Livianna
"That's it?" Astrid asked after he had left, hands on her hips, chin up stubbornly.
"That's it," I affirmed, turning away to deal with the dishes.
It wasn't it, of course.
It was it for Roderick being around, but not for the memories hanging around like ghosts to remind me he had been there in case I dared ever forget.
Like the way my sheets smelled like him, something I let myself indulge in for the first night, drinking up the scent I knew I would never get to smell again.
The next morning, I dragged all my bedding down to the laundry to wash his scent away.
But I was met with two giant cartons of eggs in the fridge - something that would never normally be there.
"Let's bake," I told Astrid, voice fake-cheery, so much so that her brow lifted, but she said nothing because baking was a tradition, one we tried never to break.
And we used up all those eggs.
When I got ready for bed, I noticed his toothbrush still in the holder. It went out with the next day's trash.
It took a full three days to get all traces of him out of the loft. But even with the blankets washed, eggs turned into cookies, toothbrush trashed, and the living room furniture Febreezed, he was still there.
Because there wasn't much in the loft he hadn't touched. We had eaten at the table, watched movies on the couch. He'd cooked at the stove, washed dishes at the sink. Showered in the bathroom, slept in my bed.
He was just there.
I would actively have to shake the thoughts away when they popped up, when I turned around and practically saw him there by the coffee machine, putting my caramel creamer into my cup for me.
"It's a lot quieter around here," Astrid observed two days before Christmas, letting out a loud sigh into our airy home, the sound carrying from her position on the couch to where I was crouched down, trying to jam a turkey into the fridge.
"Turn the music on," I suggested, praying there was some variety on the station, not just Mariah Carey and Wham! on repeat over and over again. Was there something suddenly wrong with a little Bing? Or, in lieu of him, Bublé? Sometimes you didn't want to hear those goddamn peppy Christmas songs. Sometimes you wanted to hear slow, somber ones.
They suited my mood.
"That's not what I meant. You know that's not what I meant. It's just... you're sullen. Cam is, well, Cam... and there is like nothing in this apartment. I miss when he was here. Everyone was talking and laughing and screaming to God over and over... oh, wait, that last one was just you."
"Ha. Ha," I drawled, rolling my eyes at her as I managed to jam some green beans into the butter compartment, finally getting everything in there we needed for a big Christmas feast.
"We're supposed to talk about it, you know," she told me, slamming her laptop, letting me know it was serious if she was giving me her full attention. "That's what we do, right? Share shit. I've shared all my shit. You wouldn't let me mope around the loft for days like this. You would sit me down and insist we talk about it. So, consider this me sitting you down and insisting you talk about it."
"There's nothing to talk about."
That sounded too high-pitched even to my own ears.
"Puh-lease. That man had you floating around this loft, Liv. I mean, you were on cloud fucking nine. I didn't even know you had a dimple until he made you smile so much."
"I smiled before!" I insisted, a little hurt that she thought I was always a Debbie Downer.
"Of course you smiled before, but you're missing my point. He made you smile with your whole face. He made you happier, Liv. Admit that at least."
"It was fun," I covered, shrugging it off. "We had fun."
"Fun. It was more than fun," Astrid insisted, jumping off the couch, coming over into the kitchen to hop herself up onto the counter where I was preparing to chop apples to make a pie. There was no way to walk away without it looking like I was running away from the conversation and she knew it. "Why is it so hard for you to admit he had become kinda important to you?"
"He was a fling, Astrid. That was all he could ever be."
"Oh, please. You know you were totally dreaming of him losing his job with The Henchmen, needing a new crew, and joining up with us."
Damn her.
I had fantasized of that very thing.
"It's ridiculous."
"Why is it ridiculous?"
"Because I barely knew him."
"Oh, bullshit. You didn't know him for a long period of time, but you knew him, Liv. All you guys did when you weren't fucking was talking. Sound carries in this place. We should probably hang some art. Or curtains or something. But that is beside the point. You talked all the time. And that was just when you were here. I imagine you talked on the road trip too. Most people would probably date for months before they talked as much as you guys did in just a matter of weeks. So don't pull that We barely knew each other thing with me. I know better."
