Lapse chapter 5

Chapter 5
Learning

I was like a whirlwind when I got home. I showered and threw on fresh clothes as quickly as humanly possible, slinging on small denim shorts, a thin white tank top, and black flip-flops, it was far too hot for anything more. Once I was dressed I threw every piece of clothing in sight into the largest duffel I could carry without falling over. I tossed my toothbrush and toiletries into a small plastic case and buried it a mess of unfolded clothes inside my bag. I took a deep breath to calm myself and tried to slow down. I needed to think of a solution for my problem with Ally before I left for Evan’s house because I knew once I got there the last thing I would want to think of would be Ally and Cam.
I zipped my bag shut and threw it by the front door. It took a moment to overcome the urge to bolt out to my car and take off but I knew I had to at least try to be a good friend, so I forced myself to sit down on the couch and think. There didn’t really seem to be any logical explanation for why Cam would react so dramatically. I probably could have broken the news to him a little more gently but even still it shouldn’t have been the scene it turned into. The realization came over me that I should probably call Ally and apologized over and over again until she forgave me but I wasn’t in the mood for groveling I just wanted to find the reason for the whole mess so I could solve the problem and we could all go back to being happy.
I closed my eyes in concentration. I tried to go back a few hours to analyze their chemistry before I told Cam. I remembered them just as I always had. Ally with her longing just barely hidden behind a smile; Cam and his completely casual manner. I tried to replay the last few times I had seen them interact. Yes, it helps being a detective. It makes moments like this much easier. I searched back as far as I could but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. In my mind they always made a perfectly cute couple and I had always thought that one day Ally’s overt flirting would win him over and they would be the adorable over-affectionate pair that makes everyone jealous and a little sick. I knew that Cam wasn’t gay. He had dated a lot of girls since we met him. Most of them were beautiful but were also bitches that dressed like strippers and they didn’t usually last more than a week, two max. This was largely due to his upbringing. Cam’s parents were awful people who seemingly didn’t care for their children at all. Both his mother and father had divorced and remarried and divorced again before Cam was sixteen. After their divorce he and his four siblings were passed back and forth between Florida and New Jersey because neither parent wanted the pack of children saying simply that with all five of them it was too hard to find a date. Thanks to those two shining examples, Cam learned to be a dick when it came to women, and he had the looks to pull it off. My joke to Ally was that she was finally going to get her wish, sleep with Cam, and then end up with gonorrhea. Over the last few months Cam’s influx of girls had slowed to a trickle and now it had been quite a long time since I had seen him with one. I thought he would finally realize what he was missing with Ally, but of course he didn’t. I was just getting good and upset when my phone sounded loudly with a text tone.
Where R U?
I looked at my watch and gasped it had already been an hour. I grabbed my keys, gun, and bag then ran out into the very hot night.
Lost track of time! Sry! I’m on the rd now. Send the address.
Within only a few seconds I got a text back with very clear directions. As I read through them I began to realize it was going to be a long drive. The drive north was a quick highway trip but after forty five minutes I was sure that if I went any further west I was going to drive into the Everglades, sink my car in a swamp, and get eaten by alligators. Just when I was about to call him to ask if I had passed his street I was able to make out a distant street sign. I glanced down at my phone to see his directions and make sure I was going the right way. I made a quick left down a dark street and I had to strain to make out lights in the distance. I finally came upon the guardhouse that was in the in the text. When I pulled up to it, I noticed that tucked back behind a black blanket of trees was a winding street full of enormous houses. I was shocked and it was a moment before I realized I had to lower my window to talk to the guard. I seriously hated to have to let in the hot humid air, but with an annoyed sigh, I did crack the window. After quickly confirming I was on the list, the guard hit the button that raised the security bar to let me in.
