It takes another twenty minutes for me to calm down enough to drive home. My head feels heavy and although I’m too distressed to sleep I go to bed anyway. To my surprise, my eyelids grow heavy and in minutes I drift off to sleep.
***
I feel surprisingly fresh when I wake up hours later. I douse my face in the water and refresh myself. Back in my bedroom, I pull on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. A run will help me come up with a plan. I need one if I’m to manage to hang on to my job.
The one thing I love about LA is the hiking trails. They wind around the hills and give you a breathtaking view of the city. I weigh my options as I run. They’re not many.
Only one type of professional can help me. A therapist. The first one was a failure and I made the mistake of giving up. I’ll search for the right one until I find him or her. It’s a big admission for me to make and when I do, relief floods me.
After a five-mile run, I return to my condo, sweat dripping down my back. I jump into the shower and just as I turn it off, I hear a knock on the door. I dry myself quickly and wrap a towel around my waist.
Yanking the front door open, I’m stunned to see Declan.
Seeing Declan is like a punch in the stomach. The last time I saw him, he was on the ground after I landed a punch to his face. A normal reaction toward the man who stole my fiancé. The one man among all men who shouldn’t have even contemplated such disloyalty. My brother.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I blurt out.
He hasn’t changed at all in the last two years. He’s huge but fit. Declan loves working out. He loves running as well. A memory of us jogging and brainstorming comes to mind. We ran together when I lived in Santa Monica and he and I ran a business together.
Before he fucked up all that and decided he wanted to sleep with my girlfriend.
“Can we talk? Please?” he says.
“Five minutes,” I growl. “Make that two.” I hold the door open and he enters.
I follow him to the living room and sit down on the chair facing his. I feel myself softening. Acknowledging how much I’ve missed my brother. Before Stacy, he and I were as close as two brothers could be. I harden my heart. Declan is an asshole.
“I’m glad you’re back. I’ve been fucking worried about you. We all were, including Mom and Dad.”
“Is that what you came to say?” I make as though to stand up.
“Please go and see the folks...” his voice breaks. “They miss you. You’re all they talk about.”
I’m not mad that my parents have no moral compass and think that a brother taking his brother’s fiancée was perfectly all right. No, I’ve moved on from that but I’m in no rush to see them.
Declan is dragging me back to a life I’ve already left behind. He betrayed me but I’ve dealt with it. In the two years I’ve been away, I always visualized what I would do if I ran into Declan. I would beat him to a pulp. Looking at him now, I couldn’t be bothered.
Not over Stacy anyway. It’s just a shame that it didn’t work out between them after the hurt and pain they caused.
“Maybe I will,” I tell him.
A look of surprise comes over his features. He never expected that. Nothing else is keeping him here. I stand up and he follows suit. He rubs the back of his neck in a gesture I know well. He wants to say something.
“Look,” Declan says. “About Stacy.”
I stiffen.
“I’m sorry, man but there’s something I need to tell you. I never slept with her,” Declan says.
The military has taught me a lot of lessons, one of which is the ability to think first and talk afterward. I reconstruct the events that led to my estrangement with Declan.
We were at my parents’ house for an afternoon of frolicking around the pool and generally having fun. I noticed Declan disappear and then moments later, Stacy followed him. I told myself to stop being silly. They couldn’t. They wouldn’t. But after that, I’d been unable to follow Park’s conversation and I excused myself.
Heart thumping hard, I had found them in Declan’s old room. They were so engrossed in each other they hadn’t heard me enter. I had grabbed Declan’s shirt and dragged him from the bed.
It had taken all the men to separate us. And now he was saying that he never slept with Stacy.
What kind of fucked up crap is this?
“Sit,” I tell him as I do the same. “Talk.”