Unlike Any Other (Unexpected #1) (26 page)

“I love you.” My fingertips caress his sensitive back.

“Don’t do this again, Gabe,” his after-sex, rough voice begs me. “You’re my life.”

“I promise, Chris.” He kisses me deeply. “Press release?”

“No.” He taps his ring with his thumb. “But if they ask you about the ring, it’ll be nice to tell the truth. I know I will.”

“Kitchen?” I offer.

“In a minute, I’m not thirty anymore. My recovery time is… longer. Next decade: the blue pill.”

2015

Mason walks into the room carrying the coffeemaker he just finished uninstalling. “The kitchen is done,” he states and I check it off the list.

According to the list, almost everything is in the truck. AJ’s studio is almost empty. The tanned walls are full of holes from all the frames AJ hung on the walls. Frames with family pictures, posters of her favorite bands, a couple of landscapes, and superheroes. The flat screen mounted on the wall along with an entertainment system that fits on a small shelf is next on the list to pack up.

During the weekend of Thanksgiving, AJ talked to us about her plans, the lack of, to be exact. She didn’t want to come back to Texas, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with her life. We dropped her off at the airport on Saturday. She went to San Diego for the two-week retreat. So far, she’s been gone for one.

In the meantime, we’re moving her belongings to the Washington house. While she makes a few decisions about her future, she’s going to stay there with us.

“Ready for inspection, Dad,” JC and MJ walk by carrying the last two boxes and I look around the studio to make sure we’re not missing anything.

“Constantine has left the building,” Chris enters the studio.

He hired a piano moving expert for Constantine, AJ’s baby grand piano.

“Where are we going to put it?”

“Ainse’s room is big enough—bigger than this place.” He walks around the studio. “I’m not rearranging the music room. She’s moving out after we come back from our trip.”

The boys are touring around Europe and Asia the first couple of months of the upcoming year. When it’s over, they’ll take a hiatus and reconvene about their careers. During those months, we’re going to follow them at the same time as Ainsley, Chris and I explore around.

“That sounds sensible,” I agree. “But it can also fit in the living room…” I wiggle my brows. “It’s only for a few weeks.”

“We’re not having sex on our daughter’s piano,” Christian lashes back. “Horny old man, there’s something wrong with you.”

I laugh because the most sexual man I know has some limits.

“You two stop it.” MJ enters the room with widened eyes and shaking his head. “The moans, gasps, and ‘Please, harder babe,’ still wake me up at night. You two are forbidden to have, talk, or think about sex while I’m around.”

Rumor has it that he heard us having sex while in the kitchen. I told them the house was off limits for the night, but they never listen.

“The moving truck is packed, Mason is driving it.” MJ runs a hand through his hair. “JC and I are driving Eleanor.”

“Don’t speed and remember your stops,” I check the map one more time.

Instead of paying for a truck to move the car, another to move her belongings and wait for them, we decided to take a road trip. Some bonding time between us and our sons… However, Mason joined the trip. He had promised AJ he’d pack and help her if she decided to leave Texas. Chris wasn’t too happy about letting Mason in because that’d make him part of the family. However, we’re bonding with the kid too, he isn’t half as bad as my husband fears. I guess the fact that he likes AJ makes him a complete troll.

Mason knows a lot more about road trips, and he traced the entire journey. Our first stop is Albuquerque, then Ogden, and finally home. Seven days on the road, four down and three to go.

“I paid to have the walls repaired and painted.” I look around the apartment wanting to know why he is complaining. “She’s like her father, can’t see a plain wall because they have to tamper with it.”

I lift my shoulder and tilt my head as if saying, ‘What can you do? That’s the way we are.’

“Yet, the entire studio was perfectly organized.” I arch a brow. “That’s your OCD, babe, AJ is daddy’s little girl if you haven’t noticed.”

She is daddy’s little girl because both of us have spoiled her plenty of times. Just like we spoiled the other two. Then other times, we treated them with a firm hand. A hand that went overboard when she needed us the most.

“I can’t believe she fit everything inside this tiny place.” Chris shuts the door behind us. “If everything else fails, she can become a life-organizer. Famous people pay a lot of shit to do that.”

“Aren’t I lucky? I have two of those at home.” He laughs at my complaint.

I give him a peck as we reach the car and open the passenger door for him.

“Let’s head home, babe,” I whisper.

Chris takes away the car keys. “I’m driving. You drove from Tucson.”

