Sixteen
Vivienne
Ollie is gone when I wake up in the morning but I can still feel the pressure of his lips against mine from the kiss he gave me before he left. I know he didn’t get much sleep last night. He was tossing and sighing too much to sleep, but he stayed with me all night, which is all I can ask for.
I’m moving slow this morning, but when I hear Davis on the phone telling whoever is on the other end how yummy Ollie looked when he was leaving, I speed up and yank it from his hand.
“I really don’t need to hear that about my brother,” Annie’s saying as I place the phone to my ear.
“Please ignore everything he just said.”
“Trust me, you have nothing to worry about. If you promise he’ll behave, I’ll cook y’all breakfast.”
“Let me get ready and we’ll be right over.”
When I turn back around, my best friend is smiling like he’s the one that had Earth-shattering sex last night.
“Girl, last night was crazy.”
My face heats up. “How do you even know about it? You weren’t here.”
“Maybe not at first, but I only stayed at Annie’s until about ten. There was no denying what was going on in your bedroom.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I want some details.”
“I think you heard enough.”
“Is he as good as I think he is? I mean, by the way you were screaming…”
“That’s enough. I’ll be in the shower. We’re going to Annie’. No talk about me and Ollie in front of her.”
He winks. “I think me and Annie are about to get really close. I don’t know if I can subject myself to that every night.
_____
I don’t know how long we’ve been asleep, but I wake up in the pitch black with Ollie screaming in his sleep. The screams turn to tortured moans as I call his name and he starts to shake violently. I sit up and keep calling his name, getting louder each time, but he can’t hear me over his cries. He’s bucking against the mattress and screaming through a jaw that’s clenched so tight I’m scared he’s going to break his teeth. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was in physical pain.
He warned me against it, but I move in closer and place my hands on either side of his face. Before I know what’s happening, he’s flipped me to my back and has me pinned to the bed.
His hands are like steel bands around my upper arms. Tears roll down my cheeks as I call his name louder and louder. Just before I start to panic, he yanks me up and yells, “Fuck,” squeezing me tight and apologizing over and over against my cheek.
He pulls away, checking my body for injury. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
I’m not okay, by any means, but I’m more worried about him than about me. What happened to him to make him do this to me?
My silence doesn’t bode well with him. Before I can process what’s happening, he’s out the door, Ace whining as he slams it behind him. My shock over the situation has me able to do little other than sitting on the edge of the bed. I decide to go after him when I get my breathing back to normal and I have a better grip on my emotions. I have no idea if this takes two minutes or two hours. My mind isn’t working properly.
“Must have been one hell of a fight,” Sammy says from his perch on the Bishop’s porch. “Didn’t even bother putting on pants.”
I look down to see he’s right. I threw on the shirt Ollie left on my floor when he stormed out the house. I don’t have shoes on either, but the most important thing right now is getting to Ollie to see what’s going on. I can’t let this ruin us.
“Is he inside?” I ask. The weak and scratchy tone of my voice is a good indication of how shaken I still am over what happened.
“He’s at his place.”
“His place?”
Rather than saying anything, Sammy points in the direction of the old barn.
“He lives in there?” I had no clue.
“Yep.”
“Thanks.”
“Viv,” Sam calls after me when I walk down the steps. “Be patient with him. He’s fucked up, but I get the feelin’ he’d still do anything for you.”
I don’t really have a response for him, so I keep walking toward the barn. There’s nothing to light the path, but I’ve walked here so many times, I could do it blindfolded. My head and arms ache with each step I take, so I concentrate on the words I want to say to him when I see him.
Words that completely slip my mind when I slide open the old door and see what he’s done to the inside.
Gone is the dust, the hay bales, and the broken-down farming equipment. This place has been transformed into one of the most beautiful homes I’ve ever seen.
“What are you doing here?”
His voice startles me, but only because I didn’t see him when I walked in. He’s on a dark leather couch, head hanging down, a cigarette dangling between the fingers of one hand and a glass of whisky in the other.
“I came to talk to you.”
“Glutton for punishment?”
His speech is the slightest bit slurred, and it makes me wonder how long it took me to get myself together enough to be able to come over here and do this.
“We need to talk.”
He finally looks up at me, and when he does, the glass of amber liquid goes flying across the room, shattering against the wall. I jump, not at all understanding his reaction to seeing me.
“Goddamnit,” he roars. With one quick sweep, he’s knocked all the contents off the surface of the table and onto the floor.
I walk toward him, trying my best not to show how scared I am, but he puts his hand up. “Don’t come any closer. Have you seen what I did to you?” I didn’t bother looking at myself before I came over. “Have you?” he repeats.
“No.”
“Do it.” He points to a mirror above the bar in the corner. I don’t want to see, but I don’t dare disobey him. I gasp when I see the rings of purplish bruises starting to form around my arms.
“You want to be with a monster?” he spits from behind me. “I’m a fucking monster. I can’t control the demons that live inside me, Viv. I’m no good for you. Never have been.”
“You don’t scare me.” I turn and take his face in my hands. He tries to pull away but he’s not as quick or strong as he should be due to all the alcohol he’s consumed.
“I should.”
