Where We Fall: A Novel

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  Ryan sits on my bed, and I move over to make room. His face is worn, and his body slumps forward. I want to console him, reach my arms across his shoulders and ease his distress, though I don’t know how. Something stops me. It has always been me in need of care; I have forgotten how to soothe someone else. The hesitation that swamps me is rooted far back in our relationship. It was how we began, how my comforting him destroyed everything he once loved and trusted.

  This is not E.J., the gentle giant who ate dinners at our house, whom Ryan is describing. Panic churns around me, the real, tangible kind. Panic derived from the unknown is far more perilous than real, concrete threats. When the waves pass through me, I am drenched with thoughts of Juliana. “She can’t see him anymore, Ryan.”

  “She loves him.”

  “He’ll hurt her,” I say, pressing into him, feeling his heart tickle my cheek. “She can’t be a part of that world.”

  “He is her world. This isn’t going to change it,” he says, his voice trailing off somewhere.

  I think of how Ryan once had another world with someone else. Things change. People move on. I shudder at the memory.

  “What are you thinking?” I ask.

  “The police are taking the charges seriously, despite the fact that he turned himself in. Those minor infractions over the years have added up. And running away from Buford will only add to their case.”

  “Didn’t he tell them how the stuff got there?”

  “He’s not talking.”

  “Not even to you?”

  “Not even to me.”

  Ryan curls around me atop the miniature bed, and before long he is dozing. I am weirdly calm from my Reiki-induced rest, though deeply concerned about Juliana. His warm body against mine spreads the flow of energy. If she loves E.J. the way I love her father, she will heed no warnings, and she’ll do things she can’t undo. She will accept circumstances that may alter her path and those of the people closest to her.

  Scanning the small room, I see the reflection of the two of us in the mirror on the wall. There have been memories over the years that I have observed from a distance. Sometimes it is easier to block out the images, as though they really didn’t happen. Because when you hold up the mirror, you don’t want to see the disgraceful person staring back. Tamar dug into my memory bank to ones that are too painful to remember. I had tricked my brain into believing that what I did wasn’t so bad, but it was. It was awful.

  Lauren had left for wherever it was in the world she claimed she had to go. I had my own feelings about this, but whatever they were, Ryan’s despair trumped them. He was losing his girlfriend, his future bride, he called her. I was losing my best friend, the only person I knew who didn’t see me as a weirdo. I was crushed. And even though I had lingering feelings for Ryan, I had kept them in check out of loyalty to my friend.

  But when she left, I was angry.

  Watching them say good-bye to each other was tough. How do you divide two who together had always been one?

  Then Ryan’s father died. It was twisted and cruel that God would take these two people from Ryan’s life so quickly, one right after the other.

  Ryan was enduring a brutal form of grief. Lauren was unreachable. Most of us who had tried to summon her on her cell phone weren’t even sure she got the messages. When you’re twenty-one and traveling the world, you don’t consider that it might fall off its axis if you don’t go home to set it right. A week turned into two, and friends and family returned to their respective lives just when Ryan most needed the sounds of voices in his empty kitchen.

  It was easy for me to think at the time—and I would never have said it aloud—that I wouldn’t have left him in the first place. And that isn’t because I had always secretly worshiped him. With all my phobias, I would have to have been knocked unconscious to board an airplane.

  So there was a fair amount of resentment both in me and in Ryan when I showed up in Myers Park, in what was once his dad’s house and then his own, with the intention of consoling him. He was still mourning, though his grief seemed more hollow and less fluid than before. His hair was long and tangled, falling almost to his shoulders. He was pale, and his jeans hung loosely on his hips. I think being with me reminded him of her, and I stuffed myself with the attention.

