Instead of You

by Anie Michaels

  We dished up our meals in silence, the only sound was the rain hitting the windows from a typical Floridian rainstorm. After a few moments of chewing and taking quiet drinks of our waters, letting moments fall between us like heavy rocks to the bottom of the ocean, I finally had to admit to myself that eating a sympathy casserole with Kenzie wasn’t the life-altering, romantic meal I was delusional enough to hope it would be.

  “I think it’s great you were able to work something out so you could stay with your mom.” McKenzie’s voice broke through my depressing inner monologue. “I’m sure she’s really thankful you stayed.”

  I swallowed, but it felt as if I were pushing down more than food; I was forcing down so much, there wasn’t room for the meal I was eating.

  “I’m not sure she really realizes what’s happening.” I paused and watched as the confusion moved over her face, starting with her eyebrows moving together, then her eyes narrowing at me, followed by the pursing of her lips, which finally made me look away. “It’s not like I sat her down and told her I was staying to make sure she was all right.” I shrugged, pushing the food around my plate with my fork. “I’m pretty sure if you went and spoke with her right now she couldn’t tell you what day it is, or how many days she’s been in her bed. She’s just not all there.”

  It was Kenzie’s turn to push her food around for a moment, then she whispered, “I can’t imagine.”

  “How are you holding up?” I asked, even though the answer had the potential to maim me. It was a horrible situation to be in. I wanted the girl I loved to be fine, I didn’t want her in pain; but I wanted my brother’s girlfriend to miss him, to be somewhat lost without him. “Was it difficult to go back to school today?”

  She looked slightly panicked at my question, her eyes widening and mouth parting just slightly. She didn’t have time to answer though because at that moment my mother made an appearance.

  “McKenzie, honey,” my mother said softly as she walked toward her, sniffling, wiping her hand beneath her nose. Her hair was damp and she only wore an old tattered robe my father had gotten her for Mother’s Day years ago. “I found this yesterday in the bag that came home from the hospital with all of Mark and Cory’s belongings in it.” My lungs froze, wondering where she’d hidden that bag. I’d hidden it in the laundry room, knowing she wasn’t ready to deal with it, but then it had disappeared. I’d spent hours looking for it, knowing the contents had the potential to hurt. She made it all the way to McKenzie and then held her hand out toward her. Sitting in her palm was a little black velvet box. “This was in Cory’s pocket when he was killed,” she said, a sob fracturing her words.

  If McKenzie had looked panicked before, she looked absolutely petrified now. Her eyes were locked on that little black box, wide with what I could only describe as fear. My mom motioned with her hand, encouraging McKenzie to take it.

  Kenzie’s hand reached out, shaking, and her trembling fingers closed around it.

  Something wasn’t right here.

  “He must have wanted to give it to you on his birthday,” Mom said, no longer even trying to rein in her tears. “I think it’s some sort of promise ring.”

  Shit.

  McKenzie slowly opened the box.

  Then she not-so-slowly stood and ran from the house.

  In an instant I was chasing after her. I ran through the front door she hadn’t closed in her haste, and yelled her name as I sprinted down the driveway.

  “McKenzie, wait!”

  The rain hadn’t stopped and it was dark outside, but I could still see her thirty feet in front of me, her arms flailing and feet kicking up water behind her. I pushed myself harder knowing that if I didn’t catch up with her soon, she’d reach her house and once inside it would be easy for her to ignore me, to run and hide. I managed to make it to her, wrapped my arm around her elbow, and spun her toward me.

  I was unprepared for the tears I saw falling from her eyes, mixing in with the raindrops hitting her face. Seeing her cry was like switching something on inside of me and I was instantly pulling her into my arms, uncaring of the rain quickly soaking through my clothes. All that mattered was that she was upset and I was there to comfort her.

  “I’m sorry the ring upset you.” I had to speak louder than I wanted to be heard over the rain pelting the pavement. I felt the contents of my stomach churn when I realized what I had to say next. “It must be really difficult to think about what you’ve lost—what life would have been like for you and Cory.”

  She went still in my arms. The cries stopped. Her breathing halted. She was like a block of ice pressed against me: cold and hard. Suddenly she was pushing away from me like my touch hurt her, like I’d caused her pain, and that caused me pain.

  “Kenz, wait, what’s wrong?” She kept walking away from me, so I lunged forward and grabbed her arm again. That time she didn’t need me to spin her around, because she yanked her arm from my grasp and was suddenly just inches from me, looking up at me with agony in her eyes. “What is it?” I asked, my words a plea. “Please, just talk to me.”

  “I thought—” she started, but an angry sob escaped instead of words. But she continued. “I thought I was going to spend my whole life with Cory.”

  The cold rain was no longer a match for the hot pain that came from hearing those words.

  “And I thought it was going to be difficult, at the very least, less than ideal, to spend a life with someone I didn’t love. But now,” she said, throwing an angry hand into the air, “Now I know I’ll have to live with the guilt of never telling him how I really felt. Every time someone tells me they’re sorry, sorry for me, I feel like a fake.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, my heart begging me, pleading with me, to make her talk faster, to make her words come quicker.