I sighed, peeling the last of the apples.
"Okay. He meant something," I admitted.
"I've seen you around men before. Not as much as with Roderick, but still. And you never got all snuggly and sweet, always looking for a reason to touch them, to look at them. You wanted more than just a fling with him."
"I couldn't have more than a fling with him. But if I had the opportunity, yeah, I... I would have taken it."
"Why can't there be more? He's like... an hour away only."
"Yeah, when we aren't on the road. Which isn't super often. What am I supposed to say? Let's date long distance? We can see - and fuck - each other maybe one or two weekends a month? That would never fly. He's a fucking biker, Astrid. He's used to getting ass whenever he wants it."
"Maybe - did you ever consider this - maybe he wants more than ass? Maybe he wants to build something, settle down with someone?"
"If he did, he would choose someone nearby. Someone who doesn't have to be out getting her ass kicked every couple of months when deals go south. That would never fly. You know it wouldn't." She said nothing as I mixed brown sugar and cinnamon together in a bowl, folding all the apples in, making sure each one got covered. "What?" I asked, knowing she was waiting for me to ask.
"We have a nice nest egg," she started a little cryptically.
"Yeah..."
"Maybe we could sell off the rest of the supply and..."
"We have a nest egg, Astrid. Not a multi-million-dollar retirement fund for all of us to live off of for the rest of our lives."
"I'm not saying we need to live off of it. I am saying we could... use it to settle in, hold us over while we looked for different jobs."
"You're basing a whole career change for all three of us on the off chance that maybe, possibly Roderick might be interested in dating me more seriously. And even if he was - and that is a big if since we already established he is a bit of a manwhoring biker - what happens if things don't work out? If I get bored sitting at home being Susie Homemaker. Or he gets tired of sleeping with the same woman every night? What then? Where does that leave all of us?"
"Christ, Liv, do you have to try to account for everything? Plan for everything?"
"When we don't plan, things get messy. And when things get messy, someone gets hurt. And I really have had just about enough of hurt," I told her, hearing my voice getting thick even as my eyes stung.
"This isn't a broken rib, black eye kind of hurt you are risking here, though, Liv," she said, hopping down, awkwardly patting me on my shoulder, not quite having the comforting thing down. And who could blame her? Neither did I. And her shithead mother never even looked her way, let alone showed concern for her. She had no way of learning it.
"No," I agreed, closing my eyes tight, fighting back the tears. "This is worse," I admitted. "A busted rib or a black eye, I get those. I know those intimately. I understand that for a few days, a week or two maybe, they will hurt, I will struggle. But then after that, everything will be like nothing ever happened. I don't think it is going to work that way if I let myself get any more attached to him, and only end up heartbroken, Astrid. I feel like this pain might always be there, y'know? Maybe not as raw as it feels now. But never quite healing right, hurting in random moments. I don't want any more of this. This is bad enough."
I could feel her gaze on me for a long moment, searching, trying to think of the right thing to say.
In the end, though, Astrid was no better at heart-to-hearts than I was. So she simply grabbed the pie plate for me, put it down on the counter, and told me she was going to put Superstore on for us.
A heavy weight bounced on the edge of my bed, making me let out a low grumble, flinging the crook of my arm over my eyes.
I hadn't been sleeping well.
Hardly at all, in fact.
For some reason, my brain was getting its kicks by replaying the night of the shootout on repeat. And, for a cruel little twist, all the pain I had been too numbed with adrenaline to feel in the moment, came back to me fresh as if I was getting the blows all over again. I could practically taste the blood, feel the ground as I had hit it.
Anytime I even started to doze off, some pain would send me jolting awake - a new type of hypnic jerk.
So I just stopped trying to sleep, just sitting up in bed flicking through channels or reading or messing around on my phone or online.
But somehow, by some miracle - or likely the fact that I had been up to all hours the night before prepping some of the food for Christmas - I had managed to pass out around five in the morning.
And I had dreamed of him.
In as vivid detail as the memories of the pain came back to me.
I was wrapped up in his arms, feeling his lips on me, his fingers teasing over me, his words in my ear.
