by K. B. Nelson
“You started this,” I accuse with a finger aimed squarely at him. “Take some fucking responsibility.”
“You shouldn’t have been in that car with that kid.”
“He needed help!”
“Some people can’t be saved.”
“Like me?” I question and take a measured step toward him. “Can I not be saved?”
“No, there’s a huge difference between him and you.”
“He was troubled.“
“A huge red flag you shouldn’t have jumped into his car. You could have lost your job.”
“Isn’t that one of those irreparable differences between us?” I glare at him. Football is his life. It’s always been his life. From the time he was a young tot, he was in love with the game and could have went pro if it weren’t for breaking his back in a bar fight that we both know I started after one too many drinks. Maybe that’s when this all truly began? “Your job is your everything, and I’m left fumbling in the dark because after two years playing this game, I’m over it. I’m not a teacher. I shouldn’t be a teacher. I should be something else.”
“If you hate it so much, then why do you choose to show up day after fucking day?”
“You still don’t get it, Brock.”
“I’m trying.”
“Why don’t you throw back a few shots and come back to me when your common sense is gone? Maybe that’s the only way you’re going to truly grasp this situation.”
He grunts as he throws his arm against the top of the dresser, sending everything shattering against the floor. A photo of our wedding day, vases, jewelry, and a bottle filled with sand from our honeymoon. He pinches at the bridge of his nose. “Make me understand, then.”
“I’ve been putting back all my money for months, because I’ve been planning on leaving you during winter break.”
“If I’m that bad, then why do you keep telling me that you love me?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Well the truth doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
I try to force the words down, but they come up like vomit. “I tried killing myself. Did you know that?”
He cocks an eye at me, a tired, glassy eye. “When?”
“A few weeks ago,” I say lowly. It’s not easy subject matter, riddled with embarrassment and shame. “He saved me and I fell in love with him.”
“He?”
“Kemper,” I yell. “Pay attention.”
And it’s as if his world caves in an instant, and we’re finally on equal footing. He sinks down onto the bed, defeated. “You’re having an affair?”
“I’m sorry, has all this drama damaged your brain?” I shake my head, confused. “You accosted me when I came home, wanting to know when it began, don’t you remember?”
“I was talking about the drinking and the pills.” He cups his palm over his mouth, his chest rolls with heavy breaths.
“Well, shit,” I chuckle uncomfortably and shrug my shoulders with apathy. I should care more that he’s hurting, and on some level, I do. “The pills and drinking started today,” I assure him, answering his question from the beginning of our drawn-out confrontation. It’s an easier conversation.
“Kemper?” he questions in disbelief. “The quarterback? The Student?” He shakes his head, and the contempt bubbles to the surface. “You are one hell of a piece of work.”
“Save your disdain for someone who cares,” I scoff.
“He’s a student.” He chews into his lips. “Just your type, I suppose.”
“Fuck you,” I spit. “Do you really want to get into this?”
“We’re in it, Stassi.” He bows his head and exhales a short breath, and in that particular moment, I see a change in him as anger fades into acceptance. “We’re stuck in it.”
“Stuck in a field of shit,” I add and glance down at the man I was to spend the rest of my life with. He’s hurting. I’m hurting. He’s broken because I broke him, and I’m broken because he broke me. It’s a vicious cycle with no blue skies in sight. I sink down onto the mattress beside him so we can grieve the loss of our once ironclad romance in silence and despair.
“We’re the same person, Brock,” I whisper, not because I wish to disturb the silence, but because I’m too tired to fight anymore. I’m beyond exhausted, and scared about how this night might end, because what I once thought impossible is quickly becoming possible. “We’re magnetized on the same end, and it’s begun to push us away. No matter how we try to position the two magnets, we always come up short when trying to connect.” I feel his gaze upon me, even while I’m too scared to stare anywhere but straight ahead at the remnants of the dresser dressings. “You cheat, so I cheat. You buried your problems in alcohol. I freed myself through living on the edge. You chose someone safe, my sister. And I chose someone dangerous, my student.”
“Do you still love me?” he questions, low and riddled with hope and loss at the same time.
“I wish I didn’t, but there’s something magical about that whole two of us against the world thing.” I sigh and wet my lips. “If we’re together. If we’re not together, you’ll always have a place in my heart.”
“We weren’t expecting the world to be so heavy,” he says, a beautiful sentiment of which I couldn’t agree more. I cock my head to look him in the eyes, not expecting tears, but they’re there. “It bore down on us and broke us.”
“I’ll always love you, Brock. If it weren’t for you, I’m not sure I ever would’ve learned what love was.” I comfort him with my palm on his back. “Without everything you ever gave to me, I’m not sure I’d be able to know what it is that I know now.”
“Which is?”
“I love you,” I say with a kick of my heart against my chest, but there’s more. Something I dread saying out loud, because it’s the hardest fucking thing I’ll ever have to do in this life. “I think…” I stutter, and try to catch my breath. I know once these words slip from my lips, we can’t go back.
“What is it, Stas?” He lifts my chin with a strong hand. “It’s okay, whatever it is,” he assures me, but there’s no way he can see this coming.
