All The Ways You Saved Me

by Jamie Howard

  Seeing that everything was more than fine, I plucked my hat off the coat rack and slipped it on backward. I might have lost Bianca, but I was ready to take back everything else. “You guys done? Cause I was thinking of heading to the studio.”

  “The studio?” Felix asked.

  “You want to go to the studio?” Gavin chimed in.

  I shrugged. “Seems like it’s about time, right?”

  Gavin’s sneakers slapped against the floor as he walked up to me and threw an arm around my shoulders. “Past time, man.”

  Chapter 39: Bianca

  I should’ve gone to the library. I knew enough by now to realize that trying to accomplish anything while Harper was home, especially when Harper and Brand were home, was next to impossible. Rereading the same paragraph for the third time with no greater success, I gave my textbook a little shove and leaned back in my chair.

  The first hint of spring was drifting its way through the apartment window in the form of a warm breeze tinted with the smell of freshly blooming flowers. Au revoir, winter—I’d had enough snow to last me a lifetime.

  A giggle erupted from Harper’s bedroom, piercing through the thin walls like she was sitting right next to me.

  The library. I’d have to go if I wanted to get any studying done.

  Shoving a textbook into my messenger bag, I frowned at the door when someone on the other side of it banged out three harsh knocks. Must be Mrs. Zimmer. She lived three apartments over, but could apparently still hear Harper’s racket and was always complaining about it.

  “Don’t worry,” I yelled at Harper’s closed door. “I’ll get it!”

  Grumbling to myself, I pulled open the door and readied myself for yet another fight with our lovely neighbor. Except it wasn’t her.

  “Hi, Bianca. I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time?” Rachel peered a little to the left to glance into the apartment.

  “Rachel, I . . . was not expecting you.” Especially since I made it a point not to tell anyone I was coming back to the city, I finished in my head. I cleared my throat and found my manners. “Please, come in.”

  “Thank you.” Her fingers fidgeted with her purse strap. As soon as I closed the door behind her, she turned to me and blurted, “Ian doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Oh?” Walking back over to the kitchen table, I plopped back down in the chair I’d recently vacated. Just the thought of Ian had my palms sweating. I’d been trying so hard not to think of him. Avoided places I knew I might see him. I was doing everything I could, and somehow Rachel still ended up on my doorstep.

  She sat down across from me, dropping her purse on the floor. “I didn’t tell him you’re in New York.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “I, uh . . .” she coughed into her hand and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, hacked into your e-mail.

  “I’m sorry, did you just say that you—”

  “How I found out you were here isn’t really important.” Her grin trembled on her lips like it wasn’t sure how I’d react to it. “Please, just hear me out and then I’ll go.”

  I wasn’t going to like this. I didn’t even have to hear one word out of her mouth and I already knew it. But what choice did I really have? It’s not like I was going to throw her out. I waved my hand at her, signaling for her to go on.

  “He misses you. And I think you miss him too. I don’t know you all that well, but I saw the way you looked at him on Thanksgiving, and I’ve seen the video of you two at the Blackbird. There was something there, and I just can’t understand why, if you’re back in the city and not in Texas like you said you were going to be, you’re not working this out with him.” Her speech was a sprint, the words flying out so fast the end of one word melted into the beginning of the next.

  I pinched my lips together. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

  “Ian is my best friend.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “I get that I’m probably crossing some line here, and if I’m being completely honest, this conversation is way outside my comfort zone, but I have to know. I have to do this for him.”

  At that moment, a loud, rhythmic banging started up from Harper’s room. I knew from experience that it was just the headboard thumping against the wall, but it drew a curious glance from Rachel.

  I cleared my throat to draw her attention back to me. “I didn’t tell Ian I was back in the city because it wouldn’t have mattered. Things between us didn’t work out, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”

  “You mean because he didn’t tell you about the band? Or was it the thing with Brie, because that was kind of—”

  “It’s Maggie,” I said, cutting her off before she could take off on another tangent.

