CH 8 Bring On The Rain
Disclaimer: I don't own it. I probably never will own it. I'm just having fun here. I also don't own Jo Dee Messina. I just like the song.
A/N: I'm back! Sorry it's been so long! I've had lots going on with having a new baby and some issues with my son. He was just diagnosed as autistic, so I'm a bit discombobulated right now. Just be patient and rest assured that the muse is not dead, she's just taking a back seat to real life at the moment.
It's almost like the hard times circle 'round
A couple drops and they all start coming down
Yeah, I might feel defeated,
And I might hang my head
I might be barely breathin -
but I'm not dead (no)
-Jo Dee Messina "Bring On The Rain"
Two hours. She had two hours. What was she going to do? Anyone who knew Lindsay Monroe knew full well that she could drive herself stark raving mad in only a couple hours; if properly provoked of course. In her book, actually talking with Danny without the buffer of blatant hurt and betrayal or the backdrop of the crime lab constituted proper provocation.
'Pass the time Lindsay. Don't think about it; just do something to keep your mind off the situation.'
'Pass the time and don't think about it. There's an idea. And just how in the hell do you propose that I do such a thing, huh?! My romantic future is riding on this talk and I'm supposed to not think about it?"
"I'm losing my mind already. Danny Messer has driven me to the brink of insanity," she commented aloud upon realizing she'd just had an actual argument with her brain.
Deciding that she would not think about it anymore until he arrived, the emotionally confused woman went into her room and pulled a suitcase out of her closet, intent on getting her packing done. It started off well enough, until she came across the jeans, black tank top, and grey sweater that Danny had ended up hastily discarding in every corner of his small apartment the first time they slept together.
"On his pool table no less. What a romantic," she mused, before dropping the jeans and tank top into the suitcase she had rested on the bed, and immediately retreated to the kitchen.
She could pack later; right now she needed a distraction. Looking at the clock display on the microwave, she realized that she'd been lost in her own little pre-cheating Danny world and he would be there in forty-five minutes! In her mind, there was now a 'before Danny cheated', and an 'after Danny cheated' distinction in their relationship and she hated it! She hated it with a fucking passion; and sometimes she even hated him for putting that distinction there! If there was to be a contrast in their relationship status, Lindsay had always figured it would be before the baby and after the baby or before and after their marriage; not this.
"Luke, he always knows what to say," she said to herself as she picked up the phone and dialed her twin's number. The two had always been fairly close; but since their mother had moved in with him, she found herself calling his home less often than she used to. Now her preferred, much less stressful way, of talking to him was through email, instant message, and text message. And, if she knew he wasn't busy; she'd call him at work. She was feeling adventurous today though, and since it was a Friday, there was a good chance that he'd be home at quarter past three. So, Lindsay steeled herself and dialed the familiar Allenspark, Colorado phone number. After only two rings, someone answered.
"Hello," the slow voice of an older woman answered.
"Mom, it's me," Lindsay cringed upon hearing her mother's voice.
"Lindsay, it's so nice to hear from you. I was beginning to think you'd dropped off the face of the earth or something."
"No, no, things have just been really busy around here lately."
"Spending all your free time with that boyfriend I suppose," Lucy spoke, her voice laced with distaste for Lindsay and Danny's relationship. It was the same tone that she'd often used when speaking of her only daughter's teenage years.
Over the years, Lindsay had grown accustomed to her mother's cantankerous attitude, but that didn't mean that she liked it; and today, she was in no mood for the ill-tempered manner of Lucy Monroe.
"Yes, Mother. I've been quite busy with Danny. I've also been busy with my job and my friends," she tried to be a polite as possible, but given the emotional wringer she'd been put through lately, the response came off snottier than she had intended.
"Well, excuse me for wanting to know what's going on in my daughter's life. I guess a mother doesn't have that right nowadays, does she?"
Half sighing, half growling, "Mom, look, I'm sorry it came off like that. That's not how I meant it. There's just been a lot going on and I need someone to talk to. Is Luke back from the hospice yet," the minute the words left her mouth, Lindsay knew she was in for it.
