R. Lilley - Lovely Trigger

It wasn’t fucking pretty.

I reeled for an endless moment, as I saw just what I’d done, and tried to cope with it, trying to breathe for even another moment, to live in a skin that I despised down to my soul.

I didn’t even realize I’d moved to her until I was at her table.  My body had moved with no tangible communication to my brain.

 She barely looked at my face, just one devastating, cursory glance before her eyes became glued to my chest.

Oh God.  She can’t even stand to look at me now.  I felt gutted by that.  This was going worse than my most dreadful fears.

I stared at her for the longest time, drinking her in, willing her to just look at me.

Finally, I shook myself out of it.  “Can I get you anything?  Coffee or tea?”

The finest tremor ran through her, but it stopped between one second and the next.  I wasn’t sure I hadn’t imagined it or manufactured it, since I myself was shaking.

“Some hot tea, thank you,” she finally answered stiffly.

I went to the counter and ordered two teas, watching her all the while.

She didn’t look at me once.

I brought the tea back to the table, and she nodded her thanks, staring down into her cup.  She added a sugar packet and stirred it.

“Milk?” I asked.

She shook her head, adding more sugar.  She didn’t drink it, just focused on it.

I shoved my own neglected tea to the side.

I put my hands on the table, fingers threaded together.  I stared down at them as intently as she stared at her tea.  I took a very deep breath, gathering my courage.

“I have many regrets, many bad things I must take credit for, but believe me when I say that the negative impact that all of my actions have had on your life is my biggest one.”  I had rehearsed this speech.  I doubted I would have been able to say it without breaking down otherwise.

Finally, I felt her eyes on me, but now I didn’t have the strength to meet them.  I knew I’d find nothing I could bear in them.

I wished she’d say something, anything, but when it was clear that she wouldn’t, I continued.  “I do not deserve your forgiveness, after all that’s happened, but I am asking for it.”

Begging, I thought.

Groveling.

“Know that I would take it all back if I could, and know that I hold myself responsible for all of the bad things that happened.  I am so sorry that my hitting rock bottom the way I did impacted you.  Any recompense you can imagine, anything you would ask of me, I would be happy to provide.”  Please, I thought.  Ask me for something, anything.  Let me give and you take.  Let me have some role in your life again.  “I’m at your service.  Always, Danika.  And it is my most sincere wish that someday, perhaps over time, you might consider being my friend again.”

Her hand went to her throat, and she shuddered, as though in revulsion.

I shuddered in pain.

She was that disgusted with me now that even the idea of a friendship with me made her recoil?

“Tristan,” she said slowly, her voice hoarse.  “Consider yourself forgiven.  But please don’t think that I hold you responsible for everything that happened.”

I was filled, for the briefest moment, with the strongest feeling of elation.

“Things didn’t turn out how I could have hoped,” she continued.  “But no one person is to blame for any of it.  So yes, I forgive you for any and all of it.”

Joy, wonder, the biggest spark of hope filled my chest.

Her next words made pain, horror, denial, follow closely in their wake.

“That being said, I must decline your offer of friendship.  Some things…what I mean to say is, some people, need to stay away from each other, and we are such a pair.”

No, no, no, I thought.  Anything but that.  Don’t cut me off completely.  I can take anything but that.

But I saw the resolve in the set of her shoulders.

I saw the end in her downcast eyes.

The very least I could do is give her what she so clearly wanted.  I did not have the right to fight her on this.  Not after all I’d done.

“If that is how you feel, I must respect your decision.”  Those words didn’t want to come out of me, but I forced them out.

“It is,” she said quickly.  “But thank you for the apology, and I wish you all the best.”  She spoke to my collarbone.  “I’m glad you got yourself help.”

She was done.  That was all she was going to say.  I couldn’t quite believe it, but I made myself accept it.

Finally, I wrenched myself away.

It was an effort.

My body did not want to leave her any more than my heart did.

I did not know how I was going to move on, but it was clear that she already had.

“I need to stay busy.  I need to stay on point today,” I told my friends when I’d sat back down at the table.  I stared at Danika’s downcast face.  How had it come to this?  I had the clearest picture in my head, of the way she used to look at me, like I was her whole world.

I would have given anything to have that back.

To deserve it.

Though of course, I’d never deserved it.

“I am feeling a very strong desire to use.”  My voice was succinct.

“We’ll keep you busy,” Trinity said gently.

“We’ll go watch a movie, then hit up the gym,” Todd suggested.  “I know how you love your workouts.”

I nodded, then followed them out.  We passed Danika, who seemed in no hurry to go anywhere, still looking down at her drink, her face blank.

I paused as we passed her, but Trinity grabbed my arm, tugging me away.

“She hates me,” I finally said, as I put my car in gear.  “She said she forgives me, but she doesn’t want me in her life.  Not in any way.  She said we can’t even be friends.  She could barely even look at me.”

“Oh Tristan,” Trinity said gently, and I could tell by her tone that she, too, had been hoping that this meeting would turn out better for me.

“I’m so sorry, man,” Todd added.  “It’s a rough hand you’ve been dealt.  But some things are just out of our hands.”

That was a hard lesson for me to learn, but I tried my best to learn it well.

