Skygods (Hydraulic #2)

by Sarah Latchaw

  “Don’t pretend you’ll support me if I remain silent, Kaye,” he called after me. His feet hit the floor and pounded across the room. “I could see it in your face the moment Caro suggested I go public. You want me to be a poster-child for mental health disorders, because it’s easier than cleaning up when my brain goes haywire. I mouth off to the media in a manic frenzy, you arrange for me to do a PSA that’ll run nationwide, problem solved. I’ll not be turned into a tool.”

  Eyes blazing, I whirled and found him directly behind me. “Then quit acting like one. I have put everything on the line for you. You could at least do the same for me!”

  “To what gain? That I’ll break from Buitre and go with your firm?” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You said yourself it was time for a change.”

  But his accusation hit a little too close to home. Fighting him when he was like this—paranoid and stressed—was putting a match to a stack of kindling. I took a step back, trying to calm myself. What did I expect to happen if he went public with his illness? It wouldn’t magically go away. Cautious glances from fans, hugs of pity from talk show hosts. Friends and family asking about his health, when they were really asking if his head was put together. Then the backlash would hit, hard. Every time the tabs caught wind of a display of emotion, they’d blow it into a headline reading “Sirens Author Goes Manic in Public.” He would hate that.

  This wasn’t a decision to rush. But I did know this: Samuel carried too much dead weight and he was collapsing under it. Some burdens needed to be cast by the wayside.

  “TrilbyJones doesn’t have the capacity to handle you,” I replied. “But if what Caroline said is true, breaking from Buitre is a necessity. We could find new people to represent you…”

  I tentatively traced his jawline with the tips of my fingers, back and forth…back and forth…soothing him. His eyes closed and he wrapped his hands around mine, burying his face in my palm.

  “I don’t know who to trust anymore,” he whispered.

  “Trust yourself. You will do the right thing.”

  He said nothing. I couldn’t tell if he was mulling over what I’d said, or listening to laughing voices outside the door as his neighbors returned home. So I continued.

  “Do you trust me when I say I love you?”

  Ah, there was a reaction. He raised his head from my hand. “Yes.”

  “Then believe that I’m telling you this in love. I know about crutches. Secrecy has been your crutch, and everyone’s indulged you in it. Secrecy about your illness. Your family. Your addictions. You live in the past, Samuel, in our childhood, your mother, the Water Sirens books, heck, even our old furniture—” I gestured around the room “—because it’s easier to cling to those things than to give up your secrets. So when I said publishing your book might be a good thing, I really meant for you to let go of it all.”

  “Kaye, don’t.”

  I took a deep breath and rushed on. “I admit it’s my fault, too, with all the careless reminiscing and ‘remember whens.’ But it’s time to make a new start together. Let’s just finish the book, published or not, then move on with our lives. Because as much as I cherish your Caulfield, I’d rather have the grown-up version.”

  A siren blared past the building, then faded down the street. I waited for Samuel’s answer. All that met me was a heated look and unfathomable eyes. He was too far inside his head for my words to reach him.

  He kissed my palm. “Come to bed with me. I’m sorry I’m in such a fuck-awful mood.”

  “I’m sorry, too.”

  The fire was growing. I could see the subtle changes in his demeanor much sooner than I had the last time. He clutched at my hand, thumbs kneading my skin almost frantically. “Samuel, forgive me, but I need to ask—have you been taking your meds?” He turned his face away. I tugged on his hand, bringing his eyes back to mine. “Answer me.”

  “Yes.”

  But how would I know if he hadn’t?

  “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “I just saw one a few weeks ago.” He shook off my hand.

  I was getting nowhere. Defeated and exhausted, I decided to turn in for the night.

  “Where are you going?” he blurted, his panic reaching across the room and grabbing me by the throat.

  “To the couch. I thought you might like some space. That you might be cross—”

  “There’s no need,” he pleaded. “I won’t touch you tonight, I promise.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, it’s okay if you do,” I stuttered. “I just didn’t want to intrude, that’s all.” So I followed him back to the bedroom, pillow clutched to my chest. We rolled to our respective sides, whispered our good nights, and slept.

  And yet, at four a.m., I woke to find Samuel’s side of the bed cold. The faint clack-clack-clack of a keyboard ambled around the apartment, and I couldn’t deny the truth…

  It was happening again.

  As New York coffee shops go, this one was not noteworthy. From what I could tell, there was one on every block. But we hadn’t chosen Starbucks because of its appeal factor. We’d chosen it because it was easy to find.

  “All you have to do is hop on the train,” Caroline had explained, “hop off, leave the subway and there it is. You can’t miss it.”

  I’d lied to Samuel. This morning, like a shy teenage boy approaching a girl about a dance, he’d asked me if I wanted to attend the neighborhood church with him. “I find peace there, talk to some nice people.” He shrugged, flushing at my dubious expression. “I usually go when I’m in town. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

  “It’s not that,” I hurriedly explained. “I’m sure it’s really beneficial. It’s just…I’m meeting someone for coffee this morning.”

