The Edge of Us

by Veronica Larsen

  I run a hand over the back of my neck. The majority of the pieces here weren't meant for anyone's eyes but my own.

  "I assume you're here because of Camille," I say.

  She stares at me, eyebrows furrowing.

  "Why would I be here about Camille? Did something happen to her?"

  "No. You said Grant sent you—"

  She blinks a few times, confused, then hesitates.

  "I went to see Tobias before work today. And I talked to Grant, too. Obviously. I know what happened the day of the wedding."

  The meaning of her words presses on me from every direction. A familiar gnawing of shame grows within me. It comes from the shadows where I banished it. What I need to focus on is the guilt. Guilt is my friend. Guilt gives me a problem I can solve. Shame does nothing but make me hate myself, and hating myself is always the beginning of the spiral downward.

  My mouth opens then closes again. She stares at me, waiting. How long have I waited to tell her everything? Now here she is and the words lodge in my throat. It's not that the words are hard, there are only two I need to say. But the scary part is what happens after.

  "I'm sorry," I say, "I'm sorry for everything I did that day. But mostly, I'm sorry for everything I didn't do every day since."

  She gives me a small, tight nod, her face serious.

  Mila's small but has always had a presence to her. Even now, standing in this vast room, surrounded by canvases up to three times her size, she manages to be the biggest force in the room. Everything radiates out from her, everything begins and ends where she stands.

  "I don't know how to feel." She sighs, crossing her arms. "I thought those words would make it better, but they don't."

  "I know they don't, I just needed to say them."

  She takes a breath and begins to speak, calm and collected, but cold and detached.

  "Hating you is easy, Cole. I did it for years. But now? Hating you makes me hollow. So now I have nothing. No hate, no peace. Just…emptiness. And I don't know what to do with that."

  We stand closer than the night of the gala, but still so far apart. The distance is worse than not seeing her at all. Because she's right here and yet, by the look in her eye, it's a gap I can't breach.

  She might as well be a million miles away.

  My chest rises with a deep breath. I'm unprepared for this. For this moment. I wanted to know what to say. But words have always been my enemy. They fumble from my mouth, or get stuck rattling around in my brain. Only a brush brings them out, only props give them sound.

  "I'm sorry," I say again.

  "Yeah, I know you are." She scans our surroundings again. "The exhibit, it wasn't about me, was it? It was about you."

  "It was about addiction."

  She nods, as though she'd already guessed as much.

  "It was about everything I went through to get back here."

  I point to the ground at my feet, but then regret it because I fear she's going to misunderstand what I mean. And she does.

  "But this isn't your first time back, is it?"

  "No. But this is the first time I had something to say."

  "The exhibit."

  "Yes. I spent three years on it. At first, I didn't know what I was doing with it. It seemed to be just a means to an end. The end being a distraction. But it took shape, became a story. And when I designed the last room, I was covered in paint and you were up on the wall."

  She shakes her head. "You mean the first room."

  "No. That was where I ended. But I knew it was where the exhibit would begin. I'd walked backwards through everything without even realizing it and ended with you. It always went back to you. I knew you were the only person I wanted to show it to."

  "I'll be honest," she says. "I hated it."

  I almost laugh, despite the somber mood between us.

  "No, I get it."

  She watches me with curiosity.

  "You said there's another room."

  "There is. It was the first room I finished. But it's where all the pieces fall together."

  "The first room is the last room you did, but where the exhibit begins. And the last room is the first room you did, but where the exhibit ends?"

  "I know. It's…"

  Her eyes move from me to the canvas behind me, the one at the center of the room. The painting I'd been working on when she walked in.

  "What's that?" she asks.

  "What does it look like?"

  She stares at the incomplete work, and I doubt she'll be able to make out what I was trying to do. But when her eyes connect with mine again, the ground shifts beneath my feet. There's a flash of something there, just like there was the night of the gala and the day I glimpsed her tattoos at lunch.

  She hesitates before answering.

  "It looks like me."

  THIRTY-THREE

  MILA

  COLE SEEMS MORE SHOCKED than I am at what I said. I'm not sure why I think the painting is of me. There's no face, no definitive figure or even the vague impressions of a person. No, it's all colors and curves and texture. It's nothing, really. Nothing that I could make out for certain. And yet, it's me.

  I can't explain it.

  I take a few steps toward the canvas but pause to look at Cole. He reads my thoughts, somehow, and nods.

  "You can touch it."

  "Is that paint wet?" I ask.

  "Doesn't matter, Mila. Go ahead. Touch it."

  I do. I step right up to it and press my fingers to the thick coat of purple paint. My fingers come away stained, but the painting appears untouched. Because the brushstrokes are chaotic, the colors a stunning and mesmerizing swirl of emotions. How could this have come from the inside of his head, when this painting looks the way I felt when I saw him the night of the gala.

  Cole steps up behind me. I sense him before he speaks. The hairs on my arms prickle awake at his proximity.

  "How did you know it was you?" he asks.

  "I don't know. It just…it's like a feeling painted on a canvas. I just don't know how that's possible."

  "I don't, either," he says, his voice so close I'm sure our faces would be inches apart if I turned around.

