Chapter 8
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, except for my own. The rest belong to Tribune Entertainment.
Thanks so much all of you who wrote in to give me good wishes about my uncle. And hooray, my beta reader Amanda is back. Wrote the last 2 chapters without her guidance, and was a bit rudderless. I don't have that many chapters left to go now. Just bear with me. This story has been pre-planned from Chapter 1, and it's following its exact route so far. (In other words, please don't kill me if it doesn't turn out the way you like).
As always, pls R & R.
Rated PG-13
'Brennan?' She didn't know quite how to ask this. But she desperately wanted to know. And she had to mask this, make it come out like it was something casual, or risk ruining it all for them. 'I know I asked about Dash, and how you never really loved her.' She paused, licking her dry lips. Was it going to be too obvious? 'Have you ever loved someone then? I mean, the head over heels falling in love sort of thing. And how did you know?'
Please please don't say it's Shalimar, she begged. I don't think I can bear it.
He contemplated this. 'If you're asking me if I've ever been in love with somebody....yes I have. But it's not a pretty story either.' He looked bemused. 'You sure you want to hear it?'
She nodded. That gave her hope. She didn't really want to hear a present day story with him in love with someone else. The love thing was so complicated, it was tiring her out, wringing her emotions like a cloth squeezed dry of soapsuds. She didn't even want to think about it anymore..with Brennan and Jesse and this triangle thing that seemed to be going round and her being the only one aware of it.
If only she had someone to share it with.
Shalimar? Oh gad, no.
'I'll tell you later, okay?' He kissed her cheek, and got off the bed. They were in her room this time; it was early morning and he had slept over after a bout of heavy session lovemaking (minus the final culmination, of course). He had explored her with his magic fingers and pronounced, 'You're a lot less tight than you used to be. It'll be soon, okay?' And he had given her a break from storytelling, because she had complained about how ghastly his stories were. At which he had quipped, 'But you wanted to know. And you asked. But I won't tell them anymore if you don't want me to.'
'No,' she said immediately. 'I want to hear them.' She was loving this intimacy with him, sharing his life story. And she knew she never wanted it to end, so when he had mentioned the prophetic words 'It'll be soon', her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
She would rather remain a virgin forever than to have him end this.
Was there a possible plan to prolong it? If she could fake it somehow?
Almost instantaneously, she chided herself. That was not being honest, or even fair to him. He was helping her after all, and this was not the way to abuse their friendship. No....ultimately she had to feel her way around, be patient, and then finally tell him. Or choose never to tell him, and keep their friendship going like nothing had ever happened.
She watched him go to the bathroom, and got off the bed. She desperately wanted to talk to somebody, to seek advice. Michelle? No, she had gone underground. They had relocated her to another state and her whereabouts were hush. Maybe one of her other friends.
As she was sitting down at her computer terminal, she logged onto her Hotmail account, the one she kept for private e-mails. It was horribly unreliable, but at least she was keeping in touch with the world outside.
She was pleased to note she actually got some mail besides the usual spam stuff. Her friend Karyn from college, a final year student now. Karyn was one of those girls who made her feel inferior without meaning to. While Emma had dropped out in her sophomore year - mainly because her powers were in flux, she was penniless (not wanting to take charity from her grandmother), confused, restless and she didn't think college was going to get her anywhere anymore - Karyn was bubbly, sorority queen and popular with both girls and guys. In many ways, she reminded Emma of that Reese Witherspoon character in Legally Blonde, the one who had everything going for her. Only Karyn was brunette and not half as pretty, though that never stopped the guys from going crazy about her. Karyn was special that way.
And great, now she was going to marry her boyfriend and she was throwing a party at her campus sorority house to celebrate it.
Emma supposed she ought to feel glad for Karyn, but she strangely (and selfishly, she thought) experienced only an emptiness for the life she could have had (and maybe the trappings that went along with it) had she not been Emma DeLauro.
Oh great, now she was jealous of other people's good fortune. She was turning into someone she really didn't like at all.
'You've got mail?' She felt a kiss on her neck and arms sliding around her shoulders. 'Anyone I know?'
She took a deep breath. 'Just someone from college. She's asking me to go to a sorority party, but I'm going to say no.' She was feeling too depressed. And in those parties, there were always too many questions. Like 'Do you have a boyfriend?' Or 'Are you going to be married soon? I am. Look at my ring.' Or 'Are you planning on finishing college? Have you thought about your career? We're all going to law school, you know, and we're going to have such fabulous jobs.'
What career? What prospects? And what boyfriend? Gad, she was a charity case if she ever knew one. She was even asking her best friend to help her out.
'Why ever not?' he asked. 'Say yes, sorority parties are always fun. Plenty of booze and sex.'
'Like you would know,' She rolled her eyes. Then again, he might.
'No, I'm serious. Come on, I'll go with you. I'll be your date. And I promise,' he held up his hands, 'I won't even make nice with the college girls.'
'Brennan, are you sure you don't have any ulterior motive in this? I mean, these are my friends, and I'd die if you embarrass me.'
'Nah, college girls are not my thing.' He grinned. 'It's for you really, you need some time out.'
The idea of going out on a date with him in public sounded really appealing, even if it was a pretend thing. She hesitated.
'It's settled then,' he said, quickly kissing her on the lips. 'It'll be fun. But first, we have to get you something to wear.'
*
*
*
'The first time I fell in love, it was with someone totally unexpected,' Brennan said as they were driving out in his Camaro. Her going out shopping with a guy...it was unbelievable. But exciting anyway. As long as she got to spend more time with him.
'After that hellish night that turned my world inside out, I awoke in a hospital, the very same one Dash was in, and the very one they took my mother to so many years ago the night I killed my stepfather. Turns out the Hispanic neighbors found my bloody palm prints all over our door the next morning, and my footprints down the hallway. I made such a mess it took them probably days to clean up after. Anyhow, they thought it was a big murder case, not unusual in that apartment block, and they alerted the police. Guess who came?'
When he woke up, Detective Javier was standing at his bedside with the doctor. They both looked a little surprised, as though they didn't expect him to ever wake up again.
Heck, he surprised even himself. He certainly thought he was going to die. And now he wished he had.
Disorientation immediately set in, and as he waded through the bits and pieces of post-traumatic memories, he realized he was attached to several intravenous drips, one of them connecting a pack of blood. His chest was bandaged tightly, as were his legs; a tube was attached to his right side, and as he breathed, it bubbled into some closed water jar next to the bed.
Strangely, he didn't feel much pain. Instead, he was feeling a little euphoric.
'My mom...' he immediately tried to say.
The doctor placed a hand on his shoulder, 'Don't try to move. We almost lost you. You've lost a lot of blood and you almost went into shock. We had to do surgical repair on your wounds, and you've had a pneumothorax, so we had to put that little tube in your chest to drain it. We also gave you some morphine, so that'll settle you for a while.
'My mom,' he mumbled again, his voice coming out gutturally. His throat was extremely dry.
