Reflection

Monacco Desert Cottage - Vista Hills




Nico stood on the familiar stone steps in front of Isabella’s house, sullen and paralyzed with apprehension. He had stood in that same spot not so long ago – his heart in his throat – wondering if she would let him in, hear him out, let him tell her how much he still felt for her. Miraculously, she did let him in and everything in his life after that moment had changed for what he wanted to believe was the better.



Despite the happiness that night led to, there had always been something else between them as well – a quiet but clearly visible elephant in the room, things they didn’t talk about, tried not to think about, and all but pretended didn’t exist. They had slowly chipped away at a few of the obstacles, but one, the biggest one of all, still stood in their way and couldn’t be dissolved as easily. It was that thing, that insidious “it” that had him standing there again hesitating to ring the bell and begin a conversation that might threaten everything they had reclaimed.

The front door opened before he could make a definitive move and Isabella slipped out into the darkness, approaching him tentatively. “What are you doing here?” she asked him, the same question she had posed that first night. The anger that had been laced in her voice then was absent, but the hint of hesitation still lingered. He stood gazing at her, his restlessness calming in her presence, before pulling her close to him and wrapping her in his arms, finding comfort in her embrace, her head pressed against his chest, her hands sliding up and down his back, soothing and safe. He held her there for a long moment, long enough for him to get lost in it and long enough to let her know that something wasn’t right.



She pulled back, staring up at him, trying to catch something in his expression. “What happened? Is something wrong?” Another silent pause, followed by him taking her by the hand through the house and out onto the patio. He let her hand go and took a few steps past where she had stopped, looking off into the distant mountain range beyond the borders of what had served as their safe haven from the outside world. He tried to collect his thoughts and took a deep breath before he began.

“It’s my daughter, Bianca,” he said turning towards her. Her chest rose with a sharp inhale; the look spreading across her face – a blend of sadness and fear – was exactly what he had expected but no less difficult to face. “Bianca. That’s a pretty name,” she said in a whisper, more to herself than to him. “We had a fight before I came here. She’s been asking questions…about her mother.”

Isabella shut her eyes briefly, trying to carefully swallow the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. Here it was, the topic she had been dreading as much as he had; the questions that had been eating at her, but more than that, his answers to those questions. She shifted her gaze to her own reflection in the moonlit pool. His eyes were still on her and she could feel them searching for a reaction, but she didn’t have just one. There were hundreds even thousands of thoughts running through her mind, stirring emotions that conjured up a myriad of words to say, difficult words, words that could never be taken back once spoken. She swallowed them back down and decided to pose an obvious question instead.



“So I assume she’s heard the rumors about me? She thinks I’m her mother,” Isabella said taking a step away from him as he took one in her direction. “Yes. She asked about you, about us. She thinks you left me because of her,” he replied. She continued to stare into the still blue water this time catching his reflection moving slowly toward her but before he could get too close, she turned her back to him. “What did you tell her?” she said, struggling to maintain an even tone. “I told her the truth; a part of it at least.”

She took another step away, increasing the space between them even further. “So what is the truth Nico? Who is her mother and exactly how old is she?” He let out a sigh, well aware of where this was going. “She just turned 15 this year.” Isabella shook her head slowly taking in the information, confirming what she had suspected. “Issy I know what you’re thinking, but please just let me explain.”



“Explain what Nico?! I can do the math. You got someone pregnant barely a month after I left! All the time you claimed to be dying without me you were sleeping with somebody else. If what we had was so special how could you have done that? What if I had come back? Do you know what that would’ve done to me?” She couldn’t hold it anymore. Her tears began to fall fast and she held onto herself to keep from shaking as she let out an anguished breath. “If you could do that…it just makes me question how real any of it was in the first place.”

“How the hell can you say that?! Of course it was real! I wasn’t sleeping with her; it wasn’t like that. You were gone and I was sick of feeling like shit about it and she…she was just there. I barely knew her and it was one night, one stupid fucking night. I didn’t see her again until I found out she was pregnant.” He paused for a moment in an effort to calm down. “That’s when I knew we were over, when I gave up on us. It’s the only reason I gave up.”

Completely closing the gap between them he grabbed her from behind and held on in spite of her initial resistance. “I know how it looks but I can’t erase it, I can’t take it back and I wouldn’t because I love my daughter, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t love you. Please tell me you believe that.”

“I want to Nico, I really do. I’m not stupid, I knew you would be with other women, but so soon after I left? I couldn’t have done that and it just hurts to know that you could, even if I was gone and even if it was a million years ago. It changes who I thought we were. That’s different to me now and I wish it wasn’t.”

He tightened his grip around her hoping that the intense emotions he was feeling would somehow penetrate the walls he could feel her putting up. She turned around to face him again and he reluctantly met her eyes. The hurt, and confusion and distance behind them was unmistakable. “Come on angel, you can’t let what happened in the past stop us; we’ve come too damn far. I’ve always loved you. You know I always will.”

She stared back at him, remaining silent, her tense expression beginning to soften a bit. He pulled her into him and pressed his lips softly against her forehead, and then on one check and then the other, each kiss requesting permission to go further, and after an uncertain moment, she released her resolve and gave him full access. She wrapped her arms around his neck feeling herself getting caught up in the passion that always burned between them, but before she got totally carried away she pulled back to his dismay. She wanted to get lost in their love for one another, forget about the doubts she was having and the complications in their way, but they couldn’t keep running. Sooner or later they were going to have to face reality and she was determined to force them do it now.

