Breathe

by Melanie McCullough

  “Hey guys,” he shot back, his voice was too loud, and his words rushed. He was barely able to contain his excitement. If things kept going the way they were he might actually believe he had a shot with Abby.

  Abby inched closer to my hip, preferring me to Jeff. I tried to ignore how happy that made me. “Maybe you were right and we should’ve stayed home,” she whispered in my ear, sending chills down my spine.

  “I’m always right. When will you learn that?”

  “So you guys going down to the river after?” Jeff asked, hope evident in his voice. This was embarrassing. I kinda felt bad for the guy, but at the same time, it annoyed me that he assumed Abby and I weren’t together. By now, everyone should know Zoe and I had broken up. Abby would know soon too. I tried not to think about that. About what would cross her mind when she found out. Whether or not she would even care.

  “Yeah man, we’ll be there,” I replied.

  “Awesome,” he said and smiled again at Abby before turning his attention back to the field.

  I wanted to punch him in his perfect mouth, like I had Nolan Carter. But Nolan was being a major douche and had deserved it. Jeff was just being nice and hitting on a girl that, as far as he knew, was single. He couldn’t know how I felt about her. To be honest, I didn’t even know. Wait, that wasn’t right. I’d always known exactly how I felt about Abby. I loved her.

  She was my best friend. One of only three people on Earth I couldn’t imagine life without. The others were my mother and my brother. Everybody else could suck it.

  “I’m ready to go when you are,” I told her.

  Her lips curled upward but she shook her head. We would stay. Nothing would change. Everything would continue to be normal.

  ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  Later, at the river, Abby drank. A lot. Which was unusual because Abby didn’t drink. I always tried cutting back during training, but Abby never had a drop. Ever. “Don’t you ever want to just relax,” I’d once asked her.

  She’d looked at me like I’d grown an extra head. “Do I strike you as the laid-back type?” she’d replied then.

  Now she was chasing beer with scotch. Cheap stuff too. Misappropriated from someone’s dad’s liquor cabinet no doubt. Kids around here didn’t go out of their way to purchase scotch. This was clearly a last resort. Maybe they’d started carding again at the liquor store outside of town.

  Bodies packed the clearing by the river. In the distance, a radio played country music and the people swayed together, too slow for the up-tempo beat, but unable to stop trying to touch one another. On one side, the river reflected the bright light of the full moon. On the other, a thick layer of trees separated us from town we were all drinking to obliterate from our memory. And in the middle, atop a patch of grass beaten down to dirt, a giant bonfire raged. The temperature had plummeted along with the sun and I found myself grateful for the warmth the fire provided. Turned out Abby had been right and I should’ve worn a sweater.

  Surrounding the fire were benches fashioned out of downed tree trunks. Abby straddled one, turned toward and conversing solely with Jeff Walker who kept refilling her plastic cup like its emptiness was offensive. I couldn’t blame him really. Abby was smiling. Happy. It was one of the few times in the last week that I’d seen her really enjoy herself. I’d have done anything to keep that look on her face myself.

  “So you about ready to remove your head from your ass?” I heard Zoe ask from behind me. I didn’t bother turning so a moment later she moved in front of me. She knew my weakness—I couldn’t ignore her if I could see her. And now, with the firelight flickering, its glow highlighting the various shades of gold in her hair, she was even more attractive than usual.

  “What we’re not speaking now?” she asked.

  “You were the one looking all pissy out on the field,” I reminded her. “I assumed you didn’t want to be friends.”

  Zoe pouted, her lower lip jutting out in an unattractive expression she thought was cute. Clearly, I wasn’t responding how she imagined I should. “Of course I don’t want to be friends,” she whined. “I want us to go back to the way things were. For things to be normal.”

  There was that word again. Normal. What the hell was everyone’s obsession with normalcy? As Zoe continued to speak, expressing her desire for us to be a couple once more, I watched Jeff and Abby. He leaned in, whispered something to her. She laughed. I wondered what was so damn funny.

  “Did you even hear a word I just said?” Zoe’s brown eyes were on fire. Not from the flames. This was angry fire.

