The Spark by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 34
Donovan
Ten days had passed since I last saw Autumn. She’d texted once and said she was okay but needed to work through some things by herself. But it was quickly becoming clear that one of the things she needed to work through was me.
It was the Tuesday after Labor Day—the day I’d been looking forward to for months, and now dreaded.
“You coming?” Trent poked his head in my office door.
“Do I have to?”
He smiled sadly. “Nope. But if you’re ever going to make it through this, you need to start holding your head up high and taking your lumps.”
I sighed and tossed my pen onto my desk. “Fine.”
We rode the elevator together up to the executive floor. The “announcement” of the names of the new partners was always done in the conference room before popping the champagne. But the people about to be named had been informed before Labor Day, because they had to write a big fat check to formally buy into the partnership. Needless to say, my phone hadn’t rung over the weekend.
Trent punched my arm as the elevator halted. “Chin up, buddy.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Sure thing.”
The fourteenth floor conference room was crammed with people, so we had to stand out in the hall, which I was relieved about. Juliette was packed in near the door, along with the other sardines. When she saw us, she squeezed her way out to us. She took one look at my face and frowned.
“You still haven’t heard from her?”
I shook my head. It was pretty funny that we were standing and waiting for the announcement that someone other than me had made partner, and Juliette knew that wasn’t the reason for my long face.
She rubbed my arm. “She’ll come around.”
I could tell from Juliette’s face that she didn’t even believe what she was saying. But she was a good friend, and I didn’t have the energy to argue anyway.
“Thanks.”
For the next twenty minutes, I stood while they announced the names of the new partners. I kept my eyes straight ahead, even though I felt others watching to see how I’d react. When it was finally over and the first bottles of champagne had been opened, I leaned over to Trent. “I’m gonna get out of here.”
He slapped my shoulder. “Yeah, of course. You did what you had to do. No reason to prolong the torture. Order dinner at seven?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I’m just going to call it a day.” I smiled halfheartedly. “One of the benefits of derailing from the partner track—doesn’t matter if I put in fourteen hours every day.”
Trent nodded. “Take it easy, buddy.”
Outside on the street, I took a deep breath and loosened my tie. The air had been stifling up there, but I knew if I went home at this early hour, I’d wind up drinking to numb my thoughts. So I decided to head over to Bud’s house. I’d spoken to him a few times, but hadn’t been to see him since the weekend in Connecticut.
I found him in the garage with a three-foot ruler hanging out of his cast and a saw next to him on the table.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Got this goddamn thing stuck. I need to saw it off because I keep whacking shit as I walk.”
I chuckled and walked over to examine what the heck was going on. “Why is it in there to begin with?”
“I had an itch. I’m sweating in this thing, and it’s making my skin itchy as hell.”
“Did you try pulling it out?”
“Oh, that’s a great idea. Wish I would’ve thought of it.” He rolled his eyes. “Whatta you think, I’m a dumbass? Of course I tried to pull it out—it’s stuck.”
“Let me give it a try before we saw it off.”
It took about ten minutes and some olive oil for lube, but I got the thing out.
Bud shook his arm. “Don’t know that I’ll be able to make the eight weeks they want me to keep this thing on.”
“Take it day by day, and do the best you can.”
Bud smirked. “I believe that was my line to you for half your life.”
I nodded. “True.”
We went into the house, and Bud pointed to the watering can he’d had since I was a kid. “Help me do the inside ones, will ya? If I use my other hand, I spill half the water on the floor. If I use the hand with the cast, it drips down my arm and makes me itchy.”
“Why don’t you sit down and relax. I’ll hit them all.”
Bud pulled out a stool on the other side of the counter while I filled the can. “Anything new on the charges in Connecticut?”
I shook my head. “Nah. We filed some paperwork and requested a conference. But I don’t expect to hear anything for a few weeks at least.”
He nodded. “Things with Autumn smooth over?”
I frowned. “She doesn’t even want to talk to me.”
My eyes caught with Bud’s before I started to water his million houseplants. He was quiet for a while, which didn’t surprise me. Bud wasn’t a man who talked for the sake of filling silence.
“I bet she’s hurting.”
As if I didn’t feel enough like shit. “Of course she’s hurting. And that’s my fault.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But let me ask you something. Don’t you think she’d probably be hurting just running into the guy? Even if you hadn’t swung?”
“Yeah. You should’ve seen the way she looked when he walked up—like she’d seen a ghost. What happened might’ve been six years ago, but it was two seconds ago in that moment.”
“Okay…so let’s say you’d handled things differently. She’d probably still be a bit on edge for a while. What would you do about that?”
“What do you mean, what would I do about it? I’d talk to her, listen to whatever she wanted to get out. I wouldn’t fucking leave her side, if that made her feel better.”
“Okay… And yet you’re here and not at her place tonight.”