“Tell me what happened to you.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You don’t trust me?” I fire back. A few hours ago, he wanted to marry me and have babies, and now he’s acting like a completely different person.
“I’d trust you with my life, but I can’t do it right now.” His eyes are wet and I decide I’m pushing too hard and he’ll tell me when he’s ready.
“Tell me about this place.”
He walks me back to the couch and lights up another cigarette. “It was awful. The places I’ve been, the things I’ve had to do, all of it was pure fuckin’ awful.”
I thought we weren’t doing this now, but I sit quietly, prepared to listen to the ugliness he’s about to tell me. He doesn’t keep going, though. He sits in silence, letting the cigarette burn without taking a drag from it, staring into the darkness of the room, his mind somewhere far off. Finally, when all that remains is the butt, he decides to speak.
“I was surrounded by death, Viv, day in and day out. Couldn’t escape it. But I had the memories of you to keep me sane. You were my lifeline, baby. All the years I spent away from you, all the fucked-up things I saw and did, I’d close my eyes at night and picture you. When bombs were explodin’ around me, gunfire blazin’, I’d think about you on a warm summer day and that’s the only way I could take it. You got me through it. I hated you sometimes for leavin’ me, but I needed you to survive. I would have died without you.” He stops, takes a generous sip straight from his bottle of whisky, and takes a deep breath before hitting me with the next piece of the story. “When I came back all these years later, knowin’ you weren’t here for me, I hated everything. I hated life. Wanted to end it.”
“God, Ollie,” I whisper, because my heart hurts for this man.
“One night, the demons were strong. Stronger than I could handle. I knew it was time to end it. Put my pain to sleep. I tried so hard every damn day to get through, but that one was too much for me to take. I’m a strong man, Viv, but even I can’t carry the weight of all the shit I’ve seen and done.” He stops, his gaze moving from a dark corner of the room to his feet. His breaths coming out heavier than before. “I came in here, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. Everywhere I looked, I saw you. You’re in every corner of this place. Smilin’, laughin’, carryin’ plates of fuckin’ cookies.”
I have so much to say to him, but I can’t seem to string any words together.
“You saved my life that night. You saved me and you didn’t even know it, just like you saved me all those nights I was at war. The next mornin’, I wanted to clean up this place and purge it from the ugliness of the night before. I was still a miserable bastard, but I had a focus. All my time and energy went into this place. The exhaustion I felt at the end of every day and the dreams of you every night helped me battle all those demons. But some nights, like tonight, they just don’t leave me alone. They creep in.” He gently runs his thumb along the line of bruises he put on my arms. “Lookin’ at this kills me. I never want to hurt you.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m not,” he says immediately. “I’m so far from okay I can’t even see it.”
He chokes on the last words and we can’t speak anymore. Words are too hard and emotions are too high. We’re both damaged from our past and need to heal. The thing is, I don’t know how to help him.
“It’s not safe for me to stay with you,” he finally mutters. “I don’t ever know what I’m gonna do, and I would die if I hurt you.”
“We just got together after all these years and we can’t be together. How is this any way to live?”
“I’m not livin’, baby, just existin’.”
“Ollie, I think you might need to see someone about this,” I say cautiously. “Surely you have friends going through this.”
“They’re gone.”
“What?”
“I’m the only one who came home.”
I have no response for him. Nothing I could say would be enough to tell him how I feel. I can’t fathom to know what he feels like either. It’s too much. No wonder he fights this internal battle every day. Instead, I switch his focus to the barn.
“I guess this is why Lulu said you were the only one who could help me with her house. Did you show her this?”
He manages a small grin and it brings a fresh round of tears to my eyes. After all the ugliness of the night, it’s nice to see a semblance of happiness. God, we’ve got so much work to do to get him well, but a simple smile seems like a good place to start. “Don’t think that’s why she asked me to help you.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I think Mrs. Tallulah had somethin’ else in mind.”
“Like what?”
“Like this,” he whispers, fusing his mouth to mine, pouring his soul into the kiss. “I think she knew you were it for me,” he says when he breaks away. “She was more interested in gettin’ us back together than fixin’ up that house. Your Lulu was a smart lady.”
“She was.” I mirror his pose, taking his face in my hands. “What are we going to do?”
He kisses my temple, his lips landing right on my scar. “Sun’s about to come up. Let’s go to your place, let Ace out, and then I’ll feed you.”
I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever I can get from him. My Ollie is damaged, more damaged than I can try to fix on my own, and something needs to be done. The life he’s talked about having with me is something that I want too much. I won’t lose him a second time.
“I want your last name and your babies,” I blurt as we walk out the door. I never thought I’d admit that so soon, but as soon as he turns around, I know deep in my bones I mean it more than anything I’ve ever said in my life. He stops in his tracks, a beautiful smile stretched across his face. His eyes are lit up in a way I haven’t seen before. For a fraction of a second, he looks happy.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But for that to happen, I need you well. I need you whole.”
“I know, baby. I’ll get there.”
I want to press him for more, ask him how that’s going to happen, but I decide I’m done with the heavy stuff for today. I’d rather walk hand in hand with my man and watch the sun come up from my porch, Ollie, Ace, and Cat beside me.