by W Winters
The smile dies when Addison leans forward and away.
He doesn’t know she needs space.
It’s not his fault though. Tyler has a lot to learn. Hard life lessons.
Like the ones I’ve had to endure.
Cancer took our mother and left us a bitter father who likes the belt a little too much. Not to mention a pile of bills that a single person couldn’t possibly afford. It’s taken years to turn my father’s small-time dealing into a thriving business. Years of destroying what little life I had left.
“Let’s not,” I hear Addison say and when I look up her eyes are on me. Caught in her gaze, I hold her there, but it doesn’t last long. Tyler’s always there to reclaim her attention.
A sense of loss runs through me, followed by disgust.
I haven’t been a good person in so long, maybe I’ve forgotten how. Or maybe I never was a good person to begin with.
“You and Carter going out tonight?” my father asks as he interrupts the view I have of Tyler and his girlfriend.
It’s only ever Carter and me. Never my other brothers. We’re the oldest, after all. The ones who need to pick up my father’s slack. The ones who pay these bills and make the business what it is.
We’re the ones who have to shoulder the burden. And really it’s Carter’s hard work and brutal business tactics that make any of this possible. It sure as fuck isn’t my father. He’s good at hiding his pain. But every time he remembers my mother, I know he copes with a different addiction. One that makes using that belt easier.
Only ever for Carter and me though.
“Yeah,” I tell him and wait for him to hint that he wants us to bring some of the supply back for his personal use. Friday marks four years since our mother’s been gone and I know a relapse is coming. He’ll disappear for days, maybe even weeks. It was worse when she first passed. I guess I should be grateful that he’s better now than he was then.
“Be careful coming home. I heard there’s a patrol on the east side so maybe come up the back way after you get the shipment.”
A second passes and then another before I nod.
Some days I wonder if he cares for me anymore. He was always a hard man. But when Mom passed, he was nothing but angry. The years have maybe changed him to be less full of hate. But it doesn’t mean he has anything in him to take its place.
I give him another nod and look past him as the sound of Tyler and Addison getting up from the table catches my attention.
My father glances over his shoulder in the direction I’m staring and then turns back to me. He only shakes his head and makes to leave, but I hear him mutter, “She isn’t yours.”
I hate him even more in this moment. Because he’s right.
The sad, pretty girl doesn’t belong to me.
No matter how much I think she’d take my pain away.
Chapter 15
Addison
* * *
I wonder what the girl I used to be would think of me.
The girl who still had both her parents and a life worth living for.
I think she’d make up excuses for my poor behavior. She’d say I was sad, but she has no idea how pathetic I am.
Grief isn’t static. It’s not a point on a chart where you can say, “Here, at this time, I grieved.” Because grief doesn’t know time. It comes and goes as it pleases, then small things taunt it back into your life. The memories haunt you forever and carry the grief with them. Yes, grief is carried. That’s a good way to put it.
I pull a pillow on the sofa into my lap and stare at the television screen although my eyes are puffy and sore and I don’t even know what’s on.
Playing with the small zipper on the side of the pillow absently, I think about what happened. How it all unraveled.
I think it started with his scar, the past being brought up. But just like scars, some of our past will never leave us. The old wounds were showing. That’s what it was really about.
I always knew Daniel was broken in ways Tyler wasn’t. But I didn’t know about his father. I didn’t know any of that. I don’t even know if Tyler knew.
But what happened between Daniel and me, that … I don’t even have a word for it. It was like a light switch being turned off. Everything was fine, better than fine. Then darkness was abrupt and sudden, with no way to escape.
* * *
My eyes dart to the screen as a commercial appears and its volume is louder than whatever show or movie was playing. I sniffle as I flick the TV off and look at my phone again.
I’m sorry. Daniel messaged me earlier and I do believe he is, but I don’t know if that will be enough. My happy little bubble of lust has been popped and the self-awareness isn’t pretty.
I’m sorry too. It’s all I can say back to him and he reads it. But there’s nothing left for either of us to say now. I wonder if this will be the end of us.
We can’t have a conversation about the bad things that have happened. That’s the simple truth. It’s awkward, tense. And we can’t escape the moments coming up in conversation. There’s no way getting around that.
It’s easy to blame it on my past. On things I had no control over and things I can’t change.
It’s a lot like what I did when I left Dixon Falls. But really I was running, just like I had been since the day my parents died. Tyler was a distraction, a pleasant one that made me feel something other than the agonizing loneliness that had turned me bitter.
And then there was Daniel. He left me breathless and wanting, and that’s a hard temptation to run away from.
I’m woman enough to admit that.
So sure, I can blame it on our past.
It’s easy to blame it on grief, but it’s still a lie. It’s because neither of us can talk about what happened.
I startle at the vibration of the phone on the coffee table.
