More Than Exist

by Bethany Lopez

That’s not a coincidence, I thought, thankful to my mother for being such a thoughtful and generous spirit, then I drifted off into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Spending the morning with my parents had been just what I needed. Mom filled my belly with French toast, scrambled eggs, and her famous cinnamon spiced coffee, and I’d listened happily as my dad filled me in on all of the community gossip.

  It was the perfect morning after a great night’s sleep, and I’d felt rejuvenated going into the afternoon.

  Then my parents left for their weekly Pinochle game and I’d decided to go to the pool and lay out. Relax, get some sun, maybe even read a book. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up doing any of those things.

  I wish I had.

  I wish the good vibes of the morning had followed me throughout the day, and I’d spent my time the way I’d told my mother I would, but instead, I ran into Jasper.

  Jasper was an eighty-year-old alcoholic who’d lived in the neighborhood for about three months. His wife passed away earlier in the year, and his children had thought he’d enjoy being around other retirees in the fun-filled community, like my parents did.

  Jasper didn’t enjoy it. Not at all, and he told me all about it as we sat under an umbrella covered by the table, drinking bourbon and eating nothing at all.

  “Ya see, Mirabelle, I’ve never liked people,” Jasper was explaining to me, his thick, gray, bushy eyebrows dipping so low over his eyes, they were almost completely camouflaged. “Not when I was younger, and not now. I was never the parent that went to my kids’ games, or parties at school … Not because I didn’t love my kids, but because new people scare me. I’ve never made friends easily.”

  “Why did your kids get you a place here, then?” I asked, curious, as I watched his caterpillar-like eyebrows move. I was on my third generous glass of bourbon, and was mesmerized by his face. The deep groves, the skin so tan it was almost leathery, and those damn, crazy eyebrows.

  Jasper shrugged at my question and began to refill our glasses.

  “I guess because I was too much of a burden to keep in their own homes.”

  I frowned at his answer. Sad that Jasper was so unhappy, and that his kids didn’t even seem to care.

  “I get it though,” he added between sips. “They have their own families now, their own lives. I just wish they’d let me stay in my home. The home that Gina and I’d shared. They were worried I’d get too lonely, but I have to say, Mirabelle, I’m more lonely here than I would be at home, surrounded by the memories Gina and I had built together.”

  “I understand,” I said. And I did. Totally. “At first I didn’t want to leave the home that Ricky and I’d been in for all of those years, but after a while, I realized that I was never going to be able to move on. Not when I was so stuck in the past.”

  Jasper’s hand covered mine on the bluish Formica tabletop.

  “You’re young,” he explained. “You should move on, you have your entire life ahead of you. You’ll find love again, maybe have a family … but me? All I had left was my memories, and now even those are gone.”

  I shook my head vehemently at his words. “I’ll never fall in love again.”

  When Jasper opened his mouth to argue, I stopped him by saying, “Are you kidding me? I don’t want to go through anything like what I’ve been through over the last year again. Not ever. When you love someone the way I loved Ricky, and you lose them … It’s like losing your entire reason for existing. I never want to open myself up to that hurt again.”

  “Aww, darling,” Jasper replied with a frown. “I know the pain is near to unbearable, but you can’t close yourself off to the possibility of love. Without love, there’s no happiness. And without happiness, are you really existing anyway?”

  I let his words marinate as I tossed back the amber liquid in my glass, wincing at the burn that seemed to accompany every drink.

  We sat in silence for a while, both reflecting on the lives and loves that we’d lost.

  I barely registered the fact that he’d added more bourbon to our glasses, or that I’d almost finished drinking it; I was too wrapped up in the moving pictures in my head. I was flashing back to Ricky and I the first time we’d gone to the beach after moving to San Diego. How shocked we’d been to realize how much colder the ocean was on the West Coast, compared to the East. How we’d run along the beach, kicking water at each other and laughing every time the freezing drops hit us.

