My Hope Next Door

by Tammy L. Gray

  “And you’ve apologized for them. Multiple times.” Her cycle was continuing, that horrible march from regret to self-loathing to self-doubt. She still couldn’t grasp that she’d been forgiven. “Katie, at some point, you’re going to have to forgive yourself too.”

  “I just wanted him to be the bad guy. And here he is, helping my parents. He stood by Laila when Chad left. Kept my secret for years, and probably would have for longer if I hadn’t come back.” She paused, her eyes focusing on a spot behind him. “He went after me when I left. I never knew. I truly thought he’d be relieved to see me go.”

  A stabbing pain hit Asher in the chest, and for a span of a few seconds, he felt an ache that went past his bones to a place unseen and unfixable. “Are you still in love with him?”

  Her eyes returned to his, with a flicker of surprise. “No.”

  His stomach settled and he exhaled deeply, only then realizing he’d been holding his breath. “Okay. Good.”

  Lines deepened around her mouth. “No. It’s not good. It’s what makes me so much more rotten. I’ve never been in love with anyone. I try to be. I pretend like I am. But there’s always an escape plan, an out if I need it. That day I left, it was the easiest decision I ever made.”

  Fear rocked into him. He’d finally heard her. He’d brought her out here to declare his love, his intentions, his hopes and dreams for their future. And she couldn’t even get her mind around the idea of caring about someone on a deeper level.

  “You had a chance to leave a few weeks back and you didn’t,” he reminded her.

  She studied her hands. “I know. I still can’t figure out why.”

  Though she hadn’t stopped frowning, relief edged out the doubts that had clouded his mind for a few moments. He touched her chin, tilted it up.

  “My dad would say that people never fully understand love until they experience grace. You may be surprised by the decisions you’re capable of making now. Surprised even more by what you can feel.”

  “Guilt. That seems to be my default emotion.” She allowed him to gather her close. Allowed him a moment of full clarity as he attempted to kiss away her shame.

  Her lips lingered on his, her voice not much more than a raspy moan. “You’re so good. If I hurt you, I couldn’t stand it.”

  “You’re not the only tough one, Katie. I’m not naïve. If I wanted easy, I could have it. I want you. The old. The new. All of it.”

  Finally a smile came through the storms that had lingered on her face all afternoon. She shifted closer, straddled his lap, and ran soft fingers through the hair above his ear. “Are you saying I’m difficult?”

  “I’m saying you’re worth it.” He kissed her then, and not the careful caress of before. This one was more demanding, dangerous. One where bodies collided and hands explored. One that would escalate into the shedding of clothes if he wasn’t so determined to keep them from becoming too physical.

  He gripped her waist and pushed, the act of stopping almost as painful as a punch in the gut. His eyes locked on to her. “Tell me you’re going to stay.”

  She planted a kiss on the sensitive skin beneath his earlobe and whispered, “I’ll consider it,” before dismounting from his lap.

  He used the much-needed pause to get himself back under control.

  She stretched out her legs. “There’s an apartment coming available in the Commons. My dad brought me an application.”

  “And you’re just now telling me?”

  She shrugged. “You’re hot when you get a little demanding.”

  Yes, this girl was the opposite of easy. She was also everything he wanted, down to the crinkle on her nose as she brushed a centipede off their blanket.

  He tackled her, pinned her with tickling fingers that made her snort through her nose and howl at him to stop. He’d wait. Tell her he loved her at a better time. When she wasn’t too afraid to hear it, and more importantly, when she had forgiven herself enough to believe him.

  CHAPTER 41

  Katie hugged the cardboard box and stared at the black door leading into Joe’s. Her two previous attempts had failed. The first time she’d come, Laila wasn’t working. The second time, Katie had chickened out. This time she had nowhere to run. Cooper was at her house; his truck had pulled in just as her car drove away. She’d been anticipating his arrival for weeks, but somehow seeing his truck made her stomach ache.

