The Air He Breathes

by Brittainy C. Cherry

  “Okay,” I said, laying the book in my lap. “Your thoughts on the Bible so far.”

  He laughed and nodded. “It makes you think. It makes you want to know more about everything.”

  “But?” I asked, knowing there was a ‘but’ coming.

  “But…I don’t understand at least ninety-six percent of it.” He chuckled, placing the book down.

  “What do you want to be, Tristan?”

  He turned to me and narrowed his eyes, uncertain what I meant. “What?”

  “What do you want to be?” I asked again. “We never really talk about what we want, and I’m just curious.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose and shrugged, unable to answer. “I don’t know. I mean, in the past I was a father. A husband. But now…I have no clue.”

  My lips released a quiet sigh, and I frowned. “I wish you could see in yourself what I see when I look at you.”

  “What do you see?”

  “A fighter. Strength. Courage. Someone who loves deep and loves hard. Someone who doesn’t run when things get messy. When I look at you, I see endless possibilities. You’re smart, Tristan. And talented.” He cringed. I shook my head. “You are. And you can do anything. Anything you set your mind to, you can do. Your wood work is amazing; you could do something with that.”

  “I was,” he said. “My dad and I were starting our business up, and the day of the accident, he and I were flying to New York to meet with a few people interested in being our business partners.”

  “And nothing came of it?”

  He shook his head. “We didn’t even make it to New York. We had a layover in Detroit, and when we touched down and turned on our cell phones, we had a ton of messages about Jamie and Charlie.”

  “That’s so—”

  “It was the worst day of my life.”

  Before I could reply, I heard the sound of footsteps running down the hallway.

  “Mama! Mama! Look!” Emma said, holding her camera in one hand and two white feathers in her other hand.

  “You’re supposed to be sleeping, missy.”

  She groaned. “I know, Mama, but look! Two white feathers!”

  “Oh, it looks like Daddy is giving you a few kisses,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, Mama. These aren’t from Daddy.” Emma walked over to Tristan and handed him the feathers. “They are from Tristan’s family.”

  “For me?” he asked, his voice shaky.

  She nodded and whispered, “It means they love you.” Emma held her camera up. “Now, take a picture. Mama, get in the picture with him!” she ordered. We did as she said. When the Polaroid picture printed, she handed it to Tristan, and he thanked her over and over again.

  “Okay, time for bed. How about I read you a story so you can sleep?” I asked.

  “Can Tristan read it to me?” she asked, yawning.

  I looked over at him with questioning eyes. He nodded, standing from the ground. “Of course I can. What should we read?” he asked her, lifting my tired girl into his arms.

  “I like The Cat in The Hat,” Emma replied. “But you have to read it like a zombie.”

  His smile stretched as the two of them walked down the hallway and he said, “That’s one of my favorite ways to read it.”

  Outside of Emma’s bedroom, I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, listening to Tristan read to her, listening to her giggle at his terrible zombie voice. She sounded so happy, which in an instant made my life light up with joy. As a parent there was nothing better than knowing that your child was smiling. I couldn’t thank Tristan enough for bringing those smiles to Emma’s face.

  “Tick?” Emma said with a heavy yawn.

  “Yes, Tock?”

  “I’m sorry about your family.”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry about your dad.”

  I peeked into the room to see Tristan lying on the floor with the book against his chest beside Emma’s bed. Zeus lay against Emma’s feet. She yawned again. “I miss him.”

  “I bet he misses you, too.”

  She closed her eyes and curled into a ball as she began to fall asleep. “Tick?” she whispered, almost falling into her dreams.

  “Yes, Tock?”

  “I love you and Zeus, even though your zombie voice was really bad.”

  Tristan pinched the bridge of his nose and sniffled before standing up and pulling the cover over her. He slid Bubba into her arms and tucked her in. “I love you, too, Emma.” As he turned to leave the room, he caught me staring his way and gave me a small smirk. I gave him one back. “Come on, Zeus,” he called. Zeus wagged his tail, but didn’t move. Tristan arched a brow. “Zeus, come on. Let’s go home.”

  Zeus whimpered and curled in closer to Emma.

  I laughed. “What a traitor you have on your hands.”

  “I can’t really blame him. Is it okay if he stays the night?”

  “Absolutely. I think the two of them became used to each other after you and Zeus stayed a few days at our house.”

