by Tyler King
I turn my head, staring out the window as tears prick my eyes. “Don’t say things like that.”
“Why? Why do you want me to pretend I don’t love you? What point is there in entertaining a reality where you aren’t the last woman I’ll ever love?”
The tears fall down my cheeks, and I can’t bear the weight of him anymore. I push him off, scrambling to my feet.
“Because I can’t leave you twice. I can’t suffer this agony a second time. You broke my fucking heart, Ethan. You made me sit there and watch you kill yourself a little bit every day and it tore a piece of me away that I can’t get back. I love you so much, and I hate what you did to us.”
“Hey.” He lunges at me, capturing me in his arms and holding tight when I try to break free. “I know I fucked up. I know I hurt you. But I’m better now. That’s over. I’m never going to be that guy again. I swear, Avery. I’d rather throw myself off a building than ever put you through that again. You have to believe me. I need you.”
“That’s the problem,” I mutter against his chest. “You have to stop needing me and start a life that doesn’t include me.”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want that life.”
“I’m sorry.” Pushing away, I step out of his arms. “Please understand, this isn’t about forgiveness. I forgave you a long time ago. But I have to put myself first, and you have to make decisions for you, not anyone else. The only thing that’s going to allow that to happen is time.”
The impassive mask falls into place as Ethan stares at me, hands sliding into his pockets. “So that’s it. You’re walking away.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’ve always been right here. I said I’d be your friend, and I always will. But right now, we can’t be together. You have to learn to live without us.”
No matter how much I love him, his sobriety is more important than my pain. I’d take a lifetime of anguish and separation if it meant keeping him from ever going down that dark path again. It’s what you do when you love someone.
“I should go.” I straighten my dress and wipe my eyes, taking in one last look to save for the uncertain time ahead of us. “If you need anything, please call me. This isn’t goodbye.”
Just as I’m about to walk out the door, Ethan stops me. He holds my hand, running his thumb over my knuckles.
“You got me this far,” he says. “Don’t give up on me.”
I close the distance between us and rise on my toes to kiss his cheek.
“Never.”
Because I’m still holding my breath, waiting for that day when I don’t feel like I’m Ethan’s relapse waiting to happen.
29
The Cheaters
Come on,” Kumi whines from the bathroom as she curls her hair. “You can’t spend our first New Year’s Eve in the city at home alone.”
“Can, too.” With a box of vegetable lo mein, I sit on the couch watching the Twilight Zone marathon on TV.
“Come with us. You can be my midnight kiss.”
“Tempting, but I think Navid might get jealous.”
There’s no part of getting dressed and party-hopping all over Manhattan that sounds appealing to me. Freezing my ass off and rubbing my toes raw in a pair of ankle-killing heels. I’ve never been much of a social creature, and New Year’s Eve gets old fast when you’re the only sober person in the room.
“Have you heard from him?” Kumi walks into the living room wearing a tight sequined dress that’s sure to bring Navid to his knees.
A knot twists in my chest. The ever-present ache that is the empty place where Ethan isn’t.
“Not since the funeral.”
Almost two months ago. I thought we’d hang out, act like friends, but Ethan’s kept his distance. It’s what I told him to do, I know. All the same, I miss him.
“You’re sure I can’t convince you?” Kumi considers me with sad, sympathetic eyes. “Even just for a few hours?”
“I’m sure.” I’ve been looking forward to having the place to myself for a night. Sit around in my pajamas, eat junk food, and fall asleep by eleven. “Have a good time. Be careful. Call if you need bail money.”
The doorbell rings. Kumi grabs her purse from the kitchen table then blows me a kiss as she and Navid head out. A few minutes later, I get a text from Addison. Rather than another plea to join the festivities, it’s just a link and an order to read it. Tapping on the link sends me to an essay in the New York Times Modern Love section.
Find Yourself a Girl Who Cheats at Scrabble
By Ethan Ash
I’ve known two truly extraordinary women in my life. One recently departed this world after a long and painful battle with cancer. The other I chased away in my determination to drink myself into an early grave—beat my dying mother to the void. Both women were exceedingly kind, brilliant, loving souls who, among their many achievements, made me a better man for having known them. And both shared a common trait, a quirk I’ve come to identify as a singular, valuable hallmark: both cheated at Scrabble. Find yourself a girl who cheats at Scrabble, because a person who cares enough to fight for the little things will be the last one standing when it matters…
…Find yourself a woman who cheats at Scrabble, and try to be worthy of her.
* * *
I try calling him, but the number I have for Ethan has been disconnected. There’s no answer at his loft, where Vivian’s mural has been painted over with stark white primer. Then as I’m about to dial Carter, the answer occurs to me. There’s only one place Ethan would be.
It’s nearly midnight when the cab pulls up the driveway of the house in Montauk. I find him standing at the edge of the cliff, staring out at the starry sky. Chilling wind lashes at my face as I approach him. He’s illuminated by moonlight and the glow bleeding from the house. At a distance, I watch him for a moment. Statue of a man, frozen against the horizon. It’s how we first met, me staring at his back, catching him in a candid moment. Despite his scars, and also because of them, I still find him no less daunting. He can still shrink a room, the entire coastline, with only his presence. He still has a gravity that bends everything else around him. I look at Ethan, and I see a man who remakes the world just by waking up.
