“No. I wanted to be here when you woke up. Hunger pangs drove me out, though. You looked too peaceful to wake.”
“God, I’m sorry. I’m such an ass,” said Reilly. Guilt swept through her at the mention of the night before. Now she had caused Drew to miss her class. She wanted to bury herself under the blankets, but her hands were full.
“No biggie,” said Drew, biting into her burrito and groaning with pleasure.
“No biggie? That’s your livelihood and I—”
Drew stroked Reilly’s leg.
“No. Really. It’s okay,” she interrupted. “I called Fergie last night, after you fell asleep. She taught my classes.”
“Classes? As in plural? Shit. I hope you told her that it was my fault. I’ll pay her.” Reilly grimaced with guilt.
“Of course I didn’t tell her anything like that. And don’t worry about it. I wanted to be here with you,” said Drew, leaning closer to stroke Reilly’s face.
“I’m such a loser. You’re too good to me,” said Reilly closing her eyes at the touch.
“It’s easy to be good to you,” said Drew, and something in Drew’s voice made Reilly open her eyes. The way that Drew’s eyes pierced her made the skin on Reilly’s neck tingle. “I need to tell you something, though.”
Just like that, the mood switched, and a knot of apprehension tied itself around Reilly’s heart.
“What? Should I be scared?” asked Reilly, when Drew didn’t begin to speak immediately. Was she about to get broken up with? It had happened to her before, but she had never cared for anyone the way she cared for Drew. She couldn’t imagine that her life was about to cave in, that she was about to lose her.
“Scared? Of me? I hope not,” said Drew, with a nervous laugh.
“Are you having doubts? About us? I was a mess last night, I know—”
A look of comprehension fell over Drew’s face. She leaned toward Reilly and stroked her cheek.
“Baby, no. Last night has nothing to do with it. Well, other than making me see that I haven’t been… that I haven’t… What I’m trying to say is that any doubt I have isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
Reilly, who had begun to believe that maybe Drew wasn’t about to give her the brush off, couldn’t believe that Drew had just said those words to her. Everyone knew they were the segue into a break up.
“Whoa, ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’” said Reilly. She tried to swallow around her tightening throat. She wanted to cry, and she felt vulnerable sitting there with sleep-tousled hair and the forgotten food in her hands. Her stomach churned.
Drew took a sip of her tea and paused like she was gathering her thoughts.
“I don’t know how to begin,” she said, breathing out with a loud puff and running her fingers through her hair with what looked like anxious dread.
Reilly wanted to scream with the anticipation roiling in her. It took everything in her not to get up and pace to burn off some of her anxiety.
“I’ve lied to you, Reilly,” Drew finally said. Her eyes were downcast and she rolled the take out cup of tea between her hands. Reilly watched the strings from the teabags with the paper squares flare out.
“About what?” prodded Reilly when Drew didn’t continue, even though she didn’t want to know.
“About a few things. The tattoo—”
“We already covered that, Drew,” interrupted Reilly. “I don’t care about that.”
“I know. But you asked me how I knew Fergie, and I let you believe that she was just one of my students.”
“How is that a lie? She’s been coming to your class for years.”
“I started out as her student.”
“Okay. I’m not sure I get it,” said Reilly, a little surprised, but not sure why that would be a big deal. “Anyway, so what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Prison, Reilly. She teaches yoga in prison,” said Drew, finally meeting Reilly’s eyes.
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s where I met her. I was in prison, too. In Ral-Rutherford. Same as you.”
“What?” asked Reilly. Her growing impatience turned to confusion. She put her untouched burrito and cup of coffee on the table next to the bed.
“I should have told you. But I didn’t. And I had so many chances,” said Drew dropping her eyes to her lap again. “But I didn’t. Not when you saw Fergie in my class that day. Not when I was telling you that you needed to forgive yourself. Not last night… Not when it could have made you feel better to know that you weren’t alone with everything. There were a thousand opportunities, but I didn’t say anything, and then it got to where it seemed too hard to bring up, since I hadn’t earlier.”
