The Gravity of Love (14 page)

In twenty five years, she had no experience
in this sort of thing when it came to Harrison and her.

In this cabin by the lake, further away
from Harrison than she had been in almost five years, she was all on her own.

_______________________________________________________________________

"So...you're not the brightest crayon
in the box, are you?"

Harrison looked over from his place on the bench
to the bloodied man laying in the bed as if this was a vacation.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You weren't too bright
for getting yourself landed in jail especially because you were beating the
hell out of me."

Harrison smirked. "At least I really
beat the hell out of you and you're willing to admit it."

Ephram was caught there, but he stuck to
his point. "What's Molly going to think?"

Oh damn, he hadn't thought of Molly.
"You fought back. You're in this jail right along with me. You share
fault."

"You swung the first punch. I was only
defending myself against the crazed, drunk exbest friend of my
girlfriend."

"Yet you weren't willing enough to
just step away and stop me. Now you'll be late in getting to Molly."

"My face is full of cuts. She'll be
sympathetic when she hears what had delayed me. And she will believe me,
because she's really ticked off at you."

And he had Harrison there too. Damn, two
strikes against him and he was already losing badly before them. This wasn't
going so well.

Josiah was led in to the cell again, two
guards guiding him. "I called Marty she said she's busy tonight but
she'll be picking us up sometime tomorrow."

"What? Why the hell would she say
that?" Ephram said, sitting up in the bottom bunk. "She's not coming
tonight? Seriously?"

"Seriously. She said we need to learn
a lesson and that she's not Molly if she has to bail us out at all, we'll
wait on her until she's ready."

"Why would she say that? I've never
been in jail in my life!"

Harrison and Josiah grinned slyly at each
other. "But we have. Plenty of times."

"So I'm to suffer because of the two
of you?"

Harrison leaned back against the wall in
satisfaction. "Finally, all those cold nights in jail have been productive
for something."

_______________________________________________________________________

It was morning, but Harrison hadn't slept.
He had watched Ephram drift in and out of sleep in his bottom bunk and Josiah
to pass dead out to last the night, but he himself stayed sitting straight up
on the bench, staring in to the dark. He had a lot to think about. Molly,
mainly, but about his life too. Like why the hell he was spending the night
sleeping in a jail cell for the dozenth time. Or why he had allowed himself to
drive Molly out of the town in his anger. His best friend for life had left,
all for him. For his temper and his hate for the man sleeping not far from him.

And, as much as he hated to realize it,
there was only one real way to start making this right. It would make his ego
suffer a hard blow, but it would be worth it, that he was sure of.

In the corner of his eye, he noticed Ephram
stirring, slowly awakening from the morning light.

"What time is it?" He asked
groggily, not yet opening his eyes.

Harrison shrugged. "I don't know. Ask
the warden."

Ephram's eyes flew open, sitting straight
up and looking around. A notsomild profanity slipped out of his mouth,
slightly surprising Harrison. "Tell me I'm not really here. God, I thought
I had a horrid nightmare about this...this is really what happened last
night?"

Harrison nodded. "So says those nice
little cuts decorating your pretty boy face."

His eyes went wide. "Molly!"

"Your cousin is coming to bail us out sometime
today. You won't be too late."

But that didn't ease Ephram at all. He
leaned his back against the wall and let his legs dangle from the side of the
bed. It took a few moments, but he finally asked. "Uh...where's Joe?"

"Right up above you, still sleeping.
He's really not much fun when he's sleeping off a drunken splendor."

"Great...so we're subject to sit in
here doing nothing but stare at grey walls and listen to the man above me
snore."

"Well, that's basically the idea of
being thrown in jail having nothing to do but sober your thoughts up."

"Have you done that already?"

"Yep, I'm done. Did too much already.
So Ephram, seeing this is the perfect opportunity and you can't run away, why
don't you tell me about yourself?"

"You still want to know about me? And
here I was, thinking I was the enemy."

"Well, you know what they say."
Harrison grinned.

"Keep your friends close, your enemies
closer, and Molly fuming mad?"

Harrison nodded, his spirit taking a slight
blow at the last part but not letting it show. "Yeah, that just about
covers it. So...?"

