by Lisa Sorbe
“Whatever.” West rolls his head my way and I snap my eye shut. “We’ve almost got the house cleared out, you’ve contacted Courtney, and you sold your mom’s car.”
“Which means you’ll be driving me everywhere.” I turned my rental in weeks ago and started using my mother’s old Buick. But now, after selling it two days ago, I’m without wheels. And it makes me feel itchy. Wolf Lake isn’t exactly walkable. Not from our neighborhood, at least, which is more forest than town.
West chuckles, turning his gaze back to the sky and closing his eyes. “I think I can manage. You’re not very high maintenance.” A smirk flits over his lips. “Surprisingly.”
We lie in silence for a while, the breeze cool on our sun-warmed bodies. He’s right, of course. I am right on schedule with the house. Most of the things have been packed up and carted off, and West hooked me up with Courtney, the realtor he’ll be working with to sell his parents’ place once the remodeling is done. But there’s still one room left to empty, one I haven’t touched or even looked in on since I’ve been back.
And I’ve thought about that room every day; it’s a dark doorway against the landscape of my mind, one that I’m scared to death to open.
I’m sure West senses this, because throughout the moving process he’s never once mentioned Mike’s room. He knows me, and he knows I need time. Though we’re down to the wire now, and time is a luxury I’ve fiddled away all summer.
It’s do or die.
“I think…” I sigh and twist onto my side, facing West. Sensing my frustration, he mirrors the move, and I use the strength in his gaze to continue. “I think it’s time to do Mike’s room.”
West rises up on his elbow and nods. “Okay.”
I rush on. “Today. This afternoon. When we get back. Would that be okay? You don’t have any plans, do you?”
His smile is balm to my soul. “I’m yours, Laney. For the next two weeks. Whatever you need.” He reaches out and grabs my hand. “I’m yours.”
I smile my appreciation, trying my best to appear like it’s not a big deal. Still, I can’t contain the sigh of relief that escapes me, the tension leaving my body like a slowly deflating balloon.
But the moment is intimate. Too intimate. And as much as we promised to keep ourselves in check this summer, I can’t help but worry about what the future will bring.
Will we end up right back where we left off?
So I deflect, sliding my hand back and nodding down the small stretch of beach we’re currently the only ones occupying. Evergreens butt up against the sand, which stretches in a lazy slope toward the water. The faded wooden sign posted before the trail to the beach states, in no uncertain terms, that: This is not a nude beach. Any exhibition of public indecency will be cited. “So…how upset are you that Alden Beach isn’t a nude beach anymore?”
West just shrugs. “Doesn’t bother me.” He makes a show of dragging his gaze down my body. “I have a wicked good imagination.”
I squeal and roll away as he leaves his towel for mine.
No one aside from West knew that I was pregnant, so there was no one to tell when I lost the baby.
West accompanied me back down to the clinic again so we could gain confirmation of what I already knew…the baby was gone.
I didn’t mourn. I’d done enough mourning for the life I thought I’d lost—mine—when I got pregnant and didn’t have it in me to mourn something I’d never wanted in the first place. Sure, a part of me felt guilty for my lack of remorse, but it was quickly covered up by relief. And pragmatism. We were too young to have a baby, and the miscarriage proved it. It was the best thing for all parties involved, a prophetic sign, if you will, a message from whatever force reigned over our lives and toyed with us as if we were nothing but insects scurrying along the forest floor.
That supreme power had already taken my dad, my brother and, in a sense, my mother. I’d be damned if it took my future, too.
West, however, mourned. Not outright; with a solemn nod he agreed that this was for the best. But the vibrance that he carried flickered a bit, faded, as if he’d suddenly gone from third dimensional down to two. For days his voice was as flat as his expression, his very essence paper thin. A cloud hung over him, heavy with his mood, and for the first time ever I saw the sunshine in my friend dim, sputter out.