Drew searched her eyes, and Reilly didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how she felt about Drew’s having been in prison. She certainly didn’t feel like she had any right to be appalled about it. And she wasn’t. It seemed so implausible, but even if it were true, Drew could never have committed anything as awful as what Reilly had done.
“When were you in?”
“I got out about a year before that night I first saw you at the club.” Drew met Reilly’s eyes and then dropped her gaze again.
“What were you in for?” asked Reilly, still unable to imagine Drew doing anything that would land her in jail.
“Drug trafficking,” replied Drew.
The answer surprised Reilly almost as much as it would have if Drew had admitted to murder.
“What kind of drugs?”
“Hash.”
“Hash,” repeated Reilly, trying to envision Drew as a drug dealer. She couldn’t see it.
“How long were you in for?”
“Almost two and a half years.”
“For hash?” asked Reilly unable to hide her incredulity. That was a year longer than the time she had done for murder. It didn’t sound right. “How much did you have? Was it a lot?”
Drew blew out a sigh and pushed her hand through her hair.
“I honestly don’t know what a lot is, but I do know that two kilos is enough to get you up to five years for a first offense.”
“How did they catch you?”
“They caught me coming in from Mexico. Bringing it over international borders made it a federal offense. Otherwise, I might have gotten a lighter sentence,” said Drew, talking to the cup that she continued to spin between her hands. With a quick glance at Reilly to judge her reaction, she continued. “I had to research all of this after I was arrested. Before that, my experience with drugs consisted of a single line of coke at a college party and a few hits of pot in high school. I didn’t even know what hash was until I looked it up. I mean, I knew it was a drug, but... God, listen to me. I can’t just say that I was in jail, too, and leave it at that. I’m not going to give you excuses. Anyway, I’m not exactly the person you probably think I am, Reilly. I’m not a drug dealer either. I’m not trying to defend myself. I just don’t want you to think I’m a terrible person. God, this isn’t coming out right.”
Drew spoke in a torrent. Reilly had never seen her so insecure. The confession was shocking, but most of all—and she felt guilty about it—she was relieved that Drew wasn’t breaking up with her. She felt selfish that she focused on that, since Drew’s secret seemed have been eating away at her, but it was true. She tried to suppress her own relief so that she could just be there for Drew.
“I already know that you are the least terrible person I have ever known, Drew,” said Reilly. She remembered how much better she had felt after telling Drew about Lydia Traynor coming to visit her in prison. “I’d like to hear about it, if you want to talk about it. I know how much better I felt after telling you about some of my stuff.”
Drew’s shoulders relaxed a little. She was quiet as she seemed to gather her thoughts. At first, she spoke in short bursts, but then it started to flow. Reilly laid a hand on her leg, but otherwise she just listened to Drew’s story.
“Amy was my girlfriend. We met at s
chool, in college. I fell for her the first time I saw her. She was the popular type. The kind who had both girlfriends and boyfriends. The kind who would flirt with anyone and everyone. We lived in the same dorms, so before we got together, I would see her around all the time. Everyone responded to her. Her professors, other students, baristas—Amy got so many free coffees, it was unreal.” Drew laughed at her memory, and then shook her head. “Later, I saw how many undeserved passing grades she got, as well. She was such a player. And a user. She used people to get what she wanted. But she did it just for fun, too. Just to see how far she could take it. Sometimes she would sleep with them, sometimes she wouldn’t. It depended on the person, or what she needed at the time. I had no clue back then, though. She enthralled me from the first minute I saw her in biology class. I had a crush on her for an entire semester before she even acknowledged me.
