by Lindy Zart
Not a lot of light shone through the row of small windows that lined the tops of two walls, making it darker in the building. The floor creaked as they walked. A robust scent of coffee wrapped around them and Beth sighed with bliss, briefly closing her eyes. When she opened them, Harrison was there, studying her with rapt attention. He looked at her like he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but whatever it was, he liked looking at it.
She self-consciously rubbed her nose and shifted her feet. “What? What is it?”
He wordlessly pulled her behind a rack of books, tugged off her stocking cap, and with his cold fingers framing her face, Harrison kissed her. Beth’s body immediately responded, sparked to life with the fire of his touch. Her thoughts mirrored her heartbeat, proclaiming: I love you I love you I love you I love you. Beth didn’t allow sadness into their union. Like Harrison said, it was one day at a time. Today was only one day, one good day.
Someone nearby cleared their throat, and they broke away. With stars in her eyes, Beth smiled at Harrison. He grinned back, looking younger than his years. Looking free of his worries and fears. She didn’t know how her love alone wouldn’t be enough to keep him with her until her last breath was taken. Beth almost thought it could.
The woman cleared her throat again. “Would you like to try a latte sample? It’s pumpkin spice.”
Beth looked around Harrison, meeting the amused eyes of Midge, the owner of Coffee and Trinkets. She was shorter than Beth and about thirty years older, on the heavy side, and whenever Beth had seen her, she was in a dress. Today it was a long-sleeved purple one with white snowflakes along the hem. The dark-haired woman held out a small Styrofoam cup to Beth and Harrison, who each took it with a thank you.
They spent the next hour drinking cups of coffee as they scanned the display of items for sale. Beth bought a shirt that read ‘No talkie before coffee’ for her dad and an ornament in the shape of a desktop computer for her brother Jake. Harrison procured a stack of books and journals. They thanked Midge and stepped outside.
She felt the shift in the atmosphere as soon as they left the shop.
Something was wrong, different. The air was energized, and it was coming from the group of people standing on the corner next to them. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. It felt like nails being dragged down her skin. Beth looked at Harrison, watched the color drain from his face, how all the muscles and bones of his face went sharper, vengeful. Tight-lipped, his eyes blazed with black fire.
“What’s going on?” she stupidly asked, even though it was obvious.
“They know who I am.” His head jerked once toward the mass of suited men and women.
“How?” It was a whisper, and she wasn’t sure Harrison even heard her.
Soon they were surrounded by people. Eager, hungry people. People who didn’t see Harrison Caldwell as a person, but as a story. Harrison’s hand tightened on hers and he moved in front of her, as if to keep her safe. It was too late. She knew that as soon as she caught sight of the news van parked along the street across from where they stood. His body was taut next to her, living armor against a horde of teeth and eyes, and voices, so many voices.
The coldness in the air sank into Beth, froze her. She was numb, unmoving. Stunned.
“Harrison,” she said in a choked voice, clutching his arm.
Harrison partially turned and spoke closer to her ear. “It’s okay, Beth. Don’t say anything.”
They were swarmed, people thrusting microphones toward Harrison and voices shouting over others.
“Mr. Caldwell, is this your first public appearance since being diagnosed with HIV?”
“What’s it like to live with HIV?”
“Is there a chance you’ll come out of retirement?”
“Harrison, is this your girlfriend?”
“How does having HIV affect intimacy with one another?”
“Mr. Caldwell, have you made Logansville, Minnesota your home?”
“Were you aware that Nina Hollister, the woman from whom you contracted the disease, died less than a week ago? How does that make you feel? Does that make you more worried over your own health?”
Harrison stopped breathing. The air left his lungs, but did not return. He turned to stone. The fingers around her hand went limp. Beth felt him sway, and she set her arm around his waist, anchoring him to her, holding him up if she had to.
“Harrison,” she whispered against his arm. “We have to go. Let’s go.”
“What does your girlfriend think of the fact that you’re putting her at risk?”