We never acted like a couple during the pregnancy, so there was no expectation that we would once it was over. But West was suddenly needy, trying to take my hand while we ate hotdogs at Milwaukee Weiner and placing his palm on the small of my back while we walked down the hallway at school. He avoided most of his friends along with the senior shenanigans the rest of our class indulged in so he could appease my desire for solitude, seeming happier when it was just us, alone, on my porch or in my basement watching movies.
We weren’t together, not in the traditional sense. Not in the romantic sense.
Yet we’d gone through too much, had been bound by creation as well as death, so we weren’t apart, either.
As always, our relationship was as unique as the snowflakes that swirled around our northern town more months out of the year than not.
Thinking back on it now, I can see why things played out the way they did. And that it was my fault. Absolutely all of it.
Not the miscarriage, of course. Though, if thoughts alone are energy, like some believe, then maybe I was the cause. My ill will toward the whole situation was a darkness that seeped into my very being, more than likely affecting my body’s subconscious programming. So maybe, in a roundabout way, I really was to blame.
But West? I knew what he was doing, edging into my life the way he was. We didn’t have sex again—didn’t dare—but the little things he did and the complete way he altered his life to fit mine should have told me all I needed to know.
West was in love with me. Or, at least, he believed he was.
As for me? I wasn’t sure. I mean, of course I loved him, but did I love love him?
I was so young, I could hardly tell the difference.
But either way, it didn’t matter. My messed-up mind had stuffed caring and pain into the same messy mold. Gave them the same definition.
To love was to hurt.
And I was done hurting.
The handle to Mike’s room is cold, like his spirit is holding on to it from the other side of the door, barring me entrance.
He never wanted me in his room. Even as young kids we were at odds, never really playing well together unless West was with us, tempering our emotions. We were the proverbial siblings; Mike would tease me to no end and I’d sneak in his room, leaving sticky fingerprints all over his most cherished possessions.
My eyes stray immediately to the west wall of his room, one that my dad helped him cover in squares of cork board when he was nine so he could pin up posters of his favorite muscle cars and baseball players without ruining the walls. Throughout the years, the posters transitioned from baseball players to bikini models, but the cars are still the same, the edges curled and crisp with age.
The room is cold, so much colder than it should be—even with the air conditioning running. My feet sink into the blue shag carpet when I enter, and West is right behind me, his hand on the small of my back. It’s a familiar pressure, and if I’ve ever welcomed his touch, it’s now.
I haven’t been in this room since I was sixteen. True to form, my mother kept it neat and tidy, though since she’s been gone, a fine layer of dust has managed to accumulate on the surface of the desk, the dresser, the nightstand, and even Mike’s guitar case. The space is so empty it’s full, if that makes any sense, and the weight falls heavy around us. It’s regret, I’m sure of it. And blame…the air is thick with it. I breathe it in now, this hollow void full of accusation, and my lungs struggle as I inhale. It’s one hundred percent humidity without relief. It’s guilt without an eighteen-hundred-mile cushion.
It’s an open door I would have rather kept closed.
But for perhaps the first tim
e since I’ve been back, I square my shoulders and draw strength from the woman I used to be, the person I was before I re-entered this house two and a half months ago.
I turn and look at West, my chin held high. My lips don’t even tremble when I speak, and I can already feel the crumbled walls around my heart shake, begin to rebuild.
“Let’s get to work.”
West has been looking at me oddly all night. Waiting for a breakdown, I suppose. Or maybe just unnerved by the fact that I’m completely calm after gutting my dead brother’s room.
The brother that, in a round-about way, I allowed to die.
We’re sitting on the couch, me on one end and West on the other, when he closes his laptop with a frustrated sigh. I, in turn, flip the page of the Fear Street book I’m reading (I’ve been steadily working through my collection all summer) and ignore him.
A few minutes go by, and West clears his throat. Without taking my eyes off the page, I say smoothly, “Do you need some water?”
“Do I need some water?” He laughs, though it’s completely void of humor. “No, I don’t need any water.”
“Mmm. Okay.” I continue to read, though I can feel his eyes on me. His stare is oppressive, and after a minute I can barely stand it. I stick my finger in my book and close it with a huff. “What, West? What?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Well, you obviously have something to say. So spit it out. Say it.”