I easily followed the rest of the directions to Evan’s house and I pulled in behind his truck. The house was a mansion next to anything in my neighborhood and I couldn’t help but stare at for a minute. It was two stories and it looked roughly size of my whole apartment building. I liked my little apartment and I took good care of it, always making sure it was clean and neat but no wonder Evan wanted to come back to his place. I took another moment to ready myself and got out of the car. As soon as I shut the door I heard a loud deep volley of barking from inside the house. I wasn’t too worried, I knew it sounded like a big dog but they usually liked me.
“You didn’t get lost! I can’t even tell you how impressed I am. Everyone gets lost trying to get here.” Evan said with his usual to-die-for smile.
“I got here ‘cause you give flawless directions. I don’t even know what city I’m in.”
“Well,” he said with a playfully overdramatic bow, “let me be the first to welcome you to Southwest Ranches.” He looked behind him, “Bravo, sit.” He commanded in a stern voice. The barking stopped immediately. “Come in.” He took my hand and led me inside.
The first thing I saw when I got in was a very large, eager looking German Sheppard, “Come here, boy.” Bravo obediently came, and as I squatted to pet him, he painted my face in slobber.
Evan laughed loudly, “Some manners, Bravo.”
The dog whined and sat back down with the same excited look in his eyes.
“Who fed him while you were with me?” I roughed up the fur on his neck and put his heavy paw on my leg.
“Since I have to work late a lot, I pay the neighbor’s kid to walk him and feed him if I’m not home by seven.” He scratched the dog lovingly and walked me across the large living room to the couch.
“This is your house?” I asked still feeling astonished at the sheer size. It was pristine. I had to imagine he had a maid because with the insane hours we worked I just couldn’t see him having time to clean the whole house to this extent. I didn’t even see any dog hair or dust. The rich hardwood floor gleamed as though it had just gotten a wax and shine. All the furniture was modern and fairly large to fill the enormity of the room. A huge flat screen hung on the wall directly across from the couch.
“Yeah my brother won the Florida Powerball; he kinda hooked the family up.” Evan said with a shrug, like it was nothing.
I looked around again wondering this time how much everything must have cost.
“Do you really wanna talk about this?” He sounded genuinely curious.
At first I didn’t know how to respond to that, “Um, it’s pretty interesting . . .”
“The only reason I ask is ‘cause you didn’t want to last time. You got a little sulky when I told you.”
Now I was really without words but I could imagine what he meant. I had horrible luck, my life was a seemingly endless string of disastrous events and hearing of others good fortune annoyed me. I could hide that fairly well on any normal day but I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve when I’m drunk. I thought about his question and the answer was honestly no, I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Yeah I thought so.” He said before I could say anything. I must not have been as good at hiding it as I thought. He picked up one of two glasses that sat on the coffee table in front of us, and gestured to the other one, indicating it was for me.
The glass had a bright blue tint making it impossible for me to say with any amount of certainty what the liquid was inside. I took a hesitant sip, just as I feared; it was a perfect blend of pineapple and cranberry juice with just a hint of vodka. I placed the glass back down on the table as politely as possible.
“Too strong?” He asked. I was surprised at how easy it was for him to pick up my feelings, even when I tried to mask them.
“No, it’s awesome but I think I’m taking a liquor break for a while.” It was a necessity. I did not want to lose any more of my memory than I already had.
He nodded apologetically, “Sorry I didn’t really think about that.”
“It’s ok.” I shrugged. I was beginning to feel sort of awkward and I tried to find my way back to that effortless comfort we’d had. “I’m sorry I don’t know why but I feel a little nervous.” Since he seemed to be rather in tuned to me I decided to be honest instead of trying to pretend.
Without any hesitation he answered, “I guess, this is technically our first date.” That was clearly for my benefit because he looked just as calm as always. “Did you have any questions for me?”
“What?”
“I told you, tonight is your chance to get to know me . . .  again. You can ask me anything.”
I wished I had thought of a few questions on the way over because it was hard to think of good ones on the spot. “I don’t know, Evan, I can’t think of anything. Can you just tell me few things to get me started?”
