by Tia Lewis
My hand was still on her shoulder, and I looked from her to Craig. Always the last word, I thought. I couldn’t help smirking. He always thought he was smarter than just about anybody else around him. Well, he was right about that. He was the smartest guy I ever knew. And he knew I wouldn’t want to see her. Probably why he hadn’t told her he was dying until there was no time left. He knew we wouldn’t willingly choose to be in the same room if there were any alternative.
Still, the feeling of her shoulder under my hand, even with a coat in the way, was a good feeling. She was looking up at me with those big, sapphire eyes of hers that looked even bluer because of the tears in them. I’d done my share of crying before she got there—guys like me knew how to get emotion out of the way so we could keep functioning. A trick of the trade. My old trade, anyway.
“You’re here?” she whispered, and those familiar worry lines popped up between her eyes when she frowned.
“Yeah, I’m here. Still.” I let go of her. I couldn’t touch her for too long, even though I knew we were both feeling the same ache inside.
“I didn’t know,” she replied, shaking her head.
“You sound like you’re apologizing.”
“I’m not. I mean, I just didn’t know, is all.” She looked more confused than ever, like it wasn’t enough for her to mourn her old friend without me throwing myself into the mix.
“How could you?” I looked back at Craig. “In case you’re wondering, this is a blessing.”
“What?” She stood, still holding his hand. “How can you say that?”
The nurse spoke up from her place by the window. She’d been staying at Craig’s for two weeks, and we had gotten to know each other during my visits. She had a grandmotherly way about her, so it was nice to talk with her when Craig slept—and toward the end that was all he did. “Your friend was in a great deal of pain,” she murmured. Sympathy dripped from her voice. “It’s never good when things drag out the way they sometimes do. Trust me, dear.” She came over and rubbed Amanda’s back. I saw how my ex-girlfriend shook, like she was just barely holding back a scream or a sob or something. I had seen men act that way in the field, but this wasn’t war.
“I’ll give you time with him.” She was holding it all in because I was there. I knew it just like I knew how much I wanted to hold her and let her cry it out in my arms. She couldn’t hide herself from me. I walked out to the porch and leaned against one of the posts as the sound of gut-wrenching grief floated out through the closed windows. Some things couldn’t be silenced.
I’d had enough time to think about her after the nurse called. I’d been through it all in my head, over and over, as I listened to Craig’s breathing get slower and more labored from one hour to the next. It had just been the two of us—Nurse Shirley had left us alone on the promise that I’d call her in the minute something changed. I’d talked to him, or at him, or whatever. I’d defended the choices I made. We had never talked about her after she left, so I’d never gotten the chance to defend myself before then. I thought it was all in the past. I thought she was, for both of us.
He was a man of secrets, that Craig. He never told her he was sick—I could tell as much from overhearing Shirley’s side of the phone conversation. She had told her he had cancer, then that he didn’t have much time left. Hours, maybe. I felt a pang of regret. Maybe I should’ve found her and told her myself. I should’ve asked him during the hours I had spent with him before he lost consciousness if there was anybody else he wanted there. If he’d mentioned her even once, I would’ve moved heaven and earth to track her down if only to spare the gut-wrenching sobs I heard from inside the house. It was bad enough he was gone. But to her, he was gone without her having the chance to say goodbye.
How close were they? He never once mentioned her to me—then again, it wasn’t like we sat around talking about our feelings all the time. And we’d almost never talked about the past. In fact, and I wasn’t proud of myself when I admitted it, we had fallen out of touch the way adults tended to do no matter how close they were when they were kids. He had his practice at the clinic; I had the diner. I’d stop whatever I was doing and chat with him whenever he’d come in for his breakfast, which used to be every Sunday morning and up to two or three mornings during the week before he’d suddenly stopped coming in. No warning, no announcement, nothing. At first, I’d assumed he was on vacation, somewhere out of town. He did that sometimes, spending a week someplace else without much explanation. When almost two weeks had passed without sight of him or even news about him from the gossips who lined the counter every breakfast, lunch and dinner rush, I’d started to worry.
I’d tracked him down at home, and he’d told me the truth. I hadn’t needed to be told. The weight loss was already obvious, just like the pain etched across his face. He’d looked ten years older, too. By that time, the doctors told him he had a few weeks left. Maybe a month.
“Isn’t that always the way?” he’d asked with a grim smile. He’d sat on the flower-print sofa, one of the many pieces of furniture his mother had bought, and he hadn’t had the heart to get rid of, and pulled his feet up under a blanket. “The cobbler has no shoes. The doctor can’t diagnose himself with Stage Four pancreatic cancer.”
It was too late by then; he told me that night. He had chosen to not even bother with chemo; he’d told me as he ran a hand through his dark red hair. “What’s the point? Why spend my last weeks puking and in pain when I don’t have to? Why lose my hair?”
“Because it’ll give you more time.” I felt a desperation at that moment that I hadn’t felt since I was on my last tour. Maybe not even then. Getting pinned down by an enemy sniper was nothing compared to looking into the defeated eyes of a man who was my best friend growing up and knowing he was going to die before Christmas came around. Knowing I couldn’t help him.