The doctor squeezed his shoulder in sympathy. 'I'm sorry, kid. She's dead. We'll get a counselor in to see you, okay? And maybe another doctor for you to talk to.'
Brennan's eyes flitted to Detective Javier's wry face. 'I didn't kill her.'
'What makes you think we think you did?'
The doctor shot a warning glance at Javier. 'Perhaps you'd better leave. I won't have you interfering with my patient.'
Javier held up his hands. 'Okay, I'll leave.' To Brennan, he added, 'Your mom wasn't murdered, kid. The autopsy came back. She died of a ruptured artery in her lung. She had been having tuberculosis for years. Did you know that?'
He didn't. The awful reality of it spilled in: her coughing at night, the circles under her eyes due to fatigue...and he had thought she was just getting old. Oh God....
'Why..why then...' he stammered, 'are you here?'
'It was reported in as a murder case, so I investigated it. And besides, your name was on the file. I told you I had my eye out for you, kid. I still do. And I'll be watching.'
Brennan felt a frisson of fear running down his spine.
'Detective, you'll have to leave,' the doctor insisted.
'Cheerios, kid,' Javier saluted as he walked out the door. 'Sorry about your mom. Be seeing you around.'
*
'You know you can't go around blaming yourself forever,' the psychiatrist told him. It was his third week in the hospital. 'You didn't know how to diagnose tuberculosis. And you have to eat something.'
He lay there despondently, not answering, not looking at the shrink. The truth had finally sunk in. His mom was dead. When he had asked about Dash, they told him exchanging glances with each other that she was alive, but in a coma. Apparently, the bleeding had deprived some part of her brain of oxygen, and she had had a stroke (they called it an 'infarct'). So he was responsible for that as well.
He didn't know if it was possible for his world to sink any lower. And if he never understood depression before, he understood it now. It was indescribable, this incredible lack of feeling....this apathy, like his limbs were moving in a gel-like substance, and he could actually watch them move with a compressed surreal quality. It was as though he had no volition to speak, to move, to eat, to sleep, or even to blink his eyelids. He spent his entire days looking at the wall, staring in an open-eyed gaze, seeing nothing there at all, thinking about nothing.
They pumped him full of antidepressants, and took to hiding sharp objects from him, afraid he might attempt suicide. The truth was, he was feeling so worthless he didn't even think he was worth killing. It was a lot easier to lie down here..and waste away....
They sent a social worker to see him. Her name was Mrs. Lipinski, and she was a brown-eyed brunette in her late 30's. He remembered thinking she had very patient eyes, even though they had slight wrinkles around them.
'Brennan?' she said, holding his hand. 'They told me you won't eat.' She indicated the parenteral nutrition drip, which was now running into a central venous line through his arm, since his peripheral veins had all clotted themselves away. 'You haven't eaten for three weeks now. You can't go on like this. They are going to have to force-feed you soon.'
He didn't want to look at her either. He stared at a space on the wall blankly.
'Do you want to talk about what you're going to do after this?' Hearing only silence from him, she continued. 'Do you want to talk about the assault?'
He hadn't talked to anyone about the assault. Since he didn't press charges, and since nobody had reported anything linked to his case, nobody asked him after a while, particularly when he was immersed in this catatonic state.
He had to admire her for her persistence. Although he didn't talk to her for the first five visits, she kept on coming back to see him every day.
On her sixth visit, she brought him ice-cream.
'If you don't eat it, it'll melt,' she said solemnly. 'Come on, I'll take one spoonful....' He watched her dip the wooden spoon into the ice- cream (it was Rocky Road, his favorite, he wondered how she knew that) and put it into her mouth. '..and you take the other.' She handed a spoonful to him.
He decided to speak for the first time in weeks. 'I might have TB.' His own voice rang in his ears, and his tongue felt funny when he tried to move it. 'They're treating me with antibiotics.'
She looked at him carefully. 'I'll take the risk, if it'll get you eating again.'
He looked into her eyes, they were the kindest eyes he had ever seen. And decided to trust her. After all, he had no one else in the world, and perhaps the time had come for healing again. Deep down inside, he knew he was a survivor. There was a vitality in him pulsing away too strongly to be denied for long, and it was returning, slowly but surely. His mom would have wanted it that way.
With her spoon-feeding him, he finished the ice-cream.
Next, she helped him through rehab. His broken ribs had set slowly, though his leg muscles had wasted with disuse. Now that he was eating again, he found some strength to push himself up to walk.
'We're going to have to find a foster home for you,' she said. Something about him had touched her, he decided, she seemed to be spending more time with him than with her other charges. Maybe it was the hopelessness. 'Don't worry, we'll find you a good one.'
They discharged him when they were sure he didn't have tuberculosis. He had lost a great amount of weight; his clothes were hanging slack on his frame. And she was waiting for him at the nurse's counter. He belonged to the welfare department now.
'I'm going to buy you a nice meal,' she said. 'How do burgers and fries sound to you?'
After the hospital food, he was ravenous. As he sat across from her at the table, devouring the biggest meal he had eaten in months, he realized her face was flushed with pleasure. She liked doing this, he thought. She liked being nice to him. And somehow the world didn't seem so bad anymore.
'I'm going to have to ask you to do me a favor,' she said when he had finished. 'It'll take some time to find a foster home for you, so I'll have to ask you to stay in an orphanage for a while.'
The word 'orphan' suddenly struck home, pierced his heart deeply like it had been a knife. He hadn't even seen his mother's body. They had cremated her.
The sorrow was now coming back to him in waves.
'But I'll come and see you every day,' she said in a rush when she saw his face. Maybe she was afraid to trip him into another bout of depression. 'And we'll go out like this. I promise.'
He stayed at the orphanage, simply because he had nowhere else to go to. He didn't want to go back to school; he had too much history there, and it wouldn't do if everyone were to look at him as Dash's tormentor. So Mrs. Lipinski obliged him. And she did keep her promise to come see him everyday.
'But when we find you a foster home,' she said, 'you'll have to go back to school. Another school, depending on what city you'll live in.'
City? He didn't really want to go away. This was his home for as long as he could remember. And besides, what if he never saw her again? She reminded him of his mom, although she was a little older, and she had been the only person who seemed to care about him since his mom died.
'She found me a home finally,' Brennan told Emma. 'Seems no one was that keen to have me, with that questionable history and everything. It was in another town. And I think that was when I became angry with life in general, and how fate had dealt me these cards. So I took it out on everybody around me.'
He was indeed angry, though it didn't feel like anger at that time. He manifested it in a cavalier callousness, a ready predatory grin, and a newfound sarcasm that came easily to him. It was easy, being this new person. He just didn't have to care or feel for anybody.
After a few months, he was expelled from his new school for fighting and hurting a couple of the other boys. His foster parents hauled him back to Mrs. Lipinski.
'He's uncontrollable,' they complained. 'He won't listen to us...and in a hushed tone we daren't discipline him because of his psychological past.'
