I’m Keeping You

by Jane Lark

  I nodded.

  “Sorry, Rach.”

  I nodded.

  “I just need some time to run and think things through.”

  I nodded.

  He turned away and put the other earphone in, then walked out. He’d never walked away from me like this before, not when I was so upset. Not once.

  I’d lost him. And he hadn’t just walked away, he was running away.

  Unhappy with me…

  I’d lost him.

  I sat down on the bed, tears clogging up in my eyelashes, as a sob escaped my throat. I spoke to his mom when I felt down. I couldn’t call her. But I needed to talk to someone or I’d go completely insane. I stood up, put the parcel down, and dug my cell out of my purse. Lindy…

  I looked up her number and called her. My hand shook as I held my cell against my ear.

  “Hi, Rachel.”

  “Hey…” Now that I heard her voice I couldn’t speak.

  “Are you okay? How’s it going?”

  No, I wasn’t okay. “Badly.” Some people would think it very weird that I turned to my husband’s ex for friendship, but they had not lived our lives. Lindy was the only true girlfriend I’d ever had—I could talk to her.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll hate me and say I deserve this.” Tears tracked down my cheeks.

  “Why?”

  “Jason’s had enough of me. He’s gone.”

  “He wouldn’t walk out on you.” There was shock in her voice, but the statement was adamant.

  “He’s mad at me. He’s gone out running.”

  “Oh, he always goes running when he can’t deal with something, we both know it.” The relief in her voice said, oh, that’s okay, it’s not really a problem then. “Don’t let it worry you. It’s his thing, he did it every time we used to argue, and then we used to argue about that. It used to annoy the hell out of me.”

  “Who are you talking to?” I heard Billy, her boyfriend and Jason’s best friend, shout in the background.

  “Rachel! She’s upset, things are going badly and Jason’s gone out running and left her alone!”

  “Tell her he’ll be fine when he comes back! He probably needed some time to think things over!”

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I told you at Halloween, he won’t let go of you or let you down, he loves you.” Lindy knew how vulnerable I was, because when I’d gone into the hospital we’d bared our souls to each other. Her mom had been sick and dying and Lindy had needed a girlfriend to confide in as much as I had, someone who understood what depression was like.

  “He said he’s not a doctor, he doesn’t know how to cope with me.”

  “You know that’s not true. What do you think?”

  “That he’s perfect for me. That I couldn’t live without him. But he doesn’t have mood swings and do stupid stuff. He can’t understand me. Why should he stay with me?”

  “Because he loves you, and he can’t say he didn’t walk into your relationship with his eyes open. It was pretty obvious you suffered with depression when he met you on the bridge.”

  Lindy was opinionated. She said things how they were. She was the opposite of Jason. It was no wonder they’d not made it. But us… “But that doesn’t mean he’ll keep on putting up with my moods. I’m hard work—” He’d judged me. He wasn’t happy.

  “And you’re right Jason’s the best person for you. He can deal with that. His patience is endless.”

  “Is Rach really upset?” I heard Billy. “Can I speak to her?”

  “Do you mind?” Lindy asked me.

  “No. Put him on.” Billy probably knew Jason best, they’d been friends since they were kids.

  “Hi. Why are you worrying?”

  “He isn’t happy, and I’ve never seen him like he was—”

  “How was he?”

  “Silent. Angry underneath. Frustrated with me.”

  “I’ve known him like that plenty of times. You’ll be okay, he’s a thinker, give him a chance to get his thoughts in order on a run and he’ll come back in a better mood, and everything is gonna be fine. I promise. I’ll hand you back to Lindy.”

  “He’s right, Rachel. Honestly, I promise, it’ll be okay. Just trust him.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t feel better. Fear hovered in the room, buzzing like a swarm of bees.

  I do trust Jason! I yelled the words at myself. But paranoia was another part of my illness and it whipped at me like a wet towel, full of threats. “Thanks, goodbye.” I ended the call abruptly. I couldn’t talk anymore. The noise in my head was too loud.

