Exhale

by Jennifer Snyder

  “Yes,” I answered without hesitation. It had always been him.

  He let out a deep, gratifying sigh. His eyes made their way back to mine, and then one of his hands came up to brush across my cheek. “Positive?”

  “One hundred percent,” I smiled.

  Derek’s lips descended upon mine then. He wrapped his arms around me, surrounding me in his scent, as he pressed his body closer to mine. The beach, the kiss with Kyle, his confession, all of it faded away to nothing. Nothing else mattered except for this kiss. This moment.

  Slanting his mouth across mine just so, Derek flicked his tongue against my bottom lip, demanding access to the deepest parts of my mouth. I parted my lips and tilted my head up toward him more. His tongue slid against mine and I pressed myself against him harder, the desire flowing through my veins, making me want to erase even the smallest distance between us. Derek’s hand found its way beneath my tank top and the sensation of his warm skin on mine sent a shiver along my spine. He eased his hand upward slowly, until his thumb was able to rub against my bra.

  “What the fuck is this shit?” Kyle’s voice boomed from directly behind me and I felt my heart stop.

  Derek and I both jerked away from each other and turned to face a fuming Kyle. My hand flew to my chest out of reflex, as a sudden coldness swelled within my stomach. I noticed Missy standing in the distance, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She looked nervous; an emotion I honestly didn’t expect to see. Even though she was my best friend, I figured she’d be gloating right about now because everything was out in the open, and now she could proceed with her seduce Kyle plan without me standing in the way any longer.

  “Again, what the fuck is this shit?” Kyle repeated when neither Derek nor I gave him an answer quick enough, as he pounded a fist against his thigh.

  “You weren’t supposed to find out like this,” Derek said, clearing his throat as he straightened out his T-shirt where I had crumpled it. “I planned on telling you soon. I just hadn’t been able to think of the right words. I’m sorry, man. ”

  Kyle’s nostrils flared. “You planned on telling me soon and you’re sorry? So that means something has been going on between the two of you for a while, right?”

  “Only a few days,” Derek said, shaking his head no.

  “A few days,” Kyle repeated slowly, his words sounding hollow and broken. His eyes shifted to mine and I swore even in the bright light of the moon, I could see their intense green grow dimmer as his heart shattered. “I kissed you…I’ve always…,” his stare shifted to Derek and grew dark. “You knew. You knew better than anyone how I felt about her. Jesus, you fucking knew!”

  “I’m sorry, Kyle,” I finally said. I meant the words, I felt my heart break open and bleed as they passed from my lips, but from the look in Kyle’s eyes, I knew my words held no meaning to him. They had fallen upon ears deafened by betrayal and pain.

  “I bet you are,” Kyle sneered. He started to walk toward me, but then stopped, his hands fisted at his sides. “I can’t believe this shit!” he growled, tossing his head back.

  “Look,” Derek said calmly, taking a step or two closer to Kyle with his hands held up in front of him in surrender. “I understand how you’re feeling—”

  “Bullshit! How could you possibly understand how I’m feeling?” Kyle interrupted him.

  “I just mean—” Derek never got to finish his sentence, because Kyle lunged forward, erasing the distance between them in the blink of an eye, and hit Derek square in the jaw.

  “Feel that?” Kyle asked, tilting his head to the side and puffing up his chest, his lips twisting into a wicked grin. “Hurts, doesn’t it? That’s what I fucking feel like right now. It hurts.”

  “C’mon, Kyle,” Missy said, stepping from the shadows and draping her arms over his shoulders as she attempted to steer him away from us and back toward the party. “Let’s get you another drink or something.”

  I stood still, watching as the two of them walked away. My heart hammered in my chest as my eyes misted with tears. I’d never seen Derek and Kyle fight like that. I’d never seen them take a swing at one another, not like that anyway. My insides felt numb as the guilt from hurting Kyle, the guilt I had feared since that first kiss with Derek, echoed through me, mingling with a new one—the guilt of coming between two brothers.

