by S. Celi
She looked at me again with the kind of stare she only reserved for the most serious situations. “You know what I mean.”
“That we can’t be together in public.”
“Yeah,” she said. “And sometimes I think that’s going to kill me.”
I kissed her again, once, just because I didn’t know what I should say. She fell into me like she wanted it, expected it, and she didn’t say anything else after. Instead, she just rolled off of me and fell into a troubled sleep.
LOOKING BACK ON it, I knew. I knew from the beginning, from the first night that we slept together, that the guilt and the secrecy would kill me. I should have been used to the secrets and the lies that came with life as a Chadwick, but my nights with Avery only made me resent all of that more. The secrets held me hostage like invisible ropes that wrapped around my wrists and threatened to reveal themselves at any moment.
By the middle of August, I stopped sleeping. It brought me nothing except nightmares, anyway. I dreamed about tornadoes, about storms that washed away everything I cared about, and I relived that day, the day from the past that changed everything for Avery and me. I’d wake more troubled than when I’d fallen asleep, groggy and disgusted with myself in the morning, and I didn’t like that either.
So I stopped.
One day passed without a full night’s sleep, then two, five, and seven. I entered the waking nightmare of the insomniac zombie. During the day, I drank endless Diet Cokes and took caffeine pills; the combination allowed me enough energy to function at my new job with dad’s company. At night, I lay in bed with my arms wrapped around Avery as I tried to figure out a way to have her for real, a way to progress our relationship from veiled and embarrassed secrecy to something else, something our family might accept. Something that saved the future I wanted, her, and the rest of our family.
But no matter how much I thought about it, a viable plan for all of that didn’t come. I’d have to give up everything if I wanted a life with her. But I knew that, in the end, would be the right decision.
“What if we just told them?” I said one Sunday night, the same night that marked Day Eight of no real sleep. Avery had just turned over on her right side in bed. Her breathing hadn’t changed, and I knew she hadn’t fallen asleep either.
“Tell them?” she said after a minute. “You mean tell our parents?”
My hand found her shoulder and I pulled her flat on her back so that she faced me, though I couldn’t see her face in the darkness. “Tomorrow. We can sit them down, tell them about us, and just be done with it.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know,” I said. “But so what? This whole thing has been crazy since the beginning anyway.”
She pulled herself against my chest. I loved it when she did that because her body was soft and against mine, and I was always cold and prickly, even in bed next to her.
Sometimes people carry their guilt in strange places. That summer, mine seeped out of my skin.
“We can’t tell them, Spencer.”
“Then we’re on a train to nowhere.”
“I know,” she whispered, then kissed my chest right in the middle, just above a small patch of chest hair. “But can’t we keep this our secret just a little while longer?”
“The longer this goes on, the worse I think it will be,” I said. “And the harder it will be for both of us.”
“You’ve stopped sleeping.”
“I thought I was doing a good job of hiding that.”
“Not from me.”
“I haven’t slept in eight days,” I said.
“Nine.”
“Nine?” I blinked at her, stunned.
I knew the days had begun to blur, but it bothered me that they’d blurred that much. I had been so hopeful when I got on the plane in Cape Town; I couldn’t wait to fly home. For weeks, I’d worked on a plan, figuring out ways to stay in control, to prove my worth to my father, and to take my rightful place in the Chadwick family. None of that included a forbidden relationship with Avery, no matter how many times I had fantasized about her naked body over the last two years. Of course, now that I had her, I didn’t want to give her up ever again.
But I also didn’t want to keep on lying.
“You need to sleep, Spencer,” she said. “You can’t go on like this.”
“Sleep just makes things worse.”
“Why?” She pulled her hand from mine and began tracing a figure-eight on my chest, her index finger weaving in and out of my chest hair.
“Because when I sleep, all I see is you.” I pulled her closer to me so that now most of her body pushed against me. Her feet wrapped around mine, our legs twisted like two pretzels, and I felt the bracelet once again when she wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “We have to tell them at some point. We can’t live like this.”
“I can,” she said, and the way she said it made me wonder if she really could.
“That’s because you’re a professional at hiding things.” My hand fingered the bracelet. “You’re still wearing this.”
“I don’t plan on taking it off until it falls off.” She took two long breaths. “And as far as hiding things go, I got good at that years ago.” She trailed off and I knew she didn’t want to have that conversation, the conversation we’d both been avoiding since I came home.
“Anyway” Avery said, “I know how to play the Chadwick game, even though I’m not officially a Chadwick.”
“Tell that to all those social girls vying for your attention, like at the CSO event. They seem to think you’re a Chadwick.”
She raised her head from my chest and shifted so that she could run her hand through my hair. “I know what it takes to hold it together, that’s all.”
Then she yawned. “God, it’s almost 2AM. Gotta get some sleep. Tennis match tomorrow at 8.”
I pulled her head back to my chest, and my hand found its familiar and coveted place in her hair once more. She melted to me again as if she had always been there. “Go to sleep,” I said, knowing full well I wouldn’t follow.
