Thank God for coffee after a night like that!
“You want to talk about it,” Troy asks as I pull up a stool at my counter and blow on the mug in my hands.
I give him a look that makes him laugh before taking a sip of the coffee to keep myself from talking. The hot liquid burns and I almost spit it out on the counter. Shaking my head, I blow on the cup once more before looking up and meeting his stare.
“To be honest, I don’t remember half of it.” I confess. “And what I do remember…” I trail off as I shake my head once more before lifting the mug back up to my lips. “Forget it!” Taking another sip, I don’t even care that it burns. I want it to. Because maybe then I might be able to start to feel human again. Alive. Not dead to the world like I have let myself become walking around these last fucking six years.
“You want to know what I think,” I roll my eyes at my friend and try and avoid his stare by swiveling away on the stool. But the fucking bastard just walks around the counter right into my line of sight. “I think you finally found something worth living for, and that thought scares the little bit of life you had left right fucking out of you.”
I swallow over a lump in my throat because damn it, he is right.
“It’s not that easy,” I finally say. “You don’t just come back from the dead because someone walked into your life and set your world on fire. Made you feel again, when you haven’t felt anything in fucking years. No one gets that lucky.”
“Lucky?” He laughs, as he walks back to the coffee pot and fills his cup. “J, life is a game of luck. It’s all a damn roll of the dice. Sometimes you get lucky with a 7 or 11. Sometimes your fucked, and you can’t help but keep rolling snake eyes and never get past go.”
I shake my head at his craps analogy before taking another sip of coffee. “You’ve been rolling with cold dice for years,” he continues. “It’s about fucking time your table ran hot. Stop betting on the damn pass line, J. Stop playing it fucking safe. Get your ass out there, get back in the fucking game, and trust your lucky streak right now that is giving you a second fucking chance at life.”
I know he’s right, but the damn fear of repeating the past sneaks up inside me and makes me worry.
“I know the shit that happened overseas still weighs on your head, and I know you only came back to bury your father,” Troy says, knowing exactly what the look on my face was insinuating. I sigh as I stare at him across the counter. “But shit, the probability of rolling the same damn number in a row is 1/6. You already rolled it five fucking times. How you did, I will never know. But no one, and I mean no one, has that kind of bad luck without the world finally having mercy on them. The way I see it, you got one more roll left to prove it wrong.”
“Four times, fucker!” I hiss out before a grin escapes me and I let the possibility of hope take root inside. My mother, Emma, Charlette, the shit overseas that still haunts me from a few years back.
“Nah,” Troy laughs, breaking my train of thought as he lifts his cup to his mouth to take a sip. “One more roll, J. I saw the look on her face last night when I dropped her off at home. The look in her eyes is something a man never forgets. The end is near brother, if you haven’t screwed it up already. And you better blow on your fucking dice this time and pray to God they hit the table hot.”
Chapter 19
Rose
“No, Sir, I understand,” I repeat to the Judge-Executive on the phone for the third time in the last 10 minutes. I look over at Diana who stares back at me a little worried and very much confused. But me? I am neither as I grip the phone and annoyance boils up inside. “He hasn’t come in yet today…” I begin to say, but I am cut off by the angry way the Judge’s voice escalates into an almost furious yell and I close my eyes.
Since when did I sign up to be Justin’s punching bag for breaking news stories I didn’t write. He knew the crap he leaked from the end of last week’s “special called meeting” would cause hysteria; then his stubborn, irritating ass didn’t even show up for work this morning. I shake my head at something the Judge is saying and try to figure out another tactic to end this conversation as quickly as possible.
“I do, I completely understand. I will let him know the second he comes in.” I promise, but the Judge has a few more choice words to yell at me before he abruptly hangs up and leaves me near deaf from the sound of the receiver slamming down on his phone in the process. Slightly fighting back tears, for God only knows what reason, oh yeah maybe the way Justin pushed me away Saturday night and then didn’t show up to work Monday morning, I angrily take my red pen and jot down a note for him, making sure to underline it twice with heavy, strong streaks across the post it.
Call the Judge Executive!
Standing, I give Diana a sad smile that will inevitably give her way too much cause for concern as I make my way around my desk and walk into his office. The room smells like him. Leather, woodsy, all male, and it pulls at my heart wanting me to open back up and not close him out. But as I stick the post it on his computer, right in the damn middle of the stupid screen so he won’t miss it, bitterness rages inside me and I push every last bit of “feeling sorry” for him out of my mind as I make my way back towards my desk at the front of the office.
The door chimes and I look up, hopeful that it is him, secretly not wishing for it to be either, and once again realize just how screwed up my head is when it comes to the one man I spent my entire Sunday crying over. But all hopeful feelings leave when I lock eyes with someone I wasn’t expecting to see and now start fearing the idea of Justin actually walking through the door.
“Levi!” I exclaim, a little too rushed and startled. Diana looks up at me, as does Glen across the room, before I quickly look behind the man making his way towards me and try and assure my nerves that my boss isn’t in fact going to walk through the front doors as well any second.
