by Sarah White
Willing myself to stop thinking about us leaving each other, I just try to enjoy tonight. There will never be another night in this bar for us and I want to soak it all up. Matt nuzzles his face down into my neck and wraps his arms around my waist holding me like he is afraid I am going to get away. I lean into him and close my eyes, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck swaying with the music one last time.
When the song finishes we go back to the table and pay our bill. Matt takes my hand and leads me through the bar back out to the truck. He opens my door but before I can get in it he closes it again and pins me up against the truck. He touches my face with his hands and then leaves them on my cheeks as he gently kisses me. It is different than before, sadder. The passion I felt the last time is there but there is a new tenderness now. He leans his forehead against mine leaving our mouths close and I can feel the heaviness on both of us.
Chapter 45
Matt
Moving on with my life is going to be impossible. I am in unfamiliar territory with Cait and I don’t know what to do any more. Cait is all over the place and I can’t seem to keep up. I love her madly and the weight of the gravity that is pulling me down from the high of our night together is crushing me. I won’t allow myself to think that the night we slept together was a mistake; it was the best night of my life. How she can just put that behind her and not give us a try I will never understand.
Perhaps this is fate again, showing me what I need and then taking it from me. Watching her in the bar and knowing that she is trying to have no attachment to me is devastating. The indifference is driving me mad. My limit has been reached and I can’t take it anymore. My training has taught me to always have a way out so I need to plan for tomorrow so that Court’s death won’t cloud my escape from this town, which is painted with her memories.
Running away is my plan; I am leaving as soon as we carry out Court’s last wishes and flying back to meet up with my unit again. I am going to bury my sorrows in the desert and engulf myself in a world where she never existed. My only chance of being happy is to stay here and make a life with Cait and I can see in her face that she can’t find a place in her heart to love me. I want to drop to my knees and beg her to love me but I worry she will just stare down at me with that sadness in her eyes and tell me no.
Loving her against my will, I am a prisoner to her. I watch her when she is not looking and I long for her when she is not close. My happiness depends on her smile. My ability to breathe rises and falls with the distance she puts between us. Right now that distance is great and my heart aches in my chest and my throat is closed off by the words I can’t say. I need her and she just can’t see it.
This loss is too much for me to bare. Court’s death has taken from me my will to live and now Cait’s indifference is finishing me off. It may not kill me but I am sure I will spend the rest of my life without both of them, wanting to die. The depression is all too consuming and I am trapped in this place of limbo. I am pleading every way I know how for her to just love me. I long for her to tell me to stay, my ability to keep living depending on it.
Chapter 46
Cait
“Tell me not leave Cait,” he whispers. “Please tell me not to leave.”
“I can’t.” The tears start falling down my face as I realize that I cannot ask him to stay. He needs to go and be with his unit, far away from any place that would remind him of her. If he stays here for me I will just be buying us time but in the end we will both be miserable when it’s over. He may lose another love again in the future and find himself without the reassurance and support of his sister, but I cannot be that loss. Right now leaving will be hard but eventually he will get past it and will see it for what it is, a connection to his sister he is struggling to sever.
He stands up and puts his fists on his hips and stares into the sky. “I don’t understand Cait. Please don’t do this. What are you afraid of?” Now he is staring at me demanding an answer.
“I am afraid that I will hurt you and she won’t be there to help you get back up.”
“What do you think you are doing right now?” he yells pinning me again and I look down because I can’t bare to look him in the eyes afraid that he will see right through me. “You’re fucking killing me!”
“I’m sorry.” I whisper.
He nods and then pushes himself off of the truck and opens my door. I get into the seat and watch him as he closes my door and takes a minute to compose himself before walking around to his side. He jumps in and starts the truck but does not put it in drive.
“I know you have it in your head that I am not thinking straight, that losing my sister is somehow clouding my ability to identify what I am feeling but it’s not. I will prove it to you if you would only let me.”
“Don’t,” I say as I look out the window. Hearing him is breaking my heart and worry that any resolve I have left will break away if he continues.
“Don’t what? Don’t tell you how I feel or don’t show you? Damn it Cait, I am dying here! I should have told you a long time ago so that you would believe me now but I didn’t. She begged me to let you know. She told me that if I didn’t tell you I would be miserable forever. I should have listened to her but I thought you were happy. Now I am going to live with that choice for the rest of my life. I won’t have Court and I won’t have you either.”
“I’m sorry,” I say not looking at him. The truck is beginning to fog up now and he reaches up with his sleeve to wipe away the moisture from the window. He puts the truck in drive and we pull out of the lot and sit in silence for the rest of the ride back. When we get to Court’s he opens the door for me but then goes to his own room and closes the door. I make my way into Court’s room and sit on the edge of her bed, wishing she were there to talk to.
