An Unknown Place (7 page)

Kellan

My eyes were turned out the window, but I saw nothing. The lady sitting next to me was a chatty Kathy until she realized I couldn’t hold a conversation. The flight attendant came over the loudspeakers and told everyone to turn off all electronic devices. My cell phone was in my hand. I looked down at it and couldn’t bring myself to turn it off. The second I powered it off I’d lose touch with my parents and my ability to know what was going on with my brother. I stared at it like it was my life raft and I was a passenger on the Titanic. I couldn’t let it go. A flight attendant finally spotted me and came to my row.

“Sir, you’re going to have to turn off your cell phone.”

“Can you do it for me?”

She looked at me like I’d lost my mind and, in that moment, I had. I was not going to turn my phone off. She took the phone carefully from my hand and turned it off.

“Do you want me to hang on to it for the duration of the flight?” She had sympathy plastered all over her face and I could tell I must’ve looked lost. I nodded.

If I had the phone I would turn it back on. I was always a self aware person. Flight be damned, I needed to know what was going on. I decided to get a direct flight into New York, going into JFK. It was the only one with a direct flight. I spent $1,673 on the last minute red-eye flight, but I didn’t blink. The money didn’t even register with me.

I needed to get to my brother and, no matter the cost, I needed to get to him as quickly as possible. I had also called for a car to pick me up at the airport. I had even given the car service my arrival time as thirty minutes early so I would be sure they were ready to roll when I got there. Luckily, I only had a carry on.

My palms were sweating and I leaned my head back, trying to calm myself down. I was in a tail spin. A panic attack was emerging. I felt the urge to scream creeping up, so I did what I always did when I thought I was going to lose it: I thought of something that made me happy.

For the longest time, the images that made me happy had been of woman on woman action or, if I had an especially hot piece of ass at the time, just me and a woman going at it. But now my brain was filled with Mac. Mac’s eyes, her smile, her easy grace – even when she was falling down – her strength, her curves, her voice, everything about her was amazing. I hadn’t even kissed her yet and I was obsessed. I wondered what would happen when I got my mouth on her. Or how bad I would get if she let me touch her body…
really
touch it.

I felt my pants get tight,
and shifted to try and hide it. I was calmer, but I had a hard on. I was not a small guy so I couldn’t just turn myself and try for sleep. I untucked the button up shirt I had changed into before I got on the plane and cover up my growing want for Mac. If only covering my feelings was that easy.

With Mac, at least toward the end, I had found it difficult to disguise how she made me feel. She frustrated the shit out of me sometimes, but I didn’t blame her for that now that I knew what had happened to her.

I really hadn’t wanted to leave her place, but I had no choice. I knew if I’d stayed the hurt I felt when she called me
just
her boss would’ve festered and grown. She was frustrating, and complicated and a pain in the ass, as well as beautiful, kind-hearted, and honest. I had feelings for her, there was no doubt about it. I didn’t want to have to fire her to get her to date me – but if desperate times called for desperate measures, I would start funneling the money to Lynn so she would pay her. I wouldn’t be her boss anymore, and Mac would never know it was me if all her pay was coming from Lynn.

But I couldn’t lie to Mac, plain and simple. Even the thought of it repelled me.

I closed my eyes, trying to block out the world. I couldn’t do anything while sitting on a plane, so I might as well try and get some sleep.

Mac

I held the phone to my ear and listened as it rang. I was hoping my boss at the airport would pick up sooner rather than later.

“Sam.”

It’s how he always answered his phone. He
didn’t
put up with people’s bullshit easily
so he tried not to feed any to others. It was his motto, one that I could respect. He had been the one who hired me on at the airport. Now I had to give him the bad news. He was not going to be happy.

“Sam, it’s Mac.”

“I don’t like the way this sounds. Lay it on me. You’re going to be out for a couple weeks aren’t you?”

Sometimes I forgot how negative he could be. But I guess he wasn’t completely wrong either.

“Actually, I got offered a job, and I’m putting in my two weeks notice.” I waited a beat. I really wanted to tell him that I wouldn’t be in for two weeks either, so like a band aid, I pulled it off. “And, since I’ve never taken any time off, I’m going to take it. Today’ll be my last day.”

“How much are they paying you?”

“More than you can.”

“Shit.”

