by Brooks, Abby
I needed to move, and a strenuous yoga session sounded almost mandatory at the moment. I wouldn’t get the physical release I needed, but maybe I could exhaust myself enough to fall asleep without having to think about what almost just happened.
The thought of yoga on the balcony appealed to me, but Lucas had spent a good portion of last night out on his. The worst possible thing I could have to face right now was…well…him. My poker face wasn’t strong enough to try and pull off small talk after what just happened. The moment he looked at me, I would melt into a pile of red-hot embarrassment, possibly blurting out an admission of wrongdoing on my way down.
Instead of the balcony, I opted for a trip to the beach. I could stretch my mat out on the sand and enjoy feeling small beside the vast sea. Confident I had a solid plan on my hands, I grabbed my mat and my keys and stepped into the hallway…
…and ran straight into Lucas.
Literally.
“Whoa,” he said, gripping my shoulders as my face rebounded off his rock-hard chest. “You good?”
No. I wasn’t good. Not at all. Every second of the last fifteen minutes was the stuff of nightmares.
“Oh, sure,” I replied, in what I hoped was my breeziest voice. “Just headed out for some yoga.” I hefted my mat, presenting it as evidence that everything was perfectly normal and as it should be. When my eyes met his, I felt my cheeks go hot. I forced a smile, totally aware I must look slightly maniacal. “What about you? You good?”
Lucas looked like he couldn’t decide if the conversation was more hilarious or confusing, though maybe it was an equal blend of both. “Just heading out for a run.” He lifted a foot, highlighting a running shoe, gently mocking my gesture with the mat. “Walk with me?”
“Uh…” I glanced at my door, as if I could find an excuse to run away conveniently taped there. “I just…you know…uh…sure.”
“What is it with you?” Lucas asked on a laugh. “You’re acting like I caught you at something red-handed.”
I waved away his statement, valiantly ignoring the innuendo I could never live down. “Oh no.” I tossed my head back and laughed, the coolest cucumber in all the world. “Just figured you might be sick of me by now.”
Lucas wrapped a friendly arm around my shoulder and I couldn’t help it. I inhaled, breathing him in as if I could lock it in my memory and draw upon it the next time I needed…inspiration.
Lucas peered down at me, one eyebrow raised in question. “Did you just sniff me?”
“Uhh…no?”
He shook his head, but didn’t remove his arm. In fact, and this totally could have been my imagination, but it felt like he pulled me closer. “You’re one strange chick, Cat,” he said when we reached the bottom of the stairs.
And with that, he leaned down, buried his nose in my hair and took a deep breath.
“Hey! Who’s weird now?” I asked, as I pulled out from under his arm.
Lucas never broke his stride. “Still you,” he called over his shoulder, heading toward the door. “You coming?”
His question sent another blush flaring across my cheeks because no. If tonight was any indication, I would never get to come again.
Chapter Twenty-One
from: Katydid
to: Skywalker
date: August 3, 2018 at 9:45 pm
subject: deep thoughts
I thought about you a lot yesterday. I met some people I think you would like, people I really think I like. They’re open and kind and caring and…intense. Hanging out with them has made me realize how difficult it is to get to know someone. And I mean, really get to know them. In order to get to who anyone really is, you have to creep past their defenses, gaining trust along the way until they finally lower their guard and let you in.
We all put up fronts, these pleasant façades that we wear for different people. We have one for strangers, one for acquaintances, one for people we want to impress. How are we ever supposed to know if we’re dealing with the façade, or if we’ve finally met the real person?
What if the façade never drops? Are we always walking around, being someone less than true to ourselves in order to be what we think other people want?
Or worse, what happens when that façade doesn’t drop until you’re so deeply involved in a relationship that you can’t remember what life was like without it? The mask drops and you realize the person you thought you knew doesn’t exist. Instead, you’re tangled up with this funhouse mirror version of someone you’ve dedicated your life to. I think that’s what happened with Nash. I thought I knew him. Turned out, I only knew the parts of him I chose to see.
You and I didn’t go through that song and dance of getting to know each other. Of figuring out if we liked each other. Of wondering what the other one is thinking.
We just dove right in.
Or rather, you just dove right in. (Have I mentioned that I’ll never let you forget that you read my journal??)
I’ve only gotten bits and pieces of you and your life, but huge glimpses at how you see the world. And so, while I feel this deep connection and appreciation for you because I can—and do!—tell you everything I’m thinking, we’re still strangers.
While we go on and on about what we’re thinking and feeling, we haven’t even begun to talk about our daily lives. Our family. Our names.
We’re still wearing masks. Afraid to take them off, even when we’ve never met face to face.
And maybe I like it that way because I’m scared. After Nash, maybe I’m not ready for anything more than a pleasant façade. Maybe I just want to daydream about you being perfect so I don’t have to worry about what happens when the mask comes off.
This isn’t a very pleasant email, but I’m swimming through some not so pleasant thoughts.
Again, considering deleting it and trying to get some sleep. Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning and can save you from whatever bad mood I’m currently in.
But. You told me not to censor myself, so here you go.
