Risk the Fall

by Steph Campbell

  Fuck.

  “Yeah, decided to come see my folks after all.”

  Shayna scoffs. “Does Quinn know that?”

  She’s looking directly at Caroline when she asks. And I can’t help but worry about Caroline even more right now, because, unlike Shayna, confrontation is not Linney’s strong suit on a good day, and whatever she’s going through right now has definitely made her even more timid.

  “No, no, not yet. Last minute thing, you know?”

  “Right,” Shayna says, puckering her mouth like she’s tasted something sour.

  “So, do you guys want to eat with us?” I ask. Caroline raises her eyebrows, silently questioning whether that’s a good idea or not.

  “No, man, thanks. We just ate. We’ve got to get over to Shayna’s parents’ house. How long will you be in town?” Carter asks.

  My relief is palpable that they’re on their way out. “Just a few days.Got to get back to work as soon as Ron gets back into town.” And I sold some of my work. But I can’t even tell him that. I haven’t even told Quinn. What the hell am I doing?

  “Yeah. And Quinn will be home soon,” Shayna interjects, cocking her head to one side. As if I hadn’t already been counting down the days.

  “Can’t wait,” I say. “Merry Christmas, guys.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Shayna says. “Oh, and hey, I didn’t catch your name?” Shayna turns to Linney, her face full of suspicion masked with a smile.

  “Caroline,” Linney answers and extends her hand.

  “Right. Should have guessed.” Shayna looks at Carter with her mouth agape, then back at me and shakes her head before they leave the restaurant together.

  Fuck.

  Carter reappears just as I’m walking to the table with our food. He leans in a little too close, his tone a little too sharp, that for a minute, I forget that we live down the hall from each other, that I consider him a friend.

  “I’m not going to ruin Quinn’s trip by telling her I saw you here today. It doesn’t mean I think it’s okay. Are we clear?”

  “Carter—” I start to explain, but really, I have no defense. So I just thank him, which is probably just as bad.

  Why didn’t I at least call Quinn on the drive to my parents’ house from the airport? I answer my own question as soon as it pops into my head. Because the last time I called Quinn and told her that Linney was coming to stay with my parents, she turned around and screwed some other guy. And now she’s a world away. I can’t even consider the consequences in this situation. But she’s a different Quinn. But not different enough that me being out with Linney wouldn’t cause…Fuck, I can’t even think about it.

  What am I doing here? Putting everything on the line with Quinn like this? Shayna will probably call Quinn the second she walks out the door.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  I slide the tray of pizza across the table top. Seeing Carter and Shayna has effectively suppressed my appetite.

  “I gather you didn’t tell Quinn you were coming?” Caroline asks, spreading her napkin neatly out on her lap.

  “No, I hadn’t had a chance. That was her brother and his girlfriend, if you didn’t catch that. I guess it won’t be long before she knows.”

  “Do you want to call her?” Caroline asks.

  “I probably should, but honestly, I don’t want to mess up what she has going right now. And I hope Carter has the same idea.” Please let him have the same idea.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, lowering her head.

  “Don’t be. You didn’t ask me to come, I didit because I wanted to.” And for that, maybe now she’ll talk to me.

  “But why?”

  “Because we’re friends, Linney. And you sounded like you could use one on the phone.”

  Linney takes a small bite of her pizza and chews slowly.

  She swallows, wipes her hands and then speaks again. “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?”

  “Only if you’re ready to tell me.”

  “I guess I sort of have to, being as I just screwed up your relationship. Again.” She runs her fingertip along the rim of her glass and watches me. Her look is a little too intense.

  I scoff, trying to lighten the mood. “You didn’t screw anything up.”

  Caroline looks slightly relieved. “Where is Quinn, anyway?”

  “Italy. A program for culinary school.”

  “Wow, that’s impressive.”