  But I'm scared to. I'm scared to feel. And this painting, it's a cruel reality of everything inside of me. Worse, still, is the fact Cole would know. Does he know me so well?

  He goes quiet, and I'm scared to check if he's gotten closer because I'm not sure how I'd feel about that. He's barely said anything, hasn't laid a single finger on me. And yet it's already like he's got his thumb and forefinger at my seams, ready to unravel me. I need strength to gather myself. I'm not me around him, I'm something else.

  Something more.

  "I should go," I say, even though I don't move.

  "You don't have to go. Have you had dinner?"

  I hesitate.

  "I'm guessing you haven't," he says. "I remember when you'd get too busy and forget to eat. There's a small place, just a few blocks over. We can talk."

  For the first time, I'm glad he's standing behind me so he can't see the way I shut my eyes.

  Decisions.

  Deciding is always the hardest part. The wrong choice could ruin everything.

  I turn to look at him and even though I just saw him seconds ago, the sight of his face is once again a punch in the gut.

  That will never change.

  "Okay," I hear myself say. "Let's talk."

  It's hard to retrain yourself from the thoughts you spent years solidifying. My heart won't dislodge itself from the base of my throat. My pulse refuses to ease at my ears.

  It's hard to look at Cole. It's hard to have him look at me.

  It's harder to look away.

  We sit across from each other, food between us, and the weight of eight years overhead. I can't relax my body, every part of me tense as I lift a forkful of pasta to my lips. I chew, trying to taste it, but it's just rubber in my mouth.

  There's so much I want to say, but I don't want this t
o escalate into a fight. It could, without a doubt. He could trigger my anger in a flash and I could unload years of pent up frustration in the middle of a restaurant for all of the people around us to witness. Not that there are many people around, anyway.

  "This is awkward, isn't it?" he asks.

  I swallow and nod.

  He lowers his gaze, but I continue to stare at him. Even when I hated him and hated thinking of him, I realize now there was a part of me keeping him fresh in my mind for a reason. I've missed his face. There was a time it brought me comfort, there was a time it felt like home. It does strange things to me now. It makes me want to reach out to see if he's real. Because this? Us sitting across from each other like the past eight years didn't happen is like a nightmare disguised as a dream.

  "Why do you stay with Grant? I saw a bed in your studio," I say.

  "I only use that when I can't make it back. But I'd rather not sleep in the studio."

  "Why?"

  I'm not sure why it's important to me, but somehow it is. Somehow every explanation, every word, is significant after so long of being in the dark.

  "Because the studio is the inside of my head."

  "Where you paint the inside of mine," I add.

  I glance away just as he looks up. But the intensity of his stare spreads like a warmth across my face. I am untethered. I don't know how to be around him if I'm not being angry at him. But I'm done being angry. That anger kept me bitter and it kept me trapped. I'm ready to understand. I'm ready to move away from him, from us, from what we were and what he did.

  "It's what I saw in your eyes," he says, quietly.

  "You saw all that? In my eyes?"

  He tilts his head at my incredulous tone, the smallest hint of a smile forming on his face. I almost glance away because it's too much for me, but I don't. I hold steady, more to prove to myself that I can.

  "You've always been easy to read, Mila."

  The way he says my name is no different from how he says any other word, but it still hits me from a new angle. I don't know how, it's the same intangible gut feeling I got from the painting at his studio. It's like remembering something you didn't know you'd forgotten.

  He makes my head spin without even trying.

  I stare down at my plate again, willing myself to stop overthinking things.

  "I've always heard the opposite."

  "That's shocking to me. You're literally the only person I've ever met who was an open book." Cole lifts his water to his lips, but before taking a sip, he adds, "Back then."

  And the words catch my interest.

  "Back then?"

  "Well, yeah," he says, setting his glass down. "It's harder now. Not impossible, but you're muddled by all the things I don't know about you anymore."

  Intrigue flickers in his eyes as he rubs a hand over his chin. For some reason, the phantom smell of his aftershave comes over me even though he's clearly unshaven.

  "Oh?" I drink from my glass, trying and failing to control my reactions to him.

  "Yeah, like that tattoo on your arm."

  My eyes almost widen, but I catch myself in time.

  "Will you show it to me?" he asks.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't need a reason," I say. "I just don't want to."

  "Okay. Fair enough."

  He shifts, seeming to regret his question. But I'm relieved he dropped the subject so easily.

  "And you know what? I think I should be the one asking the questions here."

  "I can't argue with that. Ask away."

  He sets down his fork and sits back, watching me. I look down at his chest, just for a break from his eyes. But it turns out to be a mistake, because the shirt he's wearing? It's one I gave him when we first started dating. Seeing it stings. I had to wipe my life clean of every bit of him just to survive. Had he been able to live amongst memories of me without issue?

  The question that has plagued me since the day he left comes rushing from my lips so fast, it's like my heart vetoed my mind.

  "Where have you been, Cole?"

  I hate the sound of my voice when I ask it. I hate the traces of desperation, and the specks of hope that somehow he could erase all the pain he's dealt me.

  "Do you want the truth?"