  He leaned against the door, watching as Zeus snuggled into Emma’s arms, where Bubba was. Emma hugged him tight and smiled in her dreams. Tristan crossed his arms. “I see why you didn’t fall completely apart like I did. You had Emma, and she’s…she’s wonderful. She’s everything good in this world, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. She is.

  The second week of November, a huge rainstorm moved through Meadows Creek. I sat on the porch, staring out at the rain that was hitting the grass at crazy speeds. I was surprised we hadn’t had any snow yet, but I was sure that within a few weeks, everything would be covered in white.

  The sky was darker by the minute, and the thunder rolled through followed by big flashes of light. Emma was sound asleep inside, and I was thankful that she was such a heavy sleeper because otherwise, the storms would’ve spooked her. Zeus sat beside me on the porch, staring out at the raindrops as his eyes opened and closed. He was trying his best to fight his tiredness, but he was losing the battle.

  “Elizabeth!” Tristan shouted, running from the back of his house. Every part of me began to panic when I saw him getting closer and closer. “Elizabeth!” he yelled. He was soaked from head to toe when he reached the bottom step of the porch. The palms of his hands fell to his knees as the rain continued to wash over him, and he tried to catch his breath once more.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, my voice shaking with fear. He looked freaked out. I stepped down the porch and joined him in the rainfall, placing my hands against his chest as he rose up. “Are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I was sitting in my shed and you crossed my mind.” He laced his fingers with mine and pulled me closer to him. My heart pounded in my chest, my nerves skyrocketing as I stared at his lips, taking in each word that fell from his mouth. “I tried to stop you from crossing my mind. I tried to shake you from my thoughts. But I kept thinking about you and my heart skipped. And then…” He moved in closer, his lips millimeters away from mine, his mouth slowly brushing against my bottom lip. The heat from him canceled out the chill of the rain. He was a kind of warmth I’d never known existed, a protective blanket that sent away the past hurts and sadness. Tristan’s voice shook as he kept speaking. “And then, I accidentally fell in love with you.”

  “Tristan…”

  His head shook back and forth. “That’s bad, right?”

  “It’s…”

  His tongue danced across my bottom lip before he sucked it gently between his own. “Awful. So right now, Lizzie…if you don’t want me to love you, tell me and I’ll stop. I’ll walk away and I’ll stop loving you. Push me away, if you want to. Tell me to go, and I will. But, if there is any small part of you that is okay with this, any part of you that is okay with me accidentally falling in love with you, then pull me closer. Take me into your house, lead me to your bedroom, and let me show you how much I’m falling in love with you. Let me show each and every inch of y
our body how crazy I am for you.”

  A level of guilt settled in my stomach. I glanced at the ground. “I don’t know if I’m ready to say it back yet...”

  He lifted my chin up with his finger and stared into my eyes. “That’s okay,” he promised, his voice low. “I’m pretty sure I have enough love for the both of us.”

  My eyes closed and each breath I took was more peaceful than I’d thought they would ever be. I’d never thought I would hear the word love from another man, but with Tristan, when he said it, I felt whole again.

  He breathed against my lips; the air he exhaled became the inhales that healed me. We stayed in the rain for a second more before my footsteps led us both inside the warmth of the house.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Tristan

  “I need your shit,” Faye said, standing on my porch in all black, wearing black cloth gloves and a black hat. It was late at night, and I’d just gotten back from working at Mr. Henson’s shop.

  I arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  “Well, not your shit exactly. But your dog’s shit.”

  My hand brushed against the back of my neck, looking at her with the same confused look. “I’m sorry, but you said that as if it made common sense.”

  She sighed, smacking the palm of her hand against her face. “Look, normally I would go to Liz with my issues, but I know she’s probably putting Emma to bed and being a grown up or something stupid like that. So, I figured why not try to reach out to her boyfriend and ask him for a favor.”

  “A favor is giving you my dog’s shit.”

  She nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Do I want to know what you’re doing with it?”

  “Duh, tonight is ‘do it yourself’ spa night at my house. Dog shit works fantastic for a facial,” she said. The blank stare I delivered her made her smirk. “Dude. I’m putting the shit in a brown paper bag and burning it on my boss’s porch.”

  Another blank stare from me. “If you don’t want to tell me the truth, that’s fine.”

  She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag. “No. Seriously.”

  “How long is this going to take?” Faye asked as we lapped around the neighborhood with Zeus on a leash for the fourth time.