"What do you want to know? You already
know about me being a Head Chef and owning my own restaurant as my profession.
You know I'm dating your best friend and that I drive a Chevy Truck last
year's model, by the way."

"How old are you?" Harrison asked
for starters.

"Same as you. A few days younger, but
that's all."

"Where do you come from?"

"Here. Well, I mean not right here
no one in my family was ever landed in jail before me...should be a great story
at the next reunion...but here, in town. At the hospital where we'll go to pay
our bills for the stitches when we get out of here."

"Favorite sport?"

"Football."

"How many beers do you have when you
go to a bar?"

"Nothing over one, usually not that.
I'm not very fond of bars."

"Yet you have one in your
restaurant." Harrison pointed out.

"For the customers not for me."

Harrison paused, trying to think of more
questions to rail him with, but coming up blank, thanks to his great lack of
sleep over the past few days. "Okay, just start talking about
yourself."

"Fine...I uh...I went to Brown's
University. Majored in a bunch of nothing for about six years. I have a degree
in teaching too, you know. I tried to join the army but they wouldn't let me
for health reasons "

"What's wrong with your health?"
Harrison jumped on.

"A few things. I have asthma. I broke
some bones in my foot when I was twelve from a car accident it crushed my
foot. I can walk fine now, but it never really healed properly.

So I can't go hiking in the mountains or
running for long distances or anything like that. And well, army wouldn't have
that. So I ended up not getting in."

"I'm surprise Molly didn't try to make
you change that story to tell me you did get in to try and impress me."

"I think she knows that you would have
found a way of looking it up. And the fact that you would have called me a
pansy anyway for only going in the army. That's how marines look at the army,
isn't it? Low?"

Harrison shrugged a shoulder. "Not
quite. Just that military could trample army."

"Yeah well, I didn't get in
either."

"What about your family? Where are
they?"

"Well...my parents retired about two
years ago and moved to Florida. My siblings are few and scattered everywhere.
My brother is still in the military yeah, he's why I knew how you thought
about army. And then there's Marty my last relative that lives around here.
It gets pretty lonely without family Marty knows that too. She isn't too
close with her parents, and seeing about her brothers..."

"She basically relies on you for her
family needs." Harrison finished, his eyes going soft.

"Yeah. Kind of like you and Molls,
huh?"

Harrison looked over at him in surprise.
"What do you know about that?"

Ephram gave a little shrug. "She
mentions things here and there. About how she always thought of your mom more
like her mom. And the same with you and her dad. That you both have weird
family problems and through them all, no matter what, you both have been able
to go to each other to rely on I know you've always come through for her and
she prays she has for you. I remember this stuff because she was rattling it
off one late night...I remember I was actually feeling jealous of that. In
truth, I still am. Jealous about your relationship, that is. I never had such a
thing I've never been that close to anyone, that I could actually truly trust
them to be there for me. To trust them with all my problems and my secrets. I
envy you, in all honesty."

Harrison sat in silence for a moment,
hating himself. "You might want to put that on past tense. I don't think
I've been coming through for Molly lately. Or even for a while. I've been
making a mess of things and screwing up her trust."

"Is this where you admit to me that
you've been doing all that stuff because you were jealous of how she was giving
so much attention to me? That I was the new guy?"

Harrison looked at him like he was insane.
"Oh, hell no, Eph. I wouldn't do that if I was on my death bed."

"But it's true." Ephram said in a
soft tone.

Harrison looked straight ahead, staring
hard as if towards his worst enemy. It was true. Both of them knew it, even if
he'd never admit it. He was jealous and hated Ephram because of it.

"What if we worked together?"
Ephram said next to break the silence. "To fiz all this that we screwed up
with Molly. What if we worked together?"

"I think you're having fantasies that
we could be a team, Vinick. I don't share these fantasies."

"So you rather your pride over Molly's
happiness?"

Damn, that hit a sore spot for Harrison. He
laid the back of his head against the cool wall as his thoughts churned. A few
minutes passed until Harrison could get himself to look over at his opponent.

"Where the hell did you get the name
Ephram?"

"Our team..."

