by Lisa Sorbe
But damn it all if I don’t.
I don’t like this jealous version of myself, the one I seem to be morphing into the more I’m around my childhood friend. Then again, West has the uncanny ability to make me feel things no one else does.
“I ran into her when she was back for the holidays last year. We caught up.” West is relaxed; his tone betrays no hidden meaning. Like, I ran into her and yada, yada, yada…we caught up.
Still, I’m moody about the whole thing. I bite my lip, trying to keep the snark shark at bay, but my inner bitch bursts through anyway. “Well, you two were so cozy back in high school. I’m sure you did quite a bit of catching up.”
West doesn’t seem put off by my attitude. If anything, he seems amused. “We dated for all of about a minute our sophomore year.” He pauses, chuckling to himself. “And maybe a few seconds here and there our junior year…”
I throw a pillow at him, which he snags and tucks under his head. “Thanks,” he says with mock seriousness. “These pillows are so flat. I’ll never understand the appeal of down…”
“Ass,” I mutter.
But West just laughs. “Honestly, you’re still all riled up about her? I wouldn’t have thought you cared.” And though his tone is light, an undercurrent of bitterness ripples through his words.
Another weird knock reverberates from somewhere in the house, and Casper jolts awake, one ear standing straight up at attention. I reach down and scratch his head, and within seconds he’s sawing logs again. “I don’t care. Not now, anyway. But when the guy who takes you to homecoming ends up spending the entire night with another girl, it’s sort of hard to forget.”
West sighs, and it’s long and deep. “Laney,” he says, and then he pauses, as if unsure whether or not to continue.
“What?” I nudge. “Spit it out. I know you only invited me because you felt sorry for me. Because, of what… you know…what happened that summer with Mike and how he…” I stop, unable to go on. It’s such a simple word—died—but I can’t say it. Not in reference to him. I can’t even think about my brother without my whole body tensing up…the way it is right now.
“That is not why I invited you. Jesus, Laney. You’re the smartest person I know, but sometimes you can be so…” He puffs out a breath, obviously frustrated. “…dense.”
“Look who’s talking,” I snap back, irritated that I opened my mouth in the first place.
“You really don’t know why I spent the entire night dancing with Amber?”
I pretend to think. “Hmm. Because you wanted to get in her pants? And maybe because you knew she’d let you?”
West scoffs. “Yep. That’s it. You nailed it. That’s exactly it.”
It’s sort of silly, if you think about it. How we can both be so angry over something that happened well over a decade ago. But to me, what with being back here and seeing West and living in my old house again, it all feels so fresh. Like it happened yesterday.
All this time apart and here we are, picking right back up where we left off, old grudges and hurts causing us to backslide from who we’ve become into who we used to be.
And that night at homecoming? The one that sparked a two-year bout of silence between us? Well, that’s sugar and spice and everything nice compared to what happened later.
“Fine, then. So tell me. What’s your excuse?” And whatever he says will be just that…an excuse. Just an excuse, and nothing about it will change the way I feel or how he acted.
The silence sits heavy between us, and then West sighs. “You wouldn’t let me touch you.”
I open my mouth to gloat, staking claim to my win that it did have to do with sex. But, as usual, West knows what I’m about to do and rushes on. “You got weird any time I put my arm around you. Not to mention, you acted like I was out of my mind when I tried to do anything nice, like open doors or pay you a compliment. You laughed in my face when I asked you to dance.”
I snap my mouth shut, because I remember. I remember the way he slid his arm around my waist and pulled me in for pictures. How, when we went out to eat with his friends and their dates, he pulled out my chair and settled his hand on my thigh before the food came. How he opened the car door for me, the door to the school auditorium, poured me punch and asked if I was cold because my arms were covered in goosebumps from all of his attention. His touch was unnerving, if only because I didn’t know what to make of it. It was strange and it was new, and I was scared by how much I liked it, began to crave it in such a short period of time—the feel of his skin against mine, the weight of his hand against the small of my back, the way he steered me from one spot to another like I was the most precious thing on the planet. I’d always thought of West as a friend, maybe even a brother, and never anything more. But that night when he showed up at my door wearing a tux and smelling of cedar spiced cologne, it was like the veil we’d been living under for so long had finally lifted, and I saw a man. A hot man that made my belly swoon and turned my skin to gooseflesh.
