by K. Webster
When I spoke to Mom about reaching out to the family, she bit my head off. It wouldn’t change a damn thing she’d said. It would only cause me more grief and heartache.
I fall onto my back and stare up at the sky. Eventually I close my eyes and cry silently for her, tears soaking my face. Each time I close my eyes. I see her bright, innocent eyes. Her smile.
And then it’s gone.
No matter how much more I try to recall, it’s all I can remember.
Her smile. Her eyes. Her dress.
And then it’s gone.
“Chase.”
I’m on autopilot in my mind as I drive down the highway but am dragged from the past to see Tori’s lip quivering. I glance in the mirror again and my cheeks are wet with tears. My eyes bloodshot behind my glasses.
“Do you want me to drive?”
I shake my head at her. “No. We’re almost there.”
She takes my hand and squeezes it. “I’ll carry you. Just like you carry me. We’re in this together, okay?”
I nod and flash her an appreciative smile.
“She’s a goddamned ghost.” I growl. “It’s like she disappeared off the fucking planet!”
Penelope pats my shoulder. “Chase, it’s time to move on. You’ve been searching for her for over a year now. Maybe she needed to get away. Maybe she changed her name. You know Mom would be pissed if she knew you were trying to find her.”
I slam my laptop closed and run my fingers through my hair. “I just want to talk to her. Explain how sorry I am.”
Penelope’s eyes water and she nods. “I know but sometimes things work out how they’re supposed to. Maybe you aren’t meant to find her. What if she’s finally found some peace and happiness? Would you want to disrupt that?”
Guilt, always fucking a part of me now, surges through my veins. “I want her to be happy.”
My sister nods. “Then let her move on. Don’t bring all this back to her, especially not now. It’s been a year. She’s probably married with a kid on the way. Let her find her peace.”
“Tori,” I blurt out, as I turn on my blinker for the exit. “I tried to find her.”
She narrows her eyes and jerks her head over to me, realizing I’m telling her something huge about my past.
“But she fucking disappeared.” I slam my fist on the steering wheel.
“Who?”
“Her. The one I broke. The one I stole everything from.”
Her tears spill over her cheeks. “Chase, calm down.”
I’m angry. At her. At me. At the whole fucking unfair world.
“I wanted to tell her that I was sorry. That I tried so hard not to hit them.”
She pales as we turn down the road to the cemetery. “Who did you hit? Ashley?”
Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I slam my car into a parking spot. “Them. Both of them. I don’t remember him. All I remember is her. She haunts my dreams with her innocent smile and wide eyes. And that dress. Goddammit, I’ll never get that fucking wall the color of her dress.”
“Chase, why are we here?”
I reach into the back and snatch the flowers. The door swings open and I climb out. She’s already scrambling out of the passenger seat.
“Chase, who? Dammit, tell me who!”
When I round the car, I pull her into my arms and kiss the top of her head. “This is so fucking painful, Tori. Please don’t hate me like Ashley did. I didn’t mean to. I tried not to hit them. I did. There was a car in front of me, it spun out and I swerved the truck but it wasn’t soon enough. They came out of fucking nowhere.”
She’s crying in my arms and struggling to get out of my arms. “Chase, no.”
I clutch her wrist and pull her along with me. Through the path I know so well. To the grave that always has flowers on it, no matter what.
“Chase, no.” Her feet drag but I keep tugging. I’m on a mission. She needs to see the pain I bear each day.
“Tori.”
We stop at the grave and she wails.
I pull her into my arms. “Her name was Sarah.”
The world shifts under my feet.
A silver truck behind the SUV, the sound of screeching breaks pierces the air as the truck spins and the next time I blink, there are three vehicles twisted together in the center of the thoroughfare.
There is ringing in my ears, a sound so loud that my head is splitting open from the pain.
A figure lays unmoving on the ground three feet away from the wreck. The large frame of a man, wrapped around a tiny lump of sunshine yellow fabric.