After a brief period of thought he answered, “I was born in Florida; I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m twenty eight.” He paused and laughed as he tried to think of more to say, “My middle name is Patrick, after my dad. My parents and my sister Erin live in Key West. My younger brother Conner, the one that won the lottery, is spending the year surfing in Australia.
I could tell it was hard for him to think of random facts to tell me so I tried again to think of some questions. Judging by how close we had become, I had a feeling that he knew me very well, so I tried to think of something deep and important to ask but all I could think of was small talk, “Where are you parents from?” I asked
“My mom, Annika, was born in Sweden and my dad was born in Ireland. I actually speak Swedish.” I could have sworn his cheeks flushed a bit like he was embarrassed by that.
“Don’t worry I won’t ask you to speak it to me.” I laughed when he looked relieved. I knew how he felt; I always hated being put on the spot to speak my rusty Spanish. “Tell me about how you became a cop.” This seemed like a fair question, only moderately personal but I still regretted asking it as soon as the words were out. It would not be so easily answered if he asked me the same question in return.
“Well My dad is retired now but he used to be a Major in the Army and when I was in high school I was kind of a fuckup.”
I had to interrupt; it just didn’t fit the picture of Evan I had imagined. “You were a slacker?”
“I was a teenage boy. What can I say?” he sighed and went on, “My dad thought I needed some direction and we fought about it every day for almost my entire senior year but right after I graduated he made me enlist.” He put his drink down and leaned back on the couch holding his arm out for me to come closer. I happily obliged. “I decided to join the Marines instead of the Army; I think that was mostly to piss off my dad. But anyway, it worked out well, my dad was right, I really needed structure and I got it there. I guess some guys don’t handle it well but it worked for me and for the first year I really loved it but then in 2001 I got deployed to Afghanistan.”
I was listening intently and silently curled up under his arm but he paused for a long time and I wasn’t sure if he was going to go on or if the story got to be too bad after this point. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s not that. I’m just trying to find a way to make a long story short.” He took another few seconds, apparently summarizing in his head—and editing probably, taking out anything he thought might traumatize me. “Well, I was there for three years; I only had one year left and I was clearing a room but I didn’t see that there was a kid hiding under the bed and he shot me in leg.” He stopped again for a few moments.
His casual tone had not changed and I wondered if he was trying to be strong for my sake or if he was truly as relaxed as his voice indicated. I looked for something comforting to say but nothing seemed to encompass the gravity of ‘I’m sorry you got shot.’ So Instead of words I just grabbed his hand and squeezed. He took my hand and moved it mid-way up the side of his left thigh.
I could feel an indentation there and even though I wanted to be tough, I winced when I thought of how painful it must have been. He moved my hand around to the inner part of his thigh; I could feel an even deeper groove there where the bullet must have exited. It took me a second to realize where my hand was. “Wow, that was really close to your—”
“Yeah.”
“It a really good thing it didn’t—”
“Yeah.” He interrupted again nodding uneasily. His entire body kind of contracted involuntarily to protect it. He picked up his glass and drained it then settled back into the couch.
I had nearly forgotten how this conversation had started so I was a bit surprised when Evan started talking again.
“When I was all healed, law enforcement just seemed like the logical choice. It was the one place I could use my military experience.” He kissed the top of my head and sighed.
I almost felt like I should leave it at that, my easing-in question had turned into a very personal question and I didn’t want to push him but I had one more thing to ask. “Evan?”
“Hmm?” He sounded like he was thinking.
“Will you tell me how we got to be like this?” I felt so connected to him and I just wanted to know why. It was killing me not knowing what had brought us together so rapidly.
He gently took my chin and tuned my head to look in his eyes. He looked at me until I felt warm in the cool house. I honestly think he was examining my face, trying to see if I was attempting to con him out of information I wasn’t supposed to have but his intense gaze and close proximity brought on a surge of butterflies. “I just want to know why I feel like this about you. It’s very confusing to just be thrust into the middle of this without knowing how it started.” My voice cracked embarrassingly but it at least let him know I was being honest.
