Last Girl

by K. S. Thomas

  Penn

  “You look like shit.”

  “You don’t look so hot either. I guess spending all night standing in a forest fire will do that.” It took us hours to get the burn under control. With the drought we’ve been having it’s no wonder all it took was a single flash of lighting to set several acres ablaze.

  “Yeah, but you looked like shit before the fire.” I can see Tony watching me out of the corner of his eye while he puts up his gear. “This about Bo? This weekend was the anniversary, wasn’t it?”

  Even Tony remembered. Trix was right. We do suck.

  “Friday. Nine years now.” It’s not the reason I look the way I do, but I’d just as soon Tony believe it is.

  “Damn. Well, at least you and Trix had each other, right?”

  I laugh harshly.

  Tony hangs his coat and moves his hands to his hips, an eyebrow arched high, waiting for me to explain.

  “Funny story really,” I start, sarcasm drenching every syllable, “Turns out, Trix and I forgot. So, instead of wallowing in our loss and sharing in a perfectly miserable evening of playing the blame game and who lost more when they lost Bo, we went out. On a date. And I had, what was undoubtedly, the best night of my entire life.”

  Tony’s brow has dropped again. So has his jaw. Since it appears to be out of commission for the time being, I continue, “Then...we realized what day it was and that was the end of that.” I slam my helmet onto the top shelf and turn away from him. I’m not up for rehashing the details of my weekend. All I want right now is a hot shower and fucking cot to pass out in.

  Tony’s heavy footsteps follow me out of the locker room and into the hall.

  “Hey, wait up.”

  I shake my head and keep walking.

  “Penn!”

  He uses his big brother voice on me. I know that’s what it is. I’ve heard him use it on all five of his younger siblings at one point or another when he felt they needed a good talking to. Apparently he’s getting confused about our relationship.

  I spin back around bringing both of us to an abrupt halt. “WHAT?”

  “We’re not done here.”

  “Yes. We are.” I try to turn away again but Tony grabs my arm and stops me. I think maybe he’s angling to get punched. And it’s not going to take a whole lot of effort to make that happen given the frame of mind I’m in.

  “I know I’m not fucking Bo, okay? But you’ve been my best friend for the last three years. We work together. We live every day like we might die together. You’re like a brother to me. And you’re a fucking wreck. And you and I both know it’s because of Trix. So tell me what the fuck happened so we can sort it out together and fix it for you.”

  I shake my arm free and stare down at the ground while I get a fucking grip. When I lift my eyes to meet his, he’s patiently waiting for me to start talking.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t think it can be fixed.” I shrug helplessly. After nine years of fighting through our grief, going to battle against the demons that haunt Trix day in and day out, I’ve finally been beaten. And ironically, it was Trix who defeated me. Not the grief. Not the demons. Just her.

  “Of course it can be fixed. You two belong together. No way in hell am I going to stand by and let you give up two seconds after you finally get the balls to make a move.”

  My fists clench at my sides. “You don’t know. You didn’t see her, Tony. She spent the weekend puking her fucking guts out and when she wasn’t hunched over the toilet, she was sleeping, and not normal sleeping, sleeping like she was hoping it would lead to dying-sleeping. She won’t talk to me. Wouldn’t even come out of her room unless it was the middle of the night and she thought I was sleeping. She hasn’t been eating. And to top off the torture, I could hear her crying the entire fucking time. Didn’t matter if she was awake or passed out, her body just kept wringing out the tears and agonizing sobs until I was ready to take a bullet just to put us both out of our misery.”

  Tony nods, a quiet understanding in the gesture. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Are you eating? Sleeping?”

  I scoff. “If you count the hours I spent dazed sitting on the floor outside her bedroom door just staring at the wall across from me, then sure, I’ve slept.” My weekend wasn’t that unlike hers. I didn’t throw up, but I definitely wasn’t getting anything new down. And while I didn’t sleep twenty-four seven, the state I was in definitely qualified for comatose. I also bawled my eyes out right along with her, but there are aspects of the hell I’m in I intend to keep private.

