by Ren Benton
It made a cumbersome load, but he couldn’t ask Gin to help carry it. She held her phone tight in one hand. Her other had a death grip on the waistband of his jeans, like she thought he was going to bolt into traffic.
If having him on a leash made her feel safer, he was happy to be kept in check. He doubted he could handle a second trip ten years back in time tonight. Her stark terror went far beyond the quiet misery that had slipped free of her restraint on her birthday.
She was the cool, controlled one who kept him level when he felt himself spiraling out of control. For once, she’d been in need of a stabilizing influence. A firm touch. A calm voice. An everything-is-completely-fine remark.
If she’d bullshitted her way through calm the way he had, she deserved a shelf full of Oscars for the quality of her performances. He would never have guessed being steady for another’s benefit could be so brutally difficult. He’d nearly dropped to his knees and begged her to stop because he wasn’t qualified to provide more than a shoulder to rest on.
She’d been too preoccupied to critique the flaws in his execution of the unrehearsed role — his shaking voice and trembling hands that stilled only after she stopped staring through him into a real-life nightmare in which she and her brother fell into a killer’s hands.
Lex would do anything for her, but he was afraid repeating his mistakes with a task of that magnitude anytime soon would cause her more harm than good.
So he stuck to her side and made no quick movements she might interpret as an interest in leaving her sight.
Preparations to stay put for the night brought them to the kitchen. He stood between Gin and the powerless refrigerator, trying to recall the layout of the contents without peeking. “Until we can scoop up the free ice, we need to keep this closed as much as possible. We should eat that leftover takeout before it gets dangerous.”
“I’m not hungry.”
Lex never was. That didn’t mean he never needed food. He couldn’t force her to eat, but he could set a good example. If that failed, her honor might prevail when presented with the crime of wasting food that would have to be trashed if not eaten.
He yanked open the fridge, grabbed the pulled pork, a tub of raw mixed vegetables, and a pitcher of filtered water, and snapped the door closed, all in a chill-conserving seven seconds.
He spread the feast on the coffee table on the side facing the fire. He tossed a couple of sofa cushions on the floor and invited her to join him.
Perhaps realizing he was too creaky to spring up from the floor and outrun her even if he wanted to, she sank to sit beside him, her thigh touching his. She turned off her phone to spare the battery, and the golden, shifting light of the fire took full responsibility for banishing the darkness.
He stabbed a nugget of cauliflower with a fork. “If we had sticks, we could skewer these and pretend they’re marshmallows.”
“We’re a long way from the stage of deprivation where cauliflower is a plausible substitute for a marshmallow.” Her voice still sounded muffled under a layer of shock, but the number of words she’d strung together gave him hope for recovery. “That comes a while after I look at you and see a giant turkey drumstick.”
“Oh, you’re not there yet, cheeseburger?” He’d be damned if his starvation-induced cartoon hallucinations adhered to a diet. He went for the cold pork next. “I bet everything we’d need for s’mores is in the pantry.”
“I bet that much sugar would make me sick for a week.” She followed his lead and took a bite.
“Me too, but it’s not much of a campfire without toasting something.”
“Ryan loved camping.”
The unexpected mention of her brother arrested Lex’s hunt for his next morsel of food. He held perfectly still, as if one wrong word or gesture on his part might trigger another breakdown.
Gin’s fork darted under his hand to steal a charred edge of meat. “I hated every minute of it that didn’t involve marshmallows and chocolate.”
She seemed fine for now. Camping was a harmless enough subject to get her talking again. “I imagine it’s hard to keep your feet at precisely the right temperature in a sleeping bag.”
“Especially when you’re afraid to zip it because the family nature expert told you snakes love to slither inside to keep themselves toasty at night.”
That reeked like a legend of the urban persuasion. “Did that story check out?”
“No, but you try getting comfortable in a sleeping bag once someone plants the idea in your head.” Her foot wiggled against his knee in an approximation of serpentine affection. “A helpful ranger explained it’s more likely your exposed face will be ripped off by an inexperienced owl attracted by your twitching, whistling nose.”
“Wow. Everybody wanted you to stay home.”
“If I did, Ryan would have had no one to point out macabre landmarks to. ‘That trail got closed off because a mountain lion figured out it was the perfect spot to ambush hikers. Over there, four rock climbers were crushed in an avalanche. We’re making camp tonight at the site where a group of prospectors got snowed in and resorted to cannibalism.’ As if being surrounded by death would make the bugs, lack of bathrooms, and menace of every fluffy, big-eyed forest friend more tolerable.”
As an only child, Lex had missed out on the sister-torture perk that came with brotherhood. Until now, he’d been under the impression Ryan declined to take advantage of the benefit in favor of being his twin’s champion. Either guilt had stopped Gin from speaking ill of the dead or she hadn’t wanted Lex to think badly of the brother he would only ever know through her stories. Either way, her willingness to acknowledge a less-glowing facet of their relationship had to be healthy.
She’d apparently had enough amateur therapy for one night, though. “So, you got games on that laptop or what?”