'Oh dear,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'He's really such a nice boy. I can't imagine what he must have been thinking.'
She found him another foster home in yet another town. A few months later, they hauled him back again. They had caught him having sex on the couch with his foster sister.
'Oh dear, Brennan,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'Why in the world would you want to do something like that? You know what happened with Dash.' He knew she never recovered from her brain damage, she was permanently paralyzed .
It was protected sex, he wanted to say. I'll never have unprotected sex with anyone again. But it was pointless, he knew she was going to send him away again.
And of course she did.
He was toting up a string of foster homes longer than his list of girlfriends, and that was considerable.
'It was a very unfeeling period for me,' he explained to Emma. 'I had no roots, and each place was just a temporary respite. I had no time to get to know anybody really well before I screwed something up on purpose. Then I would get sent back to welfare again. Every single one of my foster parents thought I was a hood after getting to know me, and they were afraid I would hurt somebody in their family pretty bad. They were right too.'
Besides, he had found an enjoyable new pastime.
He remembered the first episode. He was walking down the streets; it had just rained and there were slush puddles everywhere. He was on the curb when a fancy car screeched into a parking halt two feet away from him, sploshing his jeans all over with muddy water.
'Hey!' he yelled.
The driver got out - it was a man in a business suit toting a briefcase. He looked at his watch, slammed the door and locked it with his remote.
'Sorry kid. Gotta run.'
He walked briskly away, leaving Brennan soaking and very, very cross.
'What a mistake that was,' Brennan remarked. 'At sixteen, I was one person you didn't want to tread toes with.'
He turned to look at the car. It was a BMW, 7 series, metallic gray. Through the window, he could see a cellphone on the seat and what looked like cash sticking out of the center console. Boy, some people were careless.
It was so very very easy. All he had to do was cross the threshold. It was like an invisible line, a barrier, and it was surprisingly easy how fast he made up his mind to go over it.
He looked up and down the street, made sure no one saw him, and shot a tiny bolt of electricity at the locking device. With one beep, the car unlocked itself. Casually he opened the door and got in.
He took a deep breath. This was it. There was no going back. Besides, he didn't want to. They had so much, and he had so little. He had to even out the odds in life in some way.
He took all the cash, the cellphone, the GPS decoder he found in the glove compartment. And heck, he thought, why stop there? With a dexterity that amazed even him, he started to disconnect the radio.
'So that's how you became a career criminal?' Emma asked.
'It was a start. I got more sophisticated as I grew up.'
He found himself a fence to sell all the stuff he stole. It was so easy, finding street connections and becoming part of the underworld. They roped him in as part of a consortium and he became their most successful petty thief.
'I was raking in good money,' Brennan said. 'Unbelievable for a kid my age who didn't have rich parents. Life was good to me. I had my pick of as many easy girls as I wanted and some of the not so easy ones as well. Nobody messed with me because of my size, and even my foster parents were leery of me.'
It didn't last of course. One day, his foster mother looked under his bed, found the envelope he stashed all his money in (he wasn't too keen on banks either), decided he had procured it through ill gotten means and hauled him back to welfare.
'You're lucky they didn't call the police,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'Oh Brennan, what's happening to you? You're turning into someone I don't know at all.'
He sat in the counseling room across from her and looked down at his hands.
She sighed. 'Now no one will have you. And the orphanages are full at the moment. What am I going to do with you?'
'You don't have to do anything for me,' he blurted. 'I can live on the streets.'
'That's exactly what I don't want happening.' She looked at him in despair. 'I don't know why I feel so responsible for you but I do. I guess you're going to have to come home with me. But just until I find you something.'
His spirits picked up.
'But I need to be able to trust you, okay?' She gave him a questioning glance.
'I won't steal anything from you, if that's what you're asking.'
She had the sense to look embarrassed.
'It was the first time I'd seen her home,' Brennan said to Emma. 'And the first time I realized she had a life outside her social work. Every time we talked, it had all been about me and never about her. I had wondered who her husband was, and if she had any children. In all the years I'd known her, I never thought to ask.'
Mrs. Lipinski lived in an apartment with two bedrooms. The first thing Brennan noticed on the walls of the hallway were rows and rows of photographs. They were all of a boy of varying ages - a toddler with a toy, the same boy in an inflated swimming pool, slightly older, the boy in a uniform in front of a school. Pictures of the boy with a younger Mrs. Lipinski against myriad backgrounds: a mountain chalet, a beach, a Chinese restaurant.
'Is this your son?' he asked.
'That's Benjamin,' she said quietly. 'Yes, he was my son. He died many years ago of leukemia. He would have been around your age if he'd survived.'
He felt acutely uncomfortable. 'I'm sorry.'
She gave a sad little smile. 'Don't be. It happened a long time ago.'
'And your husband? There are no pictures of him.' He knew he was being nosy, but he couldn't help himself.
'We got divorced soon after Benjy died. I never really recovered, and Cliff - he couldn't take it.'
Now he was feeling really bad. 'I'm sorry,' he said again.
She raised her hand to pat his cheek. 'You're a really nice boy, no matter what they say about you. Let me show you to your room.'
'Mrs Lipinski?' He hesitated.
'You can call me Maria.'
'Maria....' The name felt foreign to his tongue. 'I can live with you here...if you like .. I mean if you're lonely and everything...and you can adopt me.....if you like...' His words came tumbling out in a rush, he didn't quite know why he said that. Only that he suddenly regretted saying it, because he was now dreading to hear the rejection that would inevitably follow.
'Oh Brennan...' He flinched physically as she reached out to touch him. 'I didn't know you felt that way. Come here.' And she drew him into her arms and hugged him.
As he hugged her back, her head against his chest, his nose in her hair, imbibing the smell of her clean shampoo, he realized that he desperately, desperately loved her. And that it was a kind of love that should have, he thought, been forbidden in this situation. It wasn't the love of a son for a surrogate mother, or even that of a boy for a counselor who had been kind to him; but that of a man for a woman. He had probably been in love with her since the day she coaxed him out of his shell with the ice cream. It just took him two years to understand that.
'I love you,' he whispered against her hair, wondering if she knew what he really meant.
Oh, what tangled webs they weaved.
*
*
*
'Emma?'
Shalimar was standing at the door of her bedroom. Emma was in the midst of unpacking her shopping bags, and there were boxes and paper strewn all over her bed. The afternoon had been fun, with Brennan choosing out a couple of racy outfits for her and getting her to try them on. 'You want to impress your friends, don't you?' 'I do,' she replied, 'but I don't think looking like a hooker will do it.' 'Oh believe me,' he said, 'hookers impress people plenty.' And got into the changing room with her, whispering 'This is giving me such a hard-on,' eliciting disapproving stares from the sales people around them.
Oh yup, shopping with Brennan was exciting.
'Oh hi Shal. Wanna see what I got?' She thought she probably shouldn't mention she went shopping with Brennan. But if it came up, she could always say they went their separate ways and met up again at an appointed spot.
