All She Can Take

F O R T Y - N I N E

Sharp blades of glass pricked Sid's back. The sun beat down on her face causing more sweat beads to pop up on her forehead. Her chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. Closing her eye against the sun she tried to regulate her breathing. Out of shape wasn't the word for it. The human body was supposed to work better than this, she was sure, but the things she'd put it through the last year, hell, the last few weeks were insane. She still felt her poorly healed injuries from the bike accident. The mental weight of Phil across town in a hospital bed. The emotions of trying to set past wrongs right while wanting so badly to move forward toward her future. Right now she desperately needed to get up off of the ground. But her exhausted body wouldn't let her.

A shadow fell across her face. She tried to peel her eyes open and look at the figure hovering over but the sun blinded her. Before she could get up she felt the pressure hit her chest and warm liquid explode on her chest. She rolled away but still couldn't conjure the strength to get to her feet. She felt another explosion on her back.

"Ok! Ok! You got me." She coughed out as she gasped for breath, still trying to get away.

"Mommy's had enough, AJ!" She finally heard Aiden's voice from across the yard and said a tiny prayer. As she rolled over she saw that AJ was nearly upon her again. His hand cocked back with another balloon filled with water. The boy's arm wasn't only good for baseball. She watched as he looked back at his Dad who closing the back door and heading toward them. AJ's glee-filled eyes focused on her again like he was contemplating throwing that last balloon anyway. Sid took the chance to grab him and pull him down onto her lap. The excitement caused him to squeeze the balloon and it popped all over both of them anyway sending him into a fit of giggles.

"Thank you for saving me." Sid snuggled AJ close and buried her face in his hair like she always did. Breathing him in and locking it away in a place just for her. After seeing the brutality of Phil's injuries in the hospital Sid needed something gentle. She missed the simplicity and innocence that AJ brought her every day. Her visit wasn't planned and if it wasn't for their talk before she probably would never have even considered it. But she found herself on Aiden's doorstep knocking without even calling first. She batted away the piece of her brain that was screaming for her to run away, still stuck on autopilot after years of training. When Aiden opened the door and welcomed her in she was glad that she had fought against her typical ways. Glad something in her had shifted even though it terrified her. Before she knew it, hot dogs were on the grill, and her and AJ were locked into a cutthroat water balloon fight.

"No problem. I saw him going in for the kill. Here." Aiden passed her a beach towel and tried to wrangle AJ into another towel but AJ just snuggled deeper against Sid. She wrapped the towel around the both of them with him nestled into her lap. Her racing heart slowed and her breath leveled out.

"I'm glad you came. I was..."

"Worried?" She finished the sentence for Aiden. She'd jumped down his throat so many times just for asking how she was so she understood his hesitation.

"Yeah. How did everything work out with that?"

"Still working it out."

"There's no chance of you letting this go?" Aiden sat the plate of raw burger meat on the table and settled into the wooden chair on the patio.

"I can't."

"You can." He said, his voice cautious and measure but serious. Sid remained quiet. He took a breath before continuing. "Do you think your Dad expected you to avenge his death? Being mixed up with people like this is dangerous."

"It's about more than that."

"How so?" AJ wriggled out of her lap and went to inspect the plate that was on the table. Aiden held his little hands toward the seasoned burger meat before Aiden pulled him away from it. Sid hoisted herself off the ground and went over to the grill. The smell of grilled meat wafted up toward her as she pulled the sizzling food off of the racks. She threw a new batch of burgers on the grill. Looking back at Aiden and AJ relaxing on the patio chairs made her ache for this life. Her Aiden and their kid in the backyard playing and barbecuing on a hot summer day.