Hanging by a Moment (Keeping Score #2)

by Tawdra Kandle

  I sighed as I finally shuffled out of my bedroom and made my way to the kitchen. My dad was sitting at the table, staring into a half-drunk cup of coffee. He looked up at me and attempted a smile.

  “Hey, bud. You get a little rest?”

  “Yeah. I pretty much passed out. How about you?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. But then I woke up and your mom wasn’t next to me, so I couldn’t sleep anymore.” He pointed to the cup. “Tried to make some coffee, but I don’t like mine the way I like hers.”

  “We should go back over there. Mom and Lisa are probably tired, and they need someone else to take over so they can rest. And Quinn might need me.”

  My father sat back in his chair. “Mom texted me just before you woke up. Leo got to the house a few hours ago.”

  I dropped into a chair. “Shit. I was afraid of that.”

  “Nate.” His voice was mildly chastising.

  “I’m an adult now, a high school graduate. I can curse if I want to.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the cussing. Hell, son, say anything you want today. I was referring to what you said about Leo.”

  “What about it?” Yeah, I sounded surly, almost like a petulant child. I didn’t give one single fuck.

  “He’s here for Quinn. He’s helping. Mom said she’s finally getting some sleep.”

  I wanted to growl, but instead I just nodded. “Good. She needed it.”

  “And Nate, we’ve talked about this before.” My father paused, and I could sense his struggle, the fight between wanting to support and encourage me and needing me to understand the truth. “Quinn and Leo were apart for a year. And unless I’m mistaken, you told Quinn how you feel about her, and yet . . . nothing happened. It isn’t meant to be. So if Leo is the person who’s going to help Quinn get through the worst day of her life, you need to stand back and let him do it.”

  “I know that.” I leaned my forehead on my hand, slumping forward. “I do know it, Dad. I’m not getting in the way of anything between them. But I don’t have to like it.”

  “That’s true.” He laid a hand on my shoulder. “Okay. Let’s get ourselves together and go.”

  When we walked into Quinn’s house an hour later, it seemed as though time had stood still. Carrie was still curled on the sofa, with my mom’s arm around her shoulder. Joe came out of the kitchen, carrying a slab of lasagna on a paper plate.

  “Hey. You two get some shut-eye?”

  My dad gave Joe one of those manly half-hugs, clapping him on the back. “Yeah, a little. You’ve got to be exhausted.”

  “I conked out for quite a while on the floor.” He lowered his voice and leaned toward us. “The funeral director’s on his way over. He’s been calling since this morning, but Carrie said she wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. I finally just told him to come. So I’m not sure what she’s going to do when he gets here.”

  My dad blew out a long sigh. “Okay. Well, we’ll try to keep it low-key and hope for the best. Did Bill—does anyone know what he wanted?”

  Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we can try to get some idea from Carrie . . .” He and my father both stepped into the living room, talking quietly.

  I took advantage of the fact that all the parents were preoccupied and began climbing the steps, hoping no one would notice and try to stop me. I knew Quinn had to be upstairs in her room, and if Leo was here, he was with her.

  Hesitating outside the door, I knocked softly and then turned the knob, not sure what to expect and dreading what I might see.

  Leo sat on the end of the bed, and he looked up when the door opened. He was wearing shorts but no shirt, and his hair was messed up, as though he’d just slid out from under the covers. Holding up a finger to his lips, he glanced back over his shoulder to where Quinn lay sleeping.

  She was on her stomach, with her hair half-covering the side of her face. A sheet had been tugged up nearly to her shoulders, but I could tell she wasn’t wearing a shirt or bra even before I caught sight of her yoga pants, turned inside-out, hanging off the side of the bed.

  Leo stood up and motioned me back. I moved out of his way, and he stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him carefully.

  I waited for him to start in on me for disturbing them, but to my surprise, Leo wrapped one arm around me in a tight hug.

  “Nate.” His voice broke. “I still can’t believe it. How can this be happening?”