  The rage had been easier to deal with than this new compassion. Her lingering bitterness had allowed her to forget the times when he’d been sincere, even vulnerable with her. Allowed her to brush aside his horrible past and how he’d spent most of his childhood abandoned and rejected. It allowed her to forget the gritty emotion in his voice when he’d called her his family.

  She shook her head as if it would reset her memory, and adjusted the box so she could pull open the door.

  The lights were dim compared to the blazing summer sun, and it took Katie a moment to register Laila behind the bar, wiping and stacking glasses.

  “We don’t open until five,” Laila said, absently but with just enough heat to let Katie know she’d seen her.

  “I was hoping you’d have a minute.”

  The box was heavy in her arms. Full of more than just childhood memories, it represented a chapter closing in her life. A final good-bye to the past.

  Katie set the container on the bar and took the stool directly in front of her old best friend. “I cleaned out the attic this week. Mom had put some things up there that belonged to you.”

  Laila still hadn’t made eye contact. She finished drying a tumbler and set it on a shelf underneath a row of liquor bottles. Her eyes were puffy and red like she’d spent most the night crying. She’d never been good at hiding emotion. Her skin was too pale, her eyes too light, her heart too fragile. Unlike Katie, when Laila felt anything, she felt everything.

  “So, you’re still here,” Laila finally said, lifting a flap of the cardboard.

  “You told me to be different.”

  Laila rolled her eyes. “You’ve never listened to me before.”

  “Well, I should have. You were the only who warned me I looked like a green lizard in my formal gown, and I’ll be haunted by those pictures forever.”

  “That’s still the ugliest dress I’ve ever seen in my life.” Laila’s lip lifted and then fell back into a frown as if she’d caught herself smiling and wouldn’t allow it.

  The motion sapped the humor back out of the room, and a heavy silence took its place.

  Laila opened the final flap and pulled out a tiny red bear with a pacifier in its mouth. There was no stopping the smile this time. “You found Binky?” Her eyes lifted, making contact with Katie’s for the first time, and both girls just stared.

  “Mom found him behind my old TV a few months after I left. She was clearing out my room—partially to hurt me, I think—but, thankfully, packed most of it up.”

  Laila tucked the bear into the corner of her left arm and rummaged through the box again. Out came their senior yearbook, the vase that held the first flowers Chad ever sent her, the friendship necklaces they’d both worn for years, and a framed eight-by-ten photo of her and Chad at the beach on their wedding day.

  “How do you have all this?” she whispered, her eyes swelling again.

  Katie swallowed. “You brought it over the first time you left him.” It’d been the slap Chad needed to get sober. His sobriety had lasted six months. The second time Laila left, it lasted until the night Katie knocked on their door, high and desperate.

  Laila set the wedding photo back in the box.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” Katie knew she had no right to ask. If she’d stayed in town, she’d have known the outcome.

  “Why do you care?”

  Was it always going to be like this? Katie begging everyone to believe that she actually had a soul now? “Because I do. I loved Chad too. He was like my brother.” She didn’t need to explain that to Laila. They’d all been family.
/>   “Well, you suck as a sister.”

  Katie’s back tensed and she pushed down the fire in her gut. “I still care. Please, Laila, tell me what happened.”

  Laila crossed her arms and stared up at the ceiling. The gesture made the tip of her braid touch her lower back and reminded Katie of when they used to stand in the rain and try to catch water droplets in their mouths. Years of memories existed between them, and despite Katie’s attempt to forget, they were woven into every inch of her heart.

  Laila walked back to the box. “After he was released from the hospital, he only lasted a week before finding a source. But the cops were watching him, and they busted him during the exchange. He got probation and community service, but it cost him his job. Then school, ’cause he quit trying.”

  She picked up the necklace, brushed her thumb over the etched Best Friends in the silver.

  “I left him two more times before accepting that he was never going to change. Not permanently. The drugs held too much power over him. This last time he used, I packed up his stuff and changed the locks. Cooper was the only thing that kept him from busting down the door. Chad took off for Atlanta after that, and I filed for divorce.”