  "Of course I want the truth. Why else would I ask?"

  He shakes his head, the corner of his lips twitching down. "People say they want the truth, but then they don't like the way it sounds. Or the way it makes them feel."

  "Where have you been?" I ask again, this time there's no desperation, only resolve. I'm going to get my answers even if I have to pry them out of him.

  He looks down then shakes his head, mouth opening then closing.

  "I wish I could say I was out there, living my life. But I wasn't. I was out there, wasting it. I couldn't stay sober after I left you, Mila. I tried so hard, but it all kept coming down to one simple fact. I fell back into it even when I had everything to lose, and when I had nothing to lose? There was no reason not to use, no real purpose to anything."

  He's right. I hate the truth—the way it sounds, the way it makes me feel. It hurts so bad to know everything I went through was pointless. To know he drifted around for years, aimlessly, while I tried to forget him. I mourned him like he'd died. Except, unlike with my mother, I found no solace in memories of him. Every day when I woke up, I had to pry him from around my heart before I could get out of bed. All that torture, for what?

  I stare at my hand, which rests on the table beside my fork. I want to pick it up and go on eating, just to do something with the silence, but I don't.

  He lays a hand over mine, and I let him.

  His touch is tentative, but all my attention draws toward it.

  I keep my eyes cast downward.

  "That's where I was," he says. "I was nowhere. I was in and out of rehab. I was arrested. I was in purgatory, and I felt like I deserved to be there so that's where I stayed. I gave up on myself, I gave up on us. I was trying to forget you because I thought you'd already forgotten me. I'm sorry, Mila. I know that's not what you wanted to hear."

  I swallow. "A part of me wished you'd started a new life and were happy. That you forgot me the moment you left. I don't know. It would make it easier to hate you."

  "Why do you want it to be easier to hate me?"

  "Because, Cole, it's so fucking hard to love you."

  I look up just after I say it and his expression falls a fraction. To what? I don't know.

  I can barely think.

  He sits back again, removing his hand from mine. Cold air sweeps over my skin and I miss his touch, but I'd never admit it.

  Cole stares past me.

  "Three years ago," he says, "I met this guy who did these insane underground art shows in Chicago. The kind that just fucks with your mind and makes you feel the kinds of things I got high to avoid. But I realized I wanted that. I went so long numbing everything and suddenly, I just couldn't take the emptiness anymore. I craved to feel, I craved to hurt." He shakes his head, as though understanding how strange the statement sounds. "I started creating art. And I started feeling again. I started wanting to make other people feel, too. The very thing I avoided became my outlet. And I realized what I'd been doing wrong. Even when I was sober, every day was like a countdown to my relapse. Because I knew, I knew I wasn't strong enough. But I just couldn't figure out how to be stronger. I thought being with you could make the cravings go away. I wanted so badly for you to be my cure. The way I felt with you…" He pauses, looking at me, then he frowns and glances away again. "I never felt like that before, about anyone or anything. You made me want to be better. So damn much, I thought it was all I needed. I didn't go to meetings, I didn't get help. I just avoided temptation by wrapping myself up in you. But in the end that wasn't enough. If I'd gone to meetings, if I'd had a sponsor, I would've known one of the biggest paradoxes of addiction. An addict is just as vulnerable at the highest points of his life as he is at the low
est. That day, I'd felt like nothing could touch me. Everything I'd been pushing back, all the bullshit that drove me to drugs in the first place, was exactly what got me caught up in Tobias's web."

  "The spiderweb," I whisper.

  He nods. "In a way, I can't blame him. I'd set myself up for failure thinking I could make it all go away with just happy thoughts and by putting my attention on you. I was wrong."

  "He was wrong, too," I say. "What he did…it wasn't right."

  "It wasn't. But, neither was what I did. Two wrongs, but does it matter? We hurt the one person we both wanted to protect."

  THIRTY-FOUR

  COLE

  THE TRUTH IS SUPPOSED to set you free, yet mine has become a cage I sit behind, waiting for Mila to process it all.

  Maybe it was for the best I was unprepared. I never could have told her the things I did, in the way I did, had she not caught me off guard. Had I planned this, I would've resorted to communicating through my art, the way I always do. And that didn't go over well the first time around.

  Somehow, having her in front of me, intent to hear my explanation, propelled it out of me. I don't live under any delusion my words can fix what happened between us. But I can see the shift in her eyes in the way she'd been viewing the situation. The way she's looking at me now is different from the day I tried to talk to her at the coffee shop. She didn't want to hear my voice then. She wanted me gone. But now, she looks as if she could listen to me talk all day, even if my words twist away behind her eyes. They aren't easy to hear, even for myself.

  "You're different," she says. "You're more…I don't know. Emotionally mature."

  "You're different. You're more guarded. You used to wear your heart on your sleeve."

  "Yeah, and look where that got me."

  "Do you see it?" I ask. "Tell me you see it?"

  She tilts her head, staring at me.

  I motion between us. "We've become so much like each other."

  I glance down at her inked arm, just visible under the sleeve of her blouse. Her tattoo is a sentence written in a messy script. The way the words are slanted, it makes it difficult to read from where I'm sitting.