“You could have just called,” I shout.
Slowly, like he’s not sure it wasn’t the wind talking, he turns to see me walking through the tall grass that thins into bare dirt. A cautious smile plays across his lips. But it’s his eyes—still vivid and alive.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he says.
I stand beside him, watching the waves rush up to meet the shore and retreat again.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Here, mostly.”
“Why?”
He runs his hand through his hair as I stare up at his shadowed profile. It seems like ages since we last stood here. Almost impossible to believe it wasn’t yesterday.
“Working on a new book, actually. Decided it was best to take a step away from the news business for a while.” He turns to face me, something anxious behind his eyes and in the set of his jaw. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said, and what I’ve decided is that I can’t meet your expectations.”
“I don’t—”
“Please,” he says. “Let me say this. Loving you has changed me, Avery, and I can’t go back to a place where I’m living only for myself. Every decision I make includes you. Six, seven times a day I still want a drink, but I don’t do it because the only thing more painful than the craving is the idea of disappointing you. You said you want me to stop needing you, and that’s just not possible. I’ve fucking tried, Avery. I really have. It’s exhausting. I’m tired. Aren’t you? No matter how long we’re apart or how far away I get, you don’t wear off.”
I wanted Ethan to do this on his own, find that part of himself that would motivate him to stay sober. But I haven’t done any better at letting go. So many times, I’ve tried to split myself in half and create a new person from the leftovers, pretending
it was enough. This time, there aren’t enough threads without him. Loving him is an exchange—he took part of me with him, and gave me a piece in return. The truth is, that part of himself I wanted him to find…he’s decided it’s me.
“This whole time,” I tell him, hugging my chest against the cold, “I’ve been waiting for that day I wake up and I’ve almost forgotten to miss you, but it doesn’t come. No matter how hard I pretend it will.”
I chose him because he’s everything I’ve wanted and something I didn’t know I needed. He makes me whole again. Has given me back the parts of my identity that I’d hidden for so long because he saw something beautiful in them.
“Avery...” He takes my hands in his, stroking his thumbs over the backs. His brow creases, and an odd shift plays across his face. “You’ve given me my life back. I wouldn’t be standing if it weren’t for you. And no matter what you decide, I’ll always be grateful.”
“Ethan…” Shivers skitter down my spine. “You’re, uh, doing it again…”
“Every day I find a new reason to love you. You’re the thought that gets me up in the morning. You’re the dream that helps me sleep at night.”
Staring into his deep, earnest eyes, his face fading into shadow, my fingers fill with static and my knees go a little sideways.
“Ethan, I love you, too. Okay, babe? You don’t need to—”
He drops to one knee. My breath catches in my throat.
“You’ve made me a better man. You’ve had faith in me when I couldn’t find it in myself. For as long as you’ll have me, I promise to never take that faith for granted. Avery…” Ethan reaches into his pocket. Then prying open my clenched fist, he places the shell casing in my palm. “Will you be my girlfriend again?”
The tension in my chest snaps, and I suck in a breath.
“Fuck, Ethan. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Well, that’s an encouraging response.”
“No, fuck you,” I say as he gets to his feet. Smirking, he wraps me in his arms. “You’re unhinged, you know that?”
The strange thing is, I hadn’t even realized that I’d forgotten to miss the shell casing. Somewhere along the way, I stopped needing it. Perhaps because Ethan gave me a reason to look forward rather than back. I’ve found a different kind of strength that isn’t based in fear and regret. He’s replaced the broken pieces of me, fit them back together while I wasn’t even looking. And with his belief in me, I’ve come to know myself not for who I was, but for what I’m becoming. The biggest changes were in the smallest details.
“But you haven’t even seen the fireworks yet.”
Seconds later, huge bursts of color explode over the sky. Whistling, screaming up from the darkness, they scatter and shine.
“I hate you so much right now.”
“I love you, too.”
About the Author
Tyler King was born and raised in Orlando, Florida, and graduated from the University of Central Florida with a degree in creative writing. As a journalist, her work has appeared in Orlando magazine and Orlando Business Journal, among other publications. She is a proud army spouse currently living in Virginia with her husband.
Learn more at:
TylerAKing.com
Twitter, @TylerAKing
Facebook.com/TylerAKing
Also by Tyler King
The Debt
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The Debt
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Prologue
Session 3
Our conversations always began the same way. This woman was only interested in the worst parts of me. The ugly. Shame and contrition and all the ways I’d found to abuse myself since…
“Why are you here?”
These rooms made me anxious. The claustrophobia of one woman’s undivided attention. She still smelled like the walk across campus: damp denim and wet grass in the tread of her shoes. She watched my knee bounce. Watched me drive the serrated edge of a plastic knife into the cast wrapped around my right hand. Her fingers tapped across the screen of her iPad to the rhythm of my tongue piercing flicking between my teeth. And she waited patiently for an answer. A still, quiet patience that only irritated me further. She was a fucking wax statue of perfect fucking patience.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I fractured a man’s jaw.” And broke my hand for the trouble.
