Quirks & Kinks (28 page)

A fucking burning cigarette.

“Morning, Easie,” Tammy called, stepping out of her room casually until she saw my face.

And the picture in my hand.

“
Shit.
”

“What the fuck?” I asked, not giving her a chance to prepare or evade. I shook the photo before turning it around and holding it up for her to see.

She didn’t even need to look.

She approached me slowly, her hands raised in plea. “Give him a chance to explain, Easie.”

This was about so much more than a stupid picture, and Tammy’s reaction only solidified that. She wasn’t surprised at what was playing out in front of her. She’d more than seen it coming.

“A chance to explain? What the hell do you think our whole fucking relationship has been?” I shrieked, no longer measuring the volume or timbre of my voice. “A chance to goddamn explain!”

I knew everyone had pasts and that people changed. But this wasn’t that. The guy I knew—the guy I’d let my heart swallow up nearly whole—would
never
be in a picture like this. And if he had been, he wouldn’t have kept it from me.

“I know.” She nodded her head, resigned.

“What’s going on?” a sleepy and shirtless Anderson asked, stepping out from the mouth of the hallway. The commotion had obviously woken him.

“What the fuck is this?” I yelled, unquestionably handling the whole situation in the most immature way possible.

But come onnnn.

The dude was fucking
smoking.

Browbeating and nagging me before he even knew me. Condescending looks when he did. Mr. High and Mighty himself was hypercritical at best and a complete fucking liar at worst.

I felt like the sky was shattering above me and falling, and the ground, unforgiving and unyielding as it was, was shoving me higher and serving me up to the spiky shards—when all I wanted was for it to swallow me up.

“Easie—”

“Jesus, Anderson. I feel like I don’t know you at all.” He stepped toward me, but I threw up a hand, bringing him to an abrupt stop as though I’d encased his feet in cement. “Honestly, I feel like you’ve ripped the rug right out from under me, stolen the goddamn magic from my carpet.”

“Easie—”

“I was fucking falling for you, Anderson!”

He sucked lips into his mouth before reaching for me again. I stepped back out of reach. His speech broke. “Was?”

My voice was no more than a whisper. “You can’t fall for someone you don’t know.”

“You know me,” he insisted, stepping forward and grabbing onto my hip before I could stop him. His touch felt like home, sweet and welcoming and cozy in a way that nowhere else was.

My heart sped up, beating at triple its normal pace as I stared into his soft green eyes. They pleaded with me, begging me to see him for what he was, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t rationalize the person I thought I knew with the guy in that picture. Everything I knew about him, everything I thought he was, said he would never have been that guy. That he was too good for that life and the mistakes that it brought.

He never treated my smoking like a habit he’d overcome. Never.

And the more my heart broke, the more questions there were that filtered through the cracks.

He’d never done anything I’d invited him to, despite the numerous things I’d done with him. Why was that? What the hell else didn’t I know?

Going against everything I knew, I gave him the second chance, the opportunity to make it right.

“Blow off your gig tonight. Take me to dinner, come to my apartment and explain.”

Tammy stayed standing to the side, waiting to see how it all played out, but I only had eyes for Anderson.

His face went through a rainbow of emotions, cycling through relief, happiness, and anger and eventually landing on dismay.

I knew his answer before it even started to leave his lips.

“I want to.” I didn’t even wait, starting my embarrassingly underdressed walk to his bedroom to get my shit and get the hell out of there.

“Easie.”

“Don’t,” I said, shaking off his hand on my arm.

“But—”

I turned to him in a flash, pointing one angry finger directly in his face. “If you’re going to say anything other than yes, I don’t want to hear it.”

The silence that followed probably hurt the worst of all.

With shaky hands, I whipped off his shirt, unable to get out of it fast enough, feeling the fabric burn through my naivety and set my heartbroken skin on fire.

I thought I’d known better. I thought I’d been prepared to protect my heart from someone I knew would break it.

I was wrong.

Anderson seemed distraught, the roots of his fantastic hair nearly pulled all the way out with his tugs, but I tried my best to ignore him. He got lost in himself too, pacing and mumbling and even dropping into the occasional distressed squat.

It didn’t take me long to gather my things, and once I finished, I didn’t look back.

It wasn’t to be cruel or to make some kind of statement.

It was because I couldn’t.

Scooting out of the bedroom and down the hall, Anderson followed me, but he did it silently. No explanations were offered. No pleas to get me to stay were made.

