Play On by Samantha Young
I have no idea where the angry outburst came from. Maybe I wanted Aidan to know I wasn’t some bimbo to decorate his arm, in case that’s where his own thoughts were going.
Giggsy looked a little shell-shocked. He murmured to Aidan he’d get his usual and be back to take our order. I looked determinedly out at the water, unable to meet Aidan’s eyes.
“I’m sorry about Giggsy.”
I watched a couple walk hand in hand down the beach, each carrying their shoes in their free hands. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Nora, look at me.”
I did so reluctantly.
He appeared concerned. “I didn’t ask you out to lunch as a lead-up to sex. You’re definitely not my latest piece. I wanted to spend some time with you.”
Confused, I could only stare at him, hoping somehow to magically figure him out. If he didn’t want me to be a fuck buddy, but he wanted to hold hands and spend time together … well … shit. What did that mean?
Then something occurred to me.
And I didn’t know how I could’ve been so blind.
Maybe … maybe Aidan was lonely. “How are you?” I suddenly blurted. “We’ve talked a little about Sylvie and how she is after her mom passed, but we haven’t talked about you. Are you okay, Aidan?”
I could tell he was surprised by the question. He stared at me, almost as if he couldn’t believe I was real. I didn’t understand his reaction but I couldn’t ask about it because Giggsy came back with our drinks and to take our order.
It was too hot for a heavy lunch so I ordered light, as did Aidan, and I waited after Giggsy left to see if he would answer me.
Finally, he did. “You want the truth, Nora? Something I’ve never told anybody? I resented it. Nicky, my sister, being sick. Dying. Expecting me to take care of Sylvie. I’m a selfish bastard who actually resented her for it. I had no fucking clue what was ahead of all of us or what she’d go through in the end. I couldn’t see any of that for my own selfish inability to see past my fucking career.”
What he didn’t know was that I understood that resentment. “But you did see past it eventually.”
As if my lack of judgment took him aback, Aidan studied me thoughtfully. When he spoke, his voice was low and gravelly with emotion. “Our parents are not strong people. They could never handle the bad stuff. They hated that Nicky was a single parent, and once they moved down south, they made very little effort to come see Sylvie. They weren’t strong enough to be there for my sister. They only came at the end. After I watched cancer eat my sister alive. I watched her stay strong and brave and selfless to the end, caring only about me and Sylvie and what was to become of us. Those months changed everything.”
“How long was she sick?”
“About four months.” He gave me his profile, looking out at the water, and I saw the pain he kept hidden most of the time. “It was the end of January last year. She called me while I was in New York and asked me to come home. She wouldn’t tell me why but I knew that it had to be bad for her to ask me. When I got home, she told me while we were alone. That she had cervical cancer.” His eyes flew back to mine, blazing with anger and grief. “Nicky was a bloody nurse. She knew, Nora. She knew and she was so paralyzed by fear she couldn’t face it until it was too late. She could have lived. She could have survived. But she left it too bloody late.”
I reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “I’m so sorry.”
He squeezed it. “We told Sylvie together,” he continued. “You know how smart she is. She understood. I …” He swallowed hard, clearly lost in the memory. “I couldn’t stand it. I had to leave the room. Listening to her wail like a wounded—” He cut off, letting go of my hand to take a huge gulp of water.
Pain for him squeezed my chest tight.
“Everything stopped. Life as you know, it just stops. I moved in with them, got a full-time nurse, and I hired Olive Robertson to homeschool Sylvie so she could spend as much time with her mum as possible without missing out on school.
“Aye … I stopped resenting Nicky as I watched her die, but you know what’s worse, Pixie?”
I blinked back tears at the hollow emptiness in his voice, wondering how I could not have noticed how much pain this man was hiding. “What was worse?”
“I wanted her to die. Because anticipating her leaving was fucking agony. I just wanted her to die.” He shook his head, as if ashamed of himself. “Now that she’s gone, I can’t believe I ever thought that every single goddamn day she had to spend with us, with Sylvie, wasn’t a miracle. And I hate myself for wishing those days away.”
