by Jenn Cooksey
I pull the computer out and run my fingertips fondly over the top of it, remembering how much time Cole put into cracking its code. “Does this still work?”
He glances down and I can’t help noticing the chilliness in which he regards it with. “I have no idea. It did about four years ago, but it sorta became obsolete when I got an iPad so I just stuck it in there with all the rest of…his stuff.”
My eyes drop with the heavy weight of a name unspoken. “Do you ever think about him?” I ask, staring unseeing at articles of clothing, none of them significant enough for me to even remember them being worn. I look up at Cole on the step ladder now, frozen in place with a small carton of generic ornaments in his hand. He’s staring too, just into the depths of pine needles in front of him.
Then on a long-suffering sigh, his voice barely audible, he replies, “Every day.”
I never thought that out of the two of us, Cole would be the one to claim that as truth instead of me. I feel a sorrowed tear asking for permission to escape. Its request is denied. Instead I take a deep breath and gather the pictures, tapping them into a neat stack and begin sifting through them. There aren’t many, but in every one, I can’t get over how young he looks. Probably because he was young; he was hardly old enough to be considered an adult when most of these were taken. Lost youth goes behind my back to override my decision to not shed a tear. I brush it away quickly, as well as the one that follows on its heels. I come to a photo of him with Cole in their caps and gowns the day they graduated. He was so full of youthful vitality, as if he was invincible like all teenagers feel they are.
All except Cole.
In this picture and all the others he’s in, you can see age lurking behind his eyes. He doesn’t look old or unhappy necessarily, only that he’s not as carefree as he should’ve had the right to be. They both have their diplomas in their hands, and I drift back to when I watched the two of them and their graduating class receive those tickets to freedom. Everyone seemed to take that piece of paper lightly, like it wasn’t of much consequence aside from granting them permission to never sit in another classroom for the rest of their lives if they so wished. They took it as their just due and comically celebrated their release, whereas Cole…well, the way he accepted it and shook hands with the principal and every member of staff robed in black, you could tell Cole appreciated his achievement. Because it meant something to him and he worked for it. You could also see in his eyes, he knew he still had a long way to go…
Then my mind travels just a touch further, back to the minutes before the seniors paraded across the stage…back to an incredibly inspiring part of the ceremony that actually moved me and countless others to tears.
“Remember the speech he gave at your guys’ graduation? God, I loved that…weaving in the lyrics of ‘Sail My Vessel’ the way he did and getting the band to play that one small part of the song towards the end, and you all clapped over your heads to the drumbeat and sang the chorus…I cried. Like a baby…”
What really got me was when the band stopped playing and the sound of their a cappella voices unified and rose up even higher as they sang the words, “yes, I will sail my vessel, ’til the river runs dry, like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky, I’ll never reach my destination, if I never try, so I will sail my vessel, ’til the river runs dry.” I mean just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. Not that I wasn’t weepy before, but now I don’t mind so much. Except for the fact that I’ve given myself a crying headache.
A derisive snort comes from above me. “Yeah, I remember it. I wrote that speech, Erica. And it was also my idea to get the band and the rest of the senior class in on it.”
My head swings up to stare in utter surprise at him. “You wrote it?! But I was at his house the night before when he was rehearsing it and he didn’t use notecards. I thought he was making it up as he went.”
Cole comes down off the step stool and just wipes his hands off on each other with what I would call distinctly haughty undertones in every movement and word he says. “That’s because I used short sentences and penny words so that he could memorize it easily.”
“But, I don’t understand…why didn’t you give the speech then if you were the one responsible for writing it?”
“Because no one asked me to, sweetheart. Addressing the senior class on their last day is an honor reserved for the upper echelon, which I wasn’t a member of.”
The slight of almost a decade ago has me shedding more tears. This time though, they’re on Cole’s behalf. “That’s not tru—”
“Yes, it is. Try to remember, I had no impact on that school, but he—,” Cole pauses to suck in a breath, “Holden was thought of as a god by everyone, including you and me. He excelled in every way that was deemed important. He was just lousy at academics and had no idea what to say, so I helped him out…with everything he needed me to. Because that’s what friends are supposed to do for each other. And I did what I did and I’ve held my tongue because I was a good friend.”
“You were. You really were. Still, you could’ve at least been given credit,” I tell him and wipe my cheek again.
“Seriously, it was just a speech, and it’s certainly nothing for you to be crying over nine years later. Or are you crying because I shattered the illusion?”
The question catches me off guard. “Um, both maybe? I don’t know actually…I’ve had kind of an emotional day and it’s caught up to me. I started crying because it took finding a box for us to talk about him after all this time, and what’s more, we couldn’t even say his name. But now I think I might just be crying in general.”
He shakes his head at me and for the barest moment, something flashes in his eyes and I wonder if he’s going to make the tears stop like he used to. I’m not so fortunate.
“Humph. You know if you don’t stop, you’ll end up with a headache,” he says, turning his back to me to open another box.