“I was still kind of figuring things out. Even though I was pretty sure that I was gay, I had only dated men, and it wasn’t doing much for me. I was taking a break from all of it and was trying to come to terms with things. But then I saw her and it cemented it for me. Still, months went by, and then one day she chose me. I still don’t know why she did, but she did. I didn’t have anything that she needed. She’d already slept with the professor for her grade in biology. She just seemed to notice me one day, and then we were together.
“I told myself that I knew what I was getting into. She never promised to be my girlfriend, and I never asked. I just knew that I was more attracted to her than I had ever been to anyone before, and that I felt it more and more every time we were together. I told myself that I was in it for the fun—and the sex. She helped me to figure out who I was. It was liberating and powerful. And for a little while, I felt like I was the special one, the one who might get to keep her. She never said it, but she acted like it, talked all around it, and I thought that she was starting to have real feelings for me. It was a wonderful, chaotic time.”
Reilly remembered her own experience of coming out and understood how consuming just the thought of kissing a woman could be—well, Imelda had been a girl just like her, not a mysterious co-ed, but she knew the feeling just the same. She squeezed Drew’s leg to let her know she was listening.
“The whirlwind made it easy for me to ignore a lot of things that she did. Drugs for one—it was mostly just recreational, so I justified it as youthful experimentation. Besides, I had smoked a few joints myself. Then there was the irritating fact that sometimes she had sex with other women—but we never declared that we were monogamous, so I ignored that too. She lied sometimes—but they were always little lies, never anything important, so I let that slide.” Reilly watched Drew’s eyes focus on an internal past as she paused. “The thing was, when she focused her attention on you, she made you feel like you were the only other person in her world. It made you forgive all the little things. I thought that I was in love with her. And like a fool I thought that she loved me, too.
“When she bought us tickets to Mexico to celebrate our graduation and my acceptance to graduate school, I was so certain that it meant that we were going to be together forever. It was a great time. We moved in together when we got back. I was ecstatic. We were together for a few years, all through grad school, and life was perfect. She was an awesome girlfriend—if I pretended that all that other stuff didn’t matter. So, we built our little life and things were great. When I passed my licensing exam, we went back to Mexico to celebrate.”
Drew paused for a moment, and a small smile softened her lips. Reilly saw that Drew was lost in the time that she spoke of. She had also heard the tone of old hurt in Drew’s voice, and it made her want to hold her. But she didn’t know if Drew wanted that, so she just sat and listened. Drew began again a moment later.
“We went down to San Carlos, Mexico. It was just as beautiful as I had remembered it. She knew some people down there and we stayed with them for a few days, just like the last time, but we traveled a little, too. While we stayed with her friends, she left me for a little while, but when I asked, she told me the less I knew, the better. I suspected that she was maybe sneaking off with one of the women we were staying with, and while I didn’t like it, she always came back to me, so, in a weird way, I thought that she was kind of protecting me. I pretended not to care.
“The day that we were to return to the States, we were at the airport about to check in. She said that she had left her wallet in the hotel room that we had stayed in the night before—“
“Oh,” said Reilly, suspecting she knew where Drew was going with her story.
“Yeah,” said Drew nodding her head. “The hotel was just down the road from the airport, but we were already cutting it close, so when I turned to leave with her, she convinced me to stay and check in for the flight, while she hurried back to the hotel. She left her bag with me so it wouldn’t slow her down. When I said that I would wait, she reminded me that I was starting my new job the next day and that I couldn’t afford to miss the flight. I had to agree. She told me that if she missed the plane that she would just get on the next one. Well, she didn’t make the plane.”
“I can totally see where this is going.”
“I’m taking too much time to tell the story, aren’t I?” asked Drew.
“No. Not at all,” said Reilly quickly, hoping that she hadn’t made Drew self-conscious.
“When I got off the plane in the States, I should have known something was up. I noticed several canine cops and guys in stereotypical plainclothes, trying to fit in. You know, khakis and navy blue polos.”
Reilly nodded though she had never given a thought to plain-clothed cops.