He sets the GPS with the new address and pulls out of the parking lot.

My heart feels lighter as we head north. As parents, we tried to make things right, but they didn’t work out the way we thought. When our children moved out of the house and went to college, we gave them our blessing. It wasn’t important for us to help them move in. It had been for Ainse, and back then we failed her. She no longer resents us for that, but it’s a red mark for us. Another mistake we made.

So maybe we didn’t help her move into her dorm. Needless to say, we helped her move into her new life, whatever that will be. It’s all about our actions from now on and not what we aren’t able to fix from the past.

I glance at Chris, satisfied that my actions didn’t destroy our life together and that there will be a future for the two of us.

2015

My phone rings as I close my journal. Every day I write a page with memories of things that hurt me. Words from strangers, from friends, or their attitudes. Each day it’s harder for me to fill that page.

Then I proceed to write two pages with memories of great things that have happened. Those happy moments that filled my heart with joy and made me laugh. It’s harder to stop at two pages, every day I find more.

After that Thanksgiving weekend, I put everything on hold and stayed with my parents. I needed time to recognize what I want from my life. Find point B. My first step had been going to a grieving retreat. A place where they helped me with the pain I harbored for so long, the loss of James.

Two weeks later I went home with my parents and started counseling to help me finish what I had started a couple of years ago.

I’m searching for myself in all the right places. Recognizing who I am and who I want to be—for myself. I lost myself during the Porter period. For so long Porter became my world and conditioned me to do everything around his happiness. I let him become the only person who mattered.

As for him, Porter, he is in a rehabilitation center. My brothers who wanted to confront him found him drunk and high. It was the last thing they did for that friend they once loved. When they arrived in Arizona, they confiscated two bottles of prescription drugs and a bottle of whiskey.

Now he’s working through the twelve steps of AA and the steps include me. Not losing any more time, I pick up the phone, having agreed to take the call today at five.

“Hey,” I greet Porter. The only noise I hear is his breathing. I close my eyes as I try to organize my thoughts and wait for him to start this. “Are you okay?”

“Better,” he responds. “I’m sorry about…”

There’s another long pause on the phone, I hear his breathing and I wait for him to continue.

“Everything,” he continues. “You rescued me and I took advantage of you. I have an addictive personality—the doctors told me. You were my drug. The one who gifted me the love I never had. But my madness got the best of me and there came a day I didn’t care about you anymore. I remember your huge crinkling eyes that observed me the first day you spotted me. You were so patient with me, you’re gentle and soft… no one ever gave me that.”

Tears fall from the corner of my eyes as I remember that boy.

“As we grew older, I… I feared you’d discover I wasn’t that great guy you raved about. I worked so hard to be a smidgen of who you described.”

“You were great, Porter,” I sniff. “If you could see yourself as I did. You crossed the country to find something better for yourself. Fought against those ideas you grew up with, that you’d never do anything better with your life. You fought to believe you were smart.”

“I ended up an abusive alcoholic, AJ.”

I clean the tears with the hem of my cami and try to regain my strength.

“A lot of great men and women have succumbed to a vice and bravely fight against their addiction every day. Papi does.”

“I’m sorry for all the pain I inflicted,” he sobs.

I bite my lip. “There are memories, so many, I want them to stay with me, but the others weigh so heavy.”

“We’ll store the bad ones in the jar of lessons—as sour moments in history,” I tell him. “Never to pull them out, unless we need to review them. I don’t want to hurt anymore, I don’t want you to hurt either, Porter.”

“Are we giving up?”

“No, Porter,” I respond with a bright smile on my lips. “We should never give up.”

I pause, afraid of the overdoses my brothers told me about and say, “Life goes on, there’s so much that giving up is simply not an option,” I continue. “I survived so much. Why would I give up? That’s what we are, Porter, survivors. We continue and if we fall, we either stand up, crawl, or ask for help. Never give up.”

“That sounds cool,” Porter says, “but I’m talking about us, AJ.”

“Ah, was there ever really an us, Porter?” I confront that door I’ve avoided for so long. “There was you, and you, and…”

I browse through my journal and find the page: Things I missed while young and hidden from my parents or while I dated Porter.

Finding myself and love—when you love yourself plenty. The other kind is far from my plan, that’s more heading to point C. If I’m ever ready to take that journey.

“We’re not meant for each other, Porter.” I avoid the hurtful thoughts and save them for my shrink. “If we had been, we wouldn’t have had to work so hard to keep everyone away, to hide it.”

