Like Gravity

by Johnson, Julie

  “Fine,” I said, my breathing labored as I looked into his dark eyes. They were heavily guarded, concealing whatever he was feeling from me. “Then I’ll tell you a story. It’s about a little girl who lost everything, who had nothing left. Nothing and nobody to call her own. Until she met a boy, and for a while he became her everything.” My voice broke on the last word and I cursed inwardly, determined to hold myself together through this.

  There were things that needed to be said, and since he’d forced this confrontation, they were going to be said right freaking now.

  Hauling a breath into my lungs, I forged on. “But that boy, the one who gave her back a piece of herself? He’s a liar. He’s a manipulator. So even though that little girl, who wasn’t so little anymore, had trusted him to glue back together her broken fragments…even though she thought he could make her believe in happy endings again…even though she thought he would be the one to erase all her scars…”

  Tears were leaking from my eyes now, and my voice grew shakier with each sentence I forced out.

  “The little girl was wrong. The boy couldn’t be trusted, any more than all the other men in her life who’d let her down. He’d spun deceit and deception until she couldn’t tell reality from the lies anymore; until she knew there would be no happily ever afters for her. Not ever.

  “Because she was broken, irreparably, for the second time in her life. That glue the boy had used to piece her back together wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t true enough, to hold her together. It slipped and crumbled, and all her pieces fell and shattered worse than they’d been in the first place.”

  I’d lost all control by this point; tears were streaming down my face and Finn looked like a shadow of the man I’d come to know; he looked as haunted as I felt inside.

  “I suppose I should thank you,” I said, a bitter laugh slipping through my lips.

  He held his silence for a beat, then whispered, “Thank me?” His voice was rougher than I’d ever heard it, devastated and lacking any of his typical self-assurance.

  Good. He should be broken too.

  “I thought that I was strong, that my walls were impenetrable, until you came into my life and proved just how weak I really was. I actually thought I was safe with you,” I laughed mirthlessly, looking up at the stars painted across my ceiling. “So thank you, Finn, for showing me my own fragility. I’ll be sure not to make the same mistakes in the future.”

  “Bee–” he started.

  I cut him off. “Don’t. You don’t get to call me that anymore.”

  His eyes were glassy with unshed tears, full of hopeless resignation.

  Nodding, he took a step back, out of my space, and turned his eyes to stare at the floor. “I’m sorry, Brooklyn,” he whispered. “You have no idea how many times I tried to tell you…how close I came–”

  “Close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes, Finn.”

  “I know that,” he said, reaching up to run his hands through his hair. “But how do you find the words for something like that? How do you tell someone that you’ve spent your whole life looking for them?” He laughed, a bitter sound escaping his lips. “Brooklyn, since we were separated as kids, I’ve been trying to track you down. I begged my adoptive parents to go back for you, to let me call you or even write to you. By the time they relented and I called the group home, you were already gone. Eva wouldn’t tell me anything. Your adoption files were sealed; I never thought I’d actually find you. And then, one random Tuesday afternoon two years ago, I typed your name into a Facebook search engine and bam! There you were.”

  I thought about the long-dormant social media account Lexi had insisted on setting up for me when we’d been accepted to the university. She’d posted a photo of the two of us wearing new matching college sweatshirts that advertised the university logo in proud orange across the front. I wondered if that was how Finn had tracked me down.

  Since I’d never really used the site, I’d assumed it would deactivate after such a long period of inactivity. Apparently, all that preaching my professors did about permanent Internet footprints really was true after all; Facebook is forever.

  “I knew it was you immediately – you were beautiful as a little girl, and you’re even more gorgeous now… those eyes, that smile. There was no denying it was you.” Finn continued. “But I still needed to see that you were okay, Brooklyn. I’ve worried about you for years. You have to understand, when I got adopted, when I left you…I felt like I’d abandoned you. And I knew I’d never put that to rest until I’d seen you again, face to face.”

  “So, when you found me, what then? Was the plan to screw me back to normal? To fix me with the sheer will of your penis?” I bit out. “You could have checked on me and walked away, without speaking one single word to me. I was fine before I met you. The only thing you’ve done is fuck me up even worse than I was before.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Brooklyn,” Finn said, anger infusing his tone. “I never planned on this – on us. I didn’t want to fall in love with you, any more than you expected to fall for me. I transferred here when I learned you’d be attending last fall. But did you see me at all, your entire freshman year? No. I didn’t approach you. I didn’t mess with your life. I was just there, in the off chance that one day you’d need help – that you’d need me. I wasn’t about to fail you again, regardless of whether you even knew I existed.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. He’d transferred here for me? That was crazy. Not the good crazy either – the stalkery, obsessive kind of crazy I wanted nothing to do with.

  “I think you should leave now,” I said, backing away from him.

  “Bee…Fuck!” He buried his hands in his hair. “Please don’t be scared of me. I’m so fucking sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I tried, so many times. I just couldn’t find the words. That day, when you fell over that hydrant and hit your head – it seemed like fate. You were right there in front of me, injured and needing help. I thought maybe I could get close to you, just to be your friend. I swear my intentions never went further than that.