I felt like I was on fire that night, and every time he touched me, I was scared I’d burn away into nothing.
So, when the music slowed and the lights dimmed, I did the only thing I could think of when West took my hand and tried to lead me to the dance floor.
I laughed.
I acted like a little girl who thought boys had cooties.
Ohhhh…I’m a shit.
But still. “You didn’t have to go and spend the rest of the night mooning over Amber Oakley. You left me completely alone. I had to sit on the bleachers and watch her practically crawling on top of you on the dance floor. And you didn’t even try to stop her.” My blood boils just thinking about it. “You were an asshole, West. Regardless of what I did or didn’t do, you were an asshole that night.”
“Yeah, I was.” He says it matter-of-factly, owning up to it in the mature, solid way he always takes responsibility for things.
I remember the night I told him about…the baby. The way his features shifted into someone else in mere seconds, like some weird time lapse moment where he evolved from the teenager he was into the steady man he was becoming.
I don’t mention any of this now. Because even though I was reckless enough to bring up homecoming, I’m certainly not foolish enough to broach that subject.
West continues, oblivious of where my thoughts are now. “I was an ass. I was a sixteen-year-old jackass whose bruised ego couldn’t handle being rejected, so I did the only thing I could think of to hurt you back. But Jesus, Laney. I was in love with you and you threw everything back in my face like my feelings were a goddamned joke.”
But it was just me, I want to say. Why did you even care that I rejected you?
The bed creaks as he rolls onto his side, facing me. The dark cloaks his expression, but his voice is sincere when he says, “I’m sorry. I really am.”
If I reached out, stretched my hand across this space between us, I could touch his bed. Slide my fingers up his arm…
“But, I just…I don’t get it,” I murmur, finally voicing the thoughts that have been rambling around in the back of my mind for years. “I mean, why did you care so much? It was just me. Just…me.”
When West speaks, his answer makes my chest swell.
“Exactly.”
I don’t run in the mornings anymore. Instead, I walk.
My routine has become lazy, at least compared to the way I lived in Phoenix, where I was out the door no later than five in the morning so I could fit in a good workout at the gym before sliding behind my desk no less than two hours later. Then, I’d often work well past quitting time, usually not returning to my condo until close to nine or ten. Sometimes Brent would accompany me, sometimes not.
Though, that ship has sailed.
When I go back, I’ll be alone again.
And after spending these last few weeks with West, I’m not sure how I feel about that. I’ve grown accustomed to his morning visits, where we share coffee and maybe a donut or a bagel before he lea
ves for work. Lately, he’s been leaving Casper with me, and after West takes off, Cas and I meander around the neighborhood, following the trail I used to run, taking our time while filling our lungs with the fragrant summer air and basking in the soft heat of the morning. This going slower—in life and in thought—is not something I’m used to, never thought it would be something I could get used to.
Turns out I can.
But at what cost? Why get used to something that will more than likely eventually just get ripped away, leaving you dead and hollow inside?
Nothing is permanent. People. Relationships. Places and things.
We are all, every single one of us, temporary.
We survived the haunted house, walking through the front door the next morning with our skins intact.
But now, only a few days later, I’m pretty sure I’m going to die anyway.
I look down at my bare feet and scrunch my toes, the grit coating the surface of the cliff scratchy against my skin. A particularly pointed pebbled stabs the ball of my right foot, making me wince.
Or maybe it’s the fifty-five-foot drop just inches away from my new pedicure that’s wrinkling my brow and causing my muscles to spasm in nervous little twitches.
