“Aunt Rose called me today,” I said instead of asking any of them.
“You okay?”
I nodded. “Seven years next month.” I shook my head, fingers folding together from where they hung between my knees. I kept my eyes there, in that safe space, and asked the question I’d been thinking all day out loud. “How is that possible?”
Momma Von was silent a moment, rocking in her chair and pulling the blanket around her shoulders a little tighter. “Time has a way of doing that, Anderson—sneaking up on us. Sometimes I look back and can remember one day of my life more than I can remember an entire decade. I look at myself in the mirror every morning and wonder when those wrinkles appeared, when my hair started to gray, where my bright porcelain skin went.”
“I can still hear her laugh,” I said. “Like I heard it just this morning.”
“And you probably always will. Nothing wrong with that.”
My eyes stayed focused on my hands. “She could be here right now. If I wouldn’t have pushed her, if I would have—”
“Stop, Anderson.” She cut me off, but I was still shaking my head, rolling over the words I’d said to Dani the night before she died. “You have to let go of the blame you feel. It’s been seven years. She wouldn’t have wanted you to live like this.”
Her words might as well have been a hammer when I needed a drill, they were so useless. How did Momma Von know what Dani would have wanted, or anyone else for that matter? She didn’t survive long enough to tell anyone how she felt about the things I’d said to her, and so the comfort Momma Von tried to bring with her assumption fell flat.
I didn’t have anything else to say, and nothing had been resolved, nothing talked about really. But it was enough, and I stood, ready to shower and turn in for the night.
“Yvette and Davie are having a little bonfire tonight,” Momma Von said when I started down the stairs. “You should come. It’s been a while since you’ve seen Benjamin. He’s so big now.”
“I’m tired,” I answered. That was my answer for everything.
“Wren will be there,” she said, but I kept my eyes on my boots as I kept walking. “If that changes your mind at all.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Okay,” she added with a laugh. “So I’ll see you there later then?”
“Goodnight, Momma Von.”
She just laughed harder, and I shook my head, dislodging the thought before it had a chance to even attempt to stick. I hadn’t been to a bonfire in years, hadn’t been in a group setting with anyone but Momma Von and Ron in years. I’d tried a few times before, but every time I remembered why I couldn’t.
Because Dani couldn’t.
How could I live a normal life, a fun life, one with laughter and drinks and friends and fun when she laid buried six feet under less than a mile away?
The answer was that I couldn’t, and I repeated that over and over all the way back to my cabin.
REAL
re·al
Adjective
Not artificial, fraudulent, or illusory : genuine
I never realized how much more I had to learn about myself, not until I spent nearly every second of every single night alone.
The days were easy, because there was sunshine and other people to talk to. Even when the clouds hung low over the cabins or the sky opened up and poured down an afternoon of rain, there was always someone around. Momma Von on her porch, or Yvette and Davie walking Benjamin in his stroller, or Tucker swinging by to see if I wanted to do anything, which I never did, not with him, anyway. I kept myself busy during the day, working on little projects around the cabin and enjoying the scenery.
Nights were the hardest.
I was thankful the days were long, at least. The sun didn’t sink behind the mountains until around nine each night, but as soon as it did, I’d be alone with my thoughts. Sketching still wasn’t happening, which meant the thoughts I was left alone with weren’t even productive ones. No, usually they were filled with everything I’d yet to truly face—like my fear of failure, not only as a wife but as an artist.
Broken was the best way to describe how I felt.
I couldn’t sketch, couldn’t articulate my feelings, couldn’t fix everything in my cabin, couldn’t stay in the cabin for longer than three months anyway. I didn’t have a home, didn’t have a future that spanned further than tomorrow. Everything I thought my life would be, who I thought I would be, it had all vanished.
I didn’t have a husband. I didn’t have a child. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I didn’t have anything I thought I would at twenty-seven. And some nights, when I was weakest, I didn’t even remember why. Why did I leave? Was I really that unhappy? Every couple has problems, that’s what everyone around me said. Was I just immature, or stupid, throwing away a marriage I should have “fought for?”
But I did fight for it, for years. And years, and years. No matter what I did, or who I was, it was never enough for Keith. It never would have been, not until I’d given him every last piece of myself so he could rebuild me the way he saw fit.
Yeah, nights were the hardest.
Which was why I was more than excited to be sitting around a low-key bonfire at Yvette and Davie’s.
There were a dozen of us seated around the fire, with another small group playing drinking games on a long table behind us and a few more in the hot tub. I was buzzed, pleasantly so, and so was Yvette, which I learned quickly didn’t happen often for her.
“Oh, yeah, rub it in,” Davie teased as she popped open another beer. “Just remember paybacks are a bitch.”
“Don’t be salty because I beat you fair and square in rock, paper, scissors for baby duty tonight,” she teased right back, blowing him a kiss with a wink. He smacked her ass playfully as she scampered back to the hot tub, baby monitor still glued to his other hand.
“Well, you guys aren’t adorable or anything,” I said.
