Close to You

by B. M. Sandy

  Running a hand through my hair, I opened up my phone, hovering over my messages, opening up the conversation between Michele and me. I never erased my reply to her text message from the night before, now saved as a draft: I miss you too. Let’s spend the night tomorrow.

  My eyes blurred as I stared at the words, remembering the way Brandon had interrupted me before I had the chance to send it. Not that it would have made any difference, but to know that I’d robbed her of one last good memory between us made me feel somehow shittier.

  I love you, Iain.

  I tossed my phone aside. She loved me - and I abandoned her. How was what I’d done any different than Brandon?

  My phone rang, and I picked it up, dreading to see who was calling. If it was Michele, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to ignore it.

  It was Erik.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, man. How’s it going?”

  “Uh…” I said lamely. I leaned back against the couch, staring up at the ceiling. “I’ve been dealing with some shit.”

  “Like what?”

  I considered not telling him, if only because it would be too difficult to say. Did Erik deserve for me to drop this in his lap like that?

  “Brandon showed up at The Capital last night,” I said carefully. “He threatened me about Michele.”

  “Dude, what?” He asked, obviously taken off guard. A siren wailed in the distance.

  “Maybe ten minutes after you left last night, he showed up. Talking about how he hired a PI to tail me, how I led him to her.” I swallowed, remembering his cruel eyes. Remembering his face with an expression I’d never seen before.

  “What the fuck? For real?”

  “Yes.”

  I told him the rest, up until I ended it with Michele. I omitted the details about the way she’d told me she loved me. I couldn’t say it.

  “My god,” Erik said, when I was done. “Why the fuck did you break up with her, man? Why couldn’t you just hide her in your closet for a while and post at your door with your combat skills?”

  He said it as a joke, but I knew he really wasn’t kidding. I sighed and shook my head.

  “You don’t get it. Nothing’s gonna stop him. I can’t protect her here. The only way she’s safe is if she’s somewhere he can’t find her.”

  “You should have kicked his ass.”

  “That wasn’t the answer. Believe me, I wanted to. Big time. If my dad wasn’t a cop, I probably would have. This guy needs to be dealt with the right way.”

  “What’s the right way?” he asked, incredulous.

  “He needs to be arrested and charged. If I instigate him, it’ll fuck everything up.”

  The line went quiet and I bit my lip, once again asking myself if I’d done the right thing. Ending things with Michele was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. It went against all my instincts - it felt like I’d thrown her to the wolves, and now I had no way of knowing if she was even okay. All I wanted to do was find where she was and take her into my arms, to put her somewhere safe, somewhere I could keep an eye on her. But that wasn’t possible. I could only assume the worst, and that was that Brandon had someone watching me.

  Someone had been following me for weeks and I’d had no clue. For the first time, I let that thought sink in, and I shivered.

  This was how the husbands and wives over the years felt after they found out that their spouses hired me to follow them.

  To catch them in the act.

  “What are you going to do?” Erik asked me, cutting through my thoughts. “Just let her go? Let it all go?”

  “I have to,” I replied. “It’s the best thing for the both of us.”

  “That’s bullshit, Iain, and you know it.”

  Pent-up frustration and anger boiled, spilling out of me in hot bursts. “What the fuck was I supposed to do, Erik? There’s no line this fucker won’t cross - he threatened us both, he stalked us, he showed up at her work. I can’t protect her. It’s fucking killing me that I can’t. She had to get out before it’s too late.”

  “Again… you’re going to let this girl - who I must say has made you happier than I’ve seen you in a long ass time - you’re just going to let her go? Because you’re scared?”

  He wasn’t getting it. Nothing I was saying was getting through to him. He obviously didn’t comprehend the danger.

  “I made a promise - that I’d protect her from him. And I fucked it all up. I don’t deserve her.”

  “And you’re the only one who gets a say in that? Don’t you think Michele should be able to decide that for herself? Fuck, Iain.”