  A message made my cell vibrate. ‘Are you okay, really? Call again if you need to. You’ve got to keep talking if you’re getting down x Lindy.’

  She understood depression. ‘I’ll be okay.’ I wouldn’t go back to Manhattan Bridge. I had Saint at home. But a sudden desire to do it swept through me. I could even see the water, a long way below me, sparkling with the city’s lights. Then I saw bright clear water, sparkling in the sunshine…

  I looked up Jason’s mom’s number. “Hey, Mom.” If I lost Jason, I’d lose his family too. They’d become my family. I hadn’t had a mom and dad until his had accepted me. “May I speak to Saint?”

  “Of course, sweetheart.”

  I rubbed the cuff of my sweater over my cheek and under my nose, wiping up the tears, and sniffed.

  “Saint, speak to Mommy,” Jason’s mom said.

  “Hey, darling.” I breathed into the cell. “How are you?” Did Jason still want Saint?

  Saint’s breathing seeped through the cell, then there were babbling sounds, the elements of sounds that would become words. I’m sure he thought they were words. I wanted him to laugh. I wanted to hear his laugh so much.

  “What are you doing, playing with Grampy and Granny? Did Grampy sing to you? No. I bet it was Granny who sang to you.”

  More babbling and breathy sounds.

  “I’ll be home soon. I promise, with Daddy. For good.” That was all I wanted, to be with Jason and Saint—a family. So did it matter what mental state I was in?

  Did it matter if I was doped up?

  But I couldn’t even feel happy on the meds. I felt miserable on meds. I wanted to feel happy sometimes.

  “I love you,” I said into my cell and blew a kiss.

  “Could I speak to Jason?” His mom came back on.

  “He isn’t here. He went out for a run.” My voice caught with an edge of tears as more leaked on to my cheeks. I wiped them up on the sleeve of my sweater.

  “Oh.” She sounded surprised, she knew it wasn’t normal for him to leave me in a situation like this. “How are you?”

  “Okay, thank you. Goodbye, Mom.” I couldn’t talk to her. I hadn’t called to talk to her. I’d only wanted to hear Saint. I threw my cell on to the bed beside me and tumbled back, letting the tears flow, sobbing with self-centered pity, a massive dollop of paranoia, a scoop of insanity, and a one-ton weight of insecurity.

  I hated bipolar and I hated Declan, but neither thing was going away, so how did I cope?

  How would I cope alone, if Jason left me? I wouldn’t.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jason

  I was breathing hard and sweating lots when I ran back toward the hotel, I’d gone a long way and I hadn’t just been jogging. I’d been full-out sprinting most of the way, dodging through the New York crowds. I longed for the quiet open spaces of Oregon to run in. For Saint to pick up and squeeze. For life to go back to something that felt like normal. But there would never be a normal life with Rach. That was what I had to get my head around. And the abnormal was never going to be how I wanted it to be, her bipolar was unpredictable. It could go any direction for any reason, any moment.

  Shit. Normal. Fuck. What did I think normal was?

  Maybe that’s what I’d been doing wrong. Fighting to reach something fixed and steady with Rach when it was impossible.

  This up and down, and sometimes k
nocked out on meds, and sometimes crazy to the point she terrified me and made it painful to love her, and sometimes crazy to the point she made me love her more and made me crazy too, was normal with Rach. What we’d been living was normal. My head just had to get that and stop measuring my life, and me and Rach, by everyone else’s normal.

  This was normal for us.

  But it didn’t mean I had to keep letting her past invade our lives. That was one thing that I could fix. I didn’t have to get used to that. I’d ignored everything that’d gone on before the moment I’d met her because I’d seen straight to the core of Rach the very first night, when she’d been covered in blood, terrified and shattered to bits. I’d never judged her by anything other than the person I’d seen, the girl who’d desperately needed someone to give her a chance and care about her. I didn’t care that she’d done bad stuff and made stupid choices. The only thing I cared about from her past was a tiny bundle of lovable joy back with my parents.

