Crazy Madly Deeply

by Lily White

  “No, it’s fine. Of course, it’s fine. I’m just surprised is all.”

  “Surprised?”

  His smile stretched wider, two dimples at the corners of his lips indenting in. “I had no idea you could cook. I thought you probably had fancy chefs and all that, or ate out. I don’t know,” his voice quieted, “just whatever the people on your side of town do to eat or whatever.”

  Laughter burst from my mouth. “Well, we have a cook, so you’re not all wrong, but I like Penny. She’s worked for us since I was little and she taught me a few things.”

  He didn’t move or answer, just stared at me with eyes that saw too much.

  “I should probably go pull it from the oven before it burns.”

  Holden nodded, stepped aside, his eyes tracking me as I moved past him to leave the room. A tendril of his cologne reached out to wrap around me as I snuck past, the scent drawing me so much that I had to fight the instinct to turn and move closer to its source. Thankfully, my stomach was helpful in pushing me along, a grumble sounding as soon as the scent of food collided against me, the room warm and filled to every corner with the promise of a meal.

  Behind me, heavy footfalls were a slow beat, Holden’s long-legged stride eating the distance with fewer steps than it had taken me.

  Grabbing the potholders, I pulled dinner from the oven, a tuna casserole that I’d gotten creative to prepare. Holden’s house didn’t have all the ingredients I’d needed, but he did have enough to improvise. Crushing a bag of potato chips, I added the topping and found two plates to dish out the food.

  I almost dropped them when I spun to find Holden standing right behind me, a dark shadow that took up way too much space. His hands locked to my shoulders to steady me. “Sorry,” he said, his apology spoken softly.

  Nervous laughter rattled through me. “No need to apologize, I just don’t understand how you sneak around so quietly with as big as you are.”

  “Lots of practice, I guess.”

  “Practice to be a ninja?”

  He smiled again and I damn near melted right there at his feet.

  “Something like that. I’ll carry those to the table.” His fingers brushed mine when he took the plates from my hands, his large body moving away, stealing the heat that I hadn’t noticed when he stood close. Now that it was absent, I shivered against the cold that crept in, the increasing distance between us making me feel lonely somehow.

  Setting the plates on the table, he didn’t take a seat. He simply turned to look at me. “Aren’t you eating with me?”

  Startled out of my daze by the question, I grinned and padded over on bare feet. We took our seats and ate quietly, Holden’s empty plate scraping against the table when he pushed it away. “That was awesome. Thank you. Normally, I just eat cereal or whatever is easy when I get home after a double.”

  “Delilah doesn’t cook?” I asked, glancing up to see a stricken look on his face.

  Shaking his head, he explained, “Deli suffered a head injury in the accident that killed my folks. I’ve tried to get her to seek treatment beyond what they did for her at the hospital, but until yesterday, she refused to leave the house. Maybe now, she’ll go, as long as my issues don’t-“

  His expression was pained, his voice drifting off for a few seconds before his eyes met mine again. “Anyway, she blanks out, just pauses like someone turned off a switch. Sometimes for a second or two, and other times for several minutes. I don’t feel safe with her cooking when I’m not home. I usually prepare meals she can pop in the microwave on days I’m working long hours.”

  My guilt was suffocating, a heavy, toxic cloud that wrapped over me, stealing every last bit of clean air and good feelings. Even though I wasn’t directly responsible for the tragedies his family suffered, my part was indirect - a silent mouth, a person watching as a bright soul was dragged down and shredded by the jackals of Tranquil Falls. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For never speaking up. For never defending you against the kids that called you-“

  “Crazy?” he interrupted, stealing the word from the tip of my tongue. “A freak?”

  Shame choked me so thoroughly that my next words were a whisper. “I never called you that. Not once.”

  He should have been angry, should have raged to have been treated so badly by people who attacked when he’d never done anything to deserve it. Instead, he laughed. “I wore those titles like a badge, Michaela. It meant I wasn’t like the rest of you. Don’t feel bad about it.”

