by Callie Hart
From the look on his face this guy thinks I’m mad, but he carefully, slowly draws back the paper sheet covering Malcolm’s upper body and takes a step back so I can see.
Malcolm, the bastard, looks pretty much the same as he did the last time I saw him, aside from his coloring. Lifeless, he seems smaller somehow, though. Maybe he shrunk in his latter years. Still the same cruel downturn of his mouth, though. Still the same mean pinch in between his eyebrows. I lean down, as close as anyone should lean into the week old remains of a dead man, and I study what’s left of him. He caused so much hurt to Coralie. Physical and mental. He ruined things for us in so many ways. I’m suddenly overcome with such a huge and awful sense of hatred that I can’t keep it inside myself. I hawk and spit into his face. Saliva runs down his right cheek, chasing over his alabaster skin, until it trickles into his ear. The indignity of that makes me smile.
“Excuse me, sir. You can’t do that. You can’t spit—”
“It’s all good. You can check off your little boxes and give me the paperwork I need. We’re all done here.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CORALIE
Loose Ends
NOW
Two days pass. I walk along the narrow strand of river that winds lazily through Port Royal, refusing to step foot onto Main Street. I screen Ben’s calls. I don’t have the energy to text and tell him I’m okay. I don’t even have the will power to pretend that I still love him and want to be with him. Strangely, I get the feeling that he knows the truth. He stops calling eventually.
I spend hours imagining him fucking some other girl in the bed we share back in California, which is what I suspect he’s been doing, and I feel nothing. Maybe relief. Certainly not jealousy or sadness. I know that’s not normal, given the fact that we’ve been together for so long, but this thing with Callan supersedes Ben. It supersedes everything.
It’s been five days since I arrived in Port Royal, and I’ve accomplished nothing. Aside from getting into fights and finding myself angry a lot of the time, it seems as though me being here has been a waste of time.
I’m sitting on the banks of the river, lost in my thoughts, lost in memories of me and Callan, our few summers spent together here, taking photographs, fooling around and falling in love, when Sam the Priest appears out of nowhere, covered in sweat. He’s in his running gear again, shorts and a t-shirt. The man apparently never does any real priesting as far as I can tell.
“Coralie? Coralie Taylor? It is you. Perfect!”
“It is?” I squint up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun.
“Yes, sure is. I wanted to talk to you about flower arrangements. I know your friend said it was entirely up to me, but that seemed a little strange if I’m honest. Malcolm did set out pretty specific instructions, but normally the deceased’s loved ones want to play some part in the organization of the service.”
“I thought I couldn’t set anything in motion yet. Not until…never mind.” I’m so sick of this ridiculous game of dominoes. “Wait, what friend?”
Sam smiles broadly at me. “Your friend from the cemetery. Mr. Cross. He came by with the funeral director the other day and set a date. Next Monday. That is…” His smile slips. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it? He seemed pretty adamant that you wanted the service to take place as quickly as possible.”
I can’t believe it. I have no idea how Callan managed to get the ball rolling on Malcolm’s funeral, but I feel light all of a sudden. And conflicted. He shouldn’t be running around, making plans behind my back, but I’m so grateful he has been. “No, no, that’s perfect. Really. You really can do whatever you like about the flowers. Callan was right.”
Sam the Priest nods, though he seems a little unsure of himself now. “If you need more time—”
“No! I definitely don’t need more time. Thanks, Sam. I’ll come by the church later and write out a check for whatever I need to pay for.”
Sam sets off jogging again, slotting an ear bud back into his right ear. “No need,” he calls over his shoulder. “Your friend took care of everything.”
******
I find Callan in the back yard of his mother’s place with a chainsaw in his hands. He doesn’t hear me over the loud snarl of the machinery. His old Leica is sitting on the back step all by itself, and as soon as I see it I’m hit with a flood of memories. I can’t believe he still has the thing. He owned it long before he met me. Seems it should have fallen to pieces by now. I sit down on the back step, unnoticed, and I pick up the camera. I barely remember anything Callan taught me, but I know enough to alter the light settings, focus the lens and take a picture of him as he moves swiftly around the garden, slashing at the overgrown bushes and plant life that his mother used to tend to so lovingly.
