Year 28

by JL Mac

  Because this is what you do to me. Because I feel out of place and at home at the same time. Because I’m still so mad at you. Because I’m confused.

  “Huh? I just need to eat something,” I lie as best as I can. He narrows his hypnotic eyes on me and I feel more bared to him than ever.

  “Why did you come visit me at the hospital?”

  The jig is up, Anxiety shouts, tossing her hands up. Negativity, Self-Loathing and Regret all shake their heads at me.

  Lie and get out of there, Self-Preservation coaches.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sylas.” I shake my head and do my best to deceive him.

  “Bullshit, Snow. Morphine or not, I saw you.”

  “No, you must have been imagining things because of the painkillers or the head injury.”

  “No. I know the difference. When I saw you at my farewell ceremony, I admit that was my imagination. I was scared and picturing you there to see me off made me feel better.” He nods and swallows roughly. “On the flight over to hell from the states? My imagination. My first firefight? Imagination. In the village where my closest friends died? Imagination. The convoy I was on that went to shit? Imagination. In the goddamn sand where I landed, bleeding after I was blown out of the Humvee? Imagination. In the chopper when the chest tube slipped out and they were barely able to get it back in place just as I was suffocating? Yeah… all of that was my imagination but at Walter Reed? No. It was you. I saw you. I felt you,” he says through clenched teeth grabbing my hand and holding my palm against his chest. My chin dips so I am hanging my head. My lip wobbles and I bite it down.

  “Why?”

  “I had to make sure you were going to be okay,” I admit with as much indifference in my tone as I can manage. I sound convincing enough to my own ears but my insides creak as they coil and knot.

  “Yeah? Tell me, what’s the verdict, Raegan?” he says looking around at the wedding we’re both caught up in. Friends and family we’ve known for our whole lives are dancing, chatting and enjoying champagne, oblivious to the faceoff taking place at the center of the dance floor. “Am I okay?” he asks quietly, tightening his grip on my hip, pinning me with a look that has my inner circle shrinking away. I bite my tongue until the slight taste of blood coats my mouth. In response to my silence Sylas snorts his disappointment with a shake of his head.

  “Here’s a little newsflash for you. I’m not okay, not since you sent everything up in flames,” he says defeated. “And neither are you,” he declares, dropping my hand as though I’ve burned him. “Pretending to hate me convinces no one, least of all me,” he says. “And you’re still a sucker for a good cause because if you weren’t you wouldn’t have come to see me in the hospital and you wouldn’t have helped my folks while they were there. See you tomorrow,” he says in a way that leaves little room for argument. Then he’s gone, leaving me on the dance floor alone with the last notes of the love song drawing out beautifully slow and haunting, but over nonetheless.

  Raegan

  3 years before…

  I mindlessly slide the pad of my thumb over the screen of my cellphone, just waiting for something worth looking at on Twitter to pop out at me. I’ve been a ball of nerves since I was given the chance to fill in as deputy campaign manager for Congressman Cline’s campaign. If I have any hopes of securing a lead as Campaign manager for anyone in the future, now is the time to carve out a reputation for myself. Nothing else matters. The sudden buzzing of my phone and my mom’s contact image on the screen gives me a jolt. I pause deciding if I am in the mood to discuss the Big Stink, as it has been coined, Phyllis and Monica made at the town fair last weekend. The story is developing and Mom’s committed reporting on it would have anyone else sitting on the edge of his or her seat but I don’t actually care that Phyllis is kinda-sort-of-maybe-possibly-for-sure fucking Monica’s husband, Jeff. Nor do I care that Monica snatched Phyllis’s new wig right off her head right in front of the crawfish boil pavilion last Saturday with basically all of Palmetto on the scene. Though I did find that bit rather funny. I swipe my thumb at the screen ignoring her call. My phone immediately begins buzzing again and alarm simmers in my blood. My mother likes to chat and gossip and speculate but if I ignore her call, she doesn’t immediately call back. In an hour, yeah maybe but not right away. I swipe the screen, accepting the call.