  “I . . . don’t understand.”

  I had to respect her coming here, fighting for Ian. Even if it was a conversation I didn’t want to revisit. “Listen, I didn’t know him then. I never saw the two of them together, but I have a feeling that he really loved her. It was the real thing, right?”

  Rachel nodded, tilting her head to the side, waiting, listening.

  “I can’t compete with a ghost,” I said, wrinkling up my nose to try and ward off the tears that were quickly making their presence known. “I tried, I really did. But it didn’t matter what I did, or said, somehow I was always doing the wrong thing, or accidentally doing the thing that reminded him of her. There were times that I could see him fighting it, really struggling to stay in the present with me instead of back in the past with her. But you know what? I think she always won. And I get it, but I don’t have to live with it.”

  Rachel laced her fingers together and looked down at them. “You have to understand, Bianca. She was his wife. He loved—”

  “He’s still in love with her.”

  She shook her head. “He’s moving on. You should see the look he gets in his eyes when he talks about you. It’s like he’s him again. You do that to him.”

  “You’re wrong.” I laughed. Then again, did it really count as a laugh if it was devoid of any sense of humor? “He won’t let himself move on. She’s got this hold on him, and he can’t get past it. Everything Ian ever was and anything he’ll ever be, it will always belong to Maggie.”

  “She was his wife!” she yelled, pinching her eyebrows together.

  “She’s dead!” I yelled back even louder, punctuating it with a slam of my hand on the table that rattled the flower centerpiece.

  Harper’s door flew open, a pillow clutched in front of her, which barely managed to cover up her boobs and lower bits. Her gaze bounced from me to Rachel, and then back again. Behind her, I caught a glance of a bare butt cheek, the sinuous curl of a dragon wrapping around it. Narrowing her eyes, she seemed to decide everything was okay, took a step back, and slammed the door shut again.

  I pushed back my chair, the legs scraping against the floor. This time I said it in a much quieter voice, barely loud enough to be heard. “She’s dead, and I’m alive. I was right there in front of him, and I wasn’t enough. It was like I was the ghost, not her. I love him . . .” I squeezed my eyes shut. “But I’m not willing to settle for the pieces of Ian that Maggie didn’t take to her grave. I’ve spent too much time selling myself short. I deserve more than that.” I stood. “I think you should leave.”

  It seemed that in the face of all that, Rachel didn’t have that much to say. Tucking her purse under her arm, she took a step toward me, apparently changed her mind on whatever she was planning to do, turned back around, and left.

  The tears were falling before the door even clicked closed, climbing over my fingers and sinking into the cracks where my hand clamped over my mouth to stifle the sobs. Another door clicked open behind me.

  “Do I need to kick the shit out of her for you, B?” Harper asked.

  I shook my head, hunching my shoulders to try and contain the fresh surge of heartache. I’d fought for him, and I’d lost. I knew I was doing the right th
ing, but it felt like I was tearing my own heart out with only my fingers and a Popsicle stick to aid me.

  Footsteps padded across the floor, then slender arms wrapped around my waist, and a cheek pressed itself against the middle of my back. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.” A beat passed. “Just . . . don’t turn around. I was in the middle of getting dressed when she left, and I don’t have any pants on.”

  I nearly choked on a laugh.

  It was moments like those, when I hit rock bottom and still managed to eke out a smile, that I knew—I’d loved Ian, I’d lost him, but I was still surviving.

  Chapter 40: Ian

  Four weeks. Twenty-eight days of living and breathing music until it felt like notes were pouring out of my fingers, and my voice was hoarse from overuse. I could only imagine how Gavin felt. I was surprised his vocal cords were working at all. Weekends, weekdays, it didn’t matter. Every day, we lived music.

