A hand clamps over my shoulder, and I look up to see Llewellyn. He’s wearing a gym polo and is clean-shaven, which is nothing new. I’ve never seen the man with facial hair. What gets me most are his watchful eyes and the questions conveyed in them.
He gave me time off from working, and here I am, in his gym, anyway.
I tug my earbuds out and pocket them. “Hey.”
“How you doing, kid?”
“Alright.” I motion to the gym. “This helps.”
“I sure as hell hope so.” He sits next to me and crosses his arms over his chest, legs spread out and heels propped on the cement below him. We look out at the expanse of the gym. There’s a new girl working the front counter. A redhead who offers timid smiles to everyone that comes and goes. I overheard a dude in the locker room say her name is Kelsie and how she’s Llewellyn’s niece from an estranged sister he doesn’t ever talk about.
Old me would have greeted her properly when I arrived earlier instead of ignoring her, but no one needs me as a friend right now, so I ducked my head and ignored her altogether.
The last time I let a girl in she got in my head and heart, and I haven’t been able to get her out ever since. And now everything with her is one giant fucked up mess.
Llewellyn takes my silence as something being wrong.
“Can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you need.”
I glance over, momentarily stunned by what he says but then also not. Ever since I’ve known the guy, he’s gone above and beyond to help those around him. It’s his purpose in life. The thing that gets him out of bed to open the doors to this place every morning. It’s wild how he can take one look at a person and know how much they’re suffering.
I’m not there yet.
I’m not ready to talk about it in depth.
To get down to the nitty gritty of how goddamn broken I am. For a multitude of reasons.
I shake my head and look down at my feet. “I don’t know, Llewellyn.”
He purses his lips, but it turns up looking more like a frown than anything else. “When Gulliver died, it was like he stole myheart from my chest and took it with him. Sure, my body was still here, but the rest of me?” He wags a hand in the air. “I was gone. Didn’t give a single shit about anyone or anything. For a long time, I was fine living in the outrage that consumed me from it. Used to ask myself,how?How could it be that we both went over there, and I came back but he didn’t? Didn’t seem right. Still doesn’t some days.”
Jesus.
I can’t imagine what it was like for him and his brother all those years ago. From the way I’ve always heard it from Llewellyn, they were thick as thieves. Did everything together, including signing up to fight for their country. One came back and the other did, too, but in a flag-draped casket.
“Gulliver was older than me by two years. Had more knowledge and life behind him, but it didn’t matter. He was still taken in combat, and for a long time I goddamn hated him for it. Myself, too. Years went by before I could look my ugly mug in the mirror. All I saw was him. In every little thing.”
I’m not sure what to say so I settle on, “Wish I could’ve gotten to meet him.”
“So do I, kid. But that doesn’t change what you’re facing. I know the struggle when I see the struggle because I’ve been through the struggle. Ya get me?”
“I get you.”
“Good, so tell me, you at rock bottom yet?”
I swallow at the tarantula-sized lump in my throat.
Rock bottom.
I guess that depends on who you ask and how they define it. Then again, when I look back on time since Mom passed, all I see is me losing it on the people closest to me. Going from having some semblance of love around me to none at all. Maybe I have hit the rubble of bedrock and stone beneath the surface of the earth.
“I stared at a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for days,” I utter, knowing he won’t judge me for it. Llewellyn has been through too much to cast a single stone. “Trying to decide if I wanted to run from my problems and risk the same kind of life she had or deal with my cards head-on.”
“Yeah? Which way did the ball roll?”
Addiction is no joke in the Moore family. My body’s tolerance is higher because of it. The absolute last thing I want is to end up like Mom or her dad. I don’t want to have to answer to something that’s embedded in my flesh and blood and lose out on the richness of life.
The richness of Violet.