“More time for what?” He’d shaken his head. “More time to suffer? I’ve seen what this does, Dawson. I don’t have any intention of putting myself through it when the result is the same either way. There are very few people in the world I’ll regret leaving, like on that deep, personal level. Yeah, my patients—I’m sorry to leave them. I’m sorry to leave you before I see you settled down and changing diapers.” He’d winked at me.
“Unlikely,” I’d smirked, only half-heartedly.
“You never know,” he’d shrugged. Then, he’d grown serious. He’d leaned in a little, closer to where I sat in an armchair beside the sofa. “I need you make me a promise.”
There was no smile on his face, so I hadn’t smiled at the request. “Name it.”
“Don’t rule it out,” he’d ordered. “What I just described, I mean. Don’t shut yourself off like that. You have to give life a chance.”
I had wanted to joke with him, to tell him to look who was talking, but then I got the message. He must have shut himself off from the chance of love at some point, or maybe he’d assumed he had plenty of time. At thirty-eight, most people could assume they had plenty of time to take care of their future happiness. But look what had happened to him, he was trying to say. I couldn’t assume I had all the time in the world.
And it might have been that last little bit of conversation that made it impossible for me to stay away as he declined. He was alone. He deserved somebody sitting at his bedside when he took his last breath, not a nurse but somebody who knew him. And we had reacquainted ourselves during those final days, too. He’d told me things about himself that I had only guessed at in high school—namely, that he was gay. Not that I cared, but he’d lived a very closeted life. I had the feeling at the time that I was one of the only people in town who knew, if not the only one. He was still considered a catch by all the women our age, and even some who were older. A single doctor with a killer smile who was great with kids. Who wouldn’t want to warm his bed? So it was a pretty tight secret. I was glad, maybe even honored that he thought he could trust me with that. And I had told him about my time with the SEALs, and why I left. T
hat last tour. How it broke me a little, and how hard I had worked to come back from it.
But we never talked about her. Not once. Why?
And why hadn’t he wanted her there until it was too late?
The front door opened, and I turned as Shirley stepped onto the porch. “Ooh,” she said, rubbing her arms briskly. “It’s chilly out here! And you with just a t-shirt on.”
I snorted. “I don’t feel the cold. I never have.”
“Well, you should still get inside before you catch your death…” She trailed off into silence as the word hung in the air. I could almost feel her embarrassment.
“How is she?” I asked, changing the subject.
“She’s in the kitchen with a cup of tea.” Shirley shook her gray head, clucking her tongue. “Poor girl. She didn’t even know. That’s not the sort of thing a person recovers from very easily. Believe me. I’ve seen it before.”
“If anybody can, she will.” Not that I knew her anymore. I knew the girl she used to be, but that was a long time ago. I could hope she’d get through it, but that was all.
“I think she needs a friend right now,” Shirley hinted.
“We’re not exactly friends.” I hated to break it to her like that, but it was a fact. “I don’t think she’ll want to catch up with me, especially not right now.”
“Now is the best time,” the nurse insisted. “Get in there. She needs you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I knew better than to argue much more. She was scarier than some drill sergeants I’d come up against over the years. She shooed me through the door and into the house, where Craig was still lying in bed. No, he wasn’t in bed. He was somewhere else. That wasn’t him, there under the thin blanket, red hair against a white pillowcase. That was his shell. Him, his actual self—the guy who once made me laugh so hard, beer came out of my nose—was long gone. Out of pain. That was a relief.
I turned my eyes from his body and hoped the coroner got there soon, then walked through the living room to the hall that led to the kitchen in the back of the house. It wasn’t a big place, but Craig had obviously worked hard to keep it in good shape. His parents had never exactly had the money to do what he’d done. None of our parents did back in the day. It wasn’t exactly a wealthy town.
She didn’t look up when I walked into the cheerful little kitchen with the same apple print wallpaper that had papered the walls for at least thirty years. That was when I met Craig, when we were in third grade. How was it thirty years already?
She sat at the little table by the window, looking down at her cup instead of out at the late morning light. Well, I couldn’t blame her for that. It wasn’t much of a view, with lots of patched roofs and chimneys dotting the sky and a few mountains in the far-off. I took the opportunity to look at her. Same dark blonde hair, almost brown actually, in a messy bun. Same creamy skin. She wrapped her fingers around the cup like she was holding on for dear life, and her fingers were still long and slim. I wondered if her touch was the same, then decided it wouldn’t be. When we were together, she was just a kid. I was her first. Twenty years had passed, and she was a woman. A woman who had probably been around. She wouldn’t be so shy anymore.
I couldn’t make out her body since she was still wearing that long black coat of hers. It was a nice coat, too, not something from Walmart. Nice car, too, parked out at the curb. It looked brand new. Nicer than anything I was used to seeing around town.
“You wanna take off your coat?” I muttered. “You might be more comfortable.”
She shook her head. “I feel cold.” Her voice was breathy, shaky.
“I’ll turn up the thermostat.”
She shook her head again. “I’m fine. You don’t have to bother.”
“It’s no bother.”
