by Tracey Ward
I quickly led Laney upstairs to her bedroom, shooshing her several times as she stumbled and giggled, but Jenna knew we were there. She had to have heard us disarm the alarm system and the door closing behind us, but she stayed out of sight. When we made our way down the hall, I noticed a dim yellow light glowing under her bedroom door.
I hurried Laney past it.
“Stay with me,” Laney muttered as I flopped her down gently onto her bed.
True to her word, Jenna had put a tall glass of water on the nightstand along with a bucket on the floor by the bed. The light was glowing dim from the open closet, casting the room in a soft light perfect for sleeping and midnight emergency vomiting.
“No,” I told her coldly, pulling back to stand up.
She grabbed my arm. “Please.”
“No,” I repeated, pushing her hand off my arm.
“It’s late. You can’t drive back tonight.”
“I’m going to Callum’s to sleep,” I lied.
I didn’t tell her I’d be in the pool house because even as I spoke, she was tugging her pants off down her legs to expose her thin lace underwear and warm, tan skin. Her hands were making quick work of her shirt and I knew that if she found out I was still on the property, she would be at the door naked all night until I let her in. Until I gave in like I always did.
I couldn’t stand the thought of it.
I grabbed a throw blanket off the bench at the end of her bed and tossed it over her nearly naked body. “Sleep it off, Lane.”
“You’re really leaving?” she asked coyly, shoving the blanket off.
I opened the door, stepping into the dark hallway. “I’m already gone.”
She called something after me but I shut the door hard.
When I made my way down the hallway to leave, I passed Jenna’s door slowly, and something deep inside me wrenched so hard it hurt. My stomach fell like a stone into a dark pool at the bottom of a cold well, leaving me chilled to the bone.
The light inside her room had gone out.
***
Laney and I had breakfast the next morning. She was waiting by my motorcycle when I went to leave and she told me she just wanted to talk. Nothing more. No tricks, no manipulation. Just breakfast.
Reluctantly, I agreed.
We took separate vehicles to a coffee shop she liked where she ordered copious amounts of coffee and pancakes. We sat in awkward silence for a long time waiting for our food, both of us staring out the window and occasionally checking our phones. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but every time I found my screen empty, my heart clamored in my chest.
“Thank you for picking me up last night,” Laney eventually told me, putting down her phone after typing a quick text.
“Yeah, no problem.”
She snorted. “Right. You hated doing it.”
“You said you were scared. What was I supposed to do?”
“Did I really?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised. “Why would I be scared? I was with Stacy.”
“You were scared because you knew it would get me there.”
“Now that sounds like me,” she muttered, picking up her phone again as it beeped.
“New boyfriend?”
She narrowed he eyes at me playfully. “Would you care if it was?”
“No.”
“Then why did you ask?”
I turned away to look out the window, choosing not to answer her.
“It’s Jenna,” she eventually said.
My blood jolted through my veins before settling down. “Did you thank her for the water and bucket by your bed?”
“That was her?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Oh. Yeah, I’ll thank her now.” She clicked away absently at her phone. “Do you want me to tell her hi for you?”
I looked at her sharply. “She knows I’m here with you?”
“Yeah, of course. I told her we went to breakfast to talk. So, that’s a yes on saying hi?”
“No. Don’t.”
She frowned, glancing up from her phone. “What’s your deal, weirdo?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Since when do you not want to speak to Jenna?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to speak to her, it’s that I don’t want to speak to her through you.”
“Fine, whatever,” she mumbled, turning back to her phone. “Did you see her while you were here this weekend?”
“What’d you want to talk about, Laney?” I asked her sharply, changing the subject.
Our food arrived before she could answer. She was the one with the hangover, but when I saw her pancakes coated in greasy butter and syrup, and my biscuits soaking in thick gravy, I felt my appetite sit up and die.
When the waitress was gone, Laney looked at me solemnly. “I want to get back together.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry for what I said,” she continued, not surprised or deterred by my reaction. “For calling you the W T word.”
“That’s two words.”
“Are you going to listen to me or bust my balls?”
“Can’t I do both?”
She smiled. “You always did.”
I sighed, sitting forward and shoving my plate away. “Look, Laney, I understand wanting to get back together. We’ve done it over and over and over again until being together is like a habit, but don’t you think it’s time we quit that shit? It’s never going to work.”
“It will if I change.”
“You shouldn’t have to change to be in a relationship with someone.”
“You should if you need to grow up, and I do.” She put her hands on the table near mine. “I picked a major. Interior design. I’m excited about it.”
“That’s good. Good for you.”
“You inspired me. You and Jenna. You both know exactly what you want to do with your lives, so I figured it was time I did too. It feels good to know, you know?”
“Yeah,” I replied softly. “I do.”