  Katie’s stomach rolled. “Did he sign the papers?” Even when he was strung out, she couldn’t fathom Chad agreeing to let Laila go.

  “No. But in Georgia, it doesn’t matter if he consents or not. The divorce was final last winter.”

  Divorced. She couldn’t get her mind around it. Laila and Chad had been in love since the third grade. They’d been each other’s first everything. Theirs was the fairy tale that transcended logical thought. It was how Katie knew she’d never been in love. They had always been her standard.

  Laila leaned a hip against the counter, still rolling the chain between her fingers. “When Cooper finally told me the truth, I was so furious. First at you, then at him for waiting four years to tell me. I’d just started speaking to him again that night we went to your house. I didn’t know we were ambushing you, by the way. Another secret he’d kept from me.”

  “He knew it would hurt me more if you were there.”

  Laila sighed. “Maybe, but I think it runs deeper for him.”

  Silence drove into the space between them again. It gnawed at Katie, worked its way under her skin. She stood, leaned over to peer into the box. “There’s more in here. A few of your shirts, two pairs of shoes, a jacket—”

  Laila slammed a hand on the counter. “I don’t care about any of that stuff.”

  Katie went still. Laila had never been aggressive. She was meek and relentlessly forgiving. “Sorry.”

  “I don’t want your apology.”

  Katie wrapped a fist around the keys in her pocket. “I’ll leave, then.” She hadn’t come here to upset Laila.

  “I don’t want that either.” Laila paced behind the counter, fingering the end of her braid while she walked.

  “What do you want?” Katie couldn’t stifle the anticipation in her voice. The distant hope that Laila, like Mary, would find a way to forgive.

  “I want to stop feeling so angry all the time. At you. At Chad. But most of all, I just want this nagging spark of hope to go away. The one that says ‘If Katie got clean, if Katie came home, then maybe Chad will too.’” A tear slipped down her cheek, and her voice cracked. “’Cause I can’t live with that hope anymore. It hurts too much.”

  “Laila.” Katie moved toward her friend on instinct.

  Laila backed away. “Don’t.” One hand wiped away the tears while the other hugged her stomach.

  It was the deepest form of rejection, being told she wasn’t allowed to share in her friend’s pain. So Katie stood there and waited for Laila to calm. Waited for her to wipe her cheeks and put on a brave face that she had never worn with Katie.

  “So you brought me shoes, huh?” Laila asked, returning to the box. “I really hope they’re the cute peep-toe beige heels I lost.”

  Katie reached in, pushed aside the stack of folded clothes, and revealed hideous clogs. “Sorry, my mom chose to save these instead. We should burn them with my green dress.”

  A laugh burst from Laila’s throat as she grabbed the bright yellow shoes. “I totally forgot about my primary color phase. I had red and blue too.”

  Katie pulled the blue pair from the box, and Laila almost squealed in delight.

  “I didn’t find the red pair, but I’m guessing they never made it back from the beach blowout our senior year.” She smiled, and Laila smiled back. It was soft and genuine, and for the first time since she’d crossed the Fairfield city line, Katie felt as if her heart might become whole again.

  The door burst open. “Hey, Laila, I need Joe’s cordless drill. Mine can’t get—” Cooper froze when he saw the two of them standing there, each holding a pair of bright, ugly clogs.

  It was as if time stopped and reversed but messed up everything in the process. The three of them had spent hours together at Joe’s, laughing, teasing, planning their next big party. But there was no humor or camaraderie now, only a stifling tension that threatened to detonate at any moment.

  CHAPTER 42

  Laila threw the shoes down as if merely holding them had been a betrayal. “I’ll grab his toolbox.” Her voice was quick and apologetic, and she and Cooper exchanged a look that reminded Katie she was no longer a part of their group.

  Cooper watched her with those stormy, angry eyes of his. He wore faded work jeans and a T-shirt with two holes in the sleeve. He crossed his arms, making every inch of him appear tense and locked up.

