Falling (Fading Series)

  I listen to the three of them go back and forth and their connection seems strong with one another. I know that Mark just recently started dating Jase, so to see them interact like this, like they’ve known each other for years, makes me realize just how alone I am. The deepest friendship I feel like I have, outside of my mom and Tori, is Max. But it’s nothing like these people have. So I sit here, drink my beer, and enjoy the company.

  Before I call it a night, I catch Candace quietly sneaking off to go to bed in Jase’s room. My curiosity grows as to why she’s staying here, but I don’t ask. Mark tells me to meet him at his place in the morning to pack up for our hike as I head out.

  After about three hours of hiking, we start making our way down Tolmie Peak. It’s been raining for the better part of the hike and the four of us are cold and drenched, and when I hear, “Crap!” I look back to see that Candace has fallen in the mud.

  Jase and Mark are further down the trail, so I go back and hold out my hands for her to grab on to, pulling her out of the mud.

  “You’re a complete mess,” I tease.

  “Yeah, I know,” she says, almost unfazed that she’s covered in mud.

  She keeps her hold on my hand, and I like it, as we make our way down to the bottom. Once there, she lets go as we continue our trek back to the car. Jase and Mark are several steps in front of us, lost in their own conversation, and it’s not long before Candace starts talking. She seems more comfortable around me, but we did just spend most of the last three hours hiking without the company of Jase and Mark. They’ve been keeping their distance from us.

  “So, how did you come about owning a bar?” she asks me.

  “Just kind of fell into it. When I graduated college, the economy was starting to decline, and I couldn’t find a job. So, when I found out that the previous owner of that bar was about to shut the place down, I worked out a deal with him and was able to do a slow buyout.”

  “You went to U-Dub?”

  “Yeah, I graduated back in 2007.”

  “So, that makes you . . .?” she pries.

  Laughing at her, I answer, “Twenty-eight.”

  “What did you study?” she continues, and I like that. For once, I’m not having to struggle to get her to talk.

  “Business Finance. So, it wasn’t too far out of reach that I would come to own my own business.”

  “You enjoy it?”

  “I do. When I did the buyout, I changed the whole place out and created a new vibe for it. It wasn’t before long that the business was taking off quicker than I expected. At this point, the staff pretty much runs the place, and I have a trustworthy manager, so my schedule is very flexible.”

  “Sounds like the perfect job.”

  “You ever been there?” I question.

  “No. I don’t really ever go out.” She smiles and adds, “I’m sort of a workaholic. Jase is always nagging me about that.”

  “Well, you should stop by sometime.”

  “Yeah. Maybe,” she says, but I know she doesn’t mean it.

  Laughing, I joke, “You’re full of shit, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. Maybe,” she repeats as she laughs with me. Her smile is perfect and that shallow dimple makes it hard to not lean over and kiss her, but this girl has walls—unbreakable ones—that I’m determined to start chipping away at.

  Getting back to Mark’s house, we each take our time showering and cleaning up.

  Mark and I tune in to the Washington vs. Colorado football game. Mark throws a couple of logs onto the fire, and when I pull out my cell to order some pizzas, I see Candace walking through the room and straight into the kitchen. I’m distracted when the line is answered and I’m putting in the order.

  “What kind of pizza do you want, Candace?” I holler into the kitchen.

  “I don’t care. I’ll eat anything at this point,” she tells me as I order the pizza.

  She walks back into the room carrying a bottle of wine to share with Mark. Those two have proven to be the wine drinkers of the group while Jase and I watch the game and toss back a couple beers, but apparently I haven’t kept that good a count ‘cause Jase has definitely had more than a couple when he starts screaming at the penalty that was just called.

  We all laugh at him when he runs into the kitchen to answer Candace’s phone that starts to go off.

  He walks back in, total mood shift, mouthing ‘I’m sorry’ as he hands Candace the phone.

  “Who is it?” she asks quietly.