His computer obviously belonged to a man who spent too much time on the road. “I’ve got games. I’ve got movies. I’ve got books. I’ve got a painting program if you want to create fine art or play tic-tac-toe. I’m prepared for hours of lack of connectivity.”
“What kind of movies?”
No surprise that was her first choice. They reached an agreement about the best configuration of cushions, pillows, blankets, and bodies. When she was securely nestled against his side, Lex settled the laptop on his legs and opened the film library.
Gin scrolled through the covers. Predictably, she’d seen everything — or almost everything.
She paused over an image of a woman clinging to a rocky ledge while a bear roared overhead. “What’s that?”
His obsession with GemGam movies led to his recommendations being filled with random independent films, and he occasionally took the bait and bought one. “No idea. I meant to watch it before I got here so I could fake being outdoorsy.”
“My advice as a professional faker is a wardrobe rich in hiking boots and flannel. No one questions the forestry expertise of a man who looks like a hot lumberjack.” She tipped her head back to gaze at him with childlike wonder. “We all want to believe.”
He made a mental note about hot lumberjack role-play and clicked the play button. When the first several minutes of the movie passed in silence, he bent his neck to check on Gin.
She blinked up at him. “What?”
“You’re very quiet.”
Her nose crimped. “I forgot you’re the one weirdo who likes it when your date talks over the movie.”
Not every date. “Your live director’s commentary is by far the most interesting thing about any movie.” Not that he gave a damn about the movies, but the insight into Gin’s thoughts was priceless treasure. “Let me have it.”
She first offered career advice for Eric Somebody-or-other, who in her opinion was too good an actor for the roles he got. “Please disregard the tragic and inexplicable accent and watch his eyes say everything.”
Lex agreed the heroine had a better chance of surviving the wilderness if she went with Tragic Accent, if only because her on
screen boyfriend’s eyes said, I once got lost in an Old Navy for three days and am lucky to be alive.
She followed with a lengthy lesson on movies and TV shows ostensibly set in the U.S. that were filmed in Canada and the regulatory conditions that made living in another country during a shoot more economically feasible than using one’s own back yard.
The scenery was pretty, but the lecture was more interesting than watching actors hike through it for half an hour. “I don’t remember you ever shooting in Canada.”
“I don’t have enough budget for a low-budget Canadian production. I go where the locals are excited to cooperate and the government won’t bankrupt us with permits.”
The unhappy couple menaced in their tent by a bear compared favorably to a corresponding scene in another indie movie supposedly about Bigfoot. “They sat in the tent for most of the movie reacting to noise outside. They’d look scared and then look at each other and then look scared again, and it went on and on and on. I was screaming at the TV. You cannot milk an unseen threat that long without it becoming a joke.” She flapped her hand at the screen. “Whereas a bear making a dental molding of your flimsy tent ups the stakes considerably.”
Lex cringed when Old Navy got his leg clawed open, but Gin leaned in for a closer look. “Their special effects team is phenomenal. Usually it’s a prosthetic shell stuffed with ground beef and marinara, but that’s anatomically gruesome.”
Since Old Navy’s eyes weren’t good enough actors to inspire sympathy, she whooped a little too gleefully when he got yanked out of the tent by his feet. “I hate jump scares, but this timing is excellent. If they’d trimmed twenty minutes of scenery—”
She jerked away from the sight of the bear feasting on Old Navy’s guts.
Lex snapped the laptop shut. What were the odds of triggering her with a blackout and again with a hyperrealistic gutting in the same night?
He scrubbed his mouth with his hand. “I’m sorry, Gin. If I—”
A serrated laugh sawed from her throat. “The first thing I’m going to do when the Wi-Fi comes back is look up whether that actor is still alive. If he is, I’m going to see if I can afford those special effects folks and write a movie around them because, damn, they do great work.”
She was going to brazenly quip through it despite the betrayal of her choked voice and the heart he could feel frantically kicking through her ribs. That was how she’d coped long before he came along.
A guy who coped by spending most of his life blackout drunk was in no position to criticize her methods.
He stared up at the ceiling and strove to keep his tone as light as the firelight barely brushing the edges of the beams far above. “I can say with certainty I’m not walking through the woods anymore.”
Her weak laugh ended with a watery sniffle. “The treadmill’s looking pretty good to me, too.”
He wrapped both arms tight around her. “I’m sorry.”
Her jagged edges were back and brittle. “It’s just a movie. Lighten up.”
How many times had she heard those words, snapped by people who didn’t have the patience to deal with her pain, forcing her to reserve it for one day a year? Lex didn’t remember ever saying them to her, but that was exactly the sort of asshole behavior he would drink to forget. Holes in his memory didn’t mean he wasn’t guilty.
He had patience now, and the fortitude to withstand tough conversations. “You never talk about it.”
“I have recounted ‘it’ ad nauseam for law enforcement, judge and jury, and therapists galore. Google will tell you everything you could possibly want to know. The crime scene photos were even leaked so you can gawk at the corpses.”
She’d never talked to him about it, not one mention in all the time he’d known her. He’d never pushed her hard enough to learn she was this defensive. “I’m not the enemy, Gin. You’re welcome to use me as a punching bag, literally or figuratively. I’m not going anywhere. I just want you to know I’m not attacking you.”
