Wait: The Brazen Bulls Beginning Page 12

  “Everything hurts,” he said.

  “I know. You’re a mess, Brian. You’re drunk, too. Again. You’re bloody banjoed, in fact.”

  She thought he drank too much. She also thought he smoked too much. And fought too much. Sometimes, it was like she thought she was the older of them.

  Her friend came back with Mo’s books and her leather purse. “Thanks, Michelle. You all can go now. We’re okay. All’s well.”

  “You sure, Mo?” one of the guys asked. “You’re gonna need help getting him up and to his car, at least.”

  “No!” Brian snarled.

  “Shhh.” She patted his swollen hand. To her friends she said, “We’re grand, truly. I can hold him up.”

  And she was the only one who could.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Brian pulled out with a soft grunt and rolled to Mo’s side. Before he handled the condom, he tugged the blanket up and covered her.

  Mo stretched and sighed, snuggling under the soft weave and finding a more comfortable arrangement of the pad of blankets beneath them. They were in the bed of Brian’s truck; it was rare that they had a chance to be naked together indoors. Once or twice at Brian’s house, but never at her house—there was never a time she was alone in the evenings, and there wasn’t the remotest chance her aunt and uncle would condone sex outside marriage.

  For the most part, in bad weather, Brian took a motel room. In good weather, they found a quiet, secluded place and made love under the night sky. Mo didn’t mind. It was romantic, in fact, this little secret they shared with only the moon and stars. And, a few times, the sun.

  She stared up at tonight’s stars until Brian lay back down and folded her into the crook of his arm. He kissed her head as she settled in her customary place, with his chest as her pillow.

  Smoothing her hand over his chest, she studied the map of him, this body she now knew nearly as well as her own. The rough path of his scar. The notch at the base of his throat. The curve of his pectorals. The crease down the center of his belly, where the plates of his muscles met. The flat curl of his navel, the soft hair like an arrow pointing the way to the delights farther down.

  The dog tags that lay on his chest, always there, always between them. He’d let her touch them, hold them, and now she knew their shape and weight, the letters stamped on them and what they meant. She knew the feel of them on her own body, brushing over her as he thrust into her, or pressed into her when he held her tight. But he had never taken them off.

  Nor had he taken off the war that came with them.

  She had loved Brian Delaney for more than a year, and she would love him for all the years she had left on this earth. Every version of the future she wanted had him at the center. And he loved her just the same. She could feel it in his every touch. He said the words freely, and he meant them. She knew this.

  But she did not have all of him. She didn’t know all of him. Long ago, at their beginning, she’d asked him to show her everything, but he hadn’t. He’d given her more, but not the parts of himself he feared. Those, she’d had to find on her own. And she was still searching, still finding.

  Sometimes she wandered into his shadows, and found cause there to worry. He’d told her many times that she kept him in the light, made him calm, made him happy, and she believed it. But as they’d grown familiar with each other, as she kept seeking to know more and more of him, she found the edges of that light, and beyond them was deep black.

  He drank a lot, too much, and when he was drunk, she could feel him slipping from her. He was never unkind to her, or unloving, but sometimes he got darkly quiet and snappish if she pushed at the wrong spot.

  Like the night a few weeks ago, when he’d hunted her down on campus, shouting her name, drunker than she’d ever seen him. He’d ridden his motorcycle in that state. But she’d made sure to drive him home.

  That night, he’d learned of the death of an Army friend, a man who’d save his life. That night, as he’d given himself up to despair, Mo had worried she’d lose him to the shadows. But he’d found his way out again, holding her hand.

  Still, as they’d grown closer and known more of each other, Mo saw the way his darkness edged over her own life. There were things in her life he didn’t like—her activism chief among them. While he accepted most of her work with little more than the occasional dismissive comment, she’d had to quit the Student Alliance for Peace. He hated the war as much as she did, but he hated the peace protesters more, and he violently despised the people in that group.