  “That’s not gonna cut it. After work, you’re coming home with me today. I’ll call Gina, have her bring over some dinner. Real food. Home cooked. And then you’re gonna crash until your skin looks normal again. None of this pasty gray shit. It’s not healthy looking.” He pats my shoulder as if that settles it and every problem I had before this conversation began has been magically erased at the prospect of his sister bringing over a lasagna.

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  He frowns. “Trix will be fine. She’s alone right now, right? She can handle another night without you. Hell, the distance may do you both some good.”

  Actually, he might have a point. “Maybe you’re right.”

  Tony does a double take. “I’m sorry. Did you just agree with me on something? What, that’s like twice in the last month now.”

  “Don’t act so surprised. You’re bound to get something right every once in a while.” I muster a halfhearted grin and hope it’s enough to convince him. “And if Trix wants to spend her life wallowing alone, I’m done trying to stop her.”

  Tony’s eyes shift into skeptical slants. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not bullshit. The way she’s treating me, that’s bullshit. I poured my goddamned heart out to that girl and she turns around and stomps it to pieces two seconds later. So, fuck it. If she doesn’t want me, there are plenty of women out there who do. And I’m going to go and track one of them down just as soon as I get outta here.”

  I start walking again, faster this time. Maybe I can make it to the bathroom before Tony says anything else.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  So close.

  “No. An idiot would dwell on the shit he can’t change. I’m all about action.”

  Tony nods like he gets what I’m saying. “So what? You really gonna go out and nail the first chick who crosses your path?”

  “Any action is good action at this point.” I don’t really believe that. But I will pass on going home tonight. I’ll pass on going to Tony’s too. Pop is always heavy on the lectures, but at least he doesn’t give them unprovoked. His place is my safest bet right now. And if I’m lucky, Tony won’t be the only one to assume I’m banging some random girl tonight.

  “You’ve got a real self-destructive streak, you know that don’t you?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead I just keep walking and act like I didn’t hear him at all. He doesn’t get it. No one does. I’m not trying to destroy myself. I’m trying to save her. And I would happily go straight back to doing whatever it takes to be the guy she loves to hate before I’ll ever run the risk of becoming the guy she hates to love.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Trix

  “Good God, woman! What happened to you?”

  The horrorstruck expression on Nat’s face makes me reach for my new chopped off hairdo.

  “Think I should go back to my stylist and complain?” I try to grin, but my face is a sort of solid mass, unable to move. It’s been that way for hours. Probably since the last long strand of hair hit the bathroom floor.

  “If you paid for that do, I think you need to sue.” Nat shakes her head. “But judging by the rest of you, I’m thinking this shit didn’t happen at the beauty shop.” She walks toward the desk and digs around in her pen holder until she finds what she’s looking for. A pair of crafting scissor with bright yellow handles. I want to ask her what five year old
she stole them from, but I’m all humored out from my last attempt.

  She grabs the armrest of my chair and brings it toward her, spinning me around just before I reach her. Unable to ask her what she’s doing, I just sit here until I can feel her fingers sifting through my hair and gently smoothing it out. Then, the tug of scissors follows. This goes on for less than five minutes and she twirls me back around again.

  “There. At least now you don’t look like you escaped from an insane asylum anymore.” She reaches for my listless hand lying limp in my lap and drags me to my feet. “Come on. We’ve got work to do before any patients start rolling in here and only so much time for you to tell me why in the hell you look like death regurgitated you and spit you back out to walk among the living.”

  She’s hovering in the doorway so I’m assuming she’s expecting an answer. I don’t really have one. Not one I can put into words anyway.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Her lips purse and she squints. “That’s not gonna cut it.”

