Kristen Ashley - For You

“Feb, I’ve no idea what this fuckin’ guy is thinking, but I’ve gotta –”

She lifted her hand and waved it between them, the movement desperate. “I’ll write a list.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say, that’s my girl.

He didn’t say it.

It was then the full realization dawned that this business was going to take its toll. On Feb, on him, likely on Morrie and undoubtedly on Jack and Jackie who, as soon as they heard what was going on, would be back. They were probably already on their way.

And the toll to be paid was not just because of Angie’s murder and Feb’s admirer but because Colt and Feb had no choice but to be wound together again after years of being unraveled.

“Can I go back to the bar now?” she asked.

Colt nodded.

“You wanna talk to Morrie?”

Her question struck him like a blow, she knew him so well. And a thought he hadn’t contemplated, hadn’t allowed himself to contemplate for two years came into his head.

How in the fuck could this woman who was laced into the fibers of his life be so fucking removed?

Colt nodded again.

Feb lifted her chin and without another word walked out the door.

When he lost sight of her, Colt’s neck twisted and he bit his lip.

It was either that or tear the fucking office apart.

I’d been up for two and a half hours by the time Morrie stumbled into the kitchen.

It had not been the most joyful two and a half hours I’d ever spent, drinking coffee and filtering through the silt of my life trying to think of anyone that some unhinged psychopath might have decided done me wrong. Even if I did it after I’d done my yoga which usually left me feeling mellow.

In that time, I’d also come to the conclusion that this new living situation was not going to work.

Delilah, Morrie’s wife, had left him just over a year ago, taking the kids with her. It hadn’t been long in coming but still Morrie, like any man, hadn’t been paying attention. Her defection surprised him. He’d suffered her leaving like a blow. But after we’d taken over the bar, Delilah had changed.

Dee could tell it like it was but still, she used to be sweet as syrup, patient as a saint, a great Mom, a good wife to Morrie but she liked Morrie working construction. Out early, home early, at the dinner table with the family. Not out at noon, home after three in the morning, rarely seeing her or his kids.

She didn’t get it about J&J’s. Delilah didn’t understand the importance of J&J’s. Not even when Mom and Dad retired and I came back just because Morrie wanted me to help him run the bar so the family wouldn’t lose J&J’s and also so the town wouldn’t lose it.

Dee knew me; we were close even with the distance. She knew nothing would bring me home, except J&J’s.

So Dee had their old house and Morrie had a new pad – an apartment, a new complex in town. So new, it was void of personality and I hated it. So did Morrie. There were lots of things to hate about it but mostly I hated the trees. The trees that landscaped the outside were thin, the fluorescent tags from the garden store still on them, held up with sticks and wire to help them bear the brunt of winter and wind; the leaves in summer not throwing enough to make but a hint of shade. They’d probably be beautiful in about ten years, but now their existence screamed “New!” and something about it I did not like. It seemed weird in my town because the rest of the town felt old, established, settled and safe. It wasn’t that I didn’t like change, I was used to change, a lot of it. It was just that I didn’t like change in my town.

But there were three bedrooms and the all important two baths. One bedroom for Morrie, one for his son, Palmer, the other for his daughter, Tuesday.

That was how much Dee had changed. Morrie had been named after Jim Morrison who our father idolized. I had been named after the month Valentine’s Day fell in, Mom’s favorite holiday and my middle name was Valentine, not to mention Mom said I was conceived on that day. Morrie had talked Dee (and she loved him so much it didn’t take much effort) into keeping the family tradition, naming his son after Robert Palmer, since Morrie was a Led Zeppelin freak. He’d also talked Dee into naming their daughter Tuesday, which both of them swore was the day of the week she was conceived, which also happened to be Valentine’s Day that year. Dee had barely made a peep naming her kids these crazy names.

Then again, Morrie and I never suffered from our names and Dee had loved my brother back then. Loved him enough to let him name their kids. Loved him so much she couldn’t hack doing without him, seeing her family losing out to a bar.

All this meant I didn’t sleep on their pull out couch in their TV room, which was what I did all those years when I came home, sometimes, the times I didn’t stay with Mom and Dad, doing the rotation, sharing my time between family members. I’d come home for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some other family event, like the kids’ birthdays or Mom and Dad’s 40^th anniversary. Instead, all this meant I slept in Tuesday’s single bed last night.

My bed at home was a queen. Some nights I slept like the dead. Other nights I moved.

Last night I moved and almost fell out of Tuesday’s bed twice.

And my cat Wilson, unused to his new surroundings, steered clear.

I couldn’t sleep without Wilson on my feet or, when I was moving, he slept somewhere close. Wilson was a cuddler. He liked my warmth and even when I shifted he didn’t mind, he just shifted with me.

So I didn’t sleep.

I hadn’t slept well, not for years. But at least I slept some.

I needed to go home.

Morrie went straight to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup.

He didn’t speak or look at me until he was well into his third sip.

Then he did. “See this arrangement is gonna work out great.”

I loved my brother but he was such a fucking man.

He slept in his own bed, a big bed, in his own home. I slept in a foreign bed, a little bed, away from my home. But he got up and there was coffee brewed, coffee he didn’t have to make, so it was all going to work out great.

“Morrie, this isn’t going to work. Tuesday’s bed…” he looked at me, “I don’t sleep enough as it is.”

“Colt’s couch pulls out.”

