Back to paranoia.
It was certainly one of the reasons I drank and one of the reasons I didn’t spend any time with other people. After spending years fighting for my life in a very real sense, nighttime was often a little nerve-wracking for me. I hadn’t thought of it for some time, since The Oblation, the raft, and the island had all been very small, enclosed areas, where I was all right. However, open areas – which were naturally more difficult to defend – tended to make me nervous. The more people that were around, the more nervous I became until I blew up at someone.
I wondered if there was anything to drink around here. I hadn’t seen anything – not even a fucking wine rack. For better or worse, the one thing I wasn’t going to do was leave Raine long enough to go searching for a bottle of something. Maybe in the morning.
The refrigerator kicked on right about that time. The clock ticking seemed to be louder now as well. It was a clock, wasn’t it? I was pretty sure the timing matched the clock in the kitchen, but I didn’t know for sure and wanted to investigate, but I still wasn’t about to leave Raine’s side. The night kept on like that, my eyes wide open, watchful for any potential threat to the woman underneath me.
Another car passed, its lights shining into the window in the front of the house. My body tensed as the car seemed to slow, then stop, and then move on again. I raised my head, trying to determine if it was still out there, maybe with its lights off now.
“What’s wrong?” Raine’s soft voice snuck out from under me.
“Nothing,” I replied automatically, not wanting to alarm her.
“Have you slept at all?”
“Sure,” I said.
“Liar.”
I sighed and looked down into her eyes. I didn’t know how she always knew, but she always called me out on my bullshit.
“I’m just not used to it all,” I said, using my head to gesture towards the room in general.
“All of what?” she asked.
“The noise,” I told her. “The cars going by, the clock – whatever. Not used to it.”
“Are you nervous?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. There’s no way in hell I would have confirmed that for anyone else, but it was Raine asking.
“You got me, right?”
“I got you,” I assured her. I took a deep breath and closed my heavy eyelids for a moment. “You’re safe.”
“Good,” Raine said. Her hand reached up and pushed my hair off my forehead and behind my ear. I really needed a fucking haircut. John Paul had been right about being able to make a ponytail with it if I were so inclined. It still felt good when she did that, though – when she took hair off my forehead or my face and pushed it behind my ear over and over again.
She kept doing it, her fingertips just barely touching my skin. I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. My eyelids grew heavy as her fingers stroked over my skin. I settled my head against her shoulder, and the next thing I knew, the sneaky thing had put me to sleep.
* * * * *
Twelve noon, local time, was a stupid fucking time to be wandering around in an airport, but here we were anyway. There had to be five fucking billion people in the place. If we had to wait another fucking hour to get on our flight, I was going to slaughter someone, probably someone in a security uniform even though they were supposed to be keeping the crowds away from the long-lost castaways on the final leg of their journey home.
Fucking media.
We walked down the small terminal towards the gate where our plane would start loading in a half hour. The two security dudes who stayed with us blocked off a bit of the area near the windows for the five of us to sit. Nick was talking about the plane we’d be flying in – apparently he used to fly commercial aircraft as well – and Lindsay and Raine were beaming at him like he was some kind of fucking superhero.
I needed to get away – just for a few minutes.
I grumbled something about being back in a second but didn’t say it loud enough for anyone to actually hear me, just enough to claim later that I had. While Raine fiddled around with the small travel bag containing a change of clothes and some toiletries, I slipped down the corridor. When we had walked to our terminal earlier, I had seen the one thing I hadn’t managed to acquire since leaving the island, and I wasn’t going to waste another second without it. I headed towards the airport bar.
Upon entering the room, I inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of leather barstools, beer, and sweet, sticky liquors. Without hesitation, I walked straight up to the bar and ordered three vodka shots – top shelf. The Bartender raised his eyebrows at me and then poured out each – all in good-sized shot glasses and pretty full, which is how they fucking should be – and set them in front of me. I wrapped my fingers around the first glass and picked it up. It was cool against my fingers, and my throat burned in anticipation of the fluid about to fill it.
“Bastian!”
Fuck.
Raine raced into the bar, nearly knocking over a couple of chairs and a table as she rushed past and collided with the edge of the bar right next to me.
“Stop, Bastian – please!”
“Why?” I responded, barely glancing in her direction. I kept my vice-like grip on the glass in my hand. The clear liquid sang out, begging me to taste it.
“You don’t need it.”
“Like hell I don’t.”
“If you drink it, it controls you, Bastian. Don’t let it be like that.”
“Maybe that’s the way it should be,” I said.
“Bastian…don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I barked out a laugh. “Drink? I’m a fucking alcoholic, Raine. I told you that the first fucking day. That hasn’t fucking changed just because I didn’t have any alcohol available. I never stopped wanting it. Never. You know this shit.”
“You don’t have to drink,” Raine said. “I know you are an alcoholic, I know you want it, but you’ve been a sober alcoholic for over two months. Don’t throw that away, Bastian. Don’t you remember what you had to go through just to get dried out?”