  “This weekend was the anniversary of my brother’s death. It was also the weekend Penn admitted he was falling for me. And, because that combo was working so well already, it will also go down from here on out as the weekend that I lost what was left of my mind to my heart...which I lost to the person I pushed away as a result of the losing my mind part. And now I’m heartless and mindless. Which leaves me with my spirit. And that makes me no better than a ghost. A ghost with a body. A fucking zombie. I’m a motherfucking zombie. Just like Penn said. I may as well be dead because no matter what I do, I just can’t seem to come to terms with being alive.”

  Nat isn’t squinting anymore. Her eyes are open so wide they may pop out of her skull if someone comes along and gives her as much as a friendly pat on the shoulder.

  “So...this may be a bit beyond my capabilities.” Her hands come up to rest on her hips. “Shouldn’t you have a shrink on speed dial for this kind of thing?”

  For the first time in forty-eight hours a sensation other than agonizing pain hits me, and it’s offended.

  “No!”

  “Don’t go acting all insulted. You’re the one who let the crazy out. If you don’t have a shrink, who comes along and stuffs it all back in when you’re done with your meltdown?”

  I can feel the queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach return. My only saving grace is that there’s nothing left in there to come back up.

  “Penn. Penn always stuffs the crazy back.” The lump in my throat rises from the controllable spot where it was nicely settled to a higher point, cutting off my abilities to swallow down what ails me. The tears well up even when I thought it was impossible and I suddenly realize I have no clue how I’m going to make it through this day, let alone out of this office, without totally losing it.

  Nat gently taps my elbow to get my attention.

  “You need to get your head straight.” She’s completely calm, like a lighthouse shining me home in the midst of the torrential downpour of emotions trying to keep me lost. “You get your head straight, you get Penn. You get Penn, you get your heart back.”

  I nod. I know she’s right. “I just don’t even know where to start.”

  “You already did. I mean, taking an ax to your hair maybe wasn’t the best place to begin, but it was something. You made a change. You took control. Even if it was tiny and trivial. It was something.” Her warm smile eases the ache inside me and the nausea fades along with it.

  “You were wrong.”

  She smirks like that’s not possible. “Oh yeah?”

  “This wasn’t beyond your capabilities at all. Thanks for not freaking when all my dirty tragic insides exploded all over you. You’re a really good friend, Nat.”

  Her arm hooks into mine and she starts to walk us out into the hall. Her face turned toward me, her mouth begins to move. “We all have dirty tragic insides, Trix. Mine won’t be any prettier when they go splat in your lap the next time my girl tells me she’s having second thoughts about us for the one hundredth time.”

  My mouth actually curves slightly at the edges. “Consider my lap here for your splat whenever you need it.”

  Penn

  “Should you be here right now?”

  It’s not the most welcoming of greetings, but I’m in no position to be picky.

  “You gonna kick me out?”

  Pop actually seems to be considering it. “Depends. Why are you here?”

  “Did you know what date it was?”

  He sighs. “You didn’t.”

  I shake my head, confirming what he just figured out. “I didn’t. Neither of us did. Until it was too late.”

  Pop takes the duffle bag I brought from work and leads the way toward my old room. “I should have said something. I just thought it was intentional. That you guys were remembering Bo together, celebrating his life and the role he played in helping you two find each other.” He drops the bag onto my bed. It’s still got the same navy blue comforter on it I slept with in high school. “I take it Trix got a bit overwhelmed when everything hit her?”

  I snort. “That would be an understatement.” I walk over to my nightstand and take the first of two frames perched on it into my hands. The picture in it is of all three of us. Eighth grade. Pop took it just as we were headed out to the lake to go fishing on the dock. Bo’s standing between us as usual, but both Trix and I are shooting sideways glances at one another behind his back. Even when we were busy staring daggers at one another, we still couldn’t ever keep our eyes off one another. “She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me right now. Won’t even come out of her room.” I set the frame down again. “She basically told me to stop caring about her.”