Her head snapped up, and the pain in her bloodshot eyes was enough to make me take a step back. “Why are you here?” she hissed. “Why you and not me?”
My mouth opened, but no sound came out because I didn’t know how to answer that. She thought she should’ve been the one, which told me they were close, after all. What hadn’t he told me about them? And what hadn’t he told her?
3
Amanda
I was sure I would wake up, and it would all have been a dream. That was the only way I could survive what was happening inside me. It was a dream, and I would wake up feeling silly forever thinking it was real. Then, I would drive down to Roaring Forks and beat the holy hell out of Craig just because.
But the mug was hot in my hands, almost hot enough to burn my skin. I felt the weight of the coat hanging on my thin frame. The chair was hard under my butt, the floor a little squeaky under my feet. When I pressed down with my right foot, I heard a slight noise. No, it was no dream. I was very much in a waking nightmare.
And he was there. Because things needed to get worse.
“What are you doing here?” I had to know. All the years that had passed with absolutely no word from him. I wasn’t sure if he was still alive, and had made "I don’t care" my mantra in the aftermath of the heartbreak he’d caused. My first heartbreak, but not the last. Not by far.
“We were friends. Remember?”
“Oh, really? I didn’t know you still were.” It didn’t make sense. Never once had Craig mentioned him—granted, that could’ve been because he knew I didn’t want to think about him ever again, but we were adults. I wouldn’t have screamed or torn my hair out if I’d heard Dawson’s name. Maybe. So I told myself.
“We lived in the same town,” he murmured with a shrug. “It’s hard not to keep a connection when you run into each other several times a week. Besides, in the last month or so…” he trailed off, his eyes shifting toward the doorway, down the hall to the living room.
The truth hit me like a bomb. “So he told you about his illness,” I concluded. I felt absolutely hollow inside, like the last little twist of the knife had emptied me out. “He told you and not me.”
“I don’t understand.” Uninvited, he took a seat at the other end of the kitchen table. It was a tiny table, only wide enough to accommodate three people—one at either end and one in the middle, with the other long end pushed against the wall, so the table sat snugly beneath the windowsill. We were a foot, maybe two, away from each other. Closer than we’d been in two decades. He scrubbed a hand over his face, a face that was the same and vastly different all at once. “I didn’t know you two kept in touch.”
“And vice-versa,” I replied. “But yes, we did. We talked on the phone a few times a week; we emailed, we texted constantly.” I pulled my phone from my pocket with a shaky hand and scrolled through text after text, sometimes dozens in a single day. Tears stung my eyes all over again as I skimmed his words. He always made me laugh. Always.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Dawson asked.
I was still looking down at my phone when I replied, running my fingers over Craig’s messages. “Back in August, for my birthday. He came up to visit me.”
“He visited you?”
“At least twice a year, maybe three times if he could get away.” I looked up across the table to find Dawson’s face had taken on a kind of understanding.
He chuckled drily. “So that’s where he would go,” he grinned, shaking his head. “He never mentioned where he was going when he’d leave town for a week.”
“It was to see me,” I confirmed. “He knew it was hard for me to come back here.” My words hung between us, filling the space between our bodies with dark, painful memories. As if on cue, clouds drifted across the sun, and the light through the window turned gray.
“I see.” He stood, and his height was more obvious than ever. Not to mention the broadness of his body. Muscles strained beneath a dark t-shirt, while his waist tapered into a pair of jeans he filled out nicely. He’d gotten into shape, clearly, and I couldn’t help noticing in a detached way. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know anything about you guys being so close. I would’ve…”
“I know,” I said
, cutting him off. And he would have, too. At least, the boy I once knew would have gotten in touch with me. I was sure of that much. Time didn’t change a person’s nature, and his nature made it so he had to take care of people. No, that wouldn’t have changed.
“Did you have a fight?” My head snapped up, and something in my expression made him take a step away from the table.
“No. Even if we had, I think this would be too important to let a fight get in the way.”
“Sorry. It was a stupid question.” He slid his hands into his pockets, the very image of a man who had no idea what to do with himself. His fine chiseled features hardened into a mask of frustration and confusion. His gray eyes, startlingly light as always, jumped from his tanned face. What did he do for a living that gave him that body, that tan? There was just a faint touch of silver in his dark brown, almost black, hair. He wore it cropped close. It only made him more handsome. My chest ached a little at the thought, and it wasn’t an ache for Craig.
“Look. You don’t have to help me figure this out. It’s nice of you to try to help me, but this is my problem. I’m just going to have to live with it.” I did what I could to sound matter-of-fact, but my voice cracked in the end. When it did, everything came bubbling back up inside me. All the hurt and pain. What would I do without Craig? Nothing would ever be as fun or funny or rich or meaningful without him. Even if we only saw each other a few times a year at most, he was a daily presence. Or he had been, and I’d been too busy, too wrapped up in my mess of a life, to notice how he’d faded out.
I looked at my phone again, unwilling to meet Dawson’s eyes and let him see me cry. Sure enough, the messages from Craig had dwindled away to almost nothing. In fact, I’d gotten nothing from him in almost a week. A pang hit my heart. I should’ve known. I should’ve asked. But no. I’d deserted him.