  “It’s pretty cool. She’s been really worked hard, and she loves what she does. She’s doing really great.” At least I assume she is. I keep our conversations so short. At least that way, I don’t have to feel a pang of disappointment if she doesn’t say how much she misses me.

  “But how are you doing…like together? I mean, you did come out here…”

  “Linney, don’t read more into it than it is. Quinn and I are great. She’s amazing.”

  “Nice. Good,” Caroline says nodding.

  “Plus, it’s Christmas, and I sort of have some stuff to work out with my folks.”

  “Yeah, it sounds like it. What’s up with all of that anyway?”

  I run my hand along the table top and consider my words carefully. I don’t want to talk bad about my family, but the situation is what it is. “Mom gave me an ultimatum. Them or Quinn. In my mind, the one that gives you the ultimatum is the one that loses you. Simple.”

  “No it’s not, Ben. Not as close as you and your family are.”

  “Were,” I interject.

  “The thing is, Quinn never did a single thing to them.”

  “But she hurt you.” Linney reaches across the table and rubs my arm. It’s a simple touch, nothing more than I’ve done to her since I’ve been back in town, but it feels different. It feels like maybe Quinn might have been right all of the times she said Caroline was still after more than just a friendship with me.

  “And I’ve hurt her, too,” I qualify. I’m hurting her right now by being here. So why am I doing it? I try to be nonchalant when I pull my arm away and grab the tent-shaped desert menu off of the end of the table, and stare at it harder than I really need to.

  Caroline shifts in her chair.“Is she—”

  I don’t even let her finish whatever question she’s about to ask.

  “Linney, listen, I know you mean well, I do. But I really don’t want to talk about Quinn,” I say. “With you.”

  “Of course. I understand,” she says. Her lips form a tight, irritated line and she has a look of anything but understanding.

  “Do you want to leave?” she asks. Her eyes glisten with what might be tears forming and the last thing I want to do is leave and spend the next half-hour in the car apologizing for upsetting her more than she already was when I got here. No, maybe I can turn this around. Change the subject.

  “No, let’s stay and eat.”

  Caroline purses her lips and gives a quick bob of her head.

  There’s a pause that stretches into a lengthy, awkward silence. I flew all the way out here thinking that I could do some good. But things with Linney feel strained, like she’s looking for something more than I can offer her. She and I could always talk, but since I got here, it feels like she wants to focus on Quinn, and I can’t do that. Not right now. Not when I know I’m totally fucking things up with her by being here.

  “How’s school? I mean, what are you going to do now that you’re out here? How long are you staying?”

  “I’m not sure, honestly. It was a quick move. My mom panicked and didn’t know what to do with me, so she made arrangements to have me stay with your family…and…here I am. I don’t know if I’m supposed to enroll in school here…or if this is just a temporary move… I guess I’ll just wait to hear what Mom and Dad say.”

  “They aren’t coming in for Christmas?”

  Linney shakes her head and swirls the straw in her drink around some more.

  “No, dad couldn’t take any more time off of work. He’s missed a lot lately with…everything. And I told them it�
��s not even a big deal, really. Christmas is just…it’s just not a big deal, you know?”

  I really don’t know. I’d give anything to be with Quinn right now.

  “Mom is probably going to come in the first week of January, though. Once prices on flights go down a little.”

  We each another slice of pizza in silence before I finally get the nerve to ask her outright.

  “Alright, Linney. We’ve known each other since we were fifteen,” I say. I think about how the first time I talked to Linney was when I was defending her in our class full of assholes, and how that need to protect her has never really completely gone away. That it’s what brought me back here today. So I need to know. I need to know what she’s up against so that I can help her. Because right now, I’m thinking any number of things, and none of them are good. I’m hoping that my mind is just preparing me for the worst case scenario, that it isn’t actually anything bad. I slide my hand across the booth and clutch her dainty fingers. Her touch is familiar in a way that it shouldn’t be. I shouldn’t remember it this clearly. And after pulling away from her earlier, I shouldn’t be instigating anything. So why do I do it? “Here’s the part whereyou tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “I feel like it’s been built up too much now, and you came all this way because you were worried about me and now I just feel stupid.”

