Buried Castles

by Monica Alexander

  “Why did you guys break up?” Emily asked.

  I thought I saw something akin to jealously on her face as she’d listened to me talk about sleeping with Jen. I took that as a positive thing.

  “My mom got sick, and I started drinking a lot. After the divorce, my mom and I had gotten close, and the idea of her dying freaked me out, so I started taking solace in the numb feeling alcohol provided. Jen hated it. She also started getting really freaked out by my mom’s illness, not wanting to be around her and disinfecting my apartment after my mom visited. Cancer scared her, but I was dealing with so much already that adding her judgment and neurosis to the mix just didn't work. I let her go. From there word spread really fast that I was single, and suddenly, I was the popular guy girls fought over. If I truly wanted to, I could have brought someone home every night, but I exercised some restraint. It was still really stupid and reckless. I mean, some of the things Derrick, Andrew and I did back then were just downright idiotic. But for the first time in our lives, we were cool and the girls wanted us, and our music was taking off. We thought we were invincible, and I let it go to my head. It wasn’t until it was almost too late that I figured out how much I hated the guy I’d become. He was an asshole and a douchebag, and he wasn’t very happy.”

  “How many girls have you slept with?” she asked cautiously, and I remembered her asking me the same thing over the summer. I’d dodged her question then, but I wouldn’t now.

  I honestly didn’t know how many girls I’d been with, so I took a guess. “I don’t know. Fifty maybe. I was only really out there for about a year and a half and usually just brought girls home after our shows. When we’d just go out to a bar, or if I was bartending at Devil’s Hangout, I might have made out with a girl or let her come back with me to Leo’s office, but it was rare that we’d actually have sex. We usually just partied and smoked or sampled some of the harder stuff that Leo had stashed away. Then he met Kristin and went sober on us all of a sudden, so we had to find alternative methods of scoring drugs.”

  I noticed that her hands were clasped in her lap so tightly that her knuckles were white. I had to remind myself that she was a good girl. My world was so dark compared to the life she’d lived.

  “Am I freaking you out?” I asked, knowing I might have gone too far, shared too much. “Jen used to get pissed and give me shit for hooking up so much and doing drugs. I know it’s not very appealing. Do you want me to stop talking about it?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s fine. It’s your history, and I want to know all of it. No more secrets.”

  “No more secrets,” I echoed, relieved that she was at least pretending to take this all in stride.

  “So, if Jen was so against what you were doing, why did she sleep with you again?” she asked. “I know you guys were broken up for a while when Lily happened.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, we’d been over for almost a year, and Jen used to bitch about what Derrick, Andrew and I would do all the time, but I think she was a little envious of the careless way we lived. She’d always been responsible and forward-thinking, and I think for one night she just wanted to cut loose – sort of how you were this summer when we met, but since she and I had a history, she didn’t stop at kissing me, and viola, the creation of Lily was forever cemented into our personal timeline.”

  “God, what did you do when you found out Jen was pregnant?” she asked, angling toward me and resting her head on her arm that was draped over the back of the couch.

  She looked like she was getting tired, but she made no mention of wanting to go to sleep, so I told her the story of how Jen had thought Lily was Jay’s baby, how he’d broken up with her and she’d come to live with Derrick and me. Then I told her about the accident and the night Lily was born and how I learned she was mine. I told her about the months after the accident, how I made the decision to leave the band and how Jen, Lily and I moved in with my mom, and then how Jen and Lily had moved back home, and I’d stayed, living five hours away from my daughter for over a year. I told her everything up to the point I’d met her, filling in the missing pieces I knew she wanted to hear. I talked for more than an hour, and Emily kept her gaze on me the whole time, just listening. She didn’t ask a single question.

  “Lily is such an amazing little girl,” she finally said, shaking her head, and I fell a little more in love with her in that moment. It was one thing to love me, but to love my daughter was a whole different story.