  “But I fell in love with you, Brooklyn. I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I realized that you were everything that was missing in my life, but I knew – just like I had when I was a ten year old kid – that I couldn’t be without you anymore. Still, I tried to push you away, tried to keep boundaries between us when I realized that you didn’t remember me...But I just couldn’t stay away from you.”

  “Finn, this…it’s just so messed up,” I whispered, at a loss. I was way, way out of my emotional depth. I wasn’t just swimming in the deep end, here – this was the freaking Mariana Trench.

  “I know that, okay? I know how fucked up we are. With you, it’s one step forward, and three monumental fucking leaps back. But I also know that you can be incredibly sweet when you aren’t too busy slapping me, or glaring at me, or hating my guts.”

  At that, I glared at him and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “You don’t want anyone to take care of you – I get that. I respect it, even,” he continued, heedless of my glare. “But sometimes, behind that icy, impenetrable front you show the rest of the world, I catch a glimpse of that fiercely vulnerable, heartbroken little girl who still needs me. And I like that I’m the only one who gets to see her and protect her.

  “I know this is a lot to think about – I know you probably hate me. And maybe it makes me a total bastard, but you should know that I don’t regret a single second of our time together, Brooklyn. With or without the lies, this relationship has been – and always will be – the most important, beautiful, goddamned sacred part of my life. And I’ll wait for you – as long as it takes, I’ll wait.”

  I’ve already been waiting forever. He’d said those words before and I hadn’t understood them at the time, but I comprehended them perfectly now.

  “I need time, Finn,” I said. “I feel broken, betrayed, confused, and frankly just…exhausted by this. I don’t want to lie to you or give
you false promises that everything is okay between us. None of this is okay – I am not okay.” I dragged a deep, calming breath in through my nose. “I need to be alone right now.”

  “I can understand that,” he said, nodding. I thought I saw a flicker of hope flash through his eyes as he stared at me.

  “I’m not saying this to hurt you because, as insane as it sounds, I believe your story. But that doesn’t change anything. For right now I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. And I can’t promise that I will ever be ready to be with you again.”

  He nodded, his jaw clenched tight and the hope in his eyes extinguished.

  “Goodnight, Finn,” I said, walking over to my bedroom door and opening it. “Use the front door this time, will you? Your hands are torn to shreds.”

  Between the pounding he’d given my front door earlier and scaling the rough bark of the giant maple outside my window, he’d wreaked havoc on his palms and fingers; the knuckles were swollen and bloodied and at least two were turning an angry bruised-purple color, which meant they were likely broken.

  He made his way to the door, pausing in the frame for nearly a full minute. Keeping his back to me, he whispered into the dark hallway so quietly I could barely make out his words.

  “I love you, Brooklyn Grace Turner. I always have, and I always will. It took me nearly thirteen years to find you; I’m not about to lose you now. And if you decide you never want to see me again, I’ll try to live with that decision; but you should know that the way I feel about you? It’s been the one constant in my life. This is permanent for me. You are permanent for me.”

  With those words hanging in the air, he disappeared out into the hallway. I listened until I heard the front door click closed, then headed across the room to lock my window.

  I’d thought I cried out all my tears earlier, but as I climbed in bed and hugged my pillow to my chest, I found there were still more to be released.

  Chapter Eighteen

  100% Guarantee

  Rock bottom: I thought I’d hit it the night Finn left.

  Isn’t it funny that when you think it’s simply not possible for life to get any worse – that, no matter what else life throws at you in the future you’ll be able to handle it, because there’s just no way it could ever be as bad as the pain you’re experiencing at this very moment – life takes one good look at you and says, “You idiot, don’t you know by now? Things can always, always, always get worse. Watch, I’ll prove it.”

  Days passed with an excruciating slowness that made me feel like I was losing my mind.

  I left my room only for trips to the bathroom and kitchen. I skipped my classes, cancelled my sessions with Dr. Angelini, and refused to talk to Lexi when she came in to check on me. I had no appetite. I didn’t even bother to shower. Worse, though, I wasn’t sleeping.

  As in, not at all.

  I was afraid I’d see him in my dreams, whether as a little boy or as the man he’d become, and that prospect alone was enough to keep me awake for the rest of my life. After two full days without sleep, though, my body had different ideas. I had to be on guard at all times – if my mind wandered even for a minute, I’d find myself on the brink of unconsciousness, forced to pinch or slap myself back from sliding down into dreamland.

  I became obsessed with alarm clocks – my own personal bastions against the threat of sleep. I spent hours on my laptop, reading about sleep cycles and REM stages. A concession to my body’s needs, I became the master of naps, nodding off in exact ninety minute intervals before I could fall into the deep sleep where dreaming occurs.

  At some level, I knew that none of this was rational or remotely healthy, but I didn’t really care. As soon as Finn had walked out my door that night, I’d accepted the fact that my heart would never be the same; all I could do now was try to stitch the tattered shreds of my soul back together – and if it took weeks of reclusive, Howard Hughes-like behavior to get there, so be it.