  She’d brought him to a party once, thrown by one of her SAP friends, before she’d understood the depth of Brian’s bad feeling, and that had been a terrible mistake. He’d punched Steve Best, the SAP president—and it turned out not to have been the first time. He’d beaten Steve up before, because Steve had made a disparaging comment about the troops.

  Honestly, Mo hadn’t minded quitting SAP terribly much. She was as opposed to the war as ever, it was a sham forced on the world by cynical politics, but there were quite a few people in the group, more and more as the war went on, who had turned their anger on the troops.

  With every horrible story that came over from Asia, people seemed to blame the men at the front more for the wrongness of the war. And absolutely, some soldiers had done horrible things. But the men at the front had no power. It was the men at the back who made the calls, and sent the soldiers into hell.

  She couldn’t, and would never, support protests at airports and such, meant to shame veterans returning from that hell. SAP had begun to attend and arrange such protests regularly. So she’d quit without a qualm.

  Mo was the daughter of a man who’d fought a guerilla war, and she loved a man who’d fought one, and she made some room for good men caught in terrible times.

  As her hand brushed over his hip and slid inward, Brian hummed a contented purr and set his hand over hers.

  “Easy, Irish. You’re gonna get me goin’ again, and we gotta get you home soon. Big day tomorrow.”

  The first day of her junior year. Finally, she’d mainly finished with ‘general education’ courses and was getting into the meat of her major. Her Intro to Education class over the summer had honed her focus on elementary education, and she was excited to be taking courses that would truly teach her to teach.

  She had a five-year plan: finish her degree, get married that summer (not that Brian had asked, but of course he would eventually—or maybe she’d ask him), get a job teaching at an elementary school somewhere between Norman and the City—third or fourth grade would be perfect—and teach for three years, and then have her first baby. She wanted four, each about two or three years apart, so if she started when she was twenty-six, she’d be in her mid-thirties or so when the fourth one came. Not too old yet.

  She’d keep teaching, of course, and meant to try to time each birth to happen at the beginning of summer. Aunt Bridie would look after the babies until they were school age. And they’d all go to the school where she taught.

  Mo was a practical girl. She understood that, obviously, with the exception of her teaching, all her plans relied on the will of others and the caprices of the Fates. But there was no harm in having a dream, seeing the happiest possible future and doing what she could to reach it.

  “Do you ever think about the future?” she asked, because the topic was on her mind.

  “Hmm? What do you mean?”

  “Where you’ll be in five years. What you want to be doing.”

  Brian stiffened at once, as if she’d dealt him a blow. He pushed himself out from under her and sat up.

  “Brian?”

  Mo hadn’t been trying to get a specific answer from him, hadn’t been digging for a proposal, nothing like that. She was sure they would be together, and she could be patient. After all, that future was years away yet. But now, she saw that he’d taken it that way, he thought she was digging, and he felt pressure he didn’t like.

  He hadn’t been thinking of a future together.
Mo’s chest began to ache. But he loved her. She knew he did. Why would he not want to be together always?

  Still without answering, still with his back to her, he reached for his clothes and dug his cigarettes and his scratched Zippo lighter from his shirt pocket. She disliked the smell, and the taste, of cigarette smoke, and for a long time, Brian had kept his smoking away from her. Over the past few months, though, he’d been lighting up around her more often. She still hated it, but she was becoming used to it.

  He lit up now, the little flame burnishing his face in a momentary amber glow, and took a long puff. He kept his back to her, leaving her question like a boulder that had dropped between them.

  “Brian, it was just a question.”

  His head dropped, and Mo saw that it wasn’t rejection that had pushed him from her. It was dejection. She sat up, tucking the cover across her bare chest, and leaned close.

  They were parked in one of their favorite spots, an isolated glen at the edge of what had once been his family’s property. The property butted up against a forest, and they were some distance from anything like civilization. They were parked at the end of a disused access road, rutted and overgrown with weeds, and the world was theirs alone. The glen was ringed with evergreens. Mo considered the night-washed beauty of this peaceful place. Their peaceful place.

