Ten
Ava bought a bag of chips and a Mountain Dew for Littlejohn the prospect and left him leaning against a campus vending machine with instructions to “look casual” and “not wander.” He called her ma’am again and she rolled her eyes before she made her way inside to her appointment.
Her advisor was a round, motherly woman with a cozy office papered in Shakespeare playbills and a bowl with two calico goldfish perched on a file cabinet. Mrs. Waltham. She welcomed Ava, shook her hand and sprinkled flakes to the goldfish with her free hand. In her red short-sleeved sweater and white crop pants, she reminded Ava of a little red mushroom. Her office was cluttered and disorganized in the way of all literary-minded people.
Ava had learned, during undergrad, that mapping out her schedule with her advisors earned their favor, and guaranteed she navigated the wild waters of Course Offering without missing a single credit. Her friend Sierra had thrown a huge graduation bash…only to be notified that she was missing three math credits, and would be forced to hold off graduation for another semester. So with Mrs. Waltham, she plotted her grad school schedule, talked about policy and tuition and all the dirty details she felt were better discussed in person. In the process, she established herself in her advisor’s mind – no longer a name on a list, but a face and a smile and a sickeningly tasteful outfit.
“Ava,” Mrs. Waltham said, sitting back in her chair once they were done sorting classes. “The story that was published in The Scene – ‘Falling’ – it was a really smart piece.”
Ava felt her cheeks warm and glanced down at her plain fingernails. “One of my professors suggested I submit something…”
“I especially like the way you were able to revive the Byronic hero and make him totally modern, without letting on that’s what you were doing. It was subtle.” Mrs. Waltham beamed. “Clearly, I’m a fan of a well-turned misdirect.” She gestured to the Shakespeare playbills.
Ava twitched a smile. “No one does it like the Bard.”
“No,” Mrs. Waltham agreed. “But” – she leaned forward and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper – “if I have to read one more entrance paper about someone’s existential social crisis, I’ll throw the thing out the window.”
Ava’s brows jumped.
“Here’s what I like about you,” Mrs. Waltham continued. “Everyone’s spent so long trying to write ‘outside the box,’ that the box has shifted, and what was radical is now boring. It’s classic,” she aimed the end of a ballpoint pen, “that will endure. That’s what people will still be reading twenty years from now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ava said carefully. “That’s what I think, too.”
“Good.” The advisor shut Ava’s folder and slid it back across the desk. “You’ll do wonderful here. Just watch out for Pitts,” she warned with a wink. “He likes his existential.”
Ava nodded. “Right. Yes, ma’am.”
She left the office buoyed by optimism. She’d worried about the way she’d fit into grad school, concerned she didn’t possess the proper mindset, the right kind of personal philosophy. She looked at writing as an individual art, as a true expression of her heart. But she’d encountered profs who thought differently; there was a proper kind of rebellion, and an improper kind. She wasn’t political enough, or angry enough in her writing for the tastes of some. She loved the Brontë sisters too much; she worshipped at the Church of the Romantics.
But with Mrs. Waltham in her corner, the future at UT seemed full of possibility. Maybe even happiness.
And then she stepped out onto the sidewalk and saw Littlejohn waiting for her.
Like he’d done back at the house, he jerked to attention, coming to her side.
“You make out alright?” she asked him, sliding her sunglasses into place.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Littlejohn, I thought we talked about the ‘ma’am’ thing.”
“Oh, we did.” A little life crept into his voice, a little flavor of humor. “But there’s a problem with that. Your old man is my president. Your brother’s going to be my brother. And some real scary motherfucker told me nobody was to ‘touch a hair on your head,’ so I’m real sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got to call you ma’am. That’s just how I was raised.”
Everything about the statement struck her at once. She halted and glanced up at him through her dark lenses. Students parted in waves around them and kept moving. “My brother’s going to be your brother? You’re pretty optimistic about getting patched in, aren’t you?”
“Well, I work hard and I ain’t no rat. So I figure, yeah, I will.”
The next question hurt, the words sparking pain in her throat. “Which scary motherfucker?”