'Maybe later.' Shalimar came in and sat on her bed.
Emma paused. That was unlike Shalimar. Her blonde friend usually devoured the contents of other people's shopping bags before they themselves could get into them. 'You okay, Shal?'
Shalimar sighed and shrugged. 'It's probably nothing. And anyway, I shouldn't bother you.'
She made no move to leave nonetheless. Emma sat down next to her and took her hand. This usually meant Shal wanted to talk, which wasn't often because she was quite a private person. With her own affairs anyway.
Emma stroked Shal's hair, deciding for the umpteeth time how lovely it was. Such beautiful blonde waves, twirling so prettily at the edges. She wished she had hair like that. She had always envied Shal. Her friend was so beautiful, so composed, so confident; so everything she wanted to be and was not.
After a long silence, Shal said, 'It's about Brennan.'
Emma felt her heart skip a beat.
Shalimar continued, not noticing. 'He's been a little....different lately. I don't know how to describe it. But it's like...he's more contained. He's calmer, and happier.'
Emma's pulse was racing in her neck. 'What do you mean?'
'Well, you know how he's been a little edgy the past few months, almost like he's angry sometimes.' Emma nodded. 'All that's vanished now. Like he's found some inner peace within himself. And,' Shalimar shook her head, 'I don't know. Like I said, I can't really describe it.'
Did she dare hope? She gave a strangled laugh. 'You mean like he's joined some cult or something?'
Shalimar smiled sadly. 'I wish. But I don't think so. I think it's a woman.'
Emma froze. After a beat, she decided to say, 'But he's always had plenty of women.'
'Not like this.' Shalimar closed her eyes. 'This is different. I know it. I'm a feral, I can sense things like this.'
Emma looked nervously around the bedroom. She didn't know the extent of Shal's powers. Would she, for example, be able to detect his scent on the sheets, his special musky tang that could not be masked by any aftershave? Emma was glad now she was such a neat freak. She had insisted on changing the bed sheets every time they made love. She was toting up quite a laundry log.
'You know, Shal. You never really talked about how you feel about Brennan. Everyone just assumes you have an on and off thing, and right now it's on off mode. Because of all the people he's been seeing. And the fact you're flirting with other people.' That's right, she thought, heart pounding. Go on the offensive again. Boy, she was getting good at this.
Shalimar curled her knees up against her chest and hugged them. She suddenly looked like a lost little girl.
'How I feel about Brennan?' She shook her hair, the expression on her face taking on a wistful note. 'I've never told anyone how I feel about Brennan. But I suppose this is about a good time as any.' She drew a deep breath.
And said simply, 'I love him. I love him with every fiber of my being. I love him like I've never loved anyone before. It was different with Richard, that was more...chemical. More animal...like we'd been two ferals made for each other. With Brennan, it's different. It's like a love grown over time, when we were still feeling each other out and probing. It's chemistry of a different sort, because we're a breed apart. It's chemistry like...even when there's not supposed to be chemistry, you know what I mean?'
Licking her lips and feeling a sinking pang in her heart, Emma nodded.
'I wondered about the same things over and over again,' Shalimar continued. 'Like is it carnal? I mean, I've always been the sucker for the tall, dark handsome type. And then I figured, it's beyond that. I mean, I desire him, I have no doubts about that. I want him. I want to feel his arms around me; I want him to make love to me wildly, passionately; with reckless abandon like we're two ferals in heat. Even though he's not technically a feral. And yet, I've never acted upon it. Because I was afraid I would lose him.... like with all the men I've loved.. and because we're teammates, I knew we couldn't just walk away.'
She looked at Emma expectantly. 'Do you know how that feels? Lusting after somebody and not acting on it because you didn't want to lose their friendship?'
Emma shook her head. She wouldn't know. She had crossed that line long ago. And right now, all she could do was listen with an escalating combination of fascination and horror. She had suspected this all along, but to actually have it declared to her very own ears....
'I don't know what he feels about me,' Shalimar said. She kept her eyes hidden behind the veil of her hair, but Emma could see them glistening. 'I thought he had a thing...for such a long time he was acting funny around me, you know, like he was all possessive and jealous-like, and at the same time, caring and warm. He can be so caring, you know, to the point of being chauvinistic....but it sure makes a girl feel all special and tingly, even though she knows she can take care of herself. It's like he's one of those old movie superheroes. The kind we secretly want all men to be.'
She bowed her head. 'We even kissed..once. A little peck on the lips, nothing earth-shattering. And all those times, all that flirting and teasing. I enjoyed that. I think he enjoyed it too. But it got to the point it became stagnant, and we had either to take it up a notch, or go down. I made a decision....at that time, I thought I would go for it. And then, of course, before I could do anything, he had to hurt me.'
Emma clasped Shalimar's hand, intertwining her fingers through her own. She dreaded to hear the answer. 'Which one? Lorna, Miranda or Becky? Or....someone else?'
Shalimar sighed. 'Lorna I could accept. He was coerced against his will. With Becky it was just a historical thing. No, it was Miranda. He did that out of his own free will. And after that, I don't think he looked back. They just came piling up. And I knew I did the right thing by not acting on it. Because he would have hurt me, and kept on hurting me. He's just one of those guys you don't want to mess around with if you have feelings.'
'But Shal,' Emma ventured hesitantly. 'You flirt with other guys too.'
'Oh Emma,' Shalimar gave a nervous laugh, 'don't you know what girls do already? That was in retaliation. I did it to make him notice me.'
And he does it to make you notice him, Emma thought. What a dreadful spiral. Was she then one of his statistics? She didn't want to think that she was....it was too horrible to think of it that way.
Looking at Shalimar, she suddenly felt like the lowest of pit creatures. It was no use justifying it with a 'But I thought you didn't want him.' At some level, between the layers of denial, she had always known. She had betrayed Shalimar, as surely as the sky was blue and she was pond scum. It was like that line in that movie..what was it again? My Best Friend's Wedding. He's got you on a pedestal, and me in his arms.
And God help her, but she didn't want to let him go. She loved him, wanted him too much to be denied this newfound joy. And she liked to believe that somewhere along the line, he loved her in return. No, this was not something she was going to give up. She couldn't give him up, he had melded himself in her bones and become a part of her. Oh Shal..Shal....she thought, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry....
Aloud she asked. 'Do you still love him?'
When before her friend's eyes merely glistened, now a single tear pooled over and ran down her cheek. 'I do. I'm such an idiot, I know. But I still love him, even though I know it's probably too late for me, now that he's found someone else. So you see, he's breaking my heart even before I ever gave it to him.'
They hugged each other, both with vastly conflicting emotions. Emma closed her eyes. She couldn't think about it...didn't want to think about it anymore.
'And besides,' said Shalimar in a choked voice against her ear, 'if I ever find out who she is, I swear I will kill her.'
TBC
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, except for my own. The rest belong to Tribune Entertainment.
