In the Stillness

by Andrea Randall

  “Shit,” Ryker huffs as he jogs down the stairs and kneels in front of me. “Let me see,” he asks, reaching for my arm.

  “I’m fine, just leave me alone,” I barely make out as I start sobbing with my forehead on my knees.

  It’s the single biggest lie I’ve ever told.

  “Nat . . .” It’s like he finally realizes he’s dealing with an incredibly drunk person, so he just takes my arm into his hands and sighs. “We’ve gotta get this cleaned up, come inside.”

  “I’m not going back in there.”

  . . . Because now is the time to be stubborn.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  I sob harder. “I don’t have a home. I’m staying at Tosha’s in Northampton.”

  His voice remains calm. “Well, I’ll take you to my house, then. Come on, it’s not far.” He stands, leading me up with my arm.

  I can barely pick my head up, let alone stand straight, and I find myself leaning all of my weight onto him. The muscles in his shoulders and chest tense for a minute before he relaxes and leads me to his car.

  “My car . . .” I point weakly to my shiny Mom-U-V.

  “It’ll be fine here. Get in. Sorry about your dress, but leave it on your arm, K?” I nod as he shuts the door.

  “Wait, I can’t be here. I can’t . . . you’ve got to let me out, Ryker.” My fight-or-flight mechanism is misfiring as he gets in and starts his car. Panicked, I search for the easiest escape.

  “Natalie, I’m not going to let you drive anywhere this drunk, or that bloody.” He nods to my arm. “Wait,” he starts as he stares at my surely horrified face, “I’m not . . .” He sighs. “I’m not going to hurt you, Natalie. I want to get a look at your arm. If you’d rather, I can drive you to the hospital.” His jaw clenches as he pulls his eyes away from me and faces the windshield.

  I shake my head, suddenly feeling awful that I’ve made him feel bad. “No, sorry, I’m just wicked drunk.” I start crying again. “Just bring me to your house.”

  His tongue smoothes across his lips. “Try to let me know if you think you’re going to throw up, okay?”

  “Mmhmm.” I use my free hand to squeegee away rapidly falling tears.

  As soon as his car starts winding its way down the curves of the back roads, I rest my head against the cold window and pass out.

  Chapter 29

  “Natalie, wake up, we’re here.” I jump at the sound of Ryker’s voice, certain I’m dreaming. He walks around to my side of the car and opens the door. “Can you walk?”

  Pulling my eyebrows in, I try to gain some balance, even though I’m sitting. I stand, only to immediately fall back onto my seat. And throw up on the ground between my feet. After a few minutes, I rest my head on the doorframe, feeling empty from the inside-out.

  This is just perfect.

  Ryker places his hands on his hips and with a deep sigh, looks to the ground for a moment before looking at me. “Okay,” he sighs again as he leans into the car, “I’m going to carry you in. Is that all right with you?”

  “Yeah.” Glancing down at my arm, I’m glad to see the bleeding has stopped. I wrap my arms around his neck, careful to turn the cut away from his shirt.

  Resting my head on his shoulder, I flicker my eyes up and study Ryker’s face. His jaw is tight, gorgeous eyes focused on his front porch. He has every reason to hate me, yet he’s bringing me to his house to take care of me. It’s all too much, and I start sobbing into his shoulder.

  “Does it hurt?” His voice is doused in urgent concern as he opens the door.

  “Yes.”

  Everything does.

  Ryker sets me down on his couch. “Sit tight, I’m going to run upstairs and get some peroxide.”

  While his footsteps fade up the stairs, I look around. It’s a standard large, old farmhouse but, thankfully, looks nothing like the house from my nightmare. My breath catches as Ryker comes back down the stairs with the peroxide and cotton balls in his hand. He’s absolutely stunning, even amidst this tension-filled shit-show. Sitting on the coffee table in front of me, he reaches for my hand. Our eyes meet as I surrender my hand to him and he doesn’t even look away as he grabs the bottle of peroxide.

  “So what happened?” He opens the bottle and reaches for the cotton balls.

  “Um, I fell . . .” I’m pretty sure he saw the whole thing.