“I had seen enough television to look around me and wonder who on my flight had swallowed balloons of heroin. I was such an idiot. I never once thought that it was me they were looking for. I was clueless when the agent grabbed my arm as I lifted Amy’s bag from the belt—the bag that I had checked in as my own when Amy didn’t show up. I got a big clue when they sat me down in the interrogation room and pulled the two bricks of hash out of the bag, though.”
“I can imagine the shock you felt,” said Reilly, thinking how she had felt when she realized that there was a dead man under the sheet that morning on the beach. She could still feel the arctic chill that had filled her head and had made a slow descent down her body at the realization that she was involved in the death. She shuddered away the memories. It wasn’t the same thing, but she knew how it felt to have your world implode in an instant. “How much is two kilos?”
“About five pounds. It was compressed into the size of a couple of large bricks,” said Drew, holding her hands out to indicate how big one of them had been.
“You had no idea at all that it was in the bag?”
“None. I didn’t believe it, even when they took the drugs out of the bag right in front of me. It was the same bag Amy had carried on her back all through Mexico, but nothing in it was hers. Except the tee shirts, which we had bought at an outdoor store the day before we left. They were wrapped around the drugs. She was so adamant that I check the bag and not take it with me as a carry on.
“At first, I didn’t tell them it wasn’t my bag. I didn’t want to get Amy into trouble. I thought that there was some sort of mistake, that the drugs must have been put in the bag after I checked it in. But, when the prosecution’s first exhibit was a trail of time stamped videos showing the bag through check in all the way until I picked it up, I knew that I was screwed. Then there was the whole way that Amy just disappeared.”
“Disappeared? You never saw her again?”
Drew shook her head.
“I was actually worried that something had happened to her, and for whatever reason, she couldn’t contact me. At first, I agonized over the thought of her showing up on a later flight and not knowing where I was. It was worse when I imagined her in some jail cell, being subjected to the same things I was, and her not knowing that the reason that I wasn’t coming to see her was because I wa
s locked up, too. It seems stupid to me now. I called her mother and left a message to tell her where I was. That wasn’t a fun conversation, but at least she could have done the same. But she didn’t, and there I was, worrying about her.”
“How long did it take before you realized that she set you up?”
“I don’t think she intended for me to get caught. It was more that she let me assume all of the risk. But it wasn’t until I saw the video during the trial that it dawned on me. She had definitely let me take the fall. Up until then, I was certain that someone else had planted the drugs. I told my lawyer what had happened then, and he told me that it would do more harm than good to change my story halfway through the trial. That it would kill my credibility. Now that I look back, I don’t think that he believed me. Or he just didn’t care. He was court appointed and I was so young, stupid, and scared that I was just grateful to have a lawyer. I didn’t question his advice.”
“How could he not do anything? Didn’t he check into it? He just let your—Amy—get away with it?” Reilly was upset about the injustice of it all.
Drew shrugged her shoulders. Reilly couldn’t believe how accepting Drew was about the whole thing. It would have eaten her alive.
“They had someone to pin it on. I have no idea if they ever checked her out.”
“That’s incredible. And so messed up,” said Reilly. She was enraged for Drew and all that she had gone through. “So you did two and a half years after taking the fall for someone else?”
Drew nodded her head.
“Twenty-nine months, three days, and nineteen hours.”
“Have you ever tried to find her? Don’t you want to… to…” Reilly struggled to find the right word.
“Settle the score? Get revenge?” offered Drew.
“Yeah, settle the score,” said Reilly.
“At first, it kind of ate me up. I had fantasies of retribution. But, you know how prison is. You have a lot of time to think. And I realized that she already knew what had happened to me, and that she already felt whatever it was she was going to feel about what she had done to me—whether it was guilt, or relief at not having been caught—whatever it was. Nothing I could ever do or say would make what I went through go away. So I decided to not put any more negative energy into it.”
Life in High Def Page 30