  “Hey now, you’re lucky that Zeus is even offering up his poop to you. He’s very selective about who he lets have it.”

  While we took a few more laps, Faye told me her opinion on pretty much everything. “P.S. I think it’s stupid you named that little ass dog Zeus.”

  I smirked. “My son, Charlie, named him. We read Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The Lighting Thief, and Charlie was just in love with the whole Greek god idea. After reading the book, we spent months studying the gods. He fell in love with the name Zeus, but then he fell in love with a medium-sized dog from the pound, who didn’t exactly fit the name of such a huge god. I remember he said, ‘Dad, the size doesn’t matter. He’s still Zeus.’”

  Her face frowned for a second before she went back to her playful self and rolled her eyes. “Geez, did you really just play the dead son card on me, leaving me feeling extremely bad and awkward?”

  I laughed, because I saw the playfulness in her eyes. “I think I did.”

  “Jerk,” she muttered before turning away to try to hide herself wiping away a tear. I saw her, but I didn’t say anything about it.

  Zeus paused in front of a fire hydrant and started doing his ‘time to poop’ moves. “Here we go!” I said, clapping my hands together.

  Within seconds, Faye was scooping Zeus’ fresh poop into the bag and dancing around the street corner with it. “Way to go, you Olympic god, you!” she shouted. I’d never seen someone get so excited by what I honestly considered to be the nastiest stuff ever.

  “Okay, let’s go,” she said, walking back toward my house.

  “Go? Go where?”

  “Um, to my boss’s house so I can be an adult and set this shit on fire and watch it burn.”

  “I thought you were joking about that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Tristan, I joke about penis size, not about tossing shit on my boss’s porch.”

  “But why do I need to be included with this? And aren’t we a little…old for these kinds of antics?”

  “Yes!” she shouted, her voice cracking. “Yes, it’s completely immature of me to want to throw shit at my boss’s house. And yes, it’s completely immature of me to think that it will make me feel better, but if I don’t do this I’m just going to be pissed off and sad. And I can’t be sad because that means he wins. It means that when he called me tonight to tell me he was getting back together with his ex-wife, I realized he’d always had the upper hand, even though I thought I did. It means that the asshole allowed me to fall in love with him and trust him, only to rip my heart out. I don’t fall in love! I don’t get hurt!” Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to blink because she knew that would make them fall. Tears were a form of weakness to her, and I could tell the last thing Faye ever wanted to feel was weak. “But now all I feel is this breaking inside. I can literally feel every inch of me seconds away from falling apart, and I can’t even go to my best friend about it because she lost her fucking husband and had a really shitty year. I shouldn’t have come to you because it turns out you had an even shittier year, but I didn’t know what to do! I’m fucking heartbroken.

  “I mean, why would someone do this?! Why do people fall in love if it means there is a chance of feeling this way? What the fuck is wrong with humans?! HUMANS ARE FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED! I mean, I get it—it feels good, you know? Being in love, being happy.” Her body trembled as the tears fell faster than she could take breaths. “But when that magical rug is ripped out from under you, it takes all the happy and good feelings with it. And your heart? It just breaks. It breaks and it’s unapologetic. It shatters into a million pieces, leaving you numb, blankly staring at the pieces because all your free will, all the common sense you once had in your life is gone. You gave up everything for this bullshit thing called love, and now you’re just destroyed.”

  I was quick to wrap my arms around her. She sobbed into me and I held her tighter. We stood on the street corner for a while as she cried and I rested my chin on her head. “I think Zeus went to poop in my backyard today, and I’m pretty sure I forgot to pick it up.”

  She pulled away and cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  We searched my whole backyard and added a nice collection of poop to the bag before she hopped into my car and I drove her to Matty’s house. “This is going to be so good,” she said, rubbing her hands together. “Okay, you keep the car running and I’ll drop the shit, light it up, knock on his door, dash back to the car, and we’ll hit it!”

  “Perfect.” She hurried off, did exactly as she’d said she would, and when she jumped into the car, she giggled like a five-year-old. “Um, Faye?”

  “Yes?” she laughed, tossing her head back in amusement.

  “I think his wooden porch is on fire.”

  Her stare twisted to her window, where Matty’s porch was definitely on fire. “SHIT!”

  “Literally.” She went to open her door to rush to put it out, but I stopped her. “No. If he sees you, he’ll fire you.”

  She paused. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  I wondered how many times she could say that before it became a tongue twister. “Get down, just in case he sees you. I’