  The ground kept shifting with Rach, it always would. Life was going to be like living on a fault line. Ground trembles were going to be normal. I was getting it straight in my head now. Running always did that for me. I thought as I ran. I worked stuff through. I could live on a fault line.

  But there was one earthquake I wasn’t going to let happen. Mr. Rees had to give up fighting, because I knew Rach well enough to know she’d really tell everything to a judge and risk losing Saint, but what she was forgetting—there was no way I was going to let her do it and risk losing her.

  When I stopped running outside the hotel I doubled over to catch my breath as the adrenalin pulsed through my blood and throbbed in my muscles. When I straightened up, I took my cell out of my pocket to switch off the music. I’d had a text.

  ‘There’s a support network for people who have a family member with bipolar, if you need it. Lindy looked it up. Here’s the link.’ It was from Billy.

  ‘What??????’ I texted back. What the fuck was he talking about? Where the hell had that come from?

  ‘Rach called, she said you were pissed off with her.’

  Fuck. I shoved the door of the hotel open, and walked through, steeling myself for another encounter.

  Fault line. The words slipped through my head.

  I could cope.

  But what now?

  I stood in the elevator car riding up to our floor still breathing hard, although now it was as much from unease as exercise. I pushed the card key in the lock to get into the room. The door clicked loose.

  She flew at me when I walked in. Shouting and hitting me. “You bastard! You fucking bastard! You don’t love Saint! You don’t love me! You lied! You lied!” She threw her fists at me as hard as her words.

  Shit. I’d only wanted an hour to myself, to get my head straightened out. But looking at the clock I’d probably been gone two hours and she’d freaked out.

  “Stop it,” I said it with a firm voice as I gripped her arms. This wasn’t her, it was her bipolar. It was just another way it could swing.

  “You left me!” She thrust the words in my face, in a growl of accusation.

  “Rach, I went for a run. I wanted to run faster than I can with you.”

  “You ran away from me!”

  Fuck, it was partly true. “Not like that. I just needed a break.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, Rach…” You’re fucking hard work and I’m human, and I have feelings too! God and only two weeks ago, on Halloween, I’d told her I didn’t care that she was hard work.

  “Do you hate me? I wish we hadn’t come here. I wish we’d never told Declan that I was having a baby, we could have just put your name on Saint’s birth certificate. We didn’t need to involve him. This is your fault.” Her arm pulled free of my hold and then she thumped me again, on the chest, with the side of her fist. “I fucking hate you! Why did you make me tell him?”

  I grabbed her wrist. “I don’t even fricking know myself anymore!” Maybe it was the first time I’d shouted at her. I’d shouted in front of her but never at her.

  She recoiled as her eyebrows lifted and her green eyes opened wide.

  “You don’t want Saint…”

  Her pitch had dropped from an accusation to a question. She thought that’s what I was saying.

  “You don’t want us…”

  “God, Rach, no. I love you. I love you both.” I hauled her against my chest and hung on to her as she tried to pull free to hit me again, and I said into the air above her head, “This is your sick-brain talking, not you, this is why you need to take the medication.”

  Fault line. I was dealing with it.

  Anger turned to tears and she clasped my hoodie either side of my waist in fists, while her forehead bumped in a rhythm against my shoulder and she sobbed. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I didn’t mean to. I just needed some time out.”

  “I don’t want you to want time out!”

  “But, Rach, I have to find a way to deal with stuff the same as you do. This morning you told me I should have gone running.”

  “This morning was different, and I meant you should have woken me and taken me running, you didn’t even want me with you.”

  I didn’t answer. I hadn’t. I’d needed a break, and she was right, I’d run from her for a little while—or at least from all the problems loving Rach carried around with it.

  She didn’t say any more as she cried on my shoulder. I stroked her back.

  Neither of us talked about the huge elephant standing in the room alongside us, and it was bigger than me walking out—what do we do about Mr. Rees?

  She pulled away. I let her go. Then she wiped her eyes and her nose on her sleeve. “You need to shower. What time are we meeting your friends?”