My heart beats hard with each passing second; all the while a long-lost voice in the back of my head begs me to answer a simple question. What am I doing?
Or maybe the right question is, What did I expect?
My gaze drifts across each photo on the far wall of the living room and it stops on three. Each of the photos meant something more when I took them. There are a little more than a dozen in total. Each photographed in a moment of time when I knew I was changing.
I keep them hung up because they look pretty from a distance; the pictures themselves are pleasant and invoke warm feelings.
More than that, the photos are a timeline of moments I never want to forget. I refuse to let myself forget.
But the three I keep staring at are so relevant to how I feel in this moment.
The first photo was taken at my parents’ grave. Just a simple picture really, small forget-me-nots that had sprouted in the early spring. There was a thin layer of snow on the ground, but they’d already pushed through the hard dirt and bloomed. Maybe they knew I was coming and wanted to make sure I saw them.
In the photo you can’t even tell they’ve bloomed on graves. The photo is cropped short and close. But I’ll always remember that the flowers were on my parents’ grave.
Tyler was with me when I took it. It wasn’t the first, second or even the third time we’d gone out. But it was the first time I’d cried in such a long time and the one friend I’d met and trusted was there to witness it. I thought I was being sly asking him to drive to a cemetery hours away. Back to where I’d grown up. I hadn’t been there in so long, but on that day when Tyler said we could go anywhere, I told him about the angel statue at the front of a cemetery I’d once seen that would be perfect for the photography project.
I didn’t tell him that my parents were buried there, but he found out shortly after we arrived.
Part of me will forever be his for how he handled that day. For letting me cry and holding me. For not forcing me to talk, but being there when I was ready to.
Like I said, I never deserved him.
The second is a picture of the first place I’d rented after
I ran away from Dixon Falls. I went from place to place, spending every cent I’d gathered over the years and not staying anywhere any longer than I had to. Until I found this farm cottage in the UK and met Rae.
She’s such the opposite of me in every way. And she reminded me of Tyler. The happiness and kindness, the fact that she never stopped smiling and joking. Some people just do that to you … and because of it, I stayed. For a long time.
She’s the one who took me to the bar in Leeds where I kissed another boy for the first time after Tyler’s death.
She’s the one who showed me how to really market my photography and introduced me to a gallery owner. She made me want to stay in that little cottage I’d rented for much longer than I’d planned. But feeling so happy and having everything be too easy felt wrong. It was wrong that I could move on and it made me feel like what had happened in the past was right, when I knew without a doubt that it wasn’t.
It would never be right and that realization made me see Tyler everywhere all over again. I needed to leave. It was okay to remember, but it wasn’t okay to forget. And I did leave. Each place I stopped at was closer and closer to Dixon Falls. At first I didn’t realize it. But when I picked this university, I was keenly aware that I’d only be hours away.
The third picture is only a silhouette I took in Paris.
I don’t know the people.
It’s the shadows of four men standing outside of a church with a deep sunset behind them.
From a distance, all I could see were the Cross boys. And I took picture after picture, snapping away as quickly as I could. As if they’d vanish if I stopped. I wanted them back badly. I wanted them to forgive me and tell me it was alright. After all, they were the only family I had for a long time and just like my parents, I lost them.
That picture hurts the most. Because there should be five people in the shot. And because when the men did leave the hilltop behind the church and come closer, they weren’t the Cross boys and I knew in that moment I’d never see them again. Daniel was never going to show up for me to stare at from a distance. It would never be them, no matter how much I prayed for it to happen.
Three pretty pictures, mixed in with the others. All hues of indigo, my favorite color, and all seemingly serene and beautiful. But each a memory of something that’s made me the person I am.
My phone vibrates with the reminder of the most recent message. It’s Daniel, of course. Come over.
I need to work, I text him and snort at his immediate response. No you don’t.
I do, in fact, need to work. I could easily work at his place. That’s what I’ve been doing and I actually enjoy it. I love it when he kisses my shoulder and tells me what he thinks of the photo I’m working on. He makes me feel less alone and he understands how I see the pictures and why they mean so much to me.
I want to apologize.
You did and I get it, I tell him even though it makes the ache in my chest that much deeper.
Please, just give me another chance.
Please is another word I’m not used to hearing from Daniel and as much as I want to give in, I need a little time.
I really do have to work. We can meet up next week. As I press send, I realize I’m caving in. Simply prolonging what is sure to end. But then I remember the men by the church. If I could go back in time and make them stand there forever so I’d never have to face the fact that they weren’t the Crosses, I would.
It hurts deep in my chest. Denial is a damning thing.
And that’s what this is, isn’t it? Just a futile attempt to deny that we could ever exist without our past tearing us apart.
The phone sits there silent, indicating no new message from him although I know he sees my response. Picking up a tissue from the coffee table, I dry my nose and pick myself up off the sofa.
