by Elle Kennedy
He’s drunk.
He’s been drunk every day this week. Well, either that or high. Two nights ago, I watched him smoke four joints, one after the other, before passing out on the living room couch. Logan had to haul him over his shoulder and carry him upstairs, and the two of us had stood in the doorway, looking at Dean passed out and spread-eagled on the bed. “People grieve in different ways,” Logan had mumbled.
I get that. Believe me, I get it. When I lost my mom, I went through the various stages of grief. Denial and depression mostly, until eventually I learned to accept that she was really gone. It took a while to reach that acceptance, but I got there. Dean will get there too, I know he will. But it’s been painful—no, unbearable—to watch him turn to alcohol and weed this week when he could’ve been turning to me.
“Couldn’t do it,” he mutters when he sees me in the doorway. He’d taken off his jacket and tie, and the collar of his white dress shirt is askew. His blond hair is mussed up, as if he’s been running his fingers through it repeatedly.
I enter the room with timid strides, still wearing the simple, high-necked black dress I chose for the memorial.
“Just couldn’t stomach it, baby.” It’s a whisper. Ringing with misery. “I kept picturing his parents…and Joanna…seeing their faces…” Dean sets the vodka bottle on the dresser and slowly sinks to the edge of the bed.
Taking a breath, I sit beside him and rest my head on his shoulder. “She sang.”
“What?”
“Joanna,” I say quietly. “There was a stage set up with a piano. She sang ‘Let It Be’. It was beautiful. And sad.” I blink through an onslaught of tears. “It was sad and beautiful.”
Dean makes a choked noise.
I stroke his cheek with the pads of my fingers. His skin is hot, but he doesn’t seem as inebriated as he was last night. He leans into my touch, his unsteady breaths puffing against my hand. “I couldn’t do it,” he says again.
“I know. It’s okay, sweetie.”
Is it, though? He should’ve been there, damn it. Beau’s family was there. If they were able to ‘stomach it’, then so should Dean.
The harsh recrimination sparks a flutter of guilt. Who am I to decide what someone should or shouldn’t do? People skip funerals and memorials all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they want to grieve for their loved ones in private. Maybe it’s too hard for them. Maybe they just don’t believe in funerals. It’s not my place to judge, and I force myself to remember that as I gently run my palm over Dean’s cheek.
“I can’t believe Beau is dead,” Dean says dully.
I’m momentarily startled because this is the first time he’s said Beau’s name since it happened. I’m even more startled when I tip my head and glimpse the unshed tears in Dean’s eyes. He blinks, and a couple drops spill over, sliding down to where my fingers are stroking his jaw.
His tears trigger mine, in the way yawns are said to be contagious. Suddenly we’re both crying, Dean burying his face against my breasts as his whole body shudders in silent sobs. I don’t know who kisses who first. Or who undresses who. Or how we wind up tangled together on the bed, naked, gasping, sticking our tongues in each other’s throats and frantically touching each other’s bodies. Megan told me some crazy statistic once about how eighty percent of people who were interviewed for a grief survey admitted to having sex right before, during, or directly after a funeral.
I guess it makes sense if you think about it. Celebrating life in the face of death. Needing someone to hold on to, a tangible connection to another living, breathing person.
We release simultaneous groans when he slides inside me. No condom, but we haven’t been using them since the new semester started. We both got tested before the break, and I was already on the pill.
I welcome his thick, pulsing cock into my body, arching my hips to meet his desperate thrusts. The orgasm that sweeps through me stuns me with its force. I didn’t think it was possible to feel this kind of pleasure, raw, all-consuming, when I’m so overcome with sadness.
Dean makes a deep, tortured noise as he comes, trembling violently as he pulses and spills inside me. His breathing low and shallow, he collapses on top of me, then shifts us over so my sweaty back is plastered to his sweaty chest. I feel moisture on the back of my neck. Not perspiration, but tears. All the tears he would’ve been trying to hold in if he’d gone to Beau’s memorial.