“Hey,” he says quietly, as I finally look into his eyes and see them puffy, black and blue and a cut running across the bridge of his nose. “How was the rest of your weekend?”
I look at him confused because I have no clue in hell what would possess him to come here and ask me that question. “It was alright,” I say cautiously as I take a step towards him and catch Diana’s curious eye around the corner. “I’m sorry about…”
But he waves off my comment and takes my hand in his, pulling me a step closer. Chills spread across my body, and not the good kind. The ones that add to the sickness already building inside my gut that this is wrong. So wrong. He shouldn’t be here. Not when Justin could walk in any moment and we could have a repeat of Saturday night. “Don’t even think about it. I shouldn’t have said what I did. Chum it up to too much alcohol and a crush on a beautiful woman that I have been harboring for way too long.”
My eyes, that were once locked on the door behind him worried that if Justin walked through the door another world war would break out, now suddenly lock with his and grow wider than I have ever felt them before in my life. What did he just say? I try and cover up the way my face might look as I take a step back from him.
Shocked. Annoyed. Confused as hell as to what he is trying to tell me.
He was always Michael and I’s best friend. I thought it funny that he never married. Never really even dated. But I just figured he hadn’t found the right girl yet. I guess if what he is saying is true I just might be the one that he has been thinking is right for him all along. The idea of him and I together is absolutely absurd, but he must read a different meaning behind my very baffled expression because he continues.
“I wanted to stop by and show you that I am not standing in the shadows any longer,” he whispers, as he takes another step in my direction causing us to now stand too close together for my comfort. “I stood aside for the last several years, Ro. I’m not going to let another man get in my way. Not this time.”
I shake my head and close my eyes, “Levi, I…”
“Just dinner.” He demands as I open my eyes and look into
his pleading ones. “Please? Just give me a chance… the chance… I’ve always wanted. To prove… everything… things words can’t even say. Please?”
I can’t help but feel completely lost as I stare back at him and a reality I never even considered begs me to give it a chance. Why? I really don’t know. I war with myself for all of a few seconds before something inside me cracks. Something that feels a lot like retribution. A foreign feeling to me all together, but as he holds my hand and the memories of Saturday night come barreling back at me, I break. I can’t fucking help myself. And I give into his request out of shear jealous satisfaction in knowing just what it might cause Justin to feel. If he even feels anything at all.
“Sure. Dinner sounds nice,” I hear myself say and immediately wish I could take it back. What the hell is wrong with me? This is totally out of character, even if I was left jaded and scorned after the way I was treated. Something I still don’t fully understand.
His eyes light up and I feel the impact of the mistake I’ve made even before he has opened his mouth to accept my offer. “Great!” He exclaims, a little too loud causing Diana to look in our direction. “How about tonight? Is that OK?”
I bite my bottom lip, wishing that I could tell him no, but the reality is Erica is still in town having refused to leave after the stunt Saturday night and permanently taking up residence on my couch. That is until she feels I am in the clear, safe, and stable enough just like any best friend would. Maybe getting this over with sooner rather than later is a good idea. I nod and give him a sad smile, accepting a fate I was so stupid to let myself walk into just a few moments before.
He pulls me into a hug and I can’t help the inner cringe that happens in my soul. Releasing me, he grins like a little schoolboy before turning and making his way back towards the door. I’m just about to take back what I said, because this is not me. As much as I want to selfishly do what most women would, my heart breaks and I remember the haunted look in his eyes. I can still feel the tortured way his body held mine and I know I am not that kind of women who could so easily forget, just push everything aside and selfishly hurt him to make myself feel better. But he cuts me off.
“I’ll pick you up at 7,” he says over his shoulder before pushing the door open, pausing, and turning back to meet my stare. “And wear that dress you wore Saturday,” he winks, causing me to feel punished already for stepping into a trap and believing he might actually have felt wrong about all that happened just a few nights ago. He pushes out into the late morning sun and I anxiously look around the parking lot. I find an odd sense of happiness in the idea of Justin pulling up right now after the comment he just made and giving him another beating.
But as he climbs into his car, my boss is nowhere in sight, and I am left with the horrible decision I just made, I look at Diana who’s face judges me like any mothers would before she shakes her head and returns to her work.
Idiot! What the hell did you get yourself into now!
Justin
I swing the car door shut and let out a heavy sigh. My eyes look up to the sky above, the one that is too bright and full of hope for the way I feel inside and the place that I am finding myself at. Turning, I look across the parking lot and shake my head.
How did we get here?
The thought plagues me constantly as I start to walk, pestering me, wanting me to answer it. But I have no damn clue as to what all went wrong and how on earth I wasn’t able to fix it no matter how damn hard I tried.
When my feet hit the grassy hill, I look up and feel, hear, almost fucking see the nightmare that time so many years ago was in my life. Like usual, I count six in from the right and four from the left until my eyes fall on the two stones in the middle of the field. The only place I have left to visit them when I am feeling strong enough.
