Swept Away

by Marie Byers

  Amber has never been so grateful for her bubbly interference as she is right now. Ryan remains uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the evening and Amber has never been a chatterbox, especially not after everything, but Kim covers for them both effortlessly and by the next day they’re back to their regular again.

  Chapter Six

  Things feel like they could go on this way indefinitely. Days stretch into days and soon Amber’s studying for her mid-terms and her smiles are coming a little more generously and laughter too at times.

  It's funny how time really does heal all wounds just not perfectly. There're cracks in the glaze and Amber knows; she can see it, feel it, that there are parts of her that won't ever be the same again. Just like the move to California with Dad in tears and Mom a wreck, she was forever changed by that. Just like Michael's love and affection and just his simple regard had done a world of good for her, had put her back together again, sealed up her broken parts and let her just breathe again.

  But still there were slivers of not quite right. If Amber's parts are a puzzle piece she's from two different puzzles, all corners and edges and unwieldy bits. Still she's shoving them together and for the most part its working and a clearer picture is developing.

  She won't ever be the same again but maybe that's just a part of life. Growing up. And maybe that's a good thing, in a way, because she won't ever make those same mistakes again either.

  At least she prays she won't. She can't honestly say. Every day there's something new to learn, some new way to be, and she feels like if she can just hold out for the long run she can figure out the meaning behind all the pain she's had to endure. Or something. Amber is only certain of one thing anymore, she's not certain of anything at all. Still, she's doing the best she can and maybe that's enough for once. Michael had made her believe that, once upon a time, then they both went and fucked it up.

  * * * *

  She's on the phone with Mom, cordless tucked under her chin as she stares out her bedroom window to the great green field beyond. There's something calming about looking out and seeing nothing but greenery and life.

  "I'm taking care of myself," Amber reassures her. Mom has gotten really overprotective in the last few months like all those years she was away wasn't enough to teach Amber how to care for herself without her mother's help.

  "Yup, classes are going okay." She calls once a week just to check in, or else her parents will do it for her. Secretly she's a little afraid that they're going to end up flying out here one day and try and take her back. Neither one of them had wanted her to go so far, not after how broken she was right before she left. But she's an adult now, more or less, and she makes her own decision. If she could be mature enough to decide to have an abortion, she can handle what classes to take and what to eat for lunch.

  "I know, tell Dad I miss him too." Amber pauses here not sure if she's ready to say the words out loud, then internally dismiss her worries with a great big 'f you' and pushes them out her mouth. "I miss you too, Mom."

  Their relationship is still strained. She loves her, there's no doubt about it, and Mom loves Amber too. For once, she'd actually done the right things and was there for her when she needed her to be but it hadn't quite made up for all those years of unavailability. They're working on their relationship now. And it's nice to have a mom again. So maybe, if nothing else, this whole God-awful experience brought her that.

  * * * *

  Amber is panting through the giggles that explode from her body as Ryan chases her around the quad. Kim is lying back on the grass smiling sappily to herself as she waits for someone to unfreeze her or Amber to be caught so they can start the game over again. It's fun to do something so silly and childish and she can't remember a moment after middle school that she's felt like this. Light. Free.

  It's weird because even with it there's the sensation of pain hovering just underneath, like a sore tooth someone carries around in their mouth and forgets when they're not actively aggravating it by talking or eating. She feels like all she does these days is think think think and it's nice to just let everything go and—

  Ryan slams her bodily into the ground, they roll a few times, his arms around her protecting her head and face as he tucks her into his broad chest. If only she could love him she knows she'd be safe.

  "Tag," he says, breathless as they come to a stop. "I win." His dark chocolate eyes aren't the brilliant twinkling green she sees in her dreams. His sharp pointed features aren't the strong square jaw bristling with just the faintest 4'oclock shadow.

  The chest that beats so hard against her breasts isn't the one she'd come to know so well and love despite everything.

  Amber pushes him onto his back and climbs to her feet. It's just a game and it needs to stay that way because the truth is she can't love him. No matter what she does she's already in love with someone else

  * * * *

  Of course that's the moment she sees him. At first she dismisses it because Amber sees him everywhere, in the boy that sits across from her in Intro to World Languages, in the guy that serves coffee at Café One Stop, in her dreams, behind her closed eyelids, in her soul, in her heart, in the blood that thrums and pumps through her veins.

  Michael.

  And then he's moving towards her and she sees the circles under his eyes, the dark marks that speak of sleepless nights. And the way he's still bulky and muscular but thinner somehow, more fragile.

  And she sees that his eyes aren't glittering mischievously or alight with passion, they're burning embers of 'hope' and 'please' and 'I can't believe you're here.'

  And suddenly she's moving towards him too. She just has to make sure he's real, that's all, she just needs to touch.

  Their arms go around each other and they're locked together with their lips leading the way.

  And taste.

  His hands move restlessly over her and there's a sob building in her chest that's echoed in the guttural way he's moans into her, and how when he tilts his head and brushes his eyelashes against her cheek in butterfly kisses that skip and bump accidentally, his lashes are wet.