I roll toward him, wrapping my arms around his broad shoulders as he cries for the friend he lost. I don’t know how long we stay in that position, but eventually Dean goes still and falls asleep with his cheek pressed up against mine. For the first time in seven days, I feel a tiny flicker of hope. Hope that the emotional release he’d just experienced will ease some of his grief, lead him closer to the road of acceptance.
The worst thing about hope, though?
More often than not, it leads to disappointment.
31
Allie
Over the next two weeks, all I can do is stand idly by and watch Dean spiral. He has a new routine. He wakes up in the morning. He goes to class. He goes to practice. Then he comes home and drinks or smokes himself into a stupor.
Amazingly enough, he still finishes his course readings and turns in assignments. When I sneak a peek at one of the papers he’s written, I discover that it’s good. It’s like he handed the reins over to the intelligent brain he doesn’t like people knowing about, and is now operating on autopilot. He’s doing it on the ice, too. Just letting his strong, athletic body and his years of training take over and do the job for him. His heart—hell, his consciousness, I’m starting to think—doesn’t play a role.
Neither does his libido. That’s gone, too. Well, no, not quite. It rears up at a certain threshold of his fucked-up-ness, somewhere between buzzed and unconscious. But I turn him down every time, because the guy who’s flashing me those cocky grins? Who’s whispering dirty things in my ear and whose skillful hands are attempting to work under my shirt or into my pants? It’s not my boyfriend.
My boyfriend doesn’t want to fuck me only when he’s drunk, and my boyfriend’s carefree grins aren’t drug or alcohol induced.
Dean Di Laurentis fucks because he loves to fuck, and he smiles because he goddamn loves to smile.
This drunk, stoned Dean is an interloper. He doesn’t even care when I tell him I’m not in the mood, because he isn’t in the mood either—the substances surging through his blood are just making his body think he is.
He’s grieving. I repeat these words to myself a hundred times a day. I remind myself that Beau Maxwell is dead, and that Dean misses him desperately. I chide myself for getting angry over the fact that he’s handling Beau’s death in a different way than I would.
But…damn it, I don’t know how to handle the way he’s handling it. What am I supposed to do, take him to rehab? He’s not an alcoholic. He’s not a drug addict. And the worst part is, the booze and weed have no effect on his academic or hockey life. He just rolls out of bed in the morning and skates like a champion or aces a test.
There’s one thing missing from his routine, however—the Hurricanes. After the news of Beau’s death broke out, time kind of stood still for a week. Dean and Logan were excused from hockey practice because they were close with Beau, and Dean bailed on the middle school practices too. I thought it was a temporary hiatus. Grief leave, if you will. But now three weeks have passed and Dean still refuses to go back. I urged him to reconsider, but all that got me was an emphatic no. He flat out said he doesn’t want to work with the kids anymore.
I suspect it’s because working with them brings him joy. And right now, he doesn’t want to feel joy. He doesn’t want to feel anything.
Me, I’m feeling plenty of things. Sorrow. Frustration. Anger, which then leads to guilt, because he lost his best friend, for fuck’s sake. I’m not allowed to be angry with him.
Today, I’m feeling determined. I’ve decided that Dean can’t wallow in grief forever. At some point, he’ll fi
nd a way to pull out of this tailspin he’s caught in, and when that happens, I don’t want him looking around and discovering that he lost something important to him.
The Hurricanes are important to him.
I park Dean’s car in front of the arena and kill the engine. He was already on his fourth beer when I left the house, where I’ve been staying ever since Beau died. I told him I needed to borrow his car so I could buy tampons. Life hack: if you don’t want someone asking you questions, say the word tampon¸ and the conversation ends.
I enter the small building and walk down the hall, past the vending machines and toward the double doors leading to the rink. A chill hits my face as I push through the doors. On the ice, the boys are in the middle of a fast-paced drill that involves skating super fast and then stopping super hard. I don’t really get it, but sure.
Turning my head, I catch sight of a lone figure in the bleachers. Dakota. Her face lights up when she spots me. I wave at her, then hold up one finger to indicate I’ll be a minute.