I close my eyes tight, trying to hold back the tears, but I should know by now. It’s no use. The words roll across trembling lips, “I think I love him more,” and I break completely, into his arms.
It’s the most fucked up dichotomy in the world, but he cradles me the way he used to cradle me back in high school when I had my breakdown of the week.
“There’s nothing I can do?”
“There’s something.” I clear the tears from my face and sit up straight in bed. His head perks up to meet me at eye level. “Tell me you love my sister.”
“You know I can’t do that.” He shakes his head. “She was only a distraction.”
“That’s a shame,” I sniffle. “I wish you felt for her the way I feel about Kemper, because you deserve a happy ending,“ and then like thunder, “it just can’t be with me.”
The revelation surprises even me, but then I remember, Kemper had said he wouldn’t be sticking around. He could be gone by now. My eyes sink to the floor.
“It’s okay, Stassi,” he says to me, nodding his head in a repetitive manner as if he’s trying to accept the bomb I’ve just tossed onto his lap. “It’s okay.”
“He’s leaving,” I mumble under my breath, but Brock’s able to hear me. “Kemper is leaving.”
“Go,” he commands me.
Stunned isn’t the word. I rise to my feet. “What?”
He joins me and clenches his eyes shut, he can’t believe what he’s about to say. “Go and get him.”
I’m suspicious of his motive, of course. “Why are you supporting this?”
“Because…” his voice cracks and he balls his hand into a fist. “Because I took a vow on our wedding day to make you happy for the rest of your life, and I wish I could make you happy, but I can’t.” Tears stream down his face, though he tries to fight them, to hold them back. It’s a los
ing proposition. They stain his cheeks and his eyes fill a blood red shade. “So, I have to honor those vows and let you go.”
My feet are weighted down with emotional baggage, holding me in place as I throw my arms around him. He stumbles forward and collapses his head on my shoulder. I close my eyes, crying silently as I stroke short circles in his hair.
“I’m so sorry,” he cries. “Sorry for everything.” His grip tightens, threating to crack my ribs in half, but through the pain, I find the strength of healing. “I’ll never stop loving you,” he whispers against my ear and pulls away. He smiles a crooked smile, a forced smile if I ever saw one. This isn’t a happy man. This is a broken man. He caresses my arms lovingly. “You need to go. Your happiness is about to drive away.”
I crane my head over my shoulder to peek at the bedroom door and then back at him. “I—“
He raises his finger to the air. “Please… Don’t.”
I can’t help myself. There are three words that need to be said before I flee out that door. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he promises and steps past me, opening the door for me and motioning for me to leave.
I stand in the center of the floor for a moment more, glancing around at the pictures on the wall, and the light blue paint we chose together. I look at our bed. I look at him, and know he’s about to lose the strength to let me leave.
I rush past him, out the hallway and onto the steps. When I’m halfway down the spiral staircase, I peek up at the bedroom and see him disappear behind an oak door as it shuts.
30
I throw the screen door open and rush out into the storm, with hurricane winds puppeteering trees to their breaking point. Lightning lights the sky in short, bright flashes of blue. The wind whips and howls, twisting the long locks of my hair into my face.
I push hair out of the way as I launch the car door open and slide into the seat. With a quick twist of the ignition, I’m reversing down the long, winding gravel driveway before I’ve even pulled the door shut. The tires beneath me lose traction against the gravel and slide sideways, and into the grass, dangerously close to the edge of a ditch.
“Fuck.” I pound the steering wheel with an open fist and throw the car into drive. The tires spin against mud, sending slick dirt into the air. I shift into reverse and spin the wheel all the way into the opposite direction. It doesn’t work in my favor as my car slides further to the side, and deeper into the grass.
I bow my head against the steering wheel and let out a soft scream. My lips quiver on the edge of a breakdown. I jump out of the car and take a quick snapshot of the cars position. Maybe if I push it from the back, I can get it back on the gravel. I lean across the seat and push the car into neutral, then make my way to the back of the car to shove.
The muscles in my arms strain as I fight against the mud, but my feet lose traction too. I slip and tumble hard against the ground, my head cracking against a fallen tree branch and my body stained with mud. I peer up to the night sky. Nothing but clouds and a torrential downpour of rain that washes the tears from my face.
I groan as I climb to my knees and then onto my feet. My eyes shift back to the house, and my heart sinks into my stomach when I see Brock standing at our bedroom window, watching me struggle against mother nature.
I see everything in a flash, and everything that once made sense, no longer does. And what didn’t make sense before, now becomes obvious. Even though we’re separated by a good hundred feet, I can make out every feature of his face, and the tears that paint a fresh coat over his aging features.
He’s watching me leave, maybe forever and it’s an image I can’t shake. I look back at my car, and then the road I should be traveling on. Then back at the house. I swallow a nervous lump in my throat, but it’s not nerves I’m swallowing. It’s fear. It’s sorrow. It’s a sudden stark realization that is the biggest blind side of them all.
My feet dig into the mud. Deeper and deeper, until the heels of my shoes are buried beneath the ground. I breathe, hard and fast, and then I’m racing toward the house, screaming, “Brock!”