  “No,” I admitted. She wasn’t my girlfriend anymore. I didn’t have to pretend to be interested in what she had to say.

  Swiveling around, Zoe followed my line of sight to Abby. “Please tell me you’re not breaking up with me for her.”

  And there it was. Proof that Zoe’s beauty ceased at her skin. If a person could fail to see Abby’s worth, they weren’t looking hard enough. “Have you’ve forgotten the conversation we had this morning? Who insisted I choose between the two of you?”

  Zoe turned back to me and looked down at her shoes. They were heels. High. Red. Perfect choice for the soggy ground. “I thought you’d choose me,” she admitted.

  I took a swig from my beer bottle, keeping my gaze locked on Abby and away from Zoe’s hair. Jeff laughed. Abby smiled. My heart ached. “Then you don’t know me too well,” I told Zoe. “Abby’s my best friend.”

  Jeff rose, extending his hand to Abby. She clasped it in her own. Held his hand while he led her away from the crowd and into the woods. People went into the woods to make out. Abby was going to make out with Jeff. Here I was breaking up with the hottest girl in school while Abby was planning to hook up with Jeff-fucking-Walker.

  “You’re doing it again,” Zoe accused.

  “What’s that?”

  “Ignoring me.”

  I focused my attention on Zoe. Her soft hair. Her bright eyes. Her full lips. That spot on her neck where she liked to be kissed. “Do you love me?” I asked. The question must have caught her off guard because she blinked a few times before regaining her composure and mumbling an answer.

  “Of course,” she lied.

  I don’t know what I was looking for. It’s not like she’d never said it to me before. She said it when I dropped her off at her house and she kissed me goodnight. Said it when we ended telephone conversations and she wrote it at the end of all her texts. I guess maybe I was hoping to see it show, like for real, in her eyes. But they were just words. Sounds. Syllables. Worthless. Pointless.

  “Excuse me,” I said as I brushed past her and crossed the clearing.

  “Garrett,” she called after me, but I didn’t turn back. Even my name floating from her mouth sounded hollow, as if it meant no more than the hundreds of others she’d said in her lifetime.

  In the woods, I searched for Abby. Followed sounds I didn’t want to hear. In a moment, Abby’s sweater was beneath my foot. I leaned down, picked it up. In front of me, backed up against a tree, Abby stood with Jeff. Her turquoise tank top sat crumpled atop a pile of leaves at her feet and Jeff’s mouth was on her collarbone, his hand cupping her breast.

  “Hey,” I shouted as I moved toward them.

  Jeff’s head shot up, his eyes flicking to me as he took a step back. “What the hell man?”

  Pushing Jeff away from Abby with one hand, I shoved the hoodie I held in the other into her chest. “She’s drunk douchebag,” I spat at Jeff.

  “What are you, her mother?”

  “Nah, her mother would care as little as you do.” I picked up Jeff’s T-shirt from the ground and tossed it at him. “Just get outta here.”

  “Don’t think that’s your call to make.” Jeff stared me down, his eyes hard. It was the most determined I’d ever seen him. I imagined that if brought that kind of passion to the pool he might win a race or two.

  Turning back to Abby, I waited. She pulled the hoodie on over her bra and zipped it up to her chin, her bottom lip
trembling. “Go, Jeff,” she ordered.

  I turned a self-satisfied smile in his direction. “You heard the lady,” I told him.

  “Abby…” he pleaded.

  “Just go,” she said.

  His expression turned sour. “Fine,” he snapped, walking away and pulling his t-shirt over his head, glaring at me as he passed. Fuck him.

  “Jesus, Abby,” I breathed once he’d dragged his sorry ass back to the bonfire.

  “Nothing happened.” She refused to look at me. Kept her gaze fixed on the ground. On the tank top beside her. She hadn’t put it back on.

  “What if I hadn’t come looking for you?”

  “Nothing happened,” she insisted, still staring at the shirt.

  “It didn’t look like nothing from where I stood.”

  She bent over, picked up the shirt, and threw it at me. “Look at it,” she screeched.

