A Perfect Mess

by Zoe Dawson

  Then I realized where I was. This was where we used to live. The place where I’d burned the piano. My rib cage expanded and contracted. Something broke loose in me. My vision blurred, my breathing harsh and erratic. The smell of charred wood lodged in my nostrils. And that pain, the pain I had buried all those years ago, came thundering out of the night, trampling me. An anguished sob rose out of me as that pain rumbled around inside looking for escape. Awash with a whole storm of emotion, I uttered a broken cry. A tremor coursed through me and I buried my face in my hands. I loved her, but was powerless to stop her, just like I had been powerless to stop my father. I needed her, and fear like I had never known wracked me. After what we had shared, it hurt ten times worse.

  She’d let me believe what Langston had said was true. For years.

  I had to move again. Escape the pain. I got up and ran. When the light registered and a house loomed in front of me, I knew why I had come here. I banged on the door and the outside light came on.

  When my ma opened the door, she took one look at me and hauled me inside. She dragged me to the bathroom, where I stood shivering, more from the shock of hearing that Aubree had chosen to let me pine for her instead of talking to me or giving me some kind of closure. It felt like my dad all over again.

  It fucking hurt, like needles stabbing into my gut.

  My brain scrambled to get away from it, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run. It twisted inside me in one long unending, annihilating pain.

  Ma rubbed me down with a towel and then draped a blanket over my shoulders. I remember what it had been like that day I had come home after getting double-teamed by the Langston brothers. I had refused to say who had beat me up, and my brothers were pissed. But later, after my mother made them leave, she sat me down and gave me some hot cocoa. She prodded and poked, and the whole story about Aubree Walker came pouring out of me. She knew every embarrassing emotion, every altercation, every single thing. After that day, we never talked about Aubree expect for the day I gave her the tickets to the Greek Isles.

  “Come into the kitchen, Booker,” she said, her voice soothing. I followed her in there and she put the kettle on the stove.

  “I don’t think hot cocoa is going to fix this.” My voice sounded dead.

  The worry deepened on my mother’s face. “What happened, puddin’?”

  She hadn’t called me that since I was little. I told her everything, fighting to keep my emotions under control. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders.

  “I think this is a good thing.”

  My jaw dropped. “What?” I said. “She destroyed me, Ma.”

  “I know. But Booker, you like to reframe pain instead of accepting it. You don’t deal with the negative. You just find it a learning experience and move on. You need a relationship with a girl like Aubree, who isn’t perfect, even though she desperately wants to be. No one can be perfect. Surface relationships are much easier than those that demand emotional involvement, because there is so much more at stake. You’ve idealized her, and what you have now…that’s not the picture you’re used to looking at. Take some time to think about this. If this girl means as much to you as I think she does, she deserves to have you hear her out.”

  “How do you know that I didn’t?”

  “Because I know you. You avoid pain.”

  “I burned that piano. I thought it would help. It allowed me to understand that things like pianos shouldn’t have that much meaning or that much power over me.”

  She nodded. “Feeling things makes you human, Booker. Plain and simple. You harbored the hope that your father would come back. I should have taken you away from here, but if I had...”

  “He might not have been able to find us.”

  “Yes. I’m not proud of that. I’m not making excuses for him. He believed his own reputation and that there was nothing that he could do to change it. I had family ties here, too. People who helped and supported me to raise triplets on my own.”

  “I’ll take time to think about this, but I think it might be better if she and I part ways.”

  “Why? Because she was young and scared? Because she didn’t know how to deal with a boy who had these strong feelings for her?”

  “No, because like father, like son.”

  “Oh, Booker. You’re nothing like your father.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes while she fixed the hot cocoa. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  My mother gave me a ride home. By then the rain had stopped and everything sparkled in the car’s headlights. I half hoped Aubree would be there, half hoped she wouldn’t. When I got there, her car was gone. I thanked my ma and went inside. Folded neatly on the piano bench was my t-shirt.

