The Loss Between Us

by Brooke McBride

  It’s quiet for a few more seconds, and I realize I should say something. Instead, I stand up and cross the room to be near him. I place my hands on his shaking back. “Nash, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  He pulls away, and I try not to take it personally. He once again walks to the mantel and looks at all of my pictures. He picks up our picture and grips it in his hand before turning back to me. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  I cross to the back of the sofa and place my hands on it, gripping it for strength that I suddenly feel I’m going to need. “You’re not going to lose me.” I’ve been a baby these past few weeks, holding a grudge over something stupid. He was only trying to help. Plus, I’ve missed him.

  “That’s what everyone says, but in the end people pull away from me. Or maybe I pull away from them.” He sighs, “Either way, what I’m about to tell you is the hardest thing I will ever tell you.”

  I move toward him, take his hand, and pull him back to the sofa. Tucking my legs into my body, I lean back into the arm of the couch and face him. Then I wait. I make a silent promise to myself not to speak again until he finds the courage to tell me whatever he needs to.

  I hear the clock clicking on the mantel. The old house creaks as the wind slightly blows. Nash takes a deep breath and says, “Mark and I met each other when we were seven years old. He moved in down the street from me the summer before second grade. I was out riding my bike one day when I saw him throwing a baseball in the air and hitting it. I rode around for a while, watching him struggle to pitch to himself, and then he finally yelled at me.” A small smile drifts to his face. “He asked me to pitch to him. We agreed I would pitch five, and then we would switch so we could both bat. When it got dark, we made plans to do it again the next day. Baseball led to bike riding, and video games, and we spent the next ten years together as best friends.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “That changed the summer before our senior year in high school.”

  He glances over his shoulder at me and stares into my eyes. His gaze moves up to my hairline and then down to my jaw before finally landing on my lips. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he was memorizing every line, every freckle.

  I smile at him, trying to connect and offer him some reassurance, but he doesn’t smile back. “We were two weeks into the summer. We’d both had some sort of job since we were fourteen years old so that we could buy decent cars when we turned sixteen. We had worked all day and then found out there was a party out on Walsh’s road. Mark didn’t want to go because he and his girlfriend had just broken up. He finally agreed to go, but only if he could drive so he could leave when he wanted to. I told him okay.

  “When we got there, we were surprised his ex was there too. He was pissed because he didn’t want to see her. They both created drama when they were around each other, and that night was no different. The second she saw us, she ran up to him and started punching him in the chest, telling him to leave. Her friends dragged her away and I dragged him away. I led him to the keg and handed him a cup to get him to focus on something else. He was always the responsible one between the two of us, and since he had driven, he had one beer and then walked away. But he continued to get irrirated as the night wore on.

  “Toni started hanging on a guy we were kind of friends with, and after an hour or so, Mark had enough. He walked up to her and asked her what the hell she was doing. Our friend, Eric, got in between them and things got heated. I rushed up to Mark and told him to walk away, which he did after a few choice words with Eric. He then told Toni they were finished and walked back to the keg.

  “It had been awhile since he had a drink, so I let him have it. I walked to the fire where our other friends were. Mark stood there with the same beer in his hand, drilling holes into the back of Eric’s head. I knew Mark well enough to leave him alone.”

  He pauses as his jaw clenches. “I look back on that night and realize how stupid I was and what a shitty friend I was. As soon as that argument happened, I should have stopped drinking and focused on him instead of my own good time. But I didn’t. I didn’t need to remind him he was the one who drove us there. He knew that, and I trusted him. I trusted that he would know when he had had enough. We had gotten behind the wheel after a couple of beers before. But we were smart about it. Well, what a teenager would consider smart.