  For the first time in many years, I let my resentment of Leo slip away and pounded him on the back. “I know. It’s like a nightmare.”

  We both pulled back, and I jerked my head toward the bedroom. “How’s she doing?”

  Leo lifted one shoulder. “Man, I don’t know. She was mad, and then she was crying, and then after . . .” His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat. “Well, she just really broke down, and once that happened, she fell asleep. I didn’t want to move and risk waking her up, but she’s still pretty deep.” He leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t want to leave her alone, though. I promised I’d stay.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “Do you need anything? Want me to bring you up some food?” I’d eaten a leftover burger at home before we’d come back over, and my stomach had finally stopped growling.

  “Thanks, but I’ll wait until Quinn’s ready to eat.” He studied me for a minute, his face inscrutable. “Nate, about what happened before . . . last year—”

  I held up my hand. “We don’t have to talk about it now. I know I fucked up. I didn’t have any right to come between you and Quinn, and—I don’t have an excuse, except that I thought I was doing the right thing at the time.”

  “You weren’t wrong.” He leveled his gaze at me. “I was being an asshole, and if you hadn’t said it—well, I don’t know what might’ve happened. As it was, breaking up with Quinn—it opened my eyes to how I was screwing up stuff.” He braced one hand against the door jamb. “I’m smarter now, though, Nate. Smart enough to know I’m better with Quinn than I am without.”

  “I’m not going to get in the way. Definitely not now.” I paused as I heard a commotion downstairs, and the front door open. Must be the guy from the funeral home.

  “I appreciate it.” He tilted his neck, cracking it. “I better go back in there. What’s going on downstairs?”

  “Funeral guy just got here, I guess. Carrie’s got to make some decisions. God, this sucks.”

  Leo winced a little. “It’s just surreal. I keep waiting for someone to tell me it’s all been some sick joke.”

  “Can you imagine what it would be like? Losing your father?” We both were quiet for a minute, thinking of horrible possibilities.

  “I had to think about losing my mom last year, and that was shit I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. So no, I can’t even wrap my mind around having a parent gone, just like that.” He closed his eyes, letting out a long breath. “We’re both going to have to watch Quinn for a while, make sure she’s really okay. She puts up a good front, but she’s hurting.”

  “We can do that. It’ll be like when we were little. Remember when Quinn went through that phase when she cried whenever her mom left? And you and I used to do silly crap to distract her.”

  Leo smiled. “I’d forgotten that. She was a mess.”

  “Yeah, she was.” I smiled a little, too, remembering. “There’s no reason we can’t do the same thing now. We’ll get her through this, right?”

  “We will.” Leo held out a hand to me, his eyes sober. “The trio. Together again.”

  The seven days after my father died were a blur of numbness. Later, I would look back and not remember much more than a few minutes here and there.

  People came to the house. My mother’s family as well as my father’s, people I hadn’t seen in years, arrived in town. They didn’t stay with us—except for my mother’s sister, who did—but it seemed there were always at least three or four people at the house. And they all wanted to talk to me, or hug me, or feed me.

  All I wan
ted was to be left alone. Well, alone with Leo, that was.

  He never left me during that week, unless it was for brief snatches of time when he had to run home for more clothes, and even then, he made sure Nate was with me. The two most important guys in my life seemed to have come to some sort of meeting of the minds, and they were more at ease with each other than I’d seen them in years.

  The three of us hid out in my room as much as we could. When I had to go downstairs and be sociable, Leo held my hand in his and sat next to me the whole time. He was fiercely protective, cutting off anyone who veered into anything too deep or painful. And he took care of my mom, too, frequently sending her upstairs to rest when she began to look overwhelmed.

  Every night, when I climbed into bed, Leo was with me. That first evening, after he’d come back to me, my mother had been too upset to notice him climbing the steps with his arm around my shoulders, but Lisa had seen us and called to her son.

  Leo had paused without turning around. “What, Mom?”