Thanks so much all of you who wrote in to give me good wishes about my uncle. And hooray, my beta reader Amanda is back. Wrote the last 2 chapters without her guidance, and was a bit rudderless. I don't have that many chapters left to go now. Just bear with me. This story has been pre-planned from Chapter 1, and it's following its exact route so far. (In other words, please don't kill me if it doesn't turn out the way you like).
As always, pls R & R.
Rated PG-13
'Brennan?' She didn't know quite how to ask this. But she desperately wanted to know. And she had to mask this, make it come out like it was something casual, or risk ruining it all for them. 'I know I asked about Dash, and how you never really loved her.' She paused, licking her dry lips. Was it going to be too obvious? 'Have you ever loved someone then? I mean, the head over heels falling in love sort of thing. And how did you know?'
Please please don't say it's Shalimar, she begged. I don't think I can bear it.
He contemplated this. 'If you're asking me if I've ever been in love with somebody....yes I have. But it's not a pretty story either.' He looked bemused. 'You sure you want to hear it?'
She nodded. That gave her hope. She didn't really want to hear a present day story with him in love with someone else. The love thing was so complicated, it was tiring her out, wringing her emotions like a cloth squeezed dry of soapsuds. She didn't even want to think about it anymore..with Brennan and Jesse and this triangle thing that seemed to be going round and her being the only one aware of it.
If only she had someone to share it with.
Shalimar? Oh gad, no.
'I'll tell you later, okay?' He kissed her cheek, and got off the bed. They were in her room this time; it was early morning and he had slept over after a bout of heavy session lovemaking (minus the final culmination, of course). He had explored her with his magic fingers and pronounced, 'You're a lot less tight than you used to be. It'll be soon, okay?' And he had given her a break from storytelling, because she had complained about how ghastly his stories were. At which he had quipped, 'But you wanted to know. And you asked. But I won't tell them anymore if you don't want me to.'
'No,' she said immediately. 'I want to hear them.' She was loving this intimacy with him, sharing his life story. And she knew she never wanted it to end, so when he had mentioned the prophetic words 'It'll be soon', her heart sank into the pit of her stomach.
She would rather remain a virgin forever than to have him end this.
Was there a possible plan to prolong it? If she could fake it somehow?
Almost instantaneously, she chided herself. That was not being honest, or even fair to him. He was helping her after all, and this was not the way to abuse their friendship. No....ultimately she had to feel her way around, be patient, and then finally tell him. Or choose never to tell him, and keep their friendship going like nothing had ever happened.
She watched him go to the bathroom, and got off the bed. She desperately wanted to talk to somebody, to seek advice. Michelle? No, she had gone underground. They had relocated her to another state and her whereabouts were hush. Maybe one of her other friends.
As she was sitting down at her computer terminal, she logged onto her Hotmail account, the one she kept for private e-mails. It was horribly unreliable, but at least she was keeping in touch with the world outside.
She was pleased to note she actually got some mail besides the usual spam stuff. Her friend Karyn from college, a final year student now. Karyn was one of those girls who made her feel inferior without meaning to. While Emma had dropped out in her sophomore year - mainly because her powers were in flux, she was penniless (not wanting to take charity from her grandmother), confused, restless and she didn't think college was going to get her anywhere anymore - Karyn was bubbly, sorority queen and popular with both girls and guys. In many ways, she reminded Emma of that Reese Witherspoon character in Legally Blonde, the one who had everything going for her. Only Karyn was brunette and not half as pretty, though that never stopped the guys from going crazy about her. Karyn was special that way.
And great, now she was going to marry her boyfriend and she was throwing a party at her campus sorority house to celebrate it.
Emma supposed she ought to feel glad for Karyn, but she strangely (and selfishly, she thought) experienced only an emptiness for the life she could have had (and maybe the trappings that went along with it) had she not been Emma DeLauro.
Oh great, now she was jealous of other people's good fortune. She was turning into someone she really didn't like at all.
'You've got mail?' She felt a kiss on her neck and arms sliding around her shoulders. 'Anyone I know?'
She took a deep breath. 'Just someone from college. She's asking me to go to a sorority party, but I'm going to say no.' She was feeling too depressed. And in those parties, there were always too many questions. Like 'Do you have a boyfriend?' Or 'Are you going to be married soon? I am. Look at my ring.' Or 'Are you planning on finishing college? Have you thought about your career? We're all going to law school, you know, and we're going to have such fabulous jobs.'
What career? What prospects? And what boyfriend? Gad, she was a charity case if she ever knew one. She was even asking her best friend to help her out.
'Why ever not?' he asked. 'Say yes, sorority parties are always fun. Plenty of booze and sex.'
'Like you would know,' She rolled her eyes. Then again, he might.
'No, I'm serious. Come on, I'll go with you. I'll be your date. And I promise,' he held up his hands, 'I won't even make nice with the college girls.'
'Brennan, are you sure you don't have any ulterior motive in this? I mean, these are my friends, and I'd die if you embarrass me.'
'Nah, college girls are not my thing.' He grinned. 'It's for you really, you need some time out.'
The idea of going out on a date with him in public sounded really appealing, even if it was a pretend thing. She hesitated.
'It's settled then,' he said, quickly kissing her on the lips. 'It'll be fun. But first, we have to get you something to wear.'
*
*
*
'The first time I fell in love, it was with someone totally unexpected,' Brennan said as they were driving out in his Camaro. Her going out shopping with a guy...it was unbelievable. But exciting anyway. As long as she got to spend more time with him.
'After that hellish night that turned my world inside out, I awoke in a hospital, the very same one Dash was in, and the very one they took my mother to so many years ago the night I killed my stepfather. Turns out the Hispanic neighbors found my bloody palm prints all over our door the next morning, and my footprints down the hallway. I made such a mess it took them probably days to clean up after. Anyhow, they thought it was a big murder case, not unusual in that apartment block, and they alerted the police. Guess who came?'
When he woke up, Detective Javier was standing at his bedside with the doctor. They both looked a little surprised, as though they didn't expect him to ever wake up again.
Heck, he surprised even himself. He certainly thought he was going to die. And now he wished he had.
Disorientation immediately set in, and as he waded through the bits and pieces of post-traumatic memories, he realized he was attached to several intravenous drips, one of them connecting a pack of blood. His chest was bandaged tightly, as were his legs; a tube was attached to his right side, and as he breathed, it bubbled into some closed water jar next to the bed.
Strangely, he didn't feel much pain. Instead, he was feeling a little euphoric.
'My mom...' he immediately tried to say.
The doctor placed a hand on his shoulder, 'Don't try to move. We almost lost you. You've lost a lot of blood and you almost went into shock. We had to do surgical repair on your wounds, and you've had a pneumothorax, so we had to put that little tube in your chest to drain it. We also gave you some morphine, so that'll settle you for a while.
'My mom,' he mumbled again, his voice coming out gutturally. His throat was extremely dry.
