In This Moment

by Autumn Doughton

  The house music is a strange mixture of synthetic pop and garage rock. It’s loud and fast and the beats sizzle down my neck and slice under my skin. My eyes start to turn fuzzy so I close them and duck my head to my bent arm.

  I don’t want to listen to what Mara is saying to Cole. I don’t want to hear about how much they have in common and how they’re both fun and alive and everything that I’m not. I don’t want to stare at his full mouth or wonder what it would be like to run my fingers through the strands of sunny hair falling into his green eyes. I don’t want to think about my parents, or about Jilly, or about school, or that night back in June when it all slipped away from me.

  For five minutes, I want to forget this half-life. I just want to push all of the phantoms away and get completely lost in the gaping beats and the burn of vodka moving through my veins.

  But when I open my eyes, I’m back in that car with the salty, dark water spilling in all around me.

  Do you hear that sound? It’s the sound of the world ripping apart.

  The water covered my shoes and weighed down my arms. Everything was shifting and dark. How long had we been like this? Minutes? Hours? Only seconds? I coughed, choking on the fear and the bile creeping up my throat. “Help!”

  My hands flailed out violently and smacked into something solid and slimy.

  Jilly…

  I was weak. I groaned loudly and tried to move. It hurt to breathe.

  “Jilly?”

  Her limp body was thrown forward over the steering wheel. Her head was angled toward me but her wet, dark hair was splayed across her face so that I couldn’t see her eyes—just the tip of her nose and her chin. Her right hand was curled stiffly on the dashboard. One shoulder was bare where her blue shirt was ripped. I could see red but I didn’t know if it was her blood or mine.

  I gripped the edge of the open window. Glass crunched beneath my fingers.

  Oh my God. My brain chugged to life and the fuzziness began to clear. Oh my God.

  “Help!” I gasped and pulled frantically against the slippery metal of the seatbelt clasp with numb fingers. “Jilly?”

  I waited for her to lift her head. I waited for her fingers to uncurl. The seatbelt buckle gave way and I ignored the fierce crack of pain that ripped up my arm and I scrambled forward through the sloshing, heavy water, reaching and—

  Cole’s voice pulls me back to the present. His cool fingertips are resting on the hot skin of my neck, just beneath my ear. “Are you alright, Aimee?”

  I can tell by the strained look on his face that it’s not the first time he’s asked the question. I close my eyes again but the lights are too bright. It’s like I can feel them through my eyelids.

  “Damn it. You’re completely wasted. How much have you had to drink tonight?”

  I push him away, blinking and muttering under my breath.

  Cole picks up my discarded glass and sniffs it. He looks angry and I cringe. “Jesus Christ, Aimee. There’s enough vodka in this drink to obliterate me and you weigh about twenty-five pounds. What the fuck were you thinking?”

  When I don’t respond, he starts asking Mara questions about what we’ve been drinking and whether or not we’re planning to drive home. I dip my head back into the cradle of my arms and breathe in through my nose. The world slows down around me—it goes dark and soft and strangely mushy. With a breathy sigh I close my eyes and feel the table and the chair and the ground beneath my feet fall away.

  I am a raft.

  I am falling.

  I am floating.

  “I don’t drive.”

  Did I say the words out loud or in my head?

  Hours pass. Or maybe it’s seconds. Who knows? Who cares anymore?

  There’s a flicker of blinding light and I realize that I’m being picked up. Cole shifts my head against his solid chest and quietly directs me to put my feet down on the ground. I teeter to one side, but his powerful arm is wrapped firmly around my waist. He’s talking over my head to some guy that I don’t recognize. He says something about a car. Then he’s smoothing the loose hairs away from my face with his thumb and telling Mara to pick up my purse.

  Hmmm… I let my whole body sink into his.

  It registers that I should probably be embarrassed that I’m such a disaster, but more than anything, I think about how nice Cole smells. I nuzzle my face deep into his shirt. I make a sound. “You smell really good.”

