“I need answers, Merry.”
Merry opened his eyes but he might as well have kept them closed because he wasn’t giving a thing away.
“Do not shut down on me, brother,” Layne warned, his voice low and quiet.
Merry looked him in the eyes and then whispered, “I can’t, Tanner.”
“You will, Garrett,” Layne returned. “Somethin’ is not right and we can’t move forward unless I sort that shit out.” Merry shook his head. “I’m not askin’ you, I’m tellin’ you, I need answers.”
“Layne, I can’t give you answers.” Layne opened his mouth to speak but Merry leaned forward quickly. “I want to, right? Okay? I want to. But, seriously, she would not be pissed if I gave those answers to you. She would be gone. Not gone as in take off and move to Canada gone. Gone for me. She’d cut me out, Tanner. No joke. She would cease to exist for me and, big man,” he leaned further forward, his eyes glued to Layne’s, “you know how that feels.”
“She’s in pain,” Layne informed his friend and Merry’s eyes closed again. “Look at me, goddammit.” Merry’s eyes opened. “I have no clue how to play this and the plays I’ve been makin’ either do not work for her or they don’t work for me.”
“Only advice I can give is proceed with caution.”
“No shit? Thanks for that, buddy, that helps a whole fuckin’ lot,” Layne clipped.
“You didn’t hear me, Tanner,” Merry said quietly. “Proceed with caution and the operative word in that is proceed.”
Layne felt his chest get tight. “What?”
Merry sat back. “I can’t give you more.”
“You can and you will.”
“Tanner, seriously.”
“Yeah, Garrett, seriously.”
“I can’t –”
Layne leaned forward. “We went out to Swank’s, Saturday night. I walked into my house with her after, knowin’ the biggest fool thing I could do was ask her to stay for a drink at the same time thinkin’ about nothin’ other than how to get her to stay for a drink. We walk in and the lights go on and we find out a friend of mine from LA was payin’ a surprise visit. She’s standin’ there wearing practically nothing but shoes and a smile. Rocky sees her, she’s so fired up to get the fuck out of there, she fell during her run for the door, went down so hard she sprained her wrist. Before she left, she looked at me, Garrett, she looked at me with pain and tears in her eyes and they weren’t from hurting her wrist. That pain… that pain in her eyes shone from her fuckin’ soul. I’d get it the next night when I threw her leavin’ me in her face and she threw Gabby in mine. I’m tellin’ you right now, people do not hold onto this shit. Not for this long. It’s like it happened fuckin’ yesterday. I understand that pain I saw because I feel it every goddamned time I look at her. It’s been eighteen fucking years. That shit is not right. There is something I do not know, something that matters, it mattered then and, brother, it still matters now.”
Merry stared at him and there was pain in his eyes too, Layne saw it, pain for Raquel and pain for Layne.
“All I can tell you, Tanner, is that leaving you broke her.”
“Then why the fuck did she leave?”
Losing it, Merry slammed a fist into his armrest. “I can’t tell you, damn it!”
“Why?”
“I just can’t.”
“Why?” Layne roared.
“I can’t tell you!” Merry roared back. “But I’ll tell you this, leaving you broke her but she did it for a reason, buddy, she did it for a good fuckin’ reason. All right? Then you knocked up Gabby and I get that, I’m a man, I get it. Even Dad got it. Rocky did not. What was broken shattered. I watched it, Dad watched it, we couldn’t do shit about it. She didn’t pick up the pieces, man. She’s never picked up the pieces.” Merry leaned toward the desk. “You wanna know why Jarrod Astley is bein’ such a dick?” he asked but didn’t let Layne answer, he kept talking. “Because he had heaven in his hands, he knew it, but it was floating just above his reach. It was right there, in his hands, but he couldn’t touch it. She never loved him. She picked him because he was a dick, she knew he was a dick and she knew she could hold herself clear of that. That didn’t mean he didn’t want her but she never gave herself to him. But the fucker didn’t try. He did everything wrong because he’s an asswipe, that’s his problem. He might have been able to get in there if he wasn’t such a dick. But he was. He’s the type of man who doesn’t see his own faults, he blames others and he blames Rocky and, I’ll bet my pension, brother, he also blames you. No one in this ‘burg over fourteen years old doesn’t know the Raquel Merrick and Tanner Layne bittersweet love story, with Roc workin’ at that school and bein’ how she is, that lore is passed on the first day of freshman class. And Astley’s had that in his face for more than ten years.”
Listening to Merry, Layne’s chest was moving like he’d just finished a two hundred yard dash but even with all he was getting, he was still getting nothing.
He informed Merry of that fact. “All you’re givin’ me is more questions, Garrett.”
“Then find out the answers, Tanner, but the only place you can get them is from Roc and, like I said, proceed with caution, but, fuck, man, whatever you do, for your sake and hers, just… fuckin’… proceed.”
They stared at each other and Layne heard what he was saying.
But he wasn’t twenty-four and life wasn’t that simple.
“I got two boys who could get caught up in this shit, brother,” Layne said softly.
“I hear you,” Merry replied, just as softly.
“I put the effort into this, it goes bad, I’m not the only one gets kicked in the teeth.”
“I hear you.”
“With that reminder, you got different advice?”
Merry shook his head and repeated, “Proceed.”
“Shit, man, do you know what you’re tellin’ me to do?”