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  After she fell asleep I moved her left hand, she had it crushed against my chest while she cried and now a four pointed diamond shaped indention tingled on my pec. She used to twist her rosebud earring when she was nervous or upset but now she took out her woes on her ring. I watched her put her earring in her jewelry box one day and said she wouldn’t wear it again until her wedding day. But I took it one step further. I took the earring and had it made into a pendant. That way it would be visible in our pictures. Her wedding dress hung in the closet down the hallway. It used to hang in our bedroom but after Mad pulled his disappearing act, she moved it down the hall.

  I heard a rattling from the other room and I detangled myself from her to go get Oak from his cage. I held him for a while and then put him back. He woke up once in a while at night but it didn’t bother me. In fact, it was kinda cute. Nellie hated that Maple woke up at night and when I reminded her that babies wake up at night she punched me.

  Unable to sleep anymore, I walked into the kitchen. We had left a mess, too tired to clean after eating. But I wasn’t doing anything else other than driving myself mad, too many thought streams keeping me from sleep. I put the leftovers away, washed the dishes as quietly as possible.

  “Falcon, Owen called me a dill weed. What’s a dill weed?” Maddox whispered that question to me from the top bunk of our wooden bunk beds. We shared a room in our first house because Owen refused to share a bedroom with me and Mad didn’t bother me one bit. He used to draw pictures in his bed with a flashlight tucked under his chin.

  I laughed, he wasn’t quite old enough to know what a dill weed was. “Mad, you’re not a dill weed. And don’t say that again, especially in front of Mom. You won’t be able to sit down for a week if she hears you say that.”

  “Why does Owen always pick on me?” He whispered, half asleep. We went through this almost daily.

  “Because he loves you. That’s what Owen does. You have to worry when he stops speaking to you.”

  “Ok,” he said and just when I thought he’d finally drifted off above me he said, “He told me that you’re a dork.”

  “You didn’t hear me come in here. Either you’re deep in thought or my ninja skills are heightening.” I put the last dish in the drainer without turning around. I was deep in thought.

  “Thinking about Mad,” I said simply and turned to face her.

  “What about,” she asked.

  “He used to ask me about things late at night. We used to share a bunk bed. He asked me why Owen called him a dill weed.”

  She laughed at that and then sombered.

  “How old was he?” She asked.

  “Um, I was about eight so he was six or so.”

  “That was before he knew.” She said, her whispery, mousey voice told me everything.

  “Come here,” I opened my arms and she came willingly.

  “I’ve been hiding some things.” She murmured and I could feel her jaw move as she spoke.

  “You ready to share,” I asked.

  “I can share one,” she said.

  “I’ll take what I can get at this point.” I said, my lips moving on her hair.

  “I was going to wait until our wedding night but I know you’re getting antsy.” She started to lift the hem of her shirt. My eyes widened and I looked for a way out, preferably somewhere cold.

  “Not that, sleeve.”I bowed my head and shook it.

  “Not you too—please don’t encourage her by actually using her words in a sentence.” We both laughed and then grew serious again.

  “Whatever you’ve got to show me, let’s go to bed. Show me there. I have a feeling we’ll end up there anyway.”

  She took my hand and led me to our bed and I sat on it while she stood before me the lights from her stained glass window made her skin look like the reflections of a disco ball. She turned to the side and lifted her slip of a shirt up to expose her ribs. She looked at me hesitantly, seeking approval but my feelings crashed against each other. One part of me, clearly the homo-stupidus caveman part, was livid. She’d marred her beautiful skin, and I was too stupidus to notice. But the other part of me was honored beyond words. I should’ve been more specific when I asked her not to get my name inked on her. I should’ve known she’d find a way around it, if her heart was set on it. And she did. Lying perfectly along her long and slender torso was a intricate, abstract falcon with swirls and lines that made it look feminine.

  “When,” I asked, reaching my fingertips out to touch the bird of prey that marked her as mine.

  She shivered while she replied, “A week ago when I was with Nellie.” She still had question on her face but I had to press a little more.