  Now, I sat at a corner table across from Caroline. An already volatile Samuel would have flipped if I’d told him the truth, so I told him my coffee friend was a critic for a magazine here in the city. (I’d never actually followed up with Mr. Avant Garde, and he hadn’t called, so I assumed I was in the clear on the cuppa offer.) Here I was, only hours after passionately rebuffing him for his secrets, doing the same thing—keeping secrets.

  Caroline rubbed her temples. “Have you called his father? He might be able to convince Samuel to see his doctor.”

  “No.” I couldn’t meet her eyes. It was wrong not to inform Alonso and Sofia, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not yet, not until I’d tried to help him on my own. “How did you manage it, Caroline? Get Samuel to go?”

  “It didn’t happen often. Samuel’s very diligent in monitoring his moods before they become out of control. The few times it did, I scheduled the appointment myself and then informed him he was going. If he fought me on it, I usually pushed him like a stubborn mule until he relented just to shut me up. I wouldn’t recommend it for you, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Samuel appreciates that you don’t treat him like a disobedient toddler. Let someone else do that for you.”

  Like Alonso.

  My elbows hit the table with a thunk that shot pain through my funny bone. “He has a day packed with interviews tomorrow, followed by a charity event that will be in all the New York social diaries.”

  “You’ll just have to play it by ear.”

  I drummed my fingers on the table, knowing it was time to bite the bullet. “Look, Caro, I want to apologize for the way things went down between us. Honestly, when I heard you and Samuel were dating, I was crazy jealous. I’d already decided to dislike you before you set foot in Lyons, and that wasn’t fair.”

  She shrugged. “I admit I have an abrasive personality. You wouldn’t be the first to dislike me.”

  “True, but I probably didn’t make the best impression when I crashed Samuel’s book signing in Boulder.”

  Caroline studied me with those glittering eyes. “Tell you what,” she relented. “I’m really not supposed to release the names of Samuel’s doctors without h
is permission. But you need to take a look at the calendar I kept for him, starting two years ago in February. You might find some old appointments still useful.”

  Clever. I hadn’t thought of that. “Thank you so much.”

  “Next time, Kaye? Don’t be afraid to snoop through his medicine cabinets for names. Invading his privacy is the lesser of two evils, in this case.”

  “I understand. Thanks.”

  She caught my forearm, just as I was lifting my coffee mug to my lips. “Do you really understand?”

  I bristled. “Of course I do. I was there with you in LA. I saw it, firsthand. I lived it.”

  “No. Seven years is living it. What you saw? Just a taste.” She glanced around the nearly empty coffee shop, as if she expected someone to swoop from behind the counter and cuff her.

  “I have something for you,” she ventured. “Something I was supposed to give you that night in the East Village, when you slept in my room. I never did because, at the time, I didn’t know what to make of it.” She took a tattered, browning tablet from her briefcase. As she slid it across the table, I recognized it at once—it was one of Samuel’s Moleskine notebooks, its pages dog-eared with age.

  “I have a box full of old papers, drafts, files of Samuel’s writing we backed up from his old laptop. He knows I have it, but he hasn’t asked for it back yet.”

  “I’ll send someone over for it later this week.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s probably wise to pick it up yourself. But this—” she tapped a chipped nail on the notebook “—he hasn’t seen it, doesn’t even remember this. Open it.”

  I did. What I saw took my breath away.

  It was the note—his good-bye letter—written over and over and over again. Pages and pages of pen scribbles, a notebook full of notes, as if he’d been copying detention lines:

  Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  Red, blue, black, even faded pencil, put down and picked up again at a later time, perhaps over days. Some of the lines were illegible, some widely spaced and others over top of each other. Some, near perfect. There were slight variations in the wording, but always, “the roots between us are dead,” as if he was trying to convince himself more than me. I drew in a shuddery, terrified breath.

  “Samuel’s laptop was full of frenetic writing, too, though nothing like this. I told you his work from that time period was harsher? That was an under-exaggeration. It was frightening. Abstract ideas and stories with no cohesion, and all incredibly dark—like stumbling through a nightmare world, then randomly waking only to fall into another nightmare. Samuel would let me use his laptop because my desktop computer was on the fritz. It was wrong to snoop through his personal files, but his other writing—the things he’d shown me—was so amazing, I couldn’t help myself. But what I found shocked me. That’s how I began to get a clue something was wrong. Somehow I knew it was more than the drugs. I should have called someone when I first saw the files, but I had no experience with those sorts of things.”

  “So a doctor or Alonso has never seen this?”

  “Not this. They read through Samuel’s other episode writing, thought it was drug-induced. After the incident in Raleigh, they decided it was more.”

  “Did you copy or distribute any of it? Has Togsy seen it?”

  “I didn’t. And no.”

  I could only take her at her word.

  “That night, after I put you in my bedroom.” She pressed her forehead between shaky hands. “It was horrible. All I could do was watch Samuel torture himself running sprints up and down the street, while that imbecile East Village crew stood outside and laughed, ribbing each other about how high Cabral was. Then Alonso arrived and took his son inside, heartbreak all over his face. Samuel picked up this notebook and began the frantic writing. Alonso just stood there. His own father stood there in agony, watching him, soaked through from hours of running.”

  “Poor Alonso,” I murmured.