  I came with a bag of noshes from our favorite gourmet deli, and it was Ryan who brought out the bottle of wine. Drinking often made unbearable situations easier. It also caused dangerous side effects. More than a few glasses and I’m deluded into thinking I can karaoke, though that afternoon a bottle of wine meant possibility to me. I should have known by the rough way he handled the bottle and tossed down two glasses that something terribly wrong was going to happen. When he switched to scotch, I saw the subtle way in which his anger became defiance and then dissolved into sadness. Traces of the Ryan I knew well had been erased by a drunkenness that slapped his face. When he looked at me, I swear he was looking for someone else. There was a desire in the flecks of his eyes that touched a place deep inside of me. Even if it wasn’t for me, I felt his passion wash through me and I, too, became drunk.

  We were seated at his family’s breakfast table. The furnishings were tired and outdated, though it reflected the essence of Ryan’s family: unassuming and close knit. Ryan had two older sisters who had moved down the street to be near their aging father, and from the pictures that lined the walls of the home, one could see how the family had gathered happily between these sturdy walls. A large window surrounded us, the afternoon sunshine streaming in and casting a glow on the backyard with its wilting flower garden. People are not the only ones who need human touch.

  Ryan didn’t ask me to drink. He didn’t even offer me scotch. When he got up to clear the plates from the table, which he insisted on, I took his empty glass, refilled it, and swallowed the gold liquid down in one hungry gulp. When he returned to take a seat next to me at the table, he had no idea of what I’d done. Then I asked him for a glass of scotch.

  During our years together at school, Ryan had always treated me like Lauren’s baby sister. Whether it was because I was not nearly as sophisticated or self-assured, or because he saw me as the shadow of the girl he loved, the result was the same—he worried about me. He never came right out and said it, but I could tell by the way he’d ask about me, fix problems for me, realign my thinking when I went off on some wild tangent. It was obvious the guys on the team were rolling their eyes or ignoring me. Ryan listened, and sometimes I felt he cared.

  “You don’t drink scotch, Abs. And you shouldn’t mix it with the wine.”

  “I want to try it.”

  Ryan was buzzed when he poured another dose of the smooth liquid into a glass. When he held it up in the air, I couldn’t think of anything to say. It seemed like an awful idea at the time, but we continued. “Today,” he whispered, “let’s toast to today. Right now.” It was an empty promise, though it shot missiles through my body. Or perhaps it was the liquor. Our glasses clinked and I couldn’t wait to feel more of the same.

  Except Ryan started to get more upset. He was slurring words, and I was casually filling and refilling my glass with a liquid I had quickly learned could squelch my inhibitions. It really liked me. When I checked my anxiety levels—a self-monitoring system I had in place for situations like these—I didn’t feel the swells of impending doom. Panic was not lurking under the table, waiting to gnaw at me limb by limb. Quite the contrary, I felt better than I had in years. I was channeling the spirit of the goddess Athena, only she wasn’t prepared to hear Ryan’s “I miss her.” When he said it, it was as though his heart left his body. The pain was raw and primal. He hung his head on the table and crossed his arms.

  “I miss her too.”

  Then he asked if I had heard from her, which I had not. We were all finding it hard to believe that she hadn’t retrieved our messages, but the sketchy cell service made it possible. I said, “I’m worried about her.”

  This was when Ryan stood up from the table
and staggered across the room and down a few steps into the family room. He plopped himself on a nearby couch with a fresh bottle of scotch in his hands. “She’s fine,” he struggled to say.

  I followed him into the other room. The books spanned an entire wall, floor-to-ceiling. Each shelf was sorted by color, forming a rainbow wall. “How can you be sure?”

  “I’d know if something were wrong.”

  “Then why isn’t she here?” It came out as a whisper, a legitimate question that hit Ryan like an accusation. He stood up again, agitated, and reached for the poker beside the fireplace. He stabbed at the logs until one fell to the floor and crackled by his feet. The fire was blazing, and I am certain he was too. He didn’t bother to clean up the mess; instead, he kicked it to the side and headed back toward the couch, where I had taken cover under one of the rumpled blankets. It made no sense to have a fire going that time of year, though I suspected nothing made sense to Ryan without the people he loved around him. He guzzled another half glass of the scotch.