  “He would have given me that ring, Hayes. He would have slipped it on my finger and told me he was promising to marry me one day. And I would have let him.”

  “And?” I begged.

  “And it would have been a lie,” she yelled. Rainwater flew off her lips, dripped from her eyelashes. “I lied to him for two years, maybe longer, and I definitely lied to myself.” She dropped her face into her hands, crying, shoulders shaking, and I didn’t dare try to guess what it was she meant.

  “What was a lie?” I asked as I gently rested my hands on her shoulders.

  “Everything.”

  “Kenzie,” I said, stepping as close as I could get. My hands moved up her shoulders, across her neck, and came to rest on each side of her face. The last time my hands were on her face was the one and only time I’d kissed her. “What are you saying?”

  “I didn’t love him, Hayes. I never fell in love with him, even though, sometimes, I wanted to. It would have been so much easier to love him instead of….”

  “Instead of what, Kenzie?” I urged.

  “Instead of you.”

  She was looking up at me, but I didn’t see sadness in her eyes, I saw fear. Her words sank into me, absorbed into my skin, and flowed through my veins.

  “Me?” My thumbs moved just barely over her cheeks as my hands slid to the back of her neck.

  “It’s always been you.” Her words were just whispers, but they sounded hopeful and shameful at the same time. I brought her shivering frame closer to me, my forehead resting against hers. And the most wonderful part of it was that she let me. She came, willingly, into my arms, wrapping her own around my waist. “Hayes,” she said, just a breath, before I felt her lips press against mine.

  She was kissing me. She was kissing me. And I only let my brain ponder that magnificent fact for a nanosecond before I started kissing her back. I’d relived our kiss from two years ago daily in my mind, thought about it many times, always with mixed emotions. Some days I was glad I’d taken what I thought was my one and only shot at kissing McKenzie. Other days I was absolutely overflowing with guilt for kissing my brother’s girlfriend. Most days though, most days, I was absolutely broken that it wou
ld never happen again.

  And here she was, putting me back together again with her lips.

  She kissed me slowly, tentatively, as if she were afraid I was going to stop her.

  My fingers threaded through her hair, now drenched from the rain, and I gripped it, making sure she had nowhere to go but to me. Her lips were soft but cold, moving over mine as if I were fragile. I stepped into her farther, even though we were clinging to each other with no room between us, but pushing her back made her unsteady and forced her to hold on to me tighter.

  I passed my tongue over the seam of her lips, hoping she’d give me the permission I sought. When her lips parted and a tiny sigh escaped her, I was done handling her gently.

  My tongue swept over hers, licking her, tasting her, and a growl rumbled through my chest with the feeling of finally getting that part of her back. As I kissed her, my lips moving over hers, her lips responding with so much heat and need, I was aware of her body. Aware of the way she slowly softened against me, losing all the stiffness she’d held on to just moments before. Her hands gripped my shirt at my back, and when her fingers twisted in the material, she pressed herself against me even more. She was holding on to me because she had to; I had her at a disadvantage. But she was also clinging to me because she wanted to, I could tell. She told me in the way her lips sought mine out. If I moved left, she went with me, followed me. When I took her bottom lip between my teeth, sucking on it, she let me and her shuddering breaths told me she never wanted me to stop.

  When our lips finally separated, it was only because we needed air, both of us panting to pull in as much as we could.

  “Kenzie,” I said between dragging breaths, “I won’t let you go. I can’t walk away and pretend this didn’t happen. It’ll kill me if I do it again.”

  “I wish you’d never walked away the first time.” Her eyes were so clear, her expression, for the first time in weeks, relaxed and sincere.

  “What is this?” I asked on a breath, unsure if I wasn’t having some sort of hallucination, my hands back at the sides of her face, examining everything about her in that moment because I never wanted to forget what she looked like the instant I felt my life click into place.

  “This is us.”

  Chapter Ten

  McKenzie

  Hot water cascaded from the top of my head, down my chest, over my stomach, all the way to the shower floor. The warmth was welcomed after standing in the rain. Although, admittedly, while I was standing in the rain, I hadn’t noticed the cold.

  Oh, no.

  I was very much not cold outside, with Hayes’s arms wrapped around me, lips kissing mine, hands running all over me.

  Good God, he could kiss. I remembered the kiss we shared two years ago, but everyone knew your first kiss was never the greatest. I remember it being amazing, not only because of the actual kiss, but because of the way it made me feel.

  Well, kiss number one with Hayes held no candle to kiss number two.

  The first time, he kissed me because he thought he’d never have another chance. But the second time, well, he kissed me because he got the chance he never thought he’d have.

  I pushed thoughts of Cory out of my mind. It was maddening to think about the two of them in the same frame, as if they were mutually exclusive—which they were. I could only have one without the other. But the difference was, I kept telling myself, that Cory wasn’t a choice anymore.

  I let out a large sigh as I rinsed the conditioner out of my hair.

  We’d kissed in the rain until Hayes had finally pulled away, running the back of his large hands over my cheeks, telling me to go inside and warm up, but that we weren’t finished. I did what he asked because I had just been kissed stupid, but as I dried off and put on a pair of yoga pants and a tank top, I found myself getting nervous, wondering what he’d meant.

