Never Been Kissed (26 page)

And she was in a position to help this guy, instead of constantly wounding him.

“Let’s fix that,” she said, and grabbed her apron from the stack of stuff she’d brought with her. “Right now.”

“Food fixes everything for you, doesn’t it?”

She touched his face, ran her fingers through his hair, admired the red gold curls against her skin.

It felt as good as she’d always thought it would. “You’d be surprised,” she whispered and braved a quick kiss against his cheek.

Brody knocked on the front door of Ed’s house, taking as much of his anger out on the aluminum screen door as he could.

After a second of waiting, he knocked again. But the door didn’t open. There didn’t seem to be any sign of life, not that that was any different from normal.

Immediately a dozen worst-case scenarios ran through his mind.

When he turned the knob, the storm door opened and he walked in just as Ed was making his slow way from the kitchen into the living room.

Ed stared at him as if a wildebeest just entered the front door.

“You okay?” Brody asked, letting the screen door close behind him. Sealing him into the beige grief of the house.

“Fine. Eating dinner. What are you doing here?”

Brody had decided on the walk over not to lie. And not to sugarcoat things. He didn’t know how to do it and Ed wouldn’t appreciate it.

“Ashley said she came over today—”

“She was supposed to keep quiet about that,” Ed grumbled and turned around to head back into the kitchen. Brody followed, caught up with him in time to help him sit down in his chair. Ed shot him a low look under his eyebrows. “I don’t see what the big deal is about a couple of cigars and some poker.”

“Cigars?” Brody asked. “Ashley didn’t say anything about cigars.”

“Oh.” Ed pulled his plate closer. Dinner was a turkey sandwich and applesauce. Something about that meager dinner on a plate he recognized from his childhood made Brody’s gut twist with guilt. “Then never mind.”

No chance of that, but one battle at a time.

“She said you weren’t taking your pills correctly.” Brody went to the small table beside the recliner in the other room; while all the pill bottles were there, the weekly case wasn’t.

“It’s in here. Under the window,” Ed said. “You and Sean hired that girl to take care of it. If things aren’t right, go harass her.”

“We hired her to clean up and make you a proper
dinner.” Brody pointed to the entirely tan plate. “And I think she’s screwing up more than just the pills.”

“It’s my dinner,” Ed said. “And I like it.”

The air crackled around them and Brody grabbed the pill case from the windowsill.

“Ashley was right. This is a mess.”

“They’re just pills.”

Brody didn’t know how to read Ed. He’d never in his life known how to read him, and once he would have given him anything, would have done anything for him, but that moment was many years past. And now he was just pissed that the two of them kept circling each other, with no place to land.

“It’s medicine. That you need and you need to take correctly.” He went to the living room and grabbed the prescription bottles before charging back into the kitchen. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” He read the label on the first bottle. “For high blood pressure.” He set the bottle down and moved on to the second. “This is a blood thinner. I’m guessing you had a stroke? Did you mention that to anyone?”

“The doctor knows.”

“No need to mention it to your son.”

“If you wanted—”

“I’m talking about Sean.”

The words fell like lit bombs between them.
Not me. I was never your son.
Ed pushed away from the table, the chair legs making an unholy screech against the linoleum.

“You can’t mess around with this,” Brody said, not looking at Ed, reading the labels for the dosage information. Studiously he emptied the pillboxes, dumped the capsules on the table, and started resorting things.

“I’m dying, Brody.”

“Bullshit.” The words exploded out of him, forcing Ed back in his chair, where he chewed on the thick silence.
Brody looked away, his skin hot and then cold with embarrassment and anger. “You’re not dying. You’re just … old. And not taking your meds right.”

“I’m sorry,” Ed said.

“Well, you will be if you keep taking these things the wrong way.”

“No, son.” The word detonated inside of Brody and he knocked over one of the bottles.
Son.
God, what he would have done to hear that when he was six. “I’m sorry for what I did to you.”

Brody’s hands shook as he swept the pills into the brown plastic bottle and he hated that. He hated that he was here, that Sean was forcing this issue, that Ed, after years of silence, felt compelled to try and make things right.