  “Do you think this is a good idea?” Lisa’s voice was even. I’d never known her to get rattled with any of her sons, and tonight was no exception.

  “Yeah, actually, I think it is.” He shifted on the step, sliding his hand down to grip mine. “Quinn needs me. I’m not leaving her alone.” There was steel in his tone, and his mom must’ve heard it, too. She nodded, though I heard her sigh.

  “All right.” Lisa glanced at me, and her eyes softened. “Dad and I are going to head home in a few minutes. If you need anything, Quinn, you call me.”

  “I will.” I wanted to tell her how much I appreciated everything she’d done over the past twenty-four hours since the unthinkable had happened, but I was too tired and my brain was too sluggish to form the words. I squeezed Leo’s hand and leaned into him. “Thank you, Lisa.”

  As if she understood, she smiled a little. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to sleep again after I’d stayed in bed through most of the afternoon, but the minute Leo had slid under the covers, wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest, I’d dropped off again into a blessedly dreamless slumber.

  After that, we fell into the same rhythm. I was pretty sure my mother eventually noticed Leo coming out of my bedroom in the morning, but she didn’t say anything to me. But then again, that week we were all just trying to survive. We didn’t have the strength or the will for anything else.

  To be honest, I wasn’t too worried about my mother realizing that Leo and I were sleeping together, because that was all we were doing. After that first day, I didn’t want anything from Leo but his warm body and the knowledge that he was there for me. I couldn’t think of sex; it was as if part of my brain had been clicked off.

  Leo never pushed me. He kissed me softly on the lips each night and each morning, and he touched me all the time, but never in a way that was meant to tantalize. We didn’t have deep talks about the future or the past, and I was grateful for that, too. He let me be, without pressure or expectations.

  When the three of us were alone together, the boys were able to distract me now and then, mostly with silly guy stuff. The part of me that was still aware loved seeing the two of them relaxed with each other again. They teased, gently, and Nate made Leo fall off the bed laughing at his imitation of my uncle. It was just like old times.

  For a solid week, we lived in a sort of limbo where I had the boys with me almost constantly. We didn’t talk about the outside world or anything else. It was an awful, horrible time, and yet it was somehow sweet, too. Special and set-aside, days when I didn’t think about anything I couldn’t handle.

  Other friends came to see me, too, of course. Gia had actually stopped by that first day, shortly after Leo had arrived, but I’d been asleep. She came back the next day, hugged me and cried with me, too. I was struck again by the fact that this girl who’d started out as just someone I knew from the newspaper staff had become my best girlfriend, the one person who listened to me talk about Leo and Nate and somehow understood all that insanity.

  Jake Donavon, who’d been editor-in-chief of the paper during my junior year, visited one day that week, too. I hadn’t seen him since he’d been home from college over Christmas break, and I appreciated him taking time to see me.

  To my utter amazement, quite a few of the guys from Leo’s team also showed up at the house. Beau and Dylan brought their girlfriends along, and even Brent, who’d never quite trusted me, stopped by for an hour. I’d noticed, though, that the team’s quarterback, Matt Lampert, Leo’s best friend outside of Nate and me, was conspicuously absent. He’d never liked me, although we’d had an uneasy truce for a little while when Leo and I were together.

  A week after my father was killed, we all gathered at the Methodist church for his funeral. I sat in the front row next to my mother, with Leo on my other side. I’d insisted he sit with us, and who was going to tell me no? Nate was next to him, and I could feel the strength flowing to me from both of them.

  Lisa and Joe sat behind us, with their older sons, Simon and Danny, and with Sheri and Mark. Lisa patted my shoulder now and then and offered my mother tissues, which she took and crumpled up in her hand.

  I never had any memory of the service itself. All I remembered was the color of the carpet in the church—a deep red—and the comfort of my hand inside Leo’s. He never let go.

  Mom and I didn’t cry during the service. We made it through, and afterwards, we did a hell of a lot of nodding in response to kind, well-meaning words from people who had no fucking clue what to say to two women who had just lost their husband and father, respectively.