  His words felt like razor blades nicking at me, tiny cuts irritating a larger wound. He was right, of course. I’d taken her choice away from her, something I’d never thought I’d do. The thought pained me, and I gripped at my chest, wincing.

  “It’s done, Erik. I’m not going to change my mind.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but the tension was palpable on the line. It was obvious that nothing I could say was going to sway him on this. And I wanted to be steadfast, to be completely certain that what I had done was the best thing, the right thing. So what, I broke her heart today? In the end, it meant she was safe. And that was the most important thing.

  But my heart ached - I was just now coming to terms with the fact that I’d turned her away for good. To imagine the future spread out before me, with Michele not in it, left me feeling empty and cold.

  Erik and I hung up after that. I knew he was disappointed in me - he’d always been a black and white kind of guy. It was either right, or it was wrong. And that he thought this was wrong, there was no doubt.

  I was exhausted from barely sleeping the night before. All of the emotions of the last twelve hours played through my mind, incessantly pounding at me until I got up and forced myself to think about anything else. I eyed my coffee pot, but the thought of putting anything in my stomach at all made me feel nauseated.

  What was Michele doing right now? Was she on a bus, alone and confused? Was she waiting in the station, eying the door nervously every time someone walked through it?

  Would she ever forgive me for what I’d done?

  Did it matter? I asked myself. Let her be angry. If she was angry but on her way out of here, then I had succeeded.

  But I didn’t feel like I’d won anything. In fact, I only felt like I’d lost something I’d never be able to replace.

  Chapter 34.

  Michele

  “I need to extend my stay for another week.”

  The woman at the front desk raised her eyebrows and looked up from her computer screen, giving me a once-over before nodding.

  “Room number?”

  “113.”

  Her fingers clacked across the keyboard, her face blank. I shifted my weight from one foot to another, casting a glance over the empty lobby. It smelled like a mixture of chlorine and bleach.

  I’d been in Cape Elizabeth, Maine for over two weeks. I’d arrived here heartbroken, weary and desperate for a bed - traveling for nearly a full day had totally drained me. And now, all I could think about was what I left behind. But thinking too much about that was not at all productive.

  My situation was grim. I had no job, no prospects. My plan was simply to bide my time and hope for the best.

  Since that had worked out so well before.

  “Okay. Another week has been booked. Will you be using the same payment method we currently have on file?”

  I blinked. “Yes.” This plan was draining my bank account.

  “You’re all set then. Enjoy your stay.”

  I walked away, her words echoing in my head. Enjoy your stay.

  As if that was possible.

  On the way back to my room, I mentally did the math of how much another week was going to cost me. I had a fair amount of money saved up, but I didn’t have enough to stay in a motel indefinitely. Thinking about money made my heart lurch uncomfortably in my chest. I had been so careful with it in
Brooklyn, only to throw too much of it away at a shitty hotel with a rock-hard bed and paper-thin walls.

  At my door, I slid the card key in and walked inside. I kicked off my flats and slid into bed, turning the TV back on and settling on a rerun of Real Housewives, forgetting about the world for as long as I could.

  The sun started to go down outside, sending shadows over the bedspread and the walls. The women on the TV bickered and argued, and all I could do was stare numbly at them, thoughts racing through my head that I wished I could stop.

  The ever-present ache in my chest twinged, a fresh reminder of where I was and what I was doing. I hadn’t spoken to Iain since the day I left - not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t bear to hear his voice. I had no idea what happened after I’d left. I didn’t know if they caught Brandon, or if he gave up. I felt so utterly disconnected from the world.

  I should have fought harder. I shouldn’t have given in to Iain so easily - blindly following his wishes, letting Brandon take over what we had. I thought that time away from Iain would make me see things differently, would make me realize that I didn’t love him, that I had simply told him that in the heat of the moment, letting my emotions overwhelm me.