  “She’s perfect,” I said. “She’s inspired a lot of songs over the years – mostly due to her perfection, but I don’t really play any of them. They’re more for me, but she did inspire Jump.”

  “Really? How so?” She yawned loudly then, and I looked at the clock. It was after one in the morning.

  “Maybe we should continue story time tomorrow,” I suggested.

  She shook her head. “No, I want to hear this. Tell me, and then we can go to bed.”

  I fought the urge to imagine what it would be like if ‘we’ really were going to bed together, but she was sleeping in my room, and I was going to sleep with Lily in my mom’s room.

  “Every new parent will tell you how hard it is in the beginning, but you never truly realize how much of a toll it takes on you and how hard day-to-day living actually becomes until you experience it first-hand. There are literally points you hit when you think you’re going to lose it. I wrote Jump one night at like three in the morning after having been up with Lily. She was probably only four weeks old, and she wouldn’t go to sleep and had been crying for hours. Jen and I had tried everything we could to get her to settle down, but she just wouldn’t sleep. It had been like that for a few nights, so we were both exhausted. When Lily finally closed her eyes, Jen collapsed into bed, but as tired as I was, I was also restless. So I went outside to get some fresh air.”

  Emily was watching me intently, her teeth pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, so I continued.

  “I sank down into one of the chairs on the back porch. I remember putting my head in my hands and thinking about how much my life had changed in just a month. I literally went from being Jen’s friend who would help her with her baby to being a full-time father, and I had no notice. I still had a hard time getting used to the idea that Lily was mine. I mean she looked like me, so I knew there was no question, but I never really had time to prepare for what being a father would mean. And right then, I found myself wishing things were different, that nothing would have changed.”

  I looked up at her to gauge her reaction, waiting for the look of horror to appear on her face. I hated this part of the story, because I came off like a guy who’d wanted to reject his daughter, but it wasn’t like that. I was just exhausted.

  “Zack, you’re not a bad person,” she said, proving she knew me pretty well. “I’m sure everyone has those feelings at some point. You shouldn’t feel like you have to apologize for that. It’s not like you walked away from Lily. You were tired, and that had to have played into your emotions.”

  I nodded. “I know, but I felt guilty about it for a long time – that is until Jen told me she’d had a few moments when she felt the same way. We both agreed that having a baby was hard, and sometimes, even though we loved Lily, we really hated our situation. In the end, we had no choice but to push through. Lily changed our lives forever. We both knew we had no options but to jump headfirst into the fray and hope for the best.”

  Before I realized she was doing it, she reached forward and took my right hand in hers. Aside from the night she was drunk and fell into me, it had been months since she’d touched me or looked at me how she was gazing at me now. She flipped my hand palm up and traced the lines on it, then slowly ran her fingers up my forearm until she got to the lyrics tattooed there.

  “I wrote Jump as a reminder that I needed to keep things in perspective. I needed to keep moving forward. If I jumped, I would have control, but if I let what I was feeling eat away at me, I would free fall and lose any control I had over my life.
I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “I know the feeling,” Emily muttered, her fingers tracing the inside of my forearm with feather light movements.

  The feel of her touch did something to me deep inside, and I noticed my breathing becoming shallower, as I watched her fingers move back and forth methodically. As much as I wanted to yank her forward and hold her against me, there was something more intimate about what she was doing, so I let her continue.

  Then she did something that surprised me, and I started to protest but stopped when I saw what she was trying to show me. She’d let my hand go and pulled the sleeve of her sweater back to reveal her right wrist. She held it out to me. There, on the inside of what used to be her bare skin, was a tattoo of a colorful flower with words I’d written long before I’d met her encircling it. I realized that she’d permanently marked her skin with my lyrics, and I don’t think there was anything that could have affected me more in that moment.