I was overwhelmed.
It pressed down on my chest, making it hard for me to breathe.
Because I felt like I understood this man more than anyone ever could, and all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around him tight and whisper in his ear he wasn’t alone. My heart had been broken before, and right there on the promenade, it broke again. Because I knew that this man and the little girl he loved so much were going to use me up and leave me in pieces.
And I didn’t know if I could let them. They could be my repentance, I could let them selflessly take what they needed and leave me shattered, and maybe in some twisted way, I’d find peace. Yet I still had some measure of self-preservation left that made me want to run away. Because people could disappoint you, and sometimes that was okay, but sometimes, like with my dad, it wrecked you so badly it changed you irrevocably. I’d made so many mistakes because of that, and I was afraid that when Aidan inevitably disappointed me, I’d lose what little of myself I still respected.
Aidan’s eyes narrowed on me and he said, “I haven’t told anyone that.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because I’m being haunted, Nora, and I sense you know all about being haunted.”
Horrified that he could see that, I shook my head. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Your name is Nora Rose O’Brien McAlister. You were born November 12, 1992, in Donovan, Indiana. You lived there until you were eighteen years old when you eloped with Jim McAlister to Vegas, and then returned with him to Edinburgh. You were married three years before he died of a brain aneurysm. You work at Apple Butter on Cockburn Street and you live alone in Sighthill.” He paused as I tried to recover from the shock of him having all that information about me. “I remember you, Pixie. I remember locking eyes with a pretty girl in a pub one day and then lifting her off the floor after her husband got into a fight with a drunk over her. And I remember seeing you again the next day in the supermarket, knowing you were too young and too married, and wanting you anyway. And maybe if it had been six months earlier, I would have been a selfish bastard and tried to seduce you, damn the consequences. But my sister was in a flat above the supermarket, dying, and I’d promised her and my niece I’d make pancakes with syrup.”
A tear splashed down my cheek before I could stop it. I brushed it away quickly, impatiently.
“I’m not the kind of man who would allow his ten-year-old kid to spend so much time with a woman and not have her investigated, Pixie. So don’t take it personally.”
When I didn’t say anything—I couldn’t speak for fear I’d burst into tears—Aidan continued, his words no longer fingernails picking at my wounded memories, but a knife, slicing them clean open.
“I know your secret, Nora. I know that you really become Peter Pan for yourself, not for the kids. What I can’t understand is why an obviously talented, smart, twenty-two-year-old with her whole life ahead of her would volunteer on her day off at a sick children’s hospital … because she needs to. Because you do need to, Nora. I see it. Is this more than your husband dying too young? Or did you love him that much you can’t see that life still goes on? Whatever it is, like me, you’re haunted. And I can’t help but need to know … what the hell happened to you?”
Roddy’s voice suddenly appeared in my mind. There’s nothin’ wrong wi’ lettin’ this guy get tae ken ye. Answer his fuckin’ q
Except I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t ready. Telling him meant finally facing all that guilt I kept buried beneath my costume.
“I’m sorry.” I pushed back from the table, nearly overturning my chair. “I have to go.”
I left him there.
Alone.
After he’d given me so much of himself.
And I’d never liked myself less.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when Aidan didn’t stick around the next week. He barely looked at me when he picked up Sylvie from the hospital. She’d already told me that Uncle Aidan had a meeting so they couldn’t stay for lunch.
However, the aloofness with which he treated me made me suspect Aidan didn’t have a meeting at all. He just didn’t want to be around someone who could listen to him bare his soul and then abandon him directly afterwards.
I was a coward.
All this time I’d been telling myself that I needed to fill my life with good, do good—like spending time with the kids at the hospital—searching for peace from my guilt. Finally, I’d found two people who maybe I could really help, and I was so terrified that I’d get torn up by them in the process that I was running away.