  “Don’t,” I say. “I came because I wanted to.”

  “I don’t know what I did to deserve a friend like you, but it’s really nice to know that you cared enough to fly all the way out here, not even knowing what you’re walking into. I meant it earlier when I said you were a good guy, Ben. The best.” She squeezes my hand like she’s latching on to a life raft. Frantic and needy. And it makes me so damn glad that I came. So glad that it’s my hand she’s grasping onto.

  “Linney, what happened?”

  She takes a deep breath, and then lets it out slowly. “Nick, you remember Nick Barker, right?”

  I nod. “Sure.”

  Nick went to the same high school as Linney and I before I moved to Atlanta. I hadn’t really been friends with him, but I knew of him.

  “I started seeing him not long after the time that I saw you last year, when I was here looking at colleges.” It’s impossible to hear her talk about the last time that she was here in town and not think of the fall-out with Quinn.

  “And things were great for a long time. I started classes over the summer at the University of Kentucky, and he was at the University of Tennessee. It was okay being apart because we were both so busy with school, and he’d come in on weekends so that was good.”

  Linney looks around the deserted restaurant.

  “Two weekends in a row I had plans with the Chi Omega girls and I couldn’t get together with Nick. I didn’t think it was such a big deal, but he freaked. He showed up at my dorm in the middle of the night, convinced I was with someone else there. He was screaming outside of the building because the girls wouldn’t let him in. He kicked the door in, Ben.” Linney’s cheeks turn the deepest red I’ve ever seen on her pale face. “I was humiliated. These girls were new friends, and he made a fool out of me. Of course he apologized, but mama told me I wasn’t allowed to see him anymore after that. I didn’t care. I was so angry and embarrassed. I didn’t want to see him.”

  I can’t imagine someone as quiet and polite as Linney being yelled at by some prick. The thought of her holed up in her dorm while he beat the door down doesn’t sit well with me. I involuntarily clench my fist with anger.

  “Well, staying away from him…that didn’t go over well at all. Nick started showing up during the week when he should have been in class in a different state. I mean, who does that? He would just sit in his car and watch us while we painted signs for events, or stare at my dorm. He was calling my phone so many times a day, I ended up getting so frustrated that I threw it in the garbage and bought a new one.”

  “So, that’s why you changed your number?” I ask, remembering the quick, cryptic text that Linney sent me a while back from a new number. I didn’t reply to it. What an asshole.

  Linney nods. “It was just crazy. Mama and the counselors told me that if I just kept ignoring him, he’d get bored and leave me alone. But he didn’t.”

  I feel a twisting in my gut watching Linney retell the story, the fear present in her eyes even hundreds of miles away from this douche and sitting here with me, where she knows I’d do anything in the world to protect her. I want to beat the shit out of this clown.

  “I started finding cards from him under my windshield wipers, gifts outside of my dorm room, it was all just creepy. One day when I came back from class, there were dozens of roses outside my door room door. He must have spent a fortune. I threw them all away. The more he tried to do ‘nice’ things, the more creeped out I got.”

  “Did you call the police?” I work my jaw back and forth.

  “Yeah, Dad did. They had us fill out a report, but he hadn’t really done anything harmful, you know? It was just more annoying than anything.”

  “Then why’d you come here?”

  Linney takes a deep breath. “I came home from a party one night. A bunch of the girls wanted to stay late, but I was tired, so I left alone, which was stupid. I know that, please don’t tell me again. My dad never misses an opportunity to tell me how stupid that was, especially with everything that was already going on.”

  She blots the grease off the top of a piece of pizza with a napkin over and over until it’s so dry, it could be repackaged and labeled as health food.

  “Linney.” I press.