  With the sound of his laughter echoing in my head, I stood up abruptly, the chair crashing to the ground behind me as my legs kicked it back. I placed my hand on the table to steady myself, the world threateing to tilt beneath me, then brought the other hand to cover my lips when I began to chortle loudly.

  Wild sounds escaped from between my fingers, causing Jasper to look up at me with a crooked grin.

  “You all right, girly?” he asked, his words not even slightly slurred. It looked like he was a more experienced bourbon drinker than I was.

  “Yuppers,” I replied giddily. “I just gotta go take a nap before my folks get home,” I added on a laugh as I weaved my way clumsily through the chairs on the pool deck.

  “You be careful now, girlie, and don’t go telling Howard and Sheila that I gave you the booze,” Jasper called out after me.

  I turned to tell him that I wasn’t a snitch, when my foot caught on the end of one of the lounge chairs and I started to tumble. I threw my hands out, but with my reflexes muddled, I had absolutely no coordination.

  I felt my wrist snap as it hit, then registered Jasper crying out in warning just before my head slammed against the concrete and I tumbled over the ledge. My last conscious thought was how warm the water was, before I became totally immersed in it.

  Chapter 17

  I became aware of an annoying beeping sound in the distance, and the muffled sound of voices nearby. I registered pain, specifically in my head, and I felt cold. I really wanted a thick, comfortable blanket, because I felt like I was chilled to the bone.

  I gingerly tried to open my eyes, but the light was so bright that it made the pain in my head feel like it was going to explode.

  “Belle,” I heard my mother call out. It sounded like she was far away, but when I felt a gentle touch on my arm, I knew she was right next to me. “Honey, are you awake?” I felt my arm shake, her say, “Howard, get a nurse.”

  I could hear the worry in my mother’s voice, so I tried again to open my eyes, fighting against the burning, as my mother’s anxious face swam into focus.

  “Mom,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  I felt my mom’s hand caress my cheek as she gave me a sad smile and fought back tears.

  “There’s my baby girl.”

  I felt sorry for upsetting her so much, and searched my memory for what had happened to cause me to be lying in a hospital bed with an IV in my arm and machines monitoring my every breath.

  I remembered hanging out by the pool drinking with Jasper. I remembered we were talking about being widowed, and his kids getting him a place in the retirement community, even though it wasn’t what he wanted, but I had no idea how I ended up in the hospital.

  “What happened?” I asked my mom.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the return of my father, and a nurse who bypassed him and made a beeline right for my bedside. She began looking at the machines, the fluid that was hanging in a bag near my head, and finally she looked into my face.

  She looked angry.

  “We’ve got some nutrients and fluids pumping into your veins right now. You haven’t been eating right, you’ve been drinking way too much, and I don’t even want to ask when the last time you actually drank water was. You came to us banged up, drunk, and dehydrated.”

  My eyes widened at her candor, and I avoided looking at my parents as her words penetrated and seemed to puncture my heart.

  The nurse must have seen my angst, because her eyes softened, even if her word
s did not.

  “You need to start taking care of yourself, you hear me? You’re lucky a good Samaritan was walking by when you fell in that pool, because neither you, or the other drunk you were with, had any hope of saving you from drowning.”

  At the word “pool” everything came rushing back. My getting up to leave Jasper so I could go to bed, tripping, falling, and then hitting the water and feeling utterly numb.

  I didn’t respond; I just stared up at her in horror, too dejected to even consider being upset with her for talking to me the way she had.

  The nurse patted my hand, obviously pleased with herself for speaking her mind, then said, “I’ll get the doctor,” and left me alone in the room with my parents. Both of which were looking at me with sad eyes.

  “After the police called us and told us they’d rushed you to the hospital, I started making calls,” my mother began. I could tell that she was upset. Not just worried about me, but angry with me. “I talked to your boss, who told me that you never actually went back to work, even though you told me you had. I talked to Ricky’s mom, who told me about finding you passed out in your car the morning after you got to Shreveport. I knew you’d been drinking and that you’d been closing yourself off since Ricky died, but it’s so much worse than I thought, Mirabelle. You could have died today…”

  She broke off on a sob, and I felt the tears spill over and begin to fall down my face. I hated seeing my mother like this, especially knowing I was the cause.