The sound grows louder, my throat feels as though it is being ripped to shreds, and I realize that the sound is screaming.
It’s me, screaming.
My bare knees hit the ground hard and I barely register the sharp pain of glass digging into the flesh. The only thing I feel is numbness. There is blood, it’s all over the ground, all over them. Someone pulls on my arms and I think they tell me not to move them, but how can I stay away. My heart is on the ground in front of me, and I need to know that it is still beating.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” I’m pleading, pleading for this to not be real. I feel arms trying to surround me but I fight them off with all of my strength. “No, this can’t be happening, God, please don’t let this be real.”
“Tori! Baby, please don’t do this, please. I can’t lose you.”
Chase’s anguished voice floats around me, but I’m so lost in the pain, the sobs heaving from deep in my soul. How could the universe be so fucking twisted?
I fell in love with the man who killed my family.
There is an ugliness that is surfacing, feelings so black that they frighten me. “You—you can’t be the one who hurt me. Y—you healed me. Now you’ve destroyed me, again!” I’m screaming at him, my world once again falling to pieces around me. Only this time, I know I’ll never recover, because Chase is the love of my life. I was tied to Ben by my heart, but I’m tied to Chase with my whole fucking soul.
“Baby, I don’t understand.”
My shoulders are jerking, Chase shaking me frantically. I look at him through the tears falling from my eyes, and I see desperate, panicked fear on his face. “What do you mean again?” He’s yelling now, his voice coated in fear and despair. Good. Let him feel the pain he has caused me.
“You killed my family!” I scream, thrashing out at him with my fist, nails, anything that will get him away from me.
Chase scrambles back in a crab walk, and falls to the ground. His face goes ashen, all the color draining from him, just like the color drained from Ben and Sarah. I attempt to get up off of the ground and end up on my hands and knees, panting hard, trying regain my breath. But, I’m crying so hard I can’t get a decent amount into my lungs. The pain is excruciating. There is no molecule on my body that isn’t burning with anger, with pain, with the utter fucking disaster that is this world.
It’s not just Chase, it’s the realization that that my life is meant to be filled with nothing, or with pain. There is no option number three. When it came to passing out happiness, apparently my bucket was already too full of misery. Only this time, this time I opened myself up so much that I don’t know how to close the wounds again. There is a searing fire that is down deep in the depths of me, breaking me beyond recognition.
I’m finally able to regain my feet and I grab the flowers that Chase brought from where he’d dropped them before following me to the ground. Daffodils. How did I not put it together? Every week, I lay the purple flowers next to bouquets of yellow daffodils. I crush them in my hand.
“Tori, I tried—you disappeared. I wanted to—”
“Stop!” The tears are drying up, and the ice is working its way through my body. Slowly, I become like stone, the woman who everyone sees, the viper, Ice Queen, bitch, take your pick. “I went back to my maiden name,” I say matter of fact. “I left it all behind. Then you came along and forced me to face it all, to relive the pain, share it, fucking fall in love a
gain! Only to have it be the final straw in the sick joke that is my life. I’m done.”
“Are you happy now?” I’m screaming at the sky now, asking anyone, whomever, whatever is out there, “I’m fucking done! You can’t hurt me anymore, because I have nothing left to lose.”
“Tori, I love you. We can work this out. Please,” Chase begs. “You promised you’d never leave me.”
I toss the ruined flowers at his feet. “And you promised you’d never hurt me.”
The weather in the city of Chicago is an ever-changing beast, it could be the middle of July and when the sun dips below the horizon it can be cold. Just like it is now, on a May night, when I’m shivering from the wind whipping through my bones as I walk along the lake front. I revel in it though, the cold seeping in, freezing me, strengthening the ice inside.
I’m numb, just the way I want to be.
