Chapter Eleven
Ramsay
“Give me one week. Seven day Ramsay.” Osi had one hand propping his head up and was looking at me with such urgency that I wanted to give him anything and everything.
“To do what?” my voice was hoarse this morning, probably from crying so much last night. I blamed it on being exhausted.
“Get to know me and I’ll get to know you. We’ll ask questions and share stories.”
That was scary shit but there was a tiny piece of me that wanted to tell him the truth. That way, he would know that I wasn’t worthy of his feelings. Maybe this would be good. I could have a few more precious days with this man and then when he ended it…it would be over forever. “I don’t have any clothes or any of my things.”
“We’re in a shopping mecca. I’m sure that you can find the shit that you need on Michigan Avenue.” He grinned. He knew that I would give in.
“I do like to shop,” I gave him an answering smile.
“And you could go to a thing with me tomorrow.” He rushed out the words.
“What kind of thing?” Knowing Osi, it could be a concert or a day at the gun range.
“An assembly at my old high school.” He looked over my shoulder not continuing the eye contact.
It was odd seeing Osi uncomfortable, I didn’t press. It was enough that he wanted me there. “Just tell me how to dress and I’ll be there.”
We’d had coffee and were going to go downtown to shop. I hated putting on the same clothes from yesterday but I didn’t have any other choice. I could hear Osi in his office so I followed the noise. “I’m ready.” I’d made do with the odds and ends of make-up that were in my tote. I leaned against the door frame.
“Any idea how much this is going to cost?” He walked to the wall and just like in the movies pulled back the picture on the wall which exposed a safe.
“I have my credit cards.” He wasn’t going to buy my clothes. I didn’t want him to see how much I was willing to spend if I saw something I wanted.
“To easy to trace. Let’s play it safe until I get with Sly.” He tapped in a code and the door opened.
“Well, I don’t really know,” I tried to think about what I would need for a week. “I guess I need some idea about our plans.”
He pulled out a banded stack of bills and I couldn’t help myself, I looked inside his safe. There were several files and some other small containers and stacks of cash.
I know my mouth dropped open. That was a lot of cash. I guess in his line of work it made sense but it was still a shock. My parents had safes in their homes but they kept my mother’s jewelry and documents, never any money.
“Today we shop, tomorrow the assembly and lunch then the day after we go to South Carolina.”
“What’s in South Carolina?”
“My mama.”
“What?” I swear my knees went weak. “You’re taking me to meet your mother?”
“Don’t freak out,” he cautioned me. “I already had the trip planned so now, you’re going with me.”
“But, but,” I couldn’t even form a sentence. His Mother!
“There’s some deal for her husband and she wanted me to go so since she couldn’t make the trip here, I’m going there.”
“I don’t know about this, Osi.” I tried to back-peddle.
“You gave me your word.” His steely tone told me that I wasn’t going to get out of this trip.
“Where in South Carolina? They have electricity right?”
He shook his head at me and closed the door to the safe. “They live right outside of Charleston.”
“Ohhh, Charleston is supposed to have great shopping.” Now I was excited.
“I promise that you are going to be happy that you’re coming along.” He said mysteriously.
“Well now I definitely need to make a list.” I grabbed a pad of paper off of his desk. “What are you wearing to this assembly deal?”
Clothes shopping with Osi was interesting. He was involved in picking out my dress for tomorrow and for the event in Charleston. His eye for color was good and he seemed very knowledgeable about the appropriate undergarments that I would need. I squelched the momentary feeling of jealousy that made me want to question him about how he gained that knowledge.
He didn’t blink when I insisted that I needed a new clutch that cost more than my monthly rent. He simply laid out the line of hundreds without saying a word.
Of course I kept a tally of all of the bills and when things went back to normal, I’d send him the money. By then I’d probably not see much of him. That thought hurt my heart. I couldn’t use the “l” word. I wouldn’t allow myself but I would say that I cared very much about him. I wish things were different, that my past wasn’t what it was but I had to live with my sins.
The worst part of this plan was that I would have to tell Billie about the things that I had done, and that meant, Tye and probably the rest of the group. Billie had stayed angry with me and I couldn’t blame her after the Girls Night. I wanted to explain but I didn’t know where to start. When a week, then two passed and I didn’t have the courage to take her calls, she finally shoved a letter under my door. She told me that she was mostly mad at circumstances because she couldn’t make Osi and I admit our love. I cried as I read her words. She loved me and wanted me to find happiness and she knew that I was searching for that. But I don’t deserve it. I needed to face the very real truth that I might lose her friendship.