I finished watering a fern that was probably as old as I was and set the can down. “She doesn’t believe violence is ever justified. She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I believe the guy deserves a hell of a lot worse than I gave him. But that’s beside the point. It wasn’t my choice to make. I made a mistake.”
Bud smiled. “Damn. Why couldn’t it be this easy to get you to admit stuff when you were a teenager?”
I sighed. “I thought I’d grown past this shit. I really did.”
“I’m not so sure I would’ve done anything different in your shoes, son. This isn’t a case of you getting into a fight over the dumb shit you used to brawl over. A man hurt your woman—a man who never got what he had coming to him—and you wanted to change that. Violence might never be justified, but sometimes it feels a hell of a lot like justice.” Bud’s eyes met mine. “I take it you’re in love with Autumn?”
I nodded. “I was never sure if I was in love before. But now I realize when you are, you damn well know it.”
“Do you remember in eighth grade when you got in trouble for cutting some advanced math class they had you in, and the guidance counselor told you to just drop the class because you wouldn’t be able to handle the work anyway?”
“Mr. Schultz. Guy had the worst breath.”
“Did you drop the class?”
“No, I got a hundred on every test.”
“And what did you do with those tests when you got them back?”
“I slid every single one of them under Schultz’s door. I wouldn’t be able to handle the work, my ass.”
“And when you were disappointed that you only beat ninety-nine-point-five percent of all people taking that test you had to take to get into law school, and I suggested maybe you should apply to some other law schools besides Harvard, just to be safe?”
I shrugged. “I retook the LSAT and got a perfect score. Then I got into Harvard.”
“Are you sensing a pattern here, son?”
“That I don’t listen?”
Bud grinned. “Well, yeah. That’s definitely true. But that isn’t my point this time. You don’t give up when you want something. All your life, you’ve encountered obstacles, and you’ve found a way around them all.”
“Okay…”
Bud shook his head. “Jesus, sometimes you can be such a knucklehead. You’re in love with this girl. You made a mistake. Don’t let the mistake make you. Fix it. Find a way around it. Don’t sit on your ass and hope it will work itself out.”
***
The entire way back to Manhattan, I kept thinking about what Bud had said. There was a difference between giving Autumn space and sitting on the sidelines. I’d screwed up, and I needed to own it, but I also needed to make sure she knew I wasn’t going anywhere, and the way to do that was sure as hell not over text and voicemail. So when I got off the bridge, I turned downtown toward her place instead of uptown toward mine.
By the time I found a parking spot, it was close to nine. I still had no idea if I was doing the right thing, but how much worse could I make it at this point? So I took a deep breath, walked to the door, and hit the buzzer for her apartment.
I knew she had an app where she could see and hear who was at the door before allowing them entrance, so as I stood there and waited to hear the sound of the door lock clanking open, I looked up at the corner and stared at the camera.
Come on, Red. Buzz me in.
A minute passed, and my chest started to feel heavy. She could be sleeping or maybe even out, but she could also be pretending she wasn’t home to avoid me. Since I’d come this far, I buzzed a second time, and I looked up at the camera.
“Autumn, I just want to talk. Will you let me up? Or come down if you don’t want me inside. I won’t stay long, I promise. I just need to say a few things and I’ll get out of your hair.”
Again I waited. The minutes that ticked by were grueling. At first, I’d decided I’d wait five minutes since I’d asked her to come down, and she might have to wait for the elevator or something. But after five minutes passed, I justified why that might not be long enough.
Maybe she was sleeping and had to get dressed?
Or she needed to go to the bathroom and then get dressed?
Ten.
I’ll wait ten minutes. Five was too hasty.
But after six-hundred seconds, I still wasn’t ready to give up.
Her elevator is pretty damn slow.
Better make it fifteen.
Yeah, fifteen.
Fifteen turned into twenty, and twenty turned into a half hour. It felt like I had a knot in my throat as I turned to leave. I made it a few steps, then stopped and turned around.
Fuck it. If this was the only way she would listen to me, I needed to take the opportunity. So I hit the buzzer once more and looked up at the camera.
“Autumn, I know you’ve read my apologies. And I’m sorry for what I did. But I don’t know how long this thing records, so I’m going to dive into the things that I haven’t said.” I raked a hand through my hair, trying to come up with a way to express how I felt. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve wanted more than I had—more money, more respect, more clothes, more recognition, more family, just more. Until you walked into my life. Now none of those things seem important. I don’t need more money, more recognition, more anything. All I need is you. Looking back, a year ago I thought I knew everything, but the truth is, I had no idea what love was. But I finally figured it out. Love is…enough. None of the other things are important when you find the right person. You’re in my heart, Autumn—hell, you own my heart. Please don’t forget that.” Tears welled in my eyes, and I suddenly felt really damn exhausted. I looked up at the camera one last time. “I hope you’re okay.”
