One Life

by A. J. Pine

  “It’s okay,” I whisper before pulling away.

  “Dad,” I say, turning to my silent but supportive posse. “This is Jess and Adam.”

  Jess raises a hand to shake but drops it a second later. Then both arms open in an awkward gesture of what I assume is meant to be a hug, and my dad, ever the one to ease an awkward situation, steps right up to the plate and embraces her.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Jess says quietly, and my dad thanks her as he straightens up. He extends a hand to Adam.

  “And the basketball player,” he says, and Adam gives him a half smile. “Sorry your last season was cut short. You had a hell of a run when you were on the court, though. How’s the knee?”

  He may be high and in mourning, but Dad’s a big enough college basketball fan to know who Adam Carson is as well as remember the foul that meant knee reconstruction and an early end to Adam’s college basketball career in late November. The corners of my mouth turn up in a small grin, though. Because that game was the beginning for him and Jess.

  What’s the saying? When one door closes another opens? Jess had her own stuff to work through last year, and it took meeting Adam—and I like to think me, as well—to realize she had a new door to walk through. I used to believe stuff like that. Maybe I still do, but only as something that happens to other people. I don’t see how a life ending can be any sort of new beginning, not when the life itself was still so new.

  “Thank you, Mr. Adler.” Adam wraps an arm around Jess and squeezes her close. “The knee’s getting stronger every day. Even started to play a little, recreationally of course.”

  Jess leans into him, and I look down at my hand. There it is, in Spock’s again. I must have let go to hug Linnie, then my dad. But he’s still here, patient and quiet and here.

  “And this is Spock,” I say, watching the skin between my dad’s brows crinkle.

  “It’s Zach, really,” he says, and he and my dad shake hands. “We met at a comic book convention last fall. There were Spock ears . . .”

  My dad raises his right hand, offering Spock the Live long and prosper sign. “I get it. Same name as her brother. Say no more.”

  “We’re just friends, Dad!” I blurt the words, not entirely sure where the defense comes from. Because yeah, back in the fall when we met, I thought he was hot. He loved that I didn’t drink, that we could hang out without having to party. And yes, there was chemistry. But he held back. And I didn’t push forward because his band was leaving on tour at semester’s end. Because even if he wasn’t traveling the country for six months, we went to different schools. In different states.

  And I was a too scared to admit I wanted someone who might not want me.

  “Uh, sweetheart, I wasn’t implying . . .”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Adler. I mean, she’s right. We are. Friends, I mean. Just friends. I actually haven’t seen Zoe since November, but when I heard . . . I left my tour as soon as I heard.”

  Someone gasps, and then I realize it’s me, my hand over my mouth and everything.

  “The tour’s still going on?” I ask, my hand still muffling my words.

  Spock’s eyebrows rise, and I drop my palm before asking again.

  “The tour? You left the band and came all the way here?”

  He gives me this look, halfway between a smile that says, How could you doubt me? and a look of recognition that says, You had no reason to think I’d come.

  So he nods. “I left the tour.”

  He pauses and clears his throat, and a shock of hair falls over his eyes. My hand itches to push it out of his face, to touch some part of him other than his hand, if only to prove that I can, that we are the kind of friends we were six months ago despite whatever hung between us.

  Instead, another voice interrupts the moment.

  “Pay up, Dad.”

  It’s my brother. Zach. The one who is still alive. Is that how I’ll differentiate now? Instead of my twin brother and my little brother—the one who’s living and the one who’s not?

  “You guessed pink. I said purple, and blue is definitely closer to my guess.” He holds a hand out, palm up. My dad rolls his eyes and reaches for his wallet, pulling out a crisp twenty.

  “Only because there is blue in purple am I giving you this one, but next time it has to be exact.”

  “You bet on my hair?” I ask as my brother scoops me into a hug, doing what we do, coping the best way we know how. Messing with each other and acting normal, though I doubt anything will ever feel normal again.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he says in my ear, a tightness in his voice he saves just for me.