“Of course I fucking remember,” I snarled. “That doesn’t change anything. I want a fucking drink, and I’m having one. You’d be better off figuring that shit out now and probably find yourself a decent guy to be with instead.”
“Bastian, you don’t mean that.”
“I’m never going to be right for you, Raine,” I argued. “I’m never going to be the guy who brings you flowers and remembers our fucking anniversary or buys you just the right gift for Christmas. I’ve seen too much shit I’m not going to get over. You deserve better than that, a lot better, and I can’t give it to you because I’m a fucked up drunk.”
I couldn’t look at her. I just couldn’t. Even when I felt her fingertips starting the familiar trail from my temple, around my ear, and down to the end of my chin, I couldn’t turn and face her. It took every last ounce of control I had just to keep my hand from shaking around the shot glass.
“I don’t want anyone but you.” Raine’s voice climbed up in pitch, and I could hear the tears in her tone. “You once told me that you would fight any motherfucker who tried to take me from you. Well, there’s someone trying to take me from you right now, and he’s in that glass in front of you. You told me you would fight, Bastian. Did you mean it?”
The liquid sloshed in the glass with the vibrations of my fingers, and I couldn’t make it stop.
“How many times have you berated yourself for hitting me?” Raine suddenly asked, her fingers trailing down across my shoulder and eventually wrapping around my forearm. My throat tightened, and my heart clenched. She had told me to stop bringing it up, and for the most part I had. It didn’t keep me from thinking about it, especially when I thought about how much better she could do without me. I was a little pissed she was using it against me now after all the times I had tried to use it against myself. It didn’t make any fucking sense, but that didn’t stop me from feeling pissed about it.
“I told you
to stop talking about it because it didn’t matter anymore,” Raine said. “You aren’t that person anymore, Bastian. I meant that. I wouldn’t be with someone like that. I couldn’t be with someone who I thought would hit me again.”
“I love you,” Raine said softly, her hand still on my arm, “but when you drink, you become someone else. I can’t be with that man, Bastian. I won’t be. If this is what you really want…well, then I’m going to go now.”
I felt her hand drop, and I heard her footsteps as she walked away from me and towards the exit.
I closed my eyes, and for a moment I felt as if my whole life literally flashed in front of me. So fucking cliché, but that’s what happened. Everything I could remember – all the times I had been tossed out, unwanted, unloved…and I had moved on anyway. I remembered every time I hit someone out of anger, frustration, hatred – either of myself or the person I hit – it didn’t matter. I remembered all of it. I remembered that fucker in the group home and the look on his face when he’d finished with Theresa – the same look he had when I was charged with assault. I remembered the street fights, and I remembered the first time I killed someone in a tournament. Then I remembered the second time. And the third. I remembered all of them. I remembered the gut-wrenching feeling when I realized Jillian was gone with my child. I remembered opening up a bottle of Jack afterwards and downing the whole fucking thing in a night. I had done the same the next night. And the next.
I remembered everything Landon had said to me.
If you aren’t up for this, just say the word and I’ll end you right now.
You have no idea what you could do, and your self-pitying nature means you’ll probably never actualize any of it beyond staying alive in the tournaments.
You don’t have to live like that, Bastian, but if anything’s ever going to change, you’re going to have to let someone inside again someday.
Get up, you son-of-a-bitch! You aren’t hurt that bad! Fucking GET UP!
I remembered the sixteen people who were herded together and tortured to death for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remembered the first nightmare and the trial. I remembered looking for a bottle of Jack and only finding vodka in the cabinet. It knocked me out cold for the whole night. I remembered everything that had happened. I remembered all the reasons I took to the bottle. I drank to forget it all. I drank to make it all go away. I drank because I thought I was a worthless piece of shit – unwanted, unneeded, and unloved.
With Raine, I felt different.
Raine wanted me. Raine needed me. Raine loved me. She loved me.
I opened my eyes and saw first the glass of clear, unassuming liquid posed right before my lips. Then I saw the bartender over the rim, looking at me quizzically and waiting for me to make a move. His eyes flickered over towards the door where he could probably still see Raine on her way out. On her way out of the bar, away from me and out of my life.
I wasn’t a strong person. I was muscular, and I knew a lot of shit about how to survive, but when you got right down to it, I was weak. I was weak, and on some level, I drank because I wanted to die and was too fucking pig-headed to just end myself. I was going to let the alcohol do it for me. That had always been in the back of my mind. Eventually – either through the violence that ensued, the stupidity that followed, liver failure or a fucking overdose – the drink would kill me. I had wanted to die.
Was I different now? Did Raine make me different? With her I had something I had kept at bay for so long, too afraid of being left again to let anyone get close enough to hurt me. With Raine I had another chance – a chance at love, and even more so – a chance at life. With her I could have a real life, without the constant threat of pain. I’d lived through a lot of shit. I’d survived abandonment, betrayal, endless violence, and the elements, but could I survive Raine? Could I live with her, in her world like a regular person? Was I strong enough to do that?