“Too late,” I admit to him. Admitting to myself though, it seems it’s too late for more than just preventing a headache…
40
“Sound of Madness”
—Cole—
We lose power two more times before Erica unknowingly grants me a reprieve by going to bed. I lied to her about needing to keep up on the shoveling because it would be easier than letting it pile up. It won’t pile up; I wasn’t a dumbass when I built this house, and installing a heated driveway was accomplished before the roof was ever put on. It just never occurred to me that she would ask about the skylights; although when she did, I realized in answering her that I was about to lose my excuse to escape her presence every so often, so I tacked on another little white lie. I felt both lies justified, as they were told for my sanity’s sake.
When she first showed up, I wanted to slam the door in her face. I knew if I did though, I’d have to eventually explain my reasons so I went with the lesser evil and let her inside. I let her inside my house, but, I wasn’t about to let her get inside me again. I tried not to anyway. Of course, her simple presence alone didn’t make that particular task easy for me. Neither did the fact that she remembered what her grandma used to make me when she knew I was feeling down about my dad or anything else. Erica also remembered that I only like s’mores as much as I do if the chocolate has almonds in it. Even those seemingly small things were enough for her to little by little chip away at my resolve, and once that started, so did my night of inner turmoil.
The obsessing began immediately upon my initial trip outside to unnecessarily shovel—and smoke— when I found myself questioning why the hell she was even here in the first place, when she had Greg waiting for her at home. But, when she herself broached the subject of him by saying she needed to tell me something, I wanted to hurl. I admit that for a split second, I thought about getting on my hands and knees and pleading with her to not go through with telling me what I thought for certain she was about to. I held my ground and made myself bulletproof by pulling a blanket of past and recent hurt arou
nd me, using it as camouflage and armor. At one point I even had her on the defensive, and it felt almost good. Being on the offensive for once and even being angry with her seemed to help. I would’ve liked for her to argue with me about some of the things I said though. I gave her an opening to contradict my implied understanding of us, and she didn’t take it. It was a small opportunity, but, it was there and she passed it up. Doing so spoke volumes to me.
Then I learned how grossly I had misjudged the situation this morning and not only did I want to strangle her for not telling me right off the bat, but the self-loathing the information brought about within me in knowing I was there…that I could’ve prevented the entirety of her morning and kept her wholly safe, but because I’d again handed her over to someone undeserving…well, it was nothing less than asphyxiating. From that point on, I battled for control of myself constantly the rest of the evening. I almost lost the fight once when the lights first went out, although Holden chose that moment to make himself known to us both once more, and with him, my outlook went from marginally hopeful at best and waned into abdication.
Without directly telling her, I gave her a choice tonight. I wanted her to choose me. I always have. Tonight, though, I needed her to say or do something to make my fight worth what it’s cost me so I could continue fighting it. And in the end, her choice to go with mourning him all these years later over living in the moment with me ultimately told me that no matter how much time goes by, he will always take precedence. I just don’t think she’ll ever be free of him. Not free enough anyway.
I drop my partially smoked cigarette into the coffee can filled with snow at my feet and listen to it sizzle when my porch light comes to life. For a second I half-hope and half-fear that Erica has come looking for me and is the one who turned it on. Then I remember that I was the one who flipped the switch out of habit when I came out here about one and half cigarettes ago, which means the power just came back on again. A pent up burst of air fights its way from where it’s been entrapped in my lungs and I go back inside. Barring the ones on the Christmas tree, I’d turned all the lights upstairs off already and I lit the candles again, although I can’t remember if she or I had made sure all the switches in my bedroom were in the off position when she went to bed. I kick my slippers off so I don’t make any noise on the wooden stairs and quietly turn the handle of my bedroom door. Once inside, I find the only light that isn’t already out is the one in my closet and even though the doors are open, it’s not so bright to have woken her.
She’d reluctantly taken a t-shirt and a pair of my boxers to sleep in, but she flat-out argued about taking my bed for the night even though I truthfully explained that I learned how comfortable my couch is when Payton was here. He’s too tall to fit on it so he slept in my room the whole time, although when he gets out here for good, we’re going to have to figure something else out. I’m fine with giving up my bed every so often, but…it’s my bed and my room and I have no intention of even semi-permanently snoozing on the couch, regardless of how well I sleep on it. I’m guessing I’ll either have to give up my weight room for a while or put a bed or something in the empty loft. As with Payton though, I won the fight with Erica to have her sleep in a real bed when I told her I was planning on staying up until I was done decorating and I had no idea how long that would be with the power going out intermittently like it has been.
I watch her sleeping for I don’t even know how many minutes before coming from the floor above me, I hear the first few notes of piano that make up the introduction of “Say Something,” the song that has haunted me for most of my adult life. Along with the music, the past and everything that could’ve been starts bubbling to the surface. I hit the switch on my closet light and tiptoe out of my room again. At the base of the stairs though, I can feel it coming on fast. Tightly gripping the stair rail, I stalk back upstairs to the living room where the music is continuing its melodic torture and the fire is still going strong…to where I can have my imminent meltdown without waking Erica, and where I can listen to the lyrics of what has become the embodiment of her song outside of my head for once.