The doctor squeezed his shoulder in sympathy. 'I'm sorry, kid. She's dead. We'll get a counselor in to see you, okay? And maybe another doctor for you to talk to.'
Brennan's eyes flitted to Detective Javier's wry face. 'I didn't kill her.'
'What makes you think we think you did?'
The doctor shot a warning glance at Javier. 'Perhaps you'd better leave. I won't have you interfering with my patient.'
Javier held up his hands. 'Okay, I'll leave.' To Brennan, he added, 'Your mom wasn't murdered, kid. The autopsy came back. She died of a ruptured artery in her lung. She had been having tuberculosis for years. Did you know that?'
He didn't. The awful reality of it spilled in: her coughing at night, the circles under her eyes due to fatigue...and he had thought she was just getting old. Oh God....
'Why..why then...' he stammered, 'are you here?'
'It was reported in as a murder case, so I investigated it. And besides, your name was on the file. I told you I had my eye out for you, kid. I still do. And I'll be watching.'
Brennan felt a frisson of fear running down his spine.
'Detective, you'll have to leave,' the doctor insisted.
'Cheerios, kid,' Javier saluted as he walked out the door. 'Sorry about your mom. Be seeing you around.'
*
'You know you can't go around blaming yourself forever,' the psychiatrist told him. It was his third week in the hospital. 'You didn't know how to diagnose tuberculosis. And you have to eat something.'
He lay there despondently, not answering, not looking at the shrink. The truth had finally sunk in. His mom was dead. When he had asked about Dash, they told him exchanging glances with each other that she was alive, but in a coma. Apparently, the bleeding had deprived some part of her brain of oxygen, and she had had a stroke (they called it an 'infarct'). So he was responsible for that as well.
He didn't know if it was possible for his world to sink any lower. And if he never understood depression before, he understood it now. It was indescribable, this incredible lack of feeling....this apathy, like his limbs were moving in a gel-like substance, and he could actually watch them move with a compressed surreal quality. It was as though he had no volition to speak, to move, to eat, to sleep, or even to blink his eyelids. He spent his entire days looking at the wall, staring in an open-eyed gaze, seeing nothing there at all, thinking about nothing.
They pumped him full of antidepressants, and took to hiding sharp objects from him, afraid he might attempt suicide. The truth was, he was feeling so worthless he didn't even think he was worth killing. It was a lot easier to lie down here..and waste away....
They sent a social worker to see him. Her name was Mrs. Lipinski, and she was a brown-eyed brunette in her late 30's. He remembered thinking she had very patient eyes, even though they had slight wrinkles around them.
'Brennan?' she said, holding his hand. 'They told me you won't eat.' She indicated the parenteral nutrition drip, which was now running into a central venous line through his arm, since his peripheral veins had all clotted themselves away. 'You haven't eaten for three weeks now. You can't go on like this. They are going to have to force-feed you soon.'
He didn't want to look at her either. He stared at a space on the wall blankly.
'Do you want to talk about what you're going to do after this?' Hearing only silence from him, she continued. 'Do you want to talk about the assault?'
He hadn't talked to anyone about the assault. Since he didn't press charges, and since nobody had reported anything linked to his case, nobody asked him after a while, particularly when he was immersed in this catatonic state.
He had to admire her for her persistence. Although he didn't talk to her for the first five visits, she kept on coming back to see him every day.
On her sixth visit, she brought him ice-cream.
'If you don't eat it, it'll melt,' she said solemnly. 'Come on, I'll take one spoonful....' He watched her dip the wooden spoon into the ice- cream (it was Rocky Road, his favorite, he wondered how she knew that) and put it into her mouth. '..and you take the other.' She handed a spoonful to him.
He decided to speak for the first time in weeks. 'I might have TB.' His own voice rang in his ears, and his tongue felt funny when he tried to move it. 'They're treating me with antibiotics.'
She looked at him carefully. 'I'll take the risk, if it'll get you eating again.'
He looked into her eyes, they were the kindest eyes he had ever seen. And decided to trust her. After all, he had no one else in the world, and perhaps the time had come for healing again. Deep down inside, he knew he was a survivor. There was a vitality in him pulsing away too strongly to be denied for long, and it was returning, slowly but surely. His mom would have wanted it that way.
With her spoon-feeding him, he finished the ice-cream.
Next, she helped him through rehab. His broken ribs had set slowly, though his leg muscles had wasted with disuse. Now that he was eating again, he found some strength to push himself up to walk.
'We're going to have to find a foster home for you,' she said. Something about him had touched her, he decided, she seemed to be spending more time with him than with her other charges. Maybe it was the hopelessness. 'Don't worry, we'll find you a good one.'
They discharged him when they were sure he didn't have tuberculosis. He had lost a great amount of weight; his clothes were hanging slack on his frame. And she was waiting for him at the nurse's counter. He belonged to the welfare department now.
'I'm going to buy you a nice meal,' she said. 'How do burgers and fries sound to you?'
After the hospital food, he was ravenous. As he sat across from her at the table, devouring the biggest meal he had eaten in months, he realized her face was flushed with pleasure. She liked doing this, he thought. She liked being nice to him. And somehow the world didn't seem so bad anymore.
'I'm going to have to ask you to do me a favor,' she said when he had finished. 'It'll take some time to find a foster home for you, so I'll have to ask you to stay in an orphanage for a while.'
The word 'orphan' suddenly struck home, pierced his heart deeply like it had been a knife. He hadn't even seen his mother's body. They had cremated her.
The sorrow was now coming back to him in waves.
'But I'll come and see you every day,' she said in a rush when she saw his face. Maybe she was afraid to trip him into another bout of depression. 'And we'll go out like this. I promise.'
He stayed at the orphanage, simply because he had nowhere else to go to. He didn't want to go back to school; he had too much history there, and it wouldn't do if everyone were to look at him as Dash's tormentor. So Mrs. Lipinski obliged him. And she did keep her promise to come see him everyday.
'But when we find you a foster home,' she said, 'you'll have to go back to school. Another school, depending on what city you'll live in.'
City? He didn't really want to go away. This was his home for as long as he could remember. And besides, what if he never saw her again? She reminded him of his mom, although she was a little older, and she had been the only person who seemed to care about him since his mom died.
'She found me a home finally,' Brennan told Emma. 'Seems no one was that keen to have me, with that questionable history and everything. It was in another town. And I think that was when I became angry with life in general, and how fate had dealt me these cards. So I took it out on everybody around me.'
He was indeed angry, though it didn't feel like anger at that time. He manifested it in a cavalier callousness, a ready predatory grin, and a newfound sarcasm that came easily to him. It was easy, being this new person. He just didn't have to care or feel for anybody.
After a few months, he was expelled from his new school for fighting and hurting a couple of the other boys. His foster parents hauled him back to Mrs. Lipinski.
'He's uncontrollable,' they complained. 'He won't listen to us...and in a hushed tone we daren't discipline him because of his psychological past.'