  “Hey, Momma.”

  “Rae,” she says in a voice softened by distress that rings out clear though her tone is low. This… this I have heard from her.

  “Is something wrong?” I ask her but it’s mostly rhetorical because I can feel it in my bones—something imminent and life altering similar to the knock on the front door when I was seventeen that had been two strangers coming to inform us that Teddy was dead, killed overseas when a mortar landed inside the wire and sent shrapnel slicing through his flesh. He had been conscious they later said, aware even, but he needed more blood than they had available. My big brother, Theodore Lincoln Potter simply bled to death in a foreign land far away from the people who loved him most.

  “I—I wanted to let you know before the word gets out on the Internet… Audrey thought it would be best for me to call you…” Those words send an artic chill through my bones.

  Audrey Broussard. Sy’s momma.

  A knowing sense of anxiety washes over me and though my brain fights against what she’s about to say, my gut knows what’s coming. My heart stops its gallop and awaits the blow I can feel coming.

  Not Sy.

  Not Sy.

  Please, not Sy.

  “Momma, what’s happened?” my accent turns up, thick and distinct.

  “It’s Sylas. He—they said—the Marines called Audrey—”

  “Momma, just say it,” I whisper shakily, not caring that my newly appointed assistant is blanched white and staring at me with frightened wide eyes.

  “He’s been hurt real bad. The man on the phone said it was an incident, but he didn’t say much more beyond that. That’s all we know right now. Audrey was told they were going to be transporting him to Walter Reed in Bethesda as soon as he is stable enough to make the trip.”

  Stable enough?

  “But he’s alive? I question desperately, needing to clarify that point.

  “As far as we know, yes. He’s hanging on,” her voice cracks and she whimpers. If this news is traumatic for me, I can’t imagine how it is hurting momma. She lost Teddy, her son, overseas and I imagine this news is really wreaking havoc on her emotionally. Selfishly though, my brain only has room to focus on Sylas and myself. My Sylas.

  “My god,” I murmur through shaking fingers pressed against my mouth. “I’ll call you back,” I blurt out then end the call. Suddenly I’m seventeen again and confused by everything, doubting myself and knowing only one thing for certain and that is that Sylas Broussard is all I have ever wanted. Still is. And the idea of losing him forever makes me feel itchy and nauseous, scared and helpless to fix anything. All at once this life feels like a violent sea that I’m bobbing around in, spluttering for air though I know there’s no lifeboat coming for me.

  It takes me half an hour to calm my shaking hands and my frazzled brain enough to even begin considering what has happened. Blessedly, the calculating bitch in me, Self-Preservation steps in and takes over for the girl I used to be. First things first. Intelligence. Find out what has happened. Second, a plan. Sy’s family will want to be with him and I can get them out to Bethesda quicker and sort accommodations on their behalf if need be. The hospital is only forty minutes away from my office. Third, execute. I land in my office chair roughly and shout for my assistant who discreetly slipped out of my office the minute I began crying.

  “Bethany! Get in here,” I shout. Two seconds later she scurries around the corner ready to sprout wings and fly should I ask her to.

  “Who do we know on retired General Reese’s staff?”

  “Um,” she blinks with her lips parted. I clap my hands then motion my hands forward,
urging her to think. “Okay, um, I—I just started seeing a guy whose ex-roommate is one of his Junior Staffers, Jared. He is a friend of Reese’s driver. They all do poker night together every once in a while.”

  “Call him, call them all, and trade your soul, my soul, whatever you must, but I need information on a Marine named Sylas Broussard who has been injured in Afghanistan and is awaiting transport to Walter Reed.”

  “Got it,” she says scribbling notes then rushes back to her desk.

  Four nerve wracking hours later with wheels thoroughly greased in exchange for plenty of promises and IOU’s I’m not even sure I can honor, I know that Sylas is set to arrive at Walter Reed the day after tomorrow as long as his condition remains stable. I also discovered that he was in a convoy of vehicles that was hit with a series of improvised explosive devices rigged in such a way that they detonate in a string like a length of firecrackers. He was blown from the vehicle and sustained life-threatening injuries according to my sources.