  I kept waiting for the moment when things would start to get better. It couldn’t go on like this forever, I reasoned; people every day, all over the world, got out of bed and faced their own heartbreaks. One day, they woke up, opened their eyes, and decided that the pain had lessoned – maybe not a lot, maybe not even enough to make a tangible difference in the devastation clinging t0 them like a dark cloud, but enough to give them hope. Hope that one day, in weeks or months or years or decades, the pain would dissipate to the point that it no longer pulsated like a physical wound, with every aching heartbeat a reminder of what had been lost.

  Maybe, if I lay in bed long enough, staring at the constellations he’d left behind on my ceiling, I’d finally feel better.

  Or worse. It was a toss-up, really.

  That first morning I’d woken up without him, as soon as I’d opened my eyes and caught sight of the ceiling I’d leapt out of bed and driven straight to the nearest Home Depot. I threw the first can of white paint my hands had landed on inside my cart, wheeled it to the counter, and purchased it without a second thought.

  When I got home though, I sat on my bedroom floor staring at that can of whitewash for almost two hours unable to even crack the lid. With a frustrated scream, I eventually just shoved the unopened paint into the back of my closet along with Finn’s leather jacket, where didn’t have to look at them anymore.

  For the first day or so, I tried not to think about him at all. Then I realized how insanely useless and counterproductive that was, so I gave up and started acting like a girl – or, in other words, I began obsessing over everything he’d ever said or done in the months since we’d met.

  I began to realize that, in many ways, Finn actually had tried to tell me – maybe not with words, but certainly with actions…

  The night he took me out to look at the fireflies by his lookout point.

  His strange song dedication when he sang at The Blue Note.

  How he’d always, from the very start, called me ‘Bee.’

  How protective he’d always been.

  Even the way he’d phrased certain things…

  There’s never been anyone real for me except you.

  It’s always been you.

  You’re so different from what I expected.

  I love you, Brooklyn. I always have.

  The list went on and on, until my eyes were swimming and I forced myself to stop searching my memories.

  I think it was day seven post-Finn when the door to my bedroom was abruptly thrown open, slamming against the opposite wall so hard the photos hanging there rattled and threatened to come crashing down. Lexi stormed in, her blue eyes flashing with determination, and walked up to the bed where I was huddled under a mountain of blankets. With one jerk of her arm, she ripped the comforter from the bed and tossed it to the floor.

  “Brooklyn Grace Turner. This is pathetic. Look at yourself!” She demanded, pointing at my ratty sweatshirt and ripped pajama shorts. “More importantly, though, smell yourself. Seriously, can you even remember the last time you showered?”

  My lips twitched traitorously in the beginnings of a smile.

  “Get up!” Lexi yelled. “Right freaking now!”

  “Go away, Lexi,” I countered wearily, rolling over to face the wall. I was definitely not in the mood to play nice.

  Suddenly, my bed shifted as the weight of a body landed solidly on my mattress. Startled, I rolled over to see Lexi standing over me on the bed, hands planted on her hips. I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she thought she was doing, but it snapped closed, clacking my teeth together painfully, when she began to jump up and down like a crazy person.

  The whole mattress was bouncing, and me with it – each time her feet made contact with the bed, I was launched several feet in the air, clutching frantically at the frame so I wouldn’t be bounced right onto the floor.

  “I SAID GET UP!” Lexi yelled, jumping even harder. When her feet came dangerously close to landing on my internal organs, I had no choice other than to abandon ship
.

  I dove to the ground, scurried several feet away from the bed, and spun around to face the madwoman that was my best friend. She’d stopped jumping as soon as I’d cleared the bed, but remained standing up there, fuming at me.

  Without saying anything, she hopped off the bed, strode across the room, and backed me into a corner until I was pressed tight against the wall. Leaning in, she trapped my face between her palms and looked me in the eye.

  “It’s been seven days, Brooklyn. I gave you a full week to wallow. And, trust me, its been hard to watch.” She made a disgusted face. “I know you’re going through a hard time right now. I get that it’s the hardest thing in the world to even fathom getting out of bed in the morning and pretending that everything is normal. I’ve been there.”

  I started to interrupt, but she cut me off before I could get a word in.

  “But this isn’t you, Brooklyn. I don’t care what he did – no boy is worth subjecting yourself to this.”

  Was this Lexi talking?

  “I know what you’re thinking. Who am I, queen of the ever-revolving door of boyfriends, to tell you anything about relationships, right?”

  Wow, that had been almost my exact thought.

  “And you’d be right; I have had more than my fair share of boyfriends and unhealthy relationships. But because of that, I’ve also had my share of heartbreaks.” A sad, small smile graced her lips. “If there’s one thing I’m really good at, it’s getting over assholes and moving on with my life. Maybe I don’t move on to the right people, but that’s not the point… Thing is, Brooklyn, that’s really all you can do – you just go on. In spite of the pain, in spite of everything, you keep breathing. And one day, I promise, it will get better.”

  I supposed she had a point.

  “Do I really smell that bad?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  “Literally, I could smell you from the kitchen,” Lexi giggled. “I think you’re starting to mold.”

  “Ew!” I said, crinkling my nose. “I am so not that bad.”