  “And I didn’t think I was drunk when Mark threw down his cup and stormed over toward Eric and Toni. Eric had his tongue stuck down Toni’s throat, and I knew things were about to escalate, so I threw down my own cup and raced toward Mark. But he pushed me down and just kept charging toward them. When he reached Eric, Mark pulled his shoulder back and decked him. Toni screamed, and before I could get there, Eric’s friends had jumped in and were getting a few good ones in on Mark. I finally pushed my way through, pulled Mark back, and told him we were leaving. He could barely hear me over Toni screaming.”

  He cracks his knuckles and his nostrils flare. “One stupid fight. Over one stupid girl who had been cheating on him for half of their relationship. I dragged his ass to the car thinking that the excitement had sobered me up. And it had. I felt okay enough to drive. I didn’t realize at the time, but that’s not how alcohol works. It was obviously still in my system and affecting my motor skills. But as I dragged Mark to the car, I realized he wasn’t just shaken up from the punch, he was drunk.

  “I asked him how much he had to drink, and his words were slurred when he said, ‘Too much. I lost track watching them.’ I knew out of the two of us, I was more capable, so I walked him to the passenger side. He asked me if I was okay to drive and I told him yes.” Nash stops and tightly closes his eyes. “I looked my best friend square in the eyes and told him yes.”

  I know where this story is going, and I try to keep the water from cresting over my eyes. He opens his eye and frowns before saying, “That yes meant he could trust me. That I would take care of the situation and get him out of it. I had looked in his eyes a million times before and told him that for different reasons, and I had never let him down.”

  Nash gets up again, crosses back to the window, and faces away from me. “He handed me his keys and we pulled away. I didn’t want to draw attention in the middle of the night after I’d been drinking, so I drove carefully. Or so I thought. I’m not even totally sure what happened. The rest of the night is fuzzy. I remember Mark bitching about Toni. I remember telling him he could do better.

  “I vaguely remember driving along Winterman’s Avenue. I’m sure you’ve been up there. It’s winding and can be dangerous in the light of day. But, for whatever reason, that’s the route I decided to take that night.” He shakes his head as he continues watching nothing out my front window. “Instead of taking the longer, safer way home, I took that. I managed several of the curves fine, and then knowing me, I probably got overconfident.” His voice is soft and fragile as he continues. “All I remember are the sounds and smells and the screams. And the panic. The realization of what was happening and that I couldn’t stop it. I remember hearing metal screeching on metal. I remember smelling gasoline and oil. I remember Mark yelling ‘watch out’.”

  I try to stop them but I can’t. Hot tears run down my cheeks as Nash turns to me. He’s kneeling in front of me in two seconds. His hand is rough but his touch gentle as he wipes the tears away.

  “I don’t deserve your tears, and I can’t stand to be the reason you’re crying.”

  I sniff and I don’t mean for it to, but my voice breaks, “How can you say you don’t deserve my tears? Everyone deserves compassion, Nash.”

  “No, they don’t. Murderers don’t deserve compassion.”

  I violently shake my head back and forth and whisper, “Don’t say that. You’re not a murderer.”

  He hits his fist against the coffee table and the mugs rattle against the tray as their contents spill over the edge. “The hell I’m not!”

  I rush off the couch and place my hands on his chest. I feel his heart furiously beating. Then his hand g
rips mine and pulls it away from his chest.

  “What are you doing, Jen?” he whispers.

  I look up into his eyes, so haunted I can barely stand it. “Nash...” I move my hands down his chest trying to get closer to him and offer him some form of comfort.

  “Don’t pretend like this doesn’t bother you.”

  “Of course it bothers me. I’m sorry you had to go through that. That you have to carry that with you.”

  “That’s it? You don’t want to scream at me for keeping something else from you?”

  “What? No.”

  “I don’t want your pity, Jen.” He pushes away from me.

  “Compassion and pity are two very different things.” I go after him and move my body in front of his with my feet firmly planted on the floor. My shoulders are back, and I feel a small twinge of my former self. Confident and determined. “And I don’t care what you want. I’m entitled to my own feelings.”

