Then, she reached out and tapped my good hand once. “That’s how I felt meeting you for the first time.”
Snorting, I replied, “Oh, I’m sure that was great for you.”
“It was,” she answered without hesitating. “The way Audrey looked at you, I knew you were exactly what she needed. She was broken for a long time after losing Sabrina. We all were, but she took it the hardest. She hid it well—she had to, to be what Freddy needed—but deep down, she was battling something dark. You put the light back in her soul.”
I could only nod, absorbing her words and knowing there was truth in that for me as well. Audrey had glimpsed the darkness in my chest and lit a match. She’d started a fire and given me the reason to believe I could, in fact, have a soul. Something bound only to flesh in this life, something with the capability to move from this world into another. It felt crazy, but wasn’t everything?
Ann laughed gently. “And no, maybe you’re not who I would’ve picked for her. You’re a little more, uh, decorated,” she tapped one of my fingers, “than I maybe would’ve preferred. But God doesn’t always package the best ones in what we’d expect. That’s what makes them harder to find. And more worth the wait.”
“Hm,” I grunted contemplatively, lifting one side of my mouth into a lopsided smile.
“I bet she’s not exactly what you expected either, huh?”
“Nope,” I laughed.
Audrey returned to her small kitchen, freshly showered and wearing a pair of shorts and a sweatshirt I’d left behind a couple of weekends ago. At the sight of her, standing there in my shirt, I felt ragged and worn, exhausted and ready to curl up in her warm bed. To forget about this day for just a few peaceful hours of sleep.
Ann excused herself with one last pat against my hand, and the moment the front door was closed, my shoulders slumped and my eyes closed against the weight of weariness sitting heavily on my back. Audrey wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pressed my head to her chest.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” I asked, in hopes she had the answer.
“I guess that’s for you to decide,” she replied, stroking her fingers through my hair.
“What do you think I should do?” I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding on tight to the only anchor I’d ever known.
“Well,” she went on, pressing her chin to the top of my head, “if you really want my opinion …”
“I do.”
“Then, I think you should take all that pent-up anger and frustration that you’re no longer wasting on us, and put it toward the real battle,” she said, hugging me tighter.
I sighed exhaustedly. “It’s too late. They’ve already signed the papers,” I told her, shaking my head and still unable to believe that this was happening. “I just don’t fucking get it. He’s been doing so well these past couple of months. Why the fuck would they still think this needs to happen?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted in a hushed tone that reverberated in my ear. “But it’s not too late, Blake. It’s never too late, as long as you’re still able to fight. And Jake is worth fighting for.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“AUDREY, YOU DON’T need to be here,” I muttered in the radiologist’s waiting room. “I’m fine. Go shopping with your mother.”
“I’ll go shopping with my mom later,” she insisted, wrapping her arms around mine. “Besides, I like getting to spend more time with you.”
“You already spend a lot of time with me.”
“And yet, it never feels like enough,” she replied sweetly, before kissing my cheek.
I grumbled a reply as I heard my name being called. Picking my head up, I answered, “Yeah?”
The technician approached with a kind smile. He probably looked like that all damn day. Always smiling, through the good and the bad, delivering some optimism even in the crappiest of times. I could never survive in a job like this. I’m too real, too bitter.
“You sprained it, but there’s no break,” he said with a goodhearted nod. “Keep it wrapped up and use it sparingly. You can take some ibuprofen if the pain and swelling gets bad.”
“Got it,” I replied, nodding. “Thanks a lot.”
“Of course.” He turned his smile from me to Audrey and added, “Tell Ann I said hi, all right?”
Audrey grinned sweetly as she pulled her purse onto a shoulder. “Oh, I will. Have a great day, Jeff.”
“You, too,” Jeff said and turned toward the door from which he came. Then, with a look over his shoulder, he pointed a finger at me. “Oh! And no more punching refrigerators!”
I forced a chuckle, lifted my bandaged hand and replied sardonically, “Learned my lesson, Jeff. Thanks.”
We left the radiology building and stepped into a cold late-November morning. Audrey hugged my arm to her side and asked what I was going to do for the rest of the day while she hit the stores with Ann. I shrugged as I unlocked my car and replied, “I don’t know. Might go home and get some shit done.”
“What kind of shit?” she asked, climbing in.
“Well, someone’s been a bit of a distraction,” I shot her with a wink and she blushed, “so I’m a little behind on cleaning and laundry. Should probably do some of that.”
“You want me to come over and help?”
I narrowed my eyes as I started the car. “I’ve been cleaning and doing laundry for a long time. I really don’t need any help.”
“Yeah, I know,” she replied innocently. “I just didn’t know if you’d like the company, or um …”
I glanced at her with accusing eyes. “You’re afraid I’m gonna drink all the booze and really fuck up my hands.”
Audrey grimaced apologetically. “I’m sorry. I just know you’re hurting and I’m worried about you being alone.”
I’ve never been one to open up about my emotions. Hell, that was why I’d started receiving therapy from Dr. Travetti in the first place. To get it out and have an outlet. But Audrey was changing that. With her, I felt I could be open and honest, and so I replied, “It feels good to be worried about for once, but I’m fine. I swear.”
