“I…I guess I’ve always felt like Mom…abandoned me,” I whispered. “She never showed up that day. Up until that point, Mom was my constant. Dad was always at work during the week, and a lot of weekends, being one of the best surgeons in the state. But Mom was…she was my true north. Always there. And then, one day, she wasn’t.”
“She didn’t abandon you,” Kitty said, hugging me close. “Not on purpose.”
“I know!” I wailed. “I know! Intellectually, I know she didn’t, like, leave on purpose. She was killed in an accident...” I sucked in a sharp breath and held it till my lungs hurt. “She didn’t die immediately. She was taken to the hospital—the same one my dad was at. But he wasn’t her surgeon. Someone else was. And he couldn’t save her. They worked on her for hours, I guess, but they couldn’t save her. She died on the operating table.”
Juneau sniffled, burying her face in my shoulder. “Oh, honey. And you feel like if you could be a doctor, you could save others.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Except I never got that chance. I was so busy taking care of Daddy and the house that I missed a lot of school. If I made it to school half the week, I was lucky. When he was home, Daddy needed me constantly. When he wasn’t home, I was the only one capable of or willing to keep the house up. Then he remarried and my life got even worse. She and her daughter were worse than lazy and useless. All they cared about was Dad’s assets. I don’t even have a single fucking thing of my mother’s to remember her by, because Tracey bagged up every last item of my mothers and carted it all to fucking Goodwill while I was at school.” I sobbed, wiping my eyes. “I was so mad, you don’t even know. It took both Daddy and Trina to hold me back from physically beating the shit out of Tracey for doing that. I never spoke to her again until that day she showed up here trying to swindle me out of my inheritance.”
“So that’s what that visit of hers was about?” Juneau said, piecing the events together.
I nodded. “Yeah. She’d convinced Dad to write a new will, leaving everything to her to administer. His lawyer, the executor of his estate, fought for two years to get it tossed out, but because I wasn’t there to be part of the court hearing, Tracey won—she just needed me to sign off, relinquishing my claim on Daddy’s estate.”
“Holy shit,” Kitty breathed. “What a bitch!”
“You didn’t sign, did you?” Juneau asked.
“Yeah, I did.”
Juneau boggled at me. “But…why?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t care anymore. At that point it was just money, you know?”
Kitty shook her head. “No, Izzy, we don’t know.”
I scrubbed my face. “After Mom died, Daddy gave up. I reminded him of Mom, so he avoided me, except when he needed me to do things for him. He worked eighteen to twenty hours a day, seven days a week for three years straight, until he finally just died. I think technically it was a heart attack, but it was in his sleep. He went to bed one night and died of a broken heart. Tracey had just been someone to keep his dick wet and his bed warm until he was ready to die.”
Kitty reared away from me in disgust. “Isadora Styles, that’s a horrible thing to say!”
“It’s the fucking truth!” I shouted, standing up and stomping across the room to whirl around on them both. “He’s the one who really fucking abandoned me! Mom died and he gave up! He shut down; quit caring about me, about himself, about our life, about everything. Once Mom died, I was alone. Then he sent me away to Minnesota to live with an aunt I’d never even met, because he didn’t fucking want me anymore! When he did finally let me come back home to Memphis, he was just…gone. His body physically existed, but his mind and heart were in that grave with Mom, and I was alone.”
“Oh my god, Izzy, I’m so sorry,” Juneau said with tears in her eyes, “—we’re so sorry. I wish we could do or say something to make it better, but please, just know we’re here for you, we love you, and we support you.”
“So this is why you won’t let yourself be loved by anyone,” Kitty whispered. “Because your mom died, and then your dad abandoned you, so now you don’t trust anyone else not to do the same thing.”
Juneau shuddered, a sigh escaping her lips. “Even us, you’ve never really trusted us.”
“It wasn’t you,” I whispered. “I love you guys more than I can say, and I don’t know what I’d have done without you. I just…I don’t know how to trust anymore.”