  Ryan was close enough that I could smell his alcohol-laced breath, feel his skin against my arms and legs, burning holes through the blanket that divided us. His face was so immensely sad that I prayed for the power to extinguish the pain. His head drooped to the side and rested on my shoulder. I was light and dreamy there beside him. I was Athena. And I took my hand out from beneath the blanket and touched his shoulder. And then his hair.

  Shattered, Ryan did not move away when I slid my fingertips through his messy brown hair. He was drunk, and while I knew it was wrong and spiteful and selfish to take advantage of him in that vulnerable state, it didn’t stop me from doing what my body wanted most. We didn’t fall in rhythm against each other; instead, we sank into flesh and leather. Ryan was, for the first time, clumsy and incoherent. His words, which usually inspired his teammates, were disjointed and slurred. His head was bobbing up and down. I imagined the mess of thoughts running through his head: Why did my dad have to die? Where is Lauren?

  My hands drifted out from under the plaid blanket and touched him. They made subtle motions at first, as my fingers sized up his response. I purposely leaned against him, let him feel me beneath the slight fabric around my chest and shoulders. He didn’t move away. He let me rub my hands along his arms until I felt him release himself into me completely. He sank deeper and deeper into the couch, and I grew ravenous for him in a way that logic and loyalty could not overturn. He was openly crying, and when my mouth settled on his, I knew I would taste Ryan for a long time. He turned his head away to hide the buried pain, and my hand reached for his chin and cheeks to bring him back. The eyes staring back at me were hollow and lost. “I can make you feel better,” I said. “I can take the pain away.” He shook his head no, and I took that to mean the pain was too deep. So I pressed harder.

  In all my fantasies of seducing Ryan and having him for my own, in no way did I imagine how it could have happened like that. His eyes were pursed shut, heavy with grief. He was not the agile player I had watched on the field; he was not the animated man I studied while he snuggled around Lauren in bed. He was lifeless, strewn across the couch. I knew I had to breathe life into him. When I lay down on top of him, one of my legs cramped and I fell to the floor. When I picked myself up, he was resting peacefully against the stack of pillows. I should have known by those first awkward movements that we did not fit together like he and Lauren did. I should have left him there. I should have given him that moment of tranquility when hurt dissolves into sleep. I owed him that much. And her.

  But I didn’t. I was on my knees in a pair of jeans that hugged me in all the right places. I unzipped them and let them fall down my legs. Then I unbuttoned the front of my blouse until the only thing separating me from Ryan’s body were his clothes and my doubts.

  Though my fingers fumbled with the top button of his shirt, by the time they reached the third and fourth, they were alert and nimble. Ryan was lovely in the most wholesome, unspoiled way. His head slumped to the side and his breathing was deep and purposeful, like mine. He was too large for me to move, so I tucked the ends of his shirt away from his chest and traced his stomach and chest with my finger. I was twenty-one years old. No longer a child, though hardly an adult. Everything I was thinking and doing had the power to screw up my life and those of the people I loved most. I searched the room for a sign. I could get up, put my clothes back on, and leave Ryan to miss his father and pine for Lauren. No sign came. My palm was drawn to Ryan’s skin and common sense had vanished along with my clothes.

  I unzipped his pants.

  By now, Ryan was awake, and when I had finished pulling the jeans down his legs, our eyes met.

  “Abby, what are you doing?”

  I slid my body on top of his and let my hair fall down the sides of his face. I touched him in forbidden places and made it impossible for him to refuse. When I kissed his mouth, at first he didn’t let me in. He grabbed my shoulders and tried to push me away, though I kissed him deeper until he could feel all of me lying across his body.

  He smelled of alcohol and dying wishes. I was going to revive him. I was going to make him whole.

  “I want you,” I said, pulling his hair back so he could see my eyes. “I’m here. I can make it better.”