  Blown from the vehicle. His body, the same one I have kissed and held and loved and hated and missed so desperately—was violently blown from a big steel box on tires in a war zone. He was attacked, like Teddy, by people that want very badly to see him and his fellow brothers and sisters in arms dead.

  My throat closes and panic rises like a tsunami. Placing my head between my knees I close my eyes and work hard at breathing in a rhythm, which is no easy task considering the insurmountable torment pooling in my brain like poisoned waters.

  With the information we were able to gather clanging around in my brain I summon an image of Sylas, grinning like a loon just as he crawled out of the bayou, unafraid of the occasional gator or water moccasins, his body glistening with the salt water, his wavy hair weighed down and sticking to his head before he shakes it like a dog, flinging water all over me. Suddenly the image is of that same hair cropped short and smattered with blood. That same smile broken and turned down with fear, those dark eyes I loved so deeply open but wholly lifeless. I press the heel of my palms to my closed eyes and choke on the sob that those imaginings draw from me. It makes me think of Teddy and of his memorial service. It makes me recall how the shots fired rang and reverberated around us sending the birds in the trees scuttling away, their feathered wings rustling furiously as they made their escape. I wished very badly that day to be one of them. His burial, the shining white headstone that is supposed to be a comfort to talk to, but it isn’t. I visit Arlington every chance I get and I leave with an emotional hangover that usually lasts days on end. Can I survive that again? Could I live with myself—live this life if Sylas died? Every cell in my body knows that I could but I would not want to at all. I snag my bag from my desk and stuff a few things inside, then escape the office, batting my invisible wings. I need to be alone for the meltdown I can feel coming on.

  I cried for two days waiting for him to arrive—praying he’d arrive. The years we’ve spent estranged mingle with the years we shared growing up together and every decision I had ever made regarding Sylas Broussard is subject to my own harsh scrutiny with plenty of input from my inner circle.

  I fucked up.

  No. I did what I had to.

  I’m tainted and can never be with him.

  It’s his fault, anyway!

  He deserves better.

  We deserve us.

  What if he dies?

  My mind was a labyrinth of the worst brand of regret and fear. Two days of that madness was enough for a few lifetimes. The minute I got the word that he had made the trip I was finally able to pull myself together enough to orchestrate a solid plan that I could coordinate fairly easily. It isn’t unusual for politicians to visit Wounded Warriors in the hospital, often publicizing the visit for their own slimy benefit of course, and Cline was pleased with my idea to utilize a vacant block in his calendar to visit the hospital. He was tickled even, that I had organized the visit on my own and with impressive efficiency. He praised my “leadership capabilities.” Of course he has no idea that I cleared his schedule and I was highly motivated by the fact that Sylas is there. I gathered—with my mom’s help—that Audrey and Scott will probably be arriving in DC as soon as Sylas is received, assessed, and settled at the hospital. He arrived two hours ago which means I will be the first to see him… if I can manage access to his room—hell to the floor he’s on. I haven’t gotten that far but I am hoping that being in Cline’s camp as an official staffer, I’ll be able to squeak by unnoticed. I’m not at all above sneaking around in a housekeeping cart if that’s what I have to do. I need to see him. The sense of urgency I feel just to see him and make sure he’s okay with my own two eyes outweighs security concerns and our past and how we fell apart. It even outweighs the fact that being there amongst so many wounded will likely trigger unresolved grief I have battled since Teddy died. Still, I can’t imagine not getting in that hospital if only long enough to see that he is in fact alive. What’s pouring a little more gas on an already blazing emotional dumpster fire? A bigger dumpster fire, so what? I’ve been the same emotional dumpster fire for years now. I’m fine with the familiar scorching heat even if it does stink to the high heavens.