  She wanted to bring that peace back between them. “Please talk to me, love.” She kissed his scarred shoulder. He stiffened and lifted it as if he meant to push her off. “Brian, please.”

  He didn’t, not for a long time. For endless moments, they sat together, both of them staring off into the dark.

  Finally, his voice low and gruff, Brian said, “I don’t think about the future.”

  “All right. That’s all right.”

  He turned and looked over his shoulder at her, meeting her eyes at last, but Mo didn’t like what she saw. The moon and stars provided the only light, but she could see all his shadows in his eyes.

  “Is it?” he asked.

  “Aye. There’s nothing wrong with living in the moment.”

  That answer sparked a chuckle in him, one without any amusement. “Is that what I’m doin’?” He turned away again, took another chest-filling puff from his Camel and blew the smoke out into the night. “Damn, Irish. I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “Anything. Who I am, where I’m going, what I’m doing, why you’re with me, why you love me.” He stubbed out his cigarette and dropped the butt to the ground.

  “Do you know why you love me?” Mo asked, suddenly afraid of the answer.

  This time, when he turned to look at her, desperate sincerity shaped his features and lighted his eyes. “Yes. Absolutely.”

  She didn’t want him to try to list reasons; that he knew was enough. But he needed to hear her reasons. Brushing her fingers through his thick, dark hair that had gotten so wonderfully long, Mo leaned close again and said, “I love you because you are kind and strong. You treat me like a treasure. You are good to my folks, and you are loving to yours. You make me laugh. You make my whole body flutter just to look at you. You’ve been through terrible things, but you’re still standing, still loving. From the moment we met, you’ve been everything I want and all I need. That’s why I love you. And I will do it every day of my life.”

  His eyes sparkled in the starlight, and he turned to face her completely and framed her face with his hands. “That’s it, Mo. That’s all I see, all I want. You’re my future. I don’t give a fuck about anything else.”

  He kissed her wildly, taking her back down to their nest of blankets. Mo went with him, spreading her legs, opening herself to him as wide as she could, body and soul.

  All she needed was his love. As long as she had that, she could envision the future for them both.

  ~oOo~

  When Mo pulled up to the house a few Saturdays later, after opening the store and working to mid-afternoon, she had to park on the street, behind Brian’s bike. Aunt Bridie’s Ford Galaxy was parked on the driveway, and the hood was up. Brian’s toolbox was on the driveway near the open garage door, and tools were arrayed on newspapers before it.

  Brian himself was under the hood, elbow-deep in the Ford’s engine, and her cousin Robby was right beside him. They were dressed alike, in dark jeans and white t-shirts. Brian had his hair back with a rubber band; Mo loved that it had grown long enough for that, though Uncle Dave didn’t approve. Robby’s hair was regulation short; he got a new cut every two weeks, going to the barber with his da. But otherwise, Robby was the miniature version of his hero. He even had a red bandana in his back pocket.

  As she walked up the driveway, both boys stood straight and grinned at her. Robby had a smear of grease across one cheek. Brian wiped his grimy hands on his own red bandana and met her halfway up the drive.

  “Hi, beautiful.” He gave her a nearly chaste kiss, appropriate for an aunt’s eyes, should she be looking. And Aunt Bridie was usually looking.

  “Hi, handsome. What’re you lot up to?”

  “Just some maintenance. Changing the oil, stuff like that. And then we’re gonna give it a good wash—right, Rob?”

  “Yeah!” Robby called.

  “Since I get fed over here so much, I figured I should earn my keep.”

  “Oh, you earn your keep, my big lad. You earn your keep just fine.” Mo hooked her finger in the neck of his t-shirt and drew him close for a much less chaste kiss.

  After a few seconds, he pulled back with a wry chuckle. “Vixen. You’re gonna make Robby blush.”

  “Robby isn’t paying attention to us. He’s rearranging your tools.”

