Love Me Broken

by Lily Jenkins

  And so, for a minute, for ten minutes, for an hour—I don’t know—we sit there on the pier, Adam with an arm around my back, and me, leaning over and sobbing uncontrollably.

  Eventually, the heaving sobs start to subside. My eyes are still watering, but I can sniffle and I have enough awareness to remember where I am, who I’m with. I wipe my eyes with my hands and take a deep breath. Then I just focus on breathing for a little bit, listening to the sound of air entering and leaving my lungs, and the sound of the water as the waves break on the shore. I swallow. I open my mouth, wait a moment before saying anything, and then say, “I’m sorry.” My voice is hoarse from crying. But it is stronger now. The worst has passed. I sniffle again and say, “I haven’t cried like that in—I don’t remember.” I laugh a little at how silly I must look. “You must think I’m crazy,” I joke, and look over at Adam.

  He is staring back at me with a look of absolute solemnity. To my relief, he doesn’t look horrified, or scared off, or freaked out by my crying episode. But the mood has shifted. He’s not going to forget this. Something has shifted between us forever.

  He is watching me as I try to salvage my appearance, wiping my cheeks and readjusting my hair. I notice that his hand is no longer on my back. When did he remove it? I find that I miss it a little.

  “Erica,” he says, and waits until I meet his eyes before continuing. “What happened to you?”

  I look away and roll my eyes, trying to downplay everything. “Nothing,” I say. “I’m fine now.”

  He shakes his head. “No, really. Time out from the game. Something’s wrong. Something happened.”

  I make a face and rub my shoulders. They feel so sore all of the sudden. “I don’t really want to talk about it this early,” I say. “We just met.”

  “There is no early,” Adam insists. Then, surprising me, he reaches over and takes my hand in his. He squeezes, and I squeeze back and look up into his wide eyes. “We don’t have a lot of time, remember?” he says. “And I don’t want to pretend that we do, or that I can fix anything. But there’s something—something major—that you’re not telling me. Something that connects things: the way you hate cars, the way you are with your family, even the way you looked at the party tonight when Nicole’s boyfriend wanted to drive after a few drinks. I know she’s your friend, but your face… you looked like you had seen a ghost.”

  My eyes widen a little. He’s closer to the truth than he realizes. I look at the water, considering.

  Part of me wants to end the night. To stop here and never see Adam again. But I know this is only because I don’t want to talk about this.

  But another part, a stronger part, wants to tell Adam. It feels safe here, with just us on the pier. And I know that if I don’t tell him what’s going on, if I don’t explain why I just collapsed into tears just now, it will end us. We might as well never talk again. If I want to keep Adam, I have to tell him.

  He squeezes my hand, and I look up at him. He keeps his eyes on mine, and his expression is welcoming but insistent.

  “Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what happened.”

  She takes a few minutes to begin. At first I start to worry that she’s backing out, but then she takes a big sigh and just starts talking.

  “I used to be normal,” she says. “I had a normal family, a normal life, normal problems. I used to be bored with it, I remember. Now I’d give anything to have it back.”

  She stops talking for a minute, and I say nothing, not wanting to interrupt her. She seems so vulnerable, so broken. I’m still shaken from her crying a few minutes earlier. What the hell happened to this girl? What does she mean she used to be normal?

  When she’s ready, she starts talking again.

  “I had a brother,” she says. “His name was Conner.”

  Had. Was. I feel my stomach drop at the past tense. Her brother is dead.

  All at once the pieces start to fall into place. No wonder her family is all fucked up. No wonder she’s lonely. And I’ll bet two-to-one that it happened in a car. Jesus, I want to hold her, to comfort her. But I sense I have to let her talk. That talking is what she needs right now to be strong.

  She’s looking at the water, and it’s almost like she’s talking to someone else, to herself or the past. She starts to talk about Conner.

  “He was probably the most popular kid in school. Most of the parties and friends I had were just leftovers from him. If he got invited, I usually went along.” I think about Nicole, who didn’t seem like a leftover. This girl is being too hard on herself. But I say nothing and file that away for later.

  “He had graduated already. He was going to go to college. He wanted to be a doctor. To help people.”

  She trails off again, and we listen to the sound of the current. When she talks again, her voice is flat and distant. If someone walked in now, they might think her heartless, talking about this with so little emotion in her voice. But I know it’s the opposite. I’ve seen her cry.

  “Last summer, in June, Conner was at a party on the beach with his friends. They had all had too much to drink, so he… he did the responsible thing and didn’t drive.” She’s quiet a moment. “It was two in the morning, and rainy. I had only been driving a few months then.”

  Oh shit. Oh shit, I see where this is going. Oh fuck this is bad.

  “I made it there okay, and… I remember being angry at him. Because when he got in the car, he was dripping wet and happy about it. I remember, I remember the way his face was so full of life.”

  She pulls her hand out of mine, and rubs her face.

  “The rain was so thick. Everyone says it’s my fault, but that rain—and then the deer. It just appeared in the middle of the road, like a ghost.”

  I put my hand on her back. I can’t not touch her when she’s in so much pain.

  “I swerved. Conner was drunk. He was standing at the time, out the sunroof.”

