“Fi, oh my gosh!” my cousin, Trinity, gasped as soon as she opened the door to greet me. “Eli, get the first aid kit from the bathroom,” she instructed her fiancé.
“I’m fine, I promise. Bonnie Jane got one tiny lick in. It’s nothing.” I shrugged, nervously readjusting the backpack strap on my shoulder.
“Alf, leave Bart alone,” she huffed at her cat is he prepared to jump off the banister and pounce to scare Eli’s horse of a dog.
“See, they’re not worried, so you shouldn’t be either,” I reassured her in my thick southern drawl with a nod. How I pronounced words was rarely something I paid much attention to, especially living in Blackwell, Louisiana, but when I was around Trinity, I noticed. Although she had lived here for several years now, she didn’t grow up here as Eli and I had.
“Neither of them has a nurse for a cousin. ‘Sides the cat’s an asshole, and Bart is too gullible to have his opinion hold much weight,” Eli spoke in an accent similar to mine while opening the first aid kit and closing it before handing it off to Trinity.
“She really is a shitty parent, you know?” Trinity fumed, opening the kit and doing a once over of the interior of the plastic box, then closed it just as her fiancé had. Her eyes filled with tears, and she glanced over to Eli. “It’s empty. Just like her mother’s heart,” Trinity hissed, reaching over to hand it back to him.
“I know.”
“Why did you give it to me if you knew that?” she asked.
“A smart man never comes to his fiancée emptyhanded when she wants something.”
“But it was empty,” Trinity and I pointed out at the same time.
“The box may have been, but my hands weren’t. It’s all in the details,” he smirked, quickly kissing Trinity on the forehead.
“Only an ax murderer like you would think of things like that.”
“Still not. An. Ax murderer. I am a—”
“Businessman who reads contracts,” she mused as he wiped the tears from her cheeks.
My eyes squinted as I watched them with one another. I had no freaking idea how we went from my mother to ax murderers and contracts, but with Trinity, I learned she would share the meaning of things when she was ready. It wasn’t the first time the two of them had made the reference. I never asked the meaning behind it because I didn’t feel like I had the right to. The subject was more than likely personal, and judging by the way they acted, no one was actually hurt. I didn’t know a lot about Trinity’s past leading up to the day we met, but I knew enough to know it wasn’t a walk in the park by any means. One day, I might ask her, but somehow, I doubted that. I liked the mental image I had of her. The biggest reason I didn’t want to ask was fear of what I might find out. Many people asked things they never wanted the answer to and then were disappointed when they discovered something bad. If you didn’t ask, the chances of you being let down vastly decreased. Of course, there were people who overshared and told you stuff you didn’t want to hear, but Trinity absolutely did not fall into that category.
“Look at us, getting swept away in a moment in front of you. I’m a shitty big sister, huh? I’m sorry. Come to the bathroom, I’ll clean your face and put some ointment on that cut.”
“Trin, really, I’m fine. We all know she’s done a lot worse to me.”
“I wish you could just stay with us,” Trinity said, ignoring what I had said while her hand wrapped around mine and tugged me in the direction of the bathroom.
“That’s actually why I’m here,” I sheepishly admitted.
“It is?” Her eyebrows rose, and she released my hand, nodding toward the side of the bathtub as she took a seat. After snagging a washcloth off the shelf in front of her and dropping it into her open palm, I sat beside her. Even though it was nearlypointless to clean the dried blood off my face that I was too stubborn to do myself, it didn’t matter. This was who Trinity was. She was her happiest when she was able to help others. Her heart led all of her actions, which was the complete opposite of how I planned to live my life from now on.
“Yup. I was kind of hoping I could stay here until I found a place of my own.”
“It’s not even a question. Except the last part. This is your home now.”
“I can’t do that to you all,” I admitted the truth we both knew. She loved me. I never questioned that fact, but she loved Eli more. It was never a contest I would ever ask her to test, even if she didn’t realize that was what she would be doing.
“Nonsense. It would be our pleasure.”
“Trin, it wouldn’t,” I sternly said over the sloshing water soaking into the washcloth. Trinity and I weren’t actually blood relatives. Honestly, we shouldn’t be anything to each other, but she broke the rules to make it happen. One night, after Mom lost her cool, Trinity found me pacing outside the hospital. I was afraid to go inside. I didn’t want CPS to take me into custody. Mom was an awful parent, but she wasn’t the worst hand I could have been dealt. Anyway, Trinity patched me up off the record with the deal I would call her if it ever happened again. I never planned to actually use her phone number, but when you literally didn’t have anyone else to call in the event of an emergency, your hand was forced occasionally.
“It would. I’ll figure out something,” I promised more to myself than her.
2/
fiona
A few years down the road
“Shh,”I hushed Trinity when she walked into my small apartment, and I chewed on the end of my ink pen. My eyes roamed over the guitar staring back at me from my computer screen.