  He pushes me an arm’s length away to look at me.

  “It’s my hair,” I say. “Half that twenty belongs to me.”

  Zach shrugs, rips the bill in two, and gives me half.

  “Dude, not cool,” my dad says, and Zach and I burst out laughing. “What?” he asks. “I can use that word, especially when my son pulls a dick move like that.”

  Now Jess, Adam, and Spock are laughing too. My dad is by no means old, but my dad on weed is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

  “Just means we have to spend it together,” Zach says as the laughter dies down but doesn’t yet cease. That’s when my mom enters the room, and somehow this all seems so wrong. This brief bit of lightness now feels like betrayal.

  We’re laughing, but my mother stands before us, her reddened eyes fixed on something past me. I follow her gaze to the fireplace, to the mantel covered with pictures of Wyatt and the urn that holds his remains.

  All smiles fade. I think about my dad not having a chance to splash on that extra aftershave. I think about Zach pulling that crap with the twenty because he knew it would make me smile, yet I know he’s been here for days already, in the thick of it, making sure the house got cleaned, bills got paid, because my mother wasn’t getting out of bed and my father couldn’t shut down the diner completely. I think about a man and woman, still in love and together after thinking they’d made it through the worst, parents about to become empty nesters and finally get back all the time they gave to their kids. They’ll still get that last bit with me and Zach graduating and moving out.

  But they had it all wrong. They made it through the bad. But the worst—the worst is now.

  Chapter Three

  We lay on the grass in my backyard, Spock and me. Side by side, two parallel arrows pointing in the same direction but not intersecting.

  Jess and Adam drove back to school, both needing to study for finals. I guess I should be happy that I got some sort of bereavement allowance from my professors, all of them agreeing to base my final grades on the work I’ve done up until now and exempting me from my exams. But I’d almost prefer the distraction. Though I can’t imagine walking through graduation now. Or celebrating.

  It’s dark, the chill of early May in Illinois more pronounced with the absence of someone I love hovering in the air.

  “Is it okay?” he asks. “That I came today?”

  Spock’s arm leaves his side, and his hand finds my shoulder. I turn my head to face him, the cool blades of grass tickling my cheek.

  “What makes you doubt me wanting you here?” I force a smile. “Is it because I flung myself into your arms when you showed up at my door, or the fact I haven’t let you leave my side the entire day and night?” Humor—that’s my crutch. Yet I can’t ignore the twist in my gut that reminds me—he is here because my brother is not.

  His face breaks into a soft smile, and then he lets out a long breath. “I’ve been sort of shit with communication since I left.”

  When I don’t argue with him, he continues.

  “I was kind of shit with communication when I was around too,” he says.

  I turn my head back to the sky. “You don’t need to say this,” I tell him. “Really. We’re good. I knew what I was getting myself into when we started hanging out. You made it very clear that early graduation and the tour were what mattered. And w
e . . .”

  “You mattered, Zoe. Jesus, is that what you think?” He lets out a long sigh. “That’s why I didn’t ask you for anything more. It’s because you mattered, from the day I met you, that I didn’t let it go further than friendship.”

  That word hangs in the air—friendship. We haven’t spoken in months. We’re barely acquaintances at this point. Yet here he is, the person who hasn’t left my side since he showed up this morning, and there’s nowhere else I want him to be.

  I think back to meeting him at that damn comic book convention, how adorable—and freaking sexy—he was in those ridiculous Vulcan ears. We lived a state apart, a clock ticking away the time until he would leave to travel the country.

  Just friends, I told him. Fine by me. Because what else do I tell a guy I just met who’s one-dimple smile twisted my insides into impossible knots? How would I get the chance to know him, to keep him in my life for as long as possible if I wasn’t okay with being just friends?

  “Fine,” I say, wanting to believe him. “I mattered. And you were shit with communication.”

