480 Hours

12 | Right Where I Need to Be

Maggie Bailey

By the reaction Landon had when I announced that we were "married," I knew we were far from finished with that conversation. Liam had told me all about his friend Landon before he had walked through our door and into my life late that Thursday evening. At the time, by the way that my brother had described him, I knew I wanted nothing more than to stay away from a "bad boy." Yet, the moment I saw Landon, all the plans I made in advance to avoid the mysterious man that avoided dating and women like the plague, went out the window. Of course, it also did not help that my brother's description of Landon could not have been more wrong. Landon was not a bad boy; he was a misunderstood man with an unfortunate past. In my book, that did not make him a bad person.

Although our moment together standing in my driveway with the early morning sun beating down on our necks was tender and sweet, it did not last long. Landon quickly realized he was still needed elsewhere and requested that if I were going to drive him, we leave immediately. Although only moment's prior he had been reluctant to the idea of being chauffeured to the hospital only a town over, when he climbed into the passenger seat of my Equinox, he thanked me for offering to take him.

I glanced his way meekly and informed him that it was my pleasure before putting the car into drive. Although he had been looking out the window as we pulled away from my small home on the beach, he quickly reached over and grabbed my hand off the gear stick, giving it a quick squeeze, before placing it in his own on his lap. This action alone let me know he was already in his own head about what had happened with his mother and was in need of comforting and reassurance. "Landon, I can't pretend to know what you are going through, I have never had a sick family member. However, I do know how you are feeling and if there is anyone on this earth that understands your need to be upset and angry, it is me. Please do not ever feel like you have to pretend around me. Trust me, I know from experience that it does not help." And I was not lying. I understood more than most his need to be angry and push those that cared about him away.

I wasn't mad at him for getting angry. In fact, it was almost refreshing to see that this man I thought of without flaws was actually human. In his current situation, I was surprised he wasn't angry more often. Yet, if him getting upset every once and a while over perfectly logical things meant that occasionally a piece of the "tough guy" facade he put on for everyone in his life chipped away, I was okay with that. It meant he was truly letting me in and trusting me with his heart.

"What were you like? When your parents passed I mean." Usually, I did not like talking about the years following their passing. Thinking about what Liam and I went through; how depressed we were and what it was like to be that kid at school whose parent had passed away, always made the nightmares worse. But by the look on Landon's face I could tell that he needed to talk about something unrelated to his family that would keep from making a twenty-minute car ride feel like an eternity.

"I was a little shit." This of course earned me a halfhearted smile and a genuine chuckle from Landon, as I pocked fun at the way he had described himself as a child before. "No, but really, if you'd asked my Aunt Zemeriah, or rather if you had ears and were willing to listen, she would have told you what a hellion I was to raise..."

I could tell that to an extent, the distraction was working. By Landon's reaction, I was obvious to me Liam had never told him this story. Not that I was surprised, as according to Landon, Liam hadn't even told people in the Marines about my existence. "Your aunt? I didn't realize you and Bailey had other family members. How come I have never heard of her? When we were in the corps together, Bailey always kind of made it seem like he had raised himself."

"That is because he did. Liam was already in high school when they died. Nothing aunt Z said or did could sway him on his opinions, as he felt as though he was better fit to raise me; and to be fair, he probably was. Zemeriah never wanted kids, especially half Columbian ones. Trust me, she made that extremely evident to the both of us." For the remainder of the car ride I told Landon what it was like to grow up without either of my parents and an aunt who hated leaving her boho lifestyle in New York to raise two "non-white" children she had never been involved with. Zemeriah was my father's older, racist sister. The aunt who before my parents' passing, I had met only once; remembering her only for the five-dollar bills she sent to both Liam and I on Christmas because she simply did not care enough about us to remember our birthdays.