  “Your mother.”

  She looks irritated when she heads outside to the patio to take the call.

  “What’s that all about?” I ask Jase.

  “Her parents are assholes to her,” he blurts out and Mark butts in, almost scolding when he calls his name, “Jase.”

  He looks to Mark and says, “What? They are. They treat her like shit and she doesn’t deserve it.”

  Getting up from the couch, I head into the other room where I watch her through the glass French doors. I can hear her yelling, “Of course this is my fault, right? You are unbelievable, Mother!”

  “It’s not my fault. I swear.”

  I watch my father’s glare as he spits out, “It’s never your fault, you piece of shit,” before grabbing the broom and whacking the wooden handle into my back. I hear the wood splinter and crack when it slaps across my skin, sending shards of heated pain up my spine.

  “Get your ass up and walk to school. Don’t ask me to drive you again. You miss the bus, you walk.”

  Coming out of my thoughts, I fight the urge to storm out there and take the phone from her so she doesn’t have to listen to whatever her mother is saying to her that’s making her so upset. Instead, I stand here and watch her. When she hangs up and shoves the phone in her pocket, she sits back in one of the chairs and stares up into the sky. She’s sad. And it’s not just tonight. Underneath the few conversations that we’ve had, I can see it buried in her. On the drive to Mount Rainier this morning, she must have had a nightmare or something when she fell asleep in the back seat of the car while Mark and I were up front. I didn’t want to give it too much attention because I didn’t want to embarrass her, but she was scared. She was in Jase’s arms in a matter of seconds, and now, watching her staring into the blackness, I feel there’s more to her than she lets on.

  When she stands and turns, she catches me watching her, but I don’t even care. I open the door and ask, “You okay?” because I really need to know.

  But when she blows it off and says with mock humor, “My mother’s lost her mind, that’s all,” I see her walls.

  “Wanna talk about it?” I keep on, trying to chip as she walks past me.

  Turning to face me, she casually says, “Nothing to really talk about.”

  I want to touch her, just brush her cheek, something, but I don’t. Being with her today, talking with her, laughing with her—she’s different. Sweet, funny, athletic, and soft. God, she’s soft. But it’s more than that; she has depth to her. A depth I’ve never seen with the girls I’ve been with. Not that I’ve been with them in a way to even notice if they did, but they all seemed so shallow. Even though she doesn’t mean to let on, I can tell there’s a lot going on under her exterior, and I feel this eagerness to explore.

  When she walks back to Jase and lies down with her head in his lap, he asks, “What did she want?”

  “She wanted to know when I would be home for Thanksgiving.”

  “When are you going to leave?” Mark asks.

  “I told her I would be there Wednesday night. I’ll probably leave Saturday morning,” she answers as I walk across the room and take a seat on the stoop of the fireplace.

  “When are you and Mark heading out?” she questions Jase.

  “Our flight leaves around noon on Tuesday,” he tells her.

  “When do you guys get back?”

  “Late Sunday afternoon.”

  “What about you?” she asks me as she rolls onto her side to look at me.


  “I’m going to go spend a few days with my family down in Cannon Beach in Oregon. My aunts and uncles always come to my mother’s house with my cousins for a big dinner.”

  “Will you be there for the weekend?”

  “Nah,” I tell her. “I’ll come back home that night. My mom and her sisters spend the day plotting for Black Friday, so I always come back home and just lay low.”

  “Sounds like you have a big family,” Jase says.

  “Yeah, man, three cousins and between them they have seven little kids. I love them, but shit they’re loud,” I say as I laugh.

  “Must be nice though. I’m an only child with no cousins. Small family,” she tells me.

  “So, it’s just you and your parents?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “They live very far?” I ask her.

  “No. They still live in Shoreline where I grew up.”

  Knowing that Jase is going home with Mark to Ohio for the holiday, I offer, “Well, I’ll be around.”

  When I see a hint of a smile, I feel like maybe I’ve finally made a nick in her exterior.