I approach the low wall near the home team bench just as Doug Ellis skates up. “Allie. Hi.” He peers at the entrance. “Dean with you?”
I shake my head, and he looks disappointed. So do the boys, who clearly recognize me from the handful of times I met Dean here so we could go for dinner. I think they associate my face with the assistant coach they’d idolized.
Ellis tells the kids they have five minutes of free skate, then turns to me and listens without comment as I apologize for Dean’s absence and assure him that Dean will be coming back soon. “He’s going through a rough patch right now,” I say quietly.
Ellis nods. “He told me about his buddy. It was all over the local papers too. The football quarterback, huh?”
I nod back. “Beau Maxwell. He…” I picture Beau’s sparkling blue eyes and rogue grin, and my heart clenches. “He was a really great guy.” I swallow a lump of sadness. “He and Dean were close, and…yeah…it’s been hard. But Dean wanted me to tell you he’ll be back to work with the kids very soon.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ellis says.
I avoid his shrewd gaze.
“He didn’t send you here to talk to me, honey. And he didn’t say he was coming back.” Ellis shrugs. “But you want him to.”
My throat closes up. “Yes, I want him to.” I gulp again. “I wanted to make sure you’ll still have him if—when the time comes.”
“Of course I will.” He nods toward the ice. “Question is, will they? Kids don’t take well to being abandoned.”
“But they’re also quicker to forgive,” I point out.
Although maybe not all of them. When I join Dakota on the bleachers a few minutes later, it’s evident that forgiveness is the last thing on her mind.
“Dean doesn’t like me anymore,” she tells me in a flat voice. “And I don’t like him.”
I stifle a sigh. “That’s not true, sweetie. You both like each other just fine.”
“We do not. If he likes me, then why isn’t he teaching me skating anymore? And he doesn’t help Robbie anymore too! He hasn’t been here in years.”
Three weeks. But I guess to a ten-year-old that might feel like an eternity.
“Is he mad because I didn’t want to wear the boy skates?” Her bottom lip quivers. “My mom said it was rude for me to make him buy me girl skates. Is that why he hates me? Because he paid money for girl skates?”
And then she starts to cry.
Oh God. I don’t know what to do in this situation. I’m not related to her and I’m not one of her teachers—am I allowed to hug her? Will I get in trouble if I do?
Fuck it. I don’t care if it’s inappropriate. Dakota is bawling in earnest now, and she needs comfort.
I wrap one arm around her and hug her tightly. And then, as my heart throbs uncontrollably, I spend the next twenty minutes reassuring a sad little girl that my boyfriend doesn’t hate her.
*
My father’s gruff voice plays on a loop in my head during the drive back to Dean’s house.
I know men like him. They aren’t equipped to handle the big stuff. The life-changing setbacks. The game-changers.
He’d fall apart like a cheap tent.
I’m terrified that my dad is right. But he can’t be. Dean is just in pain. He’s mourning the loss of a friend.
He lives a perfect life.
He pays other people to clean up his messes.
A chill flies up my spine as something occurs to me. Fuck. Is that what I’m doing right now? Cleaning up Dean’s mess by trying to ensure that his position at the middle school is secure? By begging a ten-year-old to forgive him for deserting her?
God, I’m so tired. These past three weeks, I’ve been focused solely on Dean. Trying to make him feel better, trying to get him through this. I’m slacking on my schoolwork. I show up to rehearsals bleary-eyed and exhausted because I spend all my time tending to my drunken boyfriend. Dress rehearsals start tomorrow, damn it. Opening night is in five days. I should be concentrating on the performance, but I can barely remember what this goddamn play is about.
My frustration only intensifies when I walk through the door fifteen minutes later and am greeted by a blast of deafening music—Nirvana’s “Drain You” is blaring through the house. Wonderful.
I find Dean on the living room couch, holding a beer bottle in one hand and air-drumming with the other. He’s shirtless, but not even the sight of his spectacular chest can soothe my jagged nerves.
“Dean!” I shout over the music.