  “I didn’t think he would follow me.” I blinked and a fat tear slid down my cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “If I had, if I’d just—I really need to go after him,” Derek sighed. “I need to explain.” He walked away, his fingers pressed against his sore jaw, leaving me standing in the place where friendships had crumbled and hearts had been broken. The last thing I heard him mutter was, “This is a mess.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I couldn’t sleep that night. I’d tossed and turned restlessly as the image of Kyle’s betrayed eyes haunted me. When I finally made it to that blissful place of being half-asleep, half not, my cell phone buzzed across my nightstand, its brightly lit screen illuminating my room. Derek’s name and number filled the screen. I hit ignore and held my phone to my chest as I stared up at my ceiling. I didn’t feel like talking. I didn’t feel like hearing about how heartbroken Kyle was, I still had the mental image and that was enough.

  After Derek had walked away, I’d taken the long way to the parking lot, found my car, and headed home, leaving my flip-flops and the entire mess of a night behind. There was no way I was going back to that party to watch Derek and Kyle fight, argue, and flash each other death eyes from across the beach for the remainder of the night. Instead, I had chosen to come home.

  My phone vibrated in my hand, startling me. I glanced at the screen. Same name, same number. My thumb hovered above the answer button as I wondered why Derek would be calling so late. My heart fluttered at the thought of him being upset about the whole thing and me meanly ignoring his calls. I should answer, but I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to hear how their night had ended. When my house phone began ringing as Derek called me for the third time in a row, my stomach knotted.

  Something was wrong.

  “Hello?” I answered and heard one of my parents fumbling from their room to the living room in search of the house phone that kept ringing.

  “Katie.” That was all Derek had to say and I knew instantly, with just that one word that something horrible had happened. “He’s gone, Katie.” His voice cracked. “Kyle’s gone.”

  My world tilted on its axis. Somewhere in my house, the telephone one of my parents was searching for went silent.

  “Gone,” Derek sobbed into my ear.

  It was the first time I had ever heard Derek sob so hard. The moans and catches in his breathing filled my dark room and I wanted nothing more than to reach through the phone and hold him. How could this have happened? What had happened? A painful tightness began in my throat as my heart began to race.

  The next time the house phone rang, one of my parents answered. From the inaudible ‘no’ to the pounding of feet running down the hall back to my parents’ bedroom, I knew my mom had answered and had just received the same news I had. The news that Kyle was gone.

  “Derek, I—I’m sorry.” This time, when I said those words that should always mean something whenever they’re said, my heart didn’t just bleed as they passed from between my lips, it ripped apart instead.

  My bedroom door swung open at roughly the same time as my bedroom light was flicked on.

  “Katie,” Mom said, her eyes already puffy with tears. “We have to go, it’s Kyle.”

  “I know.” My words sounded distant, wrong, like they were being said to me and not coming from me. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I told Derek before I hung up my phone, staring blankly at the wall behind my mother.

  Numbly, I got myself dressed and climbed in the backseat of my parents’ car. The drive to the hospital was a blur. My parents had raced through the automatic doors and into the hospital emergency entrance ahead of me a
s soon as we’d parked. I wanted to run alongside them, but my body was incapable of moving that fast. I felt like I was underwater, struggling to run and getting nowhere.

  I kept seeing my mother’s tear-stained face, as she burst through my bedroom door to tell me the news and hearing her sobs echo in my ears, as my father drove us to the hospital. That was how I was supposed to react to this, how everyone reacted to death, they cried. I blinked my dry eyes as I started through the automatic doors. Why couldn’t I cry? What kind of horrible person was I? What the hell was wrong with me?

  My parents stood right in the center of everything, holding onto the Conners as they all fell apart at the seams in each other’s arms. I spotted Derek through the wall of Plexiglas that separated the little waiting room lobby from the receptionist area. He sat in a faded, navy blue chair with his elbows resting atop his knees and his fingers interlocked, pressing against his lips as he stared at the marbleized white and black tiled floor. His face was blotchy, and even with the distance between us, I could see how puffy his eyes were from crying. I bypassed everyone and headed directly for the chair beside him.