There was no time for me to apologize to Aidan, and I didn’t have his phone number so I could call to make amends. Yet I hated the idea of him hating me more than I hated the idea of getting hurt.
The following Wednesday when I hurried into the hospital, I found Sylvie and Aidan waiting for me.
“You’re here.” I grinned, relieved, because I’d begun to worry that Aidan would stop bringing Sylvie altogether.
“Yup!” Sylvie grinned. “And we can stay for lunch this time.”
My eyes flew up to Aidan’s to find him staring stonily down at me.
“That’s wonderful.”
His expression didn’t change and I had to look away because I couldn’t stand to see him look through me. “Well, let’s go inside.”
“I’ll be here when you’re done.” Aidan lowered himself into a chair, his phone out, eyes determinedly on it.
I wanted to apologize right then and there, but the kids were waiting and I didn’t want to make my apologies in front of Sylvie. Shoving my concern for him out of my mind, I focused on the kids and their excitement that we were nearing the epic conclusion of the third Harry Potter book.
Aware of the time pressing toward the end of my session with the kids, my nerves started to grow wings. I had full-on belly flutters way before Jan came in to tell us our time was up. As always, Sylvie let me say goodbye to the kids before she tugged on my hand and drew me outside to find Aidan. He glanced up at our approach, quickly finished typing something on his phone, and then stood up, slipping his phone back into his pocket. As he smiled down at Sylvie and asked if she had fun, those flutters in my belly were accompanied by that flip of attraction.
I was obsessed with his smile. The sexy crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the slant of cocky mischief, no matter what provoked the smile.
“Lunch!” Sylvie announced, leading the way.
“Let me guess,” Aidan said. “Mac and cheese.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “It’s not like it’s a hard guess, Uncle Aidan.” She threw me a look as if to say, “He thinks he’s so smart.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
But Aidan wasn’t laughing. He’d withdrawn into himself as he walked silently behind us to the cafeteria. Sylvie glanced over her shoulder at him every now and then, frowning, followed by a look at me, as if she knew I was the reason he wasn’t acting his usual easy-going self.
Even mad at me, however, he wouldn’t let me pay for lunch. “You paid last time,” he stated flatly.
The awful tension increased and by the time we were sitting with our food at the table in the quiet cafeteria, I could feel my panic building. Whether it was fear that Sylvie would start to question us and get upset, or fear that I was losing whatever connection I’d made with Aidan, I didn’t know. Maybe it was both. It was probably both.
“So, is Miss Robertson teaching you anything interesting?” I desperately sought conversation from the one Lennox who still liked me.
Sylvie scrunched up her face in thought. “She’s teaching me about the Scottish Wars of Independence. That’s pretty cool.”
That sounded pretty violent. They were starting kids young on that stuff, huh. “Well, someday you can tell me all about it. My knowledge of Scottish history isn’t great.”
“You should sit in with Miss Robertson and me,” Sylvie said, excited by the prospect. “Uncle Aidan, can Nora share my lessons?”
“No, sweetheart, I’m afraid not.”
His emphatic tone told her that his response was final. Her little brows puckered together as she looked between us in confusion.
Hurt by Aidan’s cold treatment and knowing I had no right to be, I struggled to say something, anything to break the tension.
My struggle was brought to an abrupt halt when Sylvie pushed back her chair. “There’s Jan. I need to ask her something.” And like a bolt of lightning, she was across the cafeteria before we could stop her.
We both turned to make sure Jan was in fact there. She was. And whatever Sylvie said made Jan look over at us. She gave us both a reassuring nod and then led Sylvie out of the cafeteria.
What the ever-loving fuck?
Slowing, I turned back in my chair to see Aidan focused on his plate. There was no sign that he was angry about Sylvie deliberately leaving us alone. And we both knew it was deliberate because there was still a full plate of uneaten mac and cheese on the table.
However, Aidan remained unmoved. He appeared cool and remote.
And tired.
Tired and alone.