  “Seven.”

  She nodded and turned away from me. It felt like she was turning away entirely; turning her back on me.

  I didn’t say anything. It would cause more trouble. I went into the bathroom and stripped off in there. I let the shower run over my head, and then I cried so my tears merged with the water. Even if she came in she’d never know. Yes, I did love her and Saint, but I wasn’t sure loving her was enough forever.

  I’d told myself I could live on a fault line, but how the fuck did I know? I wasn’t coping now. I wasn’t coping.

  We were both quiet when we dressed to go out.

  When she went into the bathroom to put her make-up on I had a look at the packet of meds. None were missing.

  Shit.

  I wanted her to make the choice. I didn’t want to police her.

  My hands were in the pockets of my leather jacket when we walked along the hall to the elevators. Rach gripped my arm. I wasn’t silent to be mean, I just had too much spinning in my head.

  When we got down to Joe’s, Justin and Portia were there already, sitting at the bar, waiting for us.

  “Hey,” I said weakly. I’m sure Rach and I had carried an atmosphere into the room. If Justin and Portia didn’t feel it then Joe must’ve. He’d known us last year, when I’d come down here to eat just to have a few moments of her company, and to see her smile at me, rather than stay home alone. Those had been the days when I’d been pretending to myself that I could keep Rach in the friend zone. I’d been kidding myself on that score, she and I had had something going from the first moment she’d looked me in the eyes, her gaze suddenly telling me she’d realized she should be wondering who I was and if I was safe.

  “It didn’t go so well, I take it.” Justin put a hand on my shoulder briefly, in a gesture saying, hi, and expressing empathy. Rach was clinging to my other arm.

  “Nope.”

  “What now, then?” Portia asked.

  “I don’t know, shall we order food and eat while we talk.” Rach hadn’t said a thing. It was a sign her mood had taken a rollercoaster dip right down. I couldn’t remember if I’d told Justin about her bipolar. But whatever, they’d have to understand, because that’s the way things were.

&nb
sp; “Can we have a table?” I asked one of the waitresses who came past the bar.

  “Sure.” She turned around, reached over, and picked up some menus, then turned back and held out a hand to show us to a table. My gaze followed the way she was pointing and clashed with Rach’s, she’d been watching me watch the waitress, who was a woman neither of us had seen before. There was hurt, jealousy, accusation, and disappointment in Rach’s eyes.

  Fuck. How was I going to deal with a lifetime of this?

  I took my hand out of my pocket, wrapped my arm around Rach’s waist, and steered her to the table. Then I held her coat at her shoulders so she could take it off easier. I handed it to the waitress and pulled out a chair for Rachel before I took off my coat and sat down. I was walking on fucking broken glass around her.

  We ordered and I talked to Portia and Justin about everything other than our problem with Mr. Rees, while Rach sat beside me silent, looking at her glass of soda. I was talking to them like nothing was wrong, but inside the concern I’d tried to run off earlier grew into a giant.

  “So what are you going to do, then?” Justin prodded.

  Who the fuck knew? But he wasn’t talking about what I was thinking about. I didn’t know what to do about Mr. Rees either, though. Apart from spending the next week following him around. “I don’t know. The only chance we have is to get the police to catch him buying drugs. He refused to be blackmailed this morning, so threats won’t work, it’s going to have to be action. We know he’s still taking cocaine, we just don’t know where or when he’s buying it.”

  Rach suddenly sat upright. “I didn’t think before. He always had full packets on a Friday.” She looked at me. Her eyes had the glossy disengaged look she always had when she was low. That image of her eyes haunted me. I’d seen it the night I’d met her on the bridge and the night I’d found her in the park when she’d run away after nearly drowning herself and Saint. She always looked through me, and never really saw me when she was like this. The emotions of both those nights swayed around in me.

  The first night I’d met her, I’d been reluctant to take her home, but she’d had nowhere else to go and it was freezing and I’d been brought up by parents who’d taught me to play the good Samaritan whenever the call arose.