NEARLY TWO YEARS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

DANIKA

I’d often noted the fact that much of the humor in my life had left with Tristan.  The humor, the fun, and if I was brutally honest with myself, the joy.

Everything was serious these days.  Work, even my social life.  When I dated, it was very serious professionals, though nothing ever got far or lasted long.  My heart just wasn’t in it yet.

I told myself I only needed more time.

I finished college, and James immediately promoted me.  I moved to L.A. and managed the gallery there.  Career wise, all of my dreams were coming true.  James let me prove myself and gave me free reign over the gallery.

I missed Bev, Jerry, and the boys, but I had enough work to keep me busy literally every waking hour, and that’s how I liked it.

Bev and Jerry remarried in a very small ceremony in the Bahamas.  I attended, and the amount of relief I felt when I found out that Tristan, for whatever reason, hadn’t come, worried me.  He should not still affect me like this, I told myself, but there was no helping it.

It was a beautiful wedding.  They both wrote their own vows, and they were so sweet that I cried like a sap through the entire thing, hugging the boys, who flanked me on each side.

Later, I found out that Tristan hadn’t come because he hadn’t been invited.  Though he and Jerry were close, Bev hadn’t even considered it.

This was told to me by Bev.  When I looked baffled by her revelation, she laughed and patted me on the shoulder.

“Oh, my sweet girl.  If someone told you I don’t hold a grudge, they were lying.”

Her eyes and her smile were so unlike her, so bloodthirsty, that I just stared.

“You’re doing great now.  You look spectacular, and I have every confidence that you will get what you want out of your life.  I couldn’t be more proud of you, but there will always be a very clear picture in my head, my dear, and it is the stuff of my nightmares.  I can close my eyes and remember how you looked, bleeding and broken in that hospital bed.  Heartbroken and abused.  Or of you those first few months after the accident.  So sad and lost.  I’m a loving woman.  You know this.  I love with all my heart, but a heart like mine works both ways, and there is a wrath in me.  I will never forget the state that man put you in.  You think I could enjoy a celebration if he was there, making you uncomfortable the entire time?  That’s not how I operate.  It will take more than a few paltry years before I can be civil to that man.”

It was hard to know what to say to that, but strangely, her words warmed me a little.

It would always feel good to have Bev in my corner.

I finally met my biological father face to face.  It was one of the most awkward moments of my life, but I can’t say I didn’t feel a bit of satisfaction by the end of it.

Bronson Giles was attending a gallery showing in L.A. with his oldest son, Dermot.  I’d heard somewhere that he was following in his dad’s acting footsteps.  He looked like a perfect younger image of his father, big, blond, and very handsome.

With my same eyes.

I think I was too completely dead to the idea of feeling anything for my father to have a reaction to him.  To see him, well, it was only a sort of vague discomfort.

Dermot, on the other hand, I had not expected.

The idea of a deadbeat dad was one thing.  The concept of a half-sibling, one that had no inkling that I existed, was something else.  It was very strange, but I found myself staring at him whenever he wandered close as they perused the art, trying to catch some kindness in him, some redemption.  I didn’t want to hate him.

In fact, I quite wanted to like him.

I wasn’t sure if Bronson thought it was him I was staring at, or if I just happened to catch his eye, but he watched me even more than I watched Dermot.

Finally, Bronson approached me directly.  I tensed up sure he’d caught the resemblance between me and my mother, who he’d obviously known well.

That wasn’t why he approached.  Well, I suppose it was a twisted version of that.  Marta was apparently his type, and being close to the spitting image of her, I suppose I was too.

His smile dripped with greasy charm even before he opened his disgusting mouth.

Before he even got a word out, I had the thought: Oh God, no.  My own father is about to hit on me.

Please, please, please, I thought, make this not actually be happening.

Who the fuck else had this kind of luck?

I didn’t even catch the first little bit that he said, more heard his tone, my mind reeling in horror.

It was just too much.  Even I couldn’t maintain my usual professional demeanor as I stood there and had the man that had sired me tell me how hot I was.

He didn’t even have good lines.  He’d been relying on his fame and money for way too long.

“So what do you say?”  He reached into his pocket, pulling out what looked like a hotel room key card.  “I keep a regular room at The Beverly Hills Hotel.  I can meet you there in three hours.  In the meantime, feel free to make yourself comfortable, order some drinks.  Charge it to the room.”

He said it all like it was just a forgone conclusion, even when I knew that the look on my face must have told him that I liked him about as much as something particularly smelly that had just gotten stuck to the bottom of my shoe.

He was that oblivious.

“You are just stunning.  Where do you get that coloring from?  A bit of Asian in there, right?  I’ve always been a fan of the Asian girls.  But the black hair with those pale eyes.”  He whistled long and low.  “So very striking.  What a beauty.  Hot little body on you too.”

I had to restrain myself from slapping him across the face.  My voice was not quite steady when I finally found it.  “What is your heritage?”

“I’m mainly Danish and English.  Your turn, babe.”

My mouth shaped into a sharp smile.  “My mother is Japanese and Russian, and my father is apparently Danish and English, though I just this second found that out.”

He gave me a strange look.  “How so?”

“Bronson Giles, my mother’s name is Marta Markova.  I assume that rings a bell?”