“I’m good,” I managed to lie to them. I heard Mom’s sigh of relief. “I’ll be out in a few.”
I could almost feel Dad’s hand on my shoulder, trying to bring me comfort. “All right, Son. We’ll be right here when you’re ready. We’re not going anywhere.”
Elizabeth had said she would meet me at Mr. Henson’s shop the next day, but at the last minute she had a change of plans. Five days passed without us actually speaking. Her window blinds had been drawn all week, and whenever I knocked on her door, it seemed as if she was on her way out, or simply pretending I didn’t exist.
I stopped in at Savory & Sweet to see if she was working and ran into Faye yelling at a customer about how the scrambled eggs were not super runny. “Faye, hey,” I said, interrupting her argument.
She twisted around on her heels and placed her hands on her hips. I could see the uncertainty in her eyes. The last time we’d seen each other was when I attacked Tanner at the bar, and I could tell she was still unsure how to address me. I’d been hearing everyone in town whispering about me, and I was sure lies had somehow crawled their way into Faye’s eardrums.
“Hey,” she replied.
“Is Elizabeth working today?”
“She’s out sick…she has been for a few days.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Why didn’t you just walk next door and check on her? Did you guys get into a fight or something?” She tensed up. “Is she okay?”
“We didn’t get into a fight. At least, I don’t think we did. She just…” I brushed my finger under my nose and cleared my throat. “She’s just not talking to me, and I’m not sure why. Did she happen to say anything to you? I know you’re her best friend and…”
“I think you should go, Tristan.” I could tell she didn’t believe me. I could tell she didn’t believe that I hadn’t hurt Elizabeth from the way every inch of her was alarmed.
I nodded, and as I opened the door to step outside, I paused. “Faye, I love her. I get why you’re wary of me, and I understand why you might even hate me. For a long time I was a monster. After Jamie and Charlie died, I turned into this beast that I didn’t even recognize. I’m sorry if I scared you the night of her birthday party, and I’m sorry I snapped, but…I would never hurt her. She’s…” I pressed my fist against my mouth and bit the inside of my cheek to keep my emotions at bay. “Last year I died right alongside my wife and kid. I checked out of reality and left this world. I was fine being gone, because being alive hurt; it hurt every fucking day. Then Lizzie came and even though I was the walking dead, she saw past it. Even though I was death, she took the time to resuscitate me. She breathed life back into my soul. She brought me back from the shadows. Now she’s not answering my calls or looking my way. I’m falling apart because I think she’s hurting and I can’t help her breathe like she helped me. So yeah, you should hate me. Please, hate the living shit out of me. I deserve it, and because of Elizabeth I can handle it. I’m alive again. But if you could just do me a favor and go check on her, if you could help her breathe for a little while, that would mean the world to me.”
I walked out of the café and stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets.
“Tristan!” I turned around to see Faye staring my way. Her eyes were softer. Her strong stance was a mere memory.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll check on her,” she promised. “I’ll help her.”
When I headed to Mr. Henson’s shop, I saw Tanner through the window, which made me hurry over. I knew he was probably giving Mr. Henson a hard time about selling his shop again. I wished the dude would give him a break.
“What’s going on?” I asked, the bell over the door sounding off.
Tanner turned to me with a sly smile on his face. “Just talking business.”
I looked at Mr. Henson, who was red in the face. He hardly ever got upset, but I could tell Tanner had said something that bothered him. “Maybe you should go, Tanner.”
“Give me a break, Tristan. I was just having a friendly chat with Mr. Henson here.” Tanner picked up a deck of tarot cards and started shuffling them in his hand. “You think you can do a reading for me real fast, Mr. Henson?”
My friend stayed quiet.
“Tanner, leave.”
He smirked and leaned in toward Mr. Henson. “You think the reading will say that you’re giving me this space? Is that why you won’t do it? You don’t want to see the truth?”
My hand landed against Tanner’s shoulder, and he flinched. Good. The way he was belittling Mr. Henson had my blood boiling. “It’s time for you to go.”
Mr. Henson sighed with relief at me taking hold of the situation, and he walked off toward the back room.
Tanner slung my hand off and dusted off his outfit. “Chill out, Tristan. I was just having fun with the old man.”
“You need to go.”
“You’re right, I do. Some people have real jobs to do. But hey, I’m glad to hear that you and Liz were still able to work things out after she told you about the accident. That’s cool. I mean, hell, you’re a better person than me. I don’t think I could even deal with being around a person who was involved in such a thing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He arched an eyebrow. “You mean, you don’t know? Shit…Liz said she told you.”
“Told me? Told me what?”
“That her husband was the one driving the car that slammed into your family’s car.” He narrowed his eyes. “She really didn’t tell you?”
My throat dried out, and part of me considered that he could be lying. Tanner hated me because I loved Elizabeth. He was a sneaky asshole who made it his job to get underneath people’s skin, and now he was determined to get underneath mine.
The last thing he said was that he was sorry and hadn’t meant to start any trouble. He said he was happy that Elizabeth and I had found each other. He said all he wanted was for her to be happy, but I knew that all his words of comfort were full of shit.