Brody was a bone that had been broken years ago and allowed to heal like that. It didn’t hurt him anymore, but things weren’t quite right because of it.

“I was so scared,” Ed said. “So scared that I would lose everything. Linda, Sean—”

“I know, Ed. You don’t need to rehash this shit.”

“It’s not shit, Brody. It’s your life.”

“It was a million years ago.” Quickly, decisively he put the pills in the proper section of the weekly case. “I’ll talk to the girl who is supposed—”

“Talk to me.”

Brody nearly reeled back. “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

He put the case back on the windowsill and the bottles beside it. “See you later,” he said. Time to go. Way past time to go. He never should have come.

Ed smashed his cane down on the side of the Formica table. His plate rattled and his water glass exploded onto the floor. Brody stopped in his tracks between the kitchen and living room.

“
Talk to me!
”

“And say what?” Brody roared. “Thank you, thank you for giving me a home and clean sheets and good food and a proper education. Thank you!”

“You know that’s not it,” Ed said. “You have a right to be angry at me. You have a right to be angry at the way things happened.”

“I got adopted.” Brody shook his head. “What happened afterward was no one’s fault.”

“I remember that night, you know. I remember it so clearly, the way you cleaned your dishes and you brushed your teeth and I stood in that hallway and held on to myself because I was falling apart.”

“It’s okay,” Brody said, because Ed was turning red. He was shaking and his lips were white. “Calm down.”

“I can’t calm down!” he roared and then started coughing. They were awful wrenching coughs dug up from the bottom of his feet.

Brody got a glass from the cabinet, an old Muppets from Space glass that came from a McDonald’s Happy Meal when he was a kid.

How did it survive,
he wondered.

He set the glass down in front of Ed, who reached for it with shaking hands. Brody knew he’d spill or drop it so he picked it up and helped the old man drink. Still, water rained down on his old USMC T-shirt that Ed had bought and worn proudly when Brody went into the Corps.

He’d been so proud of Brody being selected for Recon. As guide. And Brody had been so proud of making Ed proud and then … then it had been over and Ed couldn’t even step into Brody’s room in Walter Reed.

How did anything ever survive?

“I know what I did to you,” Ed gasped. “That night. You were going to tell me how scared you were. And I couldn’t handle it—”

“You were scared,” Brody said. “You were just trying
to survive.” He set the glass down and Ed grabbed Brody’s hands, the old skin felt like tissue paper, rough and soft at the same time.

It was the first time the old man had touched him in years and Brody gasped, he tipped back his head searching for air.

“I made it so you could never ask for more than what you got. And that’s such a terrible thing to do to a kid,” Ed said, his blue eyes runny. Whether it was age or emotion didn’t matter, Brody found them paralyzing. “It’s okay to want more.”

Brody smiled, because Ed was working himself into a state and Brody needed to get out of this house with its relics and its ghosts.

“I’ve got plenty,” Brody said, pulling his hands free, but Ed hung on and he hung on hard. Brody had no idea what to do with the interest, the sudden panicked and intense
care
from this man.

“It’s okay to want more,” Ed repeated.

“Heard you the first time. Now come on.” Finally Brody pulled himself free. But it didn’t feel right to just leave, Ed seemed fragile.

“Do you know what people used to say about you when you were a kid?” Ed asked. Brody could only shake his head, he’d had no idea anyone had talked about him when he was a kid. He was invisible inside of himself, how could anyone else see him?

“They used to say you were so brave. Such a brave kid. And Linda would get so mad, because she knew. She knew how scared you were. And she kept trying to reach you—”

Suddenly, he remembered her picking him up at school, once the health threats were over. Actually, what he remembered was the way she stood on the sidewalk outside the building, Sean chewing on his fists in the stroller beside her. When she waved at Brody, she used her whole
arm. When she smiled, it was with her whole face. Like her body just vibrated with how happy she was to see him after a mere six hours.