  When I pull into my mom’s driveway, I see my family’s cars littering the street. I’m the last one to get here, and when I walk in, the noise confirms it. I make my way through the foyer to the back of the house, and the scene looks the same as always. The guys are drinking beer and watching football while the kids run around and play. The girls are all in the kitchen with the babies, laughing and gossiping.

  “Sweetheart!” my mom squeals when she notices me walking into the kitchen. She gives me a big hug, and I wrap my arms around her. I feel like a lot has changed since I last saw her, so I take the embrace I feel like I’ve been missing for these past few months.

  We exchange our ‘I love you’s’ and ‘I’ve missed you’s’ before I say hi to everyone else. The kids are running wild, excited to see me, as I hand Tori the keys to my jeep so she can go bring in the bags of gifts that I always have every time I see the kids. I love spoiling them, but it’s also my method of distracting them, and giving them new shit to play with keeps them occupied and out of their parents’ hair for a while.

  When Tori walks back in, arms full of gifts, she mouths ‘thank you,’ desperate for the reprieve. I laugh and follow her into the living room where all the kids are. I sit on the floor with them as they rip through the paper, finding puzzles, toy cars, dolls, and a small bubble machine that is sure to keep these kids entertained by the hour.

  “And where did you plan on the kids playing with that?” my mother gently nags, in only the way a mom can do.

  “In the playroom upstairs.”

  “Can I send you the bill for the carpet cleaning?”

  Rolling my eyes at her, I say, “It’s bubble solution, Mom, not a turd.”

  “What’s a turd, Uncle Ryan?” Madison, my three-year-old niece, asks.

  Smiling at her, I say, “It’s poo poo.”

  “Ewwww!” she squeals through her fit of laughter, and her mom, Katie, scolds me with a simple, “Ryan!”

  I love getting a rise out of my cousins when it comes to their kids. I swear they can take the most harmless thing and make a big issue about it.

  “Katie, they know what poop is. Relax.”

  “Connor, you’re a turd head,” we overhear Madison say, and then I get the look from Katie as I start laughing.

  “Hey, Tor. Can you grab me a beer?” I holler over to her while I sit next to her husband, Trevor.

  “All these men are helpless,” I hear her tell my aunts.

  My mother gathers the older kids and takes them up to the playroom, and when Tori hands me my beer, she sits on the floor between her husband’s legs.

  After taking a long swig, Trevor asks, “So, man, how’s life in Seattle?”

  “Good. Can’t really complain.”

  “I need to get some free time to get up there and run around with you for a few days,” he tells me.

  “You should. I haven’t been going out as much as I used to though.”

  “Oh yeah?” he questions before Tori butts in and adds, “Why’s that? You seeing someone?”

  Shit. This girl sees right through me, so I quickly defend, not wanting to reveal my personal shit to anyone, “What? No. Just been busy and haven’t had much time.”

  Narrowing her eyes at me, she says, “You lie. You told me last week that the new manager is freeing up your time and you haven’t been going into the office as much.”

  “Dude, who is she?” Trevor pipes in with a nudge to my arm.

  “Who’s who?” my mother says as she walks down the stairs.

  God, my family is nosey as hell.

  “Nothing, Mom. They’re just giving me crap.”

  My mom walks into the kitchen to join her sisters.

  “Seriously, Ryan,” Tori pries.

  Looking down at her, I say, “Seriously,” in an attempt to clip her curiosity.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Ethan, Katie’s husband, tells me. “Enjoy the freedom.”

  I give him a nod and take another sip of my beer, while Tori teases him, “That’s nice, Ethan. Does my sister know that you miss your freedom?”

  “Every. Single. Day,” he jokes right back with her, and the three of them start laughing.

  “I can’t lie, I miss it too,” Tori admits through her chuckles.