"No, he's working a double. One of the nurses had her baby last night, and another is taking a personal day to make the final preparations for her wedding next week. When are you going to get married and have a baby, Lindsay? And before you come back with a smart answer, that time when you were fourteen doesn't count. That was all just a bad dream as far as I'm concerned," she finished her last sentence with a level of haughtiness that made Lindsay want to hang up the phone right then and there.
"If only it had been," she muttered, but Lucy heard her.
"If you'd been more careful, it never would have happened you know? It's like, you went to that diner with your friends, and you came home a different person!"
"That's because I was a different person after that night, Mom! If you'd have put down the bottle long enough to realize that I lived through something really horrible, then maybe things would have turned out different," she finished with a hint of sadness at what could have been, growing up and going through such a horrible experience.
"If you had just come to me sweetheart, and told me how you were feeling, I would have listened; I swear," Lucy knew she hadn't always been a good parent, especially where her daughter was concerned, but she had spent so many years telling herself that she did the best she could; she really believed it now.
"It's kind of hard to talk to your mother and tell her how all the boys are making bets on who will be the first to bag the weird girl from the diner, and how it makes you feel like a worthless piece of shit to know that's the only interest anyone has in you! It's not easy to explain to your mother how you sit alone at lunch, and how girls write horrible things about you on the bathroom wall, and talk about you behind your back! I couldn't just come home and tell you that the new school rumor was that I was the one that killed them since no one else had been caught! As a teenager, you just can't come home and tell your mother these things that are going on, when she's passed out on the couch with an empty whiskey bottle dangling from her hand," Lindsay screamed at the end, feeling emotions that she hadn't allowed herself to feel in fifteen years.
Taken aback by what she knew, was her daughter's brutal honesty, Lucy defended her shitty parenting the only way she knew how; be deflecting the blame on to Lindsay. "Okay, so I was a rotten, drunk of a parent who failed you, but you failed me too! I had such high hopes for you Lindsay and you went and dashed them all! How do you think that made me feel, huh? What do you think it felt like, as a mother, to have my teenage daughter tell me that she's pregnant? What do you think it felt like to know what you were going to have to go through, being an unwed teenage mother, in a community as small as ours," Lucy never liked thinking about that event, so to dull the feelings, she poured herself a hefty shot of scotch and downed it in one gulp.
"I have no idea Mom! All I know is that I was fourteen, pregnant, scared, alone; and you were talking about how I was going to have to be sent away to live with an aunt I'd only met once until the baby was born, and then I was to give the baby up for adoption and never speak of it again. Given those circumstances, I have no idea how you felt! I knew I was a disappointment though; believe me I knew I disappointed you. Even on Christmas Eve when we were sitting in the emergency room and the doctor was telling me I'd had a miscarriage, I knew I was still a disappointment to you, despite your happiness over me having lost the baby," tears were cascading down Lindsay's cheeks now. She always felt a little sick when she thought of her mother's reaction to the news. For Lucy, it was as if a problem had been solved. For Lindsay, she had just been told that she lost the child she'd barely learned existed. Not that she wanted to keep the baby, but it was her baby; and with some terrible cramping and a good bit of blood, it was gone. She failed to protect her baby from her own body and no one in the room even gave a damn!
"I don't see why you had to have sex with that boy any way. All it got you was a world of trouble," Lucy slurred as the three shots of scotch she'd taken in half as many minutes got into her system.
"You're drunk."
"I'm not drunk; I just had a drink is all. A drink does not a drunk make."
"I'm hanging up now. Tell Luke to call me."
Without waiting for her mother's slurred goodbye, Lindsay hung up the phone and slid to the floor and cried. She cried for the baby she didn't think she wanted, but had lost so long ago. She cried for the close, loving relationship with her mother than she never had, and never would have. She cried for the death of her father; in her mind the only real parent she ever had. And she cried for Danny.