“Okay,” she said, almost satisfied, and I started the car.
***
The house suddenly felt hollow thinking there’d be no chance of Jake living here full-time. I never noticed that before, during the weekends when I considered the time away from him as a welcomed reprieve. But now, as I realized our regular time together was running out, the silence came to me as a scream before dying as a pathetic whimper in the pit of my chest.
I dulled the noisy quiet by keeping busy. I vacuumed the living room, swept the kitchen floor, and dusted the shelves. I loaded the washer and managed to fold some of Jake’s clean clothes with my busted hand. Two hours of chores flew by without too much thinking, but once there was nothing left to do and I sat down on the couch, the eerie hush came for me again.
Our pictures were everywhere—the drawing of the two of us and the photographs on the mantle. Jake’s puzzles were stacked on a shelf beside the TV, and his DVDs were on a shelf below that. Coloring books, board games, and buckets and buckets of Legos cluttered another set of shelves, and as I looked at all these things, I wondered how empty my house would be once it was all gone. How despairingly sad. How pointless.
This house had always been with Jake in mind, and without him in it, what was its purpose? It was home, but only together, in whatever capacity that meant. Without him, it would be a tomb.
“I can’t let them do it,” I said to no one. “I can’t let them fucking do it.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed my phone and dialed my father’s number. He was the more reasonable one. I could talk to him, apologize for my outburst last night and discuss things like an adult, like a man. And by the time he answered, the determination was buzzing through my veins.
“Blake,” he said curtly.
“Hey, Dad.”
He didn’t respond, probably thinking I was calling for Round Two
, so I hastily added, “I’m not gonna fight with you.”
“Well, that’s good to hear.” His tone was just as flat as before.
Nobody said this battle was going to be easy, I told myself as I let loose a strained breath. “So, I’m sorry about last night. Mom caught me off-guard. I just wish she’d told me soon—”
“Your mother and I don’t have to tell you anything.”
My jaw gritted at the verbal blade held to my throat. “I know that. That’s why I’m apologizing—”
“You should be apologizing to your mother, not me. You really upset her last night.”
“Fine,” I replied, struggling to keep my cool. “Is she around? Put her on.”
“Let me see if she’ll talk to you.”
I forced my sardonic chuckle to remain locked in my chest as my father asked my mother if she had it in her to speak to me. I heard her reply but couldn’t make out the words, then Dad replied, “I don’t know what he wants.” They spoke about me like I was the last person they’d ever want to hear from. Like talking to me was a painful chore, like I was worth nothing and my existence was a burden.
And it wasn’t lost on me that not so long ago, I felt the same way.
Mom muttered something and Dad spoke into the phone, “I’m going to put you on speakerphone.”
“Okay,” I replied, taking that over nothing, and waited.
“Why are you calling?” Mom asked bitterly.
“Hi, Mom.”
“I’m not in the mood to chitchat,” she snapped in reply. “Just say what you called to say.”
Wetting my lips and thinking about the booze in the kitchen, I swallowed at the vile, angry words begging to be said. “I, um … I called to say that I’m sorry.”
Mom guffawed. “You don’t get to apologize and expect we’re just putting it behind us. You embarrassed us last night, do you not understand that? You humiliated and belittled us in front of our family, like a child. It’s bad enough this is the type of thing we deal with from Jake, but you? You’re a man, Blake, and it’s about damn time you acted like it.”
My stomach churned and my lips screwed up with distaste. “You know, for someone who didn’t want to talk, you sure have a lot to say.”
“And there you go with that mouth of yours. Doesn’t take much for you to show your true colors.”
The abrupt wobbling of my chin surprised me. I never used to be one to get emotional, but this was too much. Too much to handle, too much to wrap my head around, and far too much to take all at once.
“Mom, I just called to apologize and see if—”
“If, what? If there was anything you can do to change our minds?”
I sucked in the snot that began to accumulate as I shook my head. “That’s not—”
“You know what, Blake? I don’t want to continue this conversation. I’m done. I’m just done with you right now. I’ve had enough.”
Pushing a hand through my hair, I stared at a stain on the living room carpet without seeing its ugly, muddy brown and only hearing the disgusted tone in my mother’s voice. “How the fuck can you talk to me like this?” I managed to ask.
“I’ve been asking the same thing of you your entire life and you don’t see me throwing temper tantrums over it.”
My hand lowered to my side as I stared at that matted brown spot. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“You have made my life a living hell since the day you—”
“Diana,” Dad finally spoke up from the sidelines. “That’s enough now.”
“If it weren’t for you, none of this would’ve happened in the first place,” she went on. “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation, Jake wouldn’t be the way he is, we—”
“Diana! Enough!”
My mouth fell open with a sudden zap of clarity. Hidden memories, buried beneath the rubble, came to the surface in a torrential wave. The stain morphed, turning into something I hadn’t seen since I was ten, shortly after the accident. Jake’s spilled glass of milk, and Mom’s screams at me to clean it up. The spot shifted, now it was ice cream, smeared on the kitchen floor after a tantrum Jake had thrown. Mom, grabbing my arm and pulling me along to mop it up.