And then the real world made his image float backward like fog meeting the morning sun.
"Santa came!" Astrid declared, being obnoxiously perky because, for one, she loved Christmas. And, I suspected, because she was trying to drag me out of my admitted funk.
"Being that I was Santa. Yes, I know," I agreed, but a small smile pulled at my lips.
"I mean... nothing looks like a hamster in a box, but that's okay. There's bound to be something awesome in there. Don't you want to come and open presents?"
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really didn't care about the presents that much this year. Because, no matter what, she and Cam had likely put a lot of thought into their gifts for me.
I just needed a cup - or ten - of coffee. Then I could at least fake the enthusiasm one needed to have on Christmas.
"Yeah. But I have to throw the turkey in first," I told her, folding upward in bed, feeling sleeplessness around me like an embrace that didn't want to let go, trying to pull me backward onto the bed.
"Fiiiine," she said, hopping off the edge of the bed, making me realize for the first time that she was in candy cane printed pajama pants and a Rudolf long sleeve tee that said I'm safe. Rudolph ate the naughty list.
Her slippers even had Christmas bulbs on them.
This was her day.
Her birthday didn't mean much to her.
But Christmas?
Christmas was the one day of the year that got that lightness in her, that joy.
And, damnit, I didn't care how shitty I felt. I was going to get up, get dressed, and fake it. For her. Because she deserved it. Because she had sixteen years of no Christmases to make up for. Because I had promised her from day one that I would make each Christmas one to remember.
And maybe, just maybe, if I faked it hard enough, I could even trick myself into believing it.
An hour later, the loft was slowly starting to smell like cooking turkey, something that managed to make a little of the tension left in my shoulders fall away.
We were in the living room under a pile of wrapping paper and bows.
And Astrid was laughing and snapping pictures of a very unhappy Camden who had just gotten a gift - courtesy of her, of course - that was just a glitter bomb. Cam hated glitter. And not only was it glitter, oh, no. It was penis glitter.
I felt my lips curving upward as I helped him brush some of the pink and yellow and blue cocks out of his hair and off his shoulder.
"I thought prank gifts were for birthdays."
"Prank gifts can be appreciated any day of the year," Astrid told me with utmost authority as she tucked her phone away, reaching for her next gift.
We were down to the last three, all of us with piles stacked haphazardly next to us on the floor.
After presents came watching Astrid's favorite Christmas movie - The Family Stone. But we always had to turn it off before the mom died, listening to Astrid bitch about Whose genius idea was it to kill a main character in a feel-good Christmas movie? But she thought Ben Stone was the best thing since sliced bread, so she was willing to overlook that giant flaw.
Then we would take a break so I could do a bit more food prep. And then it was time for Cam's favorite - Die Hard. No surprise there. Even though Bruce Willis himself came out and said, unequivocally, that it was not a Christmas movie. We would eventually round it out with my selection sometime between dinner and dessert. They always complained - or in Cam's case, grumbled - about I'll Be Home For Christmas and my obsession with Johnathan Taylor Thomas even though I was a full-grown woman. What can I say? It brought back memories of a simpler time for me.
"My pants are too tight," Astrid grumbled, rolling around on the couch holding her stomach.
"You are wearing an elastic waist," I reminded her.
"It doesn't have Christmas Dinner Stretch," she told me with authority.
I tended to try to make up for my lack of cooking throughout the year by going a little - or a lot - overboard on holidays when we were home.
Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, broccoli, corn, baked macaroni and cheese, and three different kinds of rolls.
There would be enough leftovers for a week.
And we hadn't even gotten to the desserts. There were Christmas cookies, of course, but those didn't even count. Pies were the name of the game for Christmas.
Apple because it was Cam's favorite.
Pumpkin because it was mine.
Chocolate cream because it was Astrid's.
And then there was a cheesecake too, a special one that had two slices of each flavor - plain, chocolate and Nutella, cherry-topped, and caramel.
But it was early.
We had learned several years before that getting dinner on the table around four meant we had several hours to not feel disgustingly full before it was time for dessert.
"You could go take a walk," I suggested, knowing she had no intention of doing so.