Casper, who’s been lounging between us this whole time, senses the sudden tension in the air and slips off the couch with a groan. The last we see of him is his tail as he disappears down the hall. A few seconds later, the springs squeak as he jumps up and makes himself comfortable on my bed.
It’s like we’re waiting for the kid to be out of the room so we can fight, have it out. Though about what, I don’t know. Or maybe I do, I just don’t want to admit it. Because I’ve sensed a change in me today, and I have no doubt that this is what has West’s boxers in a twist.
“You said you wouldn’t do this.” I’m defensive before he even speaks.
“This has nothing to do with…” He sighs, frustrated. “I’m worried about you.”
I frown. “Worried? Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Because I watched you ice over this afternoon. Become an entirely different person in the blink of an eye. Everything about you changed. Your demeanor, your voice, the goddamned way you moved. And you’re still that way.”
“What way?”
West shakes his head and his jaw tightens. “Cold,” he says, his voice cutting. “Hard.”
I groan. “Well, it wasn’t like we were doing something fun. It wasn’t exactly a joy to be cleaning out Mike’s room. I got through it the only way I know how.”
“I know you did,” West acknowledges, and his tone softens. “I know it wasn’t easy for you. Hell, you have every right to cope with it in whatever way works. It’s just…” He trails off and attempts a smile. “You know what? Never mind. This is more about me than you.”
I shift in my seat, scooting up and tucking my legs under me. I feel ready to spring. “No, tell me. What were you going to say? It’s just…” I wave my hand in a come-on motion.
West rubs the back of his neck. “You…I…” He blows out a long breath. “You’ve just been so different this summer. It was like, I don’t know, you relaxed or something. You were you again, if that makes any sense. But this afternoon, it was like you reverted back to who you were before, when you left the first time. And then again, when you came back…” He pulls in a breath, holds it, holds it, then exhales through his teeth. Reaching up, he runs a hand through his hair, slicking it back from his forehead. “It’s hard to explain, to put into words.” He shoots me a look. “That was always your thing.”
“Yeah, well. You always were more visual than articulate. And I mean that as a compliment.” West was always building things, I was always writing things. He was the eyes and I was the ears and together it was like we made up a whole person.
“This isn’t about you,” he says again, and this time his voice is firm and solid, not full of the angst it was earlier. For some reason this makes me nervous, and I have a feeling that this is it. This is the end.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore. Us. I thought I could, but…I just can’t.” He pauses, regret and apology coating his words. “I was selfish, wanting you regardless of the consequences. I knew what I was getting into, and it’s wrong of me to ask you to be anyone other than who you are. Or expect you to be. And I’m sorry.” His eyes are pools of sorrow reflecting my own ache. “I shouldn’t have let it get this far. It’s my fault…”
I shake my head, try to swallow but can’t, so I just look down at my book, trace my finger over the cover’s smooth surface.
“Elena.”
His voice pulls the lump from my throat, just enough so I can answer. “Hmm?”
“Are you okay?”
His concern irritates me. “Am I okay?” I ask slowly. “Let me think.” I scrunch my brow and purse my lips, press my finger to my chin. “Am. I. Okay? You know what? No, I’m not okay. In fact, I’m the exact opposite of okay. I’m so very far from okay.”
West sits, facing me, patient as ever. But the guilty expression on is face infuriates me more.
“I came back here to bury my mother, yet somehow I haven’t been able to do that. Somehow,” I seethe, “I’ve managed to dig up every dead member of my family. They’re all here, and I’m here, yet they’re on some other level that I can’t even reach. Like, they’re so fucking close yet so far away…” A tear slips down my cheek, and then another, which is weird because I didn’t even feel them coming. All I feel is rage. Clean, white hot rage that’s burning through every vein, every nerve, every cell of my body. I’m surprised I’m not glowing from the intensity of it. “And I’m alone. I’m all alone. I’m so fucking alone.” I swipe the palm of my hand against my cheek because the tears are flowing in earnest now, and my eyes have become faucets that won’t stop running. “And it’s not fair! It’s not fucking fair! And I hate it, and I hate everyone, and I’m so fucking angry all the time but I can’t act like it so I fake it to…to…appear normal, to survive. But it’s killing me and I’m dying, I’m fucking dying and I haven’t even lived yet… But I can’t even live because I’m too fucking scared to. I’m scared all the time. All the time! But I don’t know how to be anything different. I don’t know how to feel any other way….”
