Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

The door gets pulled open, and then there she is.

  Oh, thank God. Thank fucking God.

  She’s not dead. She’s not hurt. She’s alive and in one piece.

  And exhausted.

  My heart sinks.

  As overjoyed as I am to see that she’s safe, I’m also instantly hurting over how drained she looks. Immense sorrow radiates from her puffy blue eyes and down through the rest of her. Her shoulders are slumped beneath her limp hair and rumpled clothes.

  I blow out a breath and try to come up with something to say. Now that I’ve laid eyes on her, my anxiety isn’t the most important thing in my head.

  Comprehension touches her eyes.

  She beats me to speaking, her voice a wisp. “Oh. Beckett, I’m sorry. I meant to get ready to leave for your house, but I guess I fell asleep.”

  So that thought I had earlier was right: she dozed off.

  Nodding, I tell her, “It’s okay. I—I was freaking out ‘cause I couldn’t get ahold of you, but it’s okay. You’re safe.”

  I’d say she nods, too, as her eyes drift away from me and off into space, but she doesn’t really do it. Just barely moves her head up and down. If it’s a nod, it’s the slightest one ever.

  “Come in,” she invites me faintly. She shuffles back from the door, turns, and trudges into the duplex.

  I hurt for her that much more.

  I’ve been eaten at by my own pain today, each memory and thought a new drop of acid, but Noelle is in a league of pain I know nothing about.

  There’s no sense in hoping I can make it go away, but at least I can sit in it with her.

  Where we spend this time together doesn’t matter to me; it doesn’t bother me to move our plan from my place to hers. So I follow her without a word, getting the door closed and locked behind me. And I thank God again—this time that my list of nightmares can be crumpled up and thrown away.

  I remain quiet while I copy her taking a seat on the couch. I still haven’t landed on anything to say, and I don’t want to force conversation.

  Maybe this is one of those times where words don’t want to come. Or maybe time will help.

  She halfheartedly curls up near one corner of the couch, and I sag wearily into the other.

  She keeps staring off into open space, and I soon find myself doing the same.

  Before too long, though, my eyes close. Close on the room, close on the world.

  I wish my thoughts would do that, too, but they don’t. Can’t. Because my hissing pain is stinging my insides again.

  Twenty-six.

  I can just about hear his laughter, you know. It’s almost as real in my head as it would be in the open air.

  If he were here, Noelle would joke that he’s old because his birthday is a couple weeks before hers. He’d laughingly fire back, ‘At least I’m not as old as Beckett!’ because my birthday is a couple weeks before his. I’m twenty-six already.

  He’ll never be my age again.

  Never get to finish out his twenties. Never get to marry Noelle.

  Never see Theodora graduate high school.

  Never hit middle-age. Never go into retirement. Never get to celebrate decades of anniversaries.

  I don’t know how long I sit here and mourn the things Cliff is going to miss out on.

  At length, my ears pick up on Noelle dragging in a particularly deep breath. It makes me wonder what she’s mourning right this second.

  But I don’t ask. Maybe I will in a little while; for now, this seems to be suiting us fine.

  Strange how minutes like these aren’t awkward for us.

  You’d think they would be. You’d think the silence would be loud and ringing, overwhelming, unbearable. You’d think one or both of us would be fidgeting in a don’t-know-what-to-do way, or pacing, or obsessively straightening things around the room because it’s torture to sit still long enough to feel.

  It’s easy to just exist with her, though. It’s easy to do nothing other than breathe and let our thoughts wander while time ticks by, pulling us along with it so we don’t have to pull ourselves.

  More often than not, pulling ourselves along feels like the existential form of scraping fingernails down a chalkboard.

  Right there at the beginning was worse because it wasn’t like nails on a chalkboard, it was like suffocating. Like rather than reality being something to experience, it was something closing around my throat and crushing my windpipe. His absence was glaring. The memory of his bloody face and broken body haunted me. I was numb and in agony at the same time. I was floundering yet frozen.