"You shouldn't have let me have thirds," she added, rubbing her stomach as I carefully packed all the leftovers away into plastic containers because I knew if I left it for later, we would all go to bed without doing it, and would waste all the food.
"Hey now, this is the how many-ith year in a row that you couldn't control yourself? I think we are beyond the shame on someone else thing, and have fallen squarely in the shame on you area."
"Shush with all your logic. How are you not in pain?" She asked, shooting Cam small eyes.
"Cam knows how to ration himself unlike some people."
"It's not a holiday if I don't feel like I am going to throw up."
"How eloquent. Have you considered working in the greeting card industry?"
"Are you almost ready? We are ready to see a Santa-suited JTT being chased around the desert by a buzzard."
She might have made fun of it, but it never escaped me that when it got to the point where JTT's character changed the words of "O Christmas Tree" for a couple, that she sang along about fucking someone on the Christmas tree skirt.
I put on the coffee, climbing onto the couch, feeling both Cam and Astrid move on at my sides, cuddling up, and these were not cuddling people. And for just a little while, for just a few moments while we watched Christmas movies and cuddled under blankets on the couch with full bellies and happy hearts, I was able not to think about it, not to wonder what it would be like if he was there with us, what he would get us, what we would get him, what movie he would pick for his choice.
"Okay. I am going to go make slow, sticky love to this caramel cheesecake in the privacy of my own room," Astrid declared sometime around ten that evening after having already sampled a bit of everything else on the dessert menu.
"Have fun," I told her with a smile that didn't quite reach my bleary eyes.
"This was the best Christmas ever," she declared with a genuine smile.
She said it every year.
But, what's more, she meant it every year.
"You look beat," I said, looking over at Cam with his heavy eyelids.
He'd been out the whole day before, not coming home until after I had climbed into bed.
Where? I didn't know.
And I couldn't exactly ask him either.
He still had his secrets.
And no one begrudged him them.
We figured he had his reasons for them.
He gave me a nod, slamming a hand down on my knee to help him get to his feet, reaching down to fold up his blanket and pile it next to the one Astrid had folded as well - something neither of them would have thought to do before Roderick had stayed with us.
He ran a finger down my nose, a sign of affection for him, before moving off toward his room.
I turned off the TV, the lights, staring at the tree for a long moment.
We would leave that on all through the night, wanting to see it if we got up to get a snack or head to the bathroom.
Because we all knew the tree would look different the next day, it would have the power to make us all feel a little sad, knowing it was over. So we didn't want to lose a moment of the good feeling it gave us on the actual day.
I was just finishing cleaning up the turkey pan, knowing that one in the sink would prevent me from piling all the others in there when I heard footsteps behind me.
"Done making love already?" I asked, smiling as I turned.
But it wasn't Astrid.
No.
It was Camden.
And he was standing there with a box wrapped in silly wrapping paper - Santa-hat-wearing penguins on a purple background - in his hands, his head ducked to the side a bit.
"You forgot one?" I asked, drying my hands.
His head shook.
"Were saving it for later?" I guessed, watching as he gave me a tight nod, setting the box down on the dining table, then taking a few steps back.
Weird.
He was acting weird.
And this was Cam we were talking about.
So if I thought he was acting odd, he was really being strange.
"For me?" I specified as I walked over.
Another tight nod.
"You already got me plenty," I told him, shaking my head, but reaching for the tucks at the sides under the tape, ripping the paper off.
To find a plain cardboard box with a lid beneath.
Feeling an odd wobbly sensation in my stomach, I pulled it off, finding a pile of red and green crinklies inside.
Cam was not - almost as a rule - someone who went overboard with the wrapping. For my birthday the year before, he had tossed my present in a birthday bag without any kind of tissue paper or anything.
Feeling oddly excited, I reached inside, feeling something cold, metal.
My hand closed around it, brows drawn together as I dragged it upward.
And there it was.
A Double Trigger.
The gun we needed.
The last one missing.
The one that had caused me to get my ass handed to me.
The one that had made almost a dozen men lose their lives.
The one that had brought Roderick and me together to begin with.