In the silence I can hear his voice. It is muffled but I can make out a few words. He discusses dates that he can leave and where he will be going and I curl up on her bed and wrap myself in her covers. The room still smells like her and I run my hand along the bed until I find her scarf. I pull it under my face and breathe her in, praying for God to take me now too.
It is morning when I wake and find myself back in my bed. I must have fallen asleep in Court’s room and Matt must have carried me in here. I can’t remember the last time I have felt so tired. I try to open my eyes again and reach out in the bed to see if he is with me. When there is no one there I curl up again, hugging myself for comfort. I fall back asleep knowing he has let me go at my horrible request and I cry myself to sleep again.
Chapter 47
Matt
Something has to give. I sit for hours in the silence on the couch unable to eat, unable to get up. We are getting lost in this house of death and pain and I can’t get up enough strength to save myself let alone the strength I need to help Cait. She hasn’t left that room in two days and yet I don’t know what to do about it. I just sit on this couch helplessly staring down the hall waiting fo the answer to just appear.
Cait is going to die if she doesn’t snap out of it. I feel like my presence would only make her pain worse so I have kept my distance from her giving her space. I hold my breath each time I hear her move waiting for her to come back out here to me but she never does. Her body will start shutting down soon and I am beginning to believe that I am going to watch her die of a broken heart. I would not believe that it could be possible if I wasn’t on my heartbreak deathbed also.
Misery doesn’t even begin to describe the state of our life at this point. Utter dismay, complete agony and imminent death are a closer description but they still imply some sort of measurable quantity and I am sure our pain is far from measurable. We want to die and our bodies are making it possible, blocking out our ability to eat, slowing down our drive to go on and separating us from each other so that neither can help the other.
We have to get through this for Court. I need to be okay with not having Cait. I need to focus on getting her out of here before our grief and this hous
e consume us. Walking to her bedroom, I tell myself that I won’t take no for an answer. Choosing to leave her room without her will be choosing to let her die. Cait’s death is not an option. Court needed her to move on and I need to know she is going to be all right also. As I reach her door I inhale deeply, pushing aside my own doubts on a mission to resurrect the almost dead.
Chapter 48
Cait
I hear a faint knock at my door and I try to orient myself to answer. “Come in.”
“Cait, you have to eat, it’s been two days.” Matt looks worried and leans down over me on my bed and pleads with me to get up, “Please Baby, come eat.”
Eating does not sound possible. Even if I didn’t vomit when I saw the food, the muscles in my throat and stomach would not allow it to get very far. There is a gaping wound in my chest where my heart should be and an ache that is relentless. The worry in his eyes and the desperate way he begs me to eat pulls me out of my thoughts and I know that I need to go with him.
“Okay, let me clean up and I will go with you.” There is relief in his face but not much and he walks into the bathroom and starts my shower. I try to get out of bed but I am weak. When I sit up I get dizzy and feel like I am going to be sick.
Matt walks over to me with such sadness in his expression. He kisses the top of my head and then lifts my chin with his hand, forcing me to look him in the eye. If it wasn’t for her ashes I would beg him to just let me die.
“Let me help you,” he says tenderly, and knowing I can’t do it alone in this state I nod my head to accept his help. He stands up and removes my shirt and bra and then helps me up to my feet. I undo my pants and he holds onto me as I struggle to free my legs. I wait until we are in the bathroom to take off my panties and he steadies me as I step into the shower.
I know Matt is sitting outside the shower as I let the hot water run over my head and down my face again, just like I always do, never learning that it can’t fix what is broken. It does wake me up a little and I soap up my body and wash my hair. He is waiting with a towel when I’m ready and dries my face and then wraps it around me and helps me to the bed.
“Can you get me my clothes out of my bag, I don’t care what it is.”
Matt digs through my bag and comes up with a pair of yoga pants and a soft t-shirt and I nod to approve his choice. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters. He dresses me and we make our way out the door. The ride to the small café is quiet and we both spend it looking out our windows. The pain I feel now is worse than I ever could have imagined and I place my hand on my chest to hold onto the small cross that hangs there.
I feel nauseous but know he is right, I have to eat so that I can fulfill my promise to Court and release her ashes at her happy place. We order our breakfast, toast and Coke again and say nothing as I swallow it for the sole purpose of surviving another day. When I have finished my food Matt leans across the table and whispers, “Thank you.” I nod my head knowing it must have been a hard two days for him as well, worrying that I was never getting back out of that bed.
“Where were you?” I ask him, allowing the self inflicted hurt to rise in my throat, burning and constricting my breath.
“What do you mean?” he asks in return looking pained. After a brief moment I can see in his eyes he understands that I am asking him why he wasn’t in bed with me when I woke up. “Cait, I can’t keep doing this. I love you. You deny loving me back, what am I supposed to do?” He had been looking me in the eye but now he turns his head sharply, obviously angry by my indifference.