  “No, I mean, why were you at a bar I’ve never seen you at, drinking an entire pitcher of tequila?”

  I swallow as the tears come again. I’ve seriously never cried so much in my entire life as I have in the last two weeks. “I doubt you’d want to know.”

  Ryker sets my hand on a towel in his lap, his blue eyes still searching mine. “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “I’m sorry, Ryker,” I squeak out between even more tears.

  “For what?” He looks up in surprise.

  “I-I-I,” I’m stuttering through an ugly cry, “I ruined your life and I’m sorry.”

  His face twitches. “Deep breath.”

  “Huh?”

  His voice is calm and even. “Take a deep breath, this is going to sting.”

  He takes one with me as he pours the peroxide over my arm. He’s right. It hurts like a bitch, but not for long.

  “So,” he continues, “you were at The Harp, getting dangerously drunk because you think you ruined my life?” Ryker’s eyebrows pull in as he pours another round of peroxide over my arm.

  I shrug. “Among other things . . .”

  Ryker dabs the cut dry and starts looking at my arms, I guess to see if I have any more gashes.

  “You didn’t ruin my life—” he stops as his calloused thumb runs along my upper, inner arm. Looking down, I find him tracing the last place I cut. “Jesus, Nat . . .”

  I shrug out of his hold, but it’s too late. His hard swallow as he looks away is the only proof I need that he knows what those marks are from. He’s seen them before, even if it was only once. His face melts as he squeezes his eyes shut. Before I can respond, Ryker’s walking to the kitchen and filling up a glass of water. He returns, setting the ice-cold glass in my hand.

  “Drink this.” He paces around the coffee table and rubs a hand over his face. “By the looks of things, I think it’s safe to say I ruined yours.” His tone fills me with uncomfortable anxiety. He wants me out of here, I can tell. He doesn’t need some screwed-up ex-girlfriend messing up the good thing he clearly has going for himself.

  Feebly, I try to console any guilt he’s feeling. I know what I can do to a person. “You didn’t ruin anything for me, Ry.”

  Ry.

  In a huff, his hands are running through his hair. He seems to choose to ignore my reply. “When you said you didn’t have a home . . .” Ryker shrugs, waiting for a response.

  “Oh. Well, you see,” I lay on the cheery sarcasm I’ve become good at, “my boys are staying at my parents’ house this week and my husband—I just found out—has been having an affair for the last year. Which, really, is just as well since I was leaving him anyway . . . so last night I stayed at Tosha’s.” In one breath I just told him that I’m a mom, a wife, and a soon-to-be ex-wife. Neat.

  He winces and clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Is she home now?”

  “No. She and Liz are at Tosha’s parents’ house for a few days, why?”

  Ryker grabs the back of his neck and groans almost inaudibly to the heavens. “I can’t let you go home like this. You’re far too drunk—”

  “Wait,” standing, I balance myself on the arm of the couch, “you’re not suggesting I stay here . . . are you?”

  “Yeah, Nat, I am.” He chuckles, but I can’t tell if it’s from nervousness or the absurdity of the situation. Probably both. I’d like to pass out now. “Unless you’re uncomfortable . . .” His face changes, and it breaks my heart.

  “No, Ryker, that’s not it. It’s just . . . I don’t see you for the better part of a decade and . . .”

  He laughs nervously again. “Go figure.
I can loan you some shorts and a t-shirt to sleep in.”

  Yeah, sure, why not?

  “Okay. Can I shower?” I’m starting to sober up at a rapid pace, but that might just be the tequila making me think that.

  “Of course, shower’s upstairs.” Ryker leads me to the stairs with his hand gently pressing against the small of my back. Praise God for my dress or I’d be on fire. “You okay to do the stairs?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

  And incredibly distracted by your hand. On my back.

  “All right,” Ryker turns on the light in a small bathroom at the top of the stairs, “towels are here, and I’ll have you sleep in the room next door. I’ll put clothes on the bed.” He’s shaved since I saw him a few days ago, and apart from the crease between his eyebrows as he focuses on what he’s trying to tell me, he looks exactly the same as the last healthy day I saw him.

  “Thanks,” I mumble while closing the bathroom door.