“Feel like what about me?” He smiled deviously, trying to get me to admit something I wasn’t ready to say. He didn’t wait for an answer that wouldn’t have come even if had waited. “We talked a lot—all night, until you kinda blacked out around six in the morning. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as thoroughly as I know you.”
“Could you tell me what we talked about that night? You don’t have to recount anything for me just give me an idea of some of the general topics. I don’t think that would be breaking the rules.” I was scared, as a general rule I tell people as little about myself as I can get away with. My past was not something I liked to get into. I could almost hear him thinking about whether or not this was acceptable but after a short moment he consented.
“We talked a little about your religious views.” He said vaguely, obviously trying not to give away too much detail but he kind of was anyway.
I grimaced, that was usually hard for people to accept. Many people didn’t go to church, some from laziness, some for lack of belief, but I believed and didn’t want to go. I was fairly sure that there was something up there but I had been through too much to forgive it so easily. I wondered briefly if Evan might be God’s way of trying to make it up to me.
“You told me about your parents.” He said vaguely, trying not to say too much in case the reason for my making him swear against this was hidden there.
I tensed. This was dangerous ground; talk of my parents could only lead back to one thing.
As if sensing I was uncomfortable Evan stroked my hair gently. “Do you want me to go on?”
I found it hard to believe that there could be more. I pictured myself a drunken mess sobbing on Evan’s shoulder about my problems all night. I immediately pushed the image away. I nodded again for Evan to go on I had to know what else I’d said.
“You told me about your brother.” Evan’s looked nervous, like he wasn’t sure if he should have said that. And indeed he probably shouldn’t have.
I froze as I waited for the wave of misery to flow over me. A torrent of tears was waiting to be released; I fought against them with everything I had. I finally conceded, Evan had said he knew me and I had doubted to what extent. I thought he might know some small embarrassing details but in a million years I never would have thought myself capable of telling this story to anyone, not even Ally. I threw all my will against the welling tears but there were still streams rolling down my face. Suddenly I felt something very warm and heavy on my leg. I looked down through watery eyes and saw Bravo’s anxious face looking up at me. I couldn’t help but give him a weak smile.
Evan wiped a tear off my cheek. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” Evan consoled, “I shouldn’t have even told you.” He mumbled as he shifted me easily onto his lap and wrapped me in a tight hug.
I tried to reign myself back in and push the tragedy from my mind but it wouldn’t go. I could feel it like it was happening again. I could remember the smell of rain; I could see the black sky as though I were outside. I could remember my mother’s screams as though she had never stopped even after all these years.
It felt like I had been sucked into a nightmare where I was forced to relive the agony again as crystal clear as the say it happened. I was ten and I stayed home sick from school. My father was working and my mother had to pick up my five year old brother from kindergarten. Instead of leaving me home sick and alone, she packed me into the car with her. When we left the house it was cloudy but still very hot, after only a short drive to the school the sky had darkened as though it had pulled on a thick fluffy blanket. We waited in the car for him as usual but he didn’t come. Fifteen minutes after the bell rang my mother parked and told me to wait while she went to the classroom to get him.
I was very sick; I was sweating with fever even in the cool air conditioned car. Some time passed and I began to worry so I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders to fend off the rain, got a handful of tissues to wipe my nose along the way, and I ventured off to look for my brother. I went to his classroom first to find my mom but it was deserted. I began to get the first crawls of anxiety in my stomach and I tried to run to look for my mom but my joints ached and my head swam with sickness. I screamed for my brother but it came out as raspy and weak, most of it swallowed by the wind. “Kyle!” I screamed again but this time as I screamed it, I heard it echoed much louder from somewhere behind the building. I pushed myself there as fast as my sore body would allow. When I got to my mother, she was screaming, she had sunken to her knees and was sobbing in her hands. Kyle’s teacher was crying and running toward the office. Panic took me and I went to my mother’s side. The image of my brother’s broken bloody body partially hidden in the bushes was, at that moment, forever emblazoned on my brain. I got on my hands and knees and crawled into the bush with him. I pulled him into my lap and sobbed. Shaking, I clawed the blanket off my shoulders and gently wrapped it around Kyle. My mother, still shrieking, tried to wrench him from me, but I couldn’t let go. In the distance I could hear the sirens. I couldn’t remember much after that except freezing in my blood and rain soaked clothes. I shivered as I steadfastly hugged Kyle’s lifeless little body to me. I recalled a swimming image of a hugely tall man taking my mother away and another smaller man trying to release the death grip I had on I had on my brother. As soon as they took him the world around me went black and I woke in a hospital bed the next morning hoping that it had all been a fever induced delusion but of course it hadn’t.
