Loving in the Light

by Alexandria Bishop

  Tinley isn’t sure she wants to know where this conversation is going, but she knows her friend has to finally get it all out, so she asks, “So what happened that night?”

  Dakota smiles and Tinley realizes she must be reminiscing about the good parts of her summer. “I sat with my feet dangling by myself reading something from our summer reading list—I did a lot of that at the beginning of that summer. I was taking swigs from the bottle as the water washed against the shore, and the air was slightly crisp but still warm, pretty much perfection in my book. I didn’t get drunk or anything, but I was pretty buzzed and just all around feeling good.

  “I got a little bold and sent a text message to a guy I had been sort of seeing that summer. We hadn’t really gone on a date or anything like that but we saw each other a lot, or I ran into him and his friends a lot because they were always hanging out at the lake. I guess you could say I made sure to always be where he was going to be. He was older than us, getting ready to go to college in the fall, and I was pretty much smitten. An older extremely attractive guy giving me attention? I felt like I was on top of the world.”

  Shit. This is what Tinley was afraid of. She doesn’t know if she can handle it if Dakota says what she thinks she’s going to say, and if anything, she’s mad at herself for not being there for her friend even if she didn’t know what was going on at the time. “Oh no, don’t tell me he did what I think he did.”

  Dakota shakes her head and continues her story without answering the question outright. “He showed up at the dock and we passed the bottle back and forth, just talking. It was nice and I felt like we just got each other. We even told each other ‘I love you,’ and I thought he was the love of my life. That night I stopped holding back and I gave him my virginity right there on the cold wooden dock. As far as firsts times go, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. He took his time and was thoughtful and caring.”

  “I don’t get it—what happened then? How did you go from being so in love to shunning it altogether?”

  Her voice changes to a colder, more cynical tone as she continues, “Afterward, we made all these promises to each other and planned to meet up the next day. I didn’t want my parents to come back and find me not in bed, so I told him I had to go home. I regretted it almost instantly, but I knew it was the right thing to do. The next morning, I woke up with the biggest smile on my face and I couldn’t wait to see him again. I called him first thing.”

  “And?” Tinley finds herself confused again. Did he change his mind about her? Up to this point, it sounds like she had a pretty great summer and found someone she truly cared about. What could have changed between then and when she came back home after that summer?

  “That’s when shit hit the fan. His girlfriend answered and told me he was in the shower, said she was spending the rest of the summer with him and I could forget anything that happened between us. She made it perfectly clear that they had a future planned out together, and it didn’t include me.”

  That’s not something she was expecting her to say at all. So he played her and took her virginity? That’s the lowest of the low. “Holy shit. Did you at least try to talk to him about it? Maybe she was lying to you, got jealous and answered his phone and told you lies.”

  “No, I didn’t. He didn’t attempt to reach out to me either, so what was the point? I spent the rest of the summer curled up in a ball in bed and wallowed in my broken heart. Before I returned to school, I vowed to myself to never get close to another guy like that ever again. It wasn’t worth the potential heartache, and I chose to never open my heart to anyone ever again.”

  That still leaves the problem of what any of this has to do with Marek. Why would Dakota even bring up that story unless…no, it can’t be. She’s terrified to ask the question but knows she has to, just to make sure. “Wait, but what does any of this have to do with Marek? The guy wasn’t Marek was he?”

  Dakota sits up straight and her eyes go wide. She reaches down, gently squeezes Tinley’s leg to get her attention, and shakes her head. “No, nothing like that. I’m sorry. I can see where my lack of spilling everything would lead you to that conclusion. I can’t put my finger on it, but there was something about Marek that reminded me of him. I know it’s petty and doesn’t make any sense, but their personalities are similar and he just rubbed me the wrong way. It’s stupid for me to put my own biases on someone else for no reason at all, but now you know everything. There are no longer any secrets between us.”

