Chapter 10

Maybe it was a testament to how much of an attitude change I'd had in that time, but before I knew it two whole months had passed by.

I didn't even know it had been that long until Damian told me that morning during breakfast. Maybe instead it was a testament to how busy Abby had kept me. This had been my first chance to get out for some exercise in a few weeks. It was a cold day in December, and most of the inmates didn't want any part of the cold weather today. Damian and I wanted the fresh air though, so we were braving the cold by playing a little basketball.

About a month ago, at his last visit, Joey had come bearing the news that Brayden had gone through with marrying Jason. Abby had expressed doubts that it would happen a few times, but I'd never had any doubts. She had kept in contact with Joey to check up on Bailey, but after six weeks her phone calls came less frequently. The last either of us heard, she was in Ione, California, but Damian had a friend in Los Angeles that thought she was hanging out with a few of his old drug friends.

Bailey was having a hard time adjusting to everything. Joey said she rarely asked about her mother and why she was missing, but asked him about me all the time. He tried to convince me that she was doing well for the circumstances, but I knew he was trying to make me feel better.

I was having a hard time adjusting to the idea that nothing would ever be normal for me again – at least not the same as it was before.

“You can't blame yourself, man,” Damian said. “You didn't abandon your daughter. You didn't up and leave her.”

“I might as well have,” I said. “First her mom disappears on her and now me.”

“She's having a hard time now. But in a couple of years, this will be a distant memory for her. You'll get back to her soon and everything will go back to normal. It'll be like this never happened.”

“Normal for us was waiting up for Bray until the crack of dawn, fielding 'Where's mommy?' every night for the past two years, D. Now she's gone somewhere in the deep depths of California, killing off brain cells, forgetting she even has a daughter.”

“See, you're dysfunctional, because you don't see that you and your baby are better off now,” he said. “You see that as a bad thing.”

“Yeah, D, I guess I do,” I said. I haphazardly threw the ball at the hoop, missing by at least three inches. “I love her and want her to come home to me and our daughter. It's probably horrible, but I can't help it.”

“Move on, man. You're so much better than she is. Trust me.”

He was repeating what Joey had said, only in different words. I knew deep down they were right, but I couldn't snap my fingers and make all the pain of losing her go away.

“It's not like a light switch,” I said. “I can't just pull a trigger and pretend that the last five years didn't happen. And that it doesn't hurt like hell.”

“Hell, I know that. But you can't sit here for the next year and pretend it's still happening either. And from my perspective, that's exactly what you're doing.”

“What I'm doing is sitting in prison,” I said. “For drug charges. I don't even do drugs. I tried marijuana once and didn't even like that. And now I'm stuck here, not quite knowing how this even happened, wondering when the hell it's going to end.”

“You don't think that maybe Brayden had you feeling like you've been in prison for the last five years anyway? And maybe it bothers you that now she's gone and still has you imprisoned so you can't move on?”

I didn't respond, only watched him throw his own shot and locked eyes with him a moment when he looked up.

“I'm just sayin',” he said. “Seems to me like you're doing better here than you did with her for five years.”

“Well,” I said after a moment, “if I am, it's probably because of Abby. She keeps me busy.”

A smile formed on his face. “Oh, she sure does.”

“I think she just doesn't want me to have time to think about all this stuff. She knows it bothers me.”

“Yep, she knows that.”

“She doesn't like to see me upset, so she tries to get me to smile whenever she can.”

He laughed as he bent down to pick up the basketball.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is so funny to you?” I asked.

“Only the fact that either you're denying it, or you can't see what's right in front of your face,” he said with a smile.

“See what?”

“You and Abby.”

“What about me and Abby?”

He clutched the basketball in his arm.

“Abby, Abby, Abby. Every fifth word out of your mouth lately seems to be her name. When she walks down the hall, she can't resist stopping by your cell to say hi. You haven't had a pair of handcuffs on since the week after you got here 'cause she's got all the guards sweet-talked into loving you, too. And the way you guys look at each other...”

“How do we look at each other?” I asked.

“Like your universes revolve completely around each other.”

I laughed. “No, Damian...no.”

“You can deny it all you want, but I saw it.”

“When did you supposedly see this?” I asked, still amused.

“You remember last week when I got my ass handed to me by that new guy on our hall?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at the healing cut still over his eyebrow. “You came in bleeding and Abby asked you if Roberta had finally got sick of your mouth constantly running and kicked your ass. And I laughed because I wondered the same thing.”

“Yeah, not quite what happened. Anyway, Abby was stitching me up, asked you to grab her something, and when you handed it to her and the two of you looked at each other, you both had that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That look like you're so stupid in love that you can't even form coherent words. I'm surprised either of you remembered I was there to begin with.”

“So, you're convinced that we're in love because you saw us look at each other?”

“Don't you even begin to act like it's so ridiculous,” he said. “I'm sure you looked the same way at Brayden five years ago.”

“Yeah, and look where that got me.”

I snatched the basketball out of his hands and threw it at the basket, missing the shot again.

“You gotta let it go, man,” he said.

“I don't think I know how.”

“Oh, you know how. You just don't want to because it's all you've known. It's too comfortable for you. Moving on to something completely new is scary. You gotta let that go and move on to something exciting, something your heart wants.”

“My heart wants to be home.”

“Your heart wants Abby to be right there beside you.”

I chuckled. “Are you still on that? I thought we had moved past that one.”

“You need to admit it to yourself. I am your voice of reason in that muddled brain of yours, telling you exactly what I know you want.”

“I appreciate the gesture, but I didn't designate you as my voice of reason. Besides, what makes you an expert in love? You talk all the time about Brayden, but I haven't heard you say one word about your girlfriend since I got here.”

