They seem to get even louder as these seconds speed by—I don’t know how unspoken words can be loud, but these are—they’re quickly becoming deafening, and now Cliff’s face is being plastered all over my brain, to the point that I can see it in the open air.
Cliff.
Cliff, my…and Beckett’s….
I don’t know when tears sprang to my eyes, but they have, and they burn.
My lips burn.
My throat burns.
My right ring finger burns.
My chest burns.
What have we done?
The nearly dark room goes blurry from those tears and the chaos swirling to life in my head.
But I can still see Beckett spinning away from me.
“I gotta st—” his weak voice cracks. His throat clearing isn’t much stronger. “I gotta step outside for a bit. I-I won’t drive in the rain, though, okay?”
He’s out of the kitchen before I can find my own voice again.
Not that I’d be able to say much.
I feel hot and disoriented, like I’m about to pass out. Or explode.
I muffle a wrenching sob with my hand and make my way out of the room, too, barely remembering to blow out the candle as I hurry by.
Only I don’t follow Beckett through the front door. No, I go the opposite way—go, go, go toward the safety of my dark bedroom, trying my hardest not to fully burst into tears as I pass Theodora’s faint snoring.
Then I’m there, shut in, alone in the thick blackness.
I stumble over to my bed, gasping, plunging into emotion so excruciating that I can’t think straight enough to name it, much less fight it.
Along with another deep sob, it just comes.
And as it crushes me, I am suddenly the farthest thing from feeling like I’m home.
I’m lost.
- 14 -
B E C K E T T
now
It’s hard to breathe.
Harder to exist.
Holding back tears is straight-up impossible.
It’s pitch-black out here under the carport, but I’m wide awake. It’s frigid and rainy and I’m shaking, but I’m also sweating.
I’ve been sitting with my back against Noelle’s car for I don’t even know how long because I….
Noelle.
I kissed her.
She’s Cliff’s and I kissed her. Held her body up against mine and stamped myself onto her mouth and felt her doing the same to me and loved every fucking second of it and wanted even more, so much more, because I knew so sharply that I wasn’t sorry about the side of the road and didn’t want her to be either because she’s…
…it feels like she’s what makes me whole.
The one girl I can’t have is the one who makes me whole.
And I only realized it after I’d done something that can’t be taken back. Remembered Cliff after, way too late.
‘Take care of my girls, Beck.’
His slurred, weakened words shred me to ribbons now just like they did on the night he died.
I press a heavy hand to my trembling mouth.
He trusted me with them.
He put the love of his life and his precious daughter in my hands. He trusted me to watch out for them in his stead.
And I did—I have. I’ve done my best, given it my all. I so innocently adored Noelle and Theo before that nightmarish evening, before Cliff made his dying request; it would’ve hurt like hell to be separated from them because they were my family. I have cherished getting to move forward at their sides, getting to live the little moments with them as well as the big ones, getting to be strong for them when they needed it.
But I’ve done something wrong somewhere.
I’ve managed to make a mockery of the trust my best friend put in me.
He asked me to take care of Noelle and Theodora, to stay close to them, to keep them on their feet, to protect them. He didn’t give me permission to hold Noelle like a lover and pull moans straight out of her chest—didn’t give me permission to stand where he stood in the most meaningful of ways.
But what if really being with her and being there for Theodora the way she deserves is what I want?
The question has been slamming into me, ripping straight through my heart and wrenching at my very spirit, since I rushed out of the house.
As it relentlessly does so again, I put my face in both hands and cry.
I can’t believe this.
I can’t believe I did what I did.
I can’t believe she kissed me back.
I can’t believe how obvious it was that we loved it—we, both of us, not just me.
What would Cliff think of us right now? What would he think of me?
How could we do such a thing?
We did it because I’m not the only one who has been changing. I’m not the only one who feels irresistibly whole when we’re together.
Pulling my hands back from my face, I shake my head and thickly refuse, “No.”
None of that can be right, can be the answer—it can’t be a good enough answer. I know that just like I knew it last night on her couch, when I kept thinking that I felt the way I did after the deer thing because I’ve begun to feel something for her.
That calmer part of me tries to speak up again, tries to remind me again that we ended up here because losing Cliff altered who we were, altered everything in our lives whether we expected it to or not.
I shove it back before I completely lose my shit.
Thinking those things again will push me over the edge, and I already feel like I’m breaking.
What am I supposed to do now?
Sniffling, I push fallen tears off my face with my wrists…
…and I remember her.
So much of her.
Everything about her.
I felt myself start slipping before we were even alone in the kitchen. It was drawn out so long, it felt like my life was moving in slow motion.
I should’ve paid attention then. Should’ve stopped it before it got to be too much. Being careful should’ve been at the front of my mind, especially after everything I was feeling and thinking at the park.