  A tiny voice in the back of my mind warns me I may not like what I see. It may be too much to handle. What if he never recovers? What will his quality of life look like if his wounds are as severe as I assume they must be? A vision of Sylas in a wheel chair snakes through my mind unbidden and I shake my head, willing it away. If he makes it through this will he be able to have kids? Sy always said he wanted kids and couldn’t wait to teach them everything he knows. What would it do to him if that dream vanished? It’s a topic I don’t wish to linger much on.

  Our camp—fifteen or so people largely composed of Cline’s public relations team and communications team—are en route to Walter Reed. The interior of this SUV feels too small. Everyone is chattering, monitoring social media, and doing other work-related tasks from their phones but I can’t bring myself to work. My mind is on the dark side of the moon trying desperately to recall every tiny detail about the last time I saw Sylas in person, which hadn’t been at all good. Or when I last touched his skin or listened to his heart beating with my ear pressed to his chest lying out on a blanket beneath the canopy of a huge magnolia at the edge of a secret bayou. It’s difficult to conjure good memories through the wealth of sadness, anxiety and trauma. Still… I try.

  I take my time in the shower washing off the heavy makeup and hairspray I was doused in for Ellie and Doug’s wedding. I try to let the shower relax my tensed muscles but no amount of scalding water could wash away the distress Sylas always seems to heap onto me. For over a decade he has haunted me and he hasn’t even had to invest any effort. So now? When he’s in my face and in my nose and ears and eyes with all his grown man allure, I’m not just haunted I’m possessed.

  Thinking back to when he was hurt and transported to Walter Reed to recover is an unsettling series of memories to visit. They drain me and as a rule I try to forget all about the time I saw Sylas close to death’s door in a hospital room over three years ago. I force myself out of the shower once the water begins to chill. I tie my robe around my body and go back to my old bedroom. I flip open my laptop and select my favorite playlist to relax to. I go about my nightly routine brushing my hair and checking emails, reviewing the calendar and scheduled events. I busy my mind reading campaign relevant news articles and making notes regarding each one. My phone buzzes on the nightstand and I lift it up to see a text from a number I don’t recognize.

  What’re you listenin’ to, Rae?

  My gut flips and my heart speeds just reading those five simple words. Only one person on the planet has ever made it a point to ask me what I’m listening to, especially before bed every night. “Dammit, Momma,” I curse, knowing Chick wasn’t exaggerating when he’d said she gives my information out to anyone from around here that asks for it.

  Back then the music I listened to was on the stupid iPod Classic I was forced i
nto shared ownership of. Now the music is on my cellphone or laptop. The device has changed but much of the music is the same. I’ll never tell anyone that though.

  Me: Who is this?

  You know who it is and before you ask how I got your number, your momma gave it to me.

  “But of course she did,” I mutter to myself. I take the time to pause there and save his phone number to my contacts. I tell myself that I am saving it so I can see whom to ignore when he calls or texts again. Right?

  Me: I see.

  Sylas: So what are you listening to?

  “Ugh!” I huff. Nope. Not playing his games. He doesn’t play fair. Never has. I press the button on my phone making the screen turn black and get back to my reading and composing two emails—one to Bethany and one to Dominic, my deputy campaign manager. Ten minutes later, my phone rings and being in a work related headspace I think little at all about answering it. I grab and answer in my typical business tone.

  “This is Raegan Potter,” I say without a trace of Louisiana in my voice.

  “You got good at hiding your roots didn’t you? Are you that embarrassed by them, Snow?” he says indifferently.

  “Sylas,” I say then inhale deeply, hating how the low tenor of his voice makes me feel warm and tingly all over.

  “So?”

  “So what?” I say short on patience with him but also secretly loving the sound of his voice in my ear.

  “What’re you listening to?”

  “How do you know I’m listening to anything at all, Sylas?”

  “Because old habits die hard, Rae,” he breathes, the low pitch of his voice making warmth unfurl deep in my stomach. “You always listened to music before bed. I’m betting you still do.”

  “‘Harvest Moon’ by Neil Young,” I begrudgingly admit.

  “Interesting. I’m listening to ‘I Lost A Friend’ by Finneas. Heard it?”

  “No. Anything else?”