  “It looks good; you’ve been taking care of it. This is why you didn’t want me to…”

  “Yeah, I was gonna wait until our wedding night but I thought showing you would help—us. I don’t know why, I just wanted you to see. I feel like we’re coming unglued or something.” I could see the tears coming down her face for the second time that night and as she looked back down at the tattoo, they fell on her chest.

  “Don’t ever say that. We will never come unglued. There is nothing in this world that could ever separate me from you. Distance, time, family—nothing will ever tear us apart. And you, getting inked for me just—it slays me and makes me so honored to be your choice. If we were already married, there would be no sleep for you tonight—at all.”

  She let her shirt go and it cascaded down her waist, back into place and on top of my hand, not willing to leave her ink yet. She turned to face me, and my hand rounded the curve of her waist, around to her back and down to where those two dimples sat above the waistband of those tiny shorts she insisted on wearing to bed.

  She reached out, grabbed my other hand and placed it on the corresponding spot on her right side.

  “You’re not gonna go home, are you?” She whispered it to me, here in the dark while her thumb set me on fire, running across my bottom lip.

  “Baby, you are my home,” I answered and pulled her down with me to show her.

  Chapter 11

  Maddox

  I hate cartoon tattoos.

  “We have to get inked, like before we get to California.” Nixon was more excited than I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve seen the boy at birthday parties all his life.

  “Yeah, I’m down with that. What are you gonna get?” I was driving this leg and we had decided to go through Nevada and hit Vegas on our way to Venice.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never gotten one. What do you have,” he asked. I had gotten several within my first few weeks of being of age.

  “I’ve got an anchor across my chest and the stars on my elbows. Find a tat shop on your phone and let’s go before we get into Vegas.”

  “Ok, cool. Um—you don’t get—twitchy or whatever when they tattoo you?” It was a valid question.

  “No, somehow the gloves help. Can we stop talking about how weird I am—please.”

  He found a tat shop about twenty five miles up the road and stopped in but as soon as we entered the place, Nixon turned puke green and sat in the closest metal chair. The man on the other side of the counter had enormous gauges the size of cup rims in his ears. I already knew what I wanted.

  “Whatcha gonna get today?” He said in a slightly condescending tone.

  “I’m getting a pinup girl on my ribcage. This guy,” I hitch-hike-thumbed in Nixon’s direction, “He’s a first timer. He’s probably gonna get a Mom heart or something.”

  “Oh yeah,” Nixon stood up, having found his boys again, “If you add a ‘W’ to your dad’s name it becomes Weiner.”

  Everyone in the place cracked up and one of the tattoo artists, a girl with rainbow hair, had to put down her tattoo machine so she could laugh without hurting her client.

  “Where in the Hell did that come from Nixon—Jesus.” I turned around at the same time to give him a ‘Please don’t embarrass me in front of these people’ look.

  He threw his
arms in the air and said, “You know how I get when I’m nervous Mad—shit.”

  I laughed at him some more, “I know, just pick what you want and shut the hell up.”

  The man with the gauges plopped a big leather clad binder in front of me. It had page after page of pin-up girls in it. I wanted a real classy pin-up girl—Lord knows my Mom would twist my ears up until they bled if I got a naked one. I finally settled on a girl, sitting on a beach, clad in one of those hot vintage bikinis. The gauge guy drew up the sketch and placed the stencil on me. While he got his station ready, I cleared my throat and told him, “I just decided, I want her to be a brunette instead of a red-head, she would look better that way.”

  “No problem, man.” He said. I sat on the black leather table, topped with the crackly white paper and then laid down after removing my shirt. He snapped on his black latex gloves and started in. It got a little painful around my ribs but at least it was something other than that damned skin crawling sensation.

  I saw Nixon pass by with some picture in his hand. The rainbow haired girl was tattooing him and he looked pleased. I heard a very girly scream from the other side of the room and all eyes snapped to his direction. “Shut up, her hands are cold.” He defended.

  “Shut up, her hands are cold,” I parroted back to him but in a much girlier voice.