  He glances down at me with those star-bright green eyes and I can’t help but smile. “Oh yeah? I told you before that I use Ivory soap.”

  “No, that’s not it… It’s not soap.” I wave my hand and flutter my eyelids. “You smell a little like… chlorine. Did you know that?” I sigh. “I miss it. I love the smell of chlorine.”

  He laughs and the sound of it moves over my skin like liquid. “I’m training for a triathlon in Gainesville in a few weeks, so I did swim this afternoon. Maybe I didn’t take a long enough shower?”

  “Hmmm… I like it. A lot.” I twist my fingers in the fabric of his shirt. “And you’re tall, aren’t you? I didn’t know that track stars were so tall.”

  He chuckles some more.

  Encouraged, I continue, reaching up to pinch the swell of muscle at his shoulders. “And you’ve got very nice muscles, Mr. Everly. I kind of want to bite them.”

  “Miss Spencer, you are extremely drunk right now,” he replies, a wide smile busting open on his face. “But you’re a nice and very flattering drunk so I’ll take it over sullen and mysterious any day.”

  My hands move higher. I gently brush his lips with my fingertips. “Do you have to use the smile with the dimples? It’s too… too much.”

  “What does that mean? Too much of what?”

  “Too much of everything.” I roll my eyes and sway to the right. “It means that it’s distracting. It means that I think about your dimples way more than I should.”

  Cole closes his eyes and captures my hand in his. He bends his head so that I feel his breath, hot and tingly against my ear. “Then maybe we’re even because I think that everything about you is too much.”

  I scrunch my nose, but before I can work out the words to respond, Cole moves his arm and instructs me to duck my head.

  Confused, I look around.

  Black upholstery. A windshield. This is a car.

  Mara is leaning back on the seat next to me with her legs crisscrossed underneath her body. I peer out of the open door. Cole’s arms are on the roof of the car and he’s looking down at me.

  “I’m in a car,” I say to him.

  Cole chuckles and nods his head slowly. “Yes, you’re in my friend Adam’s car. We’re taking you home now.”

  “How do you know where I live?” This seems like the question that I’m supposed to ask in this situation.

  “I told them,” Mara says and lets her eyes fall closed. “I think we should have stayed away from those shots, Aimee.”

  I vaguely remember the shots of tequila but I’m not sure how many either of us had. “Huh. I’m not usually so… I don’t know… unsafe.”

  Cole slides in next to me and I rest my head on his shoulder. He feels so nice.

  A car door slams and someone new says my name. I pry my heavy eyelids open and see Daniel Kearns looking at me from the front seat. His hair is darker than Jilly’s and his face is rounder, but he’s got his sister’s caramel eyes and his sister’s oversized nose.

  “Daniel? Are you? Is that…” My voice is so hoarse. Unhinged thoughts swirl around in my head like a strong wind. “D-did you know that Jillian always wanted to get a nose job?”

  Daniel looks perplexed, like he doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. I think that I feel the same way. It’ll be fine. Cole’s arm wraps around my shoulders. I feel the pressure of his fingers on my bare skin.

  “Aimee, are you okay?” Daniel asks me from a million zillion trillion miles away.

  Warm tears prick the backs of my eyes as the familiar surge of sadness pulls me under. S
uddenly the question is screaming in my head—the one I’ve wanted someone to answer for over a year. My voice is faint—made of air and hot, steamy breath. “Daniel, do you think that she hates me?”

  And maybe I’m dreaming him. Maybe I’ll stay asleep so I can hear his voice in my head, like gentle waves lapping at my toes.

  No, Aimee. Never. She’ll always love you.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aimee

  I moved to Portland because I wanted to live in a world where Jillian Kearns had never existed. I wanted the air in my lungs to be air that had never touched her lips. It sounds cruel, but I wanted to stop remembering. The goal was to get lost so I ran.

  Running, it turns out is the easy part.

  It’s the not getting found where things get complicated.