  Peering at him from beneath my lashes, I shook my head. “Of course I feel bad. Those kids targeted you. Jack and Clive targeted you, and for stupid reasons.”

  “They were jealous.”

  Locking my gaze to his, I grinned. “That’s what I think, too. You never bowed down to them. Not like the rest of the school.” Pausing, I remembered more about our years in high school. “Delilah, however, was proud of you. She didn’t have many people to brag to, but she bragged to me about you.”

  Breathing out heavily, he reached to run his hands over his head, tugging the beanie off and dropping it to the floor. Braiding his fingers together, Holden rested his hands on top of his head, his arms folded out at the sides, stretching his shoulders apart, making him look bigger. “Do I even want to know what she bragged about?”

  Swallowing to ease the attraction I had to him, I asked, “Promise not to get mad?”

  His grin was the only answer I needed. But he vocalized the thought, confirming exactly what I already knew. “I could never be mad at Del. Annoyed? Frustrated beyond belief? Yes. But mad? Never.”

  “She bragged about your art...and your music. She recorded you singing once and showed me the video at dance practice.”

  His eyes clenched shut and opened again. “Okay, maybe a little mad.” Groaning, he cursed under his breath. “She’s just as sneaky as me apparently.”

  “You shouldn’t hide your talent, Holden. Those paintings were beautiful. I thought they belonged in a big city gallery somewhere. And your music, it was-“ My voice trailed off, adequate words lost to me. I settled on a description that was far too simple. “It was beautiful. Soulful. I’ve never heard someone play like that before.”

  In that moment, I saw pride in his expression, but like everything I’d noticed in Holden, it was there one second and gone the next. The bubble bursting. The walls coming down again as his thoughts sped off to some unknown place. Sorrow replaced the pride and I wanted to reach out to smooth away the lines of it from his face.

  “I need to grab a shower,” he announced. “I smell like a greasy diner.” Standing, he reached for the plates to take them to the sink. From behind the counter, he said, “I’ll clean since you cooked.”

  “I don’t mind cleaning,” I offered, “it’ll give me something to do.”

  Holden eyed me, his stare locking to some secret part of me that I doubted I’d ever seen. “Suit yourself,” he answered with a shrug of his shoulder before stalking off.

  The loneliness settled over me again, the knowledge that I’d missed years of knowing someone as amazing as Holden all because I was as shallow and fake as the people who’d made it their life’s mission to abuse him.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Holden

  For as much as life is unfair, it’s also sadistic and confusing. We have all these concepts and beliefs, views shared by the majority as part of a collective unconscious, the landscape always changing as to what is shunned and what is accepted by people who dare to step outside the box.

  Not that the box ever existed for me, the walls failing to rise and close me in like they should have done when I was born. I’ve existed so far outside those expectations of normality that encapsulate most people that I’ve never suffered the loss of companionship or similarity because it had never existed in the first place.

  If the world were a crowd of people moving in an endless circle, I was that one outlier you’d see when viewing us from above - the one s
oul shuffling in the opposite direction, always on the outside, always alone.

  I didn’t mind it, not until this moment anyway, when I had to wonder if, for once, I’d been wrong about one of those marching people endlessly circling.

  Stripping off my clothes, I climbed in the shower to blast my body with scalding water, the ice from the walk home melting from my nose, the blood returning to my cheeks as pins and needles. Snow was supposed to fall tonight, heavy and thick, the potential of getting trapped inside, a looming threat. Angela had given me another double tomorrow, per my request, but if I couldn’t get outside, it meant I was trapped with a woman who’d managed to surprise me with many of the things she’d said and done.

  Had I judged her wrongly all these years?

  My head dipped beneath the spray, my eyes watching the falling water as that question echoed inside my head.

