For Keeps. For Always.

by Haley Jenner

  The problem with happiness, I’ve come to learn, is that it clouds your better judgment. It shelters that nagging feeling in your stomach that tells you that life is about to fall apart around you. And when unprepared, the fall from delirium is more painful than the depression of everyday life.

  It took only two weeks of me shaking my head when I’d ordered my tea for Mrs. Doyle to stop asking when Brooks would arrive.

  A month longer for her to start trying to marry me off to her friend’s sons.

  And only a day longer for me to find a new coffeehouse out of sheer embarrassment.

  31

  BROOKS

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  Walking into the bar, I should be cautious of the anger that boils under my surface. This is the last fucking place I wanted to be tonight. I’m exhausted, and I miss my girl.

  I haven’t seen her in eight months. This last shoot was a clusterfuck. Delay after delay held me hostage for eleven weeks longer than my schedule planned. I know it pissed her off. We had plans. Plans that I dropped the fucking ball on.

  The bar smells like fermented beer and missed opportunity. I wanted to surprise her at the B&B we’d organized for our time in Dingle. I wanted to kiss her senseless and fuck her until she forgot her name. Yet here I am, in a seedy dive bar, searching the crowd for the mess of brown hair I’ve missed more than anything.

  I called her the moment I had reception.

  She declined every phone call.

  I messaged her thousands of times as I made my way to her.

  She left every last one unread.

  I emailed her explaining what the fuck happened.

  I was met with silence.

  I spot her within the space in seconds.

  A smile as big as Texas on her face, fingers clasped to a shot glass like a lifeline as she shoots the clear liquid, slamming the glass down forcefully. “Whoa!” she yells.

  It’s the cluster of guys around her that spike my already fired temper.

  “What can I getcha?”

  I pull my eyes reluctantly from my girlfriend.

  “Whiskey on the rocks. Two of ’em.”

  The barkeep nods, sliding my drinks over a second later.

  “She’s somethin’ else, eh?” He gestures toward Henley, his Irish accent holding onto the words with lust in his eyes.

  I want to put my fist through his face.

  “You know her?”

  He lifts his chin. “She works ’ere.”

  My brow furrows. “Since when?”

  His smile falters at the bite in my tone. “A month?”

  “She got a man?” My heart seizes as I ask the question.

  He shrugs. “Says she does. But I ain’t ever seen the guy.”

  I swallow my first drink in one solid gulp.

  “She do this often?”

  He looks up from wiping the bar. “Do what?”

  I scowl in his direction. “Drink herself to oblivion and surround herself with every horny fucker in the building?”

  Tucking the cloth in the waist of his pants, he crosses his arms over his chest. “Whassit to you?”

  I pick up my second drink. “Just curious.”

  He thinks for a moment, eyes set on Henley as she laughs loudly. “She actually might very well be the saddest person I’ve ever met.”

  That gives me pause.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever seen her anything but morose.” He shrugs.

  I watch her candidly.

  He sees her happy.

  I see her masking.

  The dark circles under the eyes.

  The lines of irritation and worry etched into her skin like crow’s feet.

  Her smile is forced, pulled up in a way that aches her face. I’ve seen it countless times before.

  Only difference is, today, I’m the one who put that pain there. I’m responsible for the anguish in her demeanor.

  “Another?”

  I shake my head, refusing to look away from my girl. “No, thanks.”

  I need her to seek me out. To feel my presence in the room. I need her to look at me.

  But she doesn’t.

  I’m just another faceless man in the crowd.

  My feet approach her with trepidation, knowing our reunion will be anything but pleasant.

  I know, like me, she’s exhausted and demoralized by the protraction of our separation. Weary and wanting, I can only hope her relief in seeing me outweighs her hurt.

  Shot glass paused at her lips, the blankness in her stare catches me off guard when she finally notices me.

  “I thought you might’ve been dead.” She tips the glass back, swallowing its contents on a grimace.

  “Henley,” I chide quietly. “I called, you didn’t answer. I sent you an email.”

  Her palm hits her forehead. “He sent me an email,” she speaks to no one.

  She’s drunk. And angry. A lethal combination that only ends in penitent words.

  “Can we not do this here?” I step into her, removing the empty shot glass from her red-hot grasp.

  “Do what?” she asks, the dismissive shrug in her shoulders a complete contradiction to the acid in her tone. “Have you explain how you’ve finally arrived, three entire months later than planned, with the only explanation a three-line email?”

  I refrain from rubbing my hand down my face in frustration, knowing it would only incense her further.

  “Baby, please,” I beg through clenched teeth. “I miss you. Can we talk about this in private?”

  Her hand reaches out, moving toward my heart, my breath catching in relief. But the moment passes in a blink. She pulls her hand back in a fist, rubbing it against her chest, silently identifying the pain she feels.

  My guilt turns in my gut.

  “Henley, I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  She throws her keys to the small entry table as we enter the bed and breakfast.

  “Why do we do it?” She kicks off her shoes, throwing her jacket to the small sofa in the room.

  “Do what?”