I decided to take a walk to clear my head a little before getting behind the wheel. Two blocks into it, I passed a bar and decided to go in. It was dark and sad inside, so it felt like I’d found the right place. I took a seat at the bar next to an older man, who was hunched over his drink.
He looked over, so I lifted my chin. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself,” he grumbled, not very welcoming.
When the bartender came by, I ordered a beer at first. “Actually, I need something stronger.”
“What do you want?”
I shook my head. “I don’t care. Something strong.”
The old guy next to me frowned. “Bourbon—make it two, one for me.”
I smiled at the bartender. “Two bourbons, please.”
The amber liquid burned going down, though the guy next to me didn’t seem to notice. He gulped three fingers back like it was nothing.
“Your generation’s soft,” he sneered.
I chuckled to myself. He wasn’t wrong. About most people, anyway. Though I liked to think I was a little different than most of the people born the same year. I nodded. “It’s the trophies.”
The old man’s face wrinkled. “What’s a trophy?”
“You know, metal statues, or these days they’re mostly plastic I’m sure. Kids get ’em when they play sports and stuff.”
“Oh, a trophy.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I figured there was some new meaning I didn’t know about. What’s a trophy got to do with why you people are soft?”
“Well, in your generation, there was only one trophy. It went to the winning team. Nowadays, kids get trophies when they finish a season—just for finishing. Even the last-place team gets a trophy.”
The old man thought it over and nodded. “That’s just stupid.”
I finished off the liquid in my glass. The third gulp went down as hard as the first. I shook the ice, rattling it around. “How do you drink this? It tastes terrible and burns going down.”
He smiled. “I never had a fucking trophy.”
I laughed and lifted my chin to the bartender. “Another round for me and…” I looked to the old man.
“Fred.”
I nodded. “Me and Fred.”
For the next few hours, I sat next to my new friend and drank too many bourbons. Turned out Fred was down on millennials because he had a grandson about my age who had disinvited him to a party he was having this weekend and wouldn’t take his calls. “He wanted me to go to a gender reveal party. Who the hell throws a party and has a cake baked to find out the sex of the baby?”
“Actually, a lot of people do that these days.”
Fred frowned and shook his head. “Like I said, soft.”
I smiled and sucked back my third bourbon on the rocks. It was starting to hit me now, which was just fine.
“In my day, men didn’t even wait at the hospital to find out what they were having. We just dropped the woman off and went home to get some sleep. If you married a nice girl, she wouldn’t call you until the morning to tell you what she’d had, so you’d get your rest.”
I laughed. “Pretty sure that wouldn’t fly with women today.”
He waved me off, grumbling.
A little while later, I stood to go to the bathroom and stumbled. Shit. I was drunker than I thought. I went to relieve myself and intended to close out my tab. But when I returned, Fred had bought me a round for a change.
He tilted his glass toward me. “You’re not so bad for one of those alphabet kids. I can never remember what ages are for generation X, Y, or Z.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“So why are you sitting in this depressing place trying to outdrink an old pro like me?”
“Woman problems.”
Fred held his glass toward me to clink. “Fucking women. Gotta watch out for them. They’re dangerous. You know any other animal that can get juice from a nut without cracking it?”
I laughed so hard, I fell off my seat. Fred offered a hand to help me up from the floor. His grip was pretty strong for a guy who had to be pushing eighty.
Once I was standing, I put a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks a lot, buddy. This was just what I needed.”
“To fall on the damn floor?”
“Nah. To not be able to stand.”
I said I was going to head out, but Fred convinced me to have one more. That last drink totally did me in. I went from happy drunk to feeling pretty miserable about Autumn again. There was no way I was driving home in my condition, so I started toward the train, figuring I’d get my car tomorrow. But at some point, I veered and walked back to Autumn’s place.
I had no idea what time it was, but it had to be after midnight when I buzzed.
“Autumn…it’s me.” I looked up at the camera and pointed to my face. “Please let me in.”
When a few minutes went by, and she didn’t answer, I went from feeling down to feeling angry. What I should’ve done was go the hell home. But instead, I buzzed again.
“Autumn, are you going to talk to me?”
No response.
I was hurt and sad and so damn frustrated. So I buzzed again and looked up at the camera. “You know what your problem is? You got a damn trophy. No one has to work hard when you get a damn trophy just for showing up. But life is hard, Autumn.” I leaned my head against the door and mumbled. “Life is fucking hard.” I shut my eyes, and I think I might’ve started to fall asleep standing there. After a minute, I forced my eyes open and pushed off the door. I was drunk and emotionally drained and filled with so much pent-up anger that beating that douchebag didn’t even begin to take the edge off. My anger was not directed at Autumn, though in my drunken haze, I lashed out at anyone. I held up my middle finger to the camera. “Fuck everything!”
