Many Waters

by William Woodall

  Chapter Twenty-Five - Lisa

  I could see Cody’s agony, and hated myself for it. I felt lower than a wad of used gum on the bottom of a hooker’s second-best shoes. It was all I could do not to break down and tell him the truth. Instead, I bit my lip hard enough to bring blood and made sure the camera had a good view.

  “Don’t blame Marcus either; he was just as messed up as I was. He wouldn’t have done it either, if he’d been sober,” I told him.

  Any other time I knew he would have respected me for that, for not letting Marcus take all the blame. But as it was, I guess he must have been too torn up inside to care anymore.

  “Well, what were y’all doing at a party like that, anyway?” he demanded, with real anger in his voice.

  “I thought it was only a fish fry. Just somethin’ fun to do and get out of the house for a little while because me and Jenny haven’t been getting along too well here lately. It was at Tommy Jones’s house,” I told him.

  “Well, that was your first mistake, darlin’. Everybody in town knows Tommy Jones is a meth head. All you have to do is look at his rotten teeth,” he said.

  “I didn’t know. I don’t keep up with the town gossip, and I didn’t even see Tommy at the party at all,” I said.

  “Well, maybe not,” he admitted, “but Marcus should have known; they used to be friends.”

  “He said Tommy told him it was only a fish fry, nothing else,” I said.

  “Then he’s stupid, too, for believing it,” he said savagely, fury filling his voice. I winced; he was basically (if obliquely) calling me stupid right along with Marcus, but I couldn’t get mad about it or I’d blow my cover. Oh, I hated this.

  “But I don’t care who knew what, when. When y’all got to the house and saw for sure what the deal was, then you should have turned around and left right then,” he went on, not finished yet.

  “I know,” I said softly.

  “So how come you didn’t, then?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know, Cody. I guess I didn’t want to seem like a prude, you know. I didn’t want to get ready and go all the way over there just to turn around and go home. I didn’t want Marcus to think I was scared; stuff like that. I kept telling myself we could always leave if it seemed like it was too rowdy. What can I tell you, so you won’t be mad at me for the rest of my life? Yeah, I know it was stupid, I totally and completely admit it. But haven’t you ever talked yourself into doing something even though you knew better, and then regretted it later?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, you got me there,” he admitted, and for a second the question broke his anger and he sounded utterly lost again.

  “I’m sorry, Cody,” I said, for what felt like the fortieth time.

  “Do you love Marcus?” he asked me, with an edge to his voice. It was the question I’d been dreading to hear, and I’d already made up my mind that I ought to hesitate just long enough to make him think I had feelings for Marcus that I wasn’t willing to admit. But when push came right down to shove, I couldn’t do it. Even at the risk of wrecking the whole plan, I couldn’t bring myself to answer him with anything but the truth.

  “No, Cody. I never loved anybody in my whole life except you,” I said, knowing what a deep place in his heart those words would touch. They touched him, all right; I could see it on his face. They probably hurt him more than anything else I could have said, too.

  “I never loved anybody but you, either, Lisa. That’s what makes this so hard, you know. I wanted. . . I always thought. . . “ he said, struggling to keep the tears out of his eyes. That shocked me almost more than anything; in all the years I’d known him, I’d never seen Cody crack like that.

  I could hear the pain and the grief of loss in his voice, and it was all I could do not to cry out that it was all a horrible lie, to make it not to be. A part of me was dying inside; I could feel it happening. . . some small part of me which had been innocent and pure right up till that moment had winked out like a candle in a winter’s draft, and I wondered if I’d ever in my life feel clean again after doing this to him, even to save his life.

  “Go home, Lisa,” he finally said, thickly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Go home. You shouldn’t have come here. You and me, we’re just not right for each other,” he said, and I could tell that he believed it. It was victory, of a sort; the kind of victory that left me with nothing but the taste of blood and a heart full of cold ashes.

  “Cody, no. . . don’t say that,” I said, my voice cracking. But his heart was shut and his mind was made up.

  “Come on, I’ll take you back to the airport. They ought to change your ticket and let you go back home tonight. I’ll pay the fee for you,” he said, ignoring me as he got up to put his dirty clothes back on.

  “You and me both are better off apart. Wait and see; you’ll thank me someday,” he added, and I could hear the desolation in his voice when he said it.

  I didn’t say a word the whole time while we drove back to the airport and changed my ticket, no matter how badly I wanted to speak. If I’d kept talking to him, I don’t know but what he might not have broken down and forgiven me, even then, and I didn’t dare risk that. We barely made it in time to catch the last flight out for the day, and when it was time to get on board the plane I swallowed hard, but my eyes were dry.

  “It’s better this way, Lisa, for both of us,” he repeated, and then with one last little nod, he turned and walked away.

  There was nothing I could do except get on the plane and leave. I did cry then, like I never have in my whole life, but nobody asked me what was wrong or even offered me a tissue. There were only a handful of people on the flight, and the others simply pretended not to notice the girl who was crying her heart out on the third row.

  I got myself back together again a little bit by the time we landed in Anchorage, where I had an all-night layover. I’d done Layla Latimer’s dirty work for her, and I felt like filth.