“I don’t know anymore,” and as I say it out loud I know it is my heart speaking. I didn’t know anymore. When I first came to say goodbye to Court I was determined, knowing my life would be empty and death would be the only escape. Matt had been a distraction for a while, but now there is no denying to myself that I love him and the determination to leave is weakened and the bleakness I feel about a life without Court is changing.
I imagine what it would feel like to come home to Matt. I would have never believed that I could have let go of Elliot, but I did without looking back. I have not thought about him in days. My talk with Candy helped me to see that my loss was shared, that you can keep moving forward when something that precious has been taken. Reaching up to my chest, I touched my cross again to remember how the pain had lessened just slightly as I shared Emma’s story with Matt, an opportunity that Elliot had never given me.
My future had held no promise of better days, no light at the end of the tunnel. Now sitting here across from the man I loved I can see that light. The problem now is that the light is small and not blinding, held back by the great unknowns, the what-ifs, the what-nexts. I am scared for both of us without her, the woman who had kept us anchored and dried our tears. I am scared that we can’t do this without her.
“I’m scared.” With my voice he turned his gaze back to me and the relief showed on his face. He reached out with his hand and touched mine.
“Me too. The way I see it Cait is that it is going to hurt no matter when it happens. If I leave here without you it will hurt forever I am sure. Our only hope for living without this pain is trying, in the end we may get hurt but at least we won’t go through our lives wondering if it could have worked. We won’t go through this time alone.”
He was right and I knew it. What he didn’t know was that I had not planned on returning to my life without her. I think of returning to my house now, seeing the divorce through and what it might be like to call my clients after I had already said goodbye. He would get to just go one with the plans he already had in place, putting his stuff in a bag and running off to wherever in the world got him far enough away from Court. My far away was an hour by car and I know that was not enough distance to put between her memories and me. Choosing him would be choosing to live, a choice I had been so sure I couldn’t make.
“Let’s go home,” he says squeezing my hand and then he gets up from the table and puts his hand out in an offer to hold mine and I accept. We get into his truck and ride back to the house. The pain was still there but it isn’t suffocating. As we pull into the drive I am relieved to be back, feeling like I am home again. We spend most of the day back on the couch watching TV, nothing in particular, just something to pass the time while we wait. I push all decisions out of my head and just enjoyed my time with Matt, not sure if it is the start of something or the end.
Chapter 49
Matt
The afternoon had been a welcome relief. When Cait asked me at lunch why I wasn’t in her bed I thought I would scream at how crazy her wavering is making me. Like the old game played with flowers in school, I feel like these past days have been one long chain of I love you, I love you not. At first I thought the truth was that she didn’t love me, that I had read all of the signs wrong. At lunch I knew she was just as torn up about what to do as I had been all those years ago.
Choosing to love is dangerous, it is out of your control. Giving your heart to someone hurts and leaves you vulnerable to many painful what ifs. Elliot took the heart of an innocent girl and crushed it in a moment of weakness. Her heart still needs time to recover and trust again so I have to be patient. Loving her is going to be easy, getting her love in return is going to be the hard part.
So much time has been wasted already and I can’t help but to hope that in the end she chooses a life that has me in it. Being just her friend will never be enough but I won’t turn it down if that is all she can ever give me. Walking away from her that night so long ago just might have been the biggest mistake of my life. Now I know that I should have taken her hand and led her across the street to my place.
Sex is not the answer and I know that, but maybe if I had shown her what it feels like to truly be loved she would have never been broken by Elliot. I would have been her first everything then I had been so afraid to take what wasn’t mine but maybe I was wrong, maybe it has always been mine.
Something in this universe made her body call to me then and it h
as never stopped. The night that we did share together had confirmed what I had always known: we were meant for each other in every way. My body speaks to hers and our touch to each other is electric. Elliot has just been on borrowed time, I have had her heart since that night on the beach and now I am going to do whatever it takes to claim it again. I will wait for her forever if that is how long it takes.
Chapter 50
Cait
When night falls we both take our showers and then sit at the kitchen table with the scraps of food we have found in the pantry. I try my best and get something down but mostly I just watch him eat. When it is clear we were not going to eat anymore we sit in the silence and wait for the other person to speak. I felt anxious inside, wanting him to come to bed with me so I wouldn’t be alone but not having the courage to ask out of fear that it would be a promise to him that I can’t keep.
“Tell me what to do Cait,” he says with his arms folded on the table not looking at me. “Tell me what to do.”
I take a deep breath and the battle in my head begins, what my heart wants and what my head says. I don’t know which side I am on. In the silence he turns to me and stares into my eyes looking for a clue as to what I might be thinking. If he really knew what had been going on my head these last few days I am sure he would be scared off. I have spent so many hours thinking of my final moments.
Before the situation between Matt and me had an idea of how my death would go. The plan was to see Court off and then use some of the medication along with my own to end my life. I have been saving up my prescriptions for quite sometime. I had planned on finding a small hotel, taking a bath and then swallowing the pills so that even if they just knocked me out I would still die when I drowned.