“Oh, that makes it much easier to justify taking a swipe at you.” Her chest hitched with a soundless sob. Restless hands clawed at her throat, her chest, her stomach. “Everybody else talks about it and gets relief. Ethan came to one appointment with me and said a weight had been lifted from his chest. I know where it went — on top of the weight on mine. I can talk and talk and talk for years, and it never stops crushing me.”
The only thing Lex hated more than emotional advice from his psychiatrist was emotional advice from people without her credentials. He might have to reconsider that they meant well after tonight. The urge to practice without a license was overpowering when someone he loved was hurting. “Have I mentioned my therapy?”
“Not in so many words, but I figured. CBT?”
“Christ. Is it stamped on my forehead?”
“Fellow traveler. I recognize the dust on your boots.” She curled her hands around one of the arms holding her, as if to stop him from pulling away. “Please don’t be embarrassed. Anything that helps is a good thing.”
He had no plans to go anywhere. Part of the cognitive behavioral therapy was correctly identifying the emotion, and it wasn’t embarrassment — he was disappointed. “I guess I hoped it looked more natural from the outside.”
“I have an old version of what’s natural for reference. If I’d just met you, I wouldn’t think there was any effort involved. This is your new natural.”
If it was a lie, it was one he desperately wanted to believe, so he accepted it gracefully. Maybe the familiar dust on his boots would convince her he’d returned from the journey with something worthwhile to share. “Dr. O attributes those wounds that never heal, never even scab, just keep hurting and bleeding relentlessly, to talking a lot but not saying the one thing that must never be spoken.”
She went still. After a long silence, she whispered, “What’s the one thing?”
He couldn’t help her with that part. “Depends on the wound. Whatever is so terrible you’d rather live with the pain than speak it.”
A fine tremor shook her, as if the idea resonated deep within her. “Have you ever said your one thing?”
“I have more than one.” He pulled another blanket over her. He knew warmth wasn’t what she lacked, but it was what he could provide. “I’ve checked a few off the list. Some of them have to be said to someone in particular, though, and the opportunity doesn’t always coincide with the courage required.”
For instance, now would be the perfect opportunity to say his one thing to Gin, but the bond between them was so new and fragile, he couldn’t face the possibility of breaking it. Later, when they were stronger, when he had her love again, then he’d tell her.
Right. Because he’d be less afraid of losing her then? Later was the chorus of the same damn song he’d been singing to himself since the night they met. If he continued to be a coward, later would become too late again.
Her fingers kneaded his arm, a reminder he was supposed to be reassuring her. “Do you need them to forgive you?”
“Nah, it’s not about that.” Setting a condition of someone else’s forgiveness was a good way to guarantee closure never happened. “For me to be okay with myself, I have to admit who I’ve been and what I’ve done. If I’m looking somebody in the eye and can see my apology, or whatever it is, doesn’t cover the full extent of my fuckup, I have more work to do, even if they tell me all is forgiven and forgotten. Nobody can let me off the hook. I have to remove it myself.”
If any noise but the fire had competed for his attention, he might not have heard her next soft question. “How do you know it’s out?”
“It hurts less.” He wished he could do it for her, or at least make it easier, but all he had was a shoulder for her to rest on. “It doesn’t stop all at once, but when it’s not tearing at you every day, the wound starts to heal.”
She stared into the fire, no more questions, although he felt her throat working, swallowing words she couldn’t bring herself to say.
&n
bsp; It was a dark and stormy night.
They lit up the living room with LED lanterns from the camping closet and demolished what was left of the last birthday cake either of them would ever eat.
Outside, a crash.
I’ll go check it out.
Her heart shrank with cold, and she grabbed his hand to stop him from investigating.
No. Please.
It’s just a trash can. Let me put it in the shed before the wind drops it through the windshield of somebody’s Mercedes. I’ll be right back.
He took one of his new golf clubs. Of all the real details that seemed unreal to her, that one stood out the most: her newly twenty-five-year-old brother’s sudden love of golf, right down to the polo shirts and plaid pants.
She waited too long for him to return. Because he’d say she worried too much and he was a big boy who could go outside without supervision, she counted off how long it should take to drag the trash can to the garden shed, allowing extra time for the darkness, wind, and rain.
On top of the too long she’d already waited.
Still, he didn’t return.
She took one lantern into the kitchen. The door leading to the garden was wide open. The wood floor glistened with rain.
Her temper sparked. The hundred-year-old hardwood had been spared by Hurricane Katrina, only to be ruined by her impatient brother’s propensity for leaving doors ajar so he didn’t have to waste precious time turning knobs.
She owed him another lecture about being careless and a slob and making messes for her to clean up.
She followed him outside, closing the door with a snap. The driving rain forced her eyes closed. When she turned to put the wind at her back, her bare foot caught under a coil of garden hose. She shook it off and looked down so she wouldn’t trip over another mess her brother had made.
That’s not a garden hose.
Pretend it’s a garden hose.
By lantern light, the puddle was black. The wound was black, gaping like a monstrous mouth vomiting...