  His chest is still frantically rising and falling, but his eyes are now steady and focused. He lifts a hair that has fallen out of my ponytail and moves it behind my ear. I lean into his hand, not because I totally understand it but because it feels good. And it feels right. “I expected you to be angry at me for lying to you again.”

  He doesn’t know about the guilt I carry about Jeff and our baby. How my life wouldn’t have been irrevocably changed if it weren’t for my own actions. But I promised myself I would never tell anyone about that fateful night, and it’s a promise I intend to keep. “You didn’t lie to me. Either time. You just didn’t tell me your whole truth. I wish you had told me sooner, on both accounts. But I understand why you didn’t.” If he only knew how well I understood. Guilt is destructive to the soul, even if warranted.

  He leans his forehead into mine and closes his eyes. His breathing gradually slows.

  “I know this is hard, Nash, but I want you to finish it.”

  His eyes fly open. “What?”

  “Your story. That’s not the end of it.”

  I grab his hand again and move us back to the couch. I resume my position and then sprawl the blanket that was on the back of the couch over my legs. I want to lean into Nash and feel his warmth. To offer him comfort and strength. But I don’t think that’s what he wants or needs right now.

  He mirrors my position on the couch so we’re face to face. His eyes harden before he continues. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up in darkness. My eyes were trying to adjust to the light, and the first thing that hit me was the smell. Burnt flesh. I glanced around and saw that we were on an incline. I looked over my left shoulder and saw a cliff and a metal railing hanging from it. I knew we had gone over the side of the road, but I couldn’t tell how far from where I was sitting. I moved to confirm I could and then realized there was a piece of metal sticking out of the right side of my stomach. Without thinking, I yanked on it and screamed from the pain. I went to toss it aside, and when I did, I noticed Mark wasn’t there. And there was a hole in the front windshield.

  “I remembered getting ready to go out that night and Mark picking me up, I remembered the fight between Eric and Mark. Then the night before the accident creeped in. My dad and I had gotten in a fight about me not taking out the trash again. Everything came rushing back, but it was in pieces and out of order. I remembered putting Mark in the passenger side of the car and realized I didn’t buckle him in. Guys don’t do that type of stuff. He would have called me a pussy for doing something like that. But I also knew he was too drunk to do it himself.

  “Once I got my seatbelt off, I felt lightheaded and nauseous. My hands wouldn’t do what my mind was telling them. I struggled and struggled and finally got myself free. I tried to open the door but couldn’t. I punched through the side window, and it spidered out. My knuckles burned, but all I could think about was Mark. I finally pushed my body through the window and fell to the ground. I crawled to the front of the car. Only one of the headlights still worked. I couldn’t see anything. I heard someone screaming and realized it was me, screaming for Mark, but he didn’t respond. I tried to stand up and fell over again. I finally managed to get myself upright by leaning against the car. I remember the sound of my heartbeat as I frantically looked for him. I just wanted to lie down. I wanted to give up. But I kept looking.

  “I looked around the car at least four times. Finally, I started to scoot down the cliff when I noticed a piece of green shirt that I membered Mark was wearing. He was 15 feet away from me, so I started to pick up my pace. As I did, I heard sirens in the background. I yelled to him that it was going to be okay. That help was almost here. My body finally collapsed once I reached him. He was lying face up, eyes wide open. His body was contorted in such a way that I knew he was in pain. One arm was under his body and his legs were bent in different directions. He had a large gash on his head…so deep that I didn’t see red but white. I heard the sirens get very loud and then they stopped. I held his head in my lap and talked to him, reassuring him that help was there. But he never blinked, never looked at me.

  “I heard someone yell down, and I yelled back up for them to hurry. I saw two men in bright yellow uniforms with bags in their hands maneuvering through the terrain trying to get to us. Once they reached us, they started relaying information over a radio. I heard him say white male, late teens, critical, broken neck, head wound, and then I stopped listening. The next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance. I saw Mark lying in the street. The ambulance doors shut and I screamed, telling them we couldn’t leave without Mark. The paramedic that was working on me said they were sending a chopper for him and that they needed to get me to the hospital. I begged them to wait, but they didn’t. I lost consciousness before we arrived.”