Kitty slid off the couch to kneel in front of me. “Izzy. Listen to me, please. If you love me, if I’ve ever said anything that you’re capable of truly hearing, let it be this.”
I saw her through a wavering haze of tears. “I’ll try.”
“You’ve spent the last fifteen years of your life alone, isolated, cut off from everyone, even us.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“One person, in all those years—one—has been able to see through your mile-high, mile-thick walls to the woman you really are inside. One person has gotten through those walls, and in a single weekend, he broke you open like a coconut.” She took my face in her hands. “Ramsey opened the floodgates, Izz. He saw your pain and the bullshit you hid behind, he called you on it, and got you to open up to him in a way no other human being ever has. You felt safe enough with him to trust him with your past—we’ve been your best friends for almost ten fucking goddamn years and we didn’t know any of this. But you told him about it?” She sobbed, sniffed, and then sighed. “I admit I’m more than a little hurt by that, to be honest, but if Ramsey Badd can accomplish all this in two and a half days? I’m all for it. But it’s all him, Izzy. It’s him. Don’t you see that?”
For the second time that day, and the third time in as many days, I was ugly crying.
“I know,” I whisper-sobbed. “I know.”
“So admit you love him, you idiot!” Juneau shouted, louder than I’ve ever heard her shout in her life. “Get off your big fat ass and go tell him you love him!”
“My ass is not fat,” I said, hiccuping.
Juneau rolled her eyes. “Oh, get over yourself,” she snapped. “It’s an expression and you know it. If anyone in this room has an actual fat ass, it’s me, but you don’t see me whining about it, do you?”
“Your ass isn’t any fatter than mine or hers,” Kitty said, “so you can shut up about that too, June.”
I let out a bark of amused yet annoyed laughter. “Can we stop talking about our big fat asses for five seconds and get back to my fucked-up life?”
Kitty shook me like a rag doll. “You just have to woman up and accept that you’re in love with Ramsey, and see where that leads you.”
I blinked away tears. “I’m so scared, though. What if he—”
“He won’t,” Juneau cut in. “Rome didn’t. Rem didn’t. Ram won’t either.”
“Give that man half a chance, and he’ll love you so hard you’ll be looking for ways to get away from him for five seconds so you can even pee alone,” Juneau said, laughing. “Trust me on that.”
“So what do I do?” I asked. “Just…show up and be like, hey Ram, I’m in love with you, please love me back and don’t abandon me?”
Kitty and Juneau both nodded seriously, as if I hadn’t obviously meant that sarcastically.
“Yes,” they both said in unison.
I blinked. “Wait…really?”
Kitty shrugged. “Those men don’t play bullshit games. Give him the raw unvarnished truth—just tell him how you feel, what you’re afraid of, and give him a chance.”
“Just like that? After one weekend?”
“One weekend?” Juneau laughed. “Woman, you fell in love with that man that day in the hospital. You’ve been in love with him for over a year--you’ve just been running away from it.”
I frowned. “I was in love with his penis, and his oral sex skills. I knew literally nothing else about him.”
“Izzy, at least be honest with yourself,” Kitty said. “It was never about his cock, or his oral sex skills, or his looks, and you
know it. You connected with him on a whole different level than with anyone else, and that’s why you ran from him the way you did. But you spent the intervening year building it up in your mind, doubting it, fantasizing about him…and then when you actually did have sex with him—”
“It was even better than my fantasies,” I whispered. “I told him my fantasy, or one of them, at least, and he made it come true, and my fantasy was silly and pathetic and stupid compared to what the reality with him was like.”
“Because at the root of it all, it’s not about the sex,” Kitty said.
“The sex is just icing on the cake,” Juneau added. “Really hot icing on a really hot cake.”
I sighed. “Fine. Fine, fine, fine. You’re both right, and I know it. I’ve always known it.”
“You’re in love with him,” Kitty said. “Let me hear you admit it out loud.”
I shook my head. “No. He’s going to be the first person to hear me say those words.”
