The Secrets We Keep

by Kimberly Blackadar

3. Sunday

  Knock. Knock. Ding-dong. Knock. Knock. Knock. Ding-dong. The cacophonous “Front Door Overture” ends my night of sleep, and after a few melodious movements, I give up on Courtney answering it. I shuffle into the foyer, grumble-mumbling, but my attitude changes when I see the smiling face pressed against the glass.

  I swing open the door. “Wow, this is a surprise!”

  “I know. Isn’t it great?” My good friend Chloe enters, smiling, and pauses to hug me. Her blonde curls thrive in the humidity, and even without a trace of make-up, she exudes natural beauty. Her boyfriend Rob follows behind her; he skips the hug and just grins at me, his dimples sinking into his cheeks.

  “Shouldn’t you guys be at church?” I ask.

  “We went to the early service,” Rob answers, and Chloe adds, “Yeah, the very, very early service. We were, like, the only people there who were not alive during the Hoover administration.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” I say with a smirk, trying to run through the president song in my head.

  Rob glances at his watch. “But we have to get back for youth group—which means we’ll leave in five hours and about twenty-five minutes.”

  “And how many seconds, Rob?” Chloe gibes.

  Rob just frowns, yet I produce a soft laugh.

  Rob and Chloe have this strange dynamic. It must come from growing up together, almost as close as siblings, which means they know the best ways to annoy one another.

  “I wish you guys could stay longer,” I say.

  Chloe echoes my sentiments. “Me too.” She thumbs at Rob. “But Mr. Responsibility says we have to go to youth group tonight.”

  Rob runs his fingers through his dark auburn hair. “Since when is responsibility a bad thing?”

  “When,” Chloe begins, narrowing her pale blue eyes at him, “it interferes with girl time.”

  “Fine, Chlo.” He sighs. “Then we’ll just skip it tonight.”

  “No, no, Rob,” Chloe begins, “that wouldn’t be right either.”

  He shakes his head. “See, Callie, I can’t win, can I?”

  “No, you can’t,” I remind him—as if he already didn’t know.

  Rob heads over to the couch and gets acquainted with the remote control; Chloe and I move into the kitchen, leaning on opposite counters.

  “How are you doing?” Chloe asks.

  “Better…now that you’re here.”

  “Sorry about Mike,” she offers with sweet sincerity.

  “Yeah, well, I’m over it.”

  “Hmm,” she begins, “sometimes it helps to get away from everything.” Chloe smiles slightly, and I know she understands. After the rape, she ran off to her grandmother’s house in Kentucky. She left everything—including Rob—for nearly a month.

  I move closer to her. “And how are you doing?”

  “The truth?” She glances over her shoulder at her ESPN-watching boyfriend. “We had a rough morning.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Her eyes drift toward Rob again.

  “You wanna’ talk outside?” I ask quietly.

  We slip through the family room and head out the sliding glass door. I sit down on a chaise lounge on the patio and pat the other side of the chair. Chloe takes the seat next to me.

  “So what’s going on?” I ask.

  “Rob and I fought the whole way here.”

  “About?”

  “About something our pastor said.”

  “Really?”

  She nods. “Pastor Mark was preaching on forgiveness and letting go of the past. And Rob took it as a cue to discuss everything.” She turns and looks at me with sad eyes. “So for the entire ride here, we had the same wonderful conversation we used to have—the one we always had before I left for Kentucky.” She pauses and turns completely toward me. “Cal, he still wants to talk about what happened, and I just want to forget it. And he won’t let it go. He says he feels like he can’t love me, all of me, if there is a part of me that he doesn’t know. And I keep telling him: I want him to love me for the things I have chosen, not for the things I have not.” She looks down, twisting the Claddagh ring. Rob gave her the family heirloom for her seventeenth birthday. “I know we’ll be okay. It’s just so hard right now. I don’t want to fight with him, but I’m not ready to talk about it either.”

  I put my arm around her and draw her closer to me. Her head falls to my shoulder, and I know Rob is behind the sliding glass door. He is the audience of one, watching the silent movie. “He means well, Chlo.”

  “I know, but…” She pauses and glances back at her boyfriend. “It’s just that…”

  “It would be easier to talk if he weren’t right behind us,” I finish.

  She taps the glass and waves goodbye to Rob, and we take the short walkway down to the beach, finding a wide expanse of sand where birds outnumber the people. We amble along the water’s fluctuating edge, chatting about nothing for a few moments, until I broach the topic again. “Have you tried to tell him how you feel?”

  “No,” she pauses, “I just say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’”

  “You know what? We should create a T-shirt that says that.” I gesture across my chest. “I don’t want to talk about it!”

  “Yeah,” Chloe agrees. “We could get it in lots of different styles and colors because I could wear it every day.”

  “My mom is the worst.”

  “Yeah, mine too,” Chloe agrees. “Just this morning, my mom fixed me a bowl of cereal with ‘Is everything okay, dear? Is there anything you want to talk about?’”