I glance over at West, who doesn’t seem to notice my shudder. His eyes are on the horizon, where Lake Superior meets the sky, her steely waters blending with the unfurling mist so that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Though clouds smother the sky, the sun pierces through here and there, and little bursts of sunlight dapple the water, giving it the false appearance of warmth.
I gulp. It’s gonna be so cold when we hit…
We haven’t been sticking to any one pattern when choosing items on the bucket list, instead basing our picks mostly around how much effort we have to put into them while also working as best we can around West’s job. So this morning over coffee, when he told me he took a personal day, we decided that it’d be the perfect time to drive an hour to Halo Falls and…jump off.
Why did I want to do all this shit when I was a kid? Did I have a death wish before I actually had reason to have a death wish? As the woman I am now, it’s sometimes so hard to recall the girl I used to be.
But West seems hellbent on helping me to remember.
“Do you want to go first?”
I look at him, slightly wild-eyed, as the thought of actually jumping from this height hits me with a force that steals my voice. All I can do is shake my head, biting my lip and worrying the tender flesh between my teeth.
He dips his chin, raising his brows and catching my gaze. “Hey,” he says, and his voice is gentle, soothing. “This can go two ways, okay?” He moves closer, grasping my shoulders, his hands rough from years of sports and hard labor. “We can forget this,”—he waves a hand toward the empty space to my right—“and drive down to Duluth, maybe have lunch and hit a brewery. It’d still be a fun day, and leaving one item unchecked isn’t the end of the world.”
I swallow. “Wh-what’s the other option?”
West smiles, and the way his face lights up chases away my fear, my doubt…the thoughts of what could happen if I hit the water wrong or that maybe, just maybe, there’s a rock jutting up where there shouldn’t be. All I see is him and, as usual, he’s the sun that draws me in.
His hands slide from my shoulders and down my arms, briefly cupping my elbows. From there, they stray to just below my waist, and the heat from his fingers burns through the thin material of my swimming suit, so that I shiver more from his touch than his answer.
“We jump.”
Time stops when you fall. When the clock is no match for the weight of the moment and, for one fleeting breath, you hang, suspended, waiting for the drop.
I guess that analogy can be used both literally and metaphorically, because when I surface from the icy waters of the great lake, both pride and exhilaration keeping me buoyant, the first thing I see when I swipe the droplets from my eyes is West, swimming toward me, his eyes wide and a smile stretching from ear to ear.
“I did it!” I squeal, feeling nothing at all like myself. Yet, at the same time, I feel more me than I ever have before. Like I left my baggage, all that toxic emotional buildup, up there on that cliff and now I’m…free.
I feel light, normal. Open. And I haven’t felt that way in such a long time.
The thought brings tears to my eyes, though if they’re tears of sorrow or joy, I can’t tell. They’re probably a mixture of both, the freefall along with the release of emotions that, for far too many years, held dominion over my life are undoubtedly more than my psyche can handle.
And I must be out of my mind, completely and utterly looney, because when West reaches the spot where I’m treading water and having my proverbial Ah-a moment, I no longer feel like Elena Everhart. Nor do I feel like West’s Laney, a girl who was always so certain in her uncertainties. I’m no one and I’m everyone, and my chest is splitting so wide I can’t contain my wildly beating heart.
I laugh. I laugh long and hard and deep. Light and breathless and loose.
I’m feeling everything at once, like the breakdown I had in my bedroom weeks earlier. Only now, the sensation isn’t one of melancholy but one of exuberance.
And it hits me. Every emotion is the same. Every feeling stems from the same source. They’re just coming from different ends of the spectrum.
“You’re damn right you did it!” West laughs with me, and that opening in my chest swallows his voice, pulls me closer to him, and without thought I grab onto his shoulders, feel the slickness of his skin beneath my fingers. I slide a hand up, grazing his neck, the scruff of his cheek.