“Why are you here?”
“It wasn’t my choice.”
“But why are you here, Josh?”
Because eighteen years ago a woman I only remember by the back of her head left me on a public bus. No matter the answer I gave, it wasn’t good enough. Not humiliating enough. She wasn’t interested in my remorse. I had none. This woman wanted to cut me open and watch me writhe on the floor.
“Why are you here?”
“Are you going to start every conversation with the same question?” The end of the knife snapped off inside my cast. Goddammit.
“Josh…”
“Asked and answered.”
She wanted to sigh. I could see it in her eyes. The boredom in this room was contagious.
“A violent outburst put you in that chair, but I want to know how you got here.” She set her iPad aside and crossed her legs, entwining her fingers in her lap. “What is it like?”
“What?”
“The panic attacks. How do they feel?”
I closed my eyes, flexing my wrist against the severed shard of the knife. “Like waking up with your hands tied behind your back and a plastic bag cinched over your head. It feels like dying in terror.”
“Let’s start there…”
Chapter 1
I stood in the shower with the lights off and my forehead pressed to the tiles. My palm lay flat, fingertips gripping the thin grout trench for support. Scalding spray beat against my back, but it could not chase away the frigid, crackling sting of ice pumping through my veins. I held my semi-flaccid dick in my hand, trembling as my lungs ached to push past the boulder lodged in my throat. My body caved in on itself, shrinking. Gravity squeezed me. It pressed and it pushed until the weight was so much, the pain so great, I collapsed to the bottom of the tub, naked and shivering. The room spun forward and back, end over end. I grit my teeth, clenched my fists. Static filled my head and numbed my face. The sick, black poison of nausea seeped its way into my gut. Bubbling. Boiling. I heaved and clenched, vomiting acid and whiskey, leaving me a huddled clump of shaking agony in a soup of sweat and putrid bile swirling around the drain at my feet.
The water ran cold before I could move again. A silent sob cracked through my chest. Coughing, I choked on the air filling my lungs. Exhaustion was a relief.
When the panic attack subsided, I reached for the soap and rubbed it between both hands, then lathered and rinsed my body from face to feet. I hated it. Hated touching my skin with wrinkled fingers while my nerves were still raw.
Withered, I planted my hands on the tiles and climbed up the wall to stand on trembling legs. My muscles were mud. Wobbling out of the shower, I reached for a towel.
In my room, a naked woman lay asleep in my bed. I dropped the towel on the floor and slipped under the covers.
But sleep wouldn’t come.
Hours later, just after 8:00 a.m., I was still awake when the woman next to me stretched and reached for her phone on my nightstand. Propped up against my headboard, I watched the silhouette of a leggy blonde dressing at the foot of my bed. She shoved her tits into a push-up bra and wiggled her way into a tight black dress.
“It was fun,” she said. “See you around, MacKay.”
“Later.”
She tiptoed away with her shoes in her hand and closed the door behind her. I knew I shouldn’t have brought Kate home, but at the time I didn’t have the clarity of mind to do otherwise. Women had always been transient in my life. This one was no different.
I pried myself from the covers, then crossed the room and stood at the flo
or-length mirror beside my dresser to inspect the new ink peeking around the right side of my rib cage. The skin there was still tender and swollen, a result of six hours under the needles to continue the design that decorated my back. Bear was an artist with an implement of pain.
My eyes fell to the framed photo lying facedown on my dresser: a younger me in a tux, standing onstage with my adoptive parents beside a piano before my first sold-out concert. It was one of the happiest days of my life, and I couldn’t bear to look at it.
I was skinnier then, and lanky. Hadn’t yet grown into my body. Next to my pale, freckled parents, I stood out like one of those exotic adopted children of yuppie celebrity parents. Dark skin. Black hair. Green eyes. People told me I was “interesting” to look at, to gawk at. So little by little I covered all the pretty bare flesh in tattoos.
The first piece I ever had done was of a raven with its wings spread wide across my chest. The tips of each broken wing nailed down. I was seventeen then. After my first sitting, I came to understand why people said tattoos were addictive. I suppose I became a glutton for pain, because when Bear’s wife offered to put a hole in my lip, I let her stick a needle through my face. For shits and giggles. At twenty-one, I had two full sleeves. My dad only asked that I keep the modifications within reason. I was a bit fuzzy on that definition.
From the top dresser drawer, I grabbed a tube of antibacterial ointment and applied two fingers’ worth to the new tattoo. My stomach growled. It was empty and angry from last night. So I sifted through the field of laundry-pile bunkers scattered around my bedroom until I found a black shirt and dark jeans on the passable side of clean.
When I hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs, I felt a pair of knowing brown eyes watching me from the living room. Nothing good ever came from the morning-after ritual. Even so, I couldn’t help but glance at my roommate curled up on the leather couch with her laptop open and earbuds hidden under her long dark hair. She held seven fingers over her head. Hadley averted her gaze back to the computer screen rather than look for my reaction. Like she didn’t give a fuck.