  After the service, about half the crowd came back to the house, where someone—I never really knew who—had organized food to feed everyone. It was nearly three hours before the last guest finally walked out the front door, leaving my mother and me alone with Lisa and Joe, Sheri and Mark, and the boys.

  My mom stood in the front hallway and turned in a slow circle, as though seeing it for the first time.

  “I can’t believe it’s all over.” She sounded detached and exhausted.

  “Carrie, why don’t you go upstairs and change, maybe take a bath. Lay down and rest. We’ll finish cleaning up down here, and then we’ll go. Unless you need something else.”

  Mom shook her head. “No, you’ve all—you’ve been incredible. I don’t know what Quinn and I would’ve done without you.”

  “We’re family.” Sheri folded my mother into a hug. “We do for each other. How many times have you guys kept us sane when Nate was in the hospital?”

  “And who brought my family meals and sat with me during chemo?” Lisa grinned. “We do have the best times, don’t we?”

  “Let’s maybe find another way to bond, shall we?” Mom sighed. “All week, I kept thinking, we just have to get through this, get through to the funeral. I only thought about holding it all together until today. But now that it’s all done . . . I’m terrified. What comes next? Everyone’s gone. It’s time to get back to normal. Only problem is, I don’t know what normal looks like anymore.”

  “Babe, you awake?” Leo’s voice was low and husky, murmuring against my ear.

  I snuggled a little closer to him. “Mmmmm. Kind of.” My bedroom was dark except for the faint glow of the streetlight just outside. Tonight, for the first time all week, I hadn’t dropped right off to sleep after I’d laid my head on Leo’s broad chest.

  “I talked to my mom a little bit tonight before they all left.” His fingers moved in small circles on my upper arm. “She didn’t push, but she suggested I give you and your mother some space tomorrow. She said you two need to talk about some stuff and make decisions.”

  Panic welled up inside me, and it was on the tip of my tongue to argue. But I knew deep down that Leo couldn’t stay glued to my side forever. We both had to figure out what was going to come next for us, just like my mom and I had to do the same.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed hard. “She�
�s probably right.” I turned a little, resting my chin on Leo’s sternum, staring up into his face. “But don’t go far, okay? I’m not sure I’m ready to go cold turkey on my Leo addiction.”

  He brushed his hand over my hair. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll sit in the car outside, just in case you need me.”

  I sniffed. “You don’t have to do that. Maybe after breakfast, you could just go home for a little bit.”

  “That works.” He crunched up, bending so that his lips could reach the top of my head. “Hey, Mia? We haven’t really talked about anything serious yet. I mean, about us. But I wanted to say this now, before anything goes any further.”

  Trepidation gripped my gut. “I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with this.”

  “Babe, no.” Leo slid me off him, rolling to lay on his side so that our faces were close together. “Nothing bad. I just wanted to say . . . I love you, Mia. I didn’t say it to you last week. I hoped you understood it, but I thought I better be clear. I love you. I loved you before, and I never stopped.”

  I traced his jaw with one finger. “I love you, too, Leo. Still. Always. Forever.”

  He released a breath as though he’d been holding it. “Okay. Good.”

  I frowned. “Did you doubt that I did? That I do?”

  “No, not really.” He nuzzled my neck. “But I wasn’t sure if you were ready to deal with me again. I know you needed me this week, but I was afraid once things started to settle down, you’d think that maybe I wasn’t worth the effort.”

  Following my finger with my lips, I kissed his chin. “You’re worth everything, Leo. And I hate that it took my dad—what happened, I mean, to get us back together, but I’m not going to have any regrets anymore. Loving you is part of me, and so are you. I wouldn’t have made it through this week without you.” I paused, enjoying the feel of the late-night scruff on his neck. “That first day, before you got here, I wanted to die, too. It hurt so bad, and I felt like nothing was ever going to be right again. But then you came to me, and I’ll never forget that you were here for me.”