  Noelle went through it, too, although she hasn’t described it to me like that. She hasn’t had to; I witnessed it myself for days that felt like weeks, whenever I couldn’t stand being alone and was let through her front door by whoever was staying with her to help out around here.

  That stretch of time right after we lost Cliff was…just…it was dark. It turned Noelle darker than I ever imagined she could be.

  Not because she tried to hurt herself or Theo or anyone else. Nothing like that. Conversely, she was turned so dark that she didn’t do anything at all.

  She didn’t leave this duplex.

  She ate very little, didn’t care for changing clothes, spent most of the day in bed even if she couldn’t sleep.

  She barely talked. Her daughter was the only person she ever managed to speak to, but there were no real conversations, no full sentences, no stable tones—there weren’t even met gazes.

  She wasn’t really living.

  It was like the life was being sapped out of her in a different but equally frightening way from how it was sapped out of Cliff.

  It was the second hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.

  I didn’t want to lose her, too, in any way. Didn’t want her to lose herself. Didn’t want Theo to lose the only parent she had left.

  ‘Take care of my girls, Beck,’ was a neon sign constantly burning in my brain, and I desperately wanted to act on it because those girls needed me to—I needed me to. But I had no idea how to do it. Each new time I saw Noelle, my words were faint and insubstantial, when I could even think of anything to say.

  To be honest, there were many flickers of uncertainty in my mind about whether she could be brought back. I’d never seen anything like the shell she had become, and I wasn’t sure that kind of heartache could be weathered.

  Then one day, I just…I don’t know. Just felt this deep urge to pull out of my own despondency and try to help her. Not even her family and Ceceli were getting through the darkness she had sunk into. So I gathered myself and went in.

  Yeah, part of me didn’t feel like I had the tools to save her, but damn it, I gave it the best try I had. There was no other option in my mind. I couldn’t stand by and be still and silent while she grieved herself into nothingness. She needed me to fight for her.

  I didn’t understand what kind of love she lost, but I understood what kind of person she lost—I was the only one who truly did. And I was the only one who knew how pained Cliff would feel about her withering away.

  ‘We can’t just give up and stop living.’

  I told her that.

  I was kneeling at her bedside, and whatever I had bumbled out to her in the previous moments turned into words so suddenly ardent and true that I couldn’t get my voice above a whisper.

  ‘I know none of this is okay. I know every fucking minute hurts. I’ve been a wreck too. But for Theo’s sake and for our own, we’ve gotta get through it somehow, and I think it starts with grieving while we go. We can’t just give up and stop living. Cliff wouldn’t want that for us. You know he wouldn’t.’

  She’d begun to cry before I was even done talking.

  But she didn’t fight me. Didn’t argue.

  ‘I don’t know how to do it,’ was all she said, each word the heaviest of weights on the air.

  I told her I didn’t know either, but that we would figure it out together.

  It worked just enough to get
her to stir, to open up a little bit. Led to her confiding in me about not knowing how to even look at Theo when she felt so shattered. It was painful to hear, but I understood—and to my surprise, I found I had answers. I gently spoke of focusing on gratitude, on the love that still remained, and on the fact of Theo needing her even if Noelle had to fight to be present; fighting was fine and could be worked with. I told her I had faith in her, and that wherever he was, Cliff did too.

  She cried so hard it made me cry. But she listened to me.

  Though she didn’t straighten up all at once, she took her first baby step that very minute by leaving her bed to sit on this couch with me and Theo. I was so damn proud of her, and I stayed that way even when her struggles resurfaced here and there as time went on.

  So yeah, this silence we’re in now? This gloom we’re swathed in? I don’t like it worth a shit, but it’s not the worst I’ve seen. Not even close.

  Speaking of silence: it’s interrupted by my stomach growling.

  My eyes drift open and snag on where the ceiling meets the wall opposite me. Staring absently, I contemplate whether I feel like bothering to eat right now.

