Authors Note: I acknowledge I have no ownership rights to Beverly Hills 90210 characters or canon, the rest well yeah that's mine.
Chapter Two: Thanksgiving
"Hey, Man!" Brandon takes the seat across from me and then sips his fresh Condor coffee. It's a drinkable brew but it isn't quite up to Nat's standards.
"Hey, so has she decided?" He takes on a look of unease, the same look he adopts whenever I bring up his sister. It's uncomfortable but it's still preferable over the look I get when I make any suggestion of a romantic interest in her.
"Yeah, she rang last night. She's spending Thanksgiving in Minnesota." I lean back and give the words space in the air. Fuck.
"She hasn't been home since she left." He lifts his brow. "Jones, I am not counting the anniversary party from two weeks ago, a visit is longer than two hours." I close my eyes and rub my hand through my hair. "Your grandparents liked me, right? They seemed interested in getting to know me at the party-"
He cuts me off and doesn't look happy. "Dylan, please tell me you aren't thinking of travelling to see her for Thanksgiving?"
I defensively ask, "Why not?"
He slips into his lecturing mode with a hint of sarcasm. "Let's list the reasons," he sticks up his pointer finger. "You aren't together-"
I cut him off. "Her choice."
He drops his hand and then looks at me like I'm crazy. "Man I'm still amazed she's speaking to you, the fact that she is your friend after what you did… well she has a greater capacity to forgive than I do."
We were going into uncharted territory. We never discussed this. Apart from his sister and our relationship being an off-the-limits topic for both him and Steve, the latter a person I'd never want to discuss Bren with anyway, we had seemed fine. "Are you saying you don't forgive me?"
"I'm saying I trusted you with her. I trusted our friendship. I was even on your side at first thinking she ended it with you, and that Kelly was just a friend; someone you had just decided to see if you could have something more with. I didn't know my sister had broken up with you days after you had finally told her you had been with someone over the summer, that you had lied to her about it for months. My sister had been your secret keeper back then and protected you." He shook his head. "To find out that afternoon about all of it. To see that you had made MY sister the bad guy and you and Kelly the victims. That she was told for months to suck it up and that you were doing nothing wrong, that it was a situation of her own making- even from ME!" He gives me a look of betrayal. "To realise that I had watched it take place that summer right under my nose the whole time and that you had continued being too close to her after Bren got back from France-"
It wasn't like that. I was faithful to Bren when she got back. Kelly and I may have had some heavy make-out sessions that summer but it stopped when Brenda landed. I stopped his rant. He couldn't believe, that I would do that to her. "Brandon, I didn't-"
He gave me a look that screamed that he didn't fucking believe me and cut off my explanation. "Really, how lucky was Silver for seeing Kelly in the shower? Who did Kelly cry to when her Dad cancelled on her?"
That wasn't anything, we were closer but I never let anything happen. "Brandon, it wasn't like-"
"Save it. Between Nat, Willie and Nadeen, I know everything that takes place there, and even if I didn't I saw you the night of the pigskin prom swinging them both around in your arms." He looked at me like I was scum. "Forgiveness? Well, you don't have mine for any of it. You might be family but I still wouldn't be here if she hadn't forgiven you, and asked me to let it go." He ran his hand through his hair. "It's always her call on this one, brother or not, she's my twin she comes first. Whatever makes her life easier, gives her peace I'll do it."
"Has she forgiven me though? I mean we talk regularly at least once a fortnight, about everything but her life. She'll tell me about school, what she is learning, your family there, but that's it. She won't discuss how she feels, won't discuss us having a future, won't discuss Senior Year. She'll listen to my explanations of those twelve months, my thinking, how I was feeling, but she won't respond or tell me of her experience."
"Fuck, man! What do you think her experience was like? Anyone with an iota of empathy could tell you how that would have hurt. You claim to know her better than anyone, but now you need her to tell you, point out the obvious. Make her relive those emotions just so you don't have to do the work to understand, something that should have been obvious at the time. If that's what you are calling to discuss with her then I want you to stop calling. She doesn't need that stress." He shakes his head. "Seriously, what happened to you? Seeing her best friend, a girl you had never shown interest in, lying to her. You were so fucking in love you fought with my Dad to see her, and then what you forgot how you felt? You woke up one day a few weeks into her trip and just couldn't remember her? Please Dylan tell me if that's what your love is like are you really that surprised she doesn't want a bar of it?"
He didn't get it. "It wasn't like that."
He throws his arms open and sarcastically responds, "Really then tell me what it's like?"
I sigh and try to make him understand. "Look, I fucked up, I got scared. The way I love your sister it's a lot, it always has been. The intensity of it became overwhelming. It felt like it was a problem, it was too much."