  This album was something powerful, something raw. Emotion burst out of every riff, each lyric both an accusation and forgiveness for everything that’d happened. I’d never put as much of myself into the music as I did this time. And now that it was done, I felt lighter than I had in years. Like all the emotions that’d been weighing me down had been drained, drawn out of my heart, straight through my pen, bled into the paper with my ink.

  Leaning back into the cushions of my typical booth at Brady’s, I lifted my beer bottle up to my lips and took a swig. Rachel sat across from me, her fingernail worrying the edge of her bottle’s label.

  “What’s up, Rach?” I asked.

  She shook her head, eyes never leaving their downcast position. Her side of the booth shook as Ben slid in next to her, followed by Gavin. As Ben inched closer, Rachel scooted over until her entire left side was plastered against the wall.

  “Where’s Felix?” she asked.

  “Oh, you know, hiding from the public, holing up in his apartment. The usual,” Gavin responded, turning to me. “That was some brilliant work the last few weeks, man. Insane shit really.” Gavin snapped his fingers. “Everything was just clicking, flowing. Like the old days.”

  “Felt good didn’t it?” Ben asked, his voice offhand. But his eyes pinned me to my seat saying, Don’t forget it this time.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It felt . . . right.” And it did. I was slowly resurrecting myself; the shell of the Ian who’d been walking around for the past few years was almost completely bursting with my old self.

  “It’s too bad Mags couldn’t be here for this.” Gavin lifted his bottle up, tilting it toward the sky. Ben gave a somber nod, and I was about to agree when I caught sight of Rachel’s face. She was still staring at her bottle, the label half-peeled off now, but she was scowling.

  “Rach?”

  Ben glanced in her direction, and Gavin leaned forward to see around him, his cheek nearly pressed flat against the table.

  “What’s with the face?” Gavin asked, waving a hand over his own just in case she didn’t understand what face meant.

  “Nothing.” She shrugged. “Just thinking about Maggie.”

  Something twinged inside me at the mention of Maggie’s name. It was like I accidentally banged my elbow against the table, and a brief, tingling surge of pain flooded through me. It was . . . less. Not even close to the emotional blow I was used to feeling. I didn’t know what it meant, but it scared me. I tried to call an image of her to my mind, and the best I got was something that was blurry and indistinct.

  Ben pushed on. “She would have been proud of you, you know.” He lifted his eyebrows at me.

  I nodded. Never doubting it for a second. “To Maggie.” Ben clinked his glass of water against Gavin’s bottle and then against mine.

  “Oh, God.” Rachel laughed, dropping her head into her hands. “She was right.”

  “Who was right?” Ben asked.

  Rachel ignored him and looked up at me. “It’s always going to be Maggie, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, what?” I asked, at the same time Gavin said, “I’m lost.”

  “I saw Bianca.” Rachel crossed her arms.

  That name was like a bombshell, opening up a crater in my chest. Bianca. I’d done everything in my power to not even think her name. And yet, just hearing it come through Rachel’s lips, the image of her shimmered to life in front of me. No, no, no. I tried to erase the picture of her, tried to call up Maggie’s in her place.

  I couldn’t.

  As panic coursed through me, my mind finally registered what Rachel said. “You saw her?”

  Ben flicked his gaze between Rachel and me, then tried exiting the booth straight through Gavin. He jolted with the impact, but held firm, shooting Ben a dirty look. If anything, Gavin leaned in farther, obviously not wanting to miss this exchange.

  Rachel looked down her nose at me. “Yes.” She folded her arms across her chest. “And I defended you, I fought for you. I called her a liar.”

  I shook my head, trying to clear out the cobwebs. “Where? You weren’t . . . when did you go to Texas?”

  “She’s not in Texas.”

  “Her family is in Texas.”

  “Correct. Her family is in Texas, but Bianca is not.”

  I drew back, my hands slipping to my lap. All this time she’d been here. Here, and she never told me. Never called. If that wasn’t a message, I didn’t know what was.