“This time it will be different,” he sounds like a junkie swearing he can quit anytime.

“You can’t have alcohol ever again, Porter.” I remind him. “I think it’s the same with drugs, and you just mentioned that I’m one of your drugs.”

I imagine him sitting in some sterile white room, scratching the nape of his neck and searching for a way to convince me.

“Thank you for the tender-loving moments, Porter,” I sob. “They’ll stay inside my heart forever.”

“Don’t leave me, AJ, please.” I hear him crying. “I love you, AJ, don’t leave me.”

The image of that fourteen-year-old hits me, and I fight with the need to protect him and keep him safe from everything his family did. But I can’t because he’s no longer fourteen.

That boy disappeared long ago. He’s a man who needs to learn to take care of himself.

“Goodbye and Merry Christmas, Porter.”

A hand retrieves the phone from mine as I let the big bawl take over. The tears blur my vision, but my parents are right beside me. I know they’ll wait until the tears subside. It should be soon.

2015

I’m strumming Breezy while Papi tunes Constantine. He insisted on doing it for me—I can tune my own piano, but I think he wants to baby me after my call with Porter.

I can’t believe that my piano is inside my room. The ten-year-old and the fairy who lives inside me are jumping up and down. Twirling around celebrating this new and unique event. After my parents, Mason, and my brothers moved my stuff back from Texas, they rearranged my old bedroom.

My desk is piled against one corner so they could fit the piano inside. Something about, not moving the music room around for only a few weeks and keeping the temptation out of the living room. I didn’t understand the latter, but I was happy they broke one of their rules. No instruments inside the bedroom at night.

Ha, the joke is on them. I bet they’re going to slam on my door and tell me to stop the music when they realize the consequences of their acts. But I won’t be able to hear them since I’ll be playing beautiful music with Constantine and Breezy—not at the same time though.

Dad opens the door and stares at me before speaking, “You have a visitor.”

I expel one of those big breaths that lift some of the weight of the world away from my shoulders, place Breezy on her stand, and head toward the door.

“Are you going to receive your visitor like that?”

I scan myself from head to toe. A pair of shorts, a cami, and my kitty slippers. I lift one shoulder and continue walking.

“Who is it?” Chris asks and I don’t hear the response but I do hear his loud voice. “Come back here and change Ainsley Janine. You’re not receiving boys dressed like that.”

His distraught voice drags a chuckle out of me and the gloom still lingering from Porter’s call is lifting. Until I see him standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Mason.

Yes, I should go and change… how? Without the kid-like slippers and with something more… I have no idea, but I know I look like shit. I haven’t washed my face after the call, and the dry, crusty tears on my face must look hideous.

“What happened?” He takes several steps and holds my chin with both hands examining me.

“I had a call with the past?” I don’t know what to say and he waits for me to continue. “Porter.”

He releases my face and combs his hair with both hands.

“He’s working on his twelve-step program and wanted to talk to me,” I add casually.

“Why did you agree to talk to him?” Mason questions as I stare at the grayish-green eyes behind those Clark Kent-like black plastic glasses I love.

“Because,” I know that’s not a real answer.

“You need to stop having any contact with him,” he suggests. “Why do you do this to yourself?”

His insistence puzzles me. Mason doesn’t discuss much about Porter or the Porter era, it’s like fight club. You know it exists, but you don’t talk about the subject, which is why I’m curious about his question.

“Because he needs closure in order to heal too,” I explain, as I take his hand and drag him to the couch.

We sit and as I pull my legs toward my body and hug them, he touches the slippers and smiles at me.

“What about you?” he questions. His lips draw a thin line each time he closes his mouth. “Why would you agree to that while you’re trying to fix your own shit?”

“I accepted the call because I was ready—I need closure too. Real closure.” His eyes aren’t judging, but the imaginary hot seat is burning my butt. “After three years, I think the biggest issue I carry is the abuse.”

“Mostly, that for years I’ve watched movies, read books, heard stories of women who lived inside these scary, abusive relationships and I said, ‘That’ll never happen to me. How can they not notice?’ And yet, I didn’t and there’s something inside of me that keeps wanting to find out why I was so stupid.”

Mason opens his mouth to interrupt me, but I shake my head and continue.

“In any case, those self-doubts are the reason I lost all the terrain I’ve walked and slid back to the anger and bitterness. Then I bargained with myself because if I had done things differently…”

“If he recovers, are you going to forgive him?”