“What’s in the future for you, Harrison?”
“Come on, man, you’ve been hiding away for years. Give us something,” an especially belligerent reporter demanded.
They were turning something good into something ugly. Each question chipped away at her, each one brought her pain, but it was all for Harrison. They were hurting him. Beating him down. Morphing him into something bad instead of the man he was. She wanted to scream at them to shut up, she wanted to clap her hands over Harrison’s ears so he couldn’t hear them.
He straightened and looked at her. There was nothing on his face. It was empty. Empty face, empty mouth, empty eyes. It was like staring into a void. “Go to the truck, Beth. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“No.” She shook her head, her jaw taut with resolution. “I’m not leaving you. I refuse.”
“Go to the truck.” He pressed the keys into her palm. “Please. For me. I’ll be there shortly.”
She stared into his eyes. They were the mountains, and the valleys, the earth, and the sky. They were everything in the world that meant anything, and they were crying. Bleeding black. Sobbing sorrow. Fading into nothingness. Beth’s body trembled and she turned her gaze to the swarm of vipers, hating them all, wanting them all to be crushed with guilt for what they were doing to this man. He was better than them, better than all of them.
Beth focused on Harrison, and spoke clearly. Firmly. “I love you.”
Emotion flickered in his eyes, brought a twitch of life to his visage. Harrison’s face softened. He nodded, once.
When she broke away from him and headed in the direction of his truck, a newscaster made a beeline for her. Harrison blocked him, stating, “Follow her and things are going to go bad for you real quick.”
Beth saw the man’s face blanch before she turned the corner and lost sight of them. She tried to walk fast, but her legs were leaden. Hurrying made time slow. What was happening? What were they saying to him? What was he saying back? What was he feeling? Her hands were fisted tight, her fingernails abrading the flesh of her palms.
A pinpoint in the distance was her destination, and Beth aimed her eyes and feet for Harrison’s black truck. She was cold—so cold; her body was shaking from it. Worry stroked her hair, whispered in her ear that everything would be different now. Held her in its arms and cooed that she was a silly girl, with silly dreams, and silly hopes, and that the world was laughing at her.
As she passed an alley between two buildings, a figure shifted, breaking through the motions of her shocked brain. Beth paused, catching sight of Ozzy lurking in the gloom of dirty snow and brick. She had to blink a few times to believe what she was seeing. Him in his jean jacket and his disrupted hair and his golden eyes. The depth of her repulsion was startling.
She hated the sight of him.
Her limbs turned to stone, along with her heart, and she glared all of the loathing she felt for him through her eyes. She looked at him and saw something small, something weak. Ozzy stared back, not speaking, not explaining. Not even lying. Because Beth already knew. He did this. He followed them, and he let the news stations know where they were. He ruined any chance of Harrison’s continued peace, and all to spite her. To think that she’d loved him once, a boy masquerading as a man.
“I will never forgive you for this,” she told him in a voice that shook.
The coldness in his gaze melted for an instant, and she saw the phantom of
regret line his mouth. Beth blinked her eyes, and it was gone. Not that it mattered. This was unjustifiable, no matter how bad Ozzy felt about it as time went on. He slunk back into the shadows, where he belonged. Beth left him there, like she should have a long time ago. Some mistakes couldn’t be undone, some wrongs could not be mended.
THE RIDE BACK was quiet. Harrison didn’t try to talk, and Beth’s throat ached with the need to question and reassure. And comfort. She wanted to comfort him. Her mouth felt heavy, unable to function. Thoughts raced through her mind, powerful enough to freeze her, to stab through her heart. She saw herself and Harrison, held together, high above, in the palm of their surroundings, and she saw them crushed by the fingers of judgment. Effortlessly. Without remorse.
What if he gave up on her, on them? Had he already?
