I walked out of the room and into the communal bathroom. I turned the shower on and sat down on the silver tiles. I leaned my head back and let the water hit my face. And cried for my screwed up life. Silently.
When the tears were gone I got out, and methodically dried off and put Cole’s shirt back on. I lay down on the floor with the towel for a pillow. I fell asleep as more silent hurt rolled down my temples.
***
I woketo strong arms lifting me against a warm, strong chest. I opened my eyes and saw Brent standing in the bathroom doorway, holding two black pieces of metal, which he was stuffing inside a case. I glanced up at Cole and my lips trembled. He was wearing my gift on the edge of his nose. Reading glasses so he wouldn’t have to squint while looking at his laptop.
“Put me down.” My voice trembled fiercely.
“No,” they said as one, something was there, in their voices, which I didn’t recognize.
Brent backed up as Cole maneuvered out the door, holding me. Brent followed as Cole carried me to my/our bedroom, Brent shutting the door behind us and locking it – fat lot of good that would do, and Cole laying me gently in the middle of the bed. Brent climbed in as Cole slid under the covers on the other side of me. Both towered over me. I stared up at them, but my eyes were scratchy and I realized they could probably tell I had been crying. My breath caught and I scanned around frantically for an escape.
“Shh, darlin’. You’re all right,” Brent’s hushed me softly, brushing my hair back, his voice faltering. He cleared his throat and stared up at the headboard. Gradually, he chuckled and joked softly, “So the ice princess does melt.”
Cole’s gaze snapped to him and he smacked the backside of Brent’s head. Brent only shook his head like a dog for a moment before sitting back on his heels while I scowled. My lips still trembled, but boy howdy, could I ever give a good scowl when I needed to. Brent’s lopsided grin etched his face while he glancedat Cole, who was staring daggers at him while running his fingers through my hair.
“Cole, I think I’ll tell you a story.” Brent rested back on his hands after earmarking his new book – book 5, my gift - and setting it on the bedside table. “There was once this little spitfire of a redhead that was meaner than Matt Thomas’ Rottweiler, and that was real mean, let me tell you.” I scowled harder, but he kept on. “You see, this spitfire earned her reputation at the tender age of five. On her first day of kindergarten, she told the teacher that this towheaded classmate of hers had stolen crazy-haired classmates crayon while they were drawing pictures of their families. The teacher had searched Towhead’s desk – not his person, mind you, but found nothing amiss.”
“Of course, this young-handsome-wily-brilliant-upstanding boy wascompletelyinnocent of the act.” I grunted, and Brent grinned, showing teeth, continuing, “Well, he was mildly innocent, anyway. The crayon miraculously found its way back to crazy-haired girl’s desk before the end of the first day. But, anyway, during that morning’s recess, Spitfire and Crazy-hair confronted Towhead, where he was swinging, minding his own business. Spitfire grabbed the swing as it arched down, jolting poor, little Towhead right off the seat and onto the hard concrete after he’d told them to buzz off and go play on the monkey bars because that was girls stuff. The swing set was for the boys, everyone knew that.”
Cole lay down on his side, propped his head up on his hand while Brent stared up at the ceiling, smiling as he spoke. “What Spitfire didn’t realize was that the sudden speed of the stop would take her down, too. She went flying on top of Towhead, blaming him fully for the fall. Towhead took the resounding beating from Spitfire manfully.” My lips stopped trembling at the memory and Brent chuckled, saying dryly, “Well, if a man only shed a dozen tears and screamed to the teacher for help.But, the teacher was too busy flirting with the fifth grade teacher to pay much attention. So finally, Towhead got tired of covering his head and getting beat to a pulp, and pushed Spitfire off him. Like I said before, Spitfire was a tiny thing, and she went airborne.
“She scraped her knee and hand up pretty good when she landed and Towhead, bleeding himself from many scratches and a busted lip, teased Spitfire, asking if she was going to cry. Spitfire stood up on wobbly, itty-bitty feet just as the teacher decided to pay attention, grabbing both of them by the scruffs of their necks. But, even then Spitfire had spouted proudly that she wasn’t going to cry. She was an ice princess. And princesses didn’t melt.” He glanced down at Cole. “She never melted in front of Towhead. Never. Not until tonight.”
Cole rubbed his chin and asked quietly, “Never?”
Brent shook his head in large, slow motions, and then said, “What Spitfire never knew was that Towhead’s mother had left his father a week before that. In the future, Towhead always said his parents got a divorce, which was true eventually, but Towhead left all the sordid details out so people wouldn’t start talking and make his father more upset. The truth was Towhead’s mother had just packed up in the middle of the night, like some bad country song, and left with no reason or a goodbye or even a pat on his head. All she left was a note for Towhead’s dad, which he was never allowed to see.”
I stared dumfounded at Brent, while he spoke softly, “So, when Towhead had been trying to color the picture of his family and he didn’t have the right color for his mom’s hair, he had borrowed the perfect color from Crazy-Hair without her knowledge to finish the picture. You see, it had to be absolutely right so when his mom came home, like he knew she would, she would be so proud of him that she wouldn’t want to leave again. But, she never came home. There was only a court documentsent to Towhead’s father six months later. Towhead never saw his mother again. She hadn’t loved or cared enough for him, or his father, to stay around for the long haul.”