But I didn’t pay attention, because it wasn’t at the front of my mind.
I don’t know how it got away from me, but as our time together stretched on, everything I had to fight with disintegrated bit by bit until I was defenseless against her.
The openly sweet and happy expressions on her face when we were playing around with Theo. How I treasured her touches and hung on every word she said, every move she made. Then we almost kissed on accident, and I almost…I don’t even know what, don’t even know how to describe what those quick seconds did to me. But I couldn’t quit thinking about them, or our picnic, or this morning when we woke up, or last night, or how it felt the other day when she kissed my scar, or how it dug into me when she said she doesn’t want anyone to keep her afloat in this life except me—God, just how she makes me feel about myself and my life. And then our story time with Theo was so unexpectedly fucking beautiful, so warm, like it was the three of us against the world in a steadier way than ever before, and my heart just….
Then Noelle and I were by ourselves, and she was laying a look on me that matched the way I felt on the inside.
And I let myself move up to her, touch her, and time sped up, and I was slipping faster.
And she reached out for me, too, and I was gone.
Just like that, I didn’t belong to myself anymore.
But it wasn’t scary. It wasn’t the same as my ex trying to control me or my parents trying to eclipse hope and happiness with their cruelty.
No, in those moments, I was better than I’ve ever been in my life.
There wasn’t anything else—no world, no warnings, no Cliff. It was just us.
The slowing of the heavy rain around the carport offers enough of a dip in noise for me to notice I’m damn near gasping for air.
I feel like such a fucking traitor.
&
nbsp; So does she, I know. It was plain in the last wide-eyed stare to pass between us before I turned and walked out.
The thought of her distress wrings at my insides like a fist, pinching up those lingering feelings of perfection and desire with anxiety.
I don’t want to be what causes her pain. I don’t want to be what makes her cry.
Too late.
The fist of distress wrings harder at me.
Not only did we mess up bad in there, but also, how am I supposed to face her after that?
What am I supposed to do to try to make this better?
…Can I even do it?
Or have I wrecked me and Noelle—and further, Theo—all in one moment of weakness?
Have I wrecked the most important thing in my life?
—
It can’t happen again.
The thought is on a slow but steady loop in my head by the time I’m making my way back into Noelle’s house. I’m greeted with silent stillness—and complete darkness because that candle in the kitchen is no longer flickering in its glass jar.
Thinking about the kitchen makes me think, for the thousandth time, about what happened.
Thousandth time or not, my stomach still swoops and then knots up hard. My pulse still trips all over itself. My chest still aches.
It can’t happen again.
I checked my phone a minute ago and found it’s not far from midnight. Theodora got in bed somewhere between eight-thirty and nine, meaning I’ve been outside for over two hours.
Sounds about right. I’m freezing because I forgot to take my coat with me earlier, and my body hurts from shivering, crying, and either sitting on the ground or pacing like a madman. I even outlasted the rain; it stopped about half an hour ago.
Which is why I’m going home now.
I don’t want to be in the car right now, but I can’t sleep here after all. Not even on the couch, away from Noelle—my guess is she’s in her bedroom since the light of my phone shows the living room to be empty and her door to be shut.
Leaving her without a proper goodbye is also not something I want to do. It feels wrong on an even deeper level than the one my guilt is on.
But although it has been creeping up in my mind that I need to talk to her about what we did, it won’t be today. I can’t face her for another moment today. I’m so drained and overwhelmed that I feel sick, and no, there’s no way she’s any better off.
Still, despite my need to get away, so much of me feels the need to comfort her.
My throat constricts at the thought of her suffering back there in her room, all alone, heart hurting, having cried her eyes into stinging heaviness. I know she’s cried as much as I have, and maybe more; I know her. She’s not okay right now.
Fuck me.
I’m not only supposed to be there for her when she’s not okay, I also want to be. It’s painful to have something standing in my way.
Especially something like this.
And especially when I involuntarily want our moments back a little bit more each new time I think about them.
I—God help me, I already fucking miss her.
I missed her in every possible way the second there was space between us; it only got worse the farther away I went, even though I knew leaving was what I had to do.
I miss her as a friend and as…as….
So, yeah, I need to talk to her. I’m terrified to do it after all this, but it has to be done, and soon—because fear aside, I know this distance won’t be sustainable for long. The bond we’ve formed over the last two years, on top of the friendship we already had, is too strong; we have way too much history. And we’ll only have a chance at forgiving ourselves if we talk about what happened and then agree to put it behind us.
We have to put it behind us because it can’t happen again.
The bottom line is that the way I’ve started feeling and the things I’ve started wanting don’t matter more than respecting Cliff and keeping the rest of us intact.
A line was crossed, and it can’t happen again.