  It took about an hour and the guy did a fantastic job. She was lying on the beach, sun in her brunette hair. She was a dream. This was the only way I could get a girl on top of me without twitching.

  I sat in the metal chair by the entrance when some guys came to leave a pile of flyers on the counter. I got up and took one from the top of the pile.

  Antique, Classic and Futuristic Car Show

  Las Vegas

  June 13-14

  I knew those dates well. Reed had been nuts for months about getting everything right for the wedding and it was to be June 14. June 13, we were supposed to give Falcon a huge bachelor party. I knew they would be happy and while I was at the car show, still looking for a man I’d never met, they would be walking down the aisle together, starting their lives. It sucked that I couldn’t be there, but I was sure it would all be fine without me. The world didn’t stop just because I wasn’t there, right? Of course not. And it would be selfish of me to think it would.

  I opened my mouth and nearly stood to tell Nixon about the car show but I could see from across the room that his whole face was contorted in pain and his fists were balled. The girl kept soothing him, “We’re almost done. Hang in there.”

  I folded the flyer up in fourths and stuffed it in my back pocket. I looked around while bouncing my knees in boredom. I spotted an internet/coffee shop across the street and decided to check my e-mail.

  “Nix, I’m goin’ across the street to check my e-mail.” I signaled the guy behind the counter and paid for my tattoo and Nixon’s. It set me back three hundred but I had plenty with all of my graduation presents, especially Falcon and Reed’s.

  I walked into the café and signed my name for time on a stone aged computer. They should probably give people more than thirty minutes per session since it took nearly ten minutes just to log into my email. I had seventy two messages.

  To my surprise most of them were from Owen. Some asked me about where I was and why I wasn’t calling in. One e-mail told me simply that he loved me and missed his little brother. That wasn’t something I’d ever heard from Owen. He wasn’t one to come out and say loving words except to Nellie. Another e-mail caught my eye with the subject: Remember Moses.

  I opened the e-mail and as I read the story he talked about I remembered,

  Falcon was maybe seven and I was five and Owen was eleven or something. I couldn’t really remember our exact ages. But Falcon dressed up as Moses and Owen was a camel because he refused to say any ‘ridiculous’ lines. Falcon had cut a hole in one of my mom’s white top sheets and had a long stick from outside. Owen wore an old horse Halloween costume but put two pillows in the back for the humps. I was always the last one at the dinner table, usually because I refused to eat my salad or green beans or whatever green thing happened to grace the plate. I would feed it to the dog bit by bit until the plate was empty but that night my brothers made a plan to set me free. They walked in, Falcon as Moses and Owen as a random camel and Falcon demanded with a clang of his staff on the floor to ‘let his people go,’

  My mom tried really hard to compose her face as she said, ‘Um, Moses, I don’t have your people.” Dad lifted his newspaper to cover his face but we could see it shaking—he was laughing his butt off because Falcon was so damned serious about the whole thing.

  He reiterated, “This young man is a Hebrew and he is God’s people. I demand that you let him go—from the table.” He added the last part for definition. His favorite movie of late was the old version of the Ten Commandments and this was that infatuation coming to fruition.

  Mom played along and put her hands on her hips, “And what if I don’t Moses?” she asked. Falcon raised his eyebrows and took a quick glance at Owen who was trying to scratch himself with the hoof part of his costume. “Your first born will be smote before you.” That got Owen’s attention and he quickly stripped out of his horse/camel suit right there and walked out. “Hell no Falcon, you didn’t say anything about smoting me.” He marched all the way upstairs in just his alien boxers. We all cracked up and Mom relented but promised that another round of the theatrics wasn’t going to get me out of eating my vegetables next time. Owen also got punished the next day for saying ‘hell’ and Falcon was punished as well for cutting a hole in one of her sheets. Falcon moved on the next week to King Kong and we never saw Moses again.

  I took the chance and replied to him. He wouldn’t know where I was just by replying to an e-mail. I simply wrote that I was Ok and I loved him too. I hit reply but it just wouldn’t send my reply. So I refreshed the page but just as I went to re-type the message I was tapped on the shoulder by a teenager and told that my time was up. The reply would have to wait for another time.