  The texts were daily to begin with. Then weekly, monthly, and once early spring hit, all but nonexistent.

  “Come here,” he says, and I hesitate for a few long moments. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted—him to want me like this? Or is he here because Jess didn’t know what else to do, so she texted the one person she thought could make any of this better? Maybe it’s the exhaustion. Maybe the chill in the air. Or perhaps it is the aching need to fill the hole inside, the one carved deep with the loss of my brother. I think it’s a combination of the three that drives me to scoot into the crook of his arm, the warmth of his body against mine immediate and necessary.

  “How are you so warm?” I ask, burrowing into what feels like a blanket of safety.

  “If I said werewolf, would you hold it against me?” I can hear his smile, imagine the dimple that used to make my knees weak, not that he ever knew. No one knew, except Jess.

  “I might hold it against you if you’ve been hiding your team Jacob fandom from me.”

  For the first time in days my smile isn’t forced.

  He laughs, and my head bounces with the rise and fall of his chest.

  “I’m more of an Astounding Wolf-Man fan, actually. The Robert Kirkman comic?”

  I smile again, even though he can’t see it, both of us still looking toward the cloudless sky, stars sprinkled like freckles across the face of night.

  “Fandom approved,” I say, closing my eyes for minute, sinking into his warmth.

  A few more deep breaths, and then he speaks. “You think you can forgive me for disappearing—for letting the tour take over?”

  My finger traces circles on his chest. “You didn’t owe me anything. There’s nothing to forgive.”

  He takes in a breath, and I think he’s going to argue this assertion, but then he just exhales.

  This would be my opening, the perfect time to ask him why he’s here. For me? For him? Because he couldn’t say no when Jess called or else he’d be a total dick? But I don’t want answers right now. For now I just want to be.

  “Do you believe in reincarnation?” His voice is quiet but earnest, and I can feel his hope trying to burrow into my own psyche.

  We’re not a religious family. Spock can see that from today’s display. No funeral, no religious official to preside over our self-made memorial service. Just food and stories and pictures of Wyatt’s short stay on this planet.

  “I’m not sure what I believe,” I say. How do I tell him I had my doubts before, that now there’s no way I can believe in any sort of higher power that could dream up a world where Wyatt doesn’t exist?

  I believe in disappearing, in things ending, in loss. These are my constants. This is what’s true. But I only give myself tonight to indulge in the grief and in the comfort of someone’s arms. Because even though we haven’t really begun, I can imagine our ending. He left once before.

  But he’s here now.

  As if he hears my thought, his arm slides out from under my neck, and he rises up on his elbow.

  I roll to my side too, so we’re face-to-face, my cold nose drifting toward his.

  “I just wonder,” he starts, “if people do come back to us—in another way or shape. A way to begin again, you know? I’m not sure what I believe. But the idea gives me hope.”

  “Hmmmm,” I say. “Not sure about that hope thing.” I try to make my voice light, to put on the it’s all good smile. But even in the dark I doubt my delivery.

  “I know I believe in you,” he says, and his head shifts, his nose missing mine as his lips and my lips do what they’ve never done, what they wanted to do months ago, what I need them to do now.

  His lips are warm and full and mine for the taking, and I try to ignore the taste of salt, the recognition that something I never admitted to wanting is finally here but coupled with such staggering pain I don’t know what I’ll remember more—the feel of Spock’s lips on mine or the taste of my own tears.

  But I don’t stop. I don’t chastise myself for doing something that makes me feel good on a day when the rules say I need to be sad. Because underneath the tears, I taste the coffee he drank while my dad asked him all about Pleasantville, his band, and the lead singer’s favorite movie. I taste warmth and reassurance as I part my lips and let his tongue slide gently past my teeth. And then there it is, in the pit of my stomach, overriding everything telling me I shouldn’t be doing this. Need. An aching, burning need to be touched—to feel pleasure instead of pain.