Kitty clapped her hands and squealed in joy. “Yes! That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”
“Now go get him!” Juneau said, shoving off the couch.
“I need to shower and change first,” I said. “The only bath I’ve had in the last three days was in the river, and it was followed by sex.”
“Nope,” Juneau said, and she and Kitty hauled me to my feet. “Now. Just like you are.”
They shoved me to the door, opened it, and pushed me out.
I protested, “Wait! I at least need a pair of shoes!”
Kitty tossed a pair of flip-flops at me. “There. Now go.”
I still hesitated. “I’m fucking terrified.”
“Good,” Juneau said. “That means its all the more real. Buck up, buttercup. You can do this. You have to.”
I took a fortifying breath. “Fine. But I’m going to do it my way.”
They both nodded, and Kitty leaned forward to kiss me on the forehead. “Fine,” she said, “do it your way, whatever that is. As long as it results in you telling Ramsey Badd that you love him, want him, and need him, and that you’re not accepting no for an answer.”
And so I marched down the stairs, forty-eight hours without a shower, wearing Kitty’s too-small flip-flops, braless, to tell a man I was in love with him.
13
Ramsey
The boys were both gone—Remington was doing a tattoo, and Rome was off taking a food service management course, and my cousins were running the saloon. This left me to putz around the apartment by myself. I cleaned and put away my gear, contemplated taking a shower but didn’t have the energy for it, contemplated making food but didn’t feel like expending the effort…
I found myself at the refurbished iMac my brothers and I shared, updating my resumé and emailing it to the HR department of the National Park Service, attaching the letter of recommendation my brothers and I had all received from our superiors in both the hotshot and smokejumper crews. And then, with nothing better to do, I changed into workout clothes and jogged over to Baxter’s gym.
His gym was huge, clean, well-lit—and the center of the warehouse space was dominated by a boxing ring. There were massive power racks along three of the outside walls, and racks of high-end bumper plates at regular intervals; the fourth side was reserved for a trio of hanging heavy bags and a pair of speed bags, and the doorway to Baxter’s little office. I walked in and was assaulted by a palpable wall of sound—grinding, chugging, shrieking heavy metal pounding from expensive speakers suspended from the ceiling at all four corners of the warehouse. Bax himself was in the ring, barefoot, shirtless, a mouthguard protecting his teeth and professional gloves on his hands—he was sparring with a lean, hard, quick-fisted young Hispanic guy. Bax was obviously going slow and letting the younger boxer take his shots, only occasionally taking a jab here and there. I watched them spar for a few minutes, and noted the way Baxter danced and ducked and weaved, getting his trainee to reveal his strengths and weaknesses. Finally, when the younger guy started to visibly flag, Bax held up a glove to stop the fight. He used his teeth to untie his right glove, wedged it under his left arm and tugged his hand free so he could remove his mouthguard. The other fighter did the same, sweating profusely and out of breath, whereas Bax was barely winded and only had a light sheen of sweat on his forehead.
“Okay, Luis, I’ve got some homework for you, buddy,” Bax said. “Number one, conditioning, man. You’re smoked and we only went fifteen minutes, and I was going easy on you. You’ve got the footwork down pat, no question, and your hands are quicker’n greased lightning, but you gotta be able to last longer. Number two, strength—you need to build up a bit more power behind your punches. I ain’t gonna even put you in the ring yet. You could win fights, probably, but I think if you spent a few more months training, you’d go into the circuit and you’d seriously wreck some motherfuckers. So I want you to focus on those two things—endurance, and power. You’re plenty strong, but you need more power, and you gotta be able to sustain that power for several rounds.”
Luis was nodding. “I gotchu, Bax, I gotchu. Power and endurance. Got it.”
Bax clapped Luis on the shoulder with his still-gloved left hand. “Hit the road, kid. You’re good for today.”
Luis swung out of the ring between two of the ropes, hopped down, and headed for the showers, which were next to the office. Bax hopped down too, unlacing his other glove and heading over to me.