  She stops talking for so long I think she’s done. Then she adds, “They told me later that he was dead instantly from the shock of the impact. I never saw the body. Not that night, not later, when he was buried. I couldn’t go to the funeral. I guess that makes me a bad sister, or a horrible person, or whatever, but I couldn’t go. I couldn’t… couldn’t move.”

  Her blank face turns toward me, and it’s like she had forgotten I was there. She remembers herself, and I see this struggle on her face, between the facade she’s worked up and the part of her that wants to confess. I just stare at her, not knowing what to say.

  Then, with certainty, she looks me in the eye and says, “I did it. I killed my brother.”

  “Erica,” I object, “you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t mean to.”

  “But I did!” she says, leaning away from my hand, and I regret saying anything. “That’s even what it says on the police report. Everybody knows. That’s why everything is all screwed up. That’s why my parents don’t talk anymore, why I have to go away to college as soon as I can.”

  “That’s why you don’t drive,” I say, and she flinches a little. “That’s why you don’t like cars.”

  Her shoulders are hunched, and her eyes squint as she forces herself to keep talking. I get the sense that she’s made it this far, she might as well go all the way.

  “I can’t hear the sound of cars without thinking of that night,” she says. “The sound of tires. Of engines. I hear them, and I—I feel when I hit that tree. I feel Conner not being there next to me. I’m back in that car, on that night, and it’s all happening again, right now.”

  Her shoulders are shaking, and I put my arm around her again and pull her toward me. We sit like that, her leaning against me, and just listen to the sounds of the night. A single tear goes down her face, like a diamond in the moonlight. I wipe it away, and she closes her eyes and rests her head against my chest gratefully. I wrap both arms around her, and just hold her.

  “Adam,” she says once she’s got control of herself again.

&n
bsp; “Yeah?” I ask.

  “Can we go back to the game now?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Just answer how you’d like things to be. How things should be.” I think for a moment, trying to come up with a question. “You’re at a restaurant, and they serve your favorite dish. What are you eating?”

  “Enchiladas,” she says. “With sour cream and chives. But not from a place around here. From somewhere in the Southwest.” She nuzzles into me. “What did you order?”

  “Steak,” I say. “A filet, served rare. With something simple on the side, like a potato or some biscuits.”

  “I can make biscuits,” she says.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, in an ideal world.”

  We both laugh, and I hold her a little tighter. Her hair smells like watermelon today. I run my hand on the back of her head, relaxing her.

  “You’re not like other people,” she says out of nowhere.

  “How do you mean?” I ask.

  She thinks about it. “I don’t know. You’re just not. You’re… aloof at times. Like you’re watching things from a distance. Yet at the same time, you’re more here than other people. I can’t explain it.” I go on petting the back of her head. She feels really nice against my body. I could hold her all night. “Hmm,” she says, breaking up her thoughts. “Back to the game. In an ideal world, how would people describe you?”

  “Healthy, wealthy, and wise,” I say lightly. “You?”

  She’s quiet a beat. “Happy.” I feel her body tensing, and then she lifts off me and sits apart from me again. She runs a hand through her hair, smoothing it. “Where would you live?”

  “In a small cabin,” I say, “in the middle of nowhere. The woods, by a stream and lost in nature. There’d be animals coming up to the door: deer, squirrels, birds. I’d have built the place myself.”

  “With your hands,” she finishes.

  “Yeah.” I smile. Or try to, anyway. Then I want to change the subject. “Where would you live?”

  “I’d live there too,” she says softly. I look up at her, and she meets my eyes. There’s nothing mocking in her gaze. Her face is still damp with tears, but her strength is back. She’s beautiful.

  “In an ideal world,” I ask, “what are you doing right now?”

  She looks back at me, her eyes filled with longing and sadness. “This,” she says. “You?”

  “This,” I answer, and I lean in and press my lips to hers.

  His warm mouth is on mine, and suddenly the volume of the world is turned on high. The waves seem to be crashing against my ears, filling my hearing with violent white noise. All at once his arms are around me, holding me, and for a moment I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m going to explode, and then—he starts to pull back, but I want more.

  I breathe out through my nose and press my breasts into his chest. His hands are running along my back, tickling up past my bra and to my neck. Both hands go up to my face, cupping it, tilting it up toward his, and I open my mouth ever so slightly, not more than a millimeter, but we’re so close that he feels it and opens his own mouth. His tongue meets mine, and they touch, caressing. I feel almost naked at this intimate contact. He tastes sweet, a mixture of soda and mint, but also something carnal: the taste of him. I open my eyes slightly just to see him, to bring me back to reality, but I can barely make him out in the moonlight. Just a silver edge of his jaw. This feels like a dream. Like a fantasy.

  My hands rise up from my side and start to explore his body. They find their way to his chest, his pecs defined and hard through the soft fabric of his shirt. He feels so solid, so secure. I loop my fingers around the back of his neck. He’s warm, and I continue upward, running my fingers through his hair.

  “Mmmmm,” he moans. The sound is in his chest, but it rumbles into me as well. I moan back, and he pushes his mouth against me harder. It’s like we’ve been starved, like we couldn’t breathe until this moment, and now we rely on each other for every kind of life support. I can barely think. All I can do is feel, and react, and want more and more and more.