I don’t think while I do this; even all these years later, touching him is as natural as breathing. And when I lean in, West meets me halfway, pulling me closer until our bodies meet flush under the water. Our breaths mingle, heated with the rush of the moment, and when I cross that line—pressing my lips to his—it’s all I can do to stay afloat.
And time stops again. Just like when my feet left the ground moments before, my spirit now leaves my body. It’s as if West and I exist here but also somewhere else, where above and below meet, stretching timelessness into eternity.
His lips are heaven, the only one I ever care to know, and when he slides his tongue past mine, I moan. My body acts on instinct, and I lift my legs, wrapping them around his waist, letting him carry me in the way he always has. The water laps at our shoulders, our necks, a subtle caress that matches our exploring embrace.
“We shouldn’t…I’m sorry,” I murmur against his lips, because on some level I know this is complicating things far more than this euphoric version of myself can ever imagine. This is a high that will wear off, time will start again, and I’ll hit the ground…hard.
“I don’t care.” West’s voice is a rumble against my chest, his words a sigh against my lips, and I eat them up, devour them, pulling them into my very core and letting them fill me up.
I’m weightless, in body and in mind, and as we kiss I lose all sense of my surroundings. I can no longer tell what direction is down and which is up. All I can feel is West, his lips and his hands and his hips against mine, and the only thing I want is to get closer, even closer, crawl right up inside of him.
It had been two full years of stone-cold silence between us when, late into the fall of our senior year, West showed up on my porch. The season’s first snowfall was swirling around his shoulders, catching on his long eyelashes, dusting the flyaway locks of hair peeking out from under his hunter green cap. His cheeks were rosy from the cold, and his smile was a challenge…one that dared me to close the door in his face.
I hadn’t been that close to him since homecoming, the night I walked out of the dance alone, leaving him to rot in the clutches of Amber Oakley. And while I’d been so taken with him that night, noticing the way he’d seemed to grow from a boy into a man simply by donning a jacket and tie, seeing him now under the light of my porch took m
y breath away. He was taller, if that was possible, and broader, with a stronger jawline and burgeoning cheek bones. His breath exhaled in soft plumes when he spoke, and I found myself wanting to stand on my toes so I could reach those wispy vestiges, swallow them right up.
The first snow that year also happened to be a big snow, the wet kind that falls to the ground in heavy clumps, and by the time West came calling, Wolf Lake was already covered in a good two to three feet of the white stuff. I let him coax me into my coat and boots, and by the time I’d wrapped a scarf around my neck and was slipping on my gloves, I’d forgiven him. I’d hated the distance that had grown between us; being angry with him was exhausting and I just wanted it to end. My mother had warmed to me only slightly since Mike’s death, and without West, my life was colder than Minnesota’s coldest night.
And that night—the night I cursed just six weeks later—I was just tired of being alone.
We took the old sled from my garage, a red plastic one with yellow handles and a slick underbelly that practically whistled when it skimmed the snow. West used to have a blue one just like it, but it had cracked years ago, and since then we’d always just doubled up on mine.
Our houses were situated at the top of a long hill, and every year since I could remember, we’d spend the first night of the season’s first big snow sliding down the street between our homes, again and again, until our noses were numb and we couldn’t feel our toes. Of course, the last two years were an exception, and after that first winter passed without word from West, I’d just assumed the tradition had died right along with our friendship. So though I was shocked when West showed up that night, I didn’t question his appearance. I knew what he had in mind, and I indulged it, because I knew the gesture was his way of apologizing, of trying to make things right.
We were too big for the sled, of course—West with his long legs and me bundled up in too many layers to ward off the frigid Minnesota chill. But we piled in it anyway, squishing as close together as we could and laughing at the way our legs stuck out at odd angles and how my hair kept ticking West’s nose. We were so heavy, and the snow so wet, that it took West a couple of tries to push us over the crest of the hill. But once we got going, we flew, coasting down the slippery street like some awkward bobsled team careening down a track of ice.