'Oh dear,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'He's really such a nice boy. I can't imagine what he must have been thinking.'
She found him another foster home in yet another town. A few months later, they hauled him back again. They had caught him having sex on the couch with his foster sister.
'Oh dear, Brennan,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'Why in the world would you want to do something like that? You know what happened with Dash.' He knew she never recovered from her brain damage, she was permanently paralyzed .
It was protected sex, he wanted to say. I'll never have unprotected sex with anyone again. But it was pointless, he knew she was going to send him away again.
And of course she did.
He was toting up a string of foster homes longer than his list of girlfriends, and that was considerable.
'It was a very unfeeling period for me,' he explained to Emma. 'I had no roots, and each place was just a temporary respite. I had no time to get to know anybody really well before I screwed something up on purpose. Then I would get sent back to welfare again. Every single one of my foster parents thought I was a hood after getting to know me, and they were afraid I would hurt somebody in their family pretty bad. They were right too.'
Besides, he had found an enjoyable new pastime.
He remembered the first episode. He was walking down the streets; it had just rained and there were slush puddles everywhere. He was on the curb when a fancy car screeched into a parking halt two feet away from him, sploshing his jeans all over with muddy water.
'Hey!' he yelled.
The driver got out - it was a man in a business suit toting a briefcase. He looked at his watch, slammed the door and locked it with his remote.
'Sorry kid. Gotta run.'
He walked briskly away, leaving Brennan soaking and very, very cross.
'What a mistake that was,' Brennan remarked. 'At sixteen, I was one person you didn't want to tread toes with.'
He turned to look at the car. It was a BMW, 7 series, metallic gray. Through the window, he could see a cellphone on the seat and what looked like cash sticking out of the center console. Boy, some people were careless.
It was so very very easy. All he had to do was cross the threshold. It was like an invisible line, a barrier, and it was surprisingly easy how fast he made up his mind to go over it.
He looked up and down the street, made sure no one saw him, and shot a tiny bolt of electricity at the locking device. With one beep, the car unlocked itself. Casually he opened the door and got in.
He took a deep breath. This was it. There was no going back. Besides, he didn't want to. They had so much, and he had so little. He had to even out the odds in life in some way.
He took all the cash, the cellphone, the GPS decoder he found in the glove compartment. And heck, he thought, why stop there? With a dexterity that amazed even him, he started to disconnect the radio.
'So that's how you became a career criminal?' Emma asked.
'It was a start. I got more sophisticated as I grew up.'
He found himself a fence to sell all the stuff he stole. It was so easy, finding street connections and becoming part of the underworld. They roped him in as part of a consortium and he became their most successful petty thief.
'I was raking in good money,' Brennan said. 'Unbelievable for a kid my age who didn't have rich parents. Life was good to me. I had my pick of as many easy girls as I wanted and some of the not so easy ones as well. Nobody messed with me because of my size, and even my foster parents were leery of me.'
It didn't last of course. One day, his foster mother looked under his bed, found the envelope he stashed all his money in (he wasn't too keen on banks either), decided he had procured it through ill gotten means and hauled him back to welfare.
'You're lucky they didn't call the police,' Mrs. Lipinski said. 'Oh Brennan, what's happening to you? You're turning into someone I don't know at all.'
He sat in the counseling room across from her and looked down at his hands.
She sighed. 'Now no one will have you. And the orphanages are full at the moment. What am I going to do with you?'
'You don't have to do anything for me,' he blurted. 'I can live on the streets.'
'That's exactly what I don't want happening.' She looked at him in despair. 'I don't know why I feel so responsible for you but I do. I guess you're going to have to come home with me. But just until I find you something.'
His spirits picked up.
'But I need to be able to trust you, okay?' She gave him a questioning glance.
'I won't steal anything from you, if that's what you're asking.'
She had the sense to look embarrassed.
'It was the first time I'd seen her home,' Brennan said to Emma. 'And the first time I realized she had a life outside her social work. Every time we talked, it had all been about me and never about her. I had wondered who her husband was, and if she had any children. In all the years I'd known her, I never thought to ask.'
Mrs. Lipinski lived in an apartment with two bedrooms. The first thing Brennan noticed on the walls of the hallway were rows and rows of photographs. They were all of a boy of varying ages - a toddler with a toy, the same boy in an inflated swimming pool, slightly older, the boy in a uniform in front of a school. Pictures of the boy with a younger Mrs. Lipinski against myriad backgrounds: a mountain chalet, a beach, a Chinese restaurant.
'Is this your son?' he asked.
'That's Benjamin,' she said quietly. 'Yes, he was my son. He died many years ago of leukemia. He would have been around your age if he'd survived.'
He felt acutely uncomfortable. 'I'm sorry.'
She gave a sad little smile. 'Don't be. It happened a long time ago.'
'And your husband? There are no pictures of him.' He knew he was being nosy, but he couldn't help himself.
'We got divorced soon after Benjy died. I never really recovered, and Cliff - he couldn't take it.'
Now he was feeling really bad. 'I'm sorry,' he said again.
She raised her hand to pat his cheek. 'You're a really nice boy, no matter what they say about you. Let me show you to your room.'
'Mrs Lipinski?' He hesitated.
'You can call me Maria.'
'Maria....' The name felt foreign to his tongue. 'I can live with you here...if you like .. I mean if you're lonely and everything...and you can adopt me.....if you like...' His words came tumbling out in a rush, he didn't quite know why he said that. Only that he suddenly regretted saying it, because he was now dreading to hear the rejection that would inevitably follow.
'Oh Brennan...' He flinched physically as she reached out to touch him. 'I didn't know you felt that way. Come here.' And she drew him into her arms and hugged him.
As he hugged her back, her head against his chest, his nose in her hair, imbibing the smell of her clean shampoo, he realized that he desperately, desperately loved her. And that it was a kind of love that should have, he thought, been forbidden in this situation. It wasn't the love of a son for a surrogate mother, or even that of a boy for a counselor who had been kind to him; but that of a man for a woman. He had probably been in love with her since the day she coaxed him out of his shell with the ice cream. It just took him two years to understand that.
'I love you,' he whispered against her hair, wondering if she knew what he really meant.
Oh, what tangled webs they weaved.
*
*
*
'Emma?'
Shalimar was standing at the door of her bedroom. Emma was in the midst of unpacking her shopping bags, and there were boxes and paper strewn all over her bed. The afternoon had been fun, with Brennan choosing out a couple of racy outfits for her and getting her to try them on. 'You want to impress your friends, don't you?' 'I do,' she replied, 'but I don't think looking like a hooker will do it.' 'Oh believe me,' he said, 'hookers impress people plenty.' And got into the changing room with her, whispering 'This is giving me such a hard-on,' eliciting disapproving stares from the sales people around them.
Oh yup, shopping with Brennan was exciting.
'Oh hi Shal. Wanna see what I got?' She thought she probably shouldn't mention she went shopping with Brennan. But if it came up, she could always say they went their separate ways and met up again at an appointed spot.