  “Then he stepped out to call Sofia. When Alonso left, Samuel quit writing and slapped the notebook shut. I’ll never forget the pleading look on his face. ‘Take this to Kaye and put it in her backpack. Make sure you put it in her backpack,’ he kept repeating.”

  By now, tears streamed down my cheeks. “But you didn’t give it to me.”

  “Only a piece of it.” Caroline tugged the notebook from my grasping hands and flipped through it, until she found a page with a missing rectangular chunk. I recognized the lines of writing on that page, more than the others. Precise, swooping letters, more carefully written than most of the notebook:

  Go home to Colorado. I don’t want to see you again. The roots between us are dead, we are dead…

  “Rather than give you the entire thing, I cut out one line, folded it into your sweatshirt pocket so you wouldn’t find it until later, and placed it in your pack. Deep down, I knew what I did was wrong, but I felt like I was protecting him from more hurt, you see.”

  “Why?”

  “I told you. I thought you were too timid to face the problems of the real world. That you’re too focused on yourself. So I didn’t give you the book. Even if I had, it’s such a small thing, it probably wouldn’t have changed much.”

  I slammed my hands down so hard, our mugs rattled in their saucers and coffee sloshed out. The barista shot me a wary eye. “It would have changed everything. Maybe our split was inevitable because of our youth and insecurities. But I would have known. I would have seen.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Without a doubt.” I picked up the notebook and hugged it to my chest. “This was meant for me instead of you, Caroline. I should have been the one to call a doctor, to stand by him in rehab, and mental health clinics, and meds adjustments. I should have been the one to hold him and tell him it would get better.” Rage and regret churned in my belly like a sickness. “You should have given me the notebook like he asked, but you stole it. Why?”

  “Because I thought you were poisonous,” she whispered. She couldn’t meet my eyes. “Look—I didn’t have to tell you about this at all, so don’t give me grief.”

  I swiped runny mascara across my cheek. “I’d hoped…maybe…we might have become friends someday. Probably the stupidest idea I’ve ever had, huh?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not possible. I have associates, Kaye, not friends. I don’t want them.”

  “Then I am very sad for you.”

  I didn’t miss that in all of her explanations, not once had Caroline apologized. Never in a million years would she admit to being sorry. She was too proud. Brushing the last of my tears away, I rose from the table and purposefully placed my half-empty coffee mug in the dish bin, then made for the door.

  “Kaye,” she called after me. I paused. “You and Samuel should publish your book. It’s a beautiful love story.”

  I stared at her, struggling to rise above this flood of emotion. I searched for the flicker of amity I’d felt pass between us the other afternoon. One last chance. But she’d buried it, and it was gone for good. Somehow, that only made me sadder.

  “I’ll be by for Samuel’s papers tonight,” I said flatly. “And talk to Lexi at Berkshire House, explain the offer you made to Buitre. She might be willing to champion Lyle’s book if he’s serious about making those revisions. Only if the revisions are made.”

  Her eyes widened. “I can’t crawl back to Berkshire House for help. It would be degrading.”

  Not even to help Togsy. Interesting. And with those few words, Caroline Ortega told me enough.

  “Good-bye, Caroline. I hope you find your happiness.”

  When I was eleven, I bought a diary. It had a pink plastic c
over and a little silver padlock and key, threaded on a ribbon. My father gave me ten dollars for my birthday and there wasn’t much for shopping in Lyons. But I carried the ten-dollar bill in my purse on the off-chance I’d find something to blow it on. That chance came when my mother filled a prescription at the pharmacy. I spotted the diary on a magazine rack next to gift wrap and party balloons, and knew it was meant for me.

  “But you never write,” Mom said when I held up the diary.

  “I want this.” I was firm.

  The thing was, Samuel Cabral wrote in a diary.

  He kept it hidden in a box stuffed with baseball cards. But Danita had sibling radar, an instinct that started beeping when there were embarrassing things to be discovered in her brother’s room.

  “My brother is such a dork!” she shrieked when she triumphantly pulled the stolen diary from her backpack. It was a plain blue journal with a Red Sox sticker on the front and a rubber band around the middle. At the time, I was so caught up in the thrill of reading the clandestine thoughts of my long-time crush, wanted into his world so much, I didn’t consider I was doing something wrong. I was barely eleven, and eleven-year-olds are notoriously self-centered.

  Much to Danita’s dismay, there were no juicy revelations in the book’s pages, mainly recaps of baseball practice and the funny things Angel said in geography class. There were also brief, horny snippets about Jennifer—AKA, Cherry ChapStick Girl—which made Danita giggle and me fake vomit.

  Before she could return the diary, Samuel busted us.

  “I can’t believe you read it, Kaye!” he shouted, red streaking up his neck and coloring his cheeks and ears. “I would never, ever read your diary!”

  “I don’t have one,” I mumbled, “but if I did, I’d let you read it.”

  I think he understood my offer wasn’t meant to be petulant. I simply wanted to undo the damage I’d done by offering a piece of myself in return—a child’s flawed “I’m sorry for kicking you, would you like to kick me back?” sense of justice. His shoulders slumped, the fight leaving him. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”