“What’s wrong?” he said, maintaining a strong grip around her waist. “We have to deal with this. We can’t keep on acting like Bianca doesn’t exist. No matter what you told her she still thinks that I’m her mother and you need to tell her the whole truth, not just a part of it. She has a right to know what happened. Why won’t you tell her?”

Nico let out a frustrated sigh, looked away from her, irritated, his jaw tightly clenched. “I can’t. I know she needs to know, but I don’t know how to tell her. What happened to her mother was my fault, she’ll never understand it. I can’t tell her Issy, I just can’t!” Isabella turned his face back to hers, lightly caressed the sides of it with her hands. Whatever it was, it had been bottled up for far too long; he needed to get it out and she needed to hear it. “If you can’t tell her, will you try to tell me?”

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DeSantos Residence - Sagebrush



Rider walked out onto the quiet darkness of the patio, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He took a drag, catching the reflection of the lit end in the blue abyss of the pool. He flicked off some ashes and watched the red embers float through the air and land on the surface of the water before disappearing. He was sick of the pool, sick of the sofa, the TV, the whole damn house. Most of all he was sick of being stuck babysitting a teenaged brat while Nico and Rook ran the streets without him.

He took another drag, blew it out, and shut his eyes in an effort to relax but they flew back open when he heard a faint noise to his left. He scanned the darkened patio to make sure that the assumption that he was alone was correct. Seeing nothing, he resumed his position and took another drag but once again his thoughts were interrupted by the noise.

He stepped out onto the catwalk that stretched across the pool and as he approached the middle of the walkway he began to make out the silhouette of someone sitting on the ground. “Who’s there?!” he called out as he cautiously moved closer. The person didn’t speak and again he heard the soft noise that had alerted him in the first place. It sounded like sniffling. He moved toward it swiftly, fists balled, ready to attack and just as he was about to pounce the moon peaked out from behind the clouds illuminating the identity of the intruder. It was Bianca, curled up in a shivering ball, her eyes clamped shut, her face puffy and wet.

Rider broke his gait and stood over her in shocked silence. He had never seen her cry before and as mean as she always was to him, he hadn’t thought it was even possible. Still, there she was, the evidence that she could streaming down her face. He threw his cigarette down, stomped it out with his shoe and sat down next to her, but maintained a good distance just in case the wounded animal decided to strike.

“So what’s wrong with you?” he asked matter-of-factly determined not to be lulled into a false sense of safety in spite of her weakened condition. She remained silent and began hurriedly wiping at her tear stained face. “Look, either tell me what the problem is or suck it up. Nico will probably be back soon and I don’t feel like holding the bag for all this balling you’re doing.”

“Don’t worry about it. He doesn’t care anyway,” she said between sniffs, “he’s got someone else’s feelings to worry about.” Rider shot her a confused look. “What are you talking about? Does he have some new girlfriend you don’t like or something? Why are you crying about that, you know he doesn’t keep those broads around long.”

“She’s not some broad,” Bianca spat, a defensive edge to her voice. “She’s my mother and she’s the one who doesn’t like me, I guess.” The thought brought more tears to her eyes and she batted them rapidly to keep them for falling. Once again Rider’s expression was clouded with confusion. “Your mother? I didn’t…you never said…well who is she?”

“It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want me, she only wants him and he doesn’t care. I can’t believe he doesn’t even care. How can he not care?” she said looking up at him as if he had the answer. Rider stared back at her, the look in her eyes making him desperately uncomfortable, eliciting a strange sensation, a burning ache in his chest that he’d never felt before. She turned away from him as another stream of tears began to fall and instead of obeying the voice in his head telling him to get up and walk away, he found himself reaching his arm around her and pulling her closer to him.


“Hey, don’t cry. You know Nico loves you. Why else would he bother the hell out of me to look after you? He wouldn’t do that if he didn’t care. There has to be another reason, but if she really doesn’t want you than fuck her. You don’t need her anyway. I never knew my parents and I’m just fine.” He peered down, watching in awe as she buried her face deeper into his chest, her sobbing becoming more intense. Clearly whatever he had just said had been the wrong thing.

As he moved to put his other arm around her he caught a reflection of the two of them in the pool and the reality of what he was doing hit him. He was crossing a boundary that was way past his comfort level and the ramifications of his physical proximity to Nico’s daughter were not ones he wanted to explore. Abruptly he slid his arm from around her and casually patted her on the shoulder before scooting a few inches away.

Bianca had been so lost in her emotions that his sudden movement startled her. She looked up at him again dismayed to find the look of concern he wore before had been replaced by something that bordered on annoyance. She was even more disturbed when she realized that she was still clinging onto his shirt. She let it go, straightened up and began the business of fixing her face again.


“Sorry,” she said as she got to her feet and began walking back to the house. “Don’t worry about,” he called after her. He watched her disappear into the darkness of the house before reaching in his pocket and grabbing another cigarette. He needed something to take the edge off of his frayed nerves. He lit it and took a long slow drag. He felt bad for the kid, but whatever was going on between her and her father was going to stay between them. No matter what it was that had happened to him a few moments before, he was determined not to get involved again.