Page 54 of Fight or Flight
But surprisingly, even though I do believe him, it doesn’t bring me any relief. No, it opens the floodgate of my anger wide open. My skin prickles with the sudden need to cause him harm.
I slap my full plate back on the table and face him fully. The mocking laugh that gets free out of my throat sounds so unnatural that I notice at least a few heads turn toward us as their conversations around the table stop. Only children continue to play around, oblivious to the shift in the atmosphere with the adults.
Aidan’s mouth opens, but I beat him up to it.
“You think that this is all about you? That’s rich. You think I didn’t answer your stupid letters because I was sad and heartbroken? You stupid idiot. I didn’t answer because I didn’t fucking care. You think that you were so important to me that I would allow you to devastate me? Aidan, I’m sorry to say this, but you were only ever a distraction.”
He physically recoils at my words. If I had any sense left in me, I would stop at that and go take a breather to cool down, but I’m on a roll.
“You never mattered to me. I was in a dark place when Jenny went missing, and I thought a new boyfriend could actually take my thoughts away from what’s significant. I mean, it was nice while it lasted, but...” I flick my hand at him. “Don’t flatter yourself by thinking that you were of such importance in my life that you actually made an everlasting impact. How long were we together, like two months? That’s laughable. A stupid teenage crush, Aidan. Honestly, I feel sorry for you that after almost four years, you’re still here, clearly pining over me. When, in all honesty, I forgot all about you.”
My heart squeezes painfully when I say the words that I always wanted to be actually true. I didn’t want to care. I didn’t want to still love him. But I did. I do. And it infuriates me. Because it’s not fair that I still have to go through it. That still pains me so much. Not what he did and that he lied. But that he caused us to be pulled apart.
“And what are you actually doing here, huh? Shouldn’t you still be in prison, which is the rightful place that you should be at? It sickens me to see the people that you hurt giving you a chance that you obviously don’t deserve.”
I wish the words coming out of my mouth were true, but in reality, with each hurtful lie that comes flying out of me, I feel like my soul is bending out of shape.
Each attacking word that I spewed at Aidan caused him to move back as his face morphed from shocked to angry and then sad. After my last line, his posture changed drastically as he straightened and, with his face blank, turned away without a word.
I blink back the oncoming tears and eye the shocked faces around me, feeling like utter shit. I catch Jenny shaking her head at me in disappointment before she wobbles after Aidan. Tommy steps away from the table, too, and looks at me angrily before marching toward them.
I see the other guests exchange looks before they all try to pretend nothing happened and go back to their conversations from before. I’m thoroughly ignored as I walk away to the other side of the expanse garden and sit down on a tree log with my back to everyone.
I don’t want people to see me now, so I grimace when footsteps sound behind me.
“Please leave me alone, Jenny,” I throw tearfully without looking back.
“I’m too ugly to be Jenny,” Brody responds before he steps in front of me. To my surprise, he doesn’t look angry or disgusted with me. He should because what I said was horrible.
“I’m sorry that I disrupted your party,” I mutter, ignoring the tears that annoyingly won’t stop coming.
Brody doesn’t say anything for a long moment before he takes a seat next to me. I expect him to reprimand me or tell me that I am no longer welcome here because my outburst was the last straw. But he doesn’t speak, just looks ahead at the slowly swaying trees.
In the next minutes, I find myself staring at the treetops, too, as my breathing evens out and the new tears dry out.
“Why did you hire him?” I break the silence. It’s not exactly what I want to know, but Brody seems to understand what I need to hear nonetheless. How did he find the strength to forgive the people who wronged him?
“There’s no worse feeling in this world than having good intentions and trying to do what’s right and still ending up being the bad guy,” he replies, and I frown at him. “Good people end up doing bad things because they often find themselves in a difficult situation that they don’t see a way out of. Wouldn’t you agree?”
He gives me a meaningful look, and I blink.
“David Wallace was a bad man—a source of badness in more lives than I could ever count. And for a long time, I felt guilty for allowing things to go so bad. If I had caught him sooner, none of this would have happened.”
“But you don’t blame yourself anymore?” I prompt him when he stops talking and seems to get lost in thought.
Brody’s head shakes, and he smiles. “Had to let it go. I realized he’s been still tainting my life, even from the grave. And I had to admit that, just as people that came before and after me, I’ve been pulled into the fucked up web of his schemes. Hard to get out of once you're in. And I was an FBI agent with a military background. People like Jen, her mom, and frankly Aidan didn’t stand a chance.”
I bite my lip and glance at my lap, feeling like shit.
“Not that I defend what Aidan’s done. I still have a scar at the back of my head to attest to just how much he fucked up. What he did was wrong; there’s no question about it. And I can only assume what happened between you two back in the day. But the thing that really impressed me was that he never tried to get off the hook. And he could. Easily. But he admitted to his crimes, took the blame for the things he had done, and lost three years of his youth while thinking that he wouldn’t be out until he was at least forty.”
I never knew that, so I hang onto each word like a lifeline.
“I went to each sentencing. I heard statements from each member of the Culebras gang. None of them took responsibility, even in the face of strong evidence. And here’s this artistic kid who never had parents or any other role model apart from his no-good brother, taking the blame and apologizing to me while looking straight into my eyes. I can’t forget the look on his face when he heard the judge's sentencing. It was heartbreaking, not because he felt bad, but because he accepted his fate and already had given up.”
“So you decided to help him?” I whisper.
Brody glances behind his shoulder, and I follow his line of sight to where his son Henry sits with the other children. I know he’s not really the biological father of the kid, but you would never know that with the way he’s interacting with him.