Squeezing my eyes shut against the sting of tears only turns my focus to what’s happening inside me. My whole body is burning with regret; the white-hot lava born of the years I’ve spent denying the truth and myself finally breaking free, like a disparaged and underestimated phoenix rising from the flames in the pit of my stomach that are suddenly spitting fire and licking at the dark recesses of my hardened heart.
I can’t take it anymore; I have to get it out. I sink to my knees and grab one of the pillows we’d used to sit on while we roasted marshmallows, remembering making s’mores as one of the night’s many opportunities that she allowed to slip by without taking advantage of it in the least. Then I bury my face in the pillow and scream, hoping the cushion will act as a gun silencer like they do in the movies.
Yeah, shit like that never works in real life so I’m terribly surprised when I hear Erica’s worried voice asking me what’s wrong.
“It should’ve been me!” I holler into the pillow.
“What? I can’t understand you.”
I can hear her moving closer so she can hear me better, but I lift my tear-stained face and make sure she has no trouble making out my words by shouting, “It should’ve been me, Erica! ME! It should’ve been me!” I feel myself reach for it and I know it is a petulant thing to do, but all bets are off it seems and before I can control myself, I wrap my hand around the stem of a wine glass that we’d used to drink milk from when we ate the s’mores. It’s thrown and shatters against the mantel as I sob the words one last time. “It should’ve been me.”
“Why would you say that?!” She’s on her knees in front of me so fast, I have to blink to believe it, “I mean I get it, I felt the same way for a while, and it seemed like it took forever for me to finally be free of the hurt, the guilt, and everything else his dying left us with, but it’s been more than seven years, Cole…I thought you’d moved on and had gotten over Holden before I even did!”
I cover my face with my hands and try to calm down, wholly absorbing the jeering and entirely maniacal laughter coming from the lunatic within me that’s caused by his comprehension of Erica thinking I’m inflicted with an unyielding case of survivor’s guilt. Then it suddenly occurs to me that I’m sitting here crying my eyes out, like I’m some kind of damsel with a penis in distress in need of my hero to save me.
Well fuck that.
I push to my feet to lean against the mantel and stare into the fire for a moment before taking a deep breath and closing my eyes to snarl, “I am over Holden, Erica.” I shift to see that she’s also stood up and is right here…right next to me; her proximity and the moment all but daring me to say it out loud. My semi-admission confused her and she’s no doubt about to ask for clarification on what prompted my sudden break from manliness anyway, and I do consider making up some bullshit story, but I’m tired of taking the high road that’s been edged with nothing but deprivation, and I’m tired of backing down in deference to a ghost who didn’t deserve her in the first place, so looking at her parted lips instead of her rapidly blinking eyes, I whisper, “But I’ll never be over you.”
“Wha—what are you saying?”
“What do you think I’m saying?”
“That you’re…you’re in l—you’re not saying you’re falling in love with me, are you?” The terrified look on her face and her trembling body has me internally gnashing my teeth.
“No. I’m saying I’ve been in love with you.” As soon as the words are free, I feel lighter than I ever have, the embittered phoenix inside me shaking its wings out, ready to take flight and soar free. And with one look into the mystic blue of her shimmering eyes, I release him from the shackles and let him loose. “Always.”
She continues to stand before me with unrelenting tears streaming down her face. It’s the only acceptable part of her response to my admission thus far.
“Is
that it? Is crying your only response? Because this isn’t one of those times when someone lays bare their heart to another person but then tells them it’s okay to not say anything in return. Because that’s bullshit and you need to say something. Now.”
“Always?” It comes out in a small, broken whisper.
“Yes, always!” God, I just want to strangle her! I need to know, goddamnit!! “For as far back as I can remember, Erica…I have b—I have been hopelessly in love with you! Now what do you have to say to that?!”
“I…don’t…” I squeeze my eyes shut and turn my head away. Like either action will enable me to not be utterly gutted hearing from her own lips how her feelings aren’t reciprocal of mine. “I don’t understand. Always is a long freaking time and you never said anything, Cole! If you’ve been in love with me, then why didn’t you say something?”
Her question, while logical and very deserving of an answer, is like a slap in the face and I realize that while I’ve had quite a lot of time to think things over and accept my feelings, she’s been legitimately clueless and completely in the dark because I hid them all away from her.
I rub my face with one hand and wipe the wetness from it, the whole time knowing it won’t stay dry. “Because I didn’t know.”
“Then how do you know now?”
Suddenly, she sounds angry like I was, and I don’t understand why. I also don’t understand what the fuck she’s asking me. “What?”
“I want you to tell me how you know you’re in love with me…or better yet, explain why you are.”
I’ve never been fond of demands being made upon me in any way, but this one of hers almost makes my blood boil. “I can’t explain something like that, Erica! I can’t tell you why because there’s no reason that can explain why or how I love you the way I do. I just do. Everything in me feels it. It lives deep inside me and has sharp claws, and it shreds my insides to ribbons so that I feel like I’m drowning in my own blood whenever I’m not with you. It’s something so much stronger than I am that no matter what either of us does, it won’t stop. Not even when you do something that makes me want to throttle you myself, it won’t stop.