I felt horrible.

“I’m sorry Sam. It’s nothing personal, the job there’s great – but, I can’t pass this up.”

“Damn.” There was a pregnant pause. “Alright, I’ll meet you in the employee break room after your shift.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

I went into my bedroom and started digging through my outfits for the appropriate uniform since I’d been traded to another bar for my shift. Not my usual bar, but still a good one for tips. I took a quick shower and got dressed. I pulled my hair to the side and touched my neck.

I couldn’t get the feeling of Kellan off my skin. No matter how hard I tried. Kellan haunted my dreams and thoughts. It wasn’t a bad thing. He had awakened something in me that I thought was dead: my heart. I couldn’t stop touching the spot on my neck he’d kissed. He had shown me that not everything should be taken at face value. Given, I knew that better than anyone. Cam had told me the same thing…repetitively. But it took a man with a beautiful face and a not so obvious beautiful heart to show me.

I missed him. I hoped he was okay. I wanted to check on him, I wanted to know my friend was surviving. I grabbed my phone.

I hadn’t talked to him since the minute he ran out, leaving me standing in my living room, bereft of his touch and my front door wide open. It was my own fault, but I still felt it. That missing beat in my life, a beat Kellan had brought to my doorstep.

I typed a text to Kellan before I over thought it.

I hope everything is okay, call me when you can.

I know I was being Ms. Mixed Signals but I couldn’t help it. I needed to hear his voice and hear that cocky attitude and honesty.

Kellan

The plane jolted me awake. I’m glad I got the chance for a little shut-eye. The second the plane was down, the flight attendant brought me my phone. In my grogginess I realized how beautiful she was. Tall and slender with dark features and dark brown eyes. I wondered what she looked like under that uniform. She had that same empathetic look on her face as before, and that’s all it took to have everything flood back to me – my brother, my family, my business, Mac. I grabbed my phone and turned it on. The attendant went back up to the front and announced we had landed in New York, welcome, blah, blah, blah.

There were three texts from my mom.

Running a high fever we can’t get down.

Has an inflamed intestine, going into surgery.

Tino’s out of surgery. Did well
.

I was glad he had pulled through the surgery. I still felt tense, but at least I was in New York now – it took the edge off. It would only be a thirty minute drive since there shouldn’t be much traffic to Columbia University Medical Center. And the fact that it was now in the early morning hours.

I checked my phone and found a text from Jake.

I gotchu. Call me when you can.

As uptight as he was, he had a way of knowing when I just needed him to be supportive. I must’ve given him that impression with the curt text I had sent him the night before telling him what I was doing and that he would just have to handle things until I got home.

I looked through the rest of my texts. I found one from the woman who’d drugged me which I deleted without opening. The last text was from Mac. I read it three times. She asked me to call her. First she tells me that she has to think of me as her boss, now she is acting like the concerned girlfriend.

I wasn’t going to complain, since this is what I was shooting for, at least I thought I was. I knew she was inexperienced. I was willing to put in the time, but it would have to wait until after I got back to Maryland. I shot Jake a text telling him I’d call him later, and one to Mac.

Sorry I left like that. I’ll explain later.

I found the car I’d ordered via the guy holding a sign that said Mr. Freemont. I normally would’ve been annoyed at seeing my name on a sign, as good as it being written across my face. But I was too tired and distracted to care.

“Let’s go.”

The guy jumped into action, taking my bag and throwing it in the trunk. He was behind the wheel of the car before I had the chance to settle in the back seat. I liked him.

“Where to, Sir?”

“Columbia Medical.”

Without another word we were on the highway.

Mac

I was closing the register down when I heard a voice behind me.

“I need your keys Mac.” It was Sam and he sounded exhausted.

I pulled the keys from my pocket and handed them over. I knew from past employees that all my clearance, badges and codes would be deactivated once I left this evening. I didn’t need to do anything else.

“Sorry again, Sam.”

“I gotcha kid. No worries.”

Sam was in his mid-forties, graying early and always had baggage under his eyes.

“Take care of yourself,” I said to him.

“You too.”

We left it at that, and I felt good about the journey I was about to depart on. Sam turned, leaving me to close up the bar for the last time. I would miss this place, but it was better this way. I needed this.