* * *
I hit send and stared at the wall, listening to Lucas moving around in his room. Faint thumps of his feet against the floor. The hiss of the sliding door opening to the balcony and then sliding closed again. Outside, the stars shone over the water and the moon hung full and luminous in the sky. Inside, I regretted sending that email. It asked too much of a man who had done nothing but try and make me feel beautiful from the moment he met me.
Except we hadn’t actually met, so maybe I was being too hard on myself.
The sleep I knew I needed was a long way away. And so, rather than lay in bed and stew in my prickly thoughts, I slid open my door and stepped onto the balcony. Lucas glared at his phone, the screen illuminating his face as he read. Whatever he was seeing wasn’t making him happy, though with Lucas, it was hard to tell just what he was feeling at any given moment. He looked up as I sat in my chair and kicked my feet up on the railing.
“Hey,” he said as he locked his phone and slipped it into his pocket. “Can’t sleep?”
I shook my head and leaned back in my chair. “Haven’t tried yet.” I swiveled my head to meet his gaze. “But it feels like it’s going to be one of those nights, you know?”
“Believe me. I know.” Lucas smiled sadly. We sat silently as the ocean whispered and roared beneath us. Lost in our thoughts. Comfortably together yet alone, side by side on twin balconies, separated by some wrought iron and an inch of space.
“So how long are you…?” I began at the same time he asked, “Are you liking it…?”
We laughed and I gestured. “You first.”
“I was just going to ask if you like it here,” he said.
“I do,” I replied with a slight nod. The room was small but comfortable. The company was new yet oddly familiar. And the job itself was better than I could have ever hoped for.
“Wow.” Lucas sat back in his chair. “With a glowing endorsement like that, I w
on’t hesitate to tell Wyatt he won’t have to worry about you leaving.”
I laughed lightly as I counted the stars. When I was younger, I used to worry about, well, everything. School. Grades. Friends. The color of my hair. When my anxiety was at its worst, my mom would take me out on the porch. She’d point at the stars, whispering their names to me.
These have been here for more years than you can understand, she’d say. And no matter how bad your grades are, they’ll still be here tomorrow.
At first, I didn’t understand, or really, I thought she was the one who didn’t understand. How could a silly old star have anything to do with whatever tragedy was befalling me? The older I got, the more the lesson she’d been trying to teach me came into focus. And now, whenever life got too big, I came outside and stared at the things that had always been here and would still be here tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. The sun. The sky. The water. The stars.
“Sorry,” I said to Lucas. “I’m just stuck in my head or something. I really love it here.” I gave him my attention and a sad smile.
“I’m glad to hear that.” It was hard to see his face in the low light, but maybe that was for the best. Maybe that meant he couldn’t see mine and I could let down my mask a little and stop pretending to be anyone but me.
“I’m here,” he said. “If you need to talk, I’ll listen.”
Maybe it was the mood I was in. Maybe it was the darkness separating us. Maybe it was thinking about my mom. Maybe it was because he’d shared his tragedy with me yesterday. Whatever the reason, I felt comfortable enough to continue.
“Life’s been weird these past few months. I don’t typically let things get to me, but…I don’t know. I’m feeling unsettled tonight, I guess.”
Lucas nodded but didn’t say anything and we listened as soft chords from a guitar thrummed somewhere below us. The music threaded through the song of the ocean and I closed my eyes and took it all in. This place was truly paradise.
“It’s hard to find our place when it feels like the sand keeps shifting beneath our feet.” Lucas spoke so softly, he could have been speaking to himself. “Growing up here, when I was little, man, it was something. We all just lived excited, all the time. Mom and Dad were thrilled over how well the business was doing, how fast it was growing. I had a place and a purpose. Then Dad started drinking and boom. Everything mutated. What was happy became hard. What was right became wrong.”
His words conjured up images of a little boy losing his footing, unsure of how he fit into a world that used to feel so certain. My heart broke for him. In my head, I watched him grow into a man, determined to find his path. A man who needed to prove his worth so much, he became a Marine. And then, in a senseless act of violence, he lost that, too. In comparison, my complaints seemed trivial. My fiancé cheated. I chose to leave. The end.
I took a breath. “Yeah, I guess I really don’t have a whole lot of reason to complain.”
Lucas shifted, crossing his ankle over his knee and turning so he could look straight at me. “I don’t know. New city. New job. You’re living in a hotel. That sounds like some shifting sand to me.”
“A little. But nothing that ground-breaking. I left my fiancé. Had to stay with my mom. She’s doing this thing where she lives in an RV.” I shrugged, never sure if I was proud of my mom for the way she lived or if I was embarrassed. “She set out when I was in middle school. To see the world.”
“Without you?” I could hear the unspoken question in Lucas’ voice. Everyone who heard my story expected the drama of abandonment and the tragedy of loss. And sure, I was upset and confused at first, but if you knew my mom, the decision only made sense.
“Yeah. Without me. I went to live with my dad, which was fine. I mean, it was a change, because he was all rules and structure where my mom…” I searched for words to describe my mother’s free spirit.
“Is the kind of woman who lives in an RV?”
“Exactly.”