  This was usually when Katie would flee, or when she’d throw a defensive comment at him to try to make the prickling against her skin go away. But this time she didn’t turn away. She met his eyes and set down the shoes. “Hey.” It came out soft, and could even have been interpreted as happy to see him.

  A simple olive branch, but the impact on him tore at her insides. For a quick second, the wall crumbled, and Katie saw what her conscience had been screaming at her since the gas station. Before her stood a broken, bitter man. He wasn’t her enemy. He was hurting. He’d spent his life being rejected, and she had basically done the same thing.

  She took a step closer. “Thank you for helping my dad.”

  “I’m not doing it for you.” Cooper backed up a step and put his hand on the doorknob. An escape from her, it seemed. He’d been so forceful before, so determined to push through her shields, that his retreat made no sense. Except his face had gone slightly pale and his breathing was more shallow than when he’d entered.

  “I know.”

  “Do you?”

  Laila returned carrying a heavy metal toolbox. Cooper met her halfway, took it from her limp hold, and whispered something in her ear. He didn’t bother with another glance at Katie before storming back out of the bar.

  Whatever ground Katie had made with her old friend was lost with the slam of the door. Laila furiously started loading the box back up while Katie watched, having no idea what to do or say.

  “Four years he waited to come through that door and see you standing there. Four years.” Laila picked up the box in a swift motion and dropped it behind the counter. “And just now I saw it on his face. That split second when he thought you were back.” She gripped the bar with both hands. “But you’re not back, Katie, are you? This walk down memory lane isn’t to restore the past, is it? It’s the final breakup.”

  Katie closed her eyes and prayed for the exact right words. “Yes, in a way, it’s the final good-bye to the girl who left four years ago. But it’s also a new chance for the girl who came home. Laila, I know our friendship will never be what it was, but I really do want to build something new. You’ve changed. I’ve changed. Who knows what that looks like now?”

  Laila went back to wiping glasses. “I haven’t forgiven you.”

  “Okay.” The truth hurt, but it was fair. Katie pulled her keys from her pocket and inched toward the door.

  “Wait.” Laila made a defeated
sound. Looked away from her. “Maybe with a little more time, I might get there.”

  Katie’s throat burned, a sensation that had become far too familiar. “Thank you.”

  Laila didn’t wait to see her cry. She simply abandoned her row of spotted glassware and disappeared to the back.

  Time. It meant staying. It meant proving she’d really changed. It meant being a better person far longer than just for a season. And strangely, Katie felt up to the task.

  The sunlight burned her stinging eyes when she exited Joe’s, but her lungs felt ready to burst. This was what Asher had been saying all this time. Feeling something hurt, but it also felt so amazingly real. The rush of emotion was staggering. She wanted to laugh and cry. She wanted to run to Asher, throw her arms around him, and thank him for opening her eyes. For showing her a world that didn’t have to be gray, but alive with color and light.

  She walked toward her car, and another flash of color halted her steps. Cooper’s bright blue truck, the one she’d picked out down to the color of the leather, remained unmoving. He was leaning against the bed, head down, hands deep in his pockets. His profile exposed slumped shoulders, and periodically he’d kick a loose piece of gravel.

  He must have sensed her approach, because every muscle in his body went taut. “I won’t do this here,” he said to his shoes. “If you’ve got something to say to me, we do it on my terms this time.”

  Her mind warred with her instincts. She and Cooper had never been civil. Even when they were together, their relationship held a certain simmering hostility, because neither was capable of being the salvation they both craved. She’d fail him. He’d fail her. That was the cycle.

  “I won’t go to The Point.” The space was too tight there. Too crowded. It would be too easy to get sucked into the vortex of the past.

  He kicked another patch of gravel, more aggressively this time. She knew him well, even after years apart. The Point had always been their spot. A place to forgive and to pretend that, for a moment, they were happy together. But it never lasted.

  He straightened and turned, rested his forearm against the passenger window. “You afraid I’ll make you forget about your new boy toy?” His voice was low and deceptively easygoing. But Katie recognized the flash of annoyance, the jealousy in the bite in his words.