  And that’s when I felt him come alive. His eyes brightened, and the renewed emotion washed away the lingering sadness. He grabbed me hard and started to kiss me back. Then he touched me in all the places I had dreamed about. He wasn’t gentle, and he wasn’t kind.

  And then he stopped.

  “Please don’t,” I begged. “Please.”

  “I can’t do this, Abby.”

  And my heartless comeback: “She’s not here.”

  Then I slid his boxers off and did the worst possible thing I could have done.

  And when it was over, and I lay spent in his arms, I whispered, “I wish we could stay like this forever.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  RYAN

  Abby is curled in my arms on her bed at Cold Creek. She’s talking in her sleep, and I hear her say she wishes we could stay like this forever. It knocks me for a loop. I hadn’t thought about those words in a long time. I’m pretty sure I’ve blocked them out, like most of my memories of that day. I educate my boys to strengthen their body muscles, but I have come to learn the mind is the toughest muscle of all. There are places I have trained it to never revisit.

  She stayed over. I remember that much. I wanted her to leave, though the gentleman in me didn’t have the heart to kick her out. The truth: I was sick about what we did. Abby was our friend and confidante. The three of us had grown up together during our four years of college, and parts of us were fused together, but I didn’t expect it to be those parts.

  I always knew Abby had a crush on me. That’s why she let me tease her about her obsessions and weird habits. She never got mad at me. She covered her face with pounds of makeup to hide her acne scars, but when I made her laugh, I could see the true color on her cheeks. And I knew.

  When we went boating on Lake Watauga, Abby would wear these skimpy bikinis and flaunt her outrageously large breasts. As a college guy, it was tough to look away. She could be sexy at times, when she wasn’t falling apart or having some crisis. Especially when she drank. When she drank, her confidence soared, and we saw a side of her that wasn’t meek or anxious. She would spring to life with the alcohol boost, and she was actually fun to be around. She’d pull her long dark hair off her face, and her brown eyes would widen. When she let her guard down, she loved to play games and practical jokes. She could be quite a little schemer. She would say her mind is like a superhighway, a maze of overlapping roads. We always knew there was a lot going on in there, but to hear her describe it like that made us feel sorry for her.

  Abby was never comfortable in her skin. Either she tried too hard or she didn’t try hard enough. There was no in between. I knew of the onslaught of highs and lows, the edginess that lasted for days, though at the time we di
dn’t know the clinical name for it.

  I’m not saying it’s her fault for what happened with us. I stopped her at one point, and I could have stopped her again. I missed Lauren with such ferocity that when I felt Abby’s willing body against mine, my flesh descended into a needy state that only another human body could satisfy. I was horny and drunk and pissed as all hell. Her body was smooth and ripe and begging to be touched. Nothing at that point could have prevented me from falling off that cliff.

  We talked about that night just once.

  She gathered her clothes and her shoes and her purse and skipped out of the house early the next morning. I didn’t try to stop her. When she returned a month later to talk, the first thing she asked was, “Why’d you let me leave?” I thought the reasons were obvious. “It was a mistake,” I told her, though her recollection was completely different from mine.

  “You didn’t even call.” Her whiny desperation made my heart palpitate. I was irritated. “It was beautiful. The things you said, the way you held me after,” she said.

  I was drunk, half passed out, and thinking about Lauren the whole time. I didn’t hold her after, like she claimed I had. I didn’t lovingly stroke her hair. And I didn’t tell her that this would be the start of anything.

  “Your eyes. You never looked at me like that before. I saw how much you cared, Ryan. I saw it! It meant something!”

  How could I tell her that maybe what she was seeing in my eyes was my need for someone else, that maybe what she felt in her heart was someone else’s love story?

  It didn’t really matter that our recollections were so at odds, not when she told me she had missed her period and was pregnant. I couldn’t insult her with the question of paternity when I saw how her eyes locked onto mine, sealing our fate. The news hit me swift and hard.

  I do remember her saying to me she wished we could stay like that forever. I was twenty-one. Forever meant, like, five minutes.