“What are you thinking about that makes you so sad?” Osi placed his hand in the middle of my back.
I pasted a smile on my face and answered breezily, “How could I be sad, I’m shopping?”
The narrowing of his eyes as they swept over my face told me that he wasn’t buying my answer. “What else is one your list?”
We’d hit four stores and it was only a little after one. “Do you have a steamer?”
“A what?”
Yeah, I didn’t think so. “It’s better than an iron at getting wrinkles out.”
“I think there’s an iron at my place.”
“Hang on, let me check my phone. I’ll find someplace nearby that sells them.” I stepped out of the main aisle so that I could dig in my tote.
“We need to stop somewhere where I can overnight your key. My guy, Tonto, will get your stuff from your hotel and ship it to my mom’s place.”
“You have a guy named Tonto?” I stopped looking at my phone’s screen in surprise.
“That’s what you got out of that sentence? The guy’s name.” He sighed disappointedly.
“Is he uhm, Native American?”
“He was in my unit. Lost his legs so he helps me out from time to time, he isn’t mobile enough for the takedowns but he has other skills.” Osi shared.
“Oh,” I focused on the fact that he had shared info about his work with me. He rarely did that. “Well, that’s very nice of you and him.”
Osi held out his hand for my phone.
“Good idea since I don’t have any idea about where we’re heading.”
“We are going to drop your key, get some lunch, find the steamer thing and then hit the cemetery.”
I knew by the way he casually added the last stop that this was about his son. I nodded. “Add a florist to the list before we make the last stop.”
He looked up and his expression was filled with approval. “You don’t have to…”
“If I’m going to see your son…” I had to clear my throat because my voice was so rough. “I want to have flowers for Isaiah. It’s important.”
Our eyes met for a long moment. “I’ll add it to the list.”
It turned out to be a beautiful spring afternoon. The sun was shining and the spot where Isaiah’s body was laid to rest was in a gorgeous cemetery on the far north side of the city. We’d followed the lake as he drove us north. The water was sparkling and I people were playing hooky, enjoying the day.
There was a stone bench in front of Isaiah’s plot. I laid the bouquet of multi-colored Gerbera daisies in front of the charcoal headstone. I stepped back beside Osi, unsure of what to do. It was quiet, with no other visitors in the area.
“Do you come here often?” I kept my volume low, it seemed disrespectful to speak too loudly.
“Every time that I’m in town.”
“Is your brother here also?”
“No, he was cremated. After it was over, mom packed up everything that she could fit in her car and left.”
“She was heart-broken.” Her pain must have been overwhelming.
“And angry. But it worked out, she drove until the old heap died. She ended up working for a college, cleaning at night and part of the deal was that she could take classes for free. When she got her degree she got promoted to a desk job in the department that was in charge of the buildings. That’s how she met her husband. He was there to teach for a year and he never left.”
“So she made a new life.”
“We both did.” He took my hand and led me to the bench where we both sat down. “I would have been pulled into that life or something like it.” He said quietly.
“I get overwhelmed when I look back and see how one moment totally changes our lives.” I was thinking about my time in Phoenix.
“Maybe you should start looking more to the future instead of staying in the past.” He was staring stair ahead at the tombstone.
“If only it were that easy.” I blinked several times quickly.
“Billie told me that you two had words.”
“Did she ask you to intervene?”
“No.”
“I was frustrated and I said something that I shouldn’t have.” I looked down at my hand that was clenched in a fist. “I crossed a line.”
“You’ve never been afraid to throw the first punch, Ramsay.” He didn’t sound accusing, more like he was listing a fact.
“She wrote me a letter apologizing and explaining where her anger was coming from. I don’t know how to respond. Our story is so…”
“You are her friend and you simply say, ‘I fucked up.’ Then you go on. With what you two have been through, nothing is going to shake that bond.”
I hoped that was true. “Do you ever wonder about the things that you’ve done? I mean the really bad things.” I didn’t mean to speak the words.
“I do, I have.” His hand tightened around mine.
“How do you…I mean do you worry about forgiveness?” I was now staring at his dark brown hand holding my very pale one.
“I’ve spent hours right here asking those questions.”
“Did you come up with any answers?”
“For me, some of the things that I’ve done were because of the circumstances. I took lives in the Corps, that was because of orders or for survival. Growing up, I did what I did because it was all that I knew.”