  “All you can do is jump,” I said, taking her hand in mine as I looked up into her eyes and recited the lyrics. Her beautiful brown eyes were somber as she watched me, but she didn’t pull away. “I thought you weren’t into tattoos?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t, but I remember you telling me you’d never get a tattoo of something that wasn’t significant to you, and I remember thinking that was a good idea, and that if I ever got a tattoo, it would be significant.”

  I ran my thumb over the flower, loving that she’d been thinking of me when she’d gotten it. Now our tattoos were linked together. Hers completing the thought that mine left open-ended, that I’d intentionally left open-ended, and now I was so glad I’d done that.

  “And you chose lyrics I’d written?” I asked, fighting the urge to pull her closer, but I could tell she was still guarded. Her posture and the tension in her shoulders told me to be patient, wait until she was ready. I’d get my chance in time.

  “I liked the lyrics,” she said simply, “and when I turned twenty-two back in September, I was going through a really rough time, and I think I needed to remember to jump forward, because I could have easily fallen backward if I wasn’t careful.”

  And I wouldn’t have been there to catch you if you had fallen, I thought morosely.

  Biggest. Mistake. Ever.

  “I was the reason you were going through a tough time, wasn’t I?” I asked, a feeling of dread hitting the pit of my stomach.

  She nodded, just a small, imperceptible movement of her head that let me know how bad I’d hurt her. Her birthday was September twenty-first, and it had been just over a month after I’d walked away from her, broken her heart, and she’d still been hurting. I hated that I’d done that to her, absolutely hated it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said genuinely, because I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t change the past. All I could offer was a future where I never let her down again.

  I smiled a small smile as sort of a peace offering, as I turned her hand so our fingers were laced together and tried to pull her toward me, going after what I’d been thinking about all night. I really wanted to kiss her, and I hoped she’d let me.

  “I should go to bed,” she said suddenly, ripping her hand from mine. “I – I’ll see you in the morning.”

  She smiled briefly before she disappeared into my room, leaving me slightly stunned sitting on the couch wondering where I went wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Emily

  I sat on the edge of Zack’s bed getting my bearings, resting my head in my hands. What had just happened? It seemed like he’d wanted to kiss me, and I’d panicked. Why had I panicked? Because I believed he’d gotten caught up in the emotion of his story and seeing his lyrics on my wrist? I wasn’t sure, and now I had bolted from the room, so it wasn’t like I could just go back out there and say ‘Ha, ha. Just kidding. I’m back. Don’t you want to kiss me now?’ The spell was broken.

  Out in the living room I heard Zack turning off lights, the floorboards creaking under his feet, and after a minute, the door to his mother’s room closed with a click, and I breathed out air I hadn’t realized I was holding in. A part of me thought, hoped even, that he’d knock on my door, ask me if I was okay, but he didn’t. Had we been alone, I might have been so inclined as to sneak into his bed so we could finish what he’d tried to start in the living room, but his daughter was sleeping not five feet from him, so that option was out.

  With a huff, I flopped back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. It would probably take me hours to fall asleep. After what he’d just told me and what had almost happened, my mind was spinning. I now knew everything about Zack, and it was as if his life story was running on a loop in my mind over and over again. He’d been through so much in the past six years. It was unimaginable. No wonder he seemed so mature and at the same time so unstable. He’d been on a rollercoaster, and the ride hadn’t ever ended.

  Forcing myself to sit up, I changed into my pajamas and used toner to wash my face. I wasn’t about to leave the room and have him hear me puttering about the house on the way to the bathroom, so I’d have to make do with what I had in the bedroom. I’d brush my teeth in the morning.

  Knowing I needed to wind down, I walked over to Zack’s desk where I saw a few books stacked in the corner. Maybe I could read to take my mind off of him. Right on top of the stack was a Hemingway novel, so I picked it up figuring it would do. Before I headed back to bed, my gaze caught a framed picture on his desk, and picked it up, examining the smiling faces behind the glass.