“How old where you when she took off?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it taking off…” I explained the day she sat twelve-year-old me down and informed me that I’d be moving in with my dad. “She was very up front about it. I mean, I was bitter for a bit, but I was almost a teenager, so what wasn’t I bitter about?”
Lucas stared up at the sky before responding. “Is that why you’re here now instead of staying with her? Still bitter?”
“Oh, God.” I let my legs drop off the railing. “Is that how I seem to you? Believe me, no bitterness here. I made peace with my mom and her nomadic ways a long time ago. She doesn’t have room for me in the RV. She’s all too happy to make room, but there are only so many nights a person can spend on a bed that moonlights as a table.”
Lucas laughed and the conversation moved on. We talked about his days as a Marine and I was duly impressed by what he willingly put himself through to carve out his place in the world. We talked about my life as a masseuse and my plans for the future. “What about you?” I asked, after explaining my desire to one day open my own wellness spa. “What does the future hold for Lucas Hutton?”
He turned his gaze out to the water and frowned. “That’s the thing,” he said. “I’m still standing in quicksand. Have been ever since I got hurt. Nothing seems to fit. Mom wants me to settle in here.” He shrugged. “Maybe this is where I belong.” His eyes settled on mine and I couldn’t be sure he was talking about the Hut anymore.
“Maybe it is.” I wasn’t sure I was talking about the Hut anymore, either. I stifled a massive yawn. “Wow. Excuse me.” I swiped at my eyes and rubbed my face as Lucas stood.
“Yeah, it’s about that time, isn’t it?” We said our goodnights and stepped into our respective rooms. As I stretched out in bed, I realized the melancholy from earlier was gone. I fell asleep listening to the waves and wondering about Lucas.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucas
Fire licked up my leg. My pants melted into my skin. Blood dripped into my eyes and the sky burned. Smoke crawled down my throat, raking its clawed fingers across my lungs, and sweat trailed like ice down my spine. In the distance, my commanding officer disappeared in another blast. His body flew through the air, limp. He hit the ground and tumbled bonelessly. I heaved myself onto my hands and my one good knee, and crawled to him, dragging my useless leg behind me.
I screamed without sound. His name lost amongst the chaos.
Rock and debris embedded in my hands and knees while I fought my way to his wasted body. His eyes stared without seeing, but his chest lifted and fell, and then, I saw nothing but darkness and felt nothing but pain as I burned and burned and burned.
* * *
Sweat drenched my body. I threw the covers off and sat up, shivering as I dropped my head into my palms. I ran a shaking hand into my hair and let out a breath. There are things we see and experience that can’t be undone. That day in the desert was one of them. It proved to me the brutal fragility of life. We all believe the people we love and the things we have will be with us for the rest of forever. All of it an illusion, a house of cards built on shifting sands.
Everything could change in the space of a second. Order succumbed to chaos. Hope gave way to fear. Some of us fight our way back out again, smoothing all the broken bits into something resembling who we used to be. Some of us stay submerged forever.
Over the last year, I fought myself out of the wreckage left by that horrendous night in Afghanistan. There were times when the urge to kill myself felt stronger than I was—the easiest way to end my torment. But I refused to give in to those dark thoughts, even though the memories of that night clung to me like an anchor tied around my waist.
The doctors assured me the dreams would fade as I healed. They didn’t. The more time I spent with doctors, the more I wondered how much they really knew anyway. It wasn’t too long ago they believed in leeches and bloodletting as cures to just about anything. How long before today’s technological breakthroughs sounded mo
re like voodoo than medicine?
I swung my legs off the edge of the bed, appreciating the plush carpet between my toes. Time to find happier topics. I wasn’t surprised when my mind turned to Cat.
My reaction when she asked about my scars the other day surprised me. I thought I’d healed enough that I could talk about that night without bristling. I was wrong. Cat was the first non-family or military person to ask me about them and I wasn’t prepared for how hard it was to explain.
Even telling Katydid in an email hadn’t come close to looking Cat in the eyes while I told her what happened to me. With Katydid, I had time to edit my words, to smooth over the parts I didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t have to worry about my tone of voice or the panic in my eyes. I took hours to groom my story and make it sound like I’d come through it without breaking. The reality of staring Cat in the face, of knowing she could see every emotion I felt as I was feeling it, watching the shock and pity in her eyes…that was an entirely different experience.
It wasn’t pleasant, though I was probably better for it and I was glad she knew.
Kind of.
Maybe.
I wasn’t sure.
I stood and stretched, rubbing at the sore spot in my neck and shaking out my thigh before heading to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. The clock on my phone read five forty-five, too early to be up, but too late to go to bed. I brushed my teeth and got dressed, then quietly slid open the patio door and watched the day slowly appear.
As the sun blazed into existence, I opened my phone and reread the email from Katydid, worrying about the somber tone. It wasn’t like her. Outside of Wyatt, she was the most positive person I knew and I admired that about her. Maybe it was a skill she had honed over the years, or maybe she took time to cultivate her words to me in the same way I did for her, putting her best foot forward without having to worry about tone and facial expression or struggling to find the right words face to face.