Two years after Kyle’s murder my mom, Robin, and my dad, Johnny, divorced and I went to live with my mom in Fort Lauderdale. It was a hard two years because she never recovered from the sight of her bludgeoned son. I came home one day to find a note stuck with a smiley face magnet to the refrigerator. It read simply, ‘I love you and I’m so sorry.’ My mom had swallowed an entire bottle of sleeping pills. I was only fourteen when I found her dead on the floor in the bathroom, cold and covered in vomit. After that my dad took me back to Miami with him, but I was mess and I didn’t trust him because he’d left me with my mom even though he knew how unstable she was. For a long time I was plagued with nightmares. I started drinking when I was fifteen to dull the sadness, but when my dad found out he put me in therapy. It took me a while to adjust to life with my dad but he loved me and he really tried to make my life easy and stress free and I had to be grateful for that. We became friends and he was the one I confided in when I thought the grief would break me. After school he let me run the register at our little bakery because we decided the fewer idle hours I had, the less time I could spend dwelling on the past. It really worked and I began to heal.
The four years I spent with him were the best times I’d had since Kyle died but my luck just couldn’t hold. Right after I turned eighteen in December of 2004 things got bad again. I noticed my dad was not himself; he was tired all the time and he seemed weak. Over the course of ten months, I watched my father melt away, as he succumbed to pancreatic cancer. And as the last drops of life trickled out of him, so were the last bits of hope expelled from me. I was broken; all the pieces of my once happy life had been smashed into jagged shards of emptiness.
I’d had to sell the bakery to pay for his Chemo and my living expenses because I had just started the academy at the time. I even sold his house, unable to set foot back in the last place I had been happy. There was still lots of family on Robin’s side that still lived in Nebraska, every one of them were willing to help but I would not get close to anyone else, losing someone else after all I had been through would have killed me. I used the money from selling the house to get an apartment and put the rest away, knowing I would need it to pay for school and for any unforeseen expenses that would arise. There was a dark period of about four weeks where I dissolved into the misery, and I thought seriously about going the way of my late mother, but I grabbed ahold of my last frayed pieces of sanity and rationality and made the decision to trudge forward. I went about life as though I had always been alone. I returned to the academy, started college, and pretended to be normal.
I hadn’t even realized I was shaking and crying into Evan’s neck. His shirt was already wet with tears. He evenly stroked my hair and hushed soothingly into my ear.
“I’m so sorry.” I told him gesturing to his moist shirt.
He just shook his head and wiped my cheeks again, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. I swore to you I wouldn’t.” his voice was deep with regret.
“Don’t feel bad. I asked for it.” I ran a finger between his eyebrows to smooth away the furrow there.
I could tell he wanted to say more about how he should have known better but he thought better of it seeing that I was in no condition to argue.
“Can we get back to fun first date stuff?” I sniffled.
In a comfortable silence we watched a movie on Pay per View and I discovered that his couch reclined. I had never seen anything like it before but in the luxury of the house it made perfect sense. “Do you want to go upstairs and get ready for bed?”
I didn’t want to move, I was incredibly comfortable but we still had to wake up early, so I nodded.
He took my hand in one of his and my duffel in the other and led me up a flight of stairs to a dimly lit hallway, Bravo following happily behind us.