  He didn’t move, even when I sat down, but remained still like a statue, frozen in disbelief and sadness. My eyes skimmed over him, taking in the irregular-shaped purple and blue mark just along his jawline from where Kyle’s fist had connected only hours before. A pain formed in the center of my chest, and I rubbed the palm of my hand against it in slow circles as the moment that bruise was created flashed through my mind. I rested my head on Derek’s shoulder and sunk deeper into my chair.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Derek whispered, his words muffled by his fingertips still pressed firmly against his lips. “I can’t believe this is real. He’s gone, he’s really gone. I can feel it. I can actually feel it.”

  I placed my hand on his forearm and began rubbing back and forth in a soothing motion. The same emptiness that he spoke of had seeped into me the moment I answered his call. I could only imagine how much more it must be magnified for Derek because Kyle was his twin. They say twins can feel the other’s pain, that they can sense the exact moment their twin dies. I didn’t know yet how Kyle had died, but I prayed that the theory of sympathy pains or whatever you wanted to call it surrounding twins wasn’t true. It had to be hard enough knowing that your twin was gone, but having to feel the pain as they left this world too…that was just plain cruel.

  Derek had fallen silent again. I continued rubbing his forearm softly as questions surrounding Kyle’s death flooded my mind. I needed to know how it had happened, what had gone wrong, because just knowing that he was gone was not nearly enough.

  “I shouldn’t have given up so easily. I should have knocked him out and dragged him to my Jeep. There were a million ways I could’ve gotten him in there, but I didn’t use any of them. Instead I got pissed, told him to either pass out or drive home drunk, and walked away with a chip on my shoulder because I was tired of arguing with him and my jaw fuckin’ hurt,” Derek whispered, answering my unspoken questions in an unwavering voice. “If I’d just fought with him a little bit more or stayed just a little bit longer, I could’ve gotten him into my Jeep and saved his life.”

  My stomach twisted and I closed my eyes in disbelief. He had tried to drive home? Images of Kyle stumbling, laughing, and the echoes of his slurred speech filled my mind. He had been wasted. Kyle knew better than to drive when he’d had that much to drink. He knew. His betrayed and pain-filled stare flashed behind my closed eyelids. Kyle had attempted to drive himself home because he and Derek were fighting about me. If he had never seen us kiss, then he would be alive right now. My throat swelled shut as I finally felt tears trickle down my cheeks.

  The guilt from that realization slammed into me so powerfully that it made my heart hammer and bile rise up on the back of my throat. It wasn’t Kyle who should be blamed for his death, it was me. I played the biggest role in this. I should have known that he would follow me. I shouldn’t have allowed Derek to kiss me so soon after Kyle’s confession.

  I smoothed my hand against his forearm once more. “It’s not your fault. It’s mine,” I added silently.

  I had thought the ride to the hospital had been a blur, but it was the next few hours that were truly a blur. Lists of relatives to call had been made. Organ donor papers had been signed. More condolences, apologies, and sad stares had been given. Throughout it all, I never left Derek’s side, even though the guilt from the situation and my part played in it built inside of me. That weight was something I knew I would never be able to let go of, something that would always be a part of me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I spent the next day in bed, only getting up when my bladder protested too much. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. Somewhere around 10:30 in the morning, I turned my cell phone off to further block out the world. I knew the majority of my missed calls and text messages were probably from Missy, but I didn’t feel like talking, especially to her.

  It wasn’t just because she was incredibly insensitive to a fault, and would be talking about her own feelings the entire conversation, never giving me room to get a word in edgewise to express my own, but also because I knew she had truly cared about Kyle as a friend and maybe even a little more. I knew she’d be upset, in pain, and confused just like me, but the honest truth of it was… I could only handle one person’s grief and heartache at a time. This was why I blocked her and everyone else out. What I felt was enough and if I added anyone else’s emotions to it, I would break completely.