  “Wow. I just…I don’t even know what to say. I can’t believe you went through all of that and never told me. I begged you to tell me about your summer when you came back but you always refused. Guess now I know why. It also explains a lot about our friendship. Things changed between us and there was always this wedge. I could never understand where it came from or why.”

  “That’s my fault. I’ll own that completely.”

  Tinley doesn’t know how to digest everything she was just told. Her former best friend who is so anti-love and only has one-night stands was burned before, and her history and personal biases bled over into Tinley’s relationship with Marek. This whole time she never knew why, but now that everything has come to light (she hopes there aren’t any more skeletons still floating around in the closet), maybe they can both move on—at least that’s what she hopes can happen. Really, only time will tell.

  Chapter Six

  Tinley balances a plate of food and a glass of water as she walks down the hallway. She stops outside the guest bedroom door and listens for any noise on the other side. The low sound of the TV with the news on travels toward her, but other than that, she doesn’t hear any sign of movement. She knocks gently on the door and waits for stirrings from within, and when she doesn’t hear anything, she slowly turns the knob on the door and pushes it open. Giselle is curled up in a ball on the bed with used tissues scattered all over the bed and on the floor. Her eyes are completely bloodshot and it appears as if she hasn’t slept much at all. She doesn’t even look up as Tinley walks into the room. Her focus stays on the news like it will suddenly give her information or confirm that Marek is still alive.

  Crossing the room toward the bed, Tinley says, “Hey Giselle, I brought you some food. You haven’t been out of the room today, so I figure you haven’t eaten much, if anything at all.”

  A groan comes from her direction, but that’s the only thing she offers up to Tinley. She walks toward the bed and takes a seat, and Giselle barely bats an eyelash as her focus stays glued to the television screen. Tinley knows she’s missing her brother, but she has to snap out of it at some point. Tinley is the one who is in love with him, for goodness’ sake, and even she has found a reason to function every single day. Then again, she’s focusing all of her energy on making sure Luna has everything she needs. What does Giselle have to focus on other than the TV? Her parents are gone on that cruise in the Caribbean, and as far as Tinley knows, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Since she’s here, that leads her to believe Giselle might not have a whole lot in the friend’s department either.

  She sets both things down on the bedside table and reaches over for the remote. With it in hand, she pauses to see if Giselle will do or say anything. When she doesn’t, Tinley shuts the television off entirely. The volume wasn’t up very high, but still it created a little bit of noise in the room, and now everything is completely silent. It’s awkward and uncomfortable, for sure. Tinley tries not to just stare at the girl lying on the bed. That’s what she looks like: a young girl who is falling apart with so much uncertainty in her life. Tinley doesn’t think she even has a job, or at least she hopes she doesn’t based on the fact that she hasn’t left this room except to go to the bathroom since she got here. She knows Mr. and Mrs. Outlaw are fairly well off, so maybe Giselle doesn’t have to work. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  Really getting a chance to focus on something else, Tinley’s gaze travels around the cozy guest bedroom. She wonders to herself who decorated it as her eyes pa
ss over the floral curtains and matching quilt. Normally she wouldn’t question the decor, but it’s such a stark contrast from the rest of Marek’s house, which screams bachelor pad with a slight farmhouse flair, very neutral and not little red flowers with a blue checkered pattern. In the back of her mind she wonders if Cassie is the one who designed the room and if Marek left it that way as something to remember her by. She shouldn’t feel jealous of a dead woman, but she does. Cassie was Marek’s first love, and in the back of her mind, she’ll always wonder if he can ever love her the same way.

  Shaking her head, she chooses to not think about that right now and instead to focus on what’s important. Giselle doesn’t move, and Tinley releases an exaggerated sigh in hopes that she’ll move or say something. When neither one of those things happens, she says, “You really should eat something. I know you’re sad and not taking all this very well, but you can’t starve yourself.”