  My grandparents, both older than their actual ages and hard of hearing, let me be by myself for the most part. No one at school bothered me. I spent my senior year as the quiet, slightly off transfer student who ate lunch alone and never looked anyone directly in the eye.

  In Portland it’s the norm for people to march to their own beat so no one thought it was particularly odd that I didn’t go to football games, or join the drama club, or hang out at the Depot after school. No one asked me questions about my past. No one cared enough to try.

  By the fifth month of my self-imposed exile from Florida, I was speaking but I wasn’t talking. There really is a difference.

  Even my therapist ran out of letters and words that made sense so we fell into a pattern of obligatory conversation and empty promises handed over on my end. She reported to my parents that I was getting better and I stayed quiet and nodded my head when I was supposed to.

  I started to forget. I stopped dreaming about Jillian. I stopped talking to her while I got ready for school. Weeks passed by without incident. Life moved along.

  I discovered that normalcy can be like an extra layer of clothing that you put on in the morning. Underwear—check. Pants—check. Sweater—check. Normalness—check. No one worries as long as they can’t actually see that you’re naked.

  And then, all of a sudden, it was a year. A year since Jillian Kearns had made a stupid joke. Or called me up just to tell me that I was her bitch. Or twisted her hair into a spiky bun on top of her head. Or laughed. Or brushed her teeth. Or squinted into the sun.

  A year since her mother had screamed at me in the hospital. A year since I’d clawed my way out of that car and left my best friend behind to die.

  One year.

  That’s three hundred and sixty five sleeps. Fifty-two weeks. Eight thousand seven hundred sixty-five hours.

  I didn’t go to school that day. I left the house at my usual time in the morning, but instead of heading to first period Language Arts, I just walked. I walked past my turn and down to the park and then I just kept going. I thought about walking to another city, or to Washington, or maybe Canada, or right into the Pacific Ocean.

  I don’t remember much of what came after that. I don’t remember getting home or looking for the pills or swallowing them or getting into my grandparent’s car.

  Later, my parents and the doctors wanted me to tell them what happened—they wanted me to purge my thoughts. They wanted a clean slate. I think that they’d decided that it would be easier to build a new person from mishmash spilled on the floor than from me.

  I can still see my mother’s face—eyebrows perpetually pulled inward, mouth pinched tight.

  Did you mean to do it?

  Just tell us.

  We don’t want to lose you.

  That’s what she kept saying… We don’t want to lose you.

  Didn’t she realize that I was already gone?

  ***

  The sound starts from far away. Just a buzz on the peripheral of sleep.

  Then it gets closer… louder, brassier. The noise makes its way inside my head, pushing me over, sifting through my gauzy dreams and needling at the backs of my eyes.

  I open my mouth, but my tongue feels swollen and dry. I lift my arm, but it crashes back to the earth. I try to blink, but it’s like my eyelashes have been pasted to my cheeks with rubber cement.

  Oh. My. God.

  What is wrong with me? My head is throbbing painfully like it’s been bashed into my headboard by a giant’s fist. My legs feel rubbery like—

  “Wake up, Little Miss Sunshine!”

  The high-pitched squeal snaps the membrane of grogginess and forces my eyes open. My bedroom is nothing but screaming brightness and sharp noises. Mewling loudly, I roll over and tunnel down deep under the safety of my covers.

  “Rise and shine!”

  Mara. What is wrong with her?

  Mara bounces herself onto my mattress and grabs my arm. Leaning closer, she pushes the knotty hair away from my face and sticks her wet finger in my ear. I swallow and screw my face up. I want to tell her to leave, but nothing is working properly and the sound that comes out of my mouth seem closer to a grunt than an actual word. “Laaahf!”

  Mara laughs. “Get up, young lady. Yesterday you told me that you were planning to meet Jodi in an hour.”

  Dazed, I try to swat her hand away, but my older sister isn’t having it. With a loud huff she pulls on my legs until my lower half is dangling off the edge of the bed.