I blot my eyes with the hem of my shirt, see the mascara flaking the white cotton and can only imagine the raccoon eyes I’m sporting now. But who the hell cares?
I flick my eyes up to West, daring him to look away.
“You know what else I really hate?” I rage on.
Despite my anger, my outburst, West holds my stare. Indulges the crazy woman I’ve become. The one who is, for maybe the first time ever, speaking before she thinks. “What, Laney? Tell me.”
I’m breathing so hard it hurts. My chest is expanding and contracting so fast I can barely finish taking a breath in before another is clawing its way out. “I hate…hate…when people say God is good. If there is a God, He’s so fucking far from good. Because he’s never been good to my family. To us. God is good and we’re so blessed,” I mock. “Yada fucking yada. What the hell does that mean? What does that mean to the people who have nothing but rotten luck? Huh? Aren’t we good enough, fucking special enough, to have joy, too? To be blessed? To not have every goddamned thing in our lives fall completely the fuck apart?” I throw up my hands and scream, my voice scraping my throat. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
West sets his laptop on the end table next to the couch and slides closer. When he takes my hands in his, I deflate. My entire body sags, like everything that’s been holding me up all these years evaporated with this emotional eruption.
“And now you’re leaving me, too.” I shake my head. “And I know, I know what we promised when we started this…this
thing between us. And I also know that I have no right to ask you to stick around just to appease this pathetic need that I have to…to…not be…”
I look away as I hiccup-sob, knowing that I’m a jerk for even feeling this way. It’s selfish, is what it is. Asking West to stay around so I won’t be alone. Only wanting him while I’m here, soothing my heartache while exacerbating his.
What kind of person does that make me?
The same kind that allowed her brother to die.
I press my fingers to the corners of my eyelids, as if that might halt the tears. “Do you know I haven’t written anything since Mike died?”
West pulls me against his chest, and I let him. I eat it up, his attention, because I’m not going to have it for very much longer. And how am I ever going to find another love that will compare to his?
I won’t.
“I haven’t written since that night. I mean, I write legal stuff. Briefs, correspondence, and such. But not for fun. Not for…not in a creative way or anything like that. Not the way I did before.” I laugh, though it sounds hoarse and feels rough against my throat. “I actually had a professor in law school tell me that my writing had too much ‘highly charged emotional language’ and that I needed to tone it down.” I sniff. “I really hate being a lawyer.”
“Why are you, then?” West asks, his words fluttering my hair as he speaks.
“Because I hate it, if that makes sense. Because it’s so far away from the creative path that I wanted. In school, it was cut and dry. All I had to do was study, take the classes, and pass. I could be a machine. It wasn’t like writing, you know, stories and things that would make me feel. I mean, some attorneys I know get too involved in their cases, become emotional wrecks. But not me. I’m able to keep my distance, and it’s paid off. In a courtroom full of men, I’m the one with the biggest dick.” I try to laugh at my lame attempt at humor, but only end up squeezing my eyes shut as a new onslaught of tears rise up. “I was writing the night Mike called home. And I ignored him because I had a word count to finish and I was so damn sick of always having to cover for him. I was taking care of him, and my mom, and I was so fucking sick of it, West. And if I had just answered that night, picked up the goddamned phone, he’d be alive. And maybe things would have been different for my mom. Maybe she wouldn’t have died alone in her bed from a broken heart.” Because even though the doctor said it was an aneurysm, it wasn’t. Not really. She died the day my dad did. And all she ever gave any of us after was her ghost.