I’ve tried not to notice, but the fact that Callan’s not wearing a shirt and there’s sweat running in a river down his back is hard to miss. He’s not as tanned as he used to be when we’d run around Port Royal barely wearing any clothes at all. New York doesn’t strike me as the sort of place people go around topless. I watch him work, oblivious to the fact that I’ve joined him, and I take a second to admire him.
The other night was frantic and hurried. We couldn’t get each other’s clothes off fast enough. I didn’t have the time to appreciate him, to marvel at the strong, muscular lines of his body. To appreciate how much he’s grown into himself since the very first time he stripped out of his clothes and stood before me in all his unabashed glory.
Now, there are two deep dimples at the base of his spine, one on either side, where the lines of his back arch up to meet his shoulder blades. I watch his muscles shift and flex as he works, and I can’t help but find myself remembering what it felt like to cling on to him as he fucked me the other night. His body is phenomenal. I’ve lived in California long enough now to be slightly desensitized to a guy with a hot body—there are hundred of them literally everywhere—but this is Callan. This is the man I fell in love with when he was really just a boy. It will always be different with him.
“Are you just going to sit there, spying on me and taking pictures, or are you going to bring me a glass of water?” Callan hollers. So I’m busted. Should have known he would have his peripherals firmly fixed on his precious Leica, after all. I carefully put his camera down and get to my feet. I should say something to him, I’m sure. I was terrible to him the last time we saw each other, and it seems as though he’s been very busy sorting my life out for me ever since then. He didn’t have to do that. By rights, he should have been on the first flight back to New York, and I’d still be figuring out how to sort out this whole mess.
I can’t say thank you to him yet, though. I can’t say anything at all, so I brush off my skirt and head through the back door into his kitchen to fetch him his water. My breath catches in my throat when I see the dusty cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other on the kitchen table.
“Oh my god.” I cup my hands over my mouth. It’s been a very long time, but I would recognize those boxes anywhere. I opened them and taped them shut enough times for them to be seared into my memory forever. My mother’s things. How? How the hell did he get them?
I spin around, about to run outside and ask him, but I can’t because he’s right there, standing behind me, covered in sweat, his quiet presence towering over me. “You got them for me,” I whisper.
“I did.”
“How?”
He scratches at the back of his neck, one dimple forming in his cheek. “I asked nicely.” He says this in a way that leads me to believe otherwise, though.
“I can’t believe you got them back.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Why? I don’t get it. Why did you bother arranging the funeral if you already had these?”
I know Callan’s tics and idiosyncrasies like the back of my own hand. The memory of them has been buried, though, misplaced under years and years of other people’s quirks and character traits. When I see Callan’s mouth
curve up into the beginnings of a smile, I’m fixated by the familiarity of it. It’s a beautiful, painful slap in the face. “I know you think it would be easier to walk away from all of this and never look back, Coralie,” he says. “But you need closure. You need to know that this thing is finished once and for all. The only way you’re going to get that is if you see him buried, watch the dirt pile in on top of his grave, so you know he’s never going to be coming back.”
I’d beg to differ, but I’m so good at running away. Hightailing it is my first reaction when things feel like they’re becoming unmanageable. Avoiding my fear is definitely not the best way of handling them, I know. I’ve been told so a thousand times by my therapist. I have to start listening. I have to start facing my demons head on. “You’re right,” I say quietly. “I’m just not a strong person, Callan. I’m not someone who can raise their chin and brace for the impact. I’ve taken too many hits for that. I know how much harder it is to get up each time.”