  Her shoulders lift before she turns to look at me. “Hurt one another the way we do. Continue to try, even with the pain we’ve single-handedly etched into one another’s hearts. We’re pain, Brooks.”

  “We’re in love!” I scream in desperation, hating the way she wraps everything around her in negativity. Certain it's the only way life can feel. “And sometimes it’s ugly,” I grit. “It’s painful and confusing and erratic and ambivalent.”

  A low growl unfurls in my throat, and I force my eyes to close on a steady breath.

  “But through all that shit,” I speak lowly. “It’s us. Brooks and Henley. Always.” I step closer. “I love you so hard my heart aches when we’re apart.”

  “Yet you continue to leave.”

  “I have a job.” I rub my forehead. “One that I need to give us the life we deserve.”

  “I’ve lived rich. Money only causes heartache. Look at Jacinta. She lied my whole adolescence, for what? A paycheck?”

  “I’m a grown-ass fucking man, Henley. I’m not gonna live week to week. I want a fucking life. I want to give you stability. A place you can finally call fucking home. I want us to have a family. We can’t do that living in hostels and shithole motels while you pull beers.”

  She ignores me.

  “You sent me an email. You were gone for months longer than we agreed, and you sent me an email.”

  “I was on a boat,” I groan. “In the middle of the freaking ocean. The shoot got delayed. We hit land for a hot minute to refuel and resupply. I called,” I accuse. “You didn’t answer. I sent you an email with the world’s shittiest internet. I’ve apologized. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

  “It’s not words that I care for. You tell me you love me. You tell me your heart aches when we’re apart. But your actions show me that you love your job more.”

  I sigh. “This was not how this was supposed to go.”

  She barks out
a laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry. Was I supposed to fall at your feet? Were we supposed to be so consumed with relief at seeing one another, we’d tear one another’s clothes off in a cloud of lust?”

  Still, always so fucking peculiar.

  “Of course, I want to fuck you, Henley.” I throw my hands up. “I love you. I miss you, and quite frankly, I have fucking needs.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “I just want to feel close to you.”

  “Funny way of showing it. How’d your needs go on that boat for all those months? You have a new Grace to keep you warm?”

  My fists clench involuntarily. “You don’t mean that.”

  She steps toward me, a cruel smirk twisting her lips. “Did you fuck someone else, Brooks? You are a cheater, after all.”

  The tone of her voice peaks and stumbles. She doesn’t believe what she’s saying. I have to believe she doesn’t think I could do that to her.

  “You don’t believe that,” I say, needing it to be true.

  Her eyes don’t blink. Wide enough, I can see the small red lines threaded through her sclera.

  “What about you?” I test. “You’ve crossed a good many lines yourself with me. Liquored-up, surrounded by everything with a cock.”

  “Jealous?” she taunts.

  “Of course I’m fucking jealous,” I bellow. “You’re mine.”

  “I don’t belong to you!” she yells. “I belong to no one.”

  I pace back and forth, needing to move for fear I’ll throw something if I don’t. “Would that be so bad, to be mine?”

  She turns away on a growl, her feet stumbling at the tequila still floating through her system. “I’m not a fucking possession. I’ve lived that life. Being ripped between two people who vowed to love me.”

  My feet stop abruptly. “Don’t compare me to them.”

  Regret washes over her face, but she doesn’t vocalize it, choosing to swallow it down indignantly.

  “Funny.” I step forward, bringing us close enough that I can feel her heavy breath on my face. “That the thought of being mine brings you nightmares when the thought of being yours brings me everything I’ve ever wanted in this world. I don’t see you as a possession, Henley. You’re a part of me.” I hit my chest. “An extension of who I am. The better part of who I am.”

  Unable to look me in the eye, she focuses on the wall over my shoulder, her jaw shaking.

  “I’m sorry that makes me an asshole,” I whisper. “I’m sorry that fills you with nothing but dread. Maybe we aren’t for keeps, maybe always isn’t ours. We’re grasping at two separate endings here, Squirrel.”

  A tear rolls down one cheek. Then her other.

  “You’re not gonna say anything?” I push. “You’re just gonna stand there silently and act like your heart isn’t hurting like mine right now?”

  My hands ache to grab her shoulders, to shake her roughly, to make her see how stubborn she’s being.

  “We held the idea of heaven for a while,” she says quietly.

  I swear under my breath, close-cut fingernails biting into the skin of my palm painfully. “Is that what you call it? Heaven?”

  “It had to be,” she mumbles, eyes cast downward. “It’s how I know we’re now in hell.”

  I blink rapidly.

  “You’d rather be apart and miserable because of some preconceived notion that you need to be one-hundred-percent content by yourself. I’m not asking you to look at me for your happiness, Henley. I’m begging you to see that making you happy will be a part of the way I love you. Your happiness isn’t reliant on me, but on the days you can’t find it, it would’ve been my job to show you the way. Or to love you hard enough that the world didn’t look so bleak without it.”

  She moves away before I can touch her. Moving hastily to the small kitchenette, she gulps down a glass of water in panic.