  But it was obvious as time wore on that my love was only growing stronger, and it was a wicked, twisting thing that gripped my chest and wouldn’t let go. I was hundreds of miles away from him. I hadn’t heard one word from him, and yet he was all I could think about. Every day as I lay in bed, only dragging myself up in the morning for thirty minutes of cardio and into the lobby for breakfast, I asked myself what Iain would think if he saw me. About my existence here, so dull and pointless.

  Did he think about me at all?

  I flicked my eyes over to the untouched brochure sitting on the nightstand. It showed a picture of a lighthouse on a cliff overlooking the bluest ocean with cursive words that read: Cape Elizabeth, a great place for family fun! The hotel clerk had given it to me when I first got here, and I’d dropped it on the table and hadn’t looked at it since.

  I hadn’t ventured to Cape Elizabeth to know if the brochure was telling the truth. I’d been living off hotel breakfasts and fast food joints in the very near vicinity, barely a quarter of a mile stretch around this motel.

  I knew I was only repeating the same old habits here. If Brandon was still walking free, which I strongly suspected he was, then he was still a real threat to me, but I didn’t find myself looking over my shoulder every time I left the building like I did back in Brooklyn. It was as if I was too numb to even care anymore.

  I thought about going back every day. I wanted to pack my suitcase up, check out, and hop back on that bus and ride it all the way home. I wanted to pound on Iain’s door, to demand that he tell me the truth this time about the way he felt about me. I wanted to touch him again, even if it was for one last time. Even if he pushed me away. I wanted to feel something other than this dull, constant ache.

  I didn’t go, though. I let my burner phone plan expire, effectively cutting me off from my life in Brooklyn. I didn’t search for bus tickets. I didn’t do anything.

  I couldn’t go back, not broken like this. A shell of a person. The truth was, even if Iain hadn’t pushed me away, even if Brandon never did manage to find me, all of what I had in Brooklyn would have eventually crumbled. I would have imploded. I would have pushed him away, instead of the other way around. The life I was leading there - it hadn’t been sustainable.

  What I was doing now sure as hell wasn’t, either. But I knew no other way.

  Hurt, lost, and confused, I’d been drifting through each day, watching the time pass by with the shadows on the walls, filling my head with endless amounts of garbage TV and absolutely refusing to explore the city I found myself in.

  I didn’t want to think of it as home.

  This is your home, too, Iain had said to me in the dark. I closed my eyes, remembering the way I’d felt when he said that: like there was hope. Like the world had more light than darkness, like despite where I’d come from and what I’d experienced, with him, it didn’t matter.

  I had been imprisoned, locked in a cage. And Iain had set me free.

  And, despite everything that happened, despite the way things ended… I still felt so close to him. I didn’t know how to let him go, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to try.

  Letting go would only extinguish the light that kept the darkness at bay.

  xxx

  Three days later, biting wind hit my face, the scent of a salty ocean coming along with it. I stood stiffly on the beach, watching blue-green waves rush against the sand, reaching and reaching before drawing back again.

  I didn’t know what made me decide to leave the motel this morning. I woke up, back stiff, dreams only halfway remembered. All I knew was that I dreamed of him, of Iain, of his blue eyes on my lips, his body warm against mine.

  The beach was beautiful. A certain coldness unrelated to the weather was attached to it, so devoid of people and activity. Since it was March, it was off-season; the water was cold as ice, the sand hard beneath my feet.

  I began to trek up the beach, slowly, kicking at sticks and stones as I went.

  I was going to get a lawyer. The thought had dawned on me after I’d woken up, after I had curled into a little ball in bed, letting the dream wash through me. I’d let myself imagine his touch, his fingers sliding over my skin.

  Then I had opened my eyes, the blank off-white wall next to the bed taking over my vision.

  Iain had set me free from one prison, yet there I was, in another.

  Again.

  I couldn’t keep letting Brandon rule my life. It was time to take control, once and for all. As scared as I was of the consequences, I knew that I was ready to try.