“That’d be Mercy, ma’am.” A touch of color graced his cheekbones, signaling he knew there was history there. He’d heard the gossip.
“And you’re aware, right, that back-talking to me like this is so not on the getting-patched-in checklist?”
“Oh!” His blue eyes bugged. “No, ma’am…I mean, I didn’t think I was…I mean, I didn’t mean to…”
Ava laughed, letting the sound carry the internal pain away. “You’re fine, prospect. Just don’t ever let my dad hear you say anything like that.”
“No, ma’am.” He ducked his head. Shuffled his feet. Gathered a breath. “There’s just one more thing, though.”
“Yeah?” He was cute, and she felt like humoring him, even if the students around them were starting to give dirty looks.
“Your dad wants you to go by the clubhouse on your way home.”
“Of course he does.” She sighed. “Alright, let’s go.”
Dartmoor bustled with its typical Saturday traffic. If the citizens renting trucks, buying mulch, having their oil changed were concerned about the murder that had hit the papers that morning, they didn’t show it.
The clubhouse was flanked by a handful of bikes, but had that sleepy, empty look about it; the boys were working or hunting up intel. The hangarounds and prospects had cleaned up the carnage from the party; the place looked as tidy as it ever did.
Ava parked and spotted a man in the shadows beneath the portico – a tall man, his long legs stretched out in front of him as he reclined back with his elbows resting on the top of a picnic table.
Mercy.
She was getting used to the idea of him being back here. She didn’t jump this time. But her pulse gave a hard thump and her skin warmed and anxiety spiked like too much soda in her belly.
“You can wait here,” she told Littlejohn as she passed his bike. She didn’t wait for a “yes, ma’am,” but walked with purposeful steps and head up toward the front door of the clubhouse.
When she passed into the portico’s shade, she saw Mercy’s head turn toward her. His hair was long these days, and he wore it in a queue at the back of his head. He wore the same undershirt from the day before, his arms bare, the sequence of lines and swirls around the black dog on his left arm on display. So many people thought it tribal nonsense he’d had inked on while drunk. She knew the truth. The ink made permanent a sacred series of marks: Cherokee war paint, in honor of his dead grandmother.
When her heels rapped the pavement, one corner of his mouth lifted in an impossible smile.
When she stared resolutely at the door, she felt the hot weight of his gaze on her.
When she was almost beyond him, he spoke to her. “Ghost is out. He’ll be back later.”
Ava gathered the warring anger and heat that surged inside her before she turned to him. Thank God for sunglasses, his and hers. “How do you know I’m looking for him?”
He grinned. “Well you sure as hell weren’t looking for me.”
“No,” she agreed.
She was shifting her weight to leave, when his voice caught hold of her again. “What the hell are you dressed up for?”
She didn’t owe him an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything. But she propped a hand on her hip and said, “I had a meeting with my advisor at school. I start class next week.”
“School. Jesus, haven’t you had enough of that?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t you had enough of this conversation yet?”
His grin widened. “You used to be so sweet. You used to dress better, too.”
She smoothed the front of her shirt and tried not to scowl. “You don’t get to care about how I dress.” She fired him a pointed look. “Not anymore.”
He tipped his head as if to say fair enough. His features softened, the air of the smartass leaving him. “You just don’t look much like you anymore, is all.”
Ava sighed, breath shaking in her lungs. “Why are you doing this?”
His sharp black brows lifted over his sunglasses.
“Why are you pretending there’s nothing wrong? That it matters to you whether I’m ‘me’ or not?”
He studied her a long moment and she relived last night in her mind, his hands on her, his tongue in her mouth. It was so shocking to be standing here talking to him, after that moment in the dorm room, that she almost believed she was hallucinating. How were they supposed to go back after they’d already been so far? What was she supposed to do with all her hatred?
“ ‘Cause I don’t want you to be pissed at me,” Mercy finally said.
“Oh, now you’re worried about that?”
So many of these boys – her father and brother included – would have responded to her with hostility. But Mercy saved that for the moments that really needed it. No, for him, rationale had been honed and wielded just like the rest of his assorted weapons.