  I listen to them while they complain, wishing I knew what it felt like to have what they do. Someone to share their bed with, kids, a family to make a home with. I’ve been alone my whole life. I feel like I don’t have a choice. I see what my cousins have, and it seems happy. But what I had, what I know, is a stark difference. It was pure chaos and dysfunction. Misery. I fear I’ll wind up just like my dad. I don’t know what it takes to be functional with anyone. I was never exposed to what a healthy relationship looks like. But when I think about where I’d like to wind up in life, it isn’t alone.

  I head upstairs to my room to grab a coat and then make my way out to the back patio that overlooks Cannon Beach. It’s cold and windy with a faint mist under the grey sky. I love it out here, so I sit and kick my feet up onto the wooden railing in front of me.

  I hear the door open, and when I look back, I watch my mom join me as she sits in the chair next to me.

  “What are you doing out here in the cold?” she asks as she ties her leopard scarf around her neck, and my mind goes to Candace for a second before I answer, “Just thinking.”

  “About?”

  “I don’t know. I guess nothing, really.”

  She shifts to face me, and I don’t even hesitate when I open up to her. “I met someone.”

  “Really?” she says, completely surprised.

  I laugh at her enthusiasm and shake my head. “Don’t get too excited, Mom. I’m not even sure she notices me.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t really know. She’s hard to figure out.”

  “You meet her at the bar?” she questions.

  “No. She isn’t that type of girl,” I say before taking a draw from my beer. “She’s quiet. Reserved. She’s studying dance at U-Dub.” Looking over at my mom, she’s smiling at me. “What?”

  “Nothing. You’ve just never talked about a girl before.”

  “No girl has ever given me a reason to.”

  “So, have the two of you gone out yet?”

  “No. Like I said, she’s hard to read,” I tell her as I look out over the water. “She’s different than the chicks I normally go for.”

  “In what way?”

  I turn back to my mom and respond, “In every way.”

  She sits back in her chair and asks, “What’s her name?”

  “Candace.”

  “Pretty name.”

  “She has these ticks though,” I reveal.

  “Like what?”

  “She’s awkward around crowds. She’s close friends with a couple of guys I know, and they’re really protective of her. I notice she stays the night with one o
f them a lot.”

  “Is she seeing him?” she asks, and I laugh.

  “No.”

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “‘Cause they’re gay, Mom.”

  “Hmm,” is all she responds.

  “I dunno. There’re just these things I pick up on that she does, but she’s so standoffish with me, and it’s hard trying to get her to talk.”

  “Sometimes the things worth keeping are the things we have to work for,” she tells me.

  “Maybe,” I sigh. “We’ll see. I don’t even really know her. It’s just . . . I want to.”

  She reaches out and takes my hand as I look over at her and smile.

  The house has been noisy and busy for the past couple of days. Every room is filled, and having the whole family here is always something I enjoy. I went for a run along the beach this morning, and when I came back, my mom and her sisters were already in the kitchen, preparing food for Thanksgiving dinner.

  After getting cleaned up and heading downstairs, the kids are still lying on the floor, watching the Thanksgiving parade while my aunts are scouring the Black Friday ads with my mom. I swear, it’s the highlight of the year for them. They take their middle of the night shopping seriously and always have a mission plan before heading out. I look over at the three of them, huddled over the paper, and laugh as I walk into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee.

  “What’s so funny?” my Aunt Carol asks.

  Pulling a mug down, I say, “The three of you—plotting.”

  “Wanna be our driver?” she jokes.

  “Sorry, ladies. You’re on your own.”

  “Are you still heading out this evening?” my mom asks.

  “Yeah. Even though the bar’s gonna be dead, I let most of the staff take time off, so I need to be around.”

  I take my coffee and go sit with the kids as they watch with excitement when they see a cartoon character they know float by. I sit back on the couch and wonder about her, remembering what Jase told me the other day before I saw how upset she was after talking with her mom.

  “Her parents are assholes to her. They treat her like shit and she doesn’t deserve it.”