  A lead weight sank in my chest. She’d let me continue believing that what Langston had said was true. She’d let me die a little each day while Langston smirked at me in the halls.

  I picked it up. It still smelled like her. I hurled it across the room.

  Chapter Twelve

  Aubree

  I let myself into the house, moving on autopilot. I was afraid of what would happen if I stopped. It was dark, but the fire was going, and when I glanced in, Aunt Lottie and Sheriff Dalton were dancing to music only they could hear. Not wishing to disturb them or embarrass my aunt, I tiptoed up the stairs, trying with all my might to contain the guilt and the knowledge of what I had done, knowing I had just lost the best thing that ever happened to me. I let myself into my room.

  I ran a bath. I was so cold. But the cold felt familiar to me. I equated it with the numbness that acted as a layer of protection around my heart. I had thought Booker was different. I had hoped he would understand and accept my flaws, but I had been wrong. I’d lost him because of it. Lost him as surely as my heart was breaking. And I had no one to blame but myself. My need to be perfect and my need to put that above anything else had destroyed what we might have discovered in each other.

  After dumping in a generous dollop of bubble bath and letting the water foam up, I turned off the water and sank down into it. Numbness had been my friend. If I couldn’t feel, couldn’t hurt anymore, maybe it would get better.

  But when I closed my eyes, Booker’s stricken face was burned into my retinas. The way his face had looked made me hurt like little else ever had. I folded my arms tightly across my abdomen, the knots of pain and emptiness and guilt tightening into a sick mess inside me. I leaned back against the porcelain, not even trying to contain the pain. Letting it flow and engulf me was all about being a grownup, and Booker deserved this…I owed it to him to feel this agony. I was the one who had screwed up. The dreadful hollowness in my stomach pulled me forward as I covered my face with my hands and a ragged sob broke from me. The floodgates opened, and I cried for everything—for my ignorance, for my carelessness, but mostly I sobbed because I wanted what Booker and I had begun to build. The real part of it was real. I wanted him…wanted him.

  I had been young, and my fear had been strong back then. But I had known even then that just standing there watching and doing nothing was wrong. And it had eaten at me every day since then. I’d had no idea, really, who he was. I only knew what he had done for me.

  But, now. Now I knew who he was and I was…had…fallen for him.

  I loved him so much. So much.

  After drying off and getting into a sleep shirt I slipped into bed. I checked the glowing alarm clock. Two. I closed my eyes.

  I was behind on the work for Dr. Wells, but for the first time in my life I didn’t care. He’d given me a few days to handle my personal business, which had been kind of him. I wished I could immerse myself in my work. Let it take my mind off what had happened with Booker. Oh, I wished he had heard me out. Had listened to everything I had to say before leaving like that.

  As soon as my mind returned to Booker, a wave of shame washed over me. I’d made a fool of myself. The image of his blue eyes and his wicked smile filled my head. The memory of his touch set off shivers that rippl
ed from my neck downward. I was sorry I had kept that terrible secret from him for so long. Sorry that my consuming, desperate need to be perfect had burned what we were building into ashes, like Booker’s beat-up old piano. Apparently Booker couldn’t see beyond who he thought I was, and I certainly couldn’t live up to that kind of image.

  Making love to Booker, god, it had been everything.

  Tossing the blanket off me, I got out of bed, went to the French doors, and pulled them open. The night was just a tad on the chilly side, fragrant with the scents of summer that promised humidity and heat.

  I turned my head. The Magnolia tree near the corner of the house still had a few blossoms, creamy, waxy white, nestled among the broad, leathery, dark green leaves. I used to love Magnolias.

  I could see Wild Magnolia Road from my balcony. That old dirt road that I’d always used as a shortcut home.

  I could see the old, burned-out churchyard, and I shivered.

  Time slipped away as I stared down that road I had traveled that long-ago day in August, my emotions so raw that my throat kept closing up.