I finished with the register and locked the safe up with the money inside. I came back out to the main room to get my purse and turn the lights off. When someone threw themselves up against the metal gate, my pulse rocketed. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t get my feet to move.

It was a man at the gate, shaking it vigorously. I was looking at him, but I couldn’t tell you what he looked like. I was sweating and felt like a feather could knock me over. I closed my eyes and, as I had done a thousand times, I saw the face of the man who raped me. I was better than this.

I opened my eyes and saw he was still standing there, smiling at me. I finally found my voice.

“I’m calling security! Get out of here asshole!”

The guy jumped back like I had stuck him with a hot poker and took off quickly down the terminal. I grabbed my purse and went into the kitchen. I was breathing heavily and panicking.

I knew the guy on the other side of the gate couldn’t get to me. I knew he was probably drunk and just messing around. Logically, I knew those things but it didn’t mean I wasn’t totally freaked out by the incident. I grabbed my phone from my purse and saw I had a text from Kellan. My knee jerk reaction was to call him.

When had that happened? When had he become my knee jerk reaction? My knee jerk reaction used to be to go home as quickly as possible, engage all the locks on my door and curl into a ball for several hours. Then I found Lynn, and she became my knee jerk. I would call her and she would tell me to calm down and talk me off the proverbial ledge. Now I wanted to talk to Kellan. Look at me, growing out of my shell. Who knew?

And then I noticed I had calmed down without anyone needing to comfort me. I had distracted myself long enough to not let my fear guide me or become overly upset. I was still unsettled but not to the point that I couldn’t walk out of the airport with my head up, instead of on a swivel. So I did.

I got in my car and looked up at the airport that had been my haven when I felt I didn’t have one. I knew that when one door closed another one opened, but when I had found this position it had felt like a wave of relief had come with that door opening. Now I was looking forward to my next step.

As I plugged my phone into the charger in my car, I saw a text from Kellan. As I read it, I felt a new emotion bloom in my chest – hope. I knew how dangerous hope could be, but I was powerless to stop it.

Kellan

“You need to come back. Your family needs you, K.”

I hadn’t heard that nickname in thirteen years and it still pissed me off. My
Uncle
Gin (yes like the booze) was sitting next to me in the waiting room trying to fill my head with guilt, but was only filling me with anger. I still hadn’t seen my parents or my brother. So Gin, my dad’s right hand man, blabbering on and on about how my family needed me, wasn’t helping.

“Gin,” I said, turning toward him finally, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to do it for you.”

I had never spoken to Gin like that, but he also hadn’t seen me grow into the thirty one year old man I was. He was taken aback, I could tell, but I couldn’t muster the energy it took to care. I faced toward the doors that led to my brother’s room again, waiting for someone I cared about to walk through them.

Then as if these past few days couldn’t get any weirder, I felt Gin shaking beside me. I glanced over at him and found him laughing. Red in the face, so damn funny you’re laughing silently, shaking with laughter. Now I was taken aback. I just ignored him and let him keep on shaking.

The shaking finally stopped and he slapped me on the back with a howl.

“And
that
is why we need you back.”

“I have a life, I don’t want yours.”

I clasped my hands over my eyes and sat quietly, not caring if Gin left or not. I just wanted to see my brother. I couldn’t figure out how long I sat there for, but I heard the doors to the waiting room squeak open and found my mom and dad walking through them. They had both gotten older, obviously.

My dad had more grey, but he was still the tall strong man he had been when I’d left. I looked just like him. My mom was still a knock-out. She had tears in her eyes as she ran to me. I opened my arms, not needing to think about it, and picked her up. She was light. She squeezed me tightly and I could feel her tears falling on my shoulder.

“Kellan, my baby, my boy…” She kept whispering it over and over again,
like it was a prayer, a mantra
.

My dad stood off to the side. When I finally put my mother down, he extended his hand. He looked awkward. He didn’t know what to do with this version of me. When I had left home I was an angry teen, skinny and clueless. I had filled out in the years since, working out on a daily basis. It had been my best medicine over the years. That and women.

I stepped into my dad’s space and pulled him in for a hug. I couldn’t help it, I was feeling emotional and I hadn’t seen them in over a decade.

“Hey kid.”

“Hey Pop.”

I patted his back and stepped away; shocked again to find tears in my dad’s eyes.