And he’d liked it. He’d liked it so much he’d wanted to run across the lawn and throw himself at her legs. So, of course,
of course
he asked her not to pick him up anymore. Gave her some bullshit story about wanting to walk home by himself.

Brody stumbled against the other chair, feeling like the earth was moving too fast.

He hadn’t wanted anything like that ever again. So badly that he pushed it away before he lost it. Not even the Marines. Not rehabilitation. Not his job.

Until Ashley.

Ed pulled his fingers away from Brody’s grip and then he patted him on the hand, as if he knew, as if he could see right into Brody’s heart … and maybe he could.

Brody always thought Linda was the one who understood him so well, but Ed had figured out how to destroy him with just two words.

And now he was trying to fix him.

Ashley had asked him what it would take to make things right between him and Ed, and it had seemed like there was nothing that could leverage them out of the landslide they’d gotten caught in.

But suddenly he wasn’t sure about that.

“It’s okay to want more,” Ed said again and with shaking hands he pulled his plate closer. “You eat?”

Numb, Brody shook his head. But Ed didn’t see him.

It took a while, Ed’s thick fingers made a mess of tearing his sandwich piece by piece in a jagged line down the middle, and at any moment Brody could have stopped him. There was food at the apartment. Good food.

Ashley was there, too.

“I want you to stay,” Ed said. “That’s what I want. Stay with me.”

Ed set the sandwich down on the table beside Brody’s fist. His instinct was to push it away. His fingers actually twitched like the muscle memory was just too strong to resist.

I can’t be that man anymore. I don’t want to be that man anymore.

It was a panicky new feeling, walking about on shaking legs that he didn’t know how to trust. But it was so big, it stood at the forefront of everything. It blotted out the memory of being that boy, the smell of hot dogs and beans. Of asking Linda not to pick him up because he couldn’t want something without imagining the horrific pain of its loss.

Brody unclenched his fists and picked up the sandwich.

Ashley sat cross-legged on the futon making lists. She was a big fan of lists. They were calming, they organized the fear out of the unknown and some of the darkness out of the coming night.

Initially she planned on making a list for the things she needed to do, now that her bruises were fading it was time to get on with her life. But she kept getting distracted by making a list of things that could be done for Ed and the rest of Bishop’s senior population.

Her own list was boring: press conference, campaign for Harrison. Yuck.

Organize a poker night for seniors at Sean’s bar was a whole lot more fun.

The apartment door opened, letting in the night and the fresh smell of rain. Brody stood there, one hand on the doorknob, his head bent as if listening to someone say his name from a place far away.

Everything shifted inside of her, cringing to the sides to make room for all this … feeling. For him. Great bullying feelings that pushed around her common sense and her other plans and any thought past him. And the next moment with him.

Oh,
she thought.
Oh, this is bad.

“How did it go with your father?” She put her pencil down on the pad, scenting something terrible in the air. The sharp edge of heartbreak and the bitter tang of fear. “You were gone a long time.”

Without a word he crossed the room and she saw the
wet spots on his shoulders, the rain like stars in his dark hair. She sucked in a breath that tasted like lightning.

He stood over her, a shadow thrown across her whole world.

“Brody?” she whispered, electrified by his silence.

Something was very very different.

“I want you,” he said, the words landing like cinders from a fire against her skin. She had to open her mouth to pull in enough air, and even that sizzled through her lungs.

“I’ve always wanted you,” he whispered. And it was a dream, a fantasy; he came down to his knees on the floor beside the futon.

“I want you, too,” she whispered. He groaned and pressed his head into her stomach. His hands furrowed under the hem of her cutoffs, up along the warm skin of her thighs.

“This is a mistake,” he whispered into her belly. “Tell me you know that.”

“No,” she said. Greedy, aware that this moment, this breakdown of his iron control, his impeccable solitude, might not last, she covered as much of his territory as possible, making huge circles with her palms over his back, taking note of every muscle, every dimple of scar tissue. Hot flesh and hard muscle. She twined her fingers into his hair, smoothed it down over his ears. She was drunk with touching him. High. It was the only reason she’d ever open her mouth and say, “I’m falling in love with you.”