by Laney Wylde
“You did great.” His smile was tilted and sad and made me hurt.
“You don’t have to say that.”
His gaze fell to my book. “‘What do you want to do? Ruin me?’”
“What?”
“Farewell to Arms,” he said as he tapped the cover. “That’s a line from it.”
“Yeah, but how did you know?”
“I read it.” He gazed out at the water as if it were normal for him to voluntarily pick up Hemingway. But I didn’t ask why he read it; I just studied him. His profile was just as I remembered it, maybe slimmer in the slightest, with a new scar cutting through the outer edge of his right eyebrow. I smoothed over it with my thumb. The feel of his skin made my breath stop. It was cozy and hot, the same as before, except I wasn’t allowed to touch it like I wanted. That made me hurt, made me hate myself. “How’d you get this?”
“Fight.” He glanced down at my left wrist and took it in his hand. His rough thumb drew a line over my scar. My heart drummed faster. “How’d you get this?”
I wanted to feel him, really feel his hand against my skin, but it would just make leaving harder. I pulled my sleeve down to my palm.
“Sounds like you had a crummy year,” he said as he let go of my arm.
“And you?”
In a matter-of-fact tone, he answered, “Well, my pregnant fiancée dumped me with a note and then aborted the baby, so…”
“Wow,” I breathed.
“How old would it be now?”
“That’s not even a little fair.”
“Why?”
“Because you know it wasn’t yours.”
“You found out for sure?”
I shut my eyes and lowered my face.
“Didn’t think so.”
“God, Jake! I regret it, okay? Every single day. Does that help? Will it make you happier to know that I feel like shit?”
“Come on, Sawyer, that doesn’t make me happy.” He took a deep breath. “Can you just tell me why you left?”
I cackled. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah.”
“Jake, this…” I pointed between him and me. “This judgmental crap is why I had to leave. There’s no way I could have just come home after that and expected you to accept it. You were so adamant—”
“How do you know I wouldn’t have accepted it?”
“Because you still haven’t!”
He threw his hands up. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, but where were you last summer, huh? You couldn’t even make the effort to call me back.”
“You told me not to!”
“What? I specifically told you to call me if you wanted me to come home.”
He let out a defeated exhale as he brushed his hand up his face and through his hair. “I didn’t get your messages in time,” he admitted with his eyes closed.
“In time?” My whole face scrunched with confusion. “What do you mean by in—’” Oh. The look of sorrow he gave me was all the reminder I needed. I gave him a deadline. And he didn’t know about it until it had passed.
“My phone broke the day you left.” He paused before confessing, “Okay, I threw it.”
“There it is.”
“I got all three of your messages the week after you left them.” He gazed out at the waves before squeezing his eyes shut. “Sawyer, I’m sorry. I should have called or looked for you or…”
The heartache in my chest spread through my whole body until it covered every inch of me. I whispered, “You wanted me back?”
His eyes met mine. “I’ve always wanted you, Sawyer.”
I turned away. I couldn’t stand whatever was swirling in the depth of his brown eyes.
Sighing, he continued, “It physically hurts me when I think about that baby, even if it wasn’t mine. I wish with everything in me you hadn’t aborted. But after the trial…” I finally met his eyes. “Sawyer, I’m sorry I made things so hard for you last year.”
I cringed. “You went to Jeff’s whole trial?”
“As much of it as I could.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Did you see—”
“Yeah,” he exhaled. I buried my face in my hands. “The prosecutor put hundreds of ‘sanitized’ photos of you and Simone on a few of those huge bulletin boards.” His swallow was so labored I heard it. “There was a whole wall of them. I—I couldn’t—” He paused for a shaky breath. “I made myself look because I owed you that much. I needed to understand what he did to you—what they all did.”
My fingers raked through my hair and strangled the strands between them. I didn’t want to imagine him seeing that.
“Then someone read off chat room requests and matched them up to the images. I’m sorry. I couldn’t handle it. I tried, Sawyer. But I had to leave. How did you survive—”
“Please, shut up.”
“Sawyer…” His hand was sliding across my back now. “I’m sor—”
I scooted away. “Please!”
“Okay,” he surrendered.
We sat in silence for a long moment. “You shouldn’t have looked.”
His words were gentle when he argued, “You should have told me.”
I scoffed. “Why? What difference would it have made?”
“Because…why did you tell me you were raped when you were shattered? Repeatedly? Why didn’t you tell me you were scared even when we were together?”
“Please, I was fine.”
“Right,” he snickered, “because people who are fine whore themselves out.”
I glared at him. “I’m surprised it took you this long to bring it up.”
“I mean, not to be ‘judgmental,’ but what the hell were you thinking? You could have been raped or gotten HIV or—”
“I always made them use condoms.” As soon as I said the words, I wished I hadn’t. He winced like I had just slapped him.
“That’s what you chose over me,” he muttered.
“You weren’t an option anymore! And I had to pay rent.”
