Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(83)
“Look, brah,” Koa said, nodding toward the studio building. “There’s Aly and…oh…”
It was that “oh” and the quick stop my brother made that had my grip loosening so that my phone slipped out of my hand and onto the pavement at my feet.
“I thought you fixed this,” Koa said, grabbing my phone off the ground before he plopped it into my jacket pocket.
The street was crowded with fall shoppers and tourists hurrying around the city grabbing everything pumpkin spiced in the shops and delis around us. Across the street Aly stood leaning against the building, her face down, bag slung over her shoulder with Ethan in front of her, holding her hand, caging her with his arm as he rested a palm against the building's facade.
“Kunāne. It’s Aly,” Mack said, seeming to not notice how close Ethan stood to Aly, how her face was flushed, cheeks pink as though she was winded maybe from the exertion of her dance, maybe from…other things that made me want to gouge my eyes out.
“Makana, you and Koa go grab a hot chocolate.” I nodded toward the coffee shop at my right, pulling out a twenty to hand it over to my little sister. Mack didn’t argue and I felt her staring at me, saw in my peripheral the shift of her head as she watched me, then turned toward Aly.
“Do you want any…” But Mack didn’t need an answer. My head shake was good enough.
“Stay there until I come get you,” I told them, looking away from the cozy scene across the street to see my siblings safely inside the coffee shop.
They hadn’t seen me, Ethan and Aly. They hadn’t seen anything but each other, it seemed, faces close together, expressions unmarked by any emotion I could make out. Ethan stood too close to Aly, and she let him. As I approached, my heart sped up, the awareness of the world moving on around me and that big, big question of "why?" moving over and over in my head, shouting in my ears the closer I came to them, screaming in my head when Ethan took Aly’s face between his hands and kissed her. Passionately. Deeply.
Right in front of me.
She didn’t immediately stop him, only pushing him away after seven of the longest seconds of my life. They broke apart and Ethan, taking her by the hand, escorted Aly into the building. They still hadn’t seen me.
I was a lineman. I could defend myself and anyone else who came along from another burly man hurdling across time and space with the intent of mayhem. But this was not a battle on the gridiron. This was not rush/pass play that kept me on my toes. This was Aly. This was my life and I had the sick, sinking feeling that once again both were slipping away from me. Where had it all gone wrong?
It was all I could do to keep upright, to turn away from that building, trying my hardest to keep last night from my mind, and the countless nights before then. She’d been mine, like a second skin. Aly had always been the scar I’d gotten at eighteen, something I earned, something I fought like hell to keep marked on my skin. I’d wanted her and always would. Was that the ache my parents had endured for sixteen long years? That feeling that you’d lost something vital—not a finger that you could manage to be without over time and with patience; not like a limb that you could replace with something else to keep you steady. Worse than that: like walking around without your heart. Had my parents really done that for so long? As I stepped away from the building I realized that’s what this was to me—losing Aly was like losing myself completely. I knew that I simply couldn't survive without her. It went beyond wanting her. I needed her. Needed her like I needed life itself.
Two steps, three more and I’d already gained new insight to what all those long, lonely years had been for my mother. How many times had I heard that prayer she made? How often had I wondered when the day would come that those prayers stopped? They never had and now, with the sting of that so very public kiss like a splinter under my nails, I realized I needed to learn a few prayers of my own.
But it was no use. They’d all be the same: Please bring Aly back to me.
I had no shame. Right there, with the bustle of New Orleans life all around me, I stopped in the middle of the street, lowered my head until all I could see was my feet, and I prayed. To be honest, it felt funny mumbling to myself, like a wish I wasn’t sure would come true, but I was desperate to try anything, anything, that would bring Aly back to me. To let me have one more chance for me to show her just how important she was to me, and how much I needed her by my side.
Maybe I stood there seconds. Maybe it was minutes or hours and the sting of her leaving had created some crazy rift in my mind, some weird lapse that kept me from understanding that I hadn’t moved, that I was standing there repeating the same prayer over and over, a dozen, a hundred times, a thousand times. Please bring Aly back to me.
I’d never had much faith. I knew God watched over me, or I supposed He did. Sometimes I thought He liked to fiddle with my life just for shits and giggles. But right then, in the middle of that street in the heart of the bustling city, with all the noise around me, I believed in Him. I believed like a child. I believed in miracles.
And right then, He answered my prayer.
The voice came to me like a whisper at first, and then it got louder, took shape. It sounded sweet and comforting and just like what I imagined salvation must sound like, and when I looked up, that sweet, sultry voice spoke my name.
“Ransom?” Aly said, smiling up at me. How could she smile at me like that? “Where are Mack and Koa?” She looked across me, slightly confused, as though she expected them to be trailing behind me on the sidewalk. Aly came closer, adjusting the buttons on her jacket and the thin dance skirt that fit loosely over her tights. “I’m starving. Where do you…” She stopped speaking suddenly when she spotted the moisture collected in my lashes. “Shoushou…" she said, with concern and love in her voice, as she reached up to brush the tears away, "What is it?”