Her mother bringing up the pregnancy stirred something in her. She couldn't be sure, not until she talked to him, but she suspected that Danny had slept with Rikki for the same reason she'd slept with the boy whose name she couldn't even remember now. Her emotions had been so muddled by her friends' deaths that she could barely think straight half the time. Most days, just getting out of bed to get dressed for a day of being ridiculed as the school outcast was a chore. The boy had made her feel better. Sure the sex was awkward, and since she was a virgin, it hurt as is sometimes the case; but it made her feel better. For those few minutes when they were trying to clumsily remove each other's clothes and go through the motions in an abandoned shed, she didn't think. She didn't hear their dying screams, or the gunshots that took their lives. She didn't feel the cold tile of the bathroom walls and floor. She didn't smell their blood or the gunpowder from the shotgun. All she heard, felt and smelled where two first-timers having mediocre sex; at best.
Afterwards, he'd taken her to an ice cream shop and they shared a root beer float. At the time, he'd said it was the least he could do for not being as suave as in the movies. The next day, she found out it was the least he could do to keep her from catching on that she was just the target of a stupid bet among horny teenage boys. Four weeks later, she got the confirmation that going to that shed with him was one of the worst decisions she'd ever made.
The ringing of her doorbell shocked her out of her reverie. As quickly as she could, she stood up on shaky legs and made her way to the door. Taking a quick glance in the mirror, she knew there would be no way to convince Danny that she wasn't crying, so she dried her eyes and hoped that he would just assume it was because of him and not ask too many questions. Maybe one day she'd tell him, but now was not the time. Now was the time to see if they could somehow reassemble the shattered pieces of their relationship.
Upon opening the door, she saw Danny's face instantly transform from a mix of nervousness and hopefulness to concern.
"Montana, what's the matter? Are you okay? Did someone hurt you," he spurted out question after question, all the while hoping that he'd see the answers to her pain in her eyes.
"Danny, come in. It's nothing, really. I just got off the phone with my mother," she explained softly as she stepped aside to let him in.
"I take it you two aren't exactly best friends or anything," he'd asked the question lightheartedly, as he removed his shoes, hoping to cut some of the heaviness in the air.
"We used to get along, but ever since the murders; things just haven't been the same. A lot of unpleasant things have transpired between us," as she spoke, she eyed the small plastic bag he carried with him.
Seeing her looking at the bag, he gently handed it over to her, letting his fingers linger on top of hers a little longer than necessary. "I saw this and thought of us and how we got started on the road to being us. No pressure or anything. I know that a lot has happened and you might not be able to trust me enough again to be a couple, but I wanted you to have that, regardless, as a memory of the good days; before things got so fucked up," he finished sadly, the knowledge that his actions were what fucked things up so badly, almost choking him with emotion.
Lindsay smiled softly, "thank you Danny", and opened the bag. Slowly she pulled out a small stuffed tiger.
"That day, when we met and I gave you all kinds of hell is one of the most significant memories I have of us before we became a couple."
"What made that day so special for you? You hated me and wanted me to go back to the land of overalls, wheat fields and heard of cattle," she giggled, paraphrasing something he'd said about her coming from Montana.
"You would remember that wouldn't you? What makes that day so special is because, at that time, I couldn't imagine liking you and working with you every day; and now I can't imagine not loving you and having you involved in every aspect of my life, every day."
Maybe it was the toy that did it, or the fact that his eyes were so impossibly blue and his hair mussed from the rain. Or, maybe it was the fact that she was already at the end of her emotional threshold after talking with her mother, but before either of them knew it, Lindsay had her arms wrapped around Danny's neck, as if he were the buoy keeping her from drowning in a ferocious sea; and her face was buried in the crook of his neck as she inhaled his uniquely musky scent, mixed with the smell of his leather jacket, and the fresh rain.
Taken by surprise at this sudden turn of events, Danny's arms wrapped around her torso, acting as the strong bands of strength, she'd come to depend on them as. Instinctually, he knew she just needed to cry it out right now, so he held her firmly against his chest, one arm wrapped low around her waist and the hand of the other creeping up her spine until he reached the nape of her neck, where he could stroke her hair; something he'd found worked to gently bring her back down when she was as emotionally overworked, as she was right now.
"It's okay baby. You go ahead and let it all out. I'm right here and I'm not going anywhere. We'll talk when you're ready. You just cry and let me take care of you, okay?"
In response, he got a nod, along with a sniffle and another hearty sob.
A/N: So, this is where we leave them this chapter. They will sit down and talk, but Lucy Monroe had a lot to say and insisted on riling her daughter up first.