“What up, cuz?” he said, holding out a fist.
I shrugged, tapping knuckles with him. “I need to blow off some steam.”
Bax jerked his chin at the ring. “That kinda steam?” He jerked a thumb at the closest power rack, next. “Or that kind?”
I indicated the power rack. “That kind.”
Bax nodded, but I could tell he was scrutinizing me. “Tell me one thing, first.”
“Okay?”
“Are we trying to shred you out of thinking about a certain someone?”
I sighed in frustration. “Honestly, yes.”
Bax nodded again. “A’ight. I’ll work you out till you’re half dead, but I’m gonna warn you right now, it won’t work for long.”
He was as good as his word—for the next eighty minutes Baxter put me through the most brutally punishing workout of my life. For those eighty minutes, I benched, squatted, deadlifted, pushed and pulled a loaded sled, did dozens of burpees and hundreds of pushups and pull-ups. By the time Bax called it quits, I was barely able to stay on my feet, and couldn’t lift my arms more than waist high.
He was as good as his word in another respect as well—the minute I stopped exerting myself, I started thinking about Izzy again.
Bax saw it, too. “Told you.”
I groaned, leaning against the boxing ring. “It sucks, dude. I don’t know what to do.”
“Want to talk about it?”
I shrugged. “Not much to say. We went hiking together, camped out together…finally slept with her, and it was…well, better than I’d even imagined it could be. But after that, after we slept together, she just…withdrew.”
“Sex or love?” Bax asked.
“Huh?”
“Was it sex…or was it love?”
I growled. “Fuck if I know.”
“Can’t help you if you don’t tell me the fuckin’ truth, cuz.”
“Neither, and both.”
Bax chuckled. “That means it was love. Or the beginnings of it. If you have sex with a chick and it’s just fucking, and you both know it, that’s easy-peasy. But if you have sex with a girl and you both know it’s something else, too? That’s when shit gets complicated, and complicated means at least one of you, and probably both of you, have feelings you’re not willing to deal with. Which means it’s most likely the beginnings of love—at least the beginnings, if not flat out the real deal.”
I laughed. “Okay, Dr. Phil.”
Bax eyed me weirdly. “You know, last time I talked to Izzy, she said basically the same thing--she called me
Dr. Phil. What the fuck is with that?”
“You’re like some love expert or something.”
“Nah,” he said, waving a hand. “I am an expert on bullshitting myself into thinking I’m not in love when I am, though. Eve had to bludgeon me upside the head with the fact that we were perfect for each other before I could accept it, and now I guess I’m just more easily able to see that in others, and articulate it.”
“But if she won’t see it, if she won’t even give us the chance to talk about that possibility, what the fuck am I supposed to do?”
He shrugged. “Jack off a lot and hope she comes around eventually.”
I cackled. “Wow. I don’t think Dr. Phil would say that.”
He slapped my shoulder. “Dude, I wish there was something else I could tell you, but if she’s still in denial about her feelings or whatever, there’s just not much you can do. Neither you nor anyone else can force her to accept the reality of being in love with you. If she doesn’t want it, can’t handle it, won’t consider it, you’re just…fucked. You can keep trying, but eventually you’re going to either get through to her, or…not.” He eyed me. “You in love with her?”
I stared at the floor and lifted one shoulder about half an inch. “I could be.”
Bax was silent for a moment. “That’s a pussy answer.”
I stared hard at him. “Fuck you.”
He just laughed. “You know I’m right. You wanna lace up and step into my office”—here, he gestured at the ring—“be my guest.”
I growled again. “Fuck, man. How can I say I’m in love with her if I’ve only spent the one weekend with her? We fooled around a bit and slept together one time, and then she barely spoke to me the rest of the trip. Said she needed time to ‘process’ things.”
Bax shoved me toward the door. “Go home, bro. My advice? Give her time. If there was a connection and she’s got the balls to own it, she’ll come around.”