Landslide

by Jenn Cooksey

  “I do know why it’s called falling in love though, because once you wake up and realize you’re flailing in mid-air, it’s too late and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to keep you from inevitably hitting the ground. And here’s a newsflash for you, it fucking hurts when there’s no one there to catch you, and believe me, I have had no peace since I realized I fell and was already broken in pieces on the concrete.”

  In a tiny whisper, she asks, “How long has that been? Do you know when you woke up?”

  I have to force myself to meet her eyes, although, she has to settle for a regretful nod.

  Her voice thick with a back-flow of building tears and the beginnings of anguished understanding being written in her eyes, she pushes for more, “Will you tell me when?”

  Furiously blinking back my own waterfall, I struggle to keep my eyes on hers. “You need,” I have to stop and clear my throat, “You need to understand it took me a while.” She nods and continues to give me the strength to continue in her unflinching gaze. “It, um…I started realizing the night,” I pause for breath when she starts blinking like me and her face contorts with rueful pain, guessing the answer for herself, “I started waking up the night you put Holden to rest.”

  Her hand covers her mouth to silence a sob and then slides up to cover her eyes. She brings it back down over her mouth again and looks around herself like she might be lost or about to throw up. I glance around for a bucket or something I can give her like an idiot when suddenly, she’s hitting me.

  “You knew! That whole time! You knew and you didn’t tell me?! Why, Cole?! Why are you just telling me now?!”

  Taking her by the arms, I give her one, firm shake to make her stop hitting me so she can listen. “I couldn’t!”

  “Why not?!”

  “Why do you think, Erica?!” My hands drop from her arms to scour my face as I turn around.

  “I don’t know, Cole! That’s why I’m asking!”

  I spin back to face her and find her eyes again. “Holden.”

  “Holden was dead!”

  “I’m aware of that, sweetheart. Believe me. He was dead, but he wasn’t gone. Not for you.”

  “I was grieving.”

  “You think I don’t know that?! I was there, Erica! You needed to do it, and I knew that! That’s the whole fucking reason for why I didn’t say anything! But, it was killing me to watch you and not do anything to help you through it. Not that the route I went was a piece of cake…I just didn’t know what else to do for you.”

  “So out of some idyllic sense of loyalty to a dead man, you decided to let me use you? Because that’s how it felt, Cole, and I have never gotten over the guilt of being a burden on you!”

  It’s another slap in the face; this one though…this one doesn’t just sting and burn. It scorches.

  “That’s what you thought? That you were a burden?”

  She’s crying again and having as much trouble as I was making eye contact. “I heard you. The night before I left…? I heard you yelling and screaming at Holden about the betrayal of the burden he left you with. Me. I was the burden.”

  My eyes searching in the fire for the past, I cover my mouth when the enraged echo of myself from that night reaches my ears. “Oh, sweetheart…that wasn’t about you. Not directly. You weren’t the burden he left me with. I hated him. I—”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “No, not anymore, but, I did. I just…I didn’t know how much until that day. There are things I never told you because I thought telling you would only push you away from me. That was the burden I was talking about.” Looking into her pained eyes, my heart starts beating a mile a minute in knowing that the words about to come out of my mouth will quite possibly break her worse than she’s ever been. My eyes fall to the floor between us, and I settle for dragging in a shaky breath, knowing that even with a full oxygen tank, I still wouldn’t be able to breathe enough to get through this without hyperventilating. “I need to tell you some things about Holden, sugar.”

  “Will telling me those things tonight change anything that’s happened up until now?”

  “No.” It’s the unvarnished truth. It won’t change the past. It will affect everything about the future though.

  “Then it can wait.”

  “But, you need to know…Hold—”

  “Tonight isn’t about Holden. It’s about you and me.”

  “It’s about him too, though. I was waiting to tell you until we’d both said goodbye to him, but…you never did. He’s still at the center of everything. He matters in the now.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because, Erica! You’re still grieving him!”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are, sugar. And, among other things, that leaves me competing with a ghost who wasn’t who you think he was.”

  “No. You’re wrong. And you’re not competing with anyone.” I try swallowing my sigh, but she won’t let it go. “Cole, I’m not grieving Holden anymore. Seeing some of his things and those pictures made me a little sad, of course, because a life was cut short. I’d feel for anyone, even a stranger under the circumstances of how Holden’s life was taken from him. I will weep for that because it was tragic. Time won’t make that any less true. It will always be tragic.”

  “He was the epic love of your life, Erica. He always will be.”

  “He wasn’t. I loved him, yes, or…I thought I did. But…he was just a moment in time. And I knew it.”

  “What do you mean, you knew it? Knew what?”

  “That even if he hadn’t died, Holden wouldn’t last. I didn’t know it before he was gone, but…I did afterwards.”

  “How?”

  “Because I felt it. That desperate gnawing inside you…? I felt some of it. In me. I just didn’t know what it was. I couldn’t identify it because before you, I hadn’t ever experienced it and you never said a word. But I felt it. And do you remember the last night we were together before I went home from our road trip?”

