He laughed. It took me a second to realize why.
If it was Dona who said it and not Helen, I’d have her committed.
“The reason you didn’t throw this other woman in the looney bin was because you don’t see her as your sister. You might have tried, but deep down you know she isn’t your sister, which is why you’re so conflicted about it. One part of you is holding on to the image of her as a sister, while the other side of you is seeing her as a woman. Besides, straight men don’t have just female friends…unless she’s gay and even then…you’d still probably want to bone her.”
I wanted to speak, but I was damn sure my brain was short circuiting, and all I could remember was how she looked seated beside me with her tank-top slipping off her shoulder…how her lips tasted like wine.
“I can’t,” I muttered to myself.
“I never thought I’d hear those words from a Callahan,” he replied from up front, seeming very amused with himself. Again, his eyes looked to mine via the mirror. “Isn’t the very definition of being a Callahan doing whatever the fuck you want when you want without a goddamn care?”
Is that what people thought being a Callahan was? Then again, I couldn’t blame them for thinking that. It is what we had told them over the years.
“But seriously, you ain’t ever thought about being with this woman?” he asked. “Because she sure got you twisted.”
Fighting the thoughts in my mind, I looked out the window, inhaling deeply. “Monk. Stop talking, I’m thinking.”
“Monk?”
“Yeah, I changed my mind. Now shut the fuck up before I get upset,” I replied.
I never thought of being with her.
Never?
WYATT – AGE SIXTEEN
“Wyatt, come on! The water is so blue!” She was laughing, her smile so wide.
It was like watching her in slow motion. The water splashing up all around her, glistening. Those curls of hers curling up even more as they got wet. There were at least half a dozen people in the ocean with her, yet all I could see was her. Each time she jumped up after being splashed with water, I tried not to look, but her boobs kept bouncing. I could even see her nips through…
“Wyatt!?” she yelled back over to me, waving me over.
I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. Glancing down and then back up, I couldn’t—
“I’m okay!” I yelled back.
She shifted her head to the side and then in a spilt second dashed through the ocean onto the beach…
What the fuck, is this Baywatch?
She looks so good in yellow.
WYATT – NOW
FUCK! I bolted into a sitting position with my hands over my mouth. How the fuck had I forgotten about that?
Dad died a week later.
We’d gone to Marasusa Beach while on vacation in southern Italy. The locals there called it “La Costa degli Dei”—the Coast of the Gods. To me it was the beach where I…I couldn’t even say it. I couldn’t even remember what I was thinking back then. I just thought Helen was pretty and that she ended up being one of our family “friends” whenever we went to the beach and came back. I didn’t think much of it, then. And then my father passed away. He’d been getting sicker and sicker, but I tried to pretend I hadn’t noticed. When he died, I pushed everything, my whole past, into the back of my mind.
I didn’t want to think about my family or anyone else. I pushed Helen to the back of my mind, too.
What other memories was I suppressing?
More importantly, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?
Stop running. The moment I thought it was the moment I felt like I could breathe again. All of the issues I had…well, most of the issues I had, came because I ran. I ran from home, my past, my…own thoughts.