Feeling anguish for him and a longing I couldn’t deny, I realized that since he confided in me that day at the beach, I didn’t feel so intimidated by him anymore. He felt more human now, more real, more real to me than very few people ever had. Because for the first time in a long time, I’d connected with someone. I had connected with him and I couldn’t deny that.
And I think Aidan had connected with me too, otherwise he wouldn’t have told me about his pain, and he wouldn’t be so angry with me now.
It was time to be brave.
Brave for him.
“Donovan is a small town. It was too small for me.”
Aidan’s head jerked up.
“At first it didn’t feel too small because my dad was this larger-than-life character who promised me that I was going to go out into the world and be somebody. He filled my head with dreams while my mom worked too much to care. Dad had his own construction company and we lived in a nice house compared to most people in Donovan, so it didn’t seem implausible that I would be someone someday.
“But it changed. My dad had diabetes and his company was so successful, he got too busy and stopped taking care of himself. He ended up with gangrene in his leg and they had to amputate. He had to sell his company for less than what it was worth, we lost the house, and we moved into a small place that was just big enough to get a wheelchair through the doorways.” It felt like another life now, and that emotional distance only made the guilt over leaving my parents tenfold. “I was eleven and my mom had to work even more hours to make up the loss of income. Suddenly, I was my dad’s caretaker. And he wasn’t the dad I’d grown up with anymore. He was mad at the world and he could be a mean son of a bitch.” I looked deep into Aidan’s eyes and said pointedly, “I loved him, but I resented him too.”
Understanding softened his expression, giving me the strength to continue.
“It wasn’t easy but I had Mel. She was my best friend growing up. Sylvie reminds me so much of her, it’s uncanny. She was the only one who knew about the plays I had stashed away in a shoebox under my bed. She was the only one who knew I wanted to be a stage actress. I did some shows when I was a kid, and I loved falling into the part, and the way it made the audience so happy.” I blinked away those memories.
Aidan sighed, the sound sad. “Nora.”
“I know.” I blinked the tears away. “Everything all starts to make sense. But it doesn’t. None of it really makes sense. Losing Mel. Losing my dad. And losing my dream because suddenly my parents were telling me there was ‘no money for college, and anyway, who would look after Dad?’ I was working at a fast-food restaurant when I graduated. I should’ve been at the college of my choice. I’d worked for it, I’d earned it, but I never got it. And I was drowning, Aidan. I couldn’t breathe.
“Then Jim came along. This Scottish, flirty boy who took one look at me and for whatever reason I will never understand, fell in love. When he asked me to run away with him and get married, I knew it was crazy. But I was convinced that I loved him too, and that with him I could have the life I wanted. The idea of living in Scotland was so exciting. It blinded me. And I left my parents there without facing them. I left them a letter and snuck off in the night. I left them and now they won’t talk to me. My letters return unopened. I’ve never gone back. And Jim …” I paused, the words getting stuck in my throat.
“What happened, Nora?”
The guilt rose out of where I tried to bury it, and the grief was too much. All I could see was Jim’s face as he looked at me on his knees, silently pleading with me to love him, asking me to choose him. It felt like someone was crushing my ribs as the tears let loose, spilling down my cheeks one after the other after the other. “He loved me too much. He didn’t want me to have anything that would take me from him. And I was trapped all over again, working a shitty job I didn’t care about, lying to myself to keep the peace between us. I wasn’t in love with him,” I confessed on a sob. “I didn’t realize until it was too late. And he knew and he still wanted me. I stole from him, Aidan. Those years with him were stolen. He could have spent those with a girl who would’ve loved him the way he deserved to be loved. I’ve disappointed everyone. My parents. Jim. Mel. God, Jim … I hate myself, Aidan. I hate myself for letting his last years on this earth be with someone he knew didn’t love him the way he loved her. I can never make up for that. Never.” I was crying so hard, it took me a moment to realize Aidan had gotten out of his seat. But then I felt him pull me up out of mine so he could wrap his arms around me. Mine automatically wrapped around his waist and I buried my head in his chest, letting his kindness draw all my tears out.