  “Oh, god,” I whispered, closing my eyes and pressing my forehead against a smooth column. “I should never have come back here.”

  A scrap of cloud scudded across the sliver of moon. A sultry breeze whispered through the branches of the trees. A chill raced over my skin and I gasped. Was that a figure in the graveyard?

  I strained my eyes, staring into the darkness, sensing a presence. The sensation lingered like a dark, intent gaze, and the hair rose on the back of my neck. Langston, my mind whispered. Both of them haunting me.

  The sense of being watched was thick in the air.

  I backed up, swallowing hard as my heart climbed into my throat. Slowly I backed toward my bedroom, almost tripping on the lip between the balcony and the room.

  I tried not to think about the figure I convinced myself I’d imagined standing in the graveyard.

  A sense of relief flooded through me after I darted inside and locked the French doors behind me.

  On my bedside table, my phone chimed. I gasped, my heart startling. Could it be Booker? The hope alive in me, I rushed over there, but the text message I read chilled my blood, dashed that bright feeling.

  I know what you did.

  #

  The nightmare twisted inside me like something alive. I woke with a gasping start, sitting up in bed, panting like I’d run a really fast mile. The bleakness of my thoughts and the memories of Booker intermingled, turning the experience even more volatile, even more dark and dangerous. The air around me was warm and moist, a pocket of heat and humidity that had sneaked in through the French doors to escape the storm. The room was dark and still, a stillness that held something other than simple, quiet. Loss. I felt alone in a way I had never felt alone before in my life, and my thoughts turned automatically toward Booker.

  I hadn’t been alone. I’d just isolated myself because that is what I had always done with my mother. I’d closed myself off from my aunt, from Booker when I was sixteen, because I just didn’t know any other way to be. Alone was what had felt right, normal. Now I just felt loss.

  That also had never happened to me before.

  Heart bumping hard against my breastbone, I fought to untangle my legs from the sheet and then raced out onto the balcony in nothing but my white camisole and numbered shorts. Down the stairs I ran till I reached the ground. Everything was all tangled up inside me, and it was time I faced what I needed to face.

  I sprinted towards Wild Magnolia Road without thought or purpose. A small, rational corner of my brain told me to let the numbness back in, let it make me safe, but I fought against it. Something inside me was pushing me toward recklessness. I didn’t understand it, wasn’t sure I wanted to understand it, but I couldn’t seem to stop.

  Where was my self-control? That rigid bitch inside me that held me to the most impossible standards? Where was she? I wanted to kill her.

  When my feet hit the dirt road, I kept pelting down it, my lungs screaming, my legs straining, my heart breaking.

  I reached the burned-out church, then ran into the graveyard, where I tripped and fell. I got up on my hands and knees and crawled. I didn’t know when I had started sobbing.

  When I reached the spot, I pounded on the dirt mound. “This is all your fault! This is all your fault!” Anger bled from me, the fury that had lurked in every pore of my body. I screamed and howled and beat at the dirt mound until my fists throbbed, until every single ounce of scalding rage was gone. Expunged. Released like a torrent of pain that flowed out of me and into the face of the dawn.

  But it wasn’t Damien’s fault. I knew that. I was railing at myself, the breakdown bringing a new chance to look at the possibilities. I screamed into the new morning. “I love Booker Outlaw!”

  I gasped for air and the truth hit me, hammered home like my backpack full of bricks had just been dumped on my head. It was okay not to be perfect. I could never be perfect because I was real. I was human and flawed and beautiful! Every mistake I’d made had brought me to this moment and had been the building blocks of my uniqueness. Attaining perfection was an illusion I had maintained for so many years. The relief of letting that weight go made me feel as light as the breeze that blew across my moist, heated skin.