He broke out in laughter. "That's your reasoning? You loved her so much you had to cheat on her, with her best friend no less. Well with a great reason like that, I don't know why she hasn't rushed back into your arms. I mean apart from the fact that up until three weeks ago you were still with, and sleeping with Kelly, whilst you were spouting off about this overwhelming love to my sister over the phone." He leans forward pinches the bridge of his nose, and takes a moment. "She's going to kill me for this. Steve and I are banned from this topic with you, she believes this is between you and her." He looks up and meets my eyes and coldly but calmly states. "If you are asking if you should visit her in Minnesota for Thanksgiving, well I think you have had your way too much, been too selfish when it comes to her. You've wanted all the cakes and felt entitled to eat them all too. Maybe it's time you put her first and ask yourself what does she need?" He stands then. "Cindy, as always expects you at the house for the holidays." He picks up his coffee and walks away.
Shit. I knew better. At the mere mention of her name and a relationship his repressed anger over my continued interest in his sister moves to the surface. It's the no-go area of our friendship. It had started when I was staying with them after Jack's death. After the funeral and after discovering my Dad had tried to do better, I came back into the kitchen a little lighter and began sharing ice cream with Bren. Eating from her spoon at first and then grabbing my own spoon to eat from her bowl. Brandon had walked in and seen the intimate and natural scene, he looked but said nothing. He did, however, have the cordless with him and let Bren know Steve wanted to speak to her. She smiled, grabbed the phone and excused herself. My face must have indicated how much it bothered me, her getting on with Steve or any guy, because, for the first time since sophomore year, Brandon had warned me away. He set the line between us. His sister was now off-limits to me in that way and I had a nerve to even consider it.
At the time it had been less than two weeks since I had made that stupid impulsive decision in that pool. Not based on anything more than the clear reminder given to me that night that Bren and my relationship would always be interfered with, always have other people believing they could have input and give us expectations. In a year full of expectations, people wanting to discuss college, SATs, career, majors, and life plans; any more just felt like too much so I bailed, and chose the simple easy breezy relationship with no parents or long-term outlook. Hell even before jumping in that pool I had begun privately thinking and then later publicly planning on moving to San Francisco for College. I knew she was attending CU, and even when she knew of my plans she never brought up that big geographical divide. I assume she understood as much as I did that it wasn't a forever or hell more than six-month interlude we were going to have. There would be no trying to make this work long distance or wanting to see if we could attend College together. That was not what we were. Those offers I would have only made with Bren. Kel and I were not an infinite possibility, we were finite, from the start we had a use-by date.
Kelly and I meant no big feelings, no big hurts, no big dramas- it was all true and still remains how I feel about Kelly today, but even without that it turned into a bloody nightmare. It had been an image, an illusion of a nice summer's day on the beach, but instead, the reality was full of flies buzzing, ants biting, and a sticky heat that made you uncomfortable and irritated. Any ease was completely erased by the constant annoyances of a relationship where I care too little, and she wanted Brenda's Dylan, someone she could never have. He was a person Brenda was only capable of extracting out of me, but then what had I expected from a relationship that had literally started my travels through Dante's nine circles of hell?
The limbo of Bren in Paris. The lust over the summer. The gluttony of wanting my Bren and to keep my summer interlude secret, where I could still enjoy Kelly's fawning. The greed of not wanting to have to choose. The anger at Jim for interfering again. The heresy of denying true love in that pool. The violence of my Dad's death. The fraud of the life I had lived since his death, the one where I couldn't even pretend to be happy with my choice. All that was left was treachery and then I would have traveled them all. It was a punishment of my own making, the deal with Jim that day in his office had sealed my fate.
He wasn't the devil but he had presented Satan's deal. He had asked the question in that office, did true love have a price? If I had more of a moral fibre I would have chosen like my girl had when she arrived on my doorstep with her bags, that any cost was worth it to have the other, even risking losing her family. Instead, I had caved to the pressure, and in that office and that night at dinner, I had set a price. It was a denial of the gift that had been given to us, to me- it had sealed my fate. It had pushed me on this nightmare trip, one that I couldn't jump off until I had learnt each lesson from the circle I was stuck in. I am sure that is why she kept saying I was lost. My path to redemption wasn't ready to begin, I first had to live through the hell of my own making. My girl was not able to save me, but she had given me a kindness I didn't deserve, she refused to let me feel alone on the journey.
Getting up from the Condor cafe I moved to my last class of the day with a weariness that had long since seeped into my bones. The eight circles had tired me out and left me depleted. I'm sure it was why Dante saw treachery as the last, the ninth. Any mirage of salvation from this torture would be easily accepted after this journey even if it was a falsehood.