“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t want me to treat you like you’re broken? Fine! I’m calling bullshit. You could have done any other job.”
“You don’t think I tried those first?”
“I didn’t think you’d just up and leave me, so what do I know?”
“Well, I didn’t think my fiancé would refuse to return my calls and leave me desperate enough to do that.”
“You left! You told me not to call!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Bullshit.”
“Fine! I was pissed, okay? You took off! You should have been the one to grow a pair and come home if you wanted to. Part of me was just waiting for you to show up at my door, mad as hell, ready to fight like we always did. You could have done more to fix this than leave a few drunken voicemails. You could have tried harder.”
“You could have tried at all.”
“Well…” He shrugged. “It looks like you’re in a better relationship now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about tall, plaid, and handsome all over you this morning.”
“Cash? He was not all over me. And it’s not really—” I tilted my head back and forth. “We’re not really together.”
“Not really?” He lifted one shoulder and added a flippant, “So it’s like a sex-only thing?”
“Jake, come on—”
“Do you charge him per hour or per favor?”
“Oh, fuck you!” I stormed off, the sand making my stomping less dramatic than I had hoped.
“I don’t know that I could afford for you to do that.”
Okay, I set him up for that one. Still.
I didn’t make it too far before he called, “Sawyer, wait!” I successfully ignored him until he grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Let me go!” I wriggled to get loose.
“No. Not again.” He spun me around and held both my arms.
“Yo
u know, Jake, I don’t remember you being such an asshole.”
“Really?” He smiled that damn crooked smile that made me melt and laugh when I just wanted to be furious. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He sighed. “It just pisses me off that you were with me three years and then could go screw a bunch of other guys as if we meant nothing—like it was so easy for you to move on.”
“Easy? Jake, nothing about it was easy. And it wasn’t ‘moving on.’ It was making a living.”
“Did you think for one second about me, though? Ever?”
“I thought about you every day!”
“Really? You thought about me when some stranger was stuffing cash in your bra before shoving himself into you? Because that to me sounds like moving on.”
“Jake—” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“And I was here, up at night like an idiot, thinking ‘Is Sawyer okay? Where is she? Is she ever coming home?’”
“Jake!” I screamed. “You know how you could have answered those questions? You could have called.”
“You told me not to!”
“I swear I’m going to punch you if you say that again.”
“Okay, fine,” he said as he threw his hands in the air. “I should have called you. But it would have been too late, and you know it.”
“Seems like you dodged a bullet then. So leave me the hell alone.” I turned to leave again, but he caught my hand.
“No.”
“No? So there’s more you want to berate me about?”
“Sawyer—”
“If you want to lecture me about the things I can’t undo—like the abortion or all the things I did in that club—you can’t because I’m not your girlfriend anymore. I’m not your fiancée. I’m not your anything. You can be mad at me, you can hate me, but I don’t have to listen to this.” I flicked my wrist out of his grasp and took off through the sand.
“If you’re not my anything, why does it feel like my everything is walking away from me right now?”
My feet planted in the sand, unable to continue, but I couldn’t face him.
“Pretending like you’re nothing to me makes this easier for you. I don’t care. I’m not going to make it easy.”
I spun around. “What do you want from me?”
“The rest of your life.”
What? He’d just said it was too late. I shook my head. “No. I don’t believe you.”
“Let me prove it then.” Jake ran to me, stopping when his face was just inches from mine. Drawing in his breath, he traced his hands down my arms. He reached into his pocket and pulled out my engagement ring, that emerald surrounded by diamonds, then dropped to one knee.
No, no, no. What was happening?
“Sawyer, we can go our separate ways like before, or we can fight about this. I don’t know what you want, but I want to fight. I don’t care if we yell about it every day, forever. I don’t care if all our fights are like: ‘Jake, why are there washcloths in the sink?’ And I say, ‘Well, why did you whore around?’ And you say, ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’”
I couldn’t stand that he just made me laugh.
“I’d rather waste the rest of our lives arguing about this one stupid year than spend another day without you.”
“You’re insane. We can’t just pick up—”
His eyes were wide, his breath wisping around the words, “Why not?”
Cash. Cash was why not.
In that second, Cash was all I could think about. Running my hand over the edge of my book, I felt the folded page of his letter poking out of it. I pictured his blue eyes and perfect curls. Felt the warmth of his arms around me. I thought of all those days he was at the hospital, bringing me books and nagging me about therapy and getting forehead-vein-bursting infuriated with me for trying to kill myself even after we broke up. Those times he knew what I did, what I had done, and loved me anyway. How he never made me feel guilty or less than. How he would do anything, how he did do anything, for me, even answering my call at 1:07 AM.
And Jake hadn’t even called me back.
But all that didn’t make me want to say no. Maybe that was it. I loved Jake how Cash loved me—that unquestioning, irrational, excruciating kind of love. I loved him when I shouldn’t, when I didn’t want to. Of course I loved Cash. It was just a different texture of love. Loving Jake was like drinking whiskey neat. It stung and warmed and made me do stupid things. Cash’s love was sweet, like his brown-sugar voice. Nothing about it hurt, but I didn’t crave it the same way. I didn’t think I ever could. And Cash was the kind of guy a girl could crave. It just wouldn’t be me.