  He takes a deep breath and pauses. His face is ashen and he looks tired. And defeated. I move down the couch and grab his hand. I then lay my head in his lap. I’m not thinking, only feeling. I’m not overanalyzing, I’m simply listening to my heart.

  He starts talking again, and his body vibrates through mine as he talks. “The next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. My parents and Julia were there talking in the corner of the room. My eyes felt heavy and the light was bothering me. I went to move my arm to cover my eyes and realized my arm was stuck to the bed. I looked down and saw my right wrist was handcuffed to the bed. The rattling of the cuffs against the metal bed alerted my family that I was awake. My mom and Julia had been crying, and my dad looked like crap. I immediately asked about Mark, and mom and Julia both started to cry again. Julia rushed out of the room as my mom grabbed my hand that was handcuffed to the bed. My dad was the only one who could get the words out to tell me Mark didn’t make it.

  “He told me I’d been arrested for vehicular manslaughter. It didn’t matter. Mark was dead and I had killed him. That’s all my mind could process at the time.”

  I squeeze his knee and then wipe a tear from my eye. “My parents mortgaged their house to get me a defense attorney who convinced the judge to try me as a juvenile even though I was seven months away from my eighteenth birthday. But only if I pleaded guilty to save Mark’s family the turmoil of a trial. I didn’t need a deal to plead guilty. I was guilty. I was in the hospital for three days and then went home for several weeks while I waited for my plea agreement to go through. I never left the house. I was too ashamed and too depressed. Mark was like the brother I never had, and knowing I was the reason he was no longer here was too much of a burden to carry. So I looked forward to being punished. It’s what I deserved.

  “Once I got to the juvenile detention center, I changed. I didn’t have a choice but to fight for survival. I got jumped and beaten up repeatedly until I learned to fend for myself. After a year, I walked out of that place more broken than when I had entered. I had no idea who I was. I carried around so much anger that my own family didn’t even recognize me.

  “I couldn’t hold down a job. I didn’t have any friends anymore. And I couldn’t stand the guilt...so I went to the top of t
hat cliff to end it.

  “That’s really why I became a paramedic. The little boy on the cliff was the catalyst, but I feel as though I owe it to the world, to Mark, to try and give back and make a difference by saving lives.”

  “Because you couldn’t save Mark’s?” I whisper.

  He nods his head, and then his hands slide under my arms and lift me. I move my legs so that they’re straddling his lap, grounded to a place I’m terrified to be in, but have no desire to escape. Now that we’re face to face, I see the remnants of his shed tears on his face. I move my hand to wipe them away, but he grabs it and rests it between us, slowly forming circles on it with his thumb. “Jen, I wasn’t living. These past nine years, I’ve been punishing myself for what I did. I don’t have any friends, and the only family I still talk to or hang out with is Julia and her family. I’ve never even been in love because I didn’t think I deserved to be. He pauses while skimming his fingertips along my jaw line. “But when I’m with you, I feel alive. I’m not just existing, I’m actually happy. It’s taken me a long time to come to terms with what I did. And if I could change places with him, I would…in a heartbeat. But I can’t. You make me want to be a better person, not because I’m repaying a debt, but because I want to be a better person for you.”

  Tears flow over my face, and that’s the only feeling I can process in this moment.

  Chapter 41

  “Jensen, say something. Please.”

  Something? What? How do I respond to that? He tells me that his friend died in a car accident when he was behind the wheel and that he has feelings for me…all within a twenty minute time frame.

  I hold my breath, willing time to stop so that I can process.

  “I wasn’t strong enough to save myself before you,” he continues. “But then you needed me. You needed someone who understood to be there for you. And I wanted to be that person. I needed to be that person…I still do. I want you to be able to move forward. You deserve more than the life you’ve been giving yourself, Jen.”