  I walked back across the street to see Nixon checking out his new ink in the mirror. He’d gotten a Cypress tree across his chest and the girl had done a fantastic job. She put Vaseline on him and taped the plastic wrap on top of his new body art.

  “It looks good Nixon, good choice.”

  “It hurts like a mofo,” he said. We left after he reprimanded me for paying for his tattoo and went to find something to eat. We ate greasy burgers and fries at a little shack-like stand and I pulled the flyer out of my pocket. “Look at this, wanna go?”

  He wiped his hands on a napkin and reached for the flyer and read over it. “Yeah, sounds good. We should stay a few days in Vegas, we can’t get into the casinos or gamble but there’s plenty of other things to do.”

  I nodded, “Ok, we can head that way tomorrow. There’s a place up the road that rents little cabins for the night. We can stay there tonight and head towards Vegas in the morning.”

  He looked relieved and answered, “Yeah, and I need some Tylenol.”

  That night I called Reed and told her where we were and that I was fine. But I knew that this would be the last time I talked to her before the wedding and her honeymoon so I took the time to tell her some things.

  “Reed?” I said.

  “Yeah, Mad?” I tousled my hair and wiped my palms on my jeans even though she couldn’t see me.

  “I just—I just want you to know that I love you and I love Falcon and my brother couldn’t have found a better girl.”

  “Thanks. We all love you. You know that right?”

  I hung up before answering and felt like a complete jerk for it. But I was afraid if I didn’t that I’d spill my soul out for her perusal—go back to the way our conversations used to be. And she had better things to do.

  Chapter 12

  Nixon

  Her name was tattooed into the winding bark of the Cypress tree and Maddox didn’t even notice. Rainbow Brite nailed it.

  Mad
dox went to the store to get me Tylenol for my fake tattoo pain. Honestly, after the first thirty or so jabs, the entire area went numb but I thought ahead, knowing I would need a minute to call Reed. He finally left and I peeked through the heavy brown curtains to make sure he was gone before making the call. The cabins he’d found earlier were all booked up for some HAM radio festival or some crap so we had to stay here.

  “Hello?” she said and this time she didn’t whisper so I assumed she was somewhere she could actually talk.

  “Hey, it’s Nixon. We are in some town outside of Vegas. He said he’s not gonna call you anymore because y’all are prepping for the wedding.”

  She breathed heavily into the phone and what she said next shocked the hell out of me. “Nixon, we’re not getting married.”

  “What? Did you guys break up?”

  She giggled a little but answered quickly, “No, of course not. But contrary to what Mad has probably told you, he is their brother and Falcon and I won’t get married without the entire family there. But it’s fine. Let him think that. Where are you headed?”

  “Um, we’re headed to Vegas for a few days and then we’re on to Venice Beach, California.”

  “Ok, well, hopefully the Weiner will be in California. Then Mad can come home.”

  “You call him that too,” I asked her.

  “As far as I’m concerned he is a big weiner. So, call me when you can, I guess.”

  “I will. He’ll be back soon, so, I’ll talk to you later. Take care.”

  “Yeah, you too Nixon.”

  I almost hung up when I heard her say, “Hey Nixon!”

  “What?” I said thinking she had some more info for me.

  “We want you back home too, not just Mad.”

  “Thanks Reed.” And with that I pressed the ‘End’ button.

  I went to the mirror and peeled the plastic wrap from my chest and cocked my head sideways to look for her name. It was hard to find amongst the bark and Spanish moss but if you were purposefully searching for it, like I was, you could see it clearly. The ‘J’ started at the top, at the split of the branches and the rest of the letters weaved down to the Cypress knees spelling ‘Journey.’ I’d loved her for as long as I could remember. But she was always dating someone else or in between boyfriends, not that she would ever see me as anything but a friend anyway. She always came to me after break-ups or fights with her boyfriends for consolation and I gave it to her freely. How could I deny anything she sought from me? Then I would watch as the next day or the next week she dropped me for the boyfriend, or the next crush.