Another shift, another spot, another spill. I was sixteen, hanging out with my friends. Jake couldn’t hang out with us, he couldn’t skateboard or rollerblade, and he’d thrown a fit out of jealousy and rejection. There’d been chocolate milk everywhere. I’d told him we could hang out later, told him that we’d build Legos and watch Gremlins, and the bargain had been enough for him. But not for Mom. She had scolded me in front of my friends, treating me like a child, and had thrown my skateboard in the trash. Because, as she’d said, Jake came first, before friends and skateboarding. Before me. It was the least I could do, after everything. After what I’d done.
“You resent me,” I quietly stated. “You … you have spent over two decades making sure I’d hate myself as much as you hate me—”
“Good Lord, Blake, where are you getting this stuff from?” Mom huffed exhaustedly. “Tell me this is some garbage that girl’s feeding you. You know she doesn’t like us.”
Anger battled with my heartbreak as I growled, “Don’t you fucking dare talk about her.”
“Oh, for crying out loud, you barely know the girl!”
Another realization struck me and I blurted, “You don’t want me to be happy. Fuck, you’ve never wanted me to be happy. You—”
“All right, Blake,” Dad intervened. “That’s enough. I think we all just need a little time to calm down, okay? We’ll talk to you on—”
“Why the hell did you let her do it?” I asked my father candidly. “You became a fucking zombie and let her manipulate me. You let her treat me like shit over a fucking accident. You let her make sure I’d grow up to hate myself and—”
“Don’t be dramatic, Blake. Come on,” Dad cut in, sighing as Mom said, “That’s what he does.”
My vision re-focused with a crystal-clear view of what my life had been like. We’re all taught that our parents are here to protect us, pat us on the back, and tell us how proud they are to call us theirs. To ensure that we grow into happy, confident adults. But my parents never did, and I am the miserable, broken result of that.
Now, I’m blue. And I’m pink. I can fight, and I can love, and I decided then that I would fight them. And maybe, despite it all, I could learn to forgive them. But I couldn’t see any room for love.
“I’m hanging up,” I announced calmly.
“Okay, that’s a good idea,” Dad said. “Maybe we’ll come over for dinner—”
“No,” I interrupted. “You won’t. Neither of you are welcome in my house for the foreseeable future. I’ll see Jake on Sunday.” And I hung up.
***
“Hi, Blake, what can I do for you?”
Dr. Travetti’s voice was a lifejacket held too far from my reach. I coached my breaths in and out of my lungs until I could reply. “Hey, Doc. Sorry to disturb your shopping day.”
She laughed lightly. “Don’t apologize. I do all my Black Friday shopping online.”
“Smart.”
There was a brief lull as I struggled to find the words I needed to say and how to say them. The more I struggled, the more I wondered why I had called her at all. What the hell was she even going to do for me? What was she going to tell me that I didn’t already know myself?
I tipped my head back against the kitchen wall and eyed the shelf of liquor bottles. The numbness kept within the multicolored vessels pulled at me with a temptation I’d never known before. It worried me, how desperate I was to succumb to the black nothingness, but what worried me more was to allow this pain to swallow me alive.
“Blake?”
I cleared my throat and replied, “Yeah, Doc?”
“Are you okay?”
“Would I call you if I was?”
“Fair point,” she said, immediately sympathetic in her tone. “What’s going on? Is it your girlfriend?”
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Girlfriend. Dr. Travetti had been the only one to call Audrey my girlfriend in the time we’d been seeing each other. It was nice; it made me smile, even now.
“Nah,” I said, shaking my head and wishing she had never left me alone. “I haven’t fucked that up yet, apparently. She loves me.”
“She told you that?”
“Yeah …” Fuck. My eyes watered, remembering the moment from last night.
“Oh, Blake,” Dr. Travetti said, her tone lilting whimsically. Chicks fucking love romance. “That’s so wonderful. You have no idea how happy I am for—”
“My parents signed the papers to send Jake away,” I cut in. Because while Audrey’s love for me was certainly worthy of joy, there was a greater, darker force looming over my head, robbing me of all the light I’d recently found in my life. “They didn’t even fucking talk to me like they said they would.”
“I don’t know what to say, Blake.” My heart felt the burden of her tone, coated so heavily in sympathy. “I’m so sorry.”
“I got into a fight with my mother last night and went to Audrey’s, because I didn’t want to be alone,” I went on, eyeing a particularly appealing bottle of vodka. “But today, she went shopping with her mom, so I came home. I ended up calling my parents to apologize for last night and to try and work this shit out—”
“That’s something the old Blake wouldn’t have done,” she commented, speaking to me like a proud mama.
“Yeah, well,” I snickered sardonically, “I wish I hadn’t. ‘Cause you know what I learned today, Doc?”
“What’s that?”
That bottle was looking more and more like a thing of need. “My mother despises me. And get this—she blames me. How fucking funny is that? All this time, I’ve been blaming myself, and it turns out, she’s been doing the same fucking thing.”
“How do you know this?” Dr. Travetti asked, speaking slowly and eerily calm.
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