That night, I sat on my bed with my cell phone in my hand, and I called my Dad. I didn’t say a word when he answered, but hearing his voice was good. It was needed.
“Tristan,” he said. I could almost hear the relief in his tones. “Hey, Son. Mom said you called her a while back and didn’t speak. She was also convinced that she ran into you when she went to Meadows Creek to see the market, but I thought it was just her mind playing tricks on her.” He paused. “You’re not going to talk, are you?” He paused again. “That’s fine. I’ve always been a bit of a talker.”
That was a lie—Dad had always been the quiet one of my parents, much more of a listener. I put the phone on speaker and lay back on my bed, closing my eyes as Dad caught me up on everything I’d missed. “Your grandparents are in town staying with your mom and me, and I think it’s safe to say they are driving me crazy. They are having their house remodeled, and your mom thought it would be a good idea to have them stay at our place. They’ve been here for three weeks already, and I’ve been through more gin than I thought humanly possible.
“Oh! And your mom somehow talked me into taking a workout class with her because she worries about my healthy diet of Doritos and soda. So I showed up to the class—turned out I was the only man there. I ended up doing Zumba for an hour straight. Lucky for me my hips don’t lie and I was a natural.”
I snickered.
He talked to me late into the night as I moved from room to room, listening to him tell me stories, listening to him talk about sports and how the Packers were still the top team in the NFL. At one point he cracked open a beer, and I opened one too. It almost felt as if we were drinking together.
When it was past midnight, he told me he needed to get to bed. He told me he loved me and would always be on the other end of the line if I ever just needed someone to talk my way.
Right before I went to hang up, my lips parted. “Thanks, Dad.”
I heard his voice crack and emotion take over him. “Anytime, Son. Call wheneve
r you need to, day or night. And when you’re ready to come back, we’ll be here. We’ll be right here when you’re ready. We’re not going anywhere.”
The world needed more parents like mine.
36
Elizabeth
“You have four seconds to open this door before I come busting in to find you, woman!” Faye shouted on my front porch. When I opened the door, she gasped. “For the love of God, when was the last time you showered?”
I was wearing pajamas, my hair was in the messiest bun of the century, and my eyes were swollen. I raised my arm a little and smelled my underarm. “I put on deodorant.”
“Oh, honey.” She frowned, stepping into my living room. “Where’s Emma?”
“Friday night sleepover,” I explained, plopping down on the couch.
“What’s going on, Liz? Your boyfriend came into the café saying you haven’t been talking to him. Did he hurt you?”
“What? No. He’s…he’s perfect.”
“Then why the silent treatment? Why do you look like a homeless person?” She sat down next to me.
“Because I can’t talk to him anymore. I can’t be with him.” I went on to tell her about the accident, to explain why things with Tristan couldn’t work out. The seriousness that filled her stare was something I didn’t get often from Faye, which attested to how serious and real the situation was.
“Sweetie, you have to tell him. He’s falling apart trying to figure out what he did wrong.”
“I know. It’s just…I love him. And I know because of this, I’ll lose him.”
“Listen, I don’t know much about love, and when my heart was broken, I threw shit. Literally threw shit. After I got done throwing the shit, I was still heartbroken and sad. Someone told me that the heartbreak was worth it, because in the end at least you got to experience the love.”
I nodded and lay down, my head in her lap. “When does life stop hurting?”
“When we learn to tell life to fuck off and we find the littlest reasons to smile.”
“I’m sorry Matty broke your heart.”
She shrugged, pulling my hair tie out of my hair before starting to comb her fingers through it. “It’s okay. He only cracked it a little. So, what are we going to do for the rest of the night? We can be totally girly and watch The Notebook or some shit, or…we can order pizza, get some beer, and watch Magic Mike XXL.”
Magic Mike won.
The next afternoon, Emma and I walked into Needful Things to find Tristan smiling behind the coffee counter. “Hey, you guys!” he said with the widest grin ever.
“Hey, Tick!” Emma exclaimed, climbing up into one of the chairs.
He bent down and bopped her on the nose. “Hey, Tock. Hot cocoa?”
“With extra marshmallows!” she yelled.
“With extra marshmallows!” he echoed, turning away. His happy demeanor was a bit off-putting. I wasn’t sure what it meant, or how to take it. We hadn’t spoken in days, yet he was acting as if everything was perfect. “Elizabeth, can I get you something?”
He’d called me Elizabeth, not Lizzie.
“Just water,” I said, sitting beside Emma. “Is everything okay?” I asked him as he poured me a glass of water and handed Emma her ‘semi-hot’ cocoa, which he always added a few ice cubes to. She hopped out of her chair and hurried over to find Zeus.
“Everything’s fine. Everything’s good.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We should talk. I know you’re probably upset because I’ve been avoiding you…”
“Have you?” He smirked. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yeah, it’s just—”
He started wiping off the counter. “That your husband killed my family? Yeah, no, that’s cool.”
“What?” My throat tightened and my ears rang as I replayed the words that had just left his mouth. “How did you…?”