  Giselle flops her body over and looks up at Tinley with serious disdain. With a roll of her eyes, she says, “Don’t worry about me. You have enough on your plate other than trying to babysit a grown woman. I’m a mess, but I don’t need someone else to take care of me. I’m fine.”

  Why does she have to be so difficult? All Tinley wants to do is help the woman, but she’s making it really hard for her. “Giselle, you’re Marek’s sister—of course I’m going to worry about you. We’re practically family at this point. Besides, I’m pretty sure your bother would be pissed at me if he found out I didn’t force you to eat.”

  She doesn’t say anything, just rolls back over on the bed, facing the wall instead. It’s obvious she wants to be left alone, but Tinley doesn’t feel right leaving her like this. She feels like she needs to do something, she just doesn’t know what that something is. After a few more minutes of complete silence, she starts to get up and says, “Do you want to talk about anything? You know I’m here for you, right?”

  “What is there to talk about?” Giselle mumbles while still turned away.

  “I don’t know…anything. Marek, Anders—whatever you want.”

  Tinley is grasping at straws, but she suddenly feels this need to take care of the woman. As it is, her relationship with Dakota, although not solid, is on its way toward being repaired, and things with Luna seem to be fine. If she doesn’t have someone to focus on and help, she’ll go spiraling into the black hole of grief, and she refuses to let herself go down that road. No, she needs to stay focused and clearheaded.

  Giselle faces Tinley again and sits up, taking a small bite of the sandwich Tinley brought her. She swallows down her mouthful with a swig of water and asks, “What makes you think I want to talk about Anders? Where did that even come from?”

  It’s a start, at least. Tinley chooses to tread lightly to hopefully keep her talking. With a shrug, she says, “There seems to be a bit of tension there, or at least that’s how it seemed the other day.”

  She takes another bite of her sandwich and the look of disgust that crosses her face has Tinley wondering if it’s due to the taste of the turkey and bread in her mouth or because the topic of Anders isn’t one she would like to discuss. Without looking up and continuing to stare daggers into the food in her hand, she says, “There’s nothing going on between us, never has been and never will be. There’s nothing to say either. He’s a coward and an asshole, not worth my time or the conversation we’re having right now. If I could forget about him and never see him again, I would.”

  Yeah, Tinley doesn’t buy that for one second. If Giselle truly didn’t care, she wouldn’t have rambled on about not caring so much. She would have made a simple statement and left it at that. “What do you mean?”

  She huffs and rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. He’s made his decisions, and my opinions apparently don’t matter. It’s old news anyway. He’s long past it, and so am I.”

  “Did something happen?” She can’t help her curiosity, and with Giselle continually answering her questions, she attempts to slowly tease more information out of her. She’s not normally so much of a snoop—that’s Dakota’s area of expertise—but damn, she can’t help how intrigued she is. It’s like her own soap opera right in front of her, she hopes it’ll turn out to be more romantic comedy though because most of those shows, although addicting, can be so over the top with drama.

  Giselle continues to ignore her and glances at a painting hanging on the far wall. Tinley doesn’t know how she missed it in her perusal of the room earlier, and she focuses in on it as well. From far away, it looks like a generic painting of people standing on the beach. The sky is bright with the sun shining, and the three figures are all smiles as they face forward. She can see waves crashing against the shore in the background, can almost smell the salt in the air and hear the seagulls. It isn’t until she looks back toward the three figures that she realizes what she’s looking at. The people standing there are none other than Marek and Anders with Giselle in the middle. If Tinley had to guess, the image was most likely a photograph that was made into a painting and stretched on a canvas. It is definitely a unique piece of artwork, and she’s curious where she could get something like that made. Offhand, she can think of at least four pictures of Luna that would look adorable as a painting.