  “What?” Brian spun around to see that Robby was quite harmlessly sitting on the Ford’s fender, neither peeping at their romantic moment nor causing chaos in Brian’s carefully organized toolbox.

  “Smart aleck,” Brian called as Mo laughed her way to the house.

  ~oOo~

  Aunt Bridie went back to the window and slid it open. “Brian! Would you two like a wee drink, love? There’s Kool-Aid and tea!”

  “No, thanks,” Brian called back. “We just had drinks from the hose!”

  Mo smiled to herself as she turned the loaves of her aunt’s fresh bread onto the cooling racks. Brian wanted to know why she loved him? Because that man out there was who he truly was.

  Because he’s a good man, that’s why.

  It wasn’t until her aunt answered that Mo realized she’d said the thought aloud.

  “Aye, he is. But he worries me, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Put the casserole in, will you? And start the pudding.”

  Mo picked up the tuna casserole and slid it into the oven. Though Saturday night was traditionally TV-dinner night, when Brian was there, they put together a simple, but homemade, meal. “Aunt Bridie, what do you mean? Why does he worry you?” Brian had been nothing but wonderful to her family.

  “That’s a man with demons, Maureen. I know. I’ve lived with such a man for nigh twenty-five years, and loved him longer.”

  Mo laughed. “Uncle Dave? Go on! He’s the most levelheaded man I’ve ever met!”

  “Aye, and it takes him some struggle, every blessed day, to be so.” Aunt Bridie set aside the cans of green beans and pearl onions and leaned back against the counter. “You’re too young to know what it was like between your da and him, or in the house they grew up in. There was so much rage and fire, every day. Their da was a hard man, and a hard drinker. That kind of life, it shapes you, Mo. It can’t help but. Your da gave into it, let it define the man he was. Your uncle fights it, and he wins. Don’t mistake me, I loved Mikey like my own brother, and it broke my heart when Dave and him fell out. But your da was not an easy man.” She paused, fiddling with the fringe on the dish towel draped over her shoulder. “Sometimes—not oft, but enough—Brian reminds me of Mikey. He’s been through his hell, too, and I worry he’s not won his fight.”

  Mo’s father had treated
her like a precious gift, and her mother, too. She’d felt nothing but loved by her parents. But they’d lived in a small flat, and they’d had a large group of friends and comrades. Mo had seen enough to know that her father, in addition to being loving and often exuberant, had been, at his core, an angry, violent man who drank too much.

  “You’re wrong,” Mo said, though she knew very well she was not. It scared her, however, to know her aunt, and probably her uncle, saw Brian’s shadows, too. If they were close enough to be seen by everyone, were they taking him over?

  Aunt Bridie crossed the kitchen and took Mo’s hand. She squeezed. “I’m not tellin’ you not to love your man, a leanbh. I’m tellin’ you to do it with your eyes open. Love who he is, not who you want him to be, and if you can’t do that, move on before he hurts you, or you hurt him. Because lovin’ a man in a fight like this, you’ll be fightin’ his fight all your life. It leaves scars. It always does.”

  “I love him,” Mo said, forcing the words through her tightening throat. “I know who he is, and I love him. I’ll always fight for him.”

  “Aye, then. I know that fight, and if the man is worth it, then he’s a good man indeed.” Aunt Bridie lifted Mo’s hand and kissed it. “Now, you get dessert started while I put together the vegetables.”

  ~oOo~

  That evening, while Mo’s family was watching television, she and Brian took their customary walk to the park at the end of the street, and sat together on the one bench that wasn’t directly beneath a spotlight, so they had the privacy of some shadows. September was aging and losing its warmth, and this twilight had a chilly breeze. She drew the sleeves of her sweater over her hands, and Brian pulled her under his arm, tucking her into his jacket.

  On days like this, when they were staying close to the house, this walk was their only time alone. Though Mo was twenty-one years old, Uncle Dave would not hear of Brian being in her bedroom unless the door was open. As far as he and her aunt knew, Mo was as pure as the day she was born.