The end was really happening.

I waved a small hand at Tammy, but all she could do was cringe in return.

The door opened easily enough, but the weight of it closing behind me nearly took me all the way to my boney knees.

Larry was right.

My guts were fucking everywhere.

AS SOON AS THE
door closed behind her, I got sick. Vomit and mess all over myself and the floor, I didn’t even make it to the bathroom.

I accepted the inescapable reality of cleaning it up as my penance.

“God, would you look at yourself?” Tammy asked, offering me a wet wash cloth and a pound of unsolicited advice and criticism. “You are the biggest fucking moron. All of this so that you could hold on to the ghost of a kid who’s never coming back.”

Her words stung, licking my fresh wounds with salt and rubbing it in with each truth.

“I should have just told her.”

“No fucking kidding,” she huffed. “I’m pretty sure I told you that from the beginning.”

Pushing back from my mess and leaning back into the front of the couch, I hiked up my knees and let my face drown in the comfort of my hands. “I can’t explain it,” I whispered, knowing that Tammy would get close enough to hear me no matter how low I talked. “Every time I started to say it, the fear of letting it all go was paralyzing.”

“You mean the fear of letting him go?” she whispered.

All I could do was nod.

She settled onto the floor next to me, shoulder to shoulder and bumped me lightly with the weight of her body.

“That’s just it, Andy. You’ve served Evan well, but he’s not coming back. No matter what you do. But Easie is here now, and she makes you happy. I’ve seen it with my own gorgeous eyes. Give her a chance to get to know you. God, give her a chance to be the priority.”

“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” I admitted, lifting my head to meet her eyes. “How can I show her what I don’t even see?”

Tammy shrugged, made it all seem much simpler than it was. “You can learn together.”

I shook my head in shame. “There’s no way she’ll listen to me now. She gave me more than enough chances, and I blew every last one of them.”

“Anderson. The woman told you she was falling in love with you in the middle of a heated and humiliating argument. If you do it right, truly make an effort to rectify the mistakes you’ve made, she’ll let you back in.”

Hope bloomed in my belly and inflated my posture closer to normal. I wanted that so badly.

It wasn’t a snap realization—changing years of feeling one thing to another in no more than a mere second. It was a come to Jesus moment, an event that made one inescapable fact true. I’d lost the one thing that Evan wanted for me the most—the chance to live freely and do the things that made
me
happy—because I couldn’t let go of the ghost of him. Until Easie left, my brain had never been able to make the distinction. Fulfilling Evan’s dreams made me feel a sense of accomplishment and contentment. Easie made me feel euphoric. Easie made me feel
loved.

“You’ll probably have to give her a free shot at your nuts, but she’ll let you back in.”

“God, I don’t know.”

“The least you can do is try. Unless you’re happy with living without her for the rest of your life?”

My stomach rolled again, threatening to make me clean up two times the mess.

“I’m definitely not happy without her for the rest of my life.”

“Then start from the beginning.”

“What’s the beginning?” I asked even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

“Evan.”

She was right.

“One thing’s for sure. She can’t know you without knowing him. No one can.”

“So I’ll start with Evan.”

Tammy scrunched up her face and plugged her nose. Looked over her shoulder and back to me.

“Correction. Start with the fucking vomit. Then move on to Evan.”

Practical advice, I moved into the kitchen to get a roll of paper towels and a bottle of cleaner. I made quick work of it, hoping to never, ever get sick outside of a toilet again. Cleaning it up under these circumstances was bad enough. I didn’t ever want to have to repeat it.

Once done, I showered, feeling the need to wash away not only the filth but the morning, the toxicity of my inability to change making me stink with regret. I couldn’t believe I’d let it go that far. That the thought of giving up a single day of a hobby I didn’t even enjoy nearly had me losing the potential love of my life.

At least, I hoped it was nearly.

Clean and ready to face the day, I went back to the living room, pulled the envelope from my cabinet and rifled through each of his letters one last time. His words were choppy and cheerful, the wistful innocence of his fourteen year old self ringing soundly off of every page.

To this very day, I still couldn’t believe it had come to this, that he’d actually died. I never believed it, not even once, and the picture that Easie found haunted me every day since.

When Evan was struggling to form his last breaths, that’s where I was. Taking that picture, smoking a cigarette, believing everything would be fine, and spitting in the face of my brother, who’d wanted nothing other than a healthy pair of lungs and the opportunity to use them.