  I walked into the living room and noticed my house was still empty. I figured Mom had stopped at Mrs. Wallace’s when she got off work, and I’m sure she was planning on staying for a while since she was upset about the ring.

  The ring.

  I wasn’t surprised that Cory had picked out a ring for me. In fact, absolutely nothing about our relationship surprised me because everything was so transparent and laid out for us. Our story had been written before either one of us could put up any kind of argument.

  I grabbed my backpack and started working on the piles and piles of homework I’d gathered from school. Twenty minutes later I’d done a pretty good job of sorting work out and determining which assignments needed to be completed first. I’d always been a really good student, so I was determined to catch up quickly. The last term of senior year was not the time to fall behind.

  When the front door opened and my mother walked through, followed closely by my father, I let out a relieved sigh. Time alone was making my brain run at hyper speed.

  “I’m sorry we’re so late, sweetie. Chelsea was a mess again.”

  “I know. I probably didn’t help. I kind of bailed on her.” I did feel badly about running out on her. She had no idea the real reason I ran, and I could only imagine how much pain she thought I was in.

  My mother gave me a sad look and then her and my father sat down at the table. “Honey, we saw the ring.” Her words were in the same sympathetic tone I’d grown used to, the same voice so many people had used to speak to me that day.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” This came from my father, the same man who’d made me wait until I was sixteen to even go on a date or have a boyfriend. If Cory were alive and had given me a promise ring, I knew he wouldn’t be sitting across from me at the table trying to have a rational conversation with me about it. Funny how death changed everything.

  “I don’t think there’s much to say about it,” I replied. “It doesn’t change anything. It just kind of makes it sadder, ya know?” I dropped my pencil on the table and let out a big sigh. “He was probably really excited to give that ring to me—whatever it meant.” I paused and looked down at my hands. “But he never got the chance to give it to me. There’s so much he never got to do.”

  “What about you?” my mother asked gently.

  “What about me?” Her question confused me.

  “What about everything you’re missing out on?” I must have had a perplexed look on my face because she continued. “What about everything you’ll never get to do with Cory? How are you feeling about that aspect of it all?”

  I shrugged. “We all lost something that day. But what bothers me the most is what Cory lost. And, I suppose, what Mrs. Wallace and Hayes lost too. When I look at who all has been affected by their murder, I can’t feel sorry for myself.”

  “You’re a good kid,” my dad says, still with a sad smile across his face.

  “Did you get to eat dinner?” Mom asks.

  “I ate with Hayes.” I tried not to let my face flush at the mention of his name. I didn’t really know exactly what was going on between us, but I knew no one—especially our parents—would understand.

  We spent the next hour as normally as any other evening at my house. My parents ate dinner at the table while I worked on homework. My father asked about school and I explained how uncomfortable the whole day had been, but also expressed that I was optimistic it would fade with time. I did not tell my parents Hayes was my new history teacher. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep from blushing or stumbling over words and decided to avoid the topic altogether.

  As if he could tell I was thinking about him, my phone pinged.

  **My mom is still pretty upset. Once she settles down and goes to sleep I’ll come over. Will you meet me on your porch?**

  **Sure. My parents should be in bed in about an hour. Is your mom going to be all right?**

  **I hope so. See you soon.**

  There was no way to concentrate on schoolwork after his message, but I tried. I sat at the table until my parents decided to go to bed, staring at homework and feigning concentration. When they finally said their good ni
ghts, I let out a relieved sigh, feeling as though I’d gotten away with something.

  I packed up my bag and went upstairs. I pulled a hoodie over my head, slipped on my Converse, made sure the bun on top of my head looked messy but not too messy, and I waited.

  Finally, his message came, asking me to meet him at my front door.

  My heart was cartwheeling around my chest, the thumping of its beat pulsing all the way to my fingertips. I sneaked to the front door, opening it slowly, then sliding outside into the darkness. I saw Hayes’s silhouette, his back toward me, turning quickly when he heard me step outside.

  There’d been a split second where I panicked about whether or not the kissing in the rain had been a mistake, worried that he’d come over to tell me what we’d done was wrong and couldn’t happen again. But he hardly let those fears take root before he pulled me to him and kissed me again.

  When he pulled away, it was only his lips he took from me, his arms still wrapped around me, body still pressed close.

  “Hey,” he said, and I could have sworn he sounded shy. Hayes. Shy. He’d never been anything but confident, sometimes cocky to the point of eye rolling. I couldn’t believe that Hayes might have been feeling the same nerves I was, the same apprehension, asking the same questions as I was.

  Was it really happening?

  Could we really do this?

  After all that time?

  “Hey,” I replied. “I can’t believe you’re here.” My words came out as breathy whispers.

  “I can’t believe I can kiss you whenever I want.” With that he leaned in again and pressed a quick but swoon-worthy kiss against my mouth. “God, Kenz, I waited two years between kisses, and now I can just, I don’t know, kiss you. It feels surreal.”

  “It’s surreal that you even thought about kissing me in the last two years.” I couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped me. At my words, his hand that was wrapped around the side of my neck gently tightened.