'Maybe later.' Shalimar came in and sat on her bed.
Emma paused. That was unlike Shalimar. Her blonde friend usually devoured the contents of other people's shopping bags before they themselves could get into them. 'You okay, Shal?'
Shalimar sighed and shrugged. 'It's probably nothing. And anyway, I shouldn't bother you.'
She made no move to leave nonetheless. Emma sat down next to her and took her hand. This usually meant Shal wanted to talk, which wasn't often because she was quite a private person. With her own affairs anyway.
Emma stroked Shal's hair, deciding for the umpteeth time how lovely it was. Such beautiful blonde waves, twirling so prettily at the edges. She wished she had hair like that. She had always envied Shal. Her friend was so beautiful, so composed, so confident; so everything she wanted to be and was not.
After a long silence, Shal said, 'It's about Brennan.'
Emma felt her heart skip a beat.
Shalimar continued, not noticing. 'He's been a little....different lately. I don't know how to describe it. But it's like...he's more contained. He's calmer, and happier.'
Emma's pulse was racing in her neck. 'What do you mean?'
'Well, you know how he's been a little edgy the past few months, almost like he's angry sometimes.' Emma nodded. 'All that's vanished now. Like he's found some inner peace within himself. And,' Shalimar shook her head, 'I don't know. Like I said, I can't really describe it.'
Did she dare hope? She gave a strangled laugh. 'You mean like he's joined some cult or something?'
Shalimar smiled sadly. 'I wish. But I don't think so. I think it's a woman.'
Emma froze. After a beat, she decided to say, 'But he's always had plenty of women.'
'Not like this.' Shalimar closed her eyes. 'This is different. I know it. I'm a feral, I can sense things like this.'
Emma looked nervously around the bedroom. She didn't know the extent of Shal's powers. Would she, for example, be able to detect his scent on the sheets, his special musky tang that could not be masked by any aftershave? Emma was glad now she was such a neat freak. She had insisted on changing the bed sheets every time they made love. She was toting up quite a laundry log.
'You know, Shal. You never really talked about how you feel about Brennan. Everyone just assumes you have an on and off thing, and right now it's on off mode. Because of all the people he's been seeing. And the fact you're flirting with other people.' That's right, she thought, heart pounding. Go on the offensive again. Boy, she was getting good at this.
Shalimar curled her knees up against her chest and hugged them. She suddenly looked like a lost little girl.
'How I feel about Brennan?' She shook her hair, the expression on her face taking on a wistful note. 'I've never told anyone how I feel about Brennan. But I suppose this is about a good time as any.' She drew a deep breath.
And said simply, 'I love him. I love him with every fiber of my being. I love him like I've never loved anyone before. It was different with Richard, that was more...chemical. More animal...like we'd been two ferals made for each other. With Brennan, it's different. It's like a love grown over time, when we were still feeling each other out and probing. It's chemistry of a different sort, because we're a breed apart. It's chemistry like...even when there's not supposed to be chemistry, you know what I mean?'
Licking her lips and feeling a sinking pang in her heart, Emma nodded.
'I wondered about the same things over and over again,' Shalimar continued. 'Like is it carnal? I mean, I've always been the sucker for the tall, dark handsome type. And then I figured, it's beyond that. I mean, I desire him, I have no doubts about that. I want him. I want to feel his arms around me; I want him to make love to me wildly, passionately; with reckless abandon like we're two ferals in heat. Even though he's not technically a feral. And yet, I've never acted upon it. Because I was afraid I would lose him.... like with all the men I've loved.. and because we're teammates, I knew we couldn't just walk away.'
She looked at Emma expectantly. 'Do you know how that feels? Lusting after somebody and not acting on it because you didn't want to lose their friendship?'
Emma shook her head. She wouldn't know. She had crossed that line long ago. And right now, all she could do was listen with an escalating combination of fascination and horror. She had suspected this all along, but to actually have it declared to her very own ears....
'I don't know what he feels about me,' Shalimar said. She kept her eyes hidden behind the veil of her hair, but Emma could see them glistening. 'I thought he had a thing...for such a long time he was acting funny around me, you know, like he was all possessive and jealous-like, and at the same time, caring and warm. He can be so caring, you know, to the point of being chauvinistic....but it sure makes a girl feel all special and tingly, even though she knows she can take care of herself. It's like he's one of those old movie superheroes. The kind we secretly want all men to be.'
She bowed her head. 'We even kissed..once. A little peck on the lips, nothing earth-shattering. And all those times, all that flirting and teasing. I enjoyed that. I think he enjoyed it too. But it got to the point it became stagnant, and we had either to take it up a notch, or go down. I made a decision....at that time, I thought I would go for it. And then, of course, before I could do anything, he had to hurt me.'
Emma clasped Shalimar's hand, intertwining her fingers through her own. She dreaded to hear the answer. 'Which one? Lorna, Miranda or Becky? Or....someone else?'
Shalimar sighed. 'Lorna I could accept. He was coerced against his will. With Becky it was just a historical thing. No, it was Miranda. He did that out of his own free will. And after that, I don't think he looked back. They just came piling up. And I knew I did the right thing by not acting on it. Because he would have hurt me, and kept on hurting me. He's just one of those guys you don't want to mess around with if you have feelings.'
'But Shal,' Emma ventured hesitantly. 'You flirt with other guys too.'
'Oh Emma,' Shalimar gave a nervous laugh, 'don't you know what girls do already? That was in retaliation. I did it to make him notice me.'
And he does it to make you notice him, Emma thought. What a dreadful spiral. Was she then one of his statistics? She didn't want to think that she was....it was too horrible to think of it that way.
Looking at Shalimar, she suddenly felt like the lowest of pit creatures. It was no use justifying it with a 'But I thought you didn't want him.' At some level, between the layers of denial, she had always known. She had betrayed Shalimar, as surely as the sky was blue and she was pond scum. It was like that line in that movie..what was it again? My Best Friend's Wedding. He's got you on a pedestal, and me in his arms.
And God help her, but she didn't want to let him go. She loved him, wanted him too much to be denied this newfound joy. And she liked to believe that somewhere along the line, he loved her in return. No, this was not something she was going to give up. She couldn't give him up, he had melded himself in her bones and become a part of her. Oh Shal..Shal....she thought, I'm sorry...I'm so sorry....
Aloud she asked. 'Do you still love him?'
When before her friend's eyes merely glistened, now a single tear pooled over and ran down her cheek. 'I do. I'm such an idiot, I know. But I still love him, even though I know it's probably too late for me, now that he's found someone else. So you see, he's breaking my heart even before I ever gave it to him.'
They hugged each other, both with vastly conflicting emotions. Emma closed her eyes. She couldn't think about it...didn't want to think about it anymore.
'And besides,' said Shalimar in a choked voice against her ear, 'if I ever find out who she is, I swear I will kill her.'
TBC