The Year We Fell Down

by Sarina Bowen

  In the silence which followed, Damien looked from Bridger to me, and then slowly to Hartley. “What the fuck?”

  Interesting choice of words.

  My new boyfriend rubbed his jaw with his hand. If there was a suitable thing to say into the silence that followed, neither Hartley nor I could figure out what it was.

  Bridger was still standing frozen over Dana and Daniel, practically in the doorway. “I just, uh…” he said. “Sorry.”

  Hartley dismissed him with a wave, and then turned back to face my brother’s glare.

  “My little sister?” Damien bit out. “Out of five thousand undergrads, she’s your latest conquest?”

  I could see Hartley trying to decide if defending himself was the right strategy or not. “Conquest?” he said, frowning. “It’s not like that.”

  Damien shook his head. “You don’t have to sit here and be an asshole about it now. Can’t you just get lost now?”

  “Actually, Callahan,” Hartley said quietly, “that would be the asshole thing to do.”

  Damien turned to me, his face red. “I don’t know why I even made the trip up here.”

  “I don’t know why either,” I snapped.

  My brother’s face actually slackened with surprise. “You don’t, do you?”

  “No, Damien. So why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Wow.” He gave a dark chuckle. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Mom and Dad why you forgot what day it was.”

  “What day is it?” Dana asked. At least I wasn’t the only one who was confused.

  “It’s January fifteenth. I came here to make sure Corey was doing okay.”

  “Oh,” I said, stupidly.

  Oh.

  My stomach swerved, and memories of last January fifteenth rushed toward me, unbidden. I didn’t want to remember. But suddenly it seemed that I had no choice. Lowering my eyes to the table, I was transported back one year.

  Last January fifteenth was a Saturday.

  I slept through breakfast, and then made myself an egg and bacon sandwich for lunch. My mother had been out jogging, even though it was only ten degrees outside. And by the time she came home, I was tearing the house apart, looking for my hockey shorts. “I washed them,” she’d said. “Look on the drying rack.”

  I ran past her. I ran. On two legs. I was full of irritation, worried that I’d be late for my game. I’d had no idea that things were about to change so dramatically — that running into the laundry room was something I’d never do again.

  “Um, Corey?”

  My head snapped up. Dana had been trying to get my attention, but I’d been lost — staring with unseeing eyes at my plate. “Yeah?”

  She frowned at me. “What’s January fifteenth?”

  “It’s…” I swallowed. She and Daniel were looking at me with confusion in their eyes. Hartley and my brother only looked sad. “Today…” Now I understood why I’d had two text messages from my parents already — messages I hadn’t returned. Call us, they’d written. We’re thinking about you.

  I didn’t feel like explaining. I didn’t want to be that damaged person, but it seemed that today I had no choice.

  Leaning over, I picked up my crutches from the floor. “I was supposed to call my parents this morning, and I just remembered,” I stammered. I heaved myself out of the chair and began crutching for the door. Damien got up to follow me.

  “The game is at one-thirty!” Daniel called over his shoulder.

  Chapter Twenty Two: January the Fifteenth

  — Corey

  “The game is at one-thirty,” my father had said through clenched teeth.

  He was behind the wheel of our car, and I was hurrying to throw my gear into the back. The coach was not supposed to arrive so close to face-off, yet again. As usual, my dad’s tardiness would be my fault.

  “Sorry,” I had said, running around to the passenger seat.

  I don’t remember the drive. There wouldn’t have been any traffic, not in our sleepy little town. What had I been thinking about on the ride to the rink? A homework assignment? The boy I’d just started dating — the one whose face I could barely remember now?

  Before my accident, it had been so easy to stare out the car window at the frozen landscape, thinking of nothing at all. I hadn’t known that I should love every moment, that every minute of feeling complete and capable was worshipful. I hadn’t known.

  Back at McHerrin, I retreated into my bedroom.

  “Nice room,” Damien murmured.

  I crawled onto my bed and removed my braces. Scooting up onto the pillow, I set my back against the wall.

  A glance at the clock told me that it was almost twelve. I wondered what my parents were doing now, but I was too chicken to call them. Depending on the schedule, my father might have a game. For his sake, I hoped it was an away game. I hoped that one-thirty would not find him standing in exactly the same spot he’d stood last year.

  For every one of my games, he had always been right there, in the box with a whistle and a clipboard. It was hard to picture him without those two things. My teammate once asked me in jest if my father wore his whistle to bed at night. Maybe I’d played so hard at hockey because he was always there watching. He was such a good coach, and such a fair man, that I’d never felt hemmed in by being both his kid and his athlete. It was all good, until the day that it wasn’t.

  My poor father. He had to watch it all go down.

  I was skating hard, backwards and fast. The puck shot across the ice in my direction. I leaned in for the pass, but another skater — an opponent — leaned in harder. She flailed her stick in the direction of the speeding puck, but caught my skate blade instead.

  My memory of this part is really just a collage of the things people told me later.

  Somehow, she tripped me so badly that I went flying backwards. I flew over the other skater in a neat airborne arc. And then I landed on my back. And then I blacked out for a few seconds.