  “You know I do.”

  “What did I do, Cole?”

  It’s one of those moments in a serious conversation where you’re basically fucked no matter what you say or do, as if you’re staring straight into the headlights of an oncoming Mac truck and don’t know which way is your best bet out of its path because it’s bearing down on you so fast, you know that regardless of what side you jump to you’ll never make it clear before it squashes you like a gnat. And like with those headlights, I just stare at her, not knowing if I should answer, simply because I know what the answer is.

  “Answer me. What did I do? Or rather, what did I say I wanted to do?”

  “You um…” I have to stop and swallow the painful lump in my throat, “You said you wanted to be there for me like I was for you. You wanted to make me feel good for once.”

  “That’s right. And I did it by giving you a blow job, Cole. Which, as you well know, I had never done before, but what you don’t know is that Holden had asked me I don’t even know how many times and I never did it because just the thought of going down on my beloved boyfriend scared the absolute shit out of me. But that night, with you…I was elated in a way I never knew I could be, simply because it was you. And the night of his funeral? Holden never did that to me. And I didn’t want him to. Because I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin with him the way I’ve always been with you. But with you…I have never been made to feel that way before or since.”

  On a sigh, I cast my eyes to the ceiling and shake my head. On my own, I pretty much figured out everything she’s saying. I just don’t know how to make her see that none of that has negated Holden’s grip on her. “Erica, just because you and I are attracted to one another, exceedingly even, and we additionally seem to have an affinity for being great at oral sex with each other, doesn’t mean that you’re over Holden. You chose him tonight. I think you always will.”

  “What in the actual hell are you talking about? I didn’t choose Hold
en tonight.”

  “Yeah, you did. You had so many opportunities to just, pay attention to me, in any little way, even before that goddamned box smashed my foot. Again.”

  “Whe—what opportunities? What are you talking about? Seriously.”

  “What have we been doing the last couple weeks?”

  “Well, evidently we’re not dating, and according to you, we were just messing around.”

  “I’m in love with you, so you really think I’ve just been messing around? Because I haven’t been!”

  “Then why did you say you were?!”

  “Because that’s what you said last night and I wanted to see how you’d react if I threw it back at you. You didn’t bat a fucking eyelash. In fact, you concurred and apologized. Then I had to ask you to make s’mores with me because if I hadn’t, you would’ve stayed put in the kitchen.”

  She rolls her eyes and throws her hands up in the air, both clearly depicting her utter irritation. “You were pissed off, Cole! I thought you wanted some time to yourself to calm down!”

  I have to give her that one. But…the more I think about it, the more it becomes apparent that she hasn’t done anything tonight or over the last weeks to show me she feels even remotely close to how I feel about her. “Why didn’t you kiss me earlier? When the power first went out? You had the chance and you just stood there.”

  “Why didn’t you kiss me?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut again and pinch the bridge of my nose. The pain building behind my eyes and forehead from going round and round with her is just the icing on the cake. “Because I was testing you. All night I was waiting for you to come to me. I needed you to. And when Holden posthumously stepped on my toes—again—you went ahead and walked straight back into the past with him rather than participating in the present with me.”

  “Cole, that’s not fair, I’m not a mind-reader. And I told you, seeing his stuff like that took me by surprise. He was a part of both our lives and we hadn’t talked about him at all…it felt wrong to ignore that. And I didn’t know you wanted me to decorate with you. I thought you wanted to do it yourself. Had you asked me though, I would’ve stopped going through all that stuff and paid attention to you like you wanted me to.”

  “Come on, Erica…I shouldn’t have to ask for your attention when I’m the only one in the house. The only one alive anyway…”

  “Oh my God…it’s almost like you think that by looking at pictures and reminiscing, I was cheating on you with someone who’s been dead for more than a third of my life!”

  I pull up short, because that’s it. In a nutshell, that’s it. “Yeah. That’s how it felt back then. Except you weren’t cheating on me. You were cheating with me. Because I’m the one still breathing.” Her face falls and I know I’m right. “It still feels like that. You were so far away tonight, you might as well have not even been here at all.”

  “Cole, when I look back on my life, Holden is there, but not like you are. You’re the epicenter of my life. You always were and always will be. You’ll stand the test of time because you’re at the foundation of everything that has ever mattered or meant something. Tonight I needed to be somewhere I felt safe. I came here. I needed to be with someone I trust and I came here. I didn’t even consider anyplace or anyone else. I just came here. From the moment you opened the door tonight though, I felt like you would’ve preferred I hadn’t. Seriously, almost all night it’s felt like that…that you didn’t want mere here at all.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Well, that’s fantastic. I love you so please excuse me while I go out of my way to make it clear that you’re not welcome in my house.”

  It’s a fine use of sarcasm on her part, although the scene playing in my head prohibits me from appreciating it. “I was at your house this morning. I met Greg. He was in his underwear and your Oregon sweatshirt.” Her eyes grow round and rain clouds begin to form in them once again. “I shook hands with him, Erica. And then I left him alone with you. In what he thought was friendly conversation, he told me you stayed at his place that one night and that he was planning on moving up here and proposing to you again.