  They're making a scene and she doesn't care. He's here. He's warm and real and here.

  Amber's fingers skitter over his denim jacket, push it back and slide up his chest, just feeling him, touching and holding and making sure she's awake with every sense she owns.

  "Amber," he chokes out when they're lips finally part. "Amber, Amber," just that like he's lost all other words except her name.

  She feels the same; she feels his name pound through her, burning their mark indefinably into her soul.

  They pull away just long enough for him to search her face, drop his hands down to her flat stomach and ask with confusion bunching his eyebrows and darkening his eyes, “Where’s the baby?”

  * * * *

  Amber has never been punched but that’s what she imagines getting slammed hard with a fist in your stomach feels like. All the air whooshes from her body and her legs go weak. There’s a nasty film of sweat sliding between her shoulder blades and the chill of it makes her shiver. Nausea and bile rise to her throat and before she has a chance to think about it she’s pushing him away, knocking away his searching hands and backing up one leading step at a time.

  “Amber,” Michael calls, and his voice is absolutely wrecked. There’s a faint note of panic laced through his syllables and she sees the way his fist clench at his side, like they can’t stop opening and closing in nervous, twitching waves.

  “You said you weren’t ready,” her own voice has gone thread and whispery bare. “I wasn’t either, I couldn’t—especially if you weren’t going to be around. You know my parents, what was I supposed to do, raise a kid to be me, with me playing them and making it pay for our mistakes? Is that what you wanted. I couldn’t, I j-just couldn’t, Michael, you weren’t there you don’t know!”

  She’s practically screaming by the end and tears make slow hot tracks down her cheeks. Michael puts a hand o
ut to her, palm up, fingers spread wide, and she doesn’t’ know if it’s his intention to stop her or words or her stride.

  Amber stumbles to a stop on her own, firm arms coming up around her body and holding her to a hard chest at her back. From the way Michael’s eyes narrow, it’s Ryan.

  “You weren’t there,” she repeats again, softer this time, barely a wisp of air to carry her words from her to him. He feels farther away than he’s ever been.

  “Amber, no,” Michael moans it, anguish and hurt so clear she doesn’t have to know him to hear it. “What did you do?”

  The accusation burns in a way that’s only rivaled by his previous “is it mine?” Acid corroding her soul, her love, her memories, burning them all away and leaving scar tissue lumpy and misshapen beneath.

  “There is no baby anymore,” she says. Her body feels numb. “I got rid of it like you got rid of us.”

  Then she turns and breaks out of Ryan’s tight embrace, blindly flying back the way she came, tears blurring her vision and pushing her feet faster and faster until she reaches the safety of her dorm.

  * * * *

  Her phone is ringing off the hook a half hour later. The names on the caller I.D. cycle predictably: Ryan to Kim to Kim to Ryan and then once her Mom but that's just a coincidence because it’s her day to call home and not because they know anything. She hopes. Dad hasn't been too fond of Michael the first time and he wasn't very helpful to have around saying caustic things that hinted at his desire to use violence on him—rather heavy-handed hinting. So the longer she can put off a return of that the better. She doesn't know what she's going to say to Ryan or Kim, she doesn't know what she's going to say to herself.

  Amber hadn't lied when she hadn't said anything to them about any of it, not her abortion or her relationship with Michael, or any mention of Michael at all. She simply left that all out and she knows they knew as well as she did that she was missing a huge gaps in her life whenever she talked about 'before.' But she always kind of suspected that they wouldn't see it that way. In only a semester they'd gotten as close as three people could be—who weren't dating, or related, or known each other their whole lives. And they were probably upset that she'd kept such a giant thing from them no matter how much she justified it.

  But greater than that was this huge blank—a question mark flashing painfully, urgently, in her head—in regards to what to do about Michael.

  After she'd come out of that hospital room, once again only one person and not two, the first thing she'd thought was 'at least he'll be happy now.' Kind of bitterly. And she'd known then it hadn't been fair but she'd also thought that it was mostly true. He didn't want to be a father. He wrote that himself. She'd read those very lines with her eyes from his hand to the paper and forever recorded and marked down. How could he act like he hadn't now?

  She knew she should probably have told him, because...well, it was his baby too. But even if she forgot about that piece—which she'd happily do if she could - they told each other about everything. This was no different.

  Except for how it was. It so totally and completely was.

  And back to the beginning again.

  Amber cries and sleeps fitfully, then wakes up to cry some more. The phone ringing intermittently and her sobs are the only sounds to break that yawning silence settling over her. Her friends are persistent, she'll give them that.

  Annoyance strong, Amber finally scoots out of bed and answers the phone.

  "What," she asks tiredly. It sounds like she'd swallowed glass, her throat swollen and hoarse.

  She's not prepared for Michael's voice on the other end.

  "Amber, don't hang up," he sounds equally as exhausted, equally as wrung through. Shock is what keeps her head steady though because if she'd had a moment to think she wouldn't have answered at all.