  My father was over me when I opened my eyes. “Corey, are you okay?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. And I believed it. In fact, I eventually got up and skated off the ice.

  “So what else is going on with you?” Damien asked me. “Do you have your new semester sorted out?”

  I cleared my throat. “I think so. I’m taking a Shakespeare class with Dana. And that psych class everyone raves about. With Professor Davies.”

  “That’s a fun one,” my brother agreed, fingering the bill of his cap. “Want to play some RealStix?”

  I shook my head. Today I wanted nothing to do with hockey. Not even pretend hockey.

  “What was that guy Daniel saying about a game?”

  I met my brother’s eyes, which were warm and clear. I tried to tamp down my irritation, because he was only trying to help. “I joined the coed intramural water polo team. Did you ever play?”

  Damien shook his head. “Sounds fun, though.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s actually a better workout than I thought it would be. There aren’t any extra players. So at the end of an hour, we’re all puffing like grannies.”

  Damien looked at his watch. “I’ll come to your game.”

  I shook my head again. “I’m going to sit this one out.”

  After my awful crash, I sat the rest of the hockey game out. On the bench, leaning against the wall, my back hurt. But so did my head, and my shoulders. My father wondered if I had a mild concussion. Aside from my intense backache, there weren’t any scary symptoms. So we went home. I took a dose of an ordinary pain killer, and went to bed surprisingly early.

  That night, I woke up to crushing pain in my lower back. Terrified, I got out of bed and stumbled into my parents’ room. I barely made it, sinking down on my mom’s side of the mattress. “Corey?” she said, but her voice sounded far away. “What’s wrong?”

  That’s when I passed out.

  I woke up in the hospital two days later. I’d had major surgery for a blood clot pressing agains
t my spinal cord. There were beeping machines and tubes and worried faces everywhere. Doctors muttered phrases like “unusual presentation” and “wait and see.”

  It took everyone a while to realize that the midnight trip I’d made into my parents’ room had been the last time I would ever walk unassisted.

  At one o’clock, Hartley appeared in the doorway to my room. “Hi there,” he said.

  “Hi.” My voice sounded small and underused.

  “It’s almost time to go to the pool.”

  I didn’t want to have a big teary talk, or explain. I just looked away.

  He came in anyway, and my brother tensed, looking just on the verge of telling him off. “Callahan,” Hartley said quietly. “I need a few minutes with Callahan.”

  With an ornery grunt, Damien got up and went into the common room. I heard the TV come on as Hartley dropped a gym bag on the floor in front of me. “Can I walk you to the gym?”

  “I don’t think I’m going,” I whispered.

  “Well, I think you should,” Hartley said, sitting down on the bed. He put his arms around me, and I let him pull me in. I buried my nose in his shoulder and inhaled. “The others are waiting for you. Even if it is January fifteenth. It’s a shit shoveling kind of day.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I murmured into his chest. His arms circled tighter, and we just sat there for a minute holding each other. I could really get used to this.

  “There’s something I’ve been working on, and I wonder what you’ll think.” He leaned over, pulling an envelope out of his gym bag. He unfolded a single piece of paper, handing it to me.

  It was a letter, addressed to a Hollywood name I’d known for years.

  Dear Mr. Kellers,

  I don’t have any idea what you’ll choose to do with this letter, but I know I had to write it. For too many years I’ve tried to pretend that it doesn’t bother me that we haven’t ever met, or that you would rather not say my name out loud. But now I realize how many choices I’ve made hoping that you’d approve. I’m a junior at Harkness College. I got into this school without listing your name on the legacy part of my application. I’m a hockey player. My grades are decent and I’m majoring in political science.

  I’ve had a tough year, including an injury that kept me away from my sport. With a lot of extra time on my hands, I’ve had to slow down and figure out what’s really important. And I realized that the weight of your rejection is something I’ve been dragging around for my whole life.

  Sir, I think you should meet me. I’m not going to ask you for money or even a public acknowledgment that I’m your son. I can’t force you to look me in the eye, but I can raise my hand and let you know that it matters to me. I’m asking now so I can stop wondering whether or not you would have said yes.

  Sincerely,

  Adam Kellers Hartley

  I looked up at him, blowing out a breath. “Wow. Your middle name is his last name?”

  He nodded. “Would you send this, if you were me?”

  “I would, Hartley. It’s a brave thing to do.”

  “Meeting him wouldn’t be easy.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not why it’s brave, and I think you know that. The harder thing will be if he doesn’t answer. If he lets you just twist in the wind.”

  Hartley flopped back on my bed. “Yeah. But I’m sick of wondering. I want to make my peace with the question.”

  I put my hand down on his shapely stomach. “Then mail it. It’s a good letter.”

  He caught my hand, his thumb stroking my palm. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll mail the letter on the way to water polo.”

  I squirmed. “See, it was nice there for a minute, talking about your problems instead of mine. Will you think I’m a wimp if I don’t go to the game?”

  “There is nothing you could do to make me think you’re a wimp.” He sat up and brought my palm to his lips. “But I still want you to go.”

  “Can’t I just wallow? Just once?”

  “Wallow tomorrow. Water polo first.”