  “That’s why I avoid my mom at all costs,” I blurt out. “She’s going to therapy, like, ten times a week, and then she tries to use it all on me.”

  “I hate therapy.”

  “But you still go, right?”

  Chloe sighs. “Yeah.”

  “Does it help?”

  “A little,” she admits softly, “but I just hate how they dig inside you and pull it all out of you. Therapists are like pirates searching for buried treasure. Arrgh, matey.” She steps forward, winks, and wavers a fist in the air.

  I start to laugh.

  “Yeah, it’s total torture,” she begins, “like Chinese water torture. Just put someone in a room with a therapist, asking ‘And how does that make you feel?’ over and over and over again.” She steps in front of me, her blue eyes like saucers. “I want to get into my therapist’s face and ask her, ‘And how does that make you feel?’”

  “I dare you to do it,” I tease since our friendship has always contained a truth-or-dare element to it.

  “Nah,” she begins. “I just give the therapist exactly what she wants to hear, so she’ll tell my parents what they want to hear. I don’t want to badmouth therapy, but all I need is time, which is something I don’t have,” she pauses, exhaling deeply, “especially with Rob.”

  I press, “Have you asked him to stay—to go to school around here rather than Georgetown?”

  She shakes her head, sadly. “I can’t. If he stayed, then he would probably resent me for giving up his dream. If he didn’t stay, then I would feel…”

  “Rejected?” I fill in.

  “Bingo,” she says, turning toward me. “It’s so easy to talk to you, you know that?” She pauses, spreading her hand across the air. “A true friend is better than therapy.”

  “That would go nicely on a coffee cup.”

  “With a T-shirt and a cup, we’re in business, my friend,” she adds with an adorable laugh. We stroll on, the sun climbing in the morning sky on a ladder of wispy clouds, and I am so glad she is here. She is the most sincere of all my friends—like a little slice of genuine in a pie of fakeness.

  I walk closer to her. “Seriously, Chlo, you and Rob will be okay.”

  “I hope so.”

  I drape an arm around her shoulders. “I know so, and it’s because of what you have.”

  She lifts her hand, the golden band glinting in the sun. “His family’s ring?”


  “Yeah, but more than that,” I pause. “You two have an amazing love story.”

  “But even amazing love stories can have bad endings.”

  “In English class,” I return, speaking her language and thinking about Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter or Wharton’s House of Mirth from Am Lit last year.

  “Yeah, and literature is a reflection of reality. How many books, beyond the fairy tales and formulaic romance novels, end in happily ever after? That’s because the great novels of the literary canon paint a truer, albeit more tragic, depiction of love.”

  “You lost me at ‘Yeah, and…,’” I tease.

  She slides over for a shoulder shove. “Thanks so much, Cal.”

  “For the insult?”

  “No, for the talk.”

  “Hey, any time,” I begin. “It’s cheaper than therapy, right?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Chloe turns toward me, dipping into the serious zone. “So, uh, how are you doing?”

  “Um,” I begin with a broad smile. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  We giggle at our newest inside joke and pivot in the sand, stepping intermittently in our own footsteps as we head back to Courtney’s house. We switch to superfluous subjects like music, movies, and the friends who are not here with us, and even though Chloe deserves the truth, I really don’t want to talk about my life right now—especially the part about moving to another state, miles from my closest friends. I don’t want to tell her because tears—and not laughter—would fill the rest of our day together.

  When we enter the beach house, we find Rob in front of the TV, still, and Courtney rising from the couch with a plan. “Okay,” she starts, “I was thinking—”

  “Ooh, that can’t be good,” I say, waiting for the gory details.

  “We should do a photo shoot.” Courtney grabs her phone off the coffee table and drops it in Rob’s lap. “You take the pictures while we pose like models. Fun, right?”

  “Huh?” comes from the appointed photographer.

  “C’mon, Rob.” Chloe peels off her sundress, revealing a white bikini, and like magic, Rob Callahan bolts for the door.

  We act sexy on the sand.

  We act silly in the water.

  We waste a half hour before Rob walks up to me, handing me his phone. “Our turn.”

  Rob slips off his shirt, revealing all his hotness, and we “ooh” obnoxiously at him. “C’mon, Chlo.” He takes her hand and guides her into the shallow water. He turns toward her and holds her face. Click. He says something with a soft smile, and she rests her hands on his shoulders. Click. He waits, and she leans in, placing a kiss on his cheek. Click. Slowly, they decrease the distance and settle into a longer embrace. Click. A moment passes, she tilts her head toward him and he meets her with an amazing kiss. Click. I turn the camera and get a vertical shot. Click. I zoom in, taking a close-up. Click.

  The moment is beautiful.

  I imagine it in black and white, then sepia, and my heart tingles with warmth, and I decide the picture would make a fine cover for a romance novel—one with an exceedingly happy ending. Like the ones you don’t read—but dream about—in English class.

  *****