Art had moved into a new stage in the two weeks since the Anniversary party, he had started to engage his senses. He loved certain sounds, my voice being one that he adored. He had begun to smile and was awake for longer stretches at a time. He made gurgling noises and had taken to pushing out his legs when he was feeding. Like his father, he enjoyed stretching out his long limbs as a way of getting comfortable. He was a joy.
I had relinquished my dorm at the start of the semester when the pregnancy had become more challenging. My Doctor's growing concern with my blood pressure had resulted in me moving in most of the time with Grandma Walsh by the end of the summer. I began only staying in my dorm on the days I had early morning classes. I moved in full-time at the end of the first week of the semester when he pretty much put me on stay-at-home orders and eventually bed rest for the last couple of months of my pregnancy. Besides offering me more support, moving in with my Grandma enabled me to use the dorm refund to help pay for the increase in living expenses that my presence here had caused her. The rest was used for the excess medical costs not covered by my family's insurance policy.
Living here had been a godsend, especially as I still strived to maintain two college courses this semester. My Lecturers agreed to shift them into correspondence courses to accommodate the medical difficulties I was experiencing. Even now that I was doing better I only had to attend finals on campus. My Grandparents eagerly volunteered to watch Art during that time. This along with my summer courses meant I was still going to finish the semester having exceeded the usual college load this early on. It would be of benefit to me if I transferred to CU at the start of next semester. A decision I was currently festering over as Art lay asleep in his bassinet.
My secret was reaching its agreed-upon deadline. My Minnesota family is only willing to keep my parents in the dark for the least amount of time possible. When flannel shirts and even a concerning lack of weight gain still couldn't hide the stomach bulge of Art's growing body they had found out. I was nineteen weeks into my pregnancy. They had given me a grace period to come clean with my parents of one month. They wouldn't lie beyond that. It however was thrown out the window three weeks later when my Doctor began seeing a concerning rise in my blood pressure, combined with my low pregnancy weight it became paramount that I get it down. My grandmother's, who insisted on attending the appointment, grew worried on hearing the risks if things didn't improve, and decided then and there to put a gag order on the family. Limit my stress until my blood pressure went down and my weight improved. My preeclampsia only got worse from there.
My Brother's deadline had only been temporary as well. A begrudging acceptance of a move and distance from me and their nephew as a way to provide me some time to heal and focus on gaining more strength for the latter part of my pregnancy. That deadline was also shifted. Now with my postpartum preeclampsia being effectively managed, everyone's grace period was reaching its limit, and I had until Christmas to inform my parents. It was a hard deadline as my uncle kept reminding me that the annual insurance statement of how much had been paid out from the family policy was due to arrive on my Dad's desk in the new year. There would be questions raised about the increase in claims against my insurance number over the last twelve months. It was not the way I wanted them to hear about their grandson.
Then there was Dylan. At first, he had been kept in the dark because I was. We had been safe that January night so when my period didn't come I assumed it was just late, then after he chose I blamed it on the stress. Not eating much mixed with the crushing sadness made me believe that it was simply another physical manifestation of my heartache. The night of Kelly's eighteenth I had walked away from her hospital room after offering a cease-fire to the troubled girl and received a forehead kiss from my ex. Steve and Brandon had waited for me and as we walked to the car I fainted. My brother's after the night we just had were not taking any risks and took me straight to the emergency department. Even when I came to and said it was just the emotions of the night they refused to let me leave till I had been medically cleared. An hour later we walked back to the car, well it was more accurate to say my feet hovered somewhere across the ground as both of them insisted on keeping a firm hold on me for fear I'd break.
The two would become protective bears over the next (and last) eight weeks of school. They were constantly concerned about my lack of weight gain, a byproduct of what I had previously assumed was a nausea's belly from a broken heart but in reality, was morning sickness. During this time when I was trying to adjust to my new normal and gain calories through shakes and anything that my queasy stomach could take to keep Art healthy and there, Dylan's life maintained its now new chaos. He had been dealing with the loss of his father at the start of March, his girlfriend's medical issues at the end of that month, then her erratic behaviour in April, the pressure of late submission to Berkeley and all the dramas his life had become. It never seemed like a good time, a time he'd be ready to calmly plan a life of co-parenting our child, one that I desperately hoped would stay inside of me.
As I stared at the transfer forms I had to wonder if he was ready now or would be at the start of the New Year. My parents would not accept the distance, nor would they continue the lie to the honorary family member. When they knew, he was bound to know soon after.
Thank god they hadn't wanted to come for Thanksgiving claiming a Minnesota White Christmas would be enough of a midwest winter for them.