His room was very big and even though the bed had to have been larger then king sized the room did not feel cramped at all. There was another huge flat screen across from the bed and the black furniture looked so perfectly arranged that I felt like I could have been in an expensive furniture store looking at a showroom.
Evan rested his hand gently on an expectant Bravo, who looked as though he were about to leap onto the bed. “Not tonight buddy.” He gave the now disgruntled looking dog a gentle shove into the hall and closed the door.  I hopped up onto the very high bed. I made a mental note to not move around too much in my sleep because if I were to fall, there was a long way down to the floor. I felt Evan beside me as if reading my mind he pulled me closer to the center of the bed.
For a few seconds he looked at me with apologetic eyes. “Are you really ok?” His face said that he was waiting for answer but I was unable to speak.
My newly acquired butterflies surged around in synchrony. I felt closer to him then I had to any other man, even after only two days. He knew my most fiercely guarded secrets and he wasn’t running away. I felt rush of heat course through me, my heart sped, my breathing quickened, I felt myself acting without any conscious effort. My hands, of their own volition, moved out of his and went to his face, pulling him closer. His breath caught and his eyes locked with mine. When he kissed me it was so soft and yet still so full of emotion. His other kisses had been urgent and fused with need, now, with all the lust stripped away it felt sincere and romantic. I felt something about the way I saw him change as he became something more to me, something vital and irreplaceable.
“Evan?” I breathed, his lips almost touching mine.
“I love you too.” He whispered to my unsaid words. He gently shifted himself over me. “I’ve never felt like this with anyone before.” He was completely different. All the rough desperate desire I had felt in him the day before was gone; he was tender and patient. It was the first time I had ever really made love. It was the most amazing thing I had ever felt; his gentle hands and lips kissing and caressing me, his body knowing everything I wanted.
That night, as I slept safely in Evan’s arms, I should have had peaceful dreams. I should have had a restful night but instead I had dreams of blood soaked carpet and the smell charred flesh. The worst part of it was not the absolute gruesome detail with which I recalled the crime scene but that the discussion I had had with Evan about my brother must have stuck with me because Kyle’s dead, rotten, little corpse body was grabbing handfuls of the loose hair and tossing it playfully up in the air. His decayed face smiled when he saw me and I screamed.
“Lexi, wake up.” Evan was shaking my shoulder.
I could hear his voice calling me as I tried to fight my way back to consciousness but Kyle’s face was holding me there stunned and scared.
“Wake up!” he jerked me up to a sitting position and I was finally awake. “Are you okay, you were screaming?”
“I had horrible dream.” I mumbled. My heart was racing and I was still panting but the terror of the nightmare was beginning to slip away. Evan said something about water that my distracted mind did not catch and before I could stop him he was up and out of the room. As I sat there alone in the dark, I tried to distract myself. I forced myself to count in multiples of six. I know it’s weird but it helps me relax. I was at one hundred and thirty two when Evan came back in with a glass of ice water. Bravo leapt gracefully onto the bed and curled up by the footboard before Evan could stop him. I found that stroking the dog seemed to be rather soothing me so I pet him while I sipped my water and began to calm down as the last remnants of the dream slid away.
“Do you wanna tell me about it?”
I shook my head and hoped that he would not insist that I recount it. “It was too bad to talk about. I just want to forget it.”
“Do you think you can fall back to sleep?” Even though his eyes gave away how tired he was, his voice was deeply concerned, and I could tell that if I said no, he would force himself to be awake with me.
“I can sleep.” I said with confidence. Or at least I can lay very still while you sleep. I thought.
“Nothing will ever hurt you when you’re with me, Lexi.” He began to rub my shoulders, and despite my apprehension about going back to sleep, I started to feel drowsy. “You have no more need for nightmares because you don’t need to be afraid of anything anymore.” The peaceful rhythm of his voice and the perfect bliss his words brought me, coupled with the massage, made me feel hypnotized. As I slept I dreamt of Evan.