She told herself that wasn’t an option, but doubt was there, telling her it was, especially when he remained quiet. Guilt sat in the middle of them, and it was hers. Harrison would tell her she was wrong, that she didn’t have anything to do with what happened today. But it was Beth’s fault, however indirectly. As much as it killed her to not shout to everyone what Harrison was to her, she hadn’t spoken a word about him, not to anyone. And still, because of her, he’d been sent into the water with the piranhas.
A wall was between them, and it was one Harrison wordlessly told her not to climb. He seemed lifeless, a robot man driving a truck. He wouldn’t look at her, and even as her chest constricted, taut enough to paralyze her, she was glad. Beth feared what she would find in his eyes. Anger, hopelessness, or worse—nothing at all.
His ex-girlfriend was dead. It made it real; it shouted that a similar fate might be in store for Harrison. He couldn’t ignore it. Beth couldn’t pretend there wasn’t a chance it would happen with Harrison. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. She clenched her teeth to keep a sob unleashed. If she started crying, she wouldn’t stop, and Harrison would feel her tears deep in his soul. The thought of bringing him any more pain than he was already feeling made her want to dig out her own heart and bind it to his to fortify its resistance to hurt.
Someone he’d known and loved was gone, and even if he only had the lingering sliver of affection yet in his heart for her, Harrison still felt the loss. Loss she could one day share.
The loss of him.
Their perfect winter day was ruined.
The sky was as blue as any ocean, and as tumultuous. As far out of reach as it could possibly be from where she was. The trees were dead and dark weapons camouflaged as silent sentinels. Even the snow was lethal, glittering like glass, and quick to cut her skin should she touch it.
Beth’s vision blurred, but she would not cry. She would not cry. She would not—a tear slipped from the corner of her eye, traveled down her cold cheek, pooled on her chin, and dropped to her jacket.
Dusk had cast the town in gray by the time Harrison pulled the truck up to her little house. The streets were barren, not a person in sight. She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t the emptiness that greeted her. The multi-colored lights Jennifer helped her string along the roof a few days ago turned on, added a garish spotlight to their goodbye. Beth was in a different reality, one she didn’t recognize. The earth was numb, spinning backward. Upside down. It was all warped, wrong.
“Harrison, please talk to me,” she whispered, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing.
He didn’t.
Swallowing around a dry mouth and throat, Beth reached for the door handle, and when she was about to open it, his hand touched her arm, staying the motion. She looked into tormented eyes, the pain of his heart splashed across his features like unseen blood. “Tell me, no matter what, you still want me.”
Her eyes filled with tears. Beth’s heart thawed. She took a choked breath of air. And another. “I still want you. I’ll always want you. That isn’t going to change.”
Harrison looked like he wanted to say more, but no words came. His grip tightened, as if the thought of letting go appalled him, and then he did, abruptly, with finality. “I have something to do. I’ll be back,” was all he told her.
When will you be back?
Her eyes asked, her mouth refused.
Beth nodded, her head heavy on her neck, and stepped from the truck with legs that felt like noodles. She watched a tight-jawed Harrison drive down the street. Conflicted eyes, torn man. She entered the house, not bothering with lights, her coat sliding from her arms to pool on the floor. Beth kicked off her boots and sat down on the couch.
She closed her eyes, her body stilled; her ears strained to listen. The sound of an engine, tires as they plowed through slush on the road. The ticking of the clock in the kitchen, the faint hum of the refrigerator. The low rumble and fanning sound as the furnace kicked on. A car door shutting somewhere outside. Where the quiet used to bother her, this time it offered serenity. Beth understood why Harrison chose to live the way he did. Too late, but she understood.
Beth wanted to live in that silent, solitary world with him.
She waited for him to call, email, text, or even come to her house, but as the minutes fell into an hour, and evening descended, Beth knew she wouldn’t be hearing from Harrison. Feeling like she should be doing something and not knowing what, Beth turned on the television. It didn’t take long to find her and Harrison. Images of them were splashed across the television, giving a tainted feel to their relationship, all while sugarcoated with best wishes and eyes of sympathy.