He places his palm against the window, and the power to the house is cut. The field in front of the house, resting on a hill, goes pitch-black, and all I can see is a faint outline of the white exterior of the aging home. A transformer explodes beside the house, shocking the black sky with a spider web of deathly voltage, painting the porch in a foreboding shade of blue.
Brock throws the screen door open and gallops down the concrete steps. My heart races, pounds, sparks something in me I believed long lied dormant. When I can’t run any longer, I push myself somehow to run even faster until we meet in the center of the hill and I launch myself into his arms and there’s no hesitation on his end to catch me, cupping his strong hands around the curves of my ass as I lower trembling lips to meet his.
I kiss him deep and hard, chewing at his lip and swallowing his tongue. He tastes of rainwater, smooth and wet. He pulls me inside out, stealing whatever little breath I have left, devouring me, owning me, surrendering himself to me.
My breathing irregular, sharp and ragged, I pull away from his kiss and he lowers me to stand on my feet.
“What the hell are you doing?” he questions, but the answer should be obvious.
“I remember,” I sob. “I remember everything. I remember the way we used to be and how happy we were, and how happy we can be again.”
“What about Kemper?” His shoulders rise and fall as the blue sparks behind him recede into the night sky. “What about him?”
It’s an answer I hadn’t thought about, but it’s an answer that doesn’t matter anymore. It can’t matter. “I love you,” I struggle to get the words out, not because I don’t mean them, but because I’m finding it more and more difficult to breathe. “I always have and I always will.”
“Are you sure?” he screams over a roaring fit of thunder. “Are you in it for good?”
I nod. “I’m in it.” I throw my palm against his cheek. “We can be happy together,” I reiterate, needing him to believe the sentiment the same way I believe them. “We’re both royal fuckups,” I force a laugh, “but you were right. We took vows and in this spinning world, they have to mean something because if they don’t, then everything else is a lie.”
He closes whatever little distance is between us and pulls me into his chest, his fingers curling through soaked hair. “I love you Stassi Hamilton.”
“I love you too, Brock,” I whisper, unsure if he’s able to hear me as I take refuge in his chest, warm serenity and absolution. I’m at peace for the first time in the longest time, but I know the path ahead will be riddled with complications. But I survived the storm.
And as we stand in the pouring rain, underneath the most violent of skies, I like to think I’m a bird, soaring over the farmhouse with a unique perspective of the display on the ground. And as I fly away, the trees and dirt roads give way to a small town situated in the thick of a forest with a few thousand people lost in the struggle that is their lives, but at the end of each and every storm, they persevere.
Town after town, it’s all the same until I fly over the winding towers of a metropolis. The people there are the same, too. Further and further, my wings take me to new lands, until I reach the ocean and in a little shack lives a man, sheltered from the pain of this world. He’s happy and he’s free, and he’s found love in this impossible world, but that love he found just isn’t with me.
Epilogue
We’re old and grey, our bond in love stronger than it ever were before. Our bones are brittle and our beauty long ago faded. The sun settles beneath the forest across the way, with the shadows of tall trees billowing across the road and onto the sloped hill. Side by side, we rock in chairs, enjoying the cool, end of summer breeze.
This farmhouse is stained with memories of the good times, and memories of the bad times. They serve as a constant reminder that love is eternal, even when it appears irrevocably broken.
&
nbsp; At once, we were trapped by our dreams, an idealization of what our lives should have looked like. We were both dreamers, but somewhere along the way, we lost sight of who we were when we saw our dreams were dashed away like thunder in the night. We didn’t always do the right things, and when we did, it reeked of failure, as if somehow the truth was just as dangerous as freedom.
My world spiraled out of control that fateful night when metal tore through metal, and sliced open the wounds of my marriage. For the longest time, I blamed my husband for the events that unfolded that night, but with hindsight and wisdom, I’ve come to rest the blame on the shoulders of whom it belongs, the twisted sensibility of tragedy.
Tragedies are unavoidable in life, and they test us. They pull at our heartstrings, and rip the carpet from beneath us. I used to believe that only the strong could recover, and that left me reeling and sent me down a path where the love I had for myself was conditional. He showed me otherwise.
I think about Kemper all the time, and the way he made me feel, and the way it wasn’t really about him and I at all. He awoken something in me that long lied dormant. He saw me for who I was, and reached his strong hand into my heart and pulled it to the surface. At once, I was drowning in misery and pain. And he saved my soul in every way a soul could ever be saved.
The last time I saw him, we were standing in the pouring rain outside of a run-down motel. I never heard from him again, and sometimes, that leaves a burden on my soul. Looking back, again with hindsight and wisdom, I wish I could have told him what he meant to me. I mean, really, truly told him how he saved me. But I know he’s out there somewhere, and he’s happy, and he’s free, and he loves someone who deserves his love, in the same way he loved me. Without rules. Without limits. Without hesitation. Without condition.
I love Brock—yesterday, today, and tomorrow—because I loved Kemper.
I was his teacher, and he was my student.