“We’ll tell them soon. Just give me a little bit more time,” she said, her voice growing thicker and more tired each second. “Let’s just go to sleep.”
“I’ll try,” I lied, my fingers now braiding and twisting her hair. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping at all, though.
Instead, I stayed awake, listening to the birds which often sang at night outside my bedroom window. They reminded me of squeaking wheels, but I listened anyway. Soon, Avery’s breath evened out and she clicked her teeth a few times, grinding them together as she dreamed.
Once the morning light began to stream through the window, I saw something I hadn’t noticed any of the nights before. A small cut traveled the length of Avery’s left wrist, just above the place where her arm connected to her hand. When I leaned closer, the red rim of the cut jumped out at me. I’d seen cuts like this one on her before, two years earlier, when the burden we’d carried had felt larger than an iceberg. Just seeing it again made my stomach twist.
We were on a collision course with destiny and if we weren’t careful, the fragile life we led would explode.
I kissed Avery’s wrist once, and she stirred. Then I fell back onto my pillow and tried to shut out a tsunami of dread.
WE DIDN’T GET around to telling our parents about our relationship, though, and another week passed.
I still didn’t sleep much, except for the occasional fifteen-minute nap at my desk in the office Dad had given me, along with my new fancy title of Executive Vice President of Urban Development. My office had a door, a small desk, shelves, and a window on one side with a view of Procter & Gamble, and a window on the other with a view of the cubicles that housed the marketing and development team of Dad’s fifty-plus employees. Seven of them reported to me, and when we had bi-weekly group meetings in the conference room, they tossed out as many ides as they could about ways to get new business in our company’s key cities: Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Ind
ianapolis, and Kansas City.
Lucky for me, these meetings mostly ran themselves. Everyone on the team had at least five years of real-life business experience, and while they might have hated reporting to the boss’s son, they never showed it.
In other words, at least I found my new job pretty easy. So easy, in fact, that I managed to snag those fifteen-minute naps at around a quarter past three every day just by shutting my door and closing the blinds. No one ever needed or bothered me.
In fact, Dad gave me a salary of $175,000 and a spot on the board for this bullshit.
Other people would have been grateful. Thankful. I came home, asked my father for a chance in the company, and he gave me one with a plush salary and benefits. In a way, I had everything I wanted. Everything I had thought I wanted back at the end of my time in the Peace Corps. Countless times, though, I had lied to myself. By mid-month, I couldn’t lie about it anymore. I didn’t just come home for a chance at the money and a shot at my birthright. I came home so that I could see Avery again.
Now that I had more of her than I had ever hoped for in South Africa, I never wanted to lose her. Screw the Chadwick last name and all of our ‘obligations.’ They meant less and less to me each day.
Nine days after I last talked to Avery about telling our parents, they threw a “last blast of summer” dinner party on the wide stone back porch and veranda of the house. Linda loved to coordinate this party, too—always a lobster and clam bake with Cajun flair, and more wine than an Italian restaurant. Each year, she invited a select group of guests, people she said would mingle well together and people Dad wanted to influence.
That night, as the party guests arrived, I found a place on one of the veranda’s large couches. From there, I watched them over the rim of a glass of Diet Coke as they mingled and kissed each other’s cheeks, exclaiming their sadness over the end of summer and asking my stepmother where she planned to spend Labor Day.
Palm Beach, of course.
Linda and Dad always vacationed at The Breakers over that long weekend. They liked how quiet South Florida could be during some of the hottest months of the year, and they’d never been too friendly with the New Yorkers and East Coasters who vacationed in the 561 during the winter.
Grant arrived at the party as I finished my second glass of Diet Coke. He wore seersucker pants and a cream polo shirt, his usual uniform for this party. I didn’t stand when he walked over to the couch, and when he noticed, he shrugged and took a seat in the large chair that faced me.
“You look festive,” he said. One side of his lips twisted, as if he might break out into a smile at any second.
“This is a party, right?” I placed the empty glass on the side table by the couch. When I did, the table creaked and shook as if the glass had tipped the scales and the legs couldn’t bear the weight.
Grant settled further in to the chair and propped the ankle of his left leg on the knee of his right. Just over his shoulder, I had a direct line of sight to Avery. She had on a killer blue lace sundress, and I wondered for a moment if she wore it just to torture me. The straps of the dress tied around her neck and made her breasts appear about two sizes bigger than normal.
“Hey, bro, are you listening?” Grant said, snapping my attention back to him. “Spencer. What’s going on? Have you heard a word that I’ve said?”
I shook my head and he cursed.
“You gotta stop this, man,” he said.
“Stop what?” I thought about a Diet Coke, then reconsidered. Getting a refill would take me right past Avery, and that could be dangerous. It was bad enough to see her look so hot from far away. Closer, it would be much, much worse.
“This. Whatever you’re doing.” He stared at me. “You look like hell.”
“Hell?” I feigned innocence. “That bad?”
“Yeah, hell. You know I have no trouble calling you on your shit,” he said. “You look like you haven’t slept in a month.”
“I pretty much haven’t.”
