I came here to put Bryce in his place.
He knew this as much as I did.
Then why is he helping me?
McCarson sets out a small bowl and pours a dash of vinegar, the rest he fills with warm water. I watch wordlessly as he disappears and returns with a rag. His green eyes flicker to mine and then my torso.
“Take ya shirt off.”
“Why?”
He looks at me as if I’m insane. “Because those bruises will make ya feel like shit in the morning if you don’t do something about them. How can I help ya with it on? Rubbing vinegar and warm water on the areas before they appear will help the coloring and healing.”
I swallow hard. “I meant why did you take my side back there?”
Bryce stays silent as I take off my shirt. He stares outside the kitchen window, shoulders tense underneath his Harley Davidson sweatshirt. I’ve never seen Bryce this quiet or somber.
McCarson without the sarcasm? Unthinkable.
“Have ya ever been to Hoxton, England?”
“No.”
“Hmmm.” Bryce nods, his gaze still on the outside. When he speaks, his accent shines through. “Well, I was born there. Now if ya ask me, my mother, or say the local bread-maker what makes Hoxton really Hoxton, we’ll all say different things. The bread-maker would say the tight-knit communities and cloudy days, right. There’s something poetic about it. My mother would say her bread and butt’er pudding with raisins. She hates nutmeg and puts so many raisins in it’s basically a raisin cake. Every bite there’s like sixty pieces in your mouth and you’re paralyzed…but I never questioned it because it’s what she likes. You see, a lot of people have different perspectives on the world. It’s the same place but different things stand out. Like you in your job. Ya notice things that I wouldn’t necessarily pick up and that there takes courage to notice things others wouldn’t without the fear of being judged.”
I take the small towel and wipe over the beaten areas. Still, I’m attentive to Bryce and keep my eyes on him. The spot near my diaphragm stings and I hiss in protest.
“Easy, mate. It’ll hurt for a bit…Anyway, if someone asked me what I love about Hoxton, I would say the warmth of friendship. I had friends back there.” He smirks when he turns to me. “Hard to believe that, innit?”
The corners of my lips rise. “Am I allowed to say sometimes?”
“You’re allowed. All tough guys with the softest hearts, ya know how it all goes. I left them for opportunity here in Seattle. One thing I learned about my group of friends is if you fuck with one of us, you fuck with us all. I’ve never had a long-term girlfriend, I’m the casual type of guy. This week I hid from ya because I…I know what I did was wrong. If I was back home, all my mates would circle me and beat my ass. We love each other but we always put each other in our place too. Ya know what I mean?”
“I do.”
Bryce takes a step forward and motions towards my hand. “See what I like about you, Giannotti, is what you did to me. You hit me. Valencia, she slapped me. Now, I’m not saying violence is the answer but it’s needed to place things into perspective sometimes. I put myself in ya shoes; it’s something I’ve never done, right, so I put myself in those shiny fancy fucking Italian shoes you wear and imagined myself with kids and a wife. I imagined my wife assisting her employee with important work. They got drunk and he…he thought that maybe she was sick of me and wanted to show her what she was missing.”
He pauses with a staggered breath, his face flushed. There’s aggravation within him and I notice now it’s anger at himself. With each sentence he takes a pause, amplifying the severity.
I should be giving Bryce McCarson a piece of my mind, but he’s surprising me. I never expected this, that he would actually have an honest conversation with me. Then Valencia crosses my mind and how distressed she was in that shower. I know this is going to be more complex than I initially thought.
“If I stepped inside that bar and I saw that, right? If I saw somebody feeling up my wife, kissing her neck…I would have killed that man. I wouldn’t have stopped at a punch. I would have fucking ended him for even thinking, let alone kissing her without her wanting it. Why didn’t ya go that far with me?”
“I’m not that type of man.”
“Nah. I saw the havoc in them eyes. If she wasn’t there, you may have gone there.”
I swallow hard. No. No, I wouldn’t…not with him.
McCarson’s confidence is like no other person I have ever crossed. There’s something very cynical about him. He’s the type of man who rakes carnage and isn’t afraid to drag everybody down with him. But right now, there’s a different side to Bryce McCarson. Perhaps the side he only shows for Marcus, close friends, and particular women.
Is the arrogance just a façade?
“I needed to attend to Valencia.”
“Nah.” He shakes his head confidently. His pointer rests upon my chest and taps twice. “You didn’t go that far because you still love her and you didn’t want to face the consequences of killing a man in front of her. That’s a life sentence in marriage. I know you hate me, Giulio, but every once in awhile the hero needs the antagonist and vice-versa. That’s exactly what happened earlier…and now.”
Bryce and I are left staring at each other. I don’t know what to say because I never expected this from him. You still love her. The cords of my neck soften at the thought of civil ground, but I cannot let go of the repercussions of his actions and how much it reeled