“Your best friend Tanner stopped in for a bit yesterday. He wanted to, you know, try to talk Mr. Henson into closing his shop. So then he and I had a talk. He thought it was sweet how I was able to look past the fact that, you know, your husband killed my family.”
“Tristan.”
He placed the rag down on the counter, stood across from me, and leaned in. “How long have you known?”
“I—I wanted to tell you.”
“How long?”
“Tris…I didn’t know…”
“Dammit, Elizabeth!” he shouted, slamming his fist down. Emma and Mr. Henson turned toward us with looks of curious concern. He was quick to usher Emma into the back room. “How long? Did you know when you told me you loved me?”
I stayed quiet.
“Did you know at the wedding?”
My voice shook. “I thought…I thought I would lose you. I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”
He smiled a tight grin and nodded. “Awesome. That will be two dollars and twenty cents for the hot cocoa.”
“Let me explain.”
“Two-twenty, Elizabeth.”
His stormy eyes were cold once again. There was a coldness I hadn’t seen in his stare since the first day I’d met him. I reached into my pocket, pulled out some change, and placed it in front of me. Tristan picked up the money and tossed it into the cash register.
“We’ll talk later this week,” I said, my voice shaky. “If you let me, I’ll explain everything the best I can.”
His back was to me, and he gripped the countertop by the coffee machines. His head lowered, and I could see how red his hands were turning from his tight hold. “You need anything else?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then by all means, stay the fuck out of my life.” Tristan dropped his hold on the counter, called for Zeus, who came running out toward him, and then the two of them left the store, the overhead bell sounding their exit. Mr. Henson and Emma came out from the back room.
“What happened?” Mr. Henson asked, walking over to me. He placed a comforting hand on my shoulder, but it didn’t stop my shaking body.
“I think I just lost him.”
37
Tristan
April 7th, 2014.
Goodbye.
I stood on the hilltop in the far back of the cemetery with Zeus by my side. Everyone else stood around the side-by-side caskets, all dressed in black, with tears in their eyes. Mom’s body shook in Dad’s hold. All of Jamie’s and my friends stood by, brokenhearted.
Charlie’s teacher showed up and cried the whole time.
She was probably thinking that it was so unfair. It was so unfair that Charlie would never have the chance to learn how to handle fractions or what algebra was. That he would never learn to drive stick. That he would never have to apply to college or fall in and out of love. That he would never slow dance with his mother at his wedding. That he would never get to introduce me to his first born. That he would never get the chance to say goodbye…
I wiped my eyes and sniffled as Zeus moved closer to me and laid his head on my shoe.
Dammit, I couldn’t breathe.
They lowered Jamie into the ground first and my legs wobbled.
“Don’t go…” I whispered.
They lowered Charlie next.
“No…” I begged.
My legs collapsed. I fell to the ground and my hands covered my mouth as Zeus comforted me, licking my tears away, trying to make me believe that it was okay, that I was okay, that everything would somehow, someway, turn out okay.
But I didn’t believe him.
I should’ve walked down and stood by my parents, but I didn’t. I should’ve told both Jamie and Charlie I loved them both so fucking much, but my voice went mute.
I stood and turned away, Zeus’s leash wrapped tightly in my grip.
I turned away from Jamie.
I walked away from my son.
And I learned how much it hurt to finally have to say goodbye.
“So you’re running,” Mr. Henson said to me a week later as I parked in front of his store to say our final goodbye.
I shrugged. “Not running. Just moving on. Things come and go; you should know that better than anyone.”
He brushed his fingers against his gray beard. “But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re not moving on, you’re running again.”
“You don’t understand. Her husband—”
“Is not her.”
“Mr. Henson…”
“My former love adored magic. He spent our whole life together trying to get me to support his dream of opening a tarot shop in this town. He believed in the power of energy, in the healing power of crystals. He believed magic had a way to make life more livable. I thought he was insane. I worked a nine to five job and hardly paid any attention to him. I called his dreams of owning his own shop ridiculous. We were already two gay men—life was already hard enough for us. The last thing we needed to be was two gay men who believed in magic.
“And then one day, he left. At first it seemed so out of nowhere, but as time went on, I realized it had been all my own doing. I hadn’t valued him when I’d had him, so when I lost him, it hit me hard. After he left, I felt so alone; I realized he had probably always felt that way. No one should feel alone when they are in love. I quit my job and tried to make his dream of magic come to life. I studied the power of crystals and the healing herbs. I worked hard to understand his dreams, and by the time I did, it was too late. He had moved on to someone who loved him in the moment.
“Don’t turn away from Liz because of something she didn’t have anything to do with. Don’t walk away from a chance at happiness because of an accident. Because at the end of the day, it’s not about the tarot cards, or the crystals, or the special teas. That’s not where the magic lives. The magic is in the tiny moments. The small touches, the gentle smiles, the quiet laughs. The magic is about living for today and allowing yourself to breathe and be happy. My dear boy, to love is the magic.”
The Elements Series Complete Box Set Page 21