  No.

  I don’t feel like it.

  Don’t care for the thought of getting up and going to the trouble of either finding food or driving to get some. I just want to keep sitting here with Noelle, whose presence is more comforting than anything else could be.

  So I close my eyes again.

  “Are you hungry?” comes her dull voice.

  Mine matches it when I reply, “Not really.”

  “I heard your stomach.”

  “Yeah, but I’m all right.”

  “You should eat something.”

  I shift slightly so I can lean back into the couch more comfortably. “I can wait. Fine to keep sitting here with you.”

  She goes quiet again, so my thoughts start drifting again.

  I wonder how Theodora is faring over at Gail and Grant’s. This morning when Noelle and I were texting, she said Theo doesn’t know it’s her dad’s birthday today. She’s only three, so it makes sense, but her being little doesn’t mean she hasn’t randomly felt Cliff’s absence. Same as with us adults, heartache frequently overwhelms—

  “Do you always do that?”

  Blinking my eyes open again, I mumble, “Hmm?” Then I take a second to think back to what we were talking about. Is she asking if I put off eating all the time? “What?”

  “Do you always ignore what you need to do for yourself if it means you can cater to me in some way?”

  Her tone isn’t quite as dull as it was before, though I can’t put my finger on what’s different about it.

  The question itself has me frowning at that ceiling-wall seam I was staring at a minute ago.

  I answer, “No, I don’t think I do that.”

  At the sound of her short, low laugh, my frown deepens.

  I turn my head and look at her. She’s still gazing into space, but her expression isn’t distant. It’s…cross?

  Why is that?

  Have I done something to upset her?

  Curious and now a bit nervous, I ask, “What’s wrong?”

  “You ‘don’t think’ you ignore your own wants and needs in favor of what I might want or need.” She shakes her head, then scoffs thinly. “I literally just heard your stomach growl, but you opt to sit here with me instead of eating something.”

  My confusion is mounting. “Yeah, because I—”

  “Because you wanna do what Cliff asked you to?”

  Surprise slices through that confusion.

  Unpleasant surprise.

  What Cliff asked…?

  Um.

  She can’t mean what it sounds like she means. She wouldn’t mean that.

  Right?

  But she’s saying now, “Cliff asked you to take care of me and Theo. I heard him just like you did. And so you’ve been doing exactly that, apparently even when—” in a startling rush of movement, she gets to her feet, “—even when it obviously inconveniences you.”

  She does mean what it sounds like.

  She has somehow gotten it into her head that…what, that I’m hurting myself by sitting here with her instead of finding food I don’t want?

  I guess we’ve got words to exchange after all.

  My eyes follow the pacing she has taken up. “Noelle, no. I—”

  “You know what?” Her tone goes light in the worst sort of forced way. “Maybe you should just go. You don’t have to stay with me.”

  I don’t even know what to call what surges through me now. All I know is it stings like a motherfucker.

  “Uh,” I say, suddenly breathless, “this…but this is where I wanna be.”

  “Because I’m here.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “And you think you have to take care of me because Cliff—”

  “No.” I get to my feet, too, and angle myself into her path because she’s coming back this way. My brow furrows at how strangely flatly she meets my eyes. “I’m here ‘cause we’re friends, and friends have each other’s back on piece-of-shit days like today.”

  She shuffles to a stop in front of me, her eyes brimming with more of this unexpected—and unwelcome—emotion.

  What is going on?

  “Yeah, Beck, you’re my friend. And yeah, today hurts like hell. But you have your own life to live. You don’t have to humor me or babysit me.”