Brent gazed down at me, his forest green eyes nervous and his lips barely tipped up in a self-conscious smile. His cheeks were pink, but he didn’t look away as he bent down and kissed my forehead.
He whispered, “There were many times Towhead ran and hid from life. Like being too scared of what he felt for Spitfire – thinking no one, much less she, would ever love him enough to stay around - and running away to New York with his Army buddies, even though with all of his other obligations he could have worked them out where she was. As the years past, Towhead felt his cowardice of leaving Spitfire like it was a black pit within his heart. So much so, he could hardly talk to her through the years since she still hadn’t come for him, like she had promised so long ago. There was always something else taking precedence in her life, but he still prayed that one day Spitfire would actually love him enough to seek him out.” He cleared his throat. “He also prayed he would have the strength to be the man she needed him to be, if she ever came.”
He hesitated.
His eyes found Cole’s and he asked quietly, “Where there any interesting people you knew like that?”
Cole’s gaze instantly found somewhere else to look. I was still reeling from Brent confession as I watched the ice build tick by tick in Cole’s baby blues. His jaw clenched and his muscles flexed so hard it had to be painful. I didn’t think he was going to say anything - to open up. I thought he was going to freeze completely until he seemed to waver, breath frozen in his bulging chest. His eyes jumped to mine. Then, to Cole’s. And back again.
He cracked. His breath rushed out between his lips, and then he spoke quietly and as if he was lost in a memory, as he played with my pinkie, pulling and bending it gently, “There was this prince that had his life sat out for him on a silver platter. If he looked to the left, he saw his past. A Cold King, as a father, teaching him how to live the life of the privileged. How to treat anyone of his class and even how to shun those not worthy and what would happen if he didn’t follow the King’s dictate. The Queen, as a mother, indulging him and spoiling him rotten so that he didn’t know the difference between getting what he wanted and how he should actually behave.”
Brent lay down next to me, placing his head directly next to mine and watching Cole as he spoke. “If the prince stared straight ahead he could see his present. The perfect Ivy League College he was attending. The perfect girl he was dating. The perfect friends he had that would eventually go on to run the financial world or political one. He also saw the one night that he and his perfect friends had been out drinking, and those same perfect friends that had tried to rape a girl because they had contacts in high places and because they could. The prince did nothing at first, except sit there and watch them torment and frighten her, unsure of what he was feeling.”
He fell silent. We were silent, waiting and watching as he shut his eyes and continued in a whisper, “The perfect friends, the ones who were supposed to be of the prince’s social class, hurt that girl. Something inside the prince snapped. Everything that he had been taught, and groomed for, somehow seemedwrong. He grabbed the girl before they could rape her and took her to the police station. The girl was grateful to the prince, said he was her hero, but the prince was no hero. He knew he would have the Cold King to contend with since he had ratted out his friends names in an effort to make the charges stick with his own name backing the girls. The Cold King had threatened him witheverything possible when he heard, but the Prince wouldn’t back down. Society shunned him now, as he had to so many in the past because they were supposedly lower than him.”
Cole ran his hand through his hair, spiking and mussing it even more. “Now, the prince glanced to the right of the silver platter. It was a blank slate. His future. What the Cold King had been readying him for. The prince knew within time that society would forgive him for sticking up for the lowly girl – they would conveniently call it a youthful mishap. After all, his family was powerful. But, he was no longer sure he wanted anything to do with the society he been prepared for. So the prince ran to the one place he hoped the King couldn’t reach.
“He dropped out of college and joined the Army. The prince learned that there was a whole other world outside of the privileged and wealthy. A world that he wanted to be a part of. So, when his time in the Army was complete, he came home a different man, with different aspirations and obligations, and with true friends, and hoping to make something of himself. To better himself and not be so like the Cold King that he still, unfortunately, acted like, more than not.”
Cole went quiet and lay down with his head next to mine on the free side remaining. All three of us staring at the ceiling, either men pressed on both sides of me. I yanked the cover up to my chin. We were all screwed up. I felt the absolute urge to confess my own sordid past. There was something about being around people just as messed up as you. I wasn’t ready to reveal everything yet, but I needed to give them something.
“The wind,” I croaked. They turned their heads toward me and I cleared my throat and started again. “Once upon a time there was a gentle and timid wind. The wind was easily frightened, and scared, when she rustled the leaves on the trees and the petals on the flowers because once they knew what she was capable of, they became afraid of her. As they should be.”
I bit my lip when it started trembling. Brent rolled toward me and wrapped his arm over my stomach, and when Cole reached for my hand and bumped Cole’s arm, they didn’t say anything biting at one another. They just held me.
I continued slowly, held together by their strength, “But the wind had a dark cloud that she reported to with an atmosphere that helped feed the dark cloud’s strength. When the wind grew large from the dark clouds constant pressure and force, the dark cloud decided to use the wind to destroy anything he envied or felt threatened by. The dark cloud had abused the wind for so long that she didn’t at first see when he changed tactics and started training her to become the dark cloud she so hated, but even worse. You see, the dark cloud wanted to fly away to greener pastures with all of his life’s destruction keeping him warm at night. He planned for his prodigy wind make a whole new chaos to cement his plans.”