My brows drew together even as my head shot up, shaking my head, wanting, needing to know, but understanding that I might never know how he had pulled this off when Astrid hadn't been able to find even a hint of anyone talking about this one on legit or dark sites.
"Cam..." I said instead, shaking my head.
He gave me a look I couldn't decipher. And since I knew him as well as I did, since he communicated almost exclusively through his eyes, it bothered me that I didn't know this one.
It almost looked like something... fearful?
Yeah.
Fearful, worried, unsure.
Three looks you never usually found on Camden's face.
He swallowed hard.
And then I understood the look.
Because his mouth opened.
And words came out.
"G-g-g-g-go t-t-to h-him."
He stuttered.
He stuttered.
Jesus Christ.
All these years. Of silence. Of pleading for him to communicate with me. Of not understanding what could possibly keep him from even trying to.
And it was because he stuttered.
My free hand flew to my chest, pressing over a heart that swelled and ached at the same time.
Swelled because I could finally hear his voice, I finally understood his silence. But ached because he felt he couldn't share this with me before, that he had to hide something like that, something that never would have changed the way I viewed him.
Tears - something that had once been foreign to me, but were becoming more common for me - flooded my eyes as the gun fell from my hands and into the box.
I flew around the table, slamming into him bodily, my arms going around him so tightly it was probably cutting off all his air.
There was a pause before his arms lifted from his sides, folding around my back, squeezing me back hard.
"Thank you," I told him. "For the gun. But more for... for sharing this with me," I told him, not caring that I was getting his shirt wet with tears.
"T-t-t-time," he said, his air shuddering out of him on an exhale.
"Overdue," I agreed, giving him another tight squeeze. "We wouldn't have cared about a lisp," I added, wanting him to hear it. Because fear of our rejection was the only explanation for his.
"P-p-past s-s-s-shit," he said, shrugging it off when we both knew that if it was enough to make him mute for years, there was nothing about it to shrug over.
"I figured," I agreed, sniffling a bit, pulling away, wiping my cheeks with my sleeve. "What's your name?" I asked, the question that had been plaguing me since I met him.
"C-c-Camden."
"No.... really."
"O-only o-one t-t-t-that m-m-matters."
"Fair enough," I agreed. "All these years," I said after a second of silence. "I have thought of hundreds, thousands of things I wanted to ask you. And now I can't think of anything."
To that, his shoulder shrugged. And I realized that this wasn't some miracle, him speaking. It was a lifetime of training himself not to speak, to respond only with body language. We weren't going to go from complete silence to having long conversations in the matter of a few minutes.
And that was okay.
More than okay.
Wounds took longer to heal than get. If it took him another six years to be able to have a conversation with me, that was fine.
"I love you," I told him, voice thick with sincerity.
"L-l-love y-y-you t-too, L-Liv."
His voice was sounding scratchy, muscles atrophied from disuse.
"I won't tell Astrid," I promised. "That's for you. When you're ready."
"I thought it was part of my dreams," Astrid said, making us both jolt, not sure how we missed the scratch of her slippers on the floor.
"What?" I asked, looking over at a confused Cam.
"When I first came here," she specified. "When you guys first took me in. You remember the nightmares?"
Christ, did I remember the nightmares. They were chronic. Not just every night. Multiple times each night. So frequent that, at times, I couldn't bring myself to go in for the fourth time, praying she wouldn't hate me for not being there every single time.
"Those days are hard to forget," I admitted.
"I remember you coming in, talking to me, just babbling about anything. Your childhood. The weather. What you were going to add to your grocery list, just talking and talking until I went to sleep. But there were times when it wasn't you at my bedside. It was Cam. Singing. I thought it was a dream. That voice. But it wasn't a dream, was it?"
"N-n-no," Cam said, shaking his head, face stricken.
Astrid's reaction was the same as mine, minus the tears. She flew at him, nearly knocking the two of them to the ground as she clung to him.
"It helped so much," she choked out, making me need to slow blink even more tears out of my eyes.
I didn't care about a single goddamn present I had ever gotten in my life.
This.
This was the only gift I needed.