He pays me no attention.
I grab the remote from the coffee table and stop the music. Silence falls over the room, and his blond head jerks over in surprise. “Hey, babe. I didn’t see you there.”
“Hey.”
I sit on the edge of the couch and gently pry the bottle out of his hand. To my surprise, he doesn’t protest. And I think he’s more buzzed than drunk right now, because he doesn’t slur his words when he says, “You got rehearsal tonight?”
I shake my head. “No, but dress rehearsals start tomorrow.”
“Shit. Already?”
“Opening night is on Friday,” I remind him.
“Oh. Right.”
He acts as if he’d known that, but I’m pretty sure my play hasn’t crossed his mind in weeks. He hasn’t shown any interest in what I’m doing. In what anyone is doing. It’s like he’s frozen in place, stuck in that harrowing moment when he found out Beau was dead.
Everyone else is continuing to live their lives. Including Beau’s family. Joanna is still performing on Broadway. We’ve been emailing since the memorial, and she told me both her parents went back to work last week.
Dean is the only one refusing to move forward.
“Baby…” My throat squeezes, worry and fear forming a knot in my windpipe. “You’ll be there on opening night, right?”
His green eyes flare. “Why would you even ask me that?”
Because you weren’t there for Beau’s memorial.
I bite back the accusation and draw a deep breath. “I’m just making sure, that’s all.”
“Of course I’ll be there.” For the first time in weeks, I glimpse genuine emotion in his eyes. Honest-to-god warmth. “Where else would I be?”
*
He’s not here.
Widow opens to a packed auditorium and closes to a standing ovation. The tears swimming in my eyes when Mallory and I take our bows have nothing to do with the overwhelming response we received from the audience.
The spotlight makes it difficult to see a single face beyond the first three rows, but the second row is all I need to see, because that’s where my friends are sitting. Well, standing, because they’re on their feet applauding along with everyone else.
Hannah. Garrett. Megan. Stella. Justin. Grace. Logan.
Hysterical laughter threatens to spill out as I scan the familiar faces and experience a Wizard of Oz moment. And you were there and you were there and you were there—and you know
who wasn’t fucking there? The man I love. The man who promised he’d be here.
Backstage, I dutifully accept hugs and accolades from everyone who was involved in the production. Steven. The student producers. Our faculty advisor. The art students who created the sets. The lighting crew. The senior who played my dead husband lifts me off my feet and spins me around. Mallory hugs me tight enough to steal the breath from my lungs, then spends five minutes apologizing profusely for being such a flake at the beginning of the project.
I barely hear a word she says. Tears stain my cheeks, but I think everyone assumes they’re happy tears.
Everyone assumes wrong.
There’s an after party for the cast, crew and friends at Steven’s off-campus apartment tonight, and I assure my director that I’ll be there. But I won’t. At least not right away. I have somewhere else I need to be first, and when Hannah texts to find out if we’re meeting outside the auditorium or in the parking lot, I’m already behind the wheel of Dean’s BMW, my shaky foot pressing down on the gas pedal.
When I pull up in front of the house, I’m startled by the amount of vehicles parked on the street. And there are four unfamiliar cars in the driveway, so I’m forced to park on the curb.
I hear the music before I even reach the front door, which is unlocked. Anger floods my stomach, bubbling and simmering and reaching a boil when I enter the living room.
It’s full of monsters—man monsters, with a few petite women in the mix. Because of their sheer size, I determine that the guys lounging on the couch and armchairs and leaning against the wall must be football players. The girls, who knows. But I’m gratified to see they’re draped over the football dudes and not my boyfriend. Dean is alone, sprawled in an armchair with his eyes closed.
As if he senses my presence, his eyelids pop open, and his face lights up when he spots me in the doorway. His happiness is short-lived, though. I’m still in the gingham housedress that my character wore tonight. I’ve still got my stage makeup on. My hair is still pulled back in a harried, messy bun. I’m not Allie right now. I’m Jeannette. And Dean’s eyes widen in panic when he realizes what that signifies.