  Come Tuesday afternoon, I was still in the same position. I still hadn’t showered. I still hadn’t eaten and my cell phone still remained turned off. There was a soft knock against my door, but it didn’t startle me. I heard the soft footsteps approaching long before the knock had even come. Honestly, I had been surprised that my parents had let me close myself off in here for as long as I had been, without interference. Their presence in my bedroom at some point during the day had been expected to say the least.

  “Honey?” Mom’s soft voice cut through the silence of my room. “I brought you a sandwich. You really should try to eat something, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You have to at least eat a few bites. You need to get something in your stomach, Katie,” she said with as much motherly concern as she could muster through her own audible heartache. “I’ll leave it right here for you.”

  I didn’t say a word. I waited until I heard that distinct click of my bedroom door closing before I sat up to retrieve the sandwich from my nightstand. She was right. Mom was always right. I needed something to eat. I knew that well over twenty-four hours had passed since the last bite of food had passed between my lips.

  I took a small bite and began chewing, the tears that seemed to be in an endless supply burst from my eyes again. No matter how much I cried, there would never be enough tears shed from me to wash away the pain that had etched itself into my very soul from Kyle’s death.

  I had a lot of time to think while lying in bed, a lot of time to beat myself up for never once giving Kyle a chance with me. You know you love me just as much as I love you. It’s there, Kat, don’t keep ignoring it. His words echoed through my mind, forcing my tears to flow faster.

  Had there been something there? I thought of the day at the beach and how I had felt when Missy had first decided to put her seduce Kyle plan into action, my stomach burned from the memory. My bottom lip trembled and the few bites of sandwich I had eaten threatened to come back up, as the reality of me never knowing whether something could have ever happen between the two of us sunk in. Kyle was gone.

  You’re gorgeous, Kat, never forget it. His voice echoed hauntingly through my mind. My chest squeezed my lungs so tightly there was no air left inside.

  I lay in bed for roughly another hour. When Mom came back in to check on me, she sat at the edge of my bed and smoothed her hand across my back in slow circles like she used to when I was a little girl and sick.<
br />
  “I talked to Darlene today. They’re having him cremated this afternoon. There’s going to be some sort of a service where people can express their condolences this evening. Your dad and I are going and we think it would be nice if you came. We all need to get out of the house and we all need to say goodbye.” She paused, as if she was waiting for me to respond, but I didn’t. I kept my eyes closed and remained as still as I had been when she’d first walked in. “I’m sure Derek would like to see you.” The words that she didn’t say hung in the air… and Kyle would like for you to say goodbye. Her touch disappeared and the sound of her footsteps faded as she exited my room, closing the door behind her.

  I buried my head deeper into my pillow. I had thought of Derek, about how his arms would feel wrapped around me, how his kiss could possibly dull the pain. I’d thought about how horrible of a friend, of a girlfriend or whatever it was that we were to each other, I was being by hiding out in my room and ignoring him as well as the rest of the world. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything other than what I had been doing since I’d found out—fall apart.

  * * * *

  Everyone was here, all of them dressed respectfully in black. I’d heard the word ‘sorry’ tossed around so many times in the span of a few hours that it had lost all meaning, and didn’t even sound like a word anymore to my ears. I knew I needed to be here, I knew it was to be expected, but all I wanted was to be at home; sealed off in the coffin that was my room, because it hurt too badly to be here. To see Derek and Kyle’s parents so distraught over the loss of their son. I felt responsible for their anguish. But they weren’t the ones that I found it hardest to look at, Derek was. I looked into Derek’s eyes and it was like looking into Kyle’s.

  It was as if Kyle was haunting me. It was too hard to look at him…too hard to see Kyle’s face, and from the way everyone else flittered around Derek and refused to meet his gaze, I could tell that I wasn’t the only one. My heartbeat slowed as the same pain from the hospital entered my chest. I was torn in half between wanting to reach out and console Derek, and wanting to keep my distance from him because he reminded me too much of Kyle and the reason why we were here.