  As promised, when I step out of the shower and wander into the room next door with a towel on, I find workout shorts and an Amherst College t-shirt. It looks a little small to fit on Ryker, then I realize it’s probably from before he even graduated high school—he bulked way up when he joined the National Guard. Sliding it over my head, I pause for a minute as I’m flooded with his scent. It’s a clean shirt, but it’s still his clean shirt.

  Loud clomps announce his impending arrival up the stairs, so I hurriedly pull the shirt down and the shorts on before sitting on the edge of the bed. Ryker appears in the doorway holding more water, a box of crackers, and a bottle of Advil.

  “Here. You’re gonna want something in your stomach to take the Advil, and you’re definitely going to want to take an Advil before you fall asleep.” He sits on the bed next to me. So help me God, next to me. “It’s a good thing you threw up already, that’ll help you sober up.”

  “Um,” I clear my throat and try again, “is your wife going to be upset that some strange girl is sleeping in your house?” Somewhere from the recesses of my brain during my long, hot, shower, I was reminded of Ryker’s marital status. Looking at his hand, though, I don’t see a ring, and the look on his face suggests maybe I just opened an old wound.

  “My wife?” He sounds like I’ve said the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard.

  “My bad, sorry, did you divorce?”

  Ryker shakes his head with a grin. “Natalie, what the hell are you talking about? I’ve never been married.”

  “But your dad said—” I cut myself off, trying to shuffle through my memories.

  “My dad? When did you see my dad?

  “When I was pregnant with the twins—”

  His eyes nearly bug out of his head. “You have twins?”

  I look around the room as if I’m trying to translate everything I’m trying to say into Chinese. “Yes. I saw your dad at Trader Joe’s when I was like eight months pregnant. He congratulated me, asked me about Eric, and when I asked how you were, he said ‘happily married.’ That’s why I thought you were married.”

  Ryker shrugs. “He never told me he saw you.”

  My stomach sinks. “Oh.”

  What the hell?

  “I’m sure he had his reasons.”

  I snort, “Yeah, like I said, I ruined your life. He didn’t want our little dairy case run-in to screw up any healing you’d done, so he didn’t tell you.” Ryker’s hand wraps around my wrist as I reach for the Advil.

  “Crackers first. Trust me.” He grabs my other hand and takes a careful breath, commanding my attention. “Natalie, you didn’t ruin my life. Stop saying that. Why would you even think that?”

  It occurs to me that I actually have no idea if some of the things I’ve been thinking over the last few years are true. I use my drunkenness as a shield and forge ahead.

  “Well, did you ever reenlist in the National Guard?”

  His eyes close for an extra-long blink as he exhales. “No. I couldn’t.”

  “And,” I pull my hand away and continue, “why not?” His brief hesitation allows me to finish, “Because I pressed charges, got a restraining order, and screwed up your record.” With that declaration out of the way, I tear open the box of crackers.

  “Nat . . . it’s so much more complicated than that. Ugh. We’ll talk in the morning, okay? When you’re sober.” He opens the Advil bottle, places two pills on the bedside table, and puts the cap back on. “Take these and try to get some sleep. Do you think you’re going to throw up anymore?”

  “No.”

  “K,” he stands and takes the rest of the Advil with him, “night.”

  “Night.”

  As if I’m going to be able to sleep now.

  Chapter 30

  My fingers glide along the metal railing of the stairwell in my Mt. Holyoke dorm.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  Just ahead I spot Ryker, carrying someone. My chest clenches as I realize it’s me; my right arm dangling limp as he clutches me to his chest.

  “Help her! Please, someone help her!” Ryker’s voice is hoarse and sounds weak, like he’s crying.

  Following quietly as though I’m going to disturb the scene, I watch as we come upon ambulances and fire trucks through the door.

  Right, the fire alarm.

  “Sir, what happened?” A fire lieutenant runs alongside Ryker as he races toward the nearest ambulance.

  “Help her! Help her, I can’t tell if she’s breathing!” He probably would have known what to do if he wasn’t so strung out on Oxycontin.