“That's 'cause there ain't much to say about that,” he said somberly.

“And yet, you can go on and on about me and Abby when there's not even anything going on between us.”

The smile disappeared from Damian's face and his mood changed entirely. He took several shots at the basket without saying anything.

“Wow,” I said. “That's the first time I've left you speechless in three months. Seems to me there's more to talk about than you let on.”

“Not really,” he said, without looking me in the eyes. “Not a lot to talk about since she died five and a half years ago.”

I was floored for a moment, while he went on taking shots.

“Sounds like that's something to talk about,” I said.

“I don't talk about it,” he responded.

“Maybe you should start with me.”

I didn't want to push him to talk about it, but it felt like he wanted to tell me something, even if he guarded some of the details.

He went for a free throw and for the first time the whole game, missed the shot. Instead of walking after the ball as it rolled away, he stopped and looked at me.

“One of my friends was a pretty big dealer in Brooklyn. When I first moved here, I was one of the guys that helped him get his business off the ground – bringing in customers, moving product and stuff like that. After a couple of years, he was doing so well in the cocaine business that he decided he wanted to move to meth production.”

He looked away from me for a moment and stuffed his hands in the pocket of his hoodie.

“I was comfortable with cocaine, but meth wasn't anything that I wanted a part of. He wanted me to go in on it with him like I had before, but I didn't want to. So instead I decided to branch off on my own. Most of his people didn't want any part of it either, so they decided to come along with me. Then his customers decided to follow me, too. I cost him a lot of business, a lot of money. Of course, he didn't like that. I didn't have any beef with him, but he did with me – so he had a bullet with my name on it. Only he made a mistake and ended up getting her instead.”

I was at a loss of the right thing to say, so I said nothing.

“They never could pin him down for it. I got her mixed in with the wrong crowd. I was stupid and reckless. Thought I was invincible – never did occur to me that she wasn't.”

The ball had hit the fence and rolled back to us, so he picked it up rolled it around in his hands.

“A few months later, I got myself in some big-time trouble. DA offered me a deal of twenty-five years in PC if I'd give up some of my people – when you're staring at life, parole after ten years sounds pretty good. I had a beef now, so he was one of the first I gave up. He knows I turned on him, so now he's out for me again and he's got his people out on me, too. Some days, I wish I'd taken life instead. I'm not living much better protected than I would if I were serving life.”

He looked at the ball for a moment, then threw it back at the hoop.

“Then there's some days I wish his bullet would have found its proper target.”

“You don't wish that,” I said.

“I don't usually open up to people like that. I loved her – thought I would build up a little money, then I could leave the drug mess entirely and get married and start a family, like my mama wanted me to. I guess God had different plans for both of us.”

“I'm sorry, Damian.”

“I'm not an expert in love,” he said. “But I damn sure do know that I miss my girl, and if I could do anything to get her back, I would. And I do know that by not letting yourself move on, you're denying yourself something wonderful – something I would sacrifice anything to get back myself.”

“Abby and I,” I said, “we're friends. Maybe I love her as a friend, because she's made being here a lot less lonely – but it's nothing more than that.”

He looked at me for a moment before picking the ball back off the ground.

“You know what?” he said, throwing the ball at my chest. “Shut your mouth and take a shot.”

I raised my hands in time to barely catch the ball in my hands. I could tell he wasn't angry at me because of his tone, but the random outburst was a bit strange.

But I raised the ball up in my hands again and threw it at the hoop. It looked like it would make it for a moment, but I barely missed the shot and watched it bounce off the rim.

“Man, you suck at this game,” he said as he chased after the ball. He picked it up again and ran back towards me, and stopped about a foot in front of me. “Now,” he said, looking me in the eye. “Turn around and look at the door over there.”

I raised my eyebrow, but turned around anyway. Standing by the door to the prison was Abby, talking to one of the guards, all while watching Damian and I playing basketball. I had no idea how long she had been standing there in the cold watching us. She smiled when she saw I had noticed her.

“There's that stupid look all over your face again,” Damian said. He shoved the basketball a little rougher into my stomach. “Now try to take another shot.”

I grasped the ball and sighed, unsure of why he was leading me back and forth like he was. I threw the ball again after a few seconds; this time, the ball whooshed straight through the hoop.

“Ahhh,” he said with a smile. “Now Superman can save the day, once he knows that his Lois Lane is watching him.”

He turned to look at me as the ball rolled farther away from the hoop.

“You feel like you can do anything when she's around. She makes you feel human again after Brayden. Abby and I are friends,” he said, then pointed at me. “You and Abby are in love with each other. You can stand here and preach your sermon all you want to, but I know better. I see it, and I hope one of these days you will, too, so you won't wait and miss out on something great.”

He walked away to grab the ball and made a few more shots, but I stood in place staring at the hoop, too dumbfounded. The shot I had managed to make couldn't be used to judge whether I was in love with a woman – but I was horrible at basketball. The shot could have been a fluke, but it seemed entirely too coincidental that it happened right after I knew Abby was watching.

I turned around and looked at the door again. Abby was still standing there, smiling at me, and after seeing my successful shot gave me a small thumbs-up gesture and winked her eye. I smiled back at her, hoping I didn't look as stupid as Damian had let on.

I hadn't thought anything could get more confusing after watching Brayden walk out of the prison and essentially walking out of my life. Abby had provided a certain comfort in my life the past three months that nobody else had been able to provide. I'd had my heart broken and had put up a guard against everybody – she had forced me to take that guard down so I could start to trust people again.

I didn't know if Damian was right, and I still had too much of my guard up to be able to see it – but the new dynamic had stirred up feelings I hadn't recognized in a long time. Now, normal was more distant than it had ever been.