The Embrace by Vivian Wood

12

On the ride upstairs to Lucas’s Midtown apartment, I glower at the smooth white elevator doors. I don't want to be here. In fact, I want nothing to do with Anita ever again. And yet here I am.

I fidget and jump a little when the elevator dings, arriving at the floor that I selected. My heart is hammering inside my chest even though I know that I'm perfectly safe. But there is still a thirteen year old boy inside of me… And every step closer I take down the hall toward the apartment doors, he only gets louder in the back of my head.

Run away.

I take a deep breath as I knock on the door. Almost immediately, it's opened by a petite nurse wearing pale gray hospital scrubs.

“Hi,” I say. I feel like this person is standing between me and Anita, acting as Anita’s last defense.

My anger has been simmering on the back burner for so long that it's now at a full boil. I cast my gaze around the room. The nurse doesn't say a word to me. She just backs away from the door with a tiny bow.

I open my mouth as I enter the apartment, about to ask where Anita is.

But she's only thirty feet from me, her hospital bed and a dozen beeping machines all set up in what would be the living room. Her eyes are closed. She looks so small in the hospital bed, wrapped up in a pile of blankets. Even in her sleep, she isn't peaceful. She looks like she is running to somewhere, her arms and legs splayed out across the bed, her face a serious as she ever looks.

When the nurse shuts the door behind me, I jump out of my skin. She says sorry in a hushed voice and I just wave her off.

“Leave us.”

She bows her head. “I’ll just be in the next room,” she says.

Straightening my cufflinks, I smooth my Brioni jacket out as I slowly pace across the room to the bed. Anita stirs in her sleep but doesn't wake. This is good actually because it gives me some time to digest everything, to think of exactly what I want to say to her.

I drop my hands by my sides as I walk around the bed, my eyes traveling to Anita's face. She looks old and worn, her skin a strange combination of leathery and pale. My fists clench without any particular thought or feeling. It just makes me angry that she should still be here, still be in my life all these years later.

What gives her the right to die in peace? And why does she need to do it with my brother Lucas so close at hand?

I stalk around her bed for a moment. It seems suddenly as if there is not enough air in the room. I am feeling jittery, feel the anger roiling in my gut. Usually I would vent a little, find a way to let some of this steam escape. But now I don't have that option.

I look around the room, anywhere but at Anita herself. My hands are clammy as I pull a chair up to her bedside.

As I am taking a seat beside her bed, Anita stirs. She opens her eyes a little bit and sees me sitting there. I must have an intense expression on my face because she looks a little taken aback by my presence.

“Calum?” she gasps. She reaches for an oxygen mask that lies around her neck and presses it to her face for a long moment, sucking in a deep breath. When she speaks again, she sounds strangled. “I didn't think you would come.”

Just hearing her say my name is disagreeable to me. I clench my jaw.

“Well, here I am. You told Lucas to fetch me. So? What you have to say to me?”

She tries to sit up, pushing herself out of her bed by her elbows. But it seems that she lacks any real strength. She clears her throat, embarrassed at her body’s failure.

“Yes, I wanted to talk to you. I know that we haven't always seen eye to eye…”

I snort, interrupting her. “No, we have not. We haven't even been looking at the same screen since I was a teenager.”

Her mouth turns down in a gentle frown. “Is there something that you need to get off your chest, Cal?”

I shake my head at her, unable to believe her audacity.

“You…” I trail off, working up the nerve to confront her. My fists bunch. “I was just a kid. You know that? Just a kid. And you took advantage of me. You took advantage of my mom's death.”

Her eyebrows rise. “Me? I took you in. I took you and Lucas in. Not only that, but I also made you what you are. Without me, there would've been no ballet academy. No career as dancers. No successful adulthood. You owe everything to me.”

I hiss at her. “No one said that you had to take us in. Lucas and I would've found our way just fine without you. But you wanted something. You wanted sex. You wanted companionship. It's just it's disgusting, what you did.”

“We. What we did.” She lifts her chin.

“I didn't have a choice. I was thirteen, for God's sake. I didn't want you. I didn't even know what sex was, not really anyway.” I pause, trying to control myself. “You took something from me. Something that I can't get back. And I will hate you with every fiber of my being for the rest of my fucking life.”

Anita's eyes widen. “You can't hate me. I saved you.”

“I can do whatever I want, Anita. I will tell you that starting my new life, with no mother at my side and a little brother to look out for… Starting my new life and being used by you… It did give me something. An edge, maybe.”

Shaking my head, I give a humorless chuckle.

Her eyes narrow on my face.

“You were lucky to have me. You are lucky to touch me, to taste me.”

I rise from my chair, zooming in toward her face, my temper almost getting the best of me.

“Look at me! Look at how fucking young I am. At least compared with you. If you thought that our age difference wasn't that great, even back then, you can't think so now. I think anyone with their wits about them would say that our relationship was inappropriate at best.”

“So what?” she asks. “What is the worst thing they would call a beautiful woman like me deflowering a clumsy, inadequate virgin?”

“They would call it child endangerment. Or maybe sex with a minor. Some would even call it…”

I stop, unable to bring myself to say the word rape.

“Whatever the term, it wasn't my idea. I didn't like it. And I still can't stand to look at you.”

Anita sneers. “You just wanted to get lucky.”

“No.” I shake my head. My hands are clenched by my side. “You can say that however many times you want, but it doesn't make it true. I was a kid. You are an adult. You were promising to take care of me. And you didn’t.”

“Yes I did. I took care of you better than anybody ever will.”

I blow out a breath and take a step back. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to hurt her, to take advantage of her the way that she took advantage of me so many years ago. But I can't do that.

I lift my chin and stare her right in the eyes. “You're lucky that I have more to live for than making you pay. I know that I can't do anything right now to make you more miserable, but I can control me. I can decide that I'm done.”

She tries to sit up again but can't manage to make her muscles lift her. “That's it, you're done?”

I take a second to glance at her, to really take in her shrunken frame and her pallor. In the hospital bed just now, she looks so powerless. I half expect her to start screaming as I turn and walk toward the door. I definitely don't expect what she says.

Her frail voice reaches my ears just as I am about to exit the room. “Cal? Wait.”

God help me, I stop in the doorway. I don't turn around but I do hesitate. She must see the way that I am pausing, because she continues.

“I hope you have a good life.”

I turn my head and look at her, my fist clenching. She isn't angry. She is that depressed. She just seems passive and resigned. A first for her, surely.

“Goodbye, Anita,” I tell her in a quiet voice. Then I stalk out of the room, a strange kind of fury simmering in my veins.

As I walk to the elevator, my head and my heart are so full of confusing feelings that I don't know whether I'm going to tear up or punch the wall. But either way, I have said my goodbyes.