  I’ve never been a true genius, never had the ease with math and writing as I did with visual art, but when it came to understanding people, I would have put myself above the rest, would have sworn I couldn’t be wrong about a person because I looked beneath the surface.

  Michaela, however, a woman I’d watched grow from a girl, an open book I’d read for years on end, was proving to be a mystery. I thought I’d seen beneath the facade, but the more she revealed in her behavior now, the more I wondered if there weren’t additional defenses she’d constructed beneath the superficial demeanor, hiding places that no other person had breached. I couldn’t stop staring at her, couldn’t stop trying to pick apart the puzzle and understand what made her tick.

  Not that staring at her was difficult. It had never been. Michaela checked all the right boxes when it came to appearance. Tall and curved in all the right places, dancing had done well to tone Michaela’s physique, her long dark brown hair flowing down her back where the ends brushed her hips.

  I used to watch her walk the halls of Tranquil Falls High, used to memorize the way her hair swayed back and forth as she moved, reaching but not quite touching her heart shaped butt. In dance class, I’d snapped a few mental images of her as well, had sketched them out, but could never get the angles of her face just right, could never catch that something in her eyes that was more akin to pain than happiness. So I simply left the face blank, as empty and shallow as what I’d believed was her true self.

  It’s not unheard of for people to change. Time, age and maturity come into play as we grow, experience coloring the pages of a person’s life - joy, heartache, love and hate a liberally sprinkled glitter to highlight the moments that matter the most, sticking to our skin, scratching us when we least expect it because you can never get all of it off.

  Had she changed so much in the past two years, or had this always been who she was beneath the practiced smiles, the complacent behavior, the desperation to fit in?

  I didn’t know. I wasn’t even sure I’d find out. Time was being snatched away like sand caught in the wind, the minutes scattered until nothing remained but my view of the prison cell as I was being walked to it.

  Turning off the water, I stood dripping, my skin pink, my forehead pressed to the tile wall. There were moments when I forgot my present circumstances, tiny slivers of time where the crimes I’d committed weren’t crushing down on my chest making it impossible to breathe. Oddly, those moments occurred the most when Michaela was around.

  That thought bothered me.

  Climbing out of the shower, I dried off and got dressed, my head so clogged with chaos that I needed a release before bed. I hadn’t even noticed while selecting my clothes that I’d grabbed my old pair of tattered jeans, the legs spattered with paint in all colors. My t-shirt was a plain white, but I would take it off before working. It was easier to wash the paint from my skin than to wash it from my clothes.

  Michaela was sitting on the couch when I stepped out, her eyes darting to me as soon as I entered the living room. I’d never seen her look so lonely. The need to comfort her was a pulsing warmth inside me, but I shoved it away, scrubbing my palm over my neck before glancing down the hallway to my studio. Awkward silence lingered between us, her full lips parting to say something when I blurted out my words instead.

  “I’m going to go work on some stuff for a little while. Will you be okay by yourself out here?”

  Her mouth hung open for a few seconds, her eyes widening then narrowing again, disappointment apparent in the lines of her face. “Yeah, I should be fine.”

  “Awesome. I’m just going to go.”

  Disappearing from view as quickly as possible, I didn’t slow down until I was tucked behind the closed door of the studio, my back pressed against the wood, my eyes clenched shut because everything inside me when it came to Michaela was becoming a frustrating contradiction. I felt like a jerk for running and leaving her in there alone. It also didn’t escape my notice that I’d literally bolted to get away from her like a scared little boy with a crush.

  What was wrong with me?

  Brushing it off, I crossed the room on two long strides, slipped my favorite CD into the player and relaxed a touch as the music blared through the speakers. This was my place, my sanctuary, the church that I ran to when I needed to pray. Within these walls, there was no need for words, and reality bled away as I transferred the snapshots in my brain to canvas. Tugging off my shirt to avoid dousing it in paint, I grabbed my brushes and absorbed the music, my eyes scanning between the paintings that were incomplete, none of them calling to me or drawing me close.

