Chapter Sixteen

I feel like I’m the only sane person in the world. At least in my world. Everybody I know, who supposedly loves me, knew about Danny’s problems with pain killers and nobody thought it was necessary to tell me. My brother, my best friend, my closest ally, tells me Danny hurt his ex-girlfriend and then thinks it’s funny that I’m afraid of the same thing happening to me. My boyfriend, the drug addict, gets mad at me for asking about his drug addiction… well, okay that part isn’t so crazy. But my parents, my PARENTS, know everything about his problems, didn’t tell me, and have no issues with me spending all my time with him. And Rachel…

Before my mind can go on a tirade about Rachel, she’s walking towards me in the woods.

“I just wanted a few minutes alone with you,” she says and grabs my hand.

We walk a few yards, holding hands, neither of us saying anything and then she turns her head to me and obviously she wants to say something but she isn’t sure which words to use.

“Why did you want to be alone with me,” I nudge.

“I guess I feel bad about not telling you the truth before this,” she says quietly.

“You guess?” That part irritates me because, of course she should feel bad.

“We all knew you and Danny would end up together one day, you know,” she says it like I do even though I don’t.

I shake my head. “No, I didn’t know that. Why?”

“Because they have all been watching the way he looks at you forever. Ben pointed it out to me shortly after we started dating and it’s all you can see when you know it’s there. You know? Like lace curtains; it’s all lacey pattern until somebody says the one spot looks like a clown face and then suddenly all you can think of are clowns when you look at the curtains. Or that guy in Ben’s building that looks like a rabbit. But anyway, it started after that… well, I guess that part isn’t for me to tell because it was before my time with you all.” She stops and looks at me with a slight smile. “None of this is for me to say really.”

Then she starts walking again and she’s waving her hand around like she’s trying to erase the conversation. She bites the inside of her cheek and stops again to pick up a leaf. She’s twirling it around in her fingers, not saying anything, still looking like words are hard to come up with.

I’m about to poke at her because I’d like to know where this is going, when Ben appears with Lucky.

“I figured it made sense to just meet you guys. As soon as I got his leash out, he started dragging me this way. He probably watched you come this way earlier. You didn’t need anything at the house, did you, Carly?”

He’s talking a mile a minute and Lucky’s freaking out trying to get to me so Ben unlatches his leash. Then I guess the conversation I was having with Rachel is over because I’m focused on my dog, Rachel and Ben are talking about some movie they just watched and we’re on our way back to Danny’s.

I want to know where Rachel was going with the story though. Lace curtains and guys who look like rabbits don’t really seem relevant to anything that’s happening right now. She got me to thinking about when we were little and I fell in the lake. I don’t want to think about that so I’m kind of relieved the conversation was halted. But I’m thinking about it anyway. Everybody blamed Danny for a long time, like he pushed me in. Ben finally got everybody to believe us that I slipped and fell into the water. I couldn’t swim really well yet and if Ben wasn’t as quick as he was, I might have drowned. Or at least that’s what everybody acted like. I think I probably could have managed. We were walking along the outside of the lake, the three of us. Danny didn’t want me there that day. I tagged along with them anyway though because I didn’t like to be away from Ben. So Danny walked in between us; keeping space between me and my brother as a sort of punishment. I slipped and fell into the water and he froze in surprise. Ben jumped in and pulled me out. I cried because I was scared. Danny went to get his parents and Ben tried to calm me down so I didn’t hyperventilate. Claudia and Mitch called my parents and drove over. Danny was blaming himself, saying he should have let me walk in the middle or on the other side of Ben but he was mad because he didn’t want me to follow them around that day. A few hours later, my mother was on the phone telling my grandparents that the neighbor boy pushed me into the lake even though he knows I can’t swim. That was why Danny always let me hang around after that. So he could make sure nothing bad happened to me.

Ben whacks me with a stick and starts laughing, breaking me out of my unwanted trip down memory lane. Nothing about that memory helps me right now. Or, I don’t know, maybe it does. Danny has lived practically his whole life making sure nothing bad ever happened to me, so why would I think he would ever be a bad thing that happened. I find a stick bigger than the one Ben just smacked me with and bend to pick it up. I hold it like a sword and spin around on him. We’re sword-fighting with sticks and Lucky’s flipping out so Rachel finds one to throw for him. Seems like that’s the way it always happens with me. Everybody just prioritizes my knowledge for me. If there’s something they don’t think I need to know, they don’t tell me. In the back of my mind, I know that’s how we got in this mess in the first place. But I just go with it and by the time we get back to Danny’s, I’ve forgotten about everything I wanted to talk about.

Danny sees us coming and starts running so Lucky will chase him. They dive into the pool together.

“Wow!” Rachel exclaims. “I wish we had a camera.”

We make a day of grilling hot dogs and playing around outside. The weather is perfect. The atmosphere is relaxed. The conversations of earlier are, of course, not brought up again.

The next few days go by like they normally do. Danny is training for another fight and this time I can feel everybody getting tense about it. I guess now that I know about the pills it's easier to notice. If he hurts himself during this fight... well, we'll have to try water therapy or something. I don't know what I'll do if he ends up in rehab again. I've become pretty dependant on him. He's become part of my every day and I don't know how I would fill the space that would be left empty. I guess that's pretty selfish of me but I feel secure with him around. It's comforting to know somebody is there loving you. No matter what Danny's problems are, I do know that he loves me. Maybe someday Rachel will tell me more about why everybody found it necessary to keep secrets from me. I hope she will because it doesn't really seem like anybody else wants to be the one to do it.