  “She just needs time, son.”

  A heated streak of anger burns through me. “Oh, yeah? How much time? Because she’s had nine years. NINE YEARS. And she still hasn’t figured out how to cope.”

  Pop smiles sadly. “Of course not. You’ve made it your mission in life to look out for her, to protect her. And when you set out to do something, Penn, you do it and you do it well. She hasn’t needed to cope, because every time grief reared its ugly, beastly head, you jumped right in to slay it for her.”

  I blink several times, dumbstruck. “Are you saying...are you saying this is my fault? She’s stuck in this limbo because of me?”

  “No.” He takes a seat on my bed and I do the same. Pop is longwinded even when he makes it short, I might as well settle in. “It’s not your fault. It’s also not yours to fix. This beast you’ve been trying to protect her from, it’s a part of her. It’s never going to die. And every time you try to snuff it out, it just goes back into hiding, leaving you both blindsided and unprepared when it strikes the next time. And there will always be a next time, Penn. You know that.”

  I do know that. Watching my father grieve my mother was all the motivation my naïve little six year old heart needed to vow never to fall in love. And damn it all to hell if I didn’t do everything I could to hold myself to it and still failed.

  “How did you deal with it? How did you cope after you lost Mom?”

  He leans across me to reach the nightstand. The second frame is filled with her beautiful smiling face. It was taken before she got sick. Truthfully, I have no real memories of the woman in that picture. I have fleeting flashes. Blurred images. Ideas of who she was before she became ill, but nothing concrete I’m not convinced my brain didn’t conjure up after hearing enough stories about her.

  “That’s a strange question coming from you.” His thumb carefully traces the outline of her face. “You don’t think I have coped with her death.”

  I gulp down a painful swallow of shame and guilt. “Pop...”

  “You don’t need to try and explain, Penn. I was there. I remember. Losing your mother nearly destroyed me. It took all I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, but I did it. Every day. For you. Because that’s what you do when you’re sinking, you grasp onto something. Somet
hing stronger than the current. For me it was my love for you. For you it was your love for Trix, and I have no doubt, for her it was you.” He hands the frame to me. “Thing is, living your life for someone else only keeps you treading water, it doesn’t get you back to shore. When you didn’t need me anymore, I had to decide for myself if I was prepared to let go and sink, or if I would let go and swim. Some days it may not show as much as others, but I swam, Penn. I swam until I found solid ground to stand on. I like my life the way it is. And it’s not nearly as empty as you think.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper because the tennis ball lodged in my throat is disabling my voice.

  “Don’t be.” He pats my back, rubbing his palm back and forth between my shoulder blades the same way he did when I was a kid. “Just do me a favor and choose to swim. It’s time. For both of you. Find land and I promise, you’ll find her there too.”

  “We have to do it alone?”

  He nods. “You have to do it alone.”

  “And you’re sure she’s strong enough?”

  He smiles. “She carried you here, didn’t she?”

  She did.

  Pop pushes up from his knees and stands. “I’m going to let you get some rest. You look like you could use a little shut eye.”

  He’s almost to the door when I ask, “Did you know? This whole time? That I loved her?”

  He smiles. “Why else would you have asked me for your mother’s ring when you were only eighteen? I knew then you would wind up giving it to her one day.”

  He taps the doorframe thoughtfully with his fingers, “I wouldn’t have given it to you if I’d had any doubts about the girl whose hand you intended to put it on.”

  “Thanks, Pop.”

  “You’ll always be stronger than the current, son.” He closes the door and I’m alone. Really alone. And I think it may be the very first time I’ve felt this way in twenty-one years. I don’t like it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trix

  Penn hasn’t been home in days. At first I was relieved. Now that it’s Friday night again, the one week marker of our disastrous date, I’m getting pissed. I know I started this. I’m the one who told him to back off and then locked myself in my room all weekend. I get it. But I never really expected him to listen to me. To just...disappear.