  The picture was a year and a half old, and I knew this because it had been taken at Zack’s graduation from Duke. He was flanked by his mother, who looked much healthier than when I’d met her, and who I assumed was his father. Next to Zack’s father stood Leo, towering over everyone else in the picture. Next to his mother was Jen, who was cradling a sleeping infant Lily in her arms. Everyone was smiling big wide smiles. The only other picture on his desk was one that could have been taken just weeks before I met him. It was summer, and Lily was wearing a teeny pink bikini with white polka dots and pink sunglasses. Zack was standing behind her, holding her hands as she toddled out into the surf. Neither of them was paying attention to the camera, and whoever had snapped the picture had caught a great father-daughter moment.

  Setting the picture back on the desk, I grabbed the book and forced myself to get engrossed in the story, but it was still a few hours before I finally dozed off.

  ***

  Too early the next morning, I awoke to the sound of clanging in the kitchen and the smell of bacon frying. So I forced myself out of bed, grabbed my toiletry bag and slipped as soundlessly as I could out of the room and into the bathroom. I took my time brushing my teeth, wiping the make-up from under my eyes and pulling my hair back into a ponytail before I finally emerged and joined Zack and Lily in the kitchen.

  “Morning Sleeping Beauty,” Zack said from where he stood at the stove making scrambled eggs in a frying pan. “Coffee?”

  I nodded “Please,” I said, and he pointed to the full coffeemaker on the counter.

  “Food will be ready in just a few minutes.

  “Hi sweetie,” I said, kissing Lily on her forehead as I took a seat at the table with my full coffee mug.

  “Bacon,” she said, holding up a piece of bacon she was nibbling.

  “Yeah, bacon,” I said, taking a piece from the plate Zack had put in the middle of the table. It was hot, crispy and delicious. I turned back to him, taking a few seconds to appreciate the planes of his back as he cooked. “I didn’t know you had skills in the kitchen.”

  He grinned. “I have lots of skills that I never showed you,” he said, and I wasn’t sure if there was an underlying sexual reference in his statement, but I liked that he was being playful.

  “Sometime you’ll have to show me,” I said, knowingly flirting with him.

  He grinned back at me.

  “Lily, you want scrambled eggs?” he asked.

  “Yes, Daddy,” she cal
led back before grabbing her sippy cup of juice and tipping it back.

  “Do you want toast?”

  “No,” she said simply.

  “Watching your carbs, I see,” Zack mumbled, catching my gaze as he teased his daughter.

  I laughed. He was being really cute this morning.

  “Did you sleep well?” he asked, setting a plate of in front of Lily.

  I shrugged. “I had trouble falling asleep, but yeah, after that I did.”

  He set a plate of eggs and toast in front of me before settling across the table from me with his own breakfast. I watched him dump copious amounts of ketchup on his plate and slather his toast in butter and strawberry preserves.

  “What kept you up?” he asked. “The deafening quiet of this place?”

  I laughed and lied. “Yeah, that was it.”

  ***

  After breakfast, Zack went into his mother’s room to finish what we’d started yesterday. I knew he was putting off that task as long as he could since her room contained almost all of her personal affects, but since we were leaving that afternoon, he didn’t really have a choice. I asked him if he needed help, but he just shook his head and closed the door behind him.

  Knowing he needed to be alone, I took Lily outside and we walked along the beach collecting shells, digging in the sand and running from the water. It was chilly but not as cold as it had been at home, and the smell of the ocean brought me back to the summer, so I felt almost warm.

  When Lily started to get tired, I brought her back to the house and made her some lunch. I knocked on the door to Zack’s mom’s room to see if he wanted anything, but he told me no through the closed door. After lunch, Lily and I read a few stories before I put her down for her nap in his room. It was close to two, and I wondered what time Zack wanted to leave. We had a long drive ahead of us. But he still hadn’t emerged from the room.

  An hour later the door opened, and Zack came out with his head down, lugging garbage bags of clothes.