No, I wasn’t. I was fucking weak.
She deserved better, and this would be a quick and easy way to end it all.
My fingers tightened reflexively around the shot glass, and my arm moved ever so slightly closer to my mouth. I wanted it. I wanted it so fucking bad. It would take less than a second to drink it, and then I could forget everything again. I could go back to the way it was before I had even met her.
I stared at the shot glass, precariously balanced between my fingers with the clear liquid sloshing slightly from one side to the other, a mere half inch from my lips. Vodka – sweet, evil vodka.
Just one.
My head turned, and I looked over my shoulder at Raine’s retreating form. My gut lurched, my jaw clenched, and shooting pain radiated from the center of my chest. I looked back at the glass in my shaking fingers, and slowly lowered it back onto the surface of the bar. When I looked at it, there was want. There was need. There was a shitload of fucking desire. I was drawn to it as if it was calling my name sweetly and offering to suck my dick. I fucking wanted it bad. It felt like I needed it more than any other substance in the world.
But I could live without it.
There was something – someone – I couldn’t live without, though, and she was walking away.
“‘If you call forth what is in you, it will save you. If you do not call forth what is in you, it will destroy you,’” I whispered aloud. I pushed the glass away with my fingertips, rose off of the bar stool, and turned around to follow her.
I didn’t want to drink.
I wanted to live.
I guess I was going to survive Raine after all.
~~The End~~
Epilogue – Gaze
Landon
Over the rim of my champagne flute, I watched my former student tap his fingers against the table where he sat and glanced rapidly between the bar a few feet away on his right and the slender woman standing a few feet away on his left. She was with a large group of people, including a local reporter with matching photographer, and seemed to blush with every other question posed to her. My student looked down at the table and shook his head a little, like the motion could purge the thoughts from his head. There was a glass between his hands obviously containing water.
Glancing at the woman, I wondered how much she knew. Would he have told her about his past? If so, how much had he revealed? If she knew too much, well, that was going to be a problem. It was one thing to send him off on his own with John Paul to watch over him, but something completely different for him to rejoin society with a woman on his arm. Just having him out of the bottle was a risk, and he was clearly sober.
I took a half step backwards, further concealing myself behind a large ficus tree, right before he looked up. His eyes took in the room – automatically sizing up every individual as a potential threat. He was out of practice, no doubt, since this was the first time he had looked at anyone other than the woman and the bartender in seven minutes. I’d taught him better than that. The entire populace of the party could have switched in that amount of time. He’d become complacent and lazy, obviously. No wonder he ended up on a barely adequate raft instead of one of the life boats with radio equipment. It was a wonder he didn’t end up dead on the open sea. No, that wasn’t true. That part didn’t surprise me at all – he was always resourceful, and when he put some actual effort into something, he was nearly unstoppable.
What I found most surprising was his continued will to live. I wouldn’t have expected him to give up – he never gave up – but finding the motivation to endure beyond the norm? That was most unexpected, and now that I had seen the two of them in the same room, I understood the true reason. How in the world did the daughter of Henry Gayle end up on his schooner? The odds were just too astronomical. I didn’t believe in coincidences – not on that kind of scale. This one approximated divine intervention. I didn’t believe in that, either.
He never let the woman far from his sight. That much was obvious as well. He kept very close tabs on her and was clearly agitated when yet another male approache
d her. I wondered why he wasn’t standing with her while she was interrogated by the press and considered the possibility he had already confronted one or two of them before my arrival and had subsequently been banished to the table on his own. I wouldn’t have been shocked to hear he had had an altercation with the press. His temper was both his greatest asset and greatest vice. The idea of the woman sending him into a “time-out” for his tantrum, though – that was intriguing. I found it both out of character and mildly amusing that he would allow himself to be instructed to behave in such a way. I also had to admit I was a little shocked that he would even allow another woman into his life at all, considering the disastrous end to his last relationship.
He shoved himself out of his seat suddenly and reached for the pocket inside his jacket. I tensed reflexively, my hand reaching inside my own coat pocket. Had he spotted me? I let out my held breath when I realized he was only bringing out a pack of cigarettes. His eyes swiveled over and met the woman’s briefly, their non-verbal exchange speaking volumes to me. He lit the cigarette while still in the smoke-free building, long before he actually reached the entrance to the outdoor smoking area.
Obviously, we were going to have to have a little talk, as much as I hated to do it. I had hoped life on the sea would be enough to take him to some reasonably natural end, but it was not to be. I only hoped this woman he had chosen was going to be up for what was to come.
I guess I wasn’t completely retired after all.
Quoted Poetry Credits:
Paradise Lost – John Milton
Weeds – Lord Byron
Desire - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Shall I compare thee to a summers day? – William Shakespeare
Forgiveness – George Roemisch
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