordially. He thought he saw McAlpine's eyes narrow as Tracey's did when she was suspicious. He was imagining things. If he knew Tracey, no one from her camp knew about their relationship.

“Rett, have a sit-down with Mr. McAlpine. I guarantee you just a talk with this man is going to positively impact your career,” Simmons declared and ushered them both into Rett's office. He excused himself shortly after closing the door behind him.

“Well, sir. I don't know what Mr. Simmons told you, but—”

“Patrick told me you graduated number four in your class. He said that you had offers from all over but you chose to stay close to home. That's understandable. You'll do well here, where you're from. That's the way the legal network goes, down here, anyway. He told me you plan to specialize in trial law. That's profanity around here, but lucrative as hell if you can take it. He told me you go to church regularly and that my old firm wanted you as well.

“I
did not
tell him that my old firm might have wanted you, but they were instructed that if they pursued you, they would—partners and all—need to start looking for alternative means of supporting their families.”

“What?” The shock was out before Rett had time to check it.

“Yes. I didn't think it would be wise to have you anywhere near my firm. You see, my family has a good deal of interaction with the team there. You know how that goes. And any interaction between you and my family would be detrimental to all our interests.”

Rett closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “What is this? I haven't seen Tracey in more than three months. It's over. She made that clear. There was no reason for her to send you here—”

“She didn't send me here. I came on my own. While you think three months is a long time after the way you've behaved, I've got more experience with time, and it's not. I don't know what it was between the two of you, and, frankly, I don't care to know. All I care about is my baby's well-being. I knew that you were ‘out of the picture,' so to speak. I just want to make sure it stays that way.”

“What if I don't want it to stay that way?” What the hell was
wrong
with him? Why couldn't he just shut up, let McAlpine say his piece, and be done with it?

“Walk away from it, young man. Walk away from it.”