“Is Tino alright?” I asked, needing an answer to the question I had asked myself a hundred times.

“He’s okay. They fixed him up.”

My father was still the vague man he had been when I left. I wondered if all the years of dodging questions and giving as short of an answer as possible had bled out into every aspect of his life. I think it had. I just nodded. I’d talk to the doctors and Antonio.

My mom clasped my hand. I squeezed it and let go.

“I’m going back to see him.”

It wasn’t a question. I had to see my little brother. I walked through the doors trying to mentally prepare myself for what I was about to see. I found his room and sat down in the chair next to his bed.

As I studied my brother’s face, there were urgent voices coming over the loud speakers. Maybe I had died in Vegas and I was living out my own personal hell.

My brother’s stomach was wrapped in bandages and his eyes closed. He had peace written all over him, but I knew better. His face was sunken with stress and sleep deprivation. It could’ve been that all his baby fat and his round face had thinned out, but, again, I knew better.

He still looked just like our Ma. But he was a man. There was no missing his broad shoulders or the worry lines around his eyes. He was only twenty seven. I was shocked to find so many of those lines. I guess I shouldn’t have been if he was living the life that my father had given him. Stress was a given.

I shouldn’t have just left my brother to that life, to those inevitable worry lines. I should’ve insisted he come with me when he turned eighteen. I should’ve shown him a life outside the one he knew.

I had tried to get him to live with me on his eighteenth birthday. I could still remember the conversation like it happened yesterday…

“Happy Birthday,” I’d said.

“Right, thanks.”

“What’re your plans?”

“Party with my boys.”

“Come stay with me.”

I had figured if I got him to stay with me, he might want to stay permanently.

“I promised Ma I’d be here for dinner.”

“I’m talking long term, Antonio.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Come on man, you don’t have to stay there.”

“I can’t do what you did. I can’t abandon my family.”

What was I supposed to say to that? Really, that’s what I’d done. I left and only occasionally looked back, less and less so each passing day.

“My offer stands. Always.”

“As does my decline.”

He hung up on me.

I thought when my brother took on my father’s life, the next visit to a hospital would be a much more gruesome one.

My brother’s heart beating through the little machine was a comfort, keeping record of my brother’s life. I closed my eyes, taking whatever comfort I could get. Before I knew it, I lost myself to unconsciousness – to that beep.

Mac

The phone rang and voicemail picked up. It was the second time I had called him and he hadn’t answered. I was on break in Lynn’s office. She insisted it was my office as well, but it was hard to reconcile.

I pulled open her desk drawer, feeling a desperation I had never felt. I needed to know he was okay. I found the file marked
Freemont Brewing
. It had a ring to it. I looked over the papers quickly, knowing where his email would be,
[email protected]
. I laughed. It was so Kellan.

“Little snoop now?”

I jumped a good foot. Damn Lynn! She was so quiet.

“I need to put a bell on you,” I said.

Lynn studied me, her knowing eyes seeing too much.

“I’m creeping,” I volunteered before she had a chance to squeeze me for information.

“Have you heard from him?”

There was no need to ask who the
him
was.

“No.”

I involuntarily looked down at my phone. It was my own fault. I had told him he was my boss and that’s it. I couldn’t quite explain what my impulsive need to hear from him had stemmed from. I barely knew him. But I knew him better than any other person I’d ever known.

“Can we just pretend that I have a business related question, and that’s why I’m e-mailing him?”

“I don’t know if
I’d
buy that, but you can try.”

She turned without another word and left me to my creeping. I pulled up the e-mail on my smart phone. Now what to say….

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Kellan,

I haven’t heard from you, and needed to check some numbers with you before I order. Should I just call Jake?

-Mac

Why had I sent that to Kellan? I needed to work on the numbers for our brew master and I still hadn’t gotten any idea as to how much we needed to increase. I needed to know what kind of increase we were looking at. Foot traffic? Other micro brews sold in-house? Promotional samples?

It had been a little over a day since Kellan had left. I had expected to hear from him by now. I knew Kellan would probably not want me to contact the co-owner of the brewery, but maybe he did. Maybe he was compartmentalizing me into the employee category I had asked to be put in.

Why had I sent the email? He was my boss, he would let me know what would happen and when.

Why was I pushing him? I couldn’t answer that – not even for myself.