Page 27 of Standing Still

Problem is, I don’t fucking know. So I push it out of my mind.

It doesn’t help that she gets tipsy as we sample the different whiskeys on offer, or when Dawn and Tom arrive, and Elle completely relaxes and the wall she has had around her since she got back to Mystic starts to slip.

It’s a good thing and I silently send up thanks to Dawn for making Elle feel so at ease here. Even though Dawn isn’t able to drink, she’s still the life and soul of our little group. Jared disappeared a while ago to find Terri, his wife, but Denny is still here.

“Haven’t forgotten our deal,” Denny shouts across the table to me. I scowl at him.

“What deal?”

I pass my scowl Dawn’s way. She has bat hearing. It’s loud here, and she is on the other side of the table from Denny, but she heard that.

“That I get to drive his car, it was supposed to be today, but he conveniently kept forgetting to call me back, or pick up even.”

“You’re letting him drive the Mustang?” Tom’s eyes widen comically.

“You still have the Mustang?” Elle asks.

“Of course,” I say, like that is the craziest question ever.

“Only he’s trying to renege on our deal.” Denny points his whiskey glass at me. He’s more than halfway shot. Mom will kill him when she sees him, then me for letting it happen. She forgets he is over twenty-one and I’m not his damn keeper. “I did the shift. Now he’s gotta pay up.”

“Shift?” Dawn asks. “What shift?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I sip my coke. I’d stopped drinking whiskey about two glasses ago. I glance down at Jedi. He’s gnawing on a bone and seems happy enough, but he’s been out for a while.

“I had to go out on the boat, and I got seasick and everything, but everyone was funny and they made me laugh, except Charlie. He is a miserable bastard. But I did it because I love him and because he promised I could drive the car. I hate doing it, but he needed a favor cos they changed his stupid appointment about the old man’s will and he couldn’t go otherwise.”

I closed my eyes, turning my head away. But I feel her eyes boring into me.

“Hah,” Dawn laughs. “You can’t take it back if he went out on the water at four AM Ben, you’ll go way down in my estimation if you do.”

“I’m heartbroken,” I tell her.

She slips back into conversation with Elle while I glare at my brother, but he’s too drunk to realize I’m pissed at him for that. It’s not my intention to make Elle feel guilty. I guess it could be a good thing that Elle knows the lengths I’m willing to go over the business.

She knows what that car means to me. She was there when I bought it and started restoring it. For me to allow my youngest brother to drive it, she knows it had to have been something drastic that made me make that deal.

“So, were you drunk or something when you made that deal?” Tom grins at me.

“Or something.” I lean forward on my elbows. “I was desperate. Little shit knew it.”

“That’s what brothers are for,” he nods.

Tom has two of his own, and three sisters. Big families are a thing around here. I glance at Elle as I think that, seeing Dawn about ready to pop out her third kid with Tom, what amusement I had been feeling fades away.

I will never forget what she went through after Darren killed himself. And then her mom, too. Half of her family was gone within the space of four months. I’d always thought she was so strong to go on the way she did. She never gave up, despite her losses and what she rightly perceived as her father’s ignorance of her existence. Elle was a fighter. She still is. She isn’t going to be a pushover.

When I realized she was thinking about foregoing her dream of going to college and becoming a writer, for me, I’d near enough lost my mind. I couldn’t be the person who held her back. So I helped give her the shove. Just a little. I made her think that life with me here would be nothing like she thought. We weren’t goingto be a happy family. We were going to be like hers. Me out fishing, her waiting for me to come home. I played into that a little too much. For her. So she could go out there and fly.

Trouble with that plan was, I’d always thought she would come back. Even when we didn’t speak once she was gone. In the back of my mind, I figured she would realize what I did, and it would all work out. But she never came back.

And then I heard she got married. And that shit killed me.

Ironic that I’m now trying to do whatever I can to get her to stay. Or at least be around for six out of twelve months.

The next hour consists of everyone getting a little drunker, my brother dancing around the table like an asshole and Dawn looking dead on her feet. Tom and I conclude it’s time for them to go at the same time. Dawn pouts a little, but she knows when she’s beat.

They offer to take Denny home, as my parents’ house is on the way. I happily jump on that. I could do without dealing with my drunk off his ass little brother. Especially if mom sees me delivering him home that way. Mom still sees Denny as her baby and, God forbid, any of us do anything to corrupt him.

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