push his care away. But I couldn’t seem to tame the tremble that shook my bones, tightened my muscles, and made my teeth clatter.
Somehow I didn’t think the knock to the ground was what had caused it.
Brando removed his fingers, crossing his arms over his wide chest, turning to the guy standing next to us. He looked at him with expectation. What he expected of him, I wasn’t too sure. I felt bad for the guy. His cheeks were fiery red, his body stiff with tension. Sweat ran down his face in fast moving streams despite the chill.
“I’m sorry,” the guy whispered, not meeting my gaze, looking everywhere but at us. Clearly it wasn’t me who he studiously avoided. “I knocked you over.”
“It’s—”
Brando swung his left fist, making contact with the guy’s face. I didn’t have enough time to see where Brando’s fists had done damage because the guy fell to the ground with a resounding thud, face first. The noise seemed to echo around the circle of rubberneckers watching. I stared in horror at the guy, not knowing how to react.
“Show’s over! Show’s over!” a voice from the crowd yelled. “Well, is this a party, or what? Where’s the music?”
On that note, the music restarted, people began to talk in slow waves, and then the party ramped up into full swing again. Guy down was not a big deal anymore. Tough crowd.
I narrowed my eyes at Brando. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“He knocked you over. He saw you go down and then laughed. Him and his boys.” He said “boys” as though the word was an insult. “His boys left him.”
“That guy’s a punk.” A voice from the crowd became a solid shape and now stood next to Brando. “I know his older brother. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” He grinned at me. “Hello, Scarlett. Long time no see. And if you don’t mind me saying, my, how you’ve grown.”
I couldn’t place him.
“Mitchell Lewis.” He turned his face from left to right, giving me a clear view of his features. “I was a friend of…”
“Elliott’s.” My jaw clenched.
He nodded and then looked to the ground for a moment before meeting my gaze.
“Give us a second, Mitch,” Brando said.
I realized that not much had changed. When Brando Fausti spoke, he never really asked. He ordered. People seemed to listen, no questions asked in return, no hesitation. Mitch took off for the many ice chests filled with beer without a backward glance, probably thankful for an excuse to leave an awkward situation.
“You were standing with your eyes closed. Before—” he looked down at the guy “—I mean.”
Instinctively, a hand went to my eye. In light of his gallant appearance, I had forgotten that I had been standing closed-eyed before. “You were watching me?”
“That’s not what I asked you.” He grinned. I wanted to add that he hadn’t asked a question, he had demanded a reason for my eyes being closed, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sucker, the kind with a soft chocolate candy in the middle.
He offered it to me first, and when I refused, stuck it in his mouth. The same sweet smell that had been on his hands drifted to my nose. When he pulled the candy out, it glowed red like a ruby in the light of the fire.
I shied away from him, from his question. The situation was headed to where it had once been, picking up as though time seamlessly weaved the span into nothing but seconds. I had been on that route before Guy Down came crashing into my world.
There were times I would forget that night, in light of the loss. Other times that night would console me, and sometimes it would haunt me. I had only a cherished few hours with the memory of the two of us standing out in the snow, and then the memory would shift into one tainted by a gaping hole in my life.
Soon after Elliott’s accident, before the fog of numbness had settled, I replayed that night over and over. I went over every second of it. Pulling it apart, finally ripping it to shreds, until I realized that there were times I would add things that didn’t belong or take away things that did.
Violet had bought me a journal as a way to express all that I couldn’t say, and one night, during a moment of true clarity, I decided