  “I mean he was really waving his I heart Erica flag loud and proud, and from the way he said everything, completely and totally non-psychotic, I figured you had to be on board. I was so convinced of that. I was done. And once you told me what actually happened and that the guy is a legitimate danger, I…well, I haven’t been that kind to myself tonight, and I really needed you to make an effort for once. I needed to know that I mean something to you other than being that guy…the one you call because you want something. But that’s exactly who I am to you.”

  “No, Cole. You’re not. You never were.”

  “No? Remind me when I wasn’t.”

  “Remind you?”

  “Yeah, remind me. I need you to jog my memory on that because all I remember is being a surrogate for Holden. Especially after he died. You’d hear something or see something that reminded you of him, or have a dream or nightmare that he was always the star of, and I’d pick up the pieces. Every. Single. Time. You were like a junkie and I was your go-to pharmacy. I’d open myself up and make myself into whatever drug you needed and then once I’d given you the fix you craved, I was the one left going through withdrawals.”

  “See?! You let me use you! You let me! You know what though, I’m done feeling bad about myself for it. That’s on you now. I tried to make up for it and express my appreciation for everything you ever did for me then and before he passed and it doesn’t matter anyway…nothing I say can change any of that now.”

  “True. So, if I’m really not that guy like you’re wanting me to believe, then why couldn’t you kiss me earlier? How hard is it to do when we’re alone and I’m standing right in front of you? You did it at the bowling alley to prove a point to a fucking sixteen-year-old, where you also made damned certain that everyone knew we’re just friends, but when we’re alone and you taking the initiative might mean something, you get gun-shy? What is that?”

  “Gun-shy? You’re calling me gun-shy? Who’s the one who’s slammed on the brakes every single time we’ve ever gone for a test drive together?”

  “If you’re talking about that night in the hot tub, we were toasted and I told you then I didn’t want it to be like that. And you agreed. Most every other opportunity I’ve had Holden to contend with and I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna be your consolation prize, sugar. I don’t wanna settle for being the guy you settle for. I want to be craved and desperately wanted. I want to be loved with reckless abandon. And until I’m sure I am, I won’t take a backseat to anyone else, especially someone you don’t know how to let go of.”

  “I let him go, Cole. I think it’s you who can’t.”

  “Sweetheart, I wasn’t bullshitting when I said I think about him every day, but I don’t get weepy and lament his loss when I do. I don’t focus on the tragedy of how young he was and what promise his life used to have. And I don’t ever let his loss of life keep me from living mine. You do. And don’t tell me you don’t because I’m a veteran at recognizing the signs. I can see it on your face and in every movement…something comes over you and I know you’re thinking of what could’ve been.”

  “Did you ever stop to think I might be thinking about what could’ve been with you? Of course not, because you’ve had yourself convinced for years and years that I only ever loved Holden, and that I only ever wanted him. Well, I have news for you, Cole. I wanted you more. More than Holden or anyone else ever.”

  “Oh really. And when was that? When I cut you off in mid-stride because you were drunk on three bottles of wine and I wouldn’t go along with your whim of turning me into your one-night fuck buddy like Captain America?”

  Her nostrils flare and her eyes flash violently as she glares and slowly shakes her head at me, her temper pricked but good. Turing to stare into the fire, though, she takes her time. Breathing in and out. She does it so long, without a word or look, I begin to w
onder if that was it; if she’s ever speaking to me again.

  After that barb, would you really blame her if she didn’t?

  No. It would’ve been nice though if you’d piped up before I threw it. I mean, Jesus Christ, you have the shittiest timing.

  Sorry, buddy. I’m just a spectator and your own personal peanut gallery, which means I’m rarely anything other than reactionary. Which also means I can’t wait to see how you’re gonna get out of this monster hole you’ve dug. Or, you know, if you even do…

  41

  “Take Me To Church”

  —Cole—

  We’ve never actually fought before. Not once. Not even when we were kids. And I wish I could take tonight back so as to keep that track record unblemished. I know I can’t though. And wishing it doesn’t make me feel any less infantile or unforgivably churlish to snap at her the way I had.

  I open my mouth to attempt some form of apology, feeling though that an apology won’t cut it now, as it’s years past the time of when anything like damage control could’ve had any hope whatsoever at being effective. Then Erica moves and I hold my breath as she bends down and picks up a chunk of broken crystal. I watch her, almost transfixed, as she casually inspects it in the firelight, turning it this way and that so it glints and sparkles like a real-life star in her hand.

  “No. The only thing I was drunk on at the time was you. Even so, I was fully aware. Like I never have been before or since. I didn’t understand that I was feeling your love for me but I used how you made me feel as inspiration one night a week or so later…the night we trusted each other more than any soul dead or alive. I wanted you to feel the same way I felt. And I felt worshipped, Cole. Profoundly. You have given and given and given of yourself to me, but you fight and refuse to let me even try to give back.”