“So you’d be forgiven.” I decided.
“I think it all starts with our selves. Once we know why we did it, then we can decide if we or how much to forgive.”
I thought about his answer for a few minutes.
His voice was still low. “Billie, she wants to forgive but that doesn’t mean that she forgets. She uses forgiveness as a tool to move on. I think that’s why she’s survived everything that she’s been through. She works through it and keeps taking another step forward.”
“I left her in Denver because I couldn’t handle her…her goodness.” I told him in a rush of words. “I was so angry with that man that hurt her and then her mother.”
“Your friend was abducted and brutalized and then her mother was trying to sell her story to the media. It’s understandable that you were furious.”
“For days on end, she was like a zombie. I mean before she had been so…so alive and then all that she did was sit and stare for hours.”
“She said that she was drugged to the max at first.”
“She was, I think the doctors’ thought that was the only way that she could get through her body healing physically.” I recalled. “So when she started to cut back on the meds, she was so grateful. When she talked that was the subject of every conversation.”
“To be alive, yeah I get that.” Osi nodded his head.
I tried to think of a way to describe how hard it was. “She would thank me over and over for taking her in…like I would have left her with that piranha. Then she thanked me for every little thing. It got…embarrassing.” I finished my thought lamely.
Osi eyes searched mine. “It made you uncomfortable because you were taking care of her because you loved her.”
I nodded slowly. “I wasn’t doing anything special, or it didn’t feel like it to me. My best friend needed me and I could help her. That’s all it was.” I rolled my eyes and was happy that I was wearing sunglasses because I knew my eyes were full of unshed tears. “It wasn’t some big deal.”
“But to her it was.” He pressed.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“And that made you feel weird.” He said slowly like he was working this out as he spoke.
“Yes. Every conversation ended with how grateful she was. I couldn’t take all that gratitude.”
“I think you were going through your own issues dealing with what happened to your friend. The shock that something so terrible could happen to a good person.”
Yes. Oh God, yes. I nodded and closed my eyes. I felt a tear fall down my cheek. “I needed some space, so I made sure that my parent’s would let her stay there for a year. I took a job in L.A. and then I was too embarrassed to go back.”
“She would have understood.”
“Billie understands everything and that was part of the problem.” It sounded like a whine but it was true.
“You would rather she yelled at you. Got mad and had it out. Told you that it hurt, the way you abandoned her?” He sounded angry.
“What I did was bad.” I admitted.
He sighed and let go of my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Ramsay did it ever occur to you that not everything is good or bad? Even when we do something that causes pain…maybe we didn’t mean it to turn out that way or to that degree?”
I dropped he head onto his shoulder. I considered his words.
“You have had to deal with adult situations since you were a kid. When Billie needed you, you dropped everything and went to her. You took care of her. You’re human and you got overwhelmed.”
“I should have talked to her then,” I admitted.
“Maybe you didn’t know how to explain how you were feeling? Or you were worried about how she would take it? Did you feel selfish for getting tired? That had to be a lot to handle every day.” He asked gently.
I spoke slowly, his words made so much sense. “I was so afraid then that I wouldn’t know what to do. It seemed like every other day something changed and I sometimes had to make decisions for Billie. I was responsible for her.”
“You did a great thing, coming to her rescue. I think she worries deep down that you regret it and that’s why you left.”
“It’s an honor that she called me. I mean she thought of me when everything was overwhelming her.” I stated firmly, “I don’t regret helping.”
“No, you don’t.” He let me pull away from him because he was saying too much. He knew me too well. “Those times when you are listing all of your faults, you probably pull that out and tell yourself, that you did do that for your friend.”
“How did you know?” I asked softly. I felt like he knew too much.
“Because you are too hard on yourself. You can probably tell me every mistake that you’ve ever made but if I asked for all of the good, you would have trouble naming more than three things.”
I shifted farther away from his body. The sun was going down and it was now cooler. I’d left my coat in the car so I crossed my arms over my chest. “Every once in a while I do something good but we both know that I’m selfish and mean.”
“If you truly believe that about yourself Ramsay, then I am sorry for you. That’s not the woman that I know and that I love.”
“Love…” I whispered as the air left my lungs.
“Babe,” one side of his mouth lifted. “You had to know.”
“Osi?” I didn’t know what to say. He loved me. Me.
“Don’t tell me not to and I’m not expecting you to say it back to me. That’s not why I told you.” He licked his lips. “I wanted you to know, that’s all.”
I had no idea what to do.