  For me, and for Iain.

  I stopped walking, looking back toward the ocean. This was the first time I’d ever seen it in person. The sound of the waves was methodical and calming. Some seagulls were calling high above my head.

  Taking off my shoes and socks, I rolled up my jeans. Then I walked toward the water.

  My feet were burning from the cold, hard sand. I didn’t care. This was my first time in front of the ocean, and I wanted to greet it.

  The first step in felt like fire. My feet hummed, goosebumps exploding all over me. I took a deep breath and smiled, giddy from what I was doing. Taking a risk, feeling the pain. Letting it overcome me.

  It was worth it. I took another step, deep enough that the water touched the bottoms of my rolled-up jeans. If a big enough wave came, I’d get soaked, but I was too overcome with the thrill of it to care. It was just water. It was only coldness. The discomfort would be temporary.

  This is what freedom feels like, I thought abruptly, looking up at the clear, blue sky.

  The only thing missing was Iain.

  I wondered what he was doing right now. Was he working on a case? Was he with his mom in the hospital? Or maybe he was at his apartment, sleeping in?

  It occurred to me that maybe he had met someone else. Someone without baggage, someone who didn’t look over her shoulder every chance she got.

  Shaking my head, I brushed that thought away, leaving the water and sitting down in the sand next to my shoes and socks.

  Getting a lawyer was what I needed to do. For myself, and for my future. The next time I saw Iain, I’d be a free woman. Truly free.

  I let that thought sink in, clutching my knees tightly to my chest. I sat on the beach for a long time, until the tide came in.

  xxx

  The next day, I found myself in front of a lawyer.

  I tucked my hair behind my ear nervously, taking in the details of her office. Her name was Mary Foster, and she had three plants sitting on the windowsill, their deep green leaves waving when the heater kicked on and blasted them with air. She had bookshelves full to the brim. And she was looking at me now, all business, her hands together in a small fist on her desk.

  “I need a divorce,” I said finally
, the first words I’d spoken since I sat down.

  “You’re in the right place for that,” she said kindly. She had fire-engine red hair in a perfect, symmetrical bob. She wore a wedding ring on her left hand. “Tell me about the terms you’re seeking.”

  Mary had excellent reviews on Yelp. Her clients recommended her highly. She was professional and efficient. But I still wasn’t sold on the fact that I wasn’t signing a death warrant by coming here.

  “I just want…” I licked my lips, blinking rapidly, trying to drum up anything that would make sense. I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want his house. “I just want to be free.”

  She nodded, as if she heard that sort of thing all the time. She parted her lips and said, “Tell me about your marriage. Tell me the reasons you’re seeking divorce today.”

  So I told her. I told her about the first time he ever hit me, about the next time, and the time after that. I told her how he had blocked me off from the world, how he wouldn’t let me work. I told her how I had escaped, that I had lived in Brooklyn for over four months and fell in love with someone new. And I told her that he found me, and that was why I was in Cape Elizabeth.

  By the time I was finished, I was crying. Mary pushed a box of tissues toward me soundlessly. She scribbled something on a notepad in front of her. I grabbed a tissue and wiped my eyes, then blew my nose.

  “You made the right choice coming to me today,” she said. “I’d like to represent you. I charge a very reasonable fee. And I will make sure that he can’t touch you. And if he does, then he will be very sorry indeed.”

  Hearing her words gave me hope, but I didn’t trust that hope just yet.

  “As soon as he knows I want a divorce, he’ll come looking for me.”

  “He won’t if a restraining order is delivered to him at the same time as the divorce papers.”

  “You really think that would stop him?” I asked her. “After everything he’s done?”

  “The threat of jail time would stop most people in their tracks,” Mary said. “But I have a feeling, based off everything you’ve told me, that he is choosing his actions very carefully. Lawrence Coffey, the Indiana state senator, is his father, correct?”