  My stomach knotted. To be honest, I was afraid of what I might find, but I unfurled the shirt anyway. Small, splotchy stains peppered the front. I’d expected something a little more shocking. “Okay, Ab, what am I looking at?”

  “I’ve washed it three times,” she told me.

  “Okay…”

  “It won’t come out.”

  “But what is it?” I still couldn’t understand how a few stains on a tank top had anything to do with letting Jeff Walker grope her in the woods.

  Abby raised her eyebrows, creating small creases in the smooth, pale skin of her forehead. “It’s his,” she insisted as if I should have known the answer all along.

  I glanced again at the rust colored stains and finally understood what she was attempting to explain. It was his. It was Tom Ford’s blood.

  Chapter Four

  Abby

  I’d met Tom Ford about a year prior to his death. “I’ll have a beer,” were the first words he said to me. Lounging in a low-back barstool surrounding a small round table with three other guys, he had handed me his credit card and told me to start a tab.

  “Large crowd for a Tuesday,” I leaned over the bar and remarked to Uncle Jim.

  He’d looked up from his crouched position behind the bar and stopped shelving freshly washed pilsner glasses. “Biggest crowd we’ve had in weeks,” he’d agreed and pulled himself up to his full height. It always amazed me that Uncle Jim and I shared the same genes. He was massive and I was slight, like my mother. “What d’ya need?” he asked.

  “Four bottles of Miller Light for the guys at table seven.” I’d placed the credit card on the bar top. “Oh, and the tall one says to start a tab.”

  Uncle Jim eyed the group at table seven, turned, pulled four bottles from the refrigerator behind him, and then placed them on a tray. “Have Becca take ‘em their drinks.”

  “What?” I’d laughed. “Why?”

  He’d glanced at the group again. “’Cause I don’t like the looks of ‘em.”

  I’d chuckled then, thinking my uncle was merely being overprotective. “You just don’t like strangers,” I’d replied and looked over my shoulder at the four men. “They seem harmless enough.”

  Now I stood in the woods, Garrett holding my bloodied shirt, wondering what Uncle Jim had seen in those first few seconds that I had escaped my notice.

  Garrett face was crestfallen. Looked as if I’d kicked him in the gut. In a way, I suppose I had. He couldn’t have expected to find me in the woods with Jeff Walker. Hell, I hadn’t expected to find me in the woods with Jeff. Not after last week. Not after we Garrett and I…

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized.

  Garrett gawked at the shirt in his hands. “You wore this here?” He was practically shrieking at me. “What in the hell were you thinking?”

  The plan had actually been a simple one—wear the shirt to the bonfire and somehow toss it in. But sitting around, the crowd growing thicker by the minute and Jeff refusing to leave me alone, I’d had no opportunity to remove it. “I needed to get rid of it,” I confessed. “I figured the fire was my best bet.”

  Garrett slid down the trunk of the tree behind him, coming to a rest at its base. I moved across the small clearing to crawl beside him and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. Pulled me closer. A week ago, I’d wanted nothing more than for Garrett to hold me. A week ago, I’d thought things between us could change. But a week ago I didn’t have Tom Ford’s blood on my clothes.

  “I wasn’t about to strip in front of the entire crowd and I thought it would be weird if I disappeared into the woods myself,” I tried to explain.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me to help you?”

  I watched him ball my tiny shirt up—he easily concealed it in one of his large hands—and I knew he was right. If I’d asked for his help, I wouldn’t have had to let Jeff Walker fondle me. I wouldn’t even have had to wear the disgusting garment again. But then I would have had to admit that I couldn’t handle things on my own.

  The silence between us grew louder with each second I failed to provide an answer. I concentrated on the little twitch in his jaw that appeared when he was upset and tried to remember to breathe. Inhale and exhale. Just like swimming, fluid and exact.

  Moments later, he withdrew from our embrace and stood, extending his hand to help me to my feet. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  He always did. When all else failed, I knew Garrett would take care of it. And so I waited alone in the truck while he returned to the bonfire, and wrestled with the images from that night a week ago in my mind—the river cold and black beneath the moonless sky. The way the water fell from Garrett’s hair. His smile. His lips nearing mine. I’d wished then for the ability to stop time, to freeze that image, so I would always know that look in his eyes. Now I didn’t know if he’d ever be able to look at me that way again.