Callan runs his free hand along the corner of one of the cardboard boxes, sitting on top of Jo’s kitchen table. I wonder…. Is this where she told him she was dying, too? Somehow, I don’t think it was. I climbed out of his bed and left him sleeping that morning. I can picture Jo silently entering his room and lying herself down next to him on his bed, stroking his hair, smiling at him sadly while she waited for him to rouse from sleep. She used to look at him in this way that would stun me—like she was reliving the day she gave birth to him and was meeting him for the very first time, her miracle baby.
I would try and watch other parents with their children, to see if all mothers and fathers loved their kids as fiercely, but I never saw it in their faces. I decided that maybe it was just a communication of love that passed between people behind closed doors, and that I was lucky enough, blessed enough to be able to witness between Jo and the boy I loved.
“You’re way stronger than you think,” Callan says. His eyes seem darker inside, fluctuating from warm chocolate to almost black. I used to know how he was feeling based on the hue of his irises; the darker they were, the more intense he was about whatever he was studying at the time. Usually me.
“If I were strong, I’d have stayed.”
There’s a warning light in Callan’s eyes. “It hurt more than anything in the world when you left, bluebird. But through my anger and my pain, I knew why you did it. Years of hiding things from your friends. From the school.” He shakes his head. “From me. And then losing the baby…”
What the fuck? I stagger away from him, my back hitting the kitchen counter. What the hell is he doing, talking about the baby? He shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t even be thinking about it. I feel hollow, yet filled with ice water at the same time. How can he say those words out loud without flinching? How can he even bear to remember that? “Don’t,” I say. “Please, dear god, don’t.”
“Coralie—”
“Callan, I mean it”
“Jesus, Coralie, it was twelve years ago. We were children ourselves. I think we should be able to discuss this without blowing up at each other.”
I shake my head so hard it feels like my brain is rattling around inside my skull. “You don’t understand. You can’t.” This is it. This is the one thing I can’t talk to him about. If I do, I’ll say something that I shouldn’t. I say something wrong, and he’ll know that I lied. God, I have to get the fuck out of here right fucking now.
Anger replaces the frustration in Callan’s eyes. He clenches his jaw, huffing heavily down his nose. “Why? Because losing our baby didn’t hurt me too? Because I’m a guy? Because I didn’t fucking grieve?”
“No. No, it’s just…it’s different for me. You didn’t go through it. You didn’t feel it end.”
“Like hell I didn’t,” he snaps. “I felt it keenly. I held you in my arms at the school when you told me, and I felt you die a little too. That hurt more than I could comprehend at the time.”
God, I want to explain it to him properly. I want to explain what happened, but I know how he’ll react. He’ll blame me, and he’ll be right. It was my fault. If I’d said something about my father sooner, if I’d been brave enough, Malcolm never would have been able to hurt me the way he did. He wouldn’t have been able to throw me down those stairs. Punch me in the stomach. Slap and kick me so hard that it felt like my body was fracturing into a million pieces.
I stare down at the ground, eyes locked on a black smudge staining the toe of my red Chucks. “Thank you for getting my mom’s things for me, Callan. I’ll have to swing by with my car later on and grab them. I hope that’s okay.”
“Don’t be such a fucking pussy, Coralie. I know I shouldn’t have sold that picture. It was the shittiest thing I’ve ever done, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was seventeen, and it felt like the world was ending.”
“It was never about that stupid fucking photo, Cal!” I gasp for breath, fighting to hold myself together. “I didn’t leave because of that.” The words are out before I can stop them. I clamp my mouth shut, wishing I could rewind the last few seconds so I could take them back. It’s too late now, though. I’ve already pulled the trigger, and Callan’s looking like he just got shot.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I don’t…shit.”
He leans forward at the waist, staring me down. “What do you mean by that? Tell me right now or I’m gonna lose my mind.” I can see that he’s telling the truth. There’s a wild light in his eyes that’s brand new to me.