I take a deep breath. I’d rather watch back-to-back movies of
Alien vs. Predator
, or watch
A Thousand Years at War
twice—the shit Mason likes – than discuss Porter with him. Especially with him hating Porter with every cell of his body.

“I forgave him.”

A strange animal growl erupts deeply from his throat, but he doesn’t move, speak, or change his expression.

“For both him and me.” I make myself clear, or as clear as I can since his defaced eyes aren’t changing. “Think, Mase. What’s the benefit of carrying any feelings he created—good or bad—inside me? The good moments will stay; my brothers and I have great memories from the time he arrived until we all grew up and things changed.”

I place my chin on top of my knees. My eyes begin to water, Mase squeezes my hand.

“That’s what hurts, Mase; he was our friend.” Not only did I lose a friend, my brothers did too. “I’m having trouble merging that kid with the guy I thought I loved. He asked me not to leave him over the phone and when he said it, I remembered that scared homeless boy my parents brought home. How can we abandon him?”

I turn my head and now my temple is leaning against my knees. Mason watches me with a strange void to his features, not one hint of his mood surfaces. His cold silence makes the wait feel like hours or days; perhaps it’s only seconds.

“I applaud your big heart,” Mason says dryly. He doesn’t change his serious expression. “I’ll ask one last time, and after, we’ll forget he even existed. Are you getting back together with him?”

“Not at all. At this point, I doubt what we had meant what I thought back then. He gave me what I needed, a person who accepted me as the little monster I believed myself to be.”

I came to find that we didn’t love each other the way couples should. However, that’s a tad bit for myself and no one else’s ears.

“At the same time, he used all those insecurities to fill my head with ideas and make me believe that without him, I was no one.”

That was not the person my parents raised, but then my parents handled our lives in such a way that I had no idea what was real or not. Porter’s insecurities and need to guarantee that the one person who believed in him would always stay by his side, helped brew the perfect liquid explosive to create a major catastrophe.

“I don’t want to forget, I want to learn from the past and the present, Mason,” I say, his attention still transfixed on me. “I want to learn how to live, do all that I couldn’t while trapped under his magic spell. That’s what you get when you live enclosed.”

I lift my head and look around the room and wave my hand through the entire house—my former cage. Or what I thought once had been my cage.

This is just peachy. The conversation turned out to be all about me and that pesky past.

“Dates, night clubs, bars, movie theaters, the venues I only visited backstage… I want to concentrate on being me.”

“If one day a great guy comes along and offers that thing I want, I won’t shut him down because of my past.”

“That’s a mouth full.” He rakes a hand through his hair and then brushes some strands of hair out of my face. “What’s that thing you want from that your mysterious guy?”

“A love story, his and mine. Ordinary and yet extraordinary,” I tell him hopeful that it’ll happen someday. “One, unlike any other. You know how they say there’s not two fingerprints alike in the world… like that.”

He nods and checks his black fancy watch with different time zones and buttons on the side that I can’t possibly understand from where I sit.

Mason stands up and pulls me with him. “It’s time for me to leave,” his voice is firm but his eyes don’t look convinced about it.

Heck, I don’t want him to leave yet. Being with Mason dissipates the black clouds and shitty moments. Keeps the crappy stuff of the world at bay.

“I actually came for a quick visit. I wanted to check on you before leaving the country,” he explains as he takes my hand and we head outside of the house. “I have a couple of long term projects that will keep me busy for a long time. Text, email… you know, the same shit. Don’t hesitate to call if you need me… never hesitate.”

“Goodbye?” I mean, what else is there to say, right? See you in two to three years?

He doesn’t say a word. Instead, he gathers me into his arms, holding me tightly. His soapy, musky scent slams against my nostrils and this time the anticipation stiffens my body. Mason loosens his grip gliding his hands up. One hand lands on the nape of my neck, the other cups my chin. He gradually lowers his lips to mine, a brush, a test, a nibble; those lips persuading me to let him take over.

The caress of his lips along with the stroke of his hand and the closeness of his body cause my entire body to combust. I part my lips, letting him take over and send me swirling to a dimension I’ve never known existed.

“Take care of yourself, sweet girl.”

“Bye,” I whisper. “Be safe.”

“Always, I’ll see you around.” He climbs into a dark sports car and drives away toward the shadows of the night.

Because that’s what superheroes do.