  “I’m meeting Jodi at three in the afternoon,” I say roughly into the puffy pillow still clutched in my hands.

  Mara snorts and slaps me playfully on my butt. “Yeah, Aimee. That’s in an hour.”

  This is what finally gets me to turn over and sit up. The bedroom tilts precariously to one side and the walls swing in, causing my stomach to recoil.

  “Ahhhhh!” Dropping my head and rubbing my hands up and down my face, I ask, “Is it really the afternoon already?”

  “Yep. Sure is.” She stands up. “I would have let you sleep longer but I have to go over to the sorority house to help the girls get ready for the football game. We’re hosting Sig Ep after the game tonight. You should come! I could send one of the younger girls to come pick you up…”

  I look at my window. I can see slivers of blue through the slats in the blinds. “Oh God. Too much information!” I rub my eyes. “How in the world are you so cheery right now?”

  “I have epic hangover recovery powers honed during my two previous years of college.” Mara laughs. “And it helps that I wasn’t passed out when we got home so I was able to wash down some aspirin with about thirty gallons of water.”

  Water. Something new flickers in my brain. “Ugh. What the hell happened last night?”

  “Let’s see…” She pauses like she needs to think about my question. “Tequila, vodka and Cole Everly.”

  Scrambled bits and pieces of memory start to flicker in my brain, but it’s still an incoherent hodgepodge of images. Cole’s face comes into focus and then the feel of his arm wrapped around me, and the scent of him, and the car and… I cringe and fall back to my mattress. “Holy crap. Last night was…” I wince. “Mara, it’s possible that I told Cole that I wanted to bite him.”

  Mara snorts.

  I groan and look at my sister. “Was Daniel Kearns really in the car with us?”

  Mara nods her head slowly. “He and Cole both carried you in and tucked you into your bed. It was actually pretty cute.” She takes a few steps backward and gestures to the table next to my bed. “Oh, and Cole left you a note.”

  I reach out, fumbling over a stack of books and my alarm clock until my fingers find the small slip of paper. Written below a phone number that I assume is his, are just three words: Lots of water.

  Cole

  Six days.

  She doesn’t call or put up a smoke signal or any of that shit. Not even a text.

  Six fucking days.

  At first, I’m worried.

  When day three rolls around, I’m pissed.

  By day four, I’m resigned. What does it matter to me anyway?

  I run harder than usual. I push myself on the weights. I tell myself
to forget about Aimee and, for the most part, it works.

  But at night, I end up staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, watching the fan blades cycle round and round. I think about her face and her wide saltwater blue eyes and that freckle on her cheek. And I think about her mouth.

  Fuck. I spend a lot of time thinking about her mouth. I wonder about the secrets that live between her lips and I wonder about the taste of her. After I get that far, it’s a short leap to remembering the way that her breath felt against the skin on my neck. Or how my hand sunk into the curve of her waist as I lowered her into her bed.

  Damn it.

  It’s brutal.

  On Thursday afternoon I’m walking out of the Union with Daniel and there she is. She’s in almost the exact same spot where I first saw her, only this time she’s not falling over her feet into my lap.

  She’s with that blue-haired girl, Jodi, and she’s got her legs kicked out and her head tipped back to catch the sun. Her long brown hair is spilling over the skin of her neck and pooling on the grass beneath her. Everything about the moment is so golden and glowy that my heart does an erratic flip and my feet stop moving.

  “… that if I can keep my shoulder blade rotated down, I can throw a lot farther.” Daniel’s voice comes back to me.

  “Huh?” What did he say?

  He stops and spins around. “Practice. Throwing the discus. Track and field. Earth to Cole.” He snaps his fingers sharply in front of my face.

  “Uh, yeah. I’m sorry, man.” I blink and jerk my head but it’s too late. Daniel follows my gaze and spots Aimee.

  “You’re into her.”

  I clench my jaw tight.

  He laughs. “I mean… You’re hardcore into her.”

  There’s no use denying it. I am into her.