With a sniff, I rub at my eyes and nod wearily to myself. Then I head for the wall hooks in the front hall, where my coat and car keys are. Once I’m ready, I lock the doorknob before I step back outside and quietly pull the door shut behind me.
As I make my way through the damp and frigid night air, the light from my phone lands on the front of my car, refreshing last night’s accident in my mind.
And I’m reminded in full of Cliff once again, because apparently, I haven’t thought about him enough over these last hours.
Memories of him revisit me while I get behind the wheel, haunting and taunting me, illustrating anew how he was the last person I ever wanted to betray.
The guilt that curls through me is so sharp it should be slicing me open from the inside.
…As well as those other emotions.
Ones attached to special memories that Cliff isn’t in.
Ones that make me feel shivery in a wildly different way from sitting outside in the cold, that make me feel hot in a way shame has nothing to do with.
Ones that go so deep I’m not sure how I’ll ever shake them.
But I don’t dwell on those, even as I text Noelle to let her know I’m leaving safely.
The guilt is bad enough.
- 15 -
N O E L L E
now
I have slept like absolute shit.
I don’t even know if it could be said that I slept.
Curled up in a ball with my blanket fisted under my chin, I blink blearily at the nearby window, on the other side of which is extremely dim daylight and more rain.
Though I silently plead for the steady sound to help me rest, all it does is remind me of….
Just like everything else does.
My body reminds me of him the most. His kisses are still all over my lips. The effect he had on my lungs hasn’t gone away. Under the blanket, I only have a bra on my top half because I eventually yanked my shirt off when I couldn’t stop remembering it crumpling under the grip he had on me. My shoulder is tender where I hurt it trying to escape our almost-kiss. My knee is imprinted with the feeling of his hand unexpectedly closing around it. Other moments, big and small alike, keep flipping around in my stomach.
Being in my bed reminds me of him too. All this space is so different from waking up on the couch with him yesterday. I’m by myself now and far more sore from crying over him than I was from sleeping in such a cramped-up way at his side.
Even the silence inside my house reminds me of him. It was quiet when we pulled each other into those forbidden kisses, and there was chatter and laughter when we were having fun with—
Sudden vibration near me has me jumping a mile.
As quick as my pulse’s reaction, I realize it’s just my phone telling me I have a text—but that’s not a reassuring fact. It pierces my stomach with both hope and dread.
During the night, I crept out of bed to get some water and find my phone; not only was I parched beyond ignoring, but I badly needed to reach out to Ceceli. Even though I figured she was asleep, I needed to text her and leave my confession there for her to absorb when she got the chance. There was no way I could keep it to myself any longer.
But after I located my phone, I read Beckett’s name on the screen not once but twice, and it alone hit me like a ton of bricks. And then seeing what he said….
The way I felt about what he said was legitimately insane.
I still can’t make sense of it.
Because I hadn’t only felt great relief that he was able to both leave here and arrive home safely. I also felt great sadness that he hadn’t stayed near me.
That is crazy.
I should’ve wanted him to get as far away as he could—I mean, didn’t I hide myself away in here after our kisses, rather than go after him? Didn’t I need to be by myself? Reading those messages should have had me thinking, ‘Why the hell did it take him so long to leave?’ That would have fit th
e narrative of me wanting my space to comprehend what we had done.
Instead, I read his words and felt like a huge chunk of me was removed and dragged entire miles away while heartache had me numbed to the world.
Yes, I had to get the ball rolling on talking to Ceceli.
Currently, I try to calm my pulse and quiet its hope-slash-dread that Beckett is texting me again. It very well may be my oldest friend in the world finally replying to me.
I take as deep a breath as I can, then weakly smack around until I find my phone beneath the blanket.
CECELI: Omg girl. I just saw your texts. Are you awake? If so, I’m on my way
Gratitude fills my heart.
I hadn’t expected her to run to my aid once she got caught up; a phone call or even just a conversation over messages would’ve been okay. But now that she’s offering to come over, I know it’s exactly what I need from her.
ME: Yes, I’m awake. Thank you
New tears prick at my eyes.
I have no idea how I’m physically capable of that, but here we are.
And honestly, regardless of whether I can believe it, they’ll probably keep coming. One painfully stark fact has been clawing at me all these long hours, refusing to go away no matter how I’ve tried to fight it, and I’ve realized by now what its persistence means.
It means I’m not done confessing myself to Ceceli.
—
Yep, I let her through the front door along with a wall of frigid morning air, and she hugs me and has my eyes welling up once again.
I manage to stay quiet, though, as they overflow—I’m nowhere near the sobs that were wracking me last night.
Here’s hoping that won’t change as her visit goes on. I don’t want to wake Theo with all this.
“Hey, girl,” Ceceli greets me as soothingly and gently as she pats at my back. “I’m here. Let’s talk it out.”
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