  And I forgave Booker in that instant as I realized the very same thing about him. He was also not perfect, and I understood why he struggled with what I had done to him. It wasn’t that my actions were unforgivable. It was that, like me, his illusions had been shattered. But, unlike me, he hadn’t been able to let them go. I had made a huge mistake with him when I’d said nothing about what I had seen and, most importantly, what I felt for him. How much I admired that he’d had the courage and loyalty to stand by me even when I didn’t know he was doing it. There must have been something he’d seen in me that he believed was worth it. I hoped one day I could find out what that was. And, in that moment, I allowed myself to hope that his ability to see all the possibilities would someday, at the very least, allow him to forgive me.

  When the sun hit the horizon of the new day, I got up and went back home, slipping up the stairs. Before I got into the shower, I heard my phone chime. But all that settled over me was an eerie calm.

  Where’s the body?

  My bruised hands ached as I typed the very short, very succinct message back.

  Fuck you!

  After my shower, I headed downstairs. My aunt was in the kitchen. The terrible ache wasn’t going away any time soon. And when I met my aunt’s eyes, I had to look away. I was so raw. There were things that needed to be said between us as well. “Good morning,” I said. “How was your date with the sheriff?”

  “Good morning, Aubree.” The sheriff walked into the kitchen in his robe, looking like he belonged there. My eyes snapped to my aunt’s and she blushed ever so lightly. Even with the pain that twisted my heart, I was so happy that my aunt had found love, even as it eluded me.

  “Well, I guess it went pretty good.”

  My aunt’s laughter and the sheriff’s mingled. As I stood there, it hit me like a backlash. This is what love looked like. This was happiness. And, it looked so much like…what Booker and I had shared. The longing welled up in me to once again see that patented Outlaw grin that was so uniquely Booker’s.

  “Maybe you should start calling me Mike?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, giving the sheriff a weak smile. “That just seems so…um….illegal.”

  He chuckled again. “Okay, how about Uncle Mike?”

  He looked at my aunt and she nodded.

  “Get out! Really?” Then I saw the ring on her finger. I flew across the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her, my throat tight. “I’m so happy for you. So happy.” Because this woman who had come into my life when I was twelve years old meant more to me than my own mother.

  “I’ve got to get going,” he said, giving my aunt a knowing look. “I got that itchy feeling there’s gonn
a to be some powerful female bonding going on real soon. And wedding plans…” He shuddered. “Best the menfolk be absent.”

  I punched him in the arm. “Good idea…Uncle Mike.”

  He hugged me then, and I hugged him back.

  After he had left the house and I put my cereal bowl into the sink, I turned to my aunt, who was at the French doors in the kitchen looking out on the beautiful garden patio, a cup of steaming coffee in her hands. She seemed so pensive all of a sudden, as if she, too, had a terrible secret.

  With a newfound wisdom swirling inside me, I said, “Well, you waited a long time, but you’re finally going for it?”

  “I did. And I am. The man I loved and married, he died very young. It was devastating. Then when Mike moved here, there was a spark, but I resisted it for such a long time. After I woke up from my concussion and he was there, looking so concerned, I saw the love in his eyes. And I asked myself, what am I waiting for?”

  I walked over to slip my arm around her waist. It was easier to do that now. Another thing Booker had made easier for me. “It’s hard to let go of that safety net,” I said. “Hard to let go of being alone.”

  She looked at me with surprise. Setting down the mug, she cupped my face. “You were never alone, Aubree. I have always loved you from the first…moment…” She broke off.

  “Aunt Lottie. Do you know how my father died?”

  “What?” she asked, her eyes widening with astonishment. “Didn’t your mother tell you about your father?”

  “No. She never did.”

  She took my hand and led me to the living room. She went to the liquor cabinet and poured out two shots of whiskey. My eyebrows rose. “This is going to be a whisky-shot kind of conversation?”

  “Now that I’m getting married and you’re nineteen years old, a woman, I think it’s time that we did talk. I sense a new openness in you that wasn’t there before. After that scare in the hospital, I don’t want to wait another moment to tell you something that’s been so heavy on my mind. A secret that I’ve kept. But no more secrets between us, my girl.”