  One thing that’s for sure is that it isn’t a recent picture. It has to be ten, maybe even fifteen years old. She knows Marek and Anders are old college buddies, but maybe their friendship goes back even further? All three of them look so incredibly young. At first glance it looks like they’re all just having a fun day at the beach, but as someone who’s looking for something more, she can see subtle clues. While Marek has his arm around his sister’s shoulders, Anders has his wrapped around her waist and his hand is squeezing her side. Giselle is also leaning away from her brother with her head and has it almost resting on Anders’ shoulder. There’s definitely something there, and Tinley wonders if something happened that summer that changed things, or if it was something since then.

  Shaking her head as if coming out of a trance of distant memories, Giselle looks away from the painting and up toward the ceiling. “Like I said, there’s nothing to talk about, and I’d appreciate if you would stop pushing it. I know you’re just trying to get my mind off of what’s going on in London, but trust me when I say that is not the way to go about it.”

  This leads Tinley to believe there’s definitely a lot to say, but if Giselle doesn’t want to talk about it then she’s not going to push her. The whole point of her coming in here in the first place was to cheer her up, not piss her off, and now she kind of feels like shit for allowing her curiosity to take over. Obviously that was the wrong thing to do.

  “Anything else on your mind?”

  “No, not really. I appreciate that you brought me some lunch, but I think I just want to nap now. I haven’t really been sleeping much lately and I’m finding myself suddenly tired.”

  Tinley doesn’t want to leave her alone, but she doesn’t know what other reason she has to stay. Besides, she can’t exactly force herself on Giselle. They might be slowly building a friendship, but it’s not like they’re best friends or anything like that. Tinley reaches for the plate with the half-eaten sandwich that has been abandoned and rises from the bed. “Okay, I’ll go ahead and let you get your rest then. If you need anything at all, just let me know. I might be pregnant, but that won’t stop me from helping you out in any way.”

  Giselle yawns, and although it looks fake and forced, Tinley doesn’t call her out on it. “Thank you Tinley, that means a lot to me.”

  She then pulls the quilt back over her body and rolls away, once again dismissing Tinley altogether. She stands there for a few seconds longer, unsure of what to do next, and when Giselle’s breathing evens out, she quietly turns and leaves the room. At this point, she doesn’t even know what she can do for the woman, but she hopes she can figure out something to help her soon.

  Chapter Seven

  With how active Luna is, Tinley isn’t surprised that
they spend the majority of their time together in the kitchen. If it isn’t for mealtime, it’s for snack time and that little girl could eat snacks all day if she was allowed to. There’s actually been a few times that Tinley has caught her alone in the pantry hunting for more snacks. In fact, she’s currently enjoying her second bowl of cereal this morning for breakfast.

  Luna takes a giant bite of her sugary cereal and then a swig of her apple juice. Probably not the healthiest breakfast for her, but that’s the last thing Tinley is concerned about these days. She blows a few bubbles through her twisty straw and giggles with the biggest grin on her face. Dakota went out to the grocery store yesterday to restock the fridge and brought back a present for the little girl, which had her asking every five minutes if she could start using her new straw from Auntie Dakota. She blows another bubble and with a small stern look from Tinley, Luna throws her head back, laughing, and then takes another small sip from her straw. With a dramatic aahhh, she puts her cup down and looks up, asking, “Tinley, why is Auntie Giselle always so sad?”

  She looks toward the hallway where Giselle is currently cooped up in the guest bedroom, where she has been parked for four days. Tinley had to drag her away from the microfiber couch in the living room where she decided to take up residence with the TV on. Instead, she’s locked herself in the bedroom and she watches the news nonstop in hopes of seeing any kind of indication that her brother is okay, but the only thing they’re showing is the same horrific videos over and over again with a repeat of the same handful of interviews. Watching it the first time was enough to drive Tinley crazy, she couldn’t imagine spending hours with it playing on the screen in front of her over and over. There’s nothing new being told, and Tinley still can’t get ahold of Marek. His phone is going straight to voicemail. Somehow, miraculously, Luna has been kept in the dark about everything so far.