"I want to know where the hell my team
member got the weird name like Ephram."

Ephram grinned, knowing he had gotten
Harrison on his side. "My mom loved it. It's from the bible. It
means..."

Harrison looked doubly interested now.
"What? What does it mean?"

"Fruitful." He said with
distaste.

"In which way?"

Ephram shook his head. "I don't really
want to know."

Harrison chuckled in understanding.
"As long as you're not too fruitful with Molly, I don't really want to
know either."

"Oh, well...good then."

Harrison stood up and stretched out his
back muscles. "So? What does this 'team' thing mean for us now?"

"I think it means that we be nice to
each other. Be...friend like. Make Molly happy. Uh...no more bar fights and
winding up in jail. Maybe even helping each other out once in a while?"

Harrison nodded slowly. "It may be
doable. I suppose we can try it out. But I'm not really committing to anything
before we try it. It may not work."

Ephram agreed. "No, it may not. But it
might be nice if it would."

A low groan came from the top bunk. Josiah
seemed to be waking from his drunken splendor. Or, at least, shifting in it.

But he accidently went to turn and his body
started tipping off. Harrison saw this and ran over just as Josiah's body was
falling through the air. Shoving Ephram out of the way,

Harrison caught his old buddy, then dropped
him in the bottom bunk.

Josiah groaned again, but didn't bother to
open his eyes, just curling up and getting comfortable again like nothing
happened. Meanwhile, Ephram shuffled out of that bunk.

"See? That's what we need to do."

"What? Me shove you down and do things
myself? Huh...good idea." Harrison said, slapping him on the back.

"No." Ephram answered, wincing
from Harrison's playful but hard blow. "You're close with Joe. You look
out for him and save him when he needs it. I think we should get like that.

Except, you know, I don't want to be the
guy at the bottom just waiting to be shoved out of the way."

"Then jump in and help next time I
won't stop you. Just don't tread on me."

Ephram knew that was a warning to take any
kind of friendship development slow and not to push anything on him or
interrupt something he was doing. Well, he knew it wouldn't be easy to be
friends with this man, but he'd do it. It was for Molly, after all. And after
he cracked that shell of his, perhaps they could get somewhere.

_______________________________________________________________________

Okay, so now she was just feeling
ridiculous. Two pages filled with pros and cons about Harrison and the length
was more from boredom than just because she wanted to figure things out.

She stared at the strange list. A list
she'd never let anyone see because she was embarrassed just from herself
writing all of it, let alone how red she'd get if anyone actually read it.

The pros outweighed the cons by a million.
She had written every good thing she could think of him from his beautiful
shaggy brown hair that she had loved ever since the first time she saw him, to
how stable he was when she was in shambles. Everything was all written out, and
the pros went on for pages. The cons, however, did not. True, there was more
than a few frustrating, bad temper, stubborn, likes to make fights, only
listens well if it's something not about him he's hearing...it had about half a
page, but they were minor things compared to its opponent's.

But now the question was...would she go
along with her original plan of seeing which list outweighed the other and act
accordingly to that.

Or would she abandon the list and go back
to debating on her emotions that was a never ending battle? Her emotions were
split right down the middle she loved Harrison with everything in her and he
was so much of her life, someone she could never live without. But she was hurt
and angry by him. Frustrated by his confusing actions.

If she thought about it long enough, she
knew what was their problem. It had nothing to do with their relationship
except the fact that when things went wrong, they took it out on each other
because no one else would listen. She was going through hard times as she
worked two jobs, kept hold a boyfriend and upheld her life, trying to save as
much money as possible to try and upgrade her life to something that resembled
what she always wanted.

And she knew, secretly, Harrison was going
through his own hell. He was going to be turning thirty in half a year's time
and he was seeing his life fade away. His fun twenty years that were full of
anything but fun.

He never returned to the adventurer that he
was in his heart. He never got up the nerve to sell his family's work and move
away to do what he wanted. He was thirty and too busy feeling unsettled to
settle anything in life. It was frustrating she knew the feeling well. They
were going through the same thing, reacting similar, but not willing to admit
what they were feeling to share with each other. Instead, they spirted out
their frustrations and poisoned their friendship.