“You drinking, too?” he said. “Like drinking heavily?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “No, not heavily. Not really.”
“You sure about that?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Fine. If you don’t want to talk about it, then that’s your deal,” he said and then glanced back at the party. “You just look like shit, and I know when my oldest friend isn’t okay.”
I swallowed back some of the ice at the bottom of my cup. “Really weird being at work.” I chewed some of the ice. “Especially living here.”
“I can tell.” He tapped his fingers on the side of the armchair. “You can always move out, you know. I heard Avery’s planning on doing that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Where did you hear that?”
“Oh, I guess she said something to my cousin about it, or maybe she mentioned it on Facebook, I don’t know.” He grinned. “Man, what the hell is going on with you? You sound so defensive.”
“I wouldn’t call it defensive,” I said, one eye still on Avery, who remained in my line of sight and just over Grant’s shoulder. As I watched, she finished talking to one of Linda’s friends from Junior League, waved to them, turned around, and walked toward the veranda doors, clearly headed back inside the house.
“Excuse me,” I said to Grant once she disappeared through the doorway. “I need to go check on something.”
Then I stood and walked away before he could stop me.
“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” I asked Avery when I found her alone in the kitchen. She stood next to the island, which Henry and two other caterers had piled high with what remained of the lobster, extra place settings, napkins and half-empty wine bottles.
“What are you doing?”
“I asked you first,” I said as I reached her.
“Nothing. Just thinking.” She ran her index finger around the top lip of a bottle of French rosé. Her finger traced smooth circles around the lip of it, over and over. “Just couldn’t stand it out there, having to pretend all the time.”
“It’s starting to bother you?”
“I know we have to tell them. I know. It’s been bothering me, Spencer.” A pause. “I haven’t wanted to admit it, but I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.”
I gulped as I studied her. A deep frown marred her beautiful forehead, and her bloodshot eyes added to the strain and stress on her face. Whatever mask she wore to hide her true emotions had started cracking, and I wondered how long before it would crumble.
“I’ve decided I can’t do this anymore. I can’t fake it.” She nodded at the oblivious party outside. “I can’t.”
“Do you want to tell them?”
Avery poured herself a glass of what remained in the wine bottle. “I want to, but I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared. No matter what happens, I’m not leaving you,” I said. “I left you once. I failed you. I let you down, but that’s not going to happen again. I promise.”
My hand found her shoulder, and when it did, she turned her body in my direction. I stood about a half inch away from her, and everything was amplified. Everything. The fruity fragrance of her hair. The gentle rhythm of her breath. The slow blinking of her eyes. The sadness that tugged at her lips.
All of her.
“We’ll tell them,” I said. “We’ll tell them tomorrow. No more secrets. No more lies.”
“They’ll disown us.” She looked at her feet. “They won’t understand. No one out there will understand.”
“It doesn’t matter to me. All of this . . . All of these lies . . . it’s all bullshit.” I cupped her chin. “Nothing matters but us. Nothing.”
“But what about the company? Everything you’ve worked for.”
“I don’t care about any of it,” I said. “It can all go away. As long as you—”
“As long as you what?”
Linda’s voice cut through the kitchen like an arrow on the way to a target. I hadn’t heard anything
that sharp in my life, and Avery jumped back a little when she heard it, too. In an instant, the pensive sadness on her face had transformed into an expression of sheer terror.
“Mom.” Avery was white as a sheet.
Linda stood at the doorway with an empty salad bowl in her left hand and her right hand on her hip. Behind her, the soft laughter of party guests floated into the kitchen. Linda held her mouth in a hard line, and the color drained from her face.
“Linda,” I said. “Avery and I were just talking.”
“I can see that.” She didn’t move. “Talking is an interesting word for it.”
Avery stepped away from me and gave her mother a thousand-watt smile. In a nanosecond her sadness faded to the background with the skill of a beauty queen. Anyone who walked in the kitchen from that moment onward would have no idea she’d been upset just seconds before.
“I’ve been having some problems with Mitchell,” she told her mother. “We aren’t getting along.” She nodded at me. “And Spencer was helping me figure it out.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Is that so?”
A small frown knitted Linda’s eyebrows together, the only indication I had that something was amiss. It was enough, though, to tell me everything. She didn’t like what she’d seen. No, Linda didn’t like this, at all.
Of course, I couldn’t acknowledge that, at all. Better to just pretend she didn’t see anything, to act like everything in the Chadwick family was normal.
“Mitchell’s an asshole,” I said, and walked over to the screen door that separated the kitchen from the terrace. “And Avery just needed some advice.”
With a nod at my stepmother, I opened the door and rejoined the dinner party. When Linda didn’t follow me back out to the guests, I exhaled and let the tension in my back relax.
LOOKING BACK, THOUGH, I should have seen it coming.
I didn’t.
Instead, I convinced myself that Linda didn’t really see anything at all. I started telling myself this when I retook my seat at the dinner party, and by the time I fell asleep next to Avery that night, that lie had grown large enough to wrap around us like a blanket.