I ran from Chase in the cemetery. Ran all the way out of the expansive greens and to a gas station down the road. I called Stacey and she was able to come pick me up. As I lowered myself into the seat of her car, I noticed the Challenger that was sitting in the parking lot, idling. Chase’s devastated face tugged at my heartstrings, but I tightened the pegs so they were strung so taut, they have no give.
Inside the car, Stacey didn’t even try to hide her curiosity and kept glancing between me and the black car with wide eyes. “Thanks for coming, Stacey,” I bit out. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” With one last worried glance, she nodded and started the car.
I’d had her drop me at my building, but I couldn’t bring myself to go up. So, I wandered down to the waterfront, though I’m not sure what the fuck I thought I’d find here. The dark expanse of water is cold and uninviting, the park is empty of pedestrians, with the exception of a few teenagers drinking and getting high. I traipse back to my apartment and try to forget what it was like when Chase had me pressed up against the wall. As I enter my home, I try to forget how it felt like to cuddle on my couch with Chase, to eat Chinese food on a blanket on the floor.
I move into the hallway and stare at the door to my bedroom. It feels like there is invisible caution tape over the door, WARNING: Memories that will shatter you lie ahead. I don’t know how long I stand there, but eventually I make my way into the kitchen, a room that was rarely used until Chase started spending time at my apartment. I need a place where he isn’t surrounding me! I open a cabinet and grab a bottle of whatever, and make a beeline for my guest room. Plopping down on the floor, my back against the bed, I check the label. Vodka, perfect.
Hours later, I pour the last shot and toss it down. My cell phone sits on the ground in front of me and I continually watch it light up. Chase, Stacey, Chase, Chase, Stacey, Chase…. It’s getting harder for my finger to connect with the reject button, but I squint and try to meet the two despite the way they both wobble about. A giggle slips out and I think maybe I’m really, really drunk. I like this feeling, it’s so much better than the alternative.
Life’s not fair.
That’s the fucking understatement of the century.
As I pace my bedroom floor, I have the urge to destroy the entire goddamned room. Everything reminds me of her. Her big-ass unpacked box of shoes sitting in the corner. A handful of bobby pins scattered about the nightstand. Pink panties still on the floor beside my boxers from when we woke up and made love on the way to the shower.
I stomp out of the room and away from the heartache, only to find myself staring at the yellow wall.
When I clench my eyes closed, I see the bright, sunshiny color of little Sarah’s dress and its beautiful and perfect. Yet, when I open my eyes, I can’t match the fucking color. I snap my eyes shut again and my heart seizes in my chest as I remember the little girl, so out of place on the busy road. Smiling the world’s most adorable, toothy grin. Shiny strawberry curls bouncing on her head. Her sweet, yellow dress that made her prettier than any flower on God’s green earth.
My breath is sucked from me when I remember how it felt to realize it was too late. That no matter how hard I yanked on the wheel to avoid them, my car would flip and crush them anyway. I remember the moment I came to after a medically induced coma, days later, in the hospital after countless surgeries, to successfully remove the piece of metal from my skull and the first words out of my mouth were, Please God, let them be okay.
Turns out, they were not fucking okay.
I killed them.
I killed a man and his sweet, baby girl.
In front of his wife. In front of her mother.
Fucking sick!
When Ashley came to see me, I cried and cried and it had nothing to do with the raging shit-storm of a never-ending migraine that possessed my brain. She regarded me with her own tearstained cheeks.
You killed them, she’d said.
You slaughtered that woman’s entire family, she’d said.
I’d begged her to forgive me. Tried to explain to her that it was an accident. And still, she told me she would never be able to get over knowing I’d killed a man and a little girl—accident or not. That night she dropped her ring, along with my dreams, into my lap.
As I pop my eyes back open and stare at the taunting yellow wall, I choke back a tortured wail that threatens to rip straight from my soul. Scrambling, I locate my phone and try for the hundredth time to reach my Tori. To make her understand.
When the line picks up on the third ring, I launch into begging. But drunk giggles in the background are all that can be heard.