Jake raised the ring between his finger and thumb. “Do you still want this?”
Swallowing over the lump in my throat, I reached my left hand out to Jake. I made sure to glare through the tears gathering in my lower lids. “Yeah,” I whispered. “I want to fight with you.”
Jake slipped the ring on my finger and kissed me, his rough fingers digging into my hair, then running along my jaw like they always did, ear to chin and back again. He tasted and felt better than I remembered, like I’d been starving this past year and finally had what I’d been hungering for.
I pulled away to say against his lips, “I’m going to win, you know that?”
His gaze fell from my eyes to my mouth where he breathed, “Not if I get naked.” He kissed me again before I could argue.
Upon feeling my jagged rib cage during our beach make-out session, Jake declared me malnourished and insisted on taking me to eat immediately. He ordered our usual at the harbor: a large basket of fish and chips, a bread bowl, and two glass bottles of cane sugar coke.
“I swear, I could put butter on everything,” I said as I took a bite of grilled sourdough bread.
“Did they not feed you at the hospital?”
“Nothing good. And LA doesn’t use enough butter in general.”
“Wait, so why were you hospitalized again?” He lowered his voice, “You tried to kill yourself?”
“Oh.” I swallowed. “No, I did that in the hospital. Got pretty close, too.” I nodded with pursed lips.
Jake covered my hand with his, staring at me with puppy-eyed sympathy. “Sawyer—”
Please, the last thing Jake should be feeling was sorry for me.
“I got hospitalized,” I interrupted, “because I beat a congressman almost to death when he tried to rape me. So it was that or prison.”
He shook his head to process this. “Are you serious?”
“He had to breathe through a tube for a while. And he definitely can’t have any more kids.”
“Sawyer!” he scolded.
“What? You taught me to go for the groin.”
He stared at me, the left corner of his lip quivering, fighting a smile.
I nudged his arm with my elbow. “You’re kind of proud.”
“A little.”
“I could have done without the six months of psych incarceration, but it was better than actual prison.”
“How’d you score that deal?”
“Good lawyer. There are these restitution laws for victims of child pornography, so that guy I assaulted had to reimburse me for my legal bills and my hospital stay because they finally got proof that he downloaded me.”
“Wait, the state didn’t pay for your hospital?”
“No, because my lawyer set me up in a really great place. Those state-run places are hell. I mean,” I took a bite of a fry, “that’s what some of the other crazies told me.”
He laughed. “So, are there others?”
“Crazies? Yeah—”
“No, I mean others they know have downloaded…”
“Who’ve been convicted you mean?”
Jake nodded.
“Yeah, about a dozen that I know of so far. Right now, I’m up to like $160,000 of the $3.7 million I’m eligible for.”
“Holy shit! Are you messing with me?”
I tipped my Coke bottle toward him. “The cost
of ‘never touching a child.’”
“How did they come up with $3.7 million?”
“Something like lost wages, therapy, medication—stuff like that—for my whole life.”
“So you’re still getting help? Like therapy or whatever?”
I shrugged. “I just got out two days ago.”
“Yeah, but you should probably still see someone, right? It’s already paid for. And, I mean, you tried to commit suicide. That’s a big deal—”
“Et tu, Jake?” I smirked, then changed the subject. “You still live with the guys?”
He nodded as he swallowed his food. “Yeah. But I’m moving out soon.”
“Yeah?”
“I got a contract with Golden Boy Promotions, so I’m moving to a city with a real airport.”
Translation: Jake was now a professional fighter.
“Jake! Holy crap! Congratulations!”
He smiled before refocusing on his clam chowder. “Thanks.”
“Where are you moving?”
“Where do you want to live?”
I twisted the ring around my finger. I got to live with Jake again. “Well, I’d like to go back to school.”
“Yeah? In LA?”
“If you want to. I mean, you can wear your Henleys there.”
“I thought you said they don’t put enough butter in their food in LA.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like there’s a shortage. It’s just my friends are there, and I like the school. Also,” I breathed, “there’s this church I like.”
Jake stared at me like I was a stranger. “Church?”
“Yeah. It’s not so bad, actually.” I took a spoonful of chowder.
He smirked, and I wished I could have read his mind. “It must be really great if you went.”
“It is. You might like it.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “I let my mom drag me to church this year.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Desperate times. It was right after you left, and I was too depressed to put up a fight. It wasn’t as bad as I thought.”
I nodded.
He tipped his chin toward me. “How’d you end up there?”
My eyes fell to my fish and chips as I picked up another fry. “Cash.” I didn’t know what I felt guiltier about: being with Cash this past year or letting Jake put that ring on my finger while the poor guy was still at my house. I was such a bitch. How’d I get either of these guys?