  “Why?”

  He grinned. “Because I told Daniel I’d play goalie. And I’d really like you to witness my greatness.”

  “You did? Just because of my funk?” I couldn’t help but smile. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if you jam your leg?”

  “Don’t baby me, Callahan.” His dimple made an appearance.

  I kissed him on the nose. “You are a manipulative, evil boy.”

  “I’ve been called worse. So where do you keep your bikinis?”

  I shook my head. “We’re going to have to forfeit anyway. Even if I show up.”

  “Not true! I convinced Dana and Bridger to play too. I told them you shouldn’t be alone today, that you need your friends around you.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “Really? And they’re going? Even Dana?”

  “I think she has a thing for Daniel,” Hartley’s smile grew. “But she said she’s doing it for you.”

  I giggled. Suddenly, living my new life seemed more important than mourning my old one. I wanted to watch Hartley’s mostly naked body floating around in an inner tube, defending the goal. And I wanted to see Dana try to maintain her bravado with a ball flying at her. “Hartley, get lost for five minutes. I’ll change into a suit.”

  “That’s my girl. I’ll get your towel,” he said, untangling himself from me and walking out.

  After he shut the door, I slipped down onto the floor and crawled over to my dresser, because it was a heck of a lot faster than putting the braces on. I crawl better now, thanks to Pat’s diligence. But removing my jeans requires me to roll from one hip onto the other, like a flopping fish.

  It’s very sexy.

  Not.

  — Hartley

  Corey’s brother was staring at the television, doing his best to ignore me. I sat down beside him anyway.

  I understood that he was struggling, but there was no way I was going to feel guilty for being with Corey. Just the opposite — I was pretty damned proud of myself. Also, I felt lighter. Telling Corey my whole freakish family story was such a load off my mind.

  “What’s she doing in there?” Damien asked without looking at me.

  “Changing into her bathing suit.”

  He turned his head. “Really? You talked her into going?”

  “Yeah.” I tried not to sound smug, but I might have. Just a little.

  He shut the TV off and then turned his body toward me. There was some aggression in it, but I knew it was just for show.

  “My sister, huh?” He scraped his face. “Damn. At least it’s not Bridger.”

  “Dude, please.” I had a pang of guilt for throwing my best friend under the bus like that, but Damien had a point. He might not like the idea of me getting naked with his sister, but love ‘em and leave ‘em wasn’t my style.

  “You know what, though? She was all kinds of bummed out over the holidays. And I think that’s on you.”

  Okay, ouch. But making Corey sad was never my intention. And to be fair, she never said so. Not until later. “We had some things to work through. It took me a while to figure it all out.”

  “I’m just saying, I know where you live.”

  And there it was — the threat. Fine. “You know, I don’t have a little sister. Actually, that’s not right. I have one, but I’ve never met her.” Look at me spilling my guts everywhere today! Next thing you know, I was going to be telling my life story on daytime TV. “So I don’t know exactly where you’re coming from. But that’s okay, because Corey is important to me.”

  He gave me a blue-eyed glare which reminded me of Corey’s. “Just treat her right.”

  “I plan to. Hey, you know what? I covered for you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “She asked me if her brother was a total dog, and I told her that you weren’t so bad.”

  His face broke into a very slow smile. “But what does it matter whether I was a total dog? As long as she’s not with a total dog.”r />
  “Double standard, much?”

  Damien showed me his middle finger, and then Corey opened her bedroom door. “Um, guys?”

  I jumped up off the couch and shoved Corey’s towel into my gym bag. Then I brought her ID over, looping it over her neck.

  “Hartley?” she put her hands on my chest. “Thank you.”

  Well, that made me feel like a million bucks. So, Damien be damned, I kissed her right on the lips. Then I tucked my letter back inside its envelope, licked the flap and sealed it shut. “Let’s do this thing.” I opened Corey’s door and waited while Damien put on his jacket to come with us. “You know,” I said to him, “I could lend you a suit, if you want to play. You are a Beaumonter, after all.”

  “He can’t play!” Corey protested. “Alums aren’t allowed. I don’t want our win to be disqualified.”

  At that, I had to throw my head back and laugh. “Jesus, Callahan. I forgot who I was dealing with.” As Corey crutched past me, I leaned down to drop another kiss onto her head.

  Even Damien grinned, and I saw his attitude toward me melt by one or two degrees. “The Callahans play to win,” he said. “Lead on, you two. Show me how this is done.”

  So we did.

  Chapter Twenty Three: Later is Better Than Never

  — Corey, Three Months Later

  Hartley and I sat together on the couch. It was a Saturday afternoon in April, just after brunch. I was trying to stay absorbed in my copy of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but Hartley pulled me onto his lap, sweeping my hair off my shoulder. He kissed the place where the hair had just been.

  “I can’t read Shakespeare with your lips on my neck,” I complained.

  “So don’t read it,” he mumbled. He leaned me back against his chest, and I felt his firm body shift suggestively beneath me. “That play is 400 years old. It can wait another half an hour. We could just…mmm,” he said, his hands sliding down my ribcage and hips, cupping my bottom.