  That’s when I pull away.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Maybe this wasn’t the right time.”

  But I shake my head, press my palm to his cheek. I don’t want him to misread me, but I also don’t want to forget myself enough to take him right here, right now, in my freaking yard while the late-night mourners remain. Because although that would obliterate everything for the time being, I have enough sense to know this would be best without an audience.

  “No,” I assure him. “I’m glad you did it.” Having him here today beats what it would have been like to do this without him. If he wants to give me more, I’ll take it. Because more feels a hell of a lot better than nothing at all.

  His face relaxes into a smile. “Forgot about that tongue ring,” he says. “Still the same one?”

  I nod and stick my tongue out, flashing him the Superman symbol, a gesture I usually love. But tonight all it does is remind me how much of a hero I am not.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I just . . . I should probably head in to help clean up.”

  He swipes a thumb across my cheek, and I feel it streak wet against my skin. He kisses me once more, soft and sweet, and I wonder how much he’s thought of me in the past six months, if his actions are a product of missing me or distracting me.

  Right now I’ll take either one.

  * * *

  After getting Spock situated on the couch later that night, I head upstairs. We can discuss where he goes from here in the morning. I assume he’ll rejoin the tour, but I didn’t want to ask. I don’t want to anticipate him leaving when he only just got here.

  I knock on Zach’s door even though it’s partly open and I can see the bottom half of his legs stretched out on the bed.

  “Come in,” he says, his voice hoarse and groggy, and I wonder if I woke him but then realize his light is on, so he’s probably not quite asleep yet.

  “Jesus, Zach,” I say, waving my hand at the smoke slowly seeping from his lips. “What the fuck? You got Dad high?”

  The judgment I suspended for a grieving father finds its way into my words for my brother.

  He waves me off with the same hand that holds the disappearing joint. “You color your hair . . . I do . . .”

  He trails off, and at first I think it’s because he’s too high to finish his thought—my brother who knows the risk of addiction in our family, who knows that risk is the exact reason why I haven’t had a sip o
f alcohol since freshman year—too high to finish a fucking sentence. But he drops the joint in the bowl next to him and presses the heels of his hands to both eyes. My throat tightens with the threat of tears too, but I swallow them down for Zach.

  “Hey,” I say, nudging him toward the center of the bed so I can sit next to him. “I just worry about you, okay? I can keep an eye on you at school, but what’s going to happen now that we’re almost done? We graduate in a few weeks, and then I’ll be in Chicago while you’re back here.” Alone, I think. He’ll be here alone with his grief and Mom’s and Dad’s. “I can postpone the program, you know. They’ll offer it again next year. We can both work at the diner this summer and wait for things to, I don’t know, get better?”

  He sits up straight and turns to face me, eyes regaining some clarity.

  “No fucking way, Zoe. You’d never survive here in this tiny town. It’s not like I’m staying either. I just need to figure out where I’m going first. But you? Look at you, my little sister, the artist. You’re meant for the city, for this chance to get your talent noticed.”

  He stares at me hard, as if the conviction in his voice isn’t enough. Because it’s not.

  “How am I supposed to make sure you’re okay?” I ask.

  Now Zach smiles and even gives me his annoyed, big brother eye roll, as if three minutes constitute enough time to dub him the older and wiser sibling. “The city is, like, only ninety minutes away, Z.”

  I smile at his use of our nickname for each other. It started when we were toddlers, according to Dad. Zach did it first, called me Z as if somehow my three-letter, two-syllable name was just too much for him. So I started calling him Z back, and it stuck.

  “And whenever Mom and Dad drive me batshit, you know I’m coming to crash on your floor for the weekend,” he continues. “Plus . . .” He pauses, his smile fading. “Someone needs to keep an eye on them.”

  My face grows hot, and the burn runs all the way up to my eyes, the stinging in my tear ducts too much to blink away. I shake my head as the tears fall, realizing this is one of my biggest worries too—my parents.