  In a flash I see myself on a gurney and locked behind the ambulance doors while Ryker bangs his fists on them, begging to be let in. Another flash and I’m inside the ambulance with my body, banging my fists banging on the door, staring into his dilated pupils as the police approach him from behind.

  My screams come out as a whisper. “Let me out! He didn’t do anything! Stop driving, Stop!”

  No one listens, and I’m forced to watch Ryker be wrestled to the ground by police as I’m driven further and further away from everything I’d held as true up until that moment.

  Then, my eyes open.

  Sitting up, I’m relieved that I don’t feel nearly as shitty as I should. Unfortunately, I remember every single detail of my self-medication project from yesterday. The low grumble of a lawnmower turns my attention out the window, where I find Ryker on a riding mower wearing faded jeans, a t-shirt, and a tattered baseball cap. I can tell from up here that it’s his old Red Sox hat.

  I can’t believe I slept until nine-thirty. Walking down the stairs, I scroll through my phone and find only one missed call. From Tosha. I call her back as I wander into the kitchen, relieved at the smell of freshly-brewed coffee.

  “Hey skank, how are things?” I laugh at her greeting.

  “Interesting . . .” I chuckle, opening a few cupboards until I find the one with the coffee mugs.

  “What’s going on?”

  With a deep breath and an eye-roll I tell Tosha about Eric coming to her apartment yesterday, and the events leading up to where I’m currently standing.

  “Natalie. For fuck’s sake, I leave you alone for a day and this is where you find yourself?” Her voice turns serious. “Are you okay?”

  Placing the pot back on the coffeemaker, I turn around and jump a little when I see Ryker in the doorway, looking as confused as he has over the last twenty-four hours. On auto-pilot, I turn and reach for another mug, pouring him a cup as I continue with Tosha on the phone.

  “I’m fine, Tosh. Just having some coffee right now, then . . . who knows anymore.” I walk to the fridge and take out the cream, setting it next to Ryker’s mug.

  “He’s in the room now, isn’t he?”

  “You betcha.” I smile.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I am. I’ll call you later.”

  She groans in frustration. “This is unbelievable, you know that?”

  “I do. Bye.”

  I
watch Ryker pour the cream into his coffee and tuck the container back into its spot on the door of the fridge. He doesn’t ask me if I want any, because he remembers—I drink my coffee black.

  “Thanks,” he murmurs, raising his mug a little.

  “Well, thank you for letting me sleep it off here. Sorry about that. You should know I don’t usually do—”

  “I can tell,” he chuckles, “no one sets out to drink a pitcher of margaritas. Are you hungry?”

  “Coffee first, then food.” I lean my back against his counter. An island with a thick butcher’s block on top of it separates us.

  “Of course. It’s wicked nice out, want to sit on the porch?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  Naturally, there’s a porch swing. I balance myself on it, and Ryker leans his shoulder against the pillar opposite me. I think better of asking him to sit next to me. This is all too much as it is. The awkward silence is already churning my stomach.

  Ryker sets his mug on the railing and puts his hands in his pockets as he rolls his shoulders back once. He smells like freshly-cut grass. It’s refreshing. “Look, Nat . . . does it bother you that I call you ‘Nat’?”

  “Of course not.” It never has . . . not from him.

  “I spent most of the night thinking about what you said . . . about ruining my life.”

  Any thoughts I had about eating breakfast fly out the window as I watch him struggle to find the right words.

  “We don’t have to talk about this right now, Ryker.”

  He looks to his left and talks to the fields as the sun highlights his face. “No. We do. I can’t believe you’ve spent the last nine years thinking you ruined my life. It wasn’t like that, Natalie.”

  “How was it, then?” This coffee isn’t strong enough.

  “Okay, well, of course I spent some time being mad at you. But, mostly I was scared. No one would tell me where you were, I couldn’t get anything out of Tosha . . .”

  “You talked to Tosha?”

  Ryker finally looks at me and gives his head a quick shake. “I called her every day for like a month.”

  “She never told me . . .”

  “I’m lucky she didn’t call the police.” His eyebrows shoot up in relief. “She finally told me you weren’t coming back to school till the next year because your parents were making you go to therapy.”