  “What happened in Texas?” Ben asked, a line creasing his forehead as he looked at me.

  “What the fuck does it matter what happened in Texas?” I yelled. “You think it matters what she said? Here.” Grabbing my phone out of my pocket, I tossed it on the table. It spun across the aged wood, coming to rest halfway between us. “Here’s everything she didn’t say. Here’s nearly five months of her not saying anything!”

  The silence expanded between us until it was so wide you could’ve driven a freight train through it.

  Brady’s was practically empty, but I still almost missed what Rachel said. “What did you want her to say, when you won’t let Maggie go?” Her eyes drifted slowly to my face, her expression all kinds of sad. “We all know how much you loved her, but she’s gone, Ian.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” The words managed to escape through my gritted teeth.

  Her hand reached across the table for mine, and I tried to jerk it away. Tightening her fingers, she tugged harder. “When is it going to be enough? Three years? Five? How long until you feel like you deserve be happy again?”

  “You don’t get it.” This time when I tried to pull my hand away, she let me. “I will never love anyone the way that I love Maggie. Ever. I’m not going to ‘get over it.’ I was lucky, so damn lucky that I got to experience that even once in my life. That kind of love? It’s not something that comes around twice.”

  There was a pause, a beat, and then Gavin said, “That is some of the stupidest shit I have ever heard.” He snorted. “Seriously, you don’t know how much I want to lean across the table and punch you in the face right now. What are you even talking about? Soulmates? Fuck, man, if that’s the case, then I might as well call it a day.” He brushed his hands together, like he was wiping them clean. “I already found her, and she took off on me in the middle of the night. So, I guess that’s it for me, right? Might as well give up now.” He stood, shaking off Ben’s hand when he tried to make a grab at him. Stalking toward the front of the room, the slam of the door shook the half-empty bottles on our table.

  Ben opened his mouth, then closed it, his gaze darting toward Rachel and then away again. He slid out of the booth and left without a word.

  I wanted to call Gavin back, tell him that’s not what I meant. It had to be different for him. He’d find someone else. There were too many people in the world for him not to. But by saying that, I’d be calling myself a liar. If I believed there was still someone out there for him, then why couldn’t it be possible for me too?

  I tried to swallow, but it felt like I was trying to swallow my beer bottle whole.
My throat constricted, tight enough that I could barely breathe. “What if I forget her?”

  “Ian.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Right now, if I close my eyes, I can barely picture her face. She’s slipping away from me, Rach. And I know that if I let her go, she’s never coming back.” I knew how stupid I sounded, but it was everything that I was feeling. She was never coming back; realistically, I knew that. All I had left were memories. I replayed them in my memory every night before I fell asleep so that I wouldn’t forget. I couldn’t let them fade away.

  Loving Bianca meant losing Maggie.

  Rachel leaned toward me, her hair brushing against the table. She rested her hand over my heart. “Maggie will always be here.” Bringing her hand back, she touched the same spot on herself. “And here. As long as there’s one of us to remember her, she’ll never truly be gone.” Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, she sat back in her seat. “It isn’t wrong to love her.”

  This time I knew she wasn’t talking about Maggie.

  When I didn’t answer, she let out a breath and shook her head. Gripping her purse in one hand, she pushed herself out of the booth. She paused at the end of the table and turned around, lifting one brow at me. “Did you ever think that you might be just that lucky? That love found you not once, but twice?”

  Lucky, is that what I was?

  I wanted to scoff at the thought, but there was enough truth in the question to give me pause. When Maggie died, I couldn’t see past the next minute, let alone the next day or year. Every second was filled with a wrenching pain that tore me apart, shredding me up inside until I was just tiny fragments of myself. Then slowly, so gratingly slow that I hadn’t even noticed, I began to piece myself together. The smallest pieces first. And I realized that it wasn’t until Bianca that everything finally fit back together. A little rough around the edges, sure, but I was practically myself again.