Not at that moment, but in general, yeah, I knew. Right then I felt like I didn’t know anything. Not even my own name. That kiss with Jenna had sent me out onto a road I’d never known before. One that I hadn’t seen on the map when I was planning my life out and picking my path. I had deviated to a strange place where nothing was certain and I had no clue where I was going and it was messing me up. I’d gotten almost no sleep last night, my head was beginning to ache, my palms itched fiercely, and my leg was bouncing wildly under the table with pent up energy.
I was legitimately worried I was having a full blown panic attack.
“Kellen, are you okay?” Laney asked gently, her hand falling on mine.
I wanted to shake it off, but I didn’t. “I’m good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I lied easily. “Never better.”
“So what do you think?”
“About what?”
Her face fell a little. “About us getting back together. I’ll do better, Kellen, I promise.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t all you. I have problems that I can’t change.”
“Your distance stuff?”
“To start, yeah.”
“That’s okay,” she said eagerly, squeezing my hand. “I get that. I’m not asking you to be any different.”
“Right,” I muttered, disbelieving.
“When have I made an issue of that?”
I looked up at the ceiling, thinking back. I couldn’t remember a time that she had.
“Kellen,” she said impatiently.
“Hold on, I’m thinking,” I muttered. “You bitched about everything, there had to be a time.”
She pinched my hand hard in the soft tissue between my thumb and index finger.
I jerked my hand back chuckling. “Jesus, that hurts.”
“Man up,” she teased. “And no, you’re wrong. I know I ‘bitched about everything’, but I guarantee you that I never bitched about that. I unde
rstand that. It’s not an issue.”
“How?” I asked, rubbing my hand.
“How what?”
“How is that not a problem for you?”
She cocked her head with a wry grin. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a very emotional person myself.”
“Yeah,” I replied doubtfully.
“Promise me you’ll think about it?” she insisted.
“Okay, yeah,” I answered halfheartedly, my head pounding so hard I squinted against the sunlight. “I’ll think about it.”
***
The next day I thought about calling Jenna. I held my phone in my hand with her picture called up on the screen, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know what to say to her and I worried I’d end up saying what I felt – that I loved her. That I wanted her in every possible way. That I was damaged beyond repair. That I’d give anything to be a better man.
Instead, I put my phone away and I didn’t talk to anyone.
Four days later I still hadn’t grown the guts to call her, I definitely hadn’t trusted myself to go see her, and I was panicking because of it. I didn’t even know if she wanted to speak to me, and that alone – the idea that she was already lost to me – hurt more than anything. I didn’t know how to fix it because I didn’t understand where we were. I wanted to bring us back to where we’d been before I’d messed up and put my hands on her and taken us to the gates of a place we could never enter, but how do you turn back time?
That’s when Laney and I got back together. It was the closest I could come to a time machine. It was the only reset button I could find. She’d been a buffer between Jenna and I for years without me realizing it. And she wanted me back, exactly as I was. She didn’t expect anything from me because she didn’t believe there was anything I had to give. It was insulting, but was it wrong? Was any of this wrong?
I honestly didn’t know anymore. I had a feeling everything was wrong, and that it had been for a really long time. Longer than I realized.
I settled into the knowledge of being back with Laney with a numb acceptance. It didn’t feel exactly right, but it felt better than the foreign horror I’d been hit with going back into the Monroe Mansion after the kiss with Jenna. A feeling I was worried would become the norm if I didn’t do something to fix it, and fast.
Laney drove up with a bottle of champagne to celebrate when I agreed to give us one last try. It tasted bitter, but good. It was the first taste of alcohol I’d had since the beer that sent me to jail four years ago.
It wouldn’t be my last.
***
“You’re back together with her?” Callum asked, sipping his beer and watching the TV behind the bar.
“Yeah,” I replied numbly.
“And you’re obviously thrilled about it.”
“It is what it is.”
He glared at me. “That’s what people say when the cancer is inoperable and they’re facing their last breaths.”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. Well, I called it. Pay up.”
I took a long swallow of whiskey, feeling it burn my throat like fire. “We never bet on it.”
“I could swear we did.”
“Nope. Never.”
“I think you should still pay me. For emotional damages.”
“What damages?”
“The ones I’m going to suffer listening to you bitch about being back together with the lunatic.”
“I’ll buy your beers instead,” I told him, signaling the bartender and emptying my glass.
Callum looked at me with concern. “It’s going to take a lot of beers.”
***
Two weeks later I was at a BBQ watching football with some guys from my Criminal Justice class when I got a text from Jenna. It was the first communication we’d had since the night in the kitchen, and my fingers slipped clumsily over my phone as I opened it.
So a donkey walks into a bar...
I laughed out loud when I read it, then I just stared at it. At her name on my phone, her picture on my screen, the old joke war revived. It was like her own version of a reset button, her olive branch. It was us at our best. It was everything I had hoped to get back and I was so grateful to her for trying to give it to me. To us.
I set down my fourth beer of the afternoon and quickly typed back, And the bartender asks, 'Why the long face?' You’re a dork. Thanks for the smile, Nonpareil.