  “‘Babysit’?” I blink at her. “Okay, look, I’m—I’m really sorry if I said the wrong thing a minute ago, but seriously, you’ve misconstrued—”

  “No, I understand very well that you’re grown and single and not a parent to a small child and not a therapist and not okay after what we’ve been through, which means you have your own back to watch. You know? You’ve got Beckett to take care of. You don’t need to be stuck with me and Theo. It’s not fair that me not answering my phone burdened you when you were already struggling with your loss, and—and it’s not fair that you left work with short notice the other day to pick Theo up from daycare ‘cause she was sick and my parents weren’t available and it was gonna be an hour before I—”

  “Hey, stop,” I talk over her. My stomach is being knotted up by a deep sadness that has nothing to do with Cliff being gone. “I’m not being treated unfairly, Noelle. In case you’ve forgotten, I know what it’s like to be abused and have my well-being ignored—this isn’t any of that. This…today and the other day and every day since we lost him…it’s just what friends do. Being there for you and Theo is important to me because of—”

  “‘Take care of my girls,’” she wobbles out, her voice rising, unshed tears glistening in her eyes. “The person you loved most in this entire world asked that of you moments before he died. There’s no way that hasn’t stuck with you! There’s no way you never think about it!”

  Jagged grief spears me, each serrated edge of it a unique source of pain.

  “I think about it all the time,” I scrape out, “but not like—I mean, he just trusts—he trusted—”

  “If there was anyone in this world who you’d do anything for, it was Cliff fucking Cavill, so when you stand there and try to tell me his dying wish hasn’t had anything to do with you spending the last two months of your life coming to our rescue—”

  “Of course I care that he said that to me! Why wouldn’t I?” I hold my hands up, somewhere between quizzical and imploring. “But it’s not ruling me the way you think, Noelle. It’s an honor and a huge comfort to spend time with—”

  “Oh, it’s an honor to stress about me!” Her frown is sharp. “Is that right? Is it an honor to get to check on me all the time and have me constantly checking on you? Was it an honor to have to remind me how to be a parent because my fucking soul shut down on me and I couldn’t figure out how to be there for Theodora like she deserved? And every time I have nightmares, I reach out to you because I know you understand, but you—” her voice cracks into frailty, “—you being capable
of understanding doesn’t obligate you to do it, so I always hope you’ll tell me to stop if you need me to stop, but you never do! You put up with me even if you’re sleeping or busy or having a bad day! You always put up with me! Are you happy you get to do that?”

  “Noelle! Listen t—”

  “No, you listen!” she shouts. “I don’t want you hanging around just because you feel chained to us!”

  “Stop interrupting me!” I shout back. “Why the fuck are you doing this to me? Why are you suddenly accusing me of—? Oh, oh, hey. Hey!”

  I rush forward to where she’s crumpling to the floor. I don’t catch her before she goes all the way down, but I do kneel and get her pulled into my arms before a sob tears out of her—such a forceful sob that I can practically feel its grate against her vocal chords.

  Just like that, my frustration gets shoved onto the back burner.

  And as she closes desperate arms around me and cries into my shoulder, it gets knocked away completely.

  She isn’t in the heated grip of frustration anymore either. She’s in the merciless grip of anguish.

  With my throat constricting, I get as comfortable on the floor as I can without letting go of her. Then I draw her in even more, as much as possible, until she’s cradled in my lap.

  “It’s okay,” I barely get out to her. “It’s okay.”

  “I’m s-sorry. I’m—I’m so—so—”

  I nod and stare unseeingly at the carpet, which is blurring more and more by the second. “It’s okay.”

  “N-no, it’s n…n….” She shakes her head tightly against my shoulder. “I don’t th-think you feel…I’m scared you feel cha-ained to….”

  The confession plus the burn of my building tears has me shutting my eyes. I lay my head against hers and try to breathe through this swell of comprehension and relief and grief and heaviness.

  It felt like she was overreacting for that minute or two because she was.

  Fear I didn’t know she was harboring got the best of her and burst out like our pain over losing Cliff so often does. This difficult day turned what was supposed to be a harmless moment into a small explosion.

  Even knowing my voice has lost its stability, I assure her, “I’m not better off without you girls. I could never be better off that way. I’d feel hopeless without you.”