  “So, when I get to my dorm, the door is unlocked, which was weird because I was so vigilant about keeping it locked. Just not vigilant enough to get someone to walk me home, I guess. Anyway, as soon as I walked in and closed the door behind me, I saw him sitting there.”

  Linney clutches her stomach and it makes my own stomach turn.

  “He, um…” She scratches at her arms nervously and rocks back and forth in her chair. “Crap, I really don’t like talking about this. Even to you. Especially to you.”

  “Did the bastard rape you, Linney? Please don’t tell me that.” I ignored her calls. I didn’t reply to her texts. Please don’t tell me that some asshole put his hands on her.

  “No,” she says. “No, but he tried. Unlucky for Nick, my roommate, Bethany, didn’t know that I had left the party and came back to our room with her boyfriend. Lucky for me, Bethany’s boyfriend could bench press Nick.”

  “Oh, shit, Linney. You should have called me earlier, before it got that far, before he could try to hurt you—before you had to move away. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.” It isn’t possible for me to feel any worse about myself than I do right now. How could I let her down like this?

  “Thank you for saying that. Really. But there wasn’t anything that you could do to prevent it, and besides, you have your own girlfriend to worry about,” Caroline says. I know she doesn’t mean it as a dig, so why does it so closely resemble one?

  “I just wish all guys were more like you, Ben. I never would have let you go if I knew what the rest of them were like.”

  I would have stayed if it meant being able to protect you from that. The thought runs through my mind, but it shouldn’t ever exist, no matter what the situation with Linney is.

  “What happened to him? Nick, I mean?” I ask.

  “He was arrested, which is great, but his dad got him out. Small town politics at its best, right? I’m not sure what’s going to happen now, but the second he was released Mom and Dad had me on the first flight out of Kentucky. And, that’s it. That’s why I’m crashing your family Christmas.”

  “You aren’t. I’m glad you’re with them. I’m glad you’re safe.”

  I push my chair out and walk around the table just as Linney does the same. She clings to my side and crushes into me, her small arms wrapping around me. I pull her in and hold her close.

  “This feels safe,” she says.
/>   And I know that I can’t let her go.

  I stare out the kitchen window, watching the children of this quiet, medieval town run up and down the steep hill, dressed in red tights and green hats and looking every bit like something out of a fairytale. I hope it’s real. I hope those kids are as happy as the smiles on their faces portray.

  I know it sounds strange to even be bothered by this, because, for the most part, my family is a bunch of dillholes, but I can’t help but miss them on Christmas Eve. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little jealous that Carter gets to hang out with our brother, Mason, today. Mason may be spoiled, but I love him and hope he grows up okay in that house alone. It’s even more hurtful that my parents cared so little that I wasn’t going to make it home. When I called and told them about this trip, Mom barely gave a reaction at all. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that it was because she was doped up on whatever holiday concoction she took to deal with Dad, but come on, it’s Italy. She could have at least pretended to be excited for me, right? Instead, she changed the subject to tell me about how Mason was selected for a new Winter Ball team and was the new pitcher. I’m proud of my brother, but why didn’t I ever get to exist?

  The laneways of Spello are decorated with garlands and bows and bits of fake snow, but not in a gaudy way like we Americans do it up. I smile every time I walk outside and see the dainty Christmas bulbs hanging from the potted plants outside of each home, and, even though I’m not religious, the Nativity-crib displays always choke me up with their simplistic beauty and the fact that they mean so much to the people here. I want to believe in something like they believe.

  I thought for sure my day would get better by talking to Ben, but I haven’t been able to get him on the phone in days. Maybe he’s at home sulking that he’s alone. Maybe he’s out taking pictures of the dudes on the surfboards wearing Santa hats. Or maybe he’s avoiding me because he’s angry that I came here after all. I don’t think that’s it. But it could be. My paranoia kicks into high gear after the sixth ring.

  I listen to the familiar robotic voice tell me to leave a message after the tone and hang up, slamming my phone onto the table top.