Page 180 of Rules of Association

“Sorry,” I said to Nina as I ran a hand over my hair. It felt like a mess, so I started redoing the ponytail.

Nina went straight up to the heavy bag and gave it a weak punch, testing it, before looking at me. “What’s this thing doing here anyway? I thought we agreed on self-defense lessons.”

This made me smile for real. “I brought this in for the future. We’ll start with self-defense but I’m willing to teach more if and when anyone is interested.”

She eyed me. “The future, huh?”

I had yet to tell Christine or Nina about any extra information I’d found out regarding the shelter. All of that information would just serve to stress them out and I didn’t want to burden them with hopes if things turned out to be different from what me and my family were planning. So I kept the girls focused on the fundraiser (a Woman’s Festival that was growing into an outright carnival with the help of my brother) and told them to worry about their regular jobs while I worried about the rest.

In the meantime, I was commandeering event night. It was high time we axed the movies. Well, okay—movie night was still an option, but this (low stakes self-defense lessons) would be an option too. And tonight was my first night teaching it.

“Are you okay, hun?”

“I’m good,” I said looking at her with a tired smile.

She gave me a sympathetic look in return. “Has he called?”

At the mention of Connor, a pulse started in my head. It was doing that lately. This throat closing, head throbbing, body altering pain overtaking me and making it hard to function with my mind anywhere near where his memory touched. The next breath I took in was shaken and raw. “No.”

“Have you called him?” she asked.

“He asked me not to.”

“And?”

“And this is all my fault. So I’ve got to respect that, don’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” she said as she eased her way to my side. Taking my hand she said. “You both are responsible for where you are now. He had every opportunity in the world to just speak up and say it clearly. You may have been deliberately ignorant, but he was intentionally not forthcoming, not to mention he enables you. He enabled you to continue to hurt him thinking he could take it, and in the end you both just hurt each other. All you need is an olive branch to start forging a bridge.”

I huffed a laugh, and she gave me a look. “What?”

“I hate olives,” I said and laughed even more when she pinched me.

“You are so stubborn,” she said with a shake of her head. Turning my hand over, she rubbed her fingers across the red of my knuckles. I had only meant to throw a few punches, but I guess I got carried away without the proper protection. I was doing that lately too.

Sometimes I’d wake up at night and just want to hit something. I had this mini bag I bought myself in my apartment that I would use for exactly that. And sometimes when I stayed late at the gym to get a few extra hits in I wouldn’t always glove all the way up. Needing to feel the sting of something other than my heart for once. The soreness it brought was just another distraction from things I didn’t want to think about. It was welcome. But I could admit the bruising over my skin was not a nice side effect.

Nina’s concerned face had me regretting it marginally. “And I’m worried about you, Ceci. Maybe you need to rethink your stance on olives. Or at least their branches.”

Before we could get any deeper into the conversation, Christine was at the door with a grand total of five women trailing behind her. More and less than I thought we’d start with. More than I thought, less than I’d hoped. It was still a good start.

Nina gave me a‘we should talk about this later’look and I gave her a look that said‘maybe’in return. But before she left, I said, “Nin, you got the metaphor wrong. An olive branch is just a sign of peace. You don't build anything with it.”

She laughed.

“And since when have you ever done anything peacefully? This way suits you better.” She smiled sympathetically, but there was something encouraging in her eyes. “This way, you can use your branches to build him a bridge back to you.”

* * *

What Nina said stuck in my mind. Wrong as she was about the metaphor, the idea of building a bridge, a reason for Connor to come back home, seemed a little devious but a lot my speed. And I knew exactly what I’d do to make it happen.

My only real hang up about it was the same hang up that had stopped me from calling, texting, or trying to contact Connor at all in the now four weeks he’d been gone. Even though I’d opened messages and typed in his number. Even though I’d rehearsed what to say and how to apologize and how I would beg for his forgiveness. Even with the clearest vision of hindsight, I couldn’t get past this one thing.

The beach.

After pulling my head out of my ass, I could see clearly all that Connor had put up with for me. All the times he’d said I love you in so many guarded words and all the times he’d said it with his actions alone.

It was clear as the sky was blue that I loved him. Long before this summer, when I’d been going through too much of my own shit to comprehend that he was confessing to me in a million little ways. Long before even this year.

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