  A new image had captured my mind, a sleeping woman, her veil slipping away to show me who she was inside. The details of her face becoming clear for the first time since I sketched her years before.

  Fighting against the need to paint it, I dabbed some details onto one of the seven canvases already on their easels, but still I was unsatisfied, unable to enter that space where the art flowed freely, where it wasn’t my thoughts directing my brush, but my soul. After several minutes passed and the urge expanded until it filled me, I removed the last canvas from its easel, grabbed a blank slate, and set it up to begin assigning this new image to the canvas.

  As soon as the first line dragged down the white background, I dropped the brush knowing the angle was wrong, my fingers itching for a sketch pad and pencil where I could rework the memory over and over again until I had it just right.

  Gathering the tools of my beleaguered trade, I dropped down in the center of the studio to sit on the drop cloths and pull the memory from my mind, the quiet scritch scritch of lead over paper lost to the beat of music filling the room. Within minutes, the outline was complete, but the shading was the detail that would bring it to life.

  It was wrong. Something was wrong. I couldn’t quite grasp what I was missing, the snapshot not quite complete in my head. Flipping the page, I attempted it again. Wrong. I flipped another page, drew another line. Shaded. Traced. Wrong. Another page. Another. I couldn’t get it right.

  Lead dust blackened the skin of my hand, my lip caught between my teeth, my focus so acute, my frustration so overwhelming that I almost missed a soft knock at the door.

  Head snapping up toward the sound, I waited for it to come again, wondering if in my trance I’d imagined it.

  The knock came again.

  A breath poured out of me, the need to ignore the knock and keep sketching holding me in place, but the knock came again, only harder.

  Dropping the pad face down onto the ground, I pushed to my feet and stalked to the door, wrenched it open to find Michaela on the other side looking panicked.

  “I didn’t want to bother you but somebody is knocking on your front door.”

  “What?” Eyes wide, I shot a glance over her shoulder as if I could see the door in question, which I couldn’t.

  “Maybe they’ll go away?” I mused.

  Her lips pulled into a tight grin. “That was my thought. I ignored it the first three times, but whoever is out there isn’t going away.”

  This was not good. In fact, this was ve
ry, VERY bad. Racking my brain to remember if the trail through the woods had been disturbed on my walk home, I couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary. If they’d found Jack, that entire area would have been taped off, police cars and a medical examiner’s van blocking the path. There was no possible way whoever stood outside was here to haul me off to jail.

  “What should we do?” Michaela asked.

  Reaching out, I pulled her into the room. “Stay in here. Don’t make a sound. Don’t come out.”

  So concerned with who would be at my house this late at night - in weather that had dropped below freezing, no less - I wasn’t thinking straight when I closed the door behind me locking Michaela inside a room that nobody had seen since I’d converted it.

  Eating the distance between my studio and the front door with a rapid, pace, I waited to hear if the person would knock again. Within seconds, there was a rap of knuckles against the wood. I pulled the door open and froze in place.

  “Hey, I was wondering if we can talk?”

  “Uh...” It was insanely difficult to formulate words at that moment.

  Kaley stood just outside the door, a thick jacket covering her body, the hood pulled over her head. White plumes of hot breath poured over her lips, her brown eyes looking up at me, pleading. Shaking myself of the panicked shock, I pulled the door open and angled my body to give her room to step in.

  “Why are you here, Kaley? Is something wrong?”

  She stepped in and was shivering beneath her jacket, her teeth chattering loudly as I closed the door against the wind racing in with icy fingers. Kaley looked up at me with the same swollen eyes she’d had at the diner. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk to you about...us.”

  Crap...

  ‘Us’ was the last thing I wanted to talk about. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about Kaley - it was that I had a secret that would tear her apart if I didn’t let her down gently now, and unfortunately the time and place for that discussion was not here where I had the ex-girlfriend of the man I killed hanging out, a girl Kaley would recognize because she despised her as much as I used to.