Oh fuck. No way. No way in hell.

“I’ll move in with Jessie.”

Jessie’s husband was a chemist, he worked at Lilly and he got paid a shitload. They didn’t have kids because that would cut into Jessie’s affinity for having fun whenever the hell she wanted and doing whatever the hell she liked whenever the hell she felt like it. They had a three bedroom house. One bedroom Jessie converted into a workout room. One had been decorated by some interior designer that Jessie hired when she’d got a wild hair up her ass. It had a double bed with a big, down comforter on it and lots of toss pillows and I knew Jessie put mints on the pillows when her Mom and Dad or her sister and her sister’s husband would come to visit.

I could do mints while I was displaced because some creepy, sick psycho had fixed onto me and was murdering people I liked and sending me notes from high school and forcing me to spend time with Alec, time where he touched me.

“No offense but Jimbo is a dweeb and he doesn’t own a .45,” Morrie dismissed my suggestion by slightly insulting Jessie’s husband who was, unfortunately, a dweeb but he also wasn’t a pushover.

I changed the subject. “Please tell me you don’t have a gun in your house with kids.”

“I do. I’m an American. I know how to use it, my kids know to avoid it and it’s locked in a safe anyway so they couldn’t get it even if they wanted to make trouble.”

I let it go and tried something else. “Al’s not a dweeb and it’s highly likely he owns a gun.”

Meems’s husband Al was anything but a dweeb. He’d been the center on the football team, on the line, right next to Morrie. Time had made him a little soft but it hadn’t made him a slouch. And he was a hunter, I knew he had guns. And he loved me, I knew he’d blow the brains out of anyone who tried to hurt me or got near his wife and kids.

No, that wasn’t true. Anyone got near his wife and kids, Al would not use his gun, he’d go in with his hands and rip them apart.

“They got no room for you, Feb. Theirs is a full house.”

This was true, they had four kids and Al wasn’t a chemist at Lilly. He worked on the highway crew. It was union, it paid well and the Coffee House was nothing to sneeze at because Meems could bake. Her muffins were orgasmic and her cookies and cakes were so good, you’d sell your soul to the devil if she made you do it just so you could have one. Still, they had four kids and Meems had a fondness for catalogue shopping. Bob, her postman, blamed her for the hernia he suffered last year and he wasn’t joking.

“Colt works a lot. You wouldn’t have to sleep on the pull out. He’d probably let you use his bed.”

If Morrie was being funny, I wasn’t laughing.

“If he’s gone all the time, what purpose would it serve me staying there?”

I watched Morrie’s face change, resistance drifting through it in a hard way, and I knew part of the bucketload of shit that sifted through my brain while I wasn’t sleeping last night was going to come spilling out just then.

I wasn’t wrong.

“We gotta talk about Colt.”

I shook my head.

His coffee cup came down with a crash and I jumped back a foot. I looked down, seeing the mug had split right down the middle and coffee was all over the place, spreading, spilling down the side of the counter, dripping in a coffee waterfall to the floor.

I looked at my brother. “Holy shit, Morrie.”

He turned and with an underarm throw he tossed the handle to the coffee mug, a jagged section of mug still attached to it, into the sink with such force it fractured again, bits flying out everywhere.

I didn’t jump that time but I took a step back.

“Morrie –”

Morrie leaned forward. “You’re gonna talk to me, February, talk to me right, fucking, now.”

I lifted my hand in a conciliatory gesture but Morrie shook his head.

“You spill now or you spill when Mom and Dad get here. Your choice but it’s been too fucking long. We all let it go too long. We shoulda made you spill ages ago, before Pete –”

“Stop!” I shouted.

No one talked to me about Pete. No one.

Not Meems. Not Jessie. Not Mom and Dad.

Not even my brother, who I loved best of them all which was saying a whole helluva lot.

I thought that’d work, it had worked before many times. Everyone knew I couldn’t talk about Pete.

But it didn’t work. Morrie moved fast. Before I knew it he had his hand curled around my upper arm and he gave me a shake. It wasn’t controlled, it was almost brutal and my head snapped back with the force of it.

My breath started coming fast but thin. Morrie got Dad’s temper which could flare out of control, though neither of them ever hurt anyone who didn’t need to get hurt. I got Mom’s which also could flare out of control but we were women and our hurt came from words rather than actions and those, unfortunately, lasted longer.

“What the fuck happened?” Morrie was in my face. “What made it go bad? What made you do what you did?”

“Let go of me Morrie.”

“Answer me, Feb.”

“Let me go!”

Another shake and my head snapped back. “Answer me!”

“You’re hurting me!” I yelled.

“I should knock some fuckin’ sense into you!” he yelled back.

I made a noise like I was going to vomit, it was involuntary and it sounded nasty. Then I wasn’t breathing anymore, not even thin, useless breaths – nothing, no oxygen.

Morrie’s face changed and he let me go, stepping back. He looked whipped, injured, the expression hideous on his face, the knowledge of what he’d done and what he’d said attacking him.

“Baby Sister,” he whispered but I shook my head.

He couldn’t go back to beloved big brother now. Not after that. Not after that. No way. No fucking way.

“I’m moving in with Jessie,” I announced, turning away.

“Feb, don’t. You need to be protected. You need someone lookin’ after you.”

I turned back. “A couple of hours in, Morrie, fine job you made of it.”