“I just said it was the photo,” I murmur. “But I didn’t care. The whole of Port Royal had seen my black eye. At the time, it didn’t matter if the whole world had seen it. I just said I was upset about it because…because I didn’t fucking love you anymore, Callan. I didn’t want to be with you!”
Standing up straight, Callan blinks at me. He sets his jaw, his head jerking back after a moment, like what I just said finally reached him. I wait for him to look crestfallen. Or something. The moment never arrives, though. He continues to stare at me like I have two heads. Gradually, steel forms in his eyes. He holds his hand out to me, palm up.
“Come with me, bluebird.”
“No, Callan. I have to go.”
“Do you want me to throw you over my shoulder? At this point, I’m not past doing it.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Okay, then I guess we’re doing this here.” He rushes me, steps in close before I can stop him or move away. I’m still waiting for him to be crushed by my flagrant lie that I’m unbalanced by his sudden closeness. His presence is huge, engulfing me, making my body hum with energy. The smell of him floods my senses. The heat pouring off his body lights me up, has my head spinning. He’s so close, I can see his pulse beating frantically in the dip of his throat.
“I’m not your fair weather boyfriend back in LA,” Callan growls. “I’m not Friday. I’m not Shane or Tina. I’m not someone who’ll swallow something, simply because the words tumbled out of your mouth. I know you. I see into you. Your heart is my heart. Your breath is my breath. Your soul is my soul. Your pain…your pain is my fucking pain. So don’t expect me to believe you when you say you stopped loving me, because I looked you in the eye when you said goodbye to me, bluebird. My heart broke when yours did. My lungs stopped breathing when yours did. My soul hurt when yours did. My pain felt like it was killing me, just like yours did. You loved me then. You never stopped. You still love me now, the same way I still fucking love you.”
His mouth comes crashing down, his lips pressing hard against mine, and I feel it all at once—everything he was talking about. Our souls, hearts, bodies and minds truly as one, breaking and sealing together all over again. I can’t move as he kisses me. My feet feel like they’re encased in cement. I want to stumble back, to slap him across the face, hurry out of the kitchen and slam the door behind me, but I can’t. My entire being is combined with his in this moment, lost and found at the same time, caught in a riptide that can’t be fought against. This is a force
of nature. I’d have more chance of withstanding a hurricane.
I feel small. I feel vulnerable. I feel saved.
Callan wraps his arms around me, pulling me to his bare chest, and he holds onto me tight. My breath catches in my throat as I gasp, trying to catch a breath around his kisses. My mind is swimming, seesawing wilding from fear to relief as he bruises my mouth with his, proving his words to me.
I already know the truth of them, though. I’m fully aware that without Callan, I am only half a person, emotionally disfigured and displaced in the world. Eventually, something snaps inside me. I can’t fight this anymore. I don’t want to. Being without him is too hard. It’s like I’m trapped, running on train tracks. There’s a high-speed bullet train on the horizon, growing closer and closer no matter how fast I sprint. There is no escape. No matter how fast I run, the train is always going to catch up with me. Callan is always going to be there, and I am always going to love him. So what’s the point anymore? What’s the fucking point in keeping things from him?
I kiss him back, my heart skipping out of my chest, my hands shaking as I reach up and dig my finger nails into the broad, muscular planes of his back. His skin is hot and slick with sweat under my palms. As I open my mouth wider, allowing Callan to dip his tongue past my lips, he shudders, groaning. It’s enough to make me light headed. I slide my tongue into his mouth too, tasting him the same way he’s tasting me, and I can barely keep my legs rigid beneath me. Cal’s grip on me tightens, as if he senses me weakening against him. He bunches my hair in his hands, gathering it into a knot at the back of my head so he can tip my head back and move swiftly down, kissing at the line of my jaw, my neck, my collarbone.
“Fuck, bluebird. You’re the only thing I want in this life.” He pants, his hands working their way down my neck, my arms, my ribcage, until he’s tearing at the material of my shirt, trying to get underneath it. “I need you. I need to be fucking inside you right now.”