“Tori,” I say loudly in hopes she’ll hear me and listen. “Please forgive me, baby. I had no idea you were the woman—the woman I took everything from. You have to believe me when I say there was no time to react. I tried. For fuck’s sake I tried but I couldn’t get away from them in time.”
Her blubbering to herself gets softer and softer until I soon hear her running a bath. I clutch the phone to my ear and quietly listen to the sounds that are her. All of her makeup is here. Her hair shit. Her bathing products. Hell, even her toothbrush is here.
I stand on shaky feet, the phone still desperately attached to my ear as I search out a suitcase. After I unzip it, I toss it onto the bed and begin loading it with the things she’ll need. I toss a couple of pairs of shoes in the suitcase but I plan on holding the rest for ransom. At least until she talks to me.
“Why?” I hear her sob in the background and I collapse onto the bed at hearing her voice again.
Because…life’s not fair.
My heart aches in my chest.
As she begs God to leave her the fuck alone, I am jerked into the gutting memory from hours earlier at the cemetery.
“Are you happy now?” she screams up at the sky. “I’m fucking done! You can’t hurt me anymore, because I have nothing left to lose.”
Me. You have me.
I reach for her. “Tori, I love you. We can work this out. Please. You promised you’d never leave me.”
She jerks her head toward me and murders me with her gaze. Her bloodshot eyes are hate-filled and my entire being crushes from one simple look. “And you promised you’d never hurt me.”
The smashed daffodils are thrown at my feet as she stalks away from me, her wails nearly waking the dead. And I stare after her, arms outstretched, begging for her to come back to me.
When her crying can no longer be heard and only my sobbing is left, I stand on shaky feet and stumble my way back to the car. I climb in and sit there for minutes or hours or fucking eons for all I know.
I found the one woman who understands my pain. Who completes me in every sense of the word. And I killed her goddamned family.
Life isn’t fair, Mother.
Life is a cruel fucking bitch.
Swiping moisture away from my swollen eyes beneath my glasses, I zip up the suitcase and head for the living room. I set it down and stride over to my bookcase. Thumbing through the paint swatches bearing Xs, I snatch one up and scribble on the back.
Tori,
Fo
rgive me, please.
Life is fucking worthless without you.
Give me yesterday and I’ll give you forever.
I love you more than I will ever be able to express.
Chase
I stuff it into the suitcase on top of her makeup shit and zip it back closed. The drive to her place is a blur and before I know it, I’m walking by the front desk where I’m waved in since Tori put me on the permanent visitor’s list. I’m a little surprised she hasn’t had me taken off of it yet. Now, I’m standing in front of her door.
It’s quiet on the other side. I want to beat down the door and demand she forgives me, but I know better. My Tori’s too strong to go down without a fight.
And I don’t want to fight with her. I want to love her.
I lean the suitcase against the door and text her telling her it’s there.
Please, God, let her come back to me.
A week without Tori is like an eternity in hell.
I can’t eat. Or sleep. Or fucking breathe for that matter.
Cort and Penelope have both come by with food. Advice. A shoulder to cry on.
But it’s not enough. I need her.
This morning was fucking torture dragging myself out of my bed, away from her scent that still lingers on my sheets, to go to group. Honestly, I’m holding on to some shred of hope that she’ll actually show up. That she’ll give me a chance to hug her.
I want to comfort her.
Kiss her.
Tell her how sorry I am.
I want to make love to her—to have my soul attach itself to hers forever.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Bill chuckles when I enter the room.
My eyes scan the room—searching for my blue-eyed angel—and eventually fall on her empty seat. The coffee I sucked down earlier without breakfast grumbles in my stomach, threatening to reappear at any moment.
“Hey,” I finally manage to say to him before walking dejectedly to the podium.
All eyes are on me as I rest my elbows on the wood. I lift my gaze to see them all wearing matching frowns. They know it has to do with Tori. I can see it written all over their faces. Little do they know, it has everything to do with Tori.