  “Belle,” my dad cut in, his arms wrapping around my mother to hold her close while she cried. “You need help.” When I opened my mouth to argue, he stopped me with a stern look and help up his hand. “You may be a grown woman, but you aren’t acting like it. Your mother and I know how hard losing Ricky has been for you, but hurting yourself isn’t the answer. He wouldn’t want that, baby. He wouldn’t want this.” He waved his hand around the room for effect, and I shrunk down into the bed, feeling about two feet tall. “We’re going to help you, and you’re going to let us … It’s time, Mirabelle, before you kill yourself, or someone else.”

  I turned my head and closed my eyes, tears streaming down my face. I was feeling so much pain. Physically, emotionally, mentally … I didn’t know what to do with it all, so I tried to shut it out.

  I felt my parents surround me, each on one side of the bed, and they lowered in tandem to put their arms around me. Holding me as the three of us cried together. I don’t know how long we stayed that way, or how long the doctor waited and watched, before he cleared his throat to announce his presence.

  “Well, Mirabelle,” the doctor said as my parents let me go and moved away to give him access to me. “I hope this was the wake-up call that you needed to get yourself well. I’ll fix you up and give you the tools you need to get better, and then I never want to see you in my hospital for something like this again. Your parents have asked me for some referrals to facilities that can help you on your road to recovery, but what I need to know from you is, are you ready to recover?”

  I looked from my mother to my father, then back to the doctor, and knew that I had to do this. I couldn’t be a burden to them, and I couldn’t live the way I’d been living any longer. It was time for me to face the pain, deal with it, and to begin to build my life without Ricky. It wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew my parents were right. Ricky would hate to see me like this.

  “Yes,” I replied with false confidence, having no idea just how hard my recovery was going to be.

  Part II

  The Ranch

  Chapter 18

  “I think you’ll be a great fit, don’t worry,” Patricia, one of the counselors at the rehabilitation center I was preparing to leave, assured me. “Hope Heals Ranch has a fantastic relationship with us, often allowing us to use the ranch for Adventure Therapy.”

  Patricia had told me all of this before, and I knew she was trying to calm my nerves, but there was no helping them.

  I’d felt a myriad of emotions since I first came to the rehab center, but now that it was time for me to move on, I found that I was terrified. What if I couldn’t cut it on my own? What if the need for a drink was too great, and without the support of the people here, I didn’t have the strength to fight it?

  The owner of the Ranch would be here any minute to interview me for a job. It wasn’t normal practice, but because he knew Patricia, and she vouched for me, he’d agreed to stop by while he was in town. Apparently his live-in cook and housekeeper was taking time off to help out her granddaughter, who’d just had a baby, and he needed to temporarily fill the position.

  It couldn’t have come at a better time, or been a better fit for me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t having a mild panic attack over the thought of interviewing with someone who knew I was just getting out of rehab.

  A sharp knock at the door had me coming to my feet in a flash. I swung my gaze to the closed door and felt my body began to tremble.

  “He’s a nice guy,” Patricia promised as she rose from behind her desk and walked to the door.

  I sat back down, not wanting to seem like I was hovering, and placed my hands in my lap, keeping my eyes downcast. When I heard the rough timber of his voice greeting Patricia, I forgot about my nerves and brought my head up.

  He wasn’t wearing a backwards baseball cap, instead he had on a black cowboy hat, but there was no mistaking that chiseled, handsome face, and his striking blue eyes.

  “Luke,” I said in surprise, before I even realized I was going to say it out loud.

  He turned his attention from Patricia, the smile dropping from his lips.

  “Belle?” he asked, and I was shocked that he remembered my name. But then I guess a cowboy from South Carolina didn’t often find himself in a strip club with his arms full of naked woman.