Life doesn’t wait for you. That’s something I’ve learned well.
Before I can take a step toward the kitchen to toss the tissue, a message from Daniel comes in. I promise I will make it up to you.
I don’t know what to write back. There’s no way to make this right.
So instead I focus on the work that’s waiting for me and choose not to respond.
I’ve barely been active online for a week now. Instead I’ve been taking pictures. Lots of them. Some of Daniel in abstract ways. Others of little things that remind me of him from when we were younger. I haven’t posted those yet though. I’m not sure I will either. No matter how beautiful I think they are.
I haven’t answered messages or sent out any packages. I don’t even know how my sales are going. When you run a business all by yourself, you can’t afford to take time off. For years I’ve buried myself in my passion and work, although really I’d just been running from reality. From my past.
Staring at the message from Daniel, the black and white text that’s so easy to read, I can’t answer the one question that matters.
What am I doing?
Six years ago
* * *
“Hey … hey …”
I hear a persistent voice but I ignore it. No one in this school has said a word to me. At least not to my face.
With a tug on my shirt, I’m forced to turn around and face a boy. A boy who’s nearly a man. He doesn’t have a baby face, and I can tell he shaves, but there’s a kindness about him that makes him appear young. And likable. Which is something I haven’t felt in the last two years.
“What are you doing?” he asks me and my forehead pinches.
I lift the pencil in the air and point to the chalkboard in science class as I say, “It’s called taking notes.”
The handsome guy laughs, a rough chuckle that forces me to smile. Some people’s happiness is simply contagious.
“No, I mean tonight.”
I don’t bother to respond other than to shrug. I do the same thing every night. Nothing. My life is nothing.
“My brothers and I are having a little party.”
“I don’t really do parties,” I answer him and nearly turn back around in my seat, but his smile doesn’t falter and that in itself keeps my attention.
Shrugging, he says, “We can do something else.”
“I don’t really do much,” I tell him honestly. I don’t really feel like doing anything. Each day is only a date on a calendar. That’s all they’ve been for a long time now.
“What about the assignment for art class? We could take some pictures for the photography project?” It takes me a moment to place him, but now that he’s mentioned it, I think I did see him in the back row yesterday in art class.
“It’s not my day for the camera.” The budget for the art department is small, so we have to take turns checking out the equipment.
“I’ve got one we can use—well, it’s my brother’s.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah, his name’s Daniel.” It all clicks when he says his brother’s name. I’ve seen him. It must be him. I’ve watched as this boy I’m talking to waits outside at the entrance to the school and another boy picks him up. Except he’s not a boy. There’s no question about that. Daniel is a man and it only took one glimpse of him to cause me to search him out each and every time the bell rings and I’m waiting in line for the bus.
“Now I know your brother’s name, but I don’t know yours.”
“It’s Tyler.” I repeat his name softly and when I look at him, I see traces of his older brother. But where Daniel has an edge to him, Tyler is warm and inviting.
“I’m Addison.”
“So what do you think, Addison?”
“I think that sounds like fun. I wasn’t doing anything anyway.”
* * *
Maybe fate knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep Tyler. It was going to take him from me. So it gave me Daniel to keep me from loving Tyler too much.
I don’t know for sure and there’s no point in speculating.
All I know for certain is that Daniel will consume me, chew me up and spit me back out.
I need to end this before I get hurt … well, before it gets worse than it already is.
Chapter 16
Daniel
* * *
I’m losing it.
I can feel myself slipping backward into a dark abyss.
Addison and I are alike in more ways than she knows. In ways I’d never dare to whisper out loud. She’s lying to herself when she says she needs space.
She doesn’t.
She needs me, just like I need her. She’s the only thing that takes the pain away and I do that for her too. I know I do. I can feel it. I can see it in her.
The light from the computer screen is the only thing that saves the living room from being in complete darkness. I’ve been staring at it, waiting for him to see I’ve been logged in for hours.
I’m trying to stay away from Addison. I’m trying to do what’s best.
It’s been a long time, Marcus finally responds. It’s not his name or his alias in this chat. But I know it’s him.
Three years now, I answer, leaning back into my seat with my laptop on my thighs and trying to ignore the shame that rings in my blood. It’s been three years since I’ve logged into this black market chat and sought him out. Three years since I’ve felt the urge to watch over Addison every second of every day. Three years since I’ve had a hit of my sweet addiction.
What brings you back? he asks me and I swallow thickly.
She came back into my life. But you already know that.
She, as in Addison? he asks me to keep up this charade.
The keys beneath my fingertips click faintly as I type. It’s odd how I find it comforting, the soft sounds tempting me to confess my sins.
I wasn’t stalking her or trying to find her. The first time was a coincidence.
How many times have there been? he asks me.
A lot, I admit but then add, but she’s been with me this time. It’s not me hiding in the shadows. She sought me out.