“C’mere.” He patted the bench beside him. “Come sit with me a sec.”
That was so dangerous. And if he was nothing to her but a former lover, she could have resisted his magnetic pull.
But Mercy had been her surrogate uncle, watcher, keeper, friend, brother…he’d been this tangle of people in her life. This man had meant so much to her. He’d snatched himself out of her life, but he’d been such a part of it…she was powerless to resist.
Feeling the imaginary ax falling toward her neck, she moved to sit beside him. She settled into his tall shadow as she’d always done. There was this place at his side that would always be hers; they both knew it; neither of them needed to say it.
Her body tightened, all her muscles contracting in sheer terror that being this close to him would wreck her common sense. His scent filled her nostrils – warm skin, faint cologne, lingering taint of smoke. She craved the weight of his arm around her waist, the rough pads of his fingers stroking her arm. But he kept his hands to himself, and they both stared at the clubhouse, at the running black dog that graced its front.
When she could stand the silence no longer, she said, “Did you tell that prospect over there that ‘not a hair’ on my head was to be touched?”
“I think I said, ‘not a hair on her fucking head, or so help me God, I’ll make you floss your teeth with your own entrails.’ ”
“Ah. That sounds more like you.”
He chuckled. “I hope he was scared. Was he? Did he get those little drops of sweat on his face?” He gestured to his own temples.
Ava couldn’t suppress a small smile. “He was properly terrified, don’t worry.”
“Good.”
The silence fell over them again, like a ship sail that had settled after an errant gust.
Then Mercy said, “I don’t wanna hash things out. I won’t do it, actually. Not possible.” His tone brooked no arguments.
“No,” she agreed. “That would be bad.” There was too much hurt and confusion there – on her part – for her to express how much she hated and still loved him with any coherence. A part of her wanted to break it all open and scream at him. Another part of her wanted to throttle him for dismissing the past. And still another part was grateful they’d never have to actually say the words out loud.
“But,” he continued, “I don’t want it to be weird – us both being back home like this.”
Ava bit down hard on the end of her tongue. “Me neither,” she finally said. It was all she could do not to glance over at him, him with his maddening calm and that almost-smile.
“Maybe we can be friends,” he said.
“Do friends shove their tongues down each other’s throats at club parties?”
He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Oh…” She started to get to her feet.
Only to be tugged back down, one of his huge hands curled around her elbow. “Don’t walk away all pissed at me. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.”
It would never cease to amaze her – his gift for rationality. He had a bad habit of being the most violent and the most logical man in the club.
She sat back down hard, scowling. “Mercy…” Saying his name aloud, under the portico like this, like old times, burned her tongue. Whatever she’d been about to say left her brain. “Why’d you come back?” she asked softly. “Why really? Because right now” – her voice dropped to a near-whisper – “it feels like you’re here just because it’s fun to harass me.”
“It is fun.” He chuckled, then sobered. “But I’m here because the president of the mother chapter asked me to be here. This is about the club, Ava, and nothing else. Maybe I was wrong to think you could see that.”
She whipped around so she could see his face, the maddening calm and resignation of his expression as he gave her a facial shrug that challenged her to prove him right and throw a tantrum.
Slowly, her movements tight and precise, she stood and glanced down at him. She didn’t try to disguise the hurt in her voice. “What happened to you?” she asked. “There used to be a speck of kindness in you.” Throwing his own words back at him, she said, “Maybe I was wrong to think that was ever genuine,” and walked to the clubhouse with a straight spine and lifted head.
Once she was inside, she sank down on a chair in the empty common room, her pulse pounding in her temples, her breath choppy. The room tilted around her and she remembered that she hadn’t eaten anything. Her stomach clenched and she remembered that she was only twenty-two and nothing had changed. Nothing at all.
She leaned forward and put her head between her knees to stop the onslaught of faint. As she closed her eyes against the black curtains of consciousness, the past rushed to meet her. It flooded her mind, loosed the memories, buried her in the old heartbreak.
A speck of kindness…It had been so much more than that. It had been everything.