Thursday afternoon, Ben is at Danny's when I get there.

"Hey Broom," I greet him with a hug. Then I walk over to Danny and wrap my arms around his waist. He smiles that smile at me, drapes his arm over my shoulders and kisses the top of my head.

"So Anne called and asked if she could ride to the party with us," he informs. He must have had this conversation with Danny already because he doesn't say anything or look at all surprised.

"Whatever," I shrug. "It probably makes more sense than making her drive by herself. But what about Tara?"

They both laugh and Danny answers, "I guess she wasn't invited."

"But Anne was?" I'm a little surprised Kris liked her enough to ask to see her again. But I'm probably a little biased when it comes to her.

"We could drive ourselves," Danny suggests.

"Oh wait just a second," Ben shakes his head. "You're going to leave me and Rachel alone in a car with Anne?"

"She's not an actual witch, Ben," Danny says coolly. "She's a good girl who makes some questionable decisions."

"Dramatic decisions," Ben adds.

Danny cocks his head to one side and crooks his mouth. "Maybe but it's better than making her drive herself. You know she'll drink and if Kris doesn't take care of her..."

"Right. I understand the reasoning," Ben sighs. "I don't know. I guess Rachel can probably control the conversation in the car and then we don't have to think about her until we're ready to leave."


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We pull up to that same old dungeon gym and go inside. The nice thing about this place is that there’s never anybody else here. It’s dirty and smells bad though so I know we aren’t the only ones who work out here.

“I thought we were going to work some ice today,” I’m a little irritated and it comes out in my voice. “If I’d have known we were just coming to this shithole again, I’d have stayed in bed.” I shoot a glare at Engo. “Or I wouldn’t have answered the phone at all.”

“meh,” is all he can manage to say and Tanger laughs like he just told a joke.

“So are you sure Tanger won’t get jealous if you start dating that Danny guy,” I say trying to make him do some verbal sparring. He could work on it anyway. People aren’t going to be afraid of his fists forever. But he just laughs.

“He’s free to date whoever he wants,” Kris says into the shirt he’s lifting over his head. “Can’t help but notice you bringing her up again though.” He slicks his hair back with water, puts his Pirates cap back on and smirks at me.

I turn away from him trying to avoid eye contact. “Whatever man. I was talking about Deryk’s fascination with the dude.”

“Maybe that’s the real connection here,” Deryk says in a serious tone. “Me and Danny, not you and Carly. That’s what this is all about.” Then he busts out laughing. “Please don’t tell my wife,” he adds with an eyeroll.

“If you were gay,” Kris laughs, “you’d want a guy that’s weaker than you. You’d date one of those pretty boys.”

“You mean a guy like you?” I ask with a slight tilt of my head and a raised eyebrow. Engo cracks up.

The whole time we’re working out, I’m thinking about her. I don’t want these guys to know that though. They don’t need to know I can’t stop seeing her everywhere. She’s like a ghost haunting my every thought. I might have to do what they suggested and just go out and get laid. Maybe that way I’ll be able to hold my thoughts of her off for a little while. Or at least until Max’s party. Maybe I will find out we have nothing in common. Or maybe the chemistry was imagined. We were out somewhere in Bumfuck Egypt, who knows what they put in the water out there. Maybe it was all some mind game played on me by some of the guys. It’s not unlike them to do something like that. Put something in my beer, like some mind-altering drug. Well okay. That’s a little overboard. A LOT overboard. They obviously wouldn’t drug me. But fucking Letang would hypnotize the shit out of me if he knew he could. I don’t know why she’s fucking with me so much. All I do know is there is something about her that just got to me. She’s beautiful but it’s beyond that. There was something in her eyes. When I looked into them, it was like I looked into her soul. Or maybe I was looking at my own soul reflecting back to me.

I don't want to be here right now, in this gym, with these guys, and that doesn't seem fair because these guys are good to me. Sure they give me a hard time but ultimately, they're just looking out for me. They care what happens to me. They want me to be happy just like I want them to be happy. Deryk is probably the one that wants happiness most for all of us. He's so happy with his wife. They're perfect together and he thinks everybody could have that. I've tried to tell him that everybody should have it but I'm not sure everybody could. People spend their entire lives searching for somebody to be intimate with. And I don't mean physical intimacy. That's pretty fucking easy to come by. I mean the intimacy that comes with knowing you are sharing life with the one person in the world that totally and completely gets you. I want that intimacy. I think most people probably want that intimacy. I just have no idea how to find it. Do you have to look for it? Do you have to want it? I think maybe you have to want it to recognize it when it shows up. Probably a lot of people force it. I don't want to do that. I don't want to be with somebody just because I want to get laid or because I think they love me... or they think they do. I want to be with somebody because I don't know how to be without her. That's what Engo has.

I hate dating. Most girls try too hard. From the clothes she wears to the things she says. The calculated artificiality is the hardest thing to get beyond. At what point does the girl stop being fake? When do you really start to get to know her? How long does it take before she lets you see who she really is? So going to some bar and picking up some girl to take home to fuck is not my thing. I don't like to be the reason people get hurt feelings. If I don't connect to a girl, I'm not going to call her again and that makes me feel bad. So I guess it hurts my feelings.

It is very cool to meet a girl by accident. Watching a girl doing her thing, being herself completely, when she doesn't know you see her is probably the best way to meet a girl. That's how you know she's being herself, when she doesn't know you're there to lie to.

These aren't things I thought about before I met Carly. This girl is making me crazy.