  Then, after what is either ten seconds or ten minutes, he pulls back.

  “Don’t stop,” I gasp, and reach for him again. He tries to object at first, I can tell, but he is unable to fight against the force drawing us closer. We are back together as one, arms around each other, feeling the new but natural desire of our bodies wanting to touch. Needing to touch. His hands are in my hair. Holding my face. My hands grip his back, his shoulders. We are rocking back and forth together, pushing each other with the force of our need to kiss.

  Then we take a moment to breathe, holding each other, our foreheads touching. I feel his chest rising and falling against my own. Our arms are wrapped around the other. His eyes—his eyes are wide and practically glowing in the moonlight.

  “Wow,” he whispers.

  He doesn’t need to say anything more. He didn’t even need to say that. I can already feel it.

  There is something between us, something I had felt before but denied in small ways. He was “just” a cute boy. He was “just” here for the summer.

  Now I’d rather spend a summer with this boy than a life with anyone else. I’ve never felt anything this intense. I’ve kissed other boys (or should I say, they’ve kissed me?) but it’s never felt like this. It was nice. I will say that. But this—this is something else entirely. It’s like we’ve just invented a new way to kiss, a way that’s never been done before but will be the benchmark for all kisses forevermore.

  I smile, and he smiles back playfully. It’s like we’re in on the same secret. His hands brush my hair back from my face. His touch feels so good. I didn’t even know what I had been missing. It’s like I wasn’t even aware that I was hungry, and now with the first few bites, I realize I was starved.

  Our shoulders are still heaving with our breath, but the intensity of the moment has abated a little. I turn and look at the waves sparkling in the moonlight, and realize I had completely forgotten when and where we were, I was so lost in the moment of the kiss.

  He follows my gaze and looks out at the night.

  “I wish this moment would last forever,” he says quietly.

  I look back at him and see his face has undergone a change. The fire has gone out of his eyes, and now he’s gazing out toward the distance as if gazing at a bleak eternity.

  “Then let’s make it last,” I say.

  A side of his mouth goes up in a sad smile. “How do we do that?”

  I curl up closer to him, and he puts his arm around me. “By making it count.”

  And this time, I’m the one that starts kissing him.

  It’s not until the sunrise starts to enflame the sky that either of us even thinks about leaving. We spent the night kissing on the pier.

  Just kissing, mind you, although I would have been up for more—and I was up for more, if you know what I’m saying. But I could tell Erica wasn’t ready for that yet. Especially on a pier in public, which is understandable.

  The night was great anyway. We kissed for hours. Erica’s a great kisser. I’m not too bad myself, but—as the saying goes—it takes two to tango. She has this sort of raw intensity that makes everything electric and breathless. It’s like we have to keep kissing or we’ll die.

  But we didn’t kiss the entire night. We talked some more. She told me some stories about Astoria, and I tried to explain motorcycles to her. She understood it all—she’s a smart girl—but I could tell it was starting to put her to sleep, so we talked about the ocean and what it’d be like to sail around the world, and what it’d be like if I had grown up in Astoria too.

  I don’t think one second of the night passed without our hands holding or her leaning against me or our lips or arms or some part of us touching.

  And when we finally stand up in the morning light and dust the sand off our clothes, she still has her hand in mine. Before we head back to Nicole’s house, we take one last look at our pier. It looks so small in the daylight. L
ike all the magic evaporated when we were done with it.

  I squeeze her hand and we walk back along the street in silence. It feels like the end of a vacation, like when you’re going back to the airport and dreading the return to your regular life. I don’t want this to be over. I look over and see her face clouded with dark thoughts as well.

  We didn’t talk about the future. Now I don’t want to bring it up, just in case she says tonight is enough. I need to believe that we still have a tomorrow for as long as I can.

  We cross the street back to Nicole’s. Her house too looks smaller and sadder than the night before. There are still a few cars outside. We make our way back to my motorcycle.

  We stand for a moment. I don’t want to get on. Then I force myself to take the helmet and hand it to her.

  She looks at it as if she doesn’t even know what it is. Then she realizes, and puts it on. Her face is hidden behind a mirrored visor, and it’s a little like she’s left already.

  I walk the bike back to the road and climb on. I feel her climb on behind me. Then her arms find their way around me, holding me, and it feels so good that it takes me a second to remember to start the bike. The ignition roars, and we are off down the small road and back to town.

  The cold air feels too real against my face. It’s like a cold shower, breaking the moment. The ride back feels like seconds, and before I know it I’m putting on the brakes outside her house. We both get off the bike.

  She takes off the helmet and stands before me, looking down. “I had a really good time,” she says quietly. Her hair has amber streaks of light from the morning sun.

  I can’t talk. I want to say so much, I want to scream and hug her and kiss her and hold her, and never let her go. I want to say, Forget your house. Let’s go back to the pier. Let’s go to the sea, for all I care, just as long as we’re together.

  But all I say is, “Yeah.”

  Then her eyes meet mine, and I see the yearning in them. My shyness fades away, and I find the words.