  I turned the rearview mirror in my direction and studied my reflection in the dark. It scared me how much I looked like Maggie. We shared the same deep-set green eyes. Same heart shaped face. My large forehead and high-arched brows, were her forehead and her brows. My thin, straight nose, full lips, pale skin, even the freckles that dotted my face—all Maggie. If not for the assistance of a few bottles of Loreal, we’d even have the same hair color.

  Of course, I knew our resemblance went much deeper than the shade of our skin and our bone structure. There was disquiet in our eyes. Like a war veteran who knew and had seen too much to ever be fully settled. You wait, constantly on edge, for something to go wrong, for someone to confirm your suspicions. For the world to prove you right. I didn’t want to look like Maggie. Wanted even less to be like her. But I couldn’t fight my DNA.

  While smoothing the lines beneath my tired eyes I caught a glimpse of Jeff Walker in the rearview mirror passing behind the truck with an arm slung over the shoulder of a girl whose name I didn’t know. Probably the friend of a local kid, visiting for the weekend. He’d certainly moved on quickly.

  I was thinking how grateful I was that the night was dark and he couldn’t see me inside the truck, when the driver’s side door opened and clicked shut. Garrett’s scent, mingled with the smell of charred wood, filled the interior. I counted his breaths. Seven before he turned toward me. I lifted my eyes to meet his gaze and in an instant, his mouth was on mine, hot and frantic, searching. As if somewhere in my mouth laid the answers he was looking for.

  The sting of rejection that I recognized in his eyes when I was the first to pull away stabbed at my heart. I guess he didn’t find what he needed. It was probably for the best anyway. If I was going under, no way in hell I was dragging Garrett down with me.

  Chapter Five

  Abby

  The next morning the swim team traveled to Clarksburg where we had our asses handed to us by their mediocre team. Guess they hadn’t all partied the night before and shown up hung-over. I swore I could see fumes rising from Coach Scott’s bald head.

  The medley relay was almost comical, with some of us forgetting to go when the swimmer in the pool touched the wall. Jeff took the w
orst of it. When he clocked in on the fifty-meter freestyle at almost a minute, Coach near about had a stroke.

  “You’re gonna have to do better than that if you want to impress Penn State, Rhoades,” Coach Scott had shouted at me after I failed to win the one hundred meter butterfly. I pushed harder just to prove I could, winning my next three events and losing the fourth.

  I had driven down with Uncle Jim and Becca in Becca’s maroon Chevy Tahoe. Garrett hadn’t called since he dropped me off the night before and he hadn’t been at the meet. So as we drove back home I wondered if he was still angry with me over the Jeff thing, or the him kissing me and me not reciprocating thing.

  I tried not to think that the last time I’d made this trip, it had been with Tom. It was the week Becca’s dad had moved into hospice, right before the lung cancer took him, and she and Uncle Jim were in Pittsburgh spending what time was left with him. Garrett was driving down with his father and though Coach Scott would surely have given me a ride had I asked, Tom had volunteered to take me. It was the first time anyone other than Uncle Jim and Becca had shown the slightest interest in my swimming.

  I won that day—every event I swam—and racked up pool records that remain unbeaten to this day. And when it was over Tom took me out for a celebratory dinner. “I swam in high school,” he’d told me over my mouth-watering meal of lasagna and Coke. “Back in Danville.”

  “Really?” I’d asked and I’d been genuinely interested. Tom had been nothing but nice to me since he’d begun seeing Maggie a few weeks prior. When he showed up for dates and brought Maggie a dozen roses, he’d always have a single calla lily (my favorite flower) for me. And since they’d started going out, Maggie seemed sober more of the time, like she was trying to keep herself together. I remembered wondering what a man like Tom—tall, muscular, handsome, and so put together—had seen in someone like Maggie. I’d learned the answer later but by that point it had been too late.