  Instead she listens quietly to his heavy shuddering breaths and waits for him to talk.

  He swallows a couple of times, air puffs into the phone ineffectively a few times, but finally he gets the words out. "I was expecting you to still be pregnant," he says.

  The suddenness, the cold icy shock, it hits just as hard the second time around.

  "Why didn't you have it," he asks quietly, "was it me? You didn’t want—you didn’t want to be attached to me?"

  The first thought she thinks flies out her mouth, "you said you weren't ready to be a father."

  "—But we'd figure it out. We can figure out anything, you and me, that’s what I said," he finishes gently, like they’re words he has practiced over and over again until they are burned onto his mind for eternally.

  Like they'll be burned into hers.

  "I didn't—" she stops there because she's dizzy and she can't choke out more words and she hates him so suddenly and fiercely that it's hard to feel anything but this sheer oppressive rage.

  "You asked me if the baby was yours."

  "You sounded like your whole world had just fallen apart I thought there was a bigger reason than you just being pregnant," he counters. And he sounds so done, so through with it all like he's tried and tried and just can't summon one iota more of strength to see this through and she's crying hard, in wracking shuddering sobs that grate against the inside of her like its shredding cheese.

  And he's hushing her and soothing her as best as he can, and saying words like, "it doesn't matter. It's done. It's okay," when they're so clearly lies that she can feel the weight of his deceit through miles and plastic and months of pain breaking over her all over again.

  She crumbles onto her ass, knees tucked to her chest and arms wrapped around that as the cordless is squeezed between her shoulder and ear and tears pour down her faces to flood her shirt with salty, aching wet.

  When she’s done and she calms it’s his turn. He’s not as loud, or as obvious but he cries just the same it the sound of it pressed into her eardrum hurts her just as much as her pain. She wishes uselessly that she hadn’t run away, that she’d stayed and listened to him, if just for the fact that in person she could tuck him in and hold him close and wrap him safe in her arms.

  They stay like that for a long time, the only witnesses to each other’s grief.

  “I can’t live without you,” she admits bravely when they’re both as calm as they can get. “I still love you, Michael. This whole time.”

  “Who was that boy you were with?” His voice is subdued again but there’s steel underneath that startles her.

  “Just a friend,” Amber says, so freakin’ glad it’s the absolute truth, “always only a friend,” she adds as his silence, and doubt, lingers between them.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” he says hoarse and low like he had no intention of letting her know but the words are torn from him just the same.

  “Me too,” Amber says quickly. Too much has been misunderstood between them she doesn’t want her love for him to be another thing on the list.

  “Why didn’t you try to talk to me?” she asks it but she’s not sure if she would have answered had he called. She’d like to think so but she’s been hurt too much in the past for her to volunteer for more pain and that’s what answering his calls would have felt like back then, with her new almost-child still freshly ripped from her through her own decision—which was almost as bad as by her own hand.

  “I called so many times at first but you never answered. Your Dad said…well, I’m not repeating what your Dad said, but your Mom said you need some time and space. In my letter—” he chokes on it, pauses, tries again, “I told you I’d wait however long it took for you to want to speak to me again. I told you I loved you and I’d wait an eternity. I said I wanted a family with you and though I wasn’t ready I’d make myself be ready because it’s us, you know? You and me. We were a team.”

  Tears burn at her eyes but Amber is resolute that they won’t fall. She’s done enough crying for a lifetime.

  “And now?”

  “And now,” Michael repeats. “I don’t know, Amber. I really don’t know. I
waited and waited until I couldn’t take it anymore. I finished my tour two days ago and flew straight here because…I couldn’t wait anymore.”

  He repeats himself again, so broken and small that her resolution trembles and nearly crumbles away.

  Chapter Seven

  Amber and Michael quietly agree that they both need some time apart to think things through. If Amber had her when, which since when does she ever, she would have told him to forget that they've already spent far too much time apart. But she hears the strain in his voice and knows he needs it. She had her time and now it's his turn.

  Michael has rented an apartment in town, only ten minutes down the road from her school, and she takes that as a positive sign that they can fix what misunderstanding and insecurity has broken.

  She thinks about their baby all the time. Every single second. But she knows, and she thinks he does too, that ultimately it is better this way. How were they going to take care of another life when they couldn't even manage to do the same for themselves. All these months of anguish and pain, all those years of both of them pretending they didn't feel how deeply and fervently the way they do. All that they could have avoided and didn't.

  No, they weren't ready to take on a child and so her decision is something that was hard and painful and she might never let it go completely... but she doesn't regret it.

  In her heart of hearts she doesn't regret it. They weren’t ready. If she’s really lucky, one day they will be.

  * * * *

  Kim corners her after class. Amber’s been expecting it both her new friends have been remarkably patient after that dramatic scene on the green a couple of days ago.

  “So…” Kim begins unsubtly. They’re on their way to the lunch hall but Amber would just as soon go back to her room and climb under the covers. She’s been doing that a lot lately.