“What are you smilin’ at, Coulter?” Kris called from the grill. “You’re missing the game.”
“Worth it, man.”
“Who are you talking to? Your girl?”
“Yeah,” I replied, my smile fading. I picked up my beer and brought it to my lips. “Yeah, it’s my girl.”
I got wasted that night. I did it to stop myself from getting on my bike and driving down to see her. To see Jenna. Because that’s what I wanted, whether I was with Laney or not, and all it’d taken was a text. Jenna was in my blood and I’d never get her out. I’d tasted her. I’d held her. I’d known what it was to have her be mine for just a minute, but it was enough. Too much. I’d never be able to look at her without remembering.
I was in deep shit, so I got smashed to contain it.
I was hung over the next morning and the urge was still there, so I got drunk again to make it stop. I kept that cycle for three days until finally I ran out of booze and I didn’t feel like going to the store to get more. Instead I laid on my bed and I waited for the anxiety to creep through the fog and find its way back into my belly.
It never came. All that was left was an empty numbness. A cold in my skin that crept into my muscles until my bed felt hard as a rock under my back.
Laney found me that way the next morning when she came to visit. I had a temperature of a hundred and two but my body was covered in a cold sweat and I was shivering violently. She made me soup to eat because I couldn’t swallow anything solid and she put she in a lukewarm bath until my temperature started to drop and the shivering subsided. Then she sat on the bed next to me for two days straight watching TV. Barely any talking, but no touching either. All she did was stay with me. It was a side of her I’d never seen before. A side of us I’d never known could exist.
Neither of us were in love, not the way people were in books and movies or the way Karen and Dan were, but you couldn’t be with someone as long as we’d been together and not feel some sort of affection for them. What I had to give her was enough for her, and what she gave me… it wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I deserved. It was the best I could hope for.
And in my fever induced haze, I thought that made for a perfect solution.
Chapter Nineteen
I was a dumb, fucking idiot.
“Congratulations, Kellen.”
“Thank you.”
A conductor on a train heading for a blown out bridge.
And I had thrown coal on the fire.
“You make a beautiful couple.”
“Yes.”
A Ken doll with a perfect face, no damn balls, and a shell of a human body.
“We’re doing the announcement soon. You need a glass for the toast.”
“I’ll go grab a drink.”
I walked away from Karen in her somber red cocktail dress and waded through the sea of dark suits and jewel encrusted women, shimmering and undulating like stars reflected on water. The living room had been emptied of furniture to allow more space for the horde of people brought in for the dinner party and the big announcement that it seemed like everyone already knew. It was supposed to stay a secret, but Laney had never been good at that.
I wasn’t the only one shoveling coal on this fire.
In the kitchen I snagged a wine glass off a tray, yanked open the freezer, and pulled out the frosty clear bottle of vodka I’d stowed in there earlier that day. It was full when I’d hidden it. It was on the southern side of half empty now. I filled the wineglass about halfway with the crystal clear liquid then added a small amount of apple juice from the fri
dge until it vaguely resembled white wine.
I hated white wine, but who was going to notice? Who was paying attention?
No one. Not even me. Not anymore.
I glanced at the clock as I left the kitchen. Seven fifty. It was almost time.
Back in the living room, surrounded by perfume, cologne, and the soft jazz Karen had wafting through the central sound system, I stood at the edge of my universe and watched it move. I watched my future dance in front of me set to music that was making me jittery.
I watched a girl I didn’t like float through the room laughing and smiling, and I felt nothing.
I saw the only girl I’d ever loved grin at another man, and it killed me inside.
Jenna stood out dark and stormy in the middle of a room full of pearls. Her makeup was smokier, her hair longer, and her laugh louder than anyone around her. She shone like a star guiding me over a dark, frothing sea, and even though I knew it was wrong, I couldn’t stay away. The siren call of her smile, her body, pulled me forward. I’d dash my rickety ship against the rocks being near her, and it’d be worth it. All of it. All of me for one infinitesimal breath of her.
I came to stand behind her close enough that I could smell the lotion on her skin, warm and sweet. Like cookies coming out of the oven.
"I see you've met Alexander," I said deeply, standing behind her and nodding to the grinning shitbag.
She nodded her head stiffly, small shining diamonds swaying from her ears with the movement. They looked strange on her, the way the dark wrap covering her shoulders and tattoos felt out of place. The way her talking to this douche in a suit felt wrong. "We just met.”
"Jenna's going to give me some tattoo advice,” Alexander told me happily. “Has she done any ink on you, Kellen?"
"No,” I replied, refusing to look at him. “I don't have any."
"I'm surprised. You're a fighter, right?"
"Boxer," Jenna corrected.
"Oh," Alexander said, giving her a curious look. "Still, though. I would have thought you had something."
I raised my glass to my lips and took a hard drink. "I'm not good with commitment.”
He laughed. "I would hope that's not true. Aren't you en—"