Not thinking, just acting on impulse, I moved across the floor, wrapping my arms around both of them.
We stayed there like that, three not touchy-feely people - hanging on for dear life.
"Not that I don't love this," Astrid said, pulling away, taking a shaky breath. "But why now? Why tonight?"
I took a step back as well, waving a hand toward the box on the table.
Astrid moved over, looking in, head lifting slowly with a brilliant smile in Cam's direction.
"You sly fuck, you," she said, the words sounding like an accusation. "That's where you were all day yesterday."
He gave her a nod and a small smirk.
"I thought it would be me. I've been hunting like freaking crazy since he left and she fell into a black hole."
"I have not been in a black hole," I insisted, shaking my head.
"Oh, please," Astrid snorted. "You've been putting on a decently convincing act, I'll give you that. But your eyes are hollow. I wanted those dimples back, man."
"This was... that is so sweet of both of you, but just because I have the gun, doesn't mean anything is going to change."
"The gun is an excuse to go visit Navesink Bank. Go drop in. Say it bothers you to have anything hanging over your head like this. That you're just settling your debts. And if something comes from that, okay. If not, at least you know."
"He left, Astrid," I reasoned.
"Yeah, and you practically pushed him out the door," she told me, snorting. "Maybe if you saw each other again, you could hash it out. Or maybe you will show up to find he is not interested at all. But at least there is some closure there. And you will have squared up with Reign. He sounds like he took this well, but it's always good to have all the contacts you can. He'd be a good one in the future. It is an all-around smart thing to do. So... you're going to do it. Case closed. I'll go pack you a bag. Cam will go get the car out of the garage."
"I'm not going anywhere tonight," I told them.
"Why not?" she asked.
"It's Christmas!" I insisted, snorting.
"Oh, please. Christmas is over."
"It's late. I haven't slept."
"And you wouldn't sleep if you stayed here anyway. You know I'm right. you'd just lay there until the sun comes up anyway. Might as well get a move on."
"Astrid, be reasona..."
"G-g-go," Camden insisted, voice firm the way I imagined it when he gave me the stern stare every now and again.
"There. It's settled. You go take a shower. I will pack your bag. Hop to!"
When I didn't immediately move to comply, Astrid physically pushed me down the hall, proving that her martial arts classes were giving her some serious upper body strength.
"Liv," she said, voice more serious than usual as she pushed me into the bathroom. "You have done a great job of taking care of everyone else, always putting things you want second. And I am thankful for that. We both know I wouldn't be as halfway to normal as I am now if it wasn't for all the sacrifices you have made. And that Cam would never have grown comfortable enough to get to the point that he could let us know he has a lisp. And we love you for all you've done. But we're okay now. It's time for you to go after what you want. And you want Roderick. Whether you want to admit that yet or not. So... at least try."
I paused for a moment, taking a deep breath.
She was right.
I wanted Roderick.
And I did want the debt off my back.
And I would like to know things for sure, no matter which way it might go.
"Okay," I agreed.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. I'll go."
"Tonight," she specified.
"Yes, tonight."
"After you shower. Do your lady-scaping."
I snorted at that, shaking my head.
"Yes, all that. Now go."
Alone, I turned on the water, stripping out of my clothes, not entirely sure how I felt, or how I was supposed to feel.
Overwhelmed covered it.
Not just because of the unexpected road trip.
But because of Cam, because he could speak even if it was uncomfortable for him. Because of the fact that when Astrid had needed him most, he had forced away his own issues, and had done what he thought she needed. Because he had gone out of his way - and it was way out of his way since neither me nor Astrid had been able to do it - to track down the gun, go get it for me. Because he wanted me to go see Roderick.
Because he - and Astrid - had seen that he had given me a hint of something I had never known before.
Real happiness.
Comfort.
Maybe even the hints, the very new first twinges of something akin to love.
And they wanted me to know more of it if that was possible.
Even, as Astrid had suggested, it meant we had to retire, get new gigs.
But that was getting ahead of ourselves.
I showered, dressed, took my bag from Astrid, took the keys from Cam, tucked the gun back into the box, told my people I loved them.
Then set my sights on Navesink Bank.