With shaky hands and a heavy heart I walk further towards the gut wrenching reality that grabs ahold of my insides and squeezes until I have no fucking breath left and I wish the earth would open me up and swallow me down with them. Tears prick the back of my eyes as I stare at my feet, afraid of what will happen when I allow myself to look up. To see their names. To feel the fucking finality of everything that happened all those years ago and the one damn thing I have been trying to outrun since.
That I am a failure. A fuck up. That I ruin, everything. And the world would be a better place if I was dead alongside them. Only when my feet stop at their site do I let myself look up and finally let my entire world come crashing down around me.
“Hey my girls,” I choke out, as I let the tears I’ve been holding in fall and I grip the flowers at my side harder. “How’s my world today?” I lean forward and place the roses I bought next to Charlette’s name, brushing my fingers across her stone as if feeling it is somehow touching her. And God what I wouldn’t give to hear her voice right now. As much as we had our differences, as much as we fought and swore at times we’d never make up, she was always there for me. One of the only people in my life that taught me to go on living again after my mother. One of the only women I’ve ever met that believed in me, trusted me, thought the fucking world of me when I never thought it of myself.
My emotions rage as I pull back and have to take a moment to collect myself. God how I miss her. How I’d do anything to take that fucking day back. The day I walked out the back door and didn’t go to her, help her, stand by her fucking side like a man, her husband, a rock for her when she was falling apart. Something she never let me live without, always being my rock in times when I needed it most. But something I failed her at, miserably.
After a moment, when I feel like I might actually have my shit together, I look up and let my eyes fall on Emma’s stone. My breath catches in my throat. My whole world turns black the longer I hold it in, and the sob that escapes my lips once I open my mouth thunders out with all the damn pain I feel inside.
“Hey Em, how’s my little Princess?” I lean forward and place the daisies I brought with me against her stone.
I like to think they may have been her favorite flower. Sweet. Innocent. Just like her.
I kneel on the grass beside her stone and close my eyes. Regret. Agony. Torture unleashes inside me as I grip the stone that says her name. “I’m so sorry, Princess. Daddy is so sorry.” But there are no words that can mean enough right now so I fall silent as the tears I hardly ever let fall flood out of my eyes and soak the ground at my feet.
“I don’t know how to move on,” I whisper after a little time has passed. “I don’t know how to let you go. I can’t, Princess. Not ever.”
Holding on to them is killing me, but so would letting go. At least with my sins as a constant reminder, they are always there. Always with me. If I let that go, if I let myself forgive, forget, just like Charlette taught me how to after my mother, they’ll slip away and really only just be a place I come to, stones I let myself fall apart at as I place new flowers at the foot of their bed and act like this one tiny gesture is enough for what I did. What I caused. The fucking heavy heartache I deserve to carry with me for eternity.
I know I told Rose different. I know I told her it gets easier. But as I stand here at their graves I realize just what a fucking liar I am.
The hardest part, even if I don’t let myself live in grief, even if I don’t carry this fucking load with me for the rest of my god-forsaken life, I still have to live with goodbye. I still have to wake up every morning and be forced to endure the nightmare that haunts my memory at every fucking turn in my life’s road. No matter what, they are never coming back, and now more than ever before I wish I would die along with them so I could be put out of the misery I feel inside. The realization that for the first time since they have been gone, I just might be ready to move on. Let go. Let life back in.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat again. This time for the truth that I am not telling. The way my heart feels alive for the first time in years when I think of Rose and the possibility of holding her, day and night, and never leaving her side. “I�
�m sorry,” I whisper once more when my mind remembers Liam and Olivia, and how I’d do anything to protect them, watch over them, and always make sure they knew just how much they were loved. Something I failed at miserably with Emma. “I’m so fucking sorry,” I cry, as I rise to my feet and shake my head. The truth being I can’t go on living dead inside. Not any longer. Not after I have felt her light. Their warmth, and felt myself come alive in their world.
Something, someone I wasn’t expecting came along and showed me how to feel again. With one look in her haunted eyes, one touch of her tiny hand, I felt more spark than I ever have before, ever. I look at Charlette’s stone as my brow furrows.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Charlette,” I whisper as I suck in a breath and hold it until my lungs burn. “But,” I say, releasing it and letting some of the pain out too. “I can help her.”
Oddly, I feel free as that last statement leaves my lips. I feel peace. I know that if I could change the past I would in a heartbeat. But I can change the present. I can help a woman that reminds me of the one I lost. I can right that wrong. And Rose can continue breathing me back to life, like she already has, like nobody has been able to before. Except Charlette.
For the first time, standing where I am and staring at the stones in front of me, I start to feel a relief I never expected. My eyes scan to my daughters and my heart still hurts, burns, wishes I could understand the meaning behind moving forward now and being OK with it, like the way I feel when I think about her mother. But I don’t. And I worry I might never. I worry the guilt of what happened will forever haunt me, and what’s more, I know I will always let it.
Resurrection Page 14