  “You two know each other?” Patricia asked, obviously confused.

  I felt my face redden with embarrassment. I was mortified that this was man who was here to interview me for a job. There was no way he was going to hire me … I didn’t exactly make a great first impression.

  Luke looked from me to Patricia, realization dawning.

  “This is Mirabelle?”

  “Yes,” Patricia, letting the fact that neither Luke nor I had answered her question slide. “I think she would be the perfect fit for the Ranch, and would be a great help to you and Matty while Ms. Lucille is away.”

  “I don’t know, Patty,” Luke said softly, and I found myself wondering what their relationship really was; all I knew was that this perfect job was about to slip through my fingers, and I had to do something to stop that from happening.

  “Um, Luke,” I ventured, trying to keep my voice strong. One of the things I’d learned while I over the last few weeks was to speak up, ask for what I want, and not keep everything bottled up inside. I was about to see whether or not that lesson worked. “Can I talk to you privately?”

  Patricia looked at me curiously, but smiled at my bravado and nodded slightly to Luke, indicating she thought it was a good idea.

  Luke did not look as convinced, but he still replied, “Sure.”

  “I’ll just give you a few minutes then,” Patricia said, and I gave her a smile of thanks before she left, closing the door behind her.

  “Will you sit?” I asked, gesturing to the chair on the other side of the small table I was sitting at. I was so nervous, and embarrassed about the fact that I was going to totally open myself up and tell him my story, but I worried if I didn’t he’d walk out and I’d never see him again.

  He folded his long, lean body into the chair and took off his cowboy hat, setting it on the open chair next to him. Luke ran his hand through his hair, more in a gesture of frustration, than an attempt to tame his hat head.

  I’m sure when he came on-site to do an interview, I was the absolute last person he thought he’d see, so I couldn’t blame him for being frustrated. I just needed to convince him to take a chance on me.

  “Look, Luke,” I began,
struggling to keep my voice from betraying my nerves. “I know our last encounter was crazy. Probably a crazy Vegas story that you tell your friends, but I really need you to know that the woman you met that night is not me.”

  “Mirabelle … Belle,” Luke amended. “I know ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,’ and all that, and I don’t have any problems with your job choices, but I have a ten-year-old boy at home. Our current live-in cook is sixty years old and has been working on our Ranch since I was a boy. I need someone that I can trust to live in my home, and sometimes care for my son without me in the house.” He rubbed a large hand over his mouth and pierced me with those gorgeous eyes. “I came here because Patty assured me that you were someone she has the utmost confidence in, and I know she’d never place someone in my home that would be a danger to Matty, but I have to admit, I feel awkward that it’s you.”

  I’m sure that was an understatement, but I fought on anyway.

  “I know it is, it’s awkward for me too. I never expected to see you again, let alone be asking you for a job, but you have to believe that I would never do anything to harm your son, or anyone…” I decided that total honesty was my only chance, and even though I wasn’t looking for pity, I felt he couldn’t understand without having the whole story.

  “My husband died about a year and a half ago…”

  “Belle,” he started, but I had to get it all out. If he started asking question, or showing sympathy, I knew I’d break down.

  “It’s okay. He was in a motorcycle accident. We lived in San Diego and I was a cook. After his accident, I kind of lost it … I stopped working, stopped communicating with the outside world, and started drinking. A couple of months ago I agreed to pack up and leave California, and come back east to see my parents and try to figure out what was next for me. It was on that cross-country trip that I met you in Vegas. I’m not a stripper and never was. My purse was stolen, and the only way for me to get it back was by dancing in that club so that the thief could get his money. That attempted lap dance for you was a one-time thing. Once I got to Orlando I ended up drinking too much and hurting myself.” When his face fell I rushed on, “Not on purpose. I fell and hit my head … Anyway, I ended up in the hospital, and that is where I realized that enough was enough. I had to make a change before I ended up killing myself, so I came to rehab.”