Davie shrugged, beaming as he watched Yvette slip into the hot tub with a splash and a laugh. “She’s the adorable one. I’m just the lucky son of a bitch she decided to drag around with her.”
“You guys met in high school, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, a gleam in his eyes. He was still watching her across the fire. “She could have gotten better than me. Still could, but for some reason she picked me out of the sea of guys clamoring for her attention. I didn’t get it back then, and I don’t guess I ever will.”
“You ever feel like you’re growing apart?” I asked before I realized how rude I was. “Sorry,” I clarified when Davie’s brows bent together. “I just mean that you met so young, and I know a lot changes in those years.” At least, they did for me and Keith.
“No, I get it. I know the statistics on high school sweethearts.” He shrugged, tossing the baby monitor between his hands like a football. “We’ve grown up a lot, been through a lot of shit, and there were some trying times. But at the end of the day, our love was more important than anything else. She’s always supported me and I’ve always supported her, and that’s all that either of us needed, I guess.”
I nodded, feeling a dark pit in the center of my stomach. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
I shifted, uncrossing my legs just to cross them the other way. “What would you do if Yvette told you she didn’t want to stay home with Benjamin anymore? What if she, I don’t know, decided she wanted to write blogs for wine magazines and travel the world tasting different wine and touring wineries?”
The corner of Davie’s mouth quirked and he glanced from where I sat over to Yvette again. “I’d sign us up for a credit card with air miles.”
Tucker plopped down into the lawn chair next to me before I had a chance to respond, throwing his arm around my shoulders. “How you liking your first cabin party, city girl?”
I laughed uneasily, shifting out from under his arm, leaning toward the cooler under the pretense that I needed another beer. I didn’t, not only because the one in
my hand was nearly full but because my buzz was strong and steady. Still, I chugged what was left as I reached into ice chest for a new one.
“It’s fun. Thanks for inviting me.”
“You’re welcome any time,” Davie said, but a sharp cry rang through the monitor. He waved it in the air like a trophy. “Duty calls. You,” he added, pointing directly at Tucker. “Behave yourself until I get back. Seriously, don’t scare her away. It’s not even midnight yet.”
Tucker threw his hands up. “I am a perfect gentleman,” he said, eyes low and grin wide.
Davie rolled his eyes and mouthed to me that he’d be right back.
“So, ever been high?” Tucker asked when Davie was out of sight.
I balked at his forwardness, choking a little on the drink I’d just taken. I’m not sure why it caught me off guard—marijuana was legal in Washington and had been for a while—but I wasn’t used to being asked about it. There had been a time when I’d wanted to try it, right around when it was first legalized, but Keith had been so against it he’d flipped out that I even brought it up at all. He was in dental school at the time, and he couldn’t believe I’d risk his career for something so stupid.
“I have not,” I answered.
“Want to change that?” He pulled a joint from his coat pocket and held it up, waggling his brows. “A little Lemon Haze Sativa will set the night right. Trust me.”
I chewed my lip, eyes on the white rolled paper before they flicked back to his. His smirk was confident, eyes already low as he shifted his hand just a little closer to me.
Oh, what the hell.
It seemed like a perfectly fine response in the moment. What did it matter? Everyone at the bonfire was buzzed, I was only a few hundred feet from my own cabin, and I was having fun. There was absolutely nothing wrong with trying weed for the first time.
That thought held strong through my first hit, and my second, and even when the high started to float in, coating itself over the buzz I’d already laid as the red carpet. Everything was fine.
And then Anderson walked up.
I knew the moment I walked into Yvette and Davie’s backyard that I shouldn’t have come.
But it was too late. Momma Von noticed me first, and she jumped from her seat by the fire and ran to me, crushing me in a hug before screaming for Yvette and Davie. I saw her then, Wren, sitting next to Tucker by the fire, and her big doe eyes doubled in size when they saw me.
The noise died down as Davie helped Yvette climb out of the hot tub. He wrapped her in a large towel and then in his arms and they walked straight up to me, both of them with concern etched hard in their features.
They must have thought something was wrong. Why else would I be there? I didn’t party anymore, didn’t hang out, didn’t do anything at all. I was a shit friend—not even a friend at all. It’d been that way for so long now, I wondered if they even remembered who I was before.
“Hey, man,” Davie said first. His eyebrows pinched together and he looked behind me, probably wondering if my truck was here, if I needed him. We hadn’t said more than ten words to each other in years, but he would jump in and drive with me no matter where I needed to go. I knew that for a fact, because I’d do the same.
“Everything okay?” Yvette asked.
“Oh, everything’s fine,” Momma Von said, waving them both off. “He came to hang out and have a good time. Ain’t that right, Anderson?”
I cleared my throat, eyes finding Wren’s as she watched me with just as much curiosity as everyone else. “Yeah. I uh, I wanted to see Benjamin.”
“Oh,” Yvette said, exchanging a look with Davie. “Well, Davie just got him back to sleep, but we can go wake him up if you want to say hi?”
“No, no,” I assured her. “No, let him sleep.”