They speculated on her—who she was and what she wanted from Harrison, why she was in the picture and what it meant, on their possible relationship, on his health and career. On too many things they had no right to. Beth watched with dry eyes as something sacred was shredded. That was what he’d gone through, every day for years, only it had to be a hundred times worse for him. That was why he’d chosen isolation.
He made himself invisible so that no one could hurt him more than he already was.
Anger ripped through her, hot and savage, and Beth’s face twisted. A scary calm waved over her as she left her house and drove to Ozzy’s. It was a four-minute drive, the house located on the other side of the small town. Four minutes of feeling and thinking nothing. But the anger stayed, churning, building, wanting to erupt. She’d never felt destructive, not like this. Like she could ransack his place, ruin everything he loved, burn the house down around him.
Beth didn’t see a brown house that once symbolized a separation of her heart. She saw a structure that stood between her and what she wanted to destroy—destroy the thing that had harmed what she loved most. The wind picked up, swirled her unbound hair around her face. She felt like a warrior on a twisted hunt of vengeance. Beth’s breath left her in gasps of white air. She’d never felt so protective, so possessive. It made her feel faint, and insane, and powerful.
She pounded on the door of Ozzy’s house; hit the door with her fist until her hand ached and her knuckles were swollen. Until the skin cracked and her hand went numb. She hit it until she couldn’t feel it anymore. All the helplessness she felt, all the rage, she pounded it into the edifice like she could smash the emotions into nothingness. Beth punched the door until it opened.
Dressed in gray jogging pants and a threadbare white shirt, Ozzy didn’t look surprised to see her. He didn’t look anything. He looked at her like he was bored, indifferent. He looked at her like she, and what he had done, meant nothing. Her body convulsed from the cold she couldn’t feel, with rage she couldn’t stop feeling.
In a low, too-even voice, he asked, “What do you want?”
“This is all your fault,” she spat. “You did this.”
Silhouetted by the light from inside, his features were kept in shade, but she caught the glint in his eyes, the shifting of his jaw. She wanted to hit him. Beth’s hands twitched with the urge. She wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him and never stop. Ozzy, with his forever dreams and his angry heart. She wanted to hit him for Harrison. Beth wanted to hit him for being se
lfish, and for not being able to let her go, and for all she couldn’t put into thoughts or words.
“You ruined any chance of him having peace here,” she choked out. “And for what? To get back at me? To hurt me for moving on from you? That wasn’t supposed to happen, right? I was supposed to love you forever, and pine after you, and take you back, always take you back. No matter what you did, no matter how you hurt me.”
She sneered at him, feeling the ugliness of the expression in the pit of her soul. “And you say I’m sick.”
He remained mute, calm. Only a faint tick under his eye showed that he felt anything at all. The door clicked shut behind him, locking the light inside the house and leaving them both in the dark. It was fitting. That’s where the memory of her and Ozzy lived now, in the dark.
The words were volcanic, a scream of pain and hatred, as they left her. “Say something!”
A crack showed in his flawless exterior; it grew as she watched. Anger roughened Ozzy’s voice, turned his features into sharp knives, blades that sliced and cut. “What do you want me to say? You picked a corpse over me.”
His words stabbed her, broke through the skin, twisted. And twisted. Her body shook, and it wouldn’t stop. She didn’t think it would ever stop. It shook with grief, with unfairness, with pain. With fury.
Pain.
And fury.
The two emotions rotated through her, wounding her heart on repeat.
“I chose not to be with you long before I knew Harrison. I picked myself over you. I couldn’t be with you anymore.” Beth shook enough that her words trembled from the force of it. “I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t live in your world, Ozzy.”
She trained her eyes on him, wondering how he got so lost. “And because of that, you sought to hurt mine.”
His nostrils flared, and he took a step closer. “You never should have left me, Beth. We were supposed to be together, work through our problems, love each other, and instead you left me. You left me for some—some diseased guy. How do you think that makes me feel?”