  I stay put, watching her from afar.

  Finally, she turns to look at me. “I don’t know if I want this anymore.” She’s afraid of her own words, her voice scarcely audible over the beating of her own heart.

  “Want what? Me?”

  I dare her to say it. To admit she doesn’t love me. Not enough.

  Her dark lashes push roughly against her skin as she squeezes her eyes shut. “I’ll always want you. But . . . us . . .”

  “Us what?” I push, stepping closer.

  “We’ve tried.” She shivers, her arms wrapping around her body protectively. “We never seem whole, Brooks.”

  “Because we haven’t given ourselves a fighting fucking chance.”

  She clears her throat. “We took our friendship and grew it wildly. We’ve been broken from the start.”

  “When shit is broken, you fix it, Henley,” I implore, trying to make her see. “We fix this.”

  She shrugs weakly, still refusing to let me see her eyes. “Some things are better left broken.”

  I want to break something. I want to scream and yell and let her see the pain I’m in.

  “If I knew loving you would hurt this much, I would’ve made sure my heart was made of stone before I tried.”

  I pause for a breath.

  “Like yours, Henley. Stone fucking cold.”

  Without thought, her fist moves to her heart, pushing at it uncomfortably. I get it. My heart throbs in my chest. The congenital defect of loving Henley killing me from the moment I met her.

  “I need to be bulletproof, Henley. I needed to be bulletproof,” I correct.

  “You just referred to me as a gunshot wound.”

  I laugh. “No, Henley. You’re a fucking gun. You have the power to destroy me, and I let you do it over and over again.”

  I let her hold the pain in her face. My words cutting her the way I intended them to.

  “Have you ever considered that it has nothing to do with you? That it’s me I’m hell-bent on destroying.”

  “I know that’s what it is.” I sigh. “That’s what makes it so much worse. You’re selfish, Henley. You’re so intent on feeling your own pain that you’ve pulled me along for the ride all these years. You’ve had the power to rise up and reject all those fucking dark thoughts in your mind, to let me love you, and to let yourself love me back. Instead, you want to be consumed by your own misery. You feel safe in your pain. Happiness is what scares you most.”

  The line of her throat swallows aggressively.

  “I don’t blame you, Squirrel. Happiness is a dream to you. It takes a lot to put faith in your dreams. Maybe if you stopped putting so much work in searching for happiness. . . I think, if you just took a second to reflect on us, you’d realize you were already there.”

  I knock my fist against the wall softly. “I love you, Henley Wright.” I smile at her sadly. “But I can’t fight for you anymore, not when you won’t fight for yourself. Baby, I hurt, and I honestly don’t know how much more of it I can take.”

  I inhale deeply, fighting back the emotion I wasn’t expecting to overwhelm me. “You’re not ready for me. For us. You weren't when we were teenagers. You haven’t been through all these years. Maybe you won’t ever be.”

  Her feet move backward.

  “If you’re searching all your life . . . know that you were loved the way you were supposed to be. Fuck Derrick and Jacinta and anyone else who has held promise only to disappoint you. I loved you, Henley. Completely.”

  I can scarcely pull in a full breath. My chest aches with the heaviness inside. It’s all but collapsed in on itself. My throat tightens with every tender breath as I turn to leave.

  I pause at the door, shaking hands braced along the frame.

  “You once told me you never let yourself love anything that can cause you pain. Maybe I should’ve believed that promise. I wish you’d never learned to tolerate me, Henley. It would’ve made my life a whole lot less complicated.”

  I don’t wait for her to speak, knowing deep down that she won’t. Or likely can’t. Henley would more likely retreat inside herself than face conflic
t head-on. She’d live unhappily forever just to save herself from the torment of rejection.

  32

  HENLEY

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  No one has heard from him.

  Not for three months.

  It’s not unusual. Shooting on location, he often disappears for months without contact.

  I learned that the hard way.

  I can’t stomach it.

  For me, each day has dragged like time has decided to stand still.

  I’ve called.

  I’ve texted.

  I’ve emailed.

  I deserve his silence. I know that.

  I fucked up.

  Shit, all I’ve ever done is fuck up.

  From the beginning of our tumultuous friendship until three months ago when I shattered his heart and watched him walk away from me forever.

  I’m selfish enough to admit that I thought he’d always be there.

  What kind of person does that make me?

  I’d pull him in only to throw him away the moment I doubted his feelings.

  I knew Brooks Riley loved me.

  I know he loves me.

  He’s proven it to me time and time again.

  Yet I’ve only ever given him the very worst parts of me.

  The flakiest of the flakiest.

  I’m a woman so petrified of rejection, of disappointment, I’d prefer to carve a hole in my chest and remove my own heart to save the pain.

  Forgetting that love and happiness also exist in this world.

  Brooks was right.

  I was so consumed with searching for my own happiness that I was too blind to see it when I was living it.

  I was too fucking blind to see how deliriously happy I was when Brooks was in my life.

  He’s a sadist. I’m certain of it. Why else would he put himself through the drama and heartache I forced upon him time and time again? Why?