Momma Von’s eyes softened as she watched me trying. Trying to what, I wasn’t sure, and that thought settled in more and more as everyone stared at me.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come,” I murmured, just loud enough for the four of us to hear, but when I turned to leave, Davie grabbed my arm.
“Hey, come on. Let’s get you a beer.”
He held my eyes when I turned, smiling like he understood, and he probably did. If anyone would know how I was feeling in that moment, it would be Davie. Years had passed, we’d both grown up in different ways—he’d created life, I’d lost one—but he was still my best friend.
“Yeah, alright.”
Yvette and Momma Von shared a smile, linking arms and walking back to one side of the fire as Davie walked me toward the ice chest.
Which also happened to be right in front of Wren.
She was buzzed, that much I could tell just from one glance. Her eyes were glossy, lids heavy, full lips I loved to stare at curved just slightly at the edges as she watched me move toward her. She was all done up, eyes outlined in black and lips a deep red. She wore a long gray coat that fell in weird folds around the sweater she wore underneath it. I’d never seen a coat like that, never seen anyone dress the way she did.
“Hi,” she breathed when we’d reached where she sat.
Davie bent, retrieving a beer for me and popping it open before handing it over.
I popped the top, eyes still on Wren. “Hey.”
“You guys have met?” Tucker asked, and I ground my teeth, taking a drink to cool my temper before it even had the chance to warm up. Tucker was Dani’s boyfriend, when she was alive, and to say we didn’t get along would be a horrible understatement.
Wren just nodded, still smiling at me. “Look what I’m wearing.”
She popped her feet out toward me, showing me the black rubber knee-high boots she wore. There was a white boxed logo outlined in red on the top of each of them and it read HUNTER in all caps.
“They’re Hunter boots! I’m practically a certified mountain girl now.”
The fire light played with the shadows on her face, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away long enough to really care about the boots.
“Foot’s better then?”
She let her feet plop back down to the dirt. “Almost. Better enough for cute shoes, at least.”
Tucker’s eyes darted from her to me then, and I knew his curiosity was eating him from the inside out. And maybe the combination of her being adorable and him being jealous was just right to make me smile for the first time in longer than I could remember.
“Stay away from the hot tub.”
Wren’s cheeks flushed, and I kept my eyes on her even after Davie dragged me away to say hi to the guys.
I was surprised how welcoming everyone was, all things considered. No one really even acted like I’d been gone at all. They talked to me like I was there the night before, and the night before that, like I hadn’t ghosted years ago, like I hadn’t ditched every single one of them in favor of living in my own miserable existence alone. Still, I felt the unasked questions in the space between us. They asked with their eyes, with their gestures, with their stories, but at least I didn’t have to answer those.
Did I even have an answer? Not one they would understand, I was sure. Everyone knew Dani and I were close, but they didn’t know everything about us—about that day.
They didn’t know how I’d drunkenly berated her for everything that made her who she was, that I’d pushed her and made her think she needed to change, that I was the reason her lifeless body was pulled from that river. No one in their right mind would have tubed it that day, not with the water the way it was, but I’d made her feel like she had something to prove.
She was the one person in my life who showed me what it was to have a family, the one person who cared enough to slap some sense into me when I was throwing my life away.
But that night, the drugs had been too strong. I’d told her it was her who needed to change, not me. And it had been those words that killed her.
Part of me wanted to tell Davie and Yvette and Sarah and everyone else, just so they’d maybe begin to get it, but the other part of me
hoped they’d never find out.
Because then they’d blame me, too.
Catching up with Davie was my favorite part of the night. We sat by ourselves for a while, reminiscing, but the later it got, the more everyone else wanted to hear what Davie had to say about “the old Anderson,” and before long, everyone joined in.
“And then Anderson just comes barreling around the corner, naked as the day he was born, clutching his clothes between his legs and screaming for me to start the truck,” Davie said, tears in his eyes as he laughed with everyone else around the fire at my misfortune. “I’ve never seen the son of a bitch run that fast before.”
“Yeah, well, a pissed-off dad with a loaded shotgun is surprisingly motivating,” I pointed out. Everyone just laughed harder, including Wren, who watched me with curious eyes.
Yvette clapped her hands. “Oh! Remember the time you threw that giant party when Aunt Rose went out of town? Huge rager. People still talk about that night.”
“Yeah, do they talk about what Aunt Rose did when she came home early to find fifty drunk high schoolers in her cabin?” Momma Von pursed her lips and looked pointedly at me.
I just threw my hands up. “What? I was caught, I had to try something.”
“You told her she was dreaming and tried to convince her that to wake up, she had to drive back into town and stay in a hotel for the night,” she deadpanned.
Sarah chimed in then, and it was the first time I’d realized she was even there. “Yeah, but Aunt Rose got him good with the punishment.”
“Oh my God! That was when she made you perform at the senior talent show, wasn’t it!” Yvette laughed, clutching her stomach. “What did you do again?”
Davie jumped up, baby monitor strapped to his hip. “I’m a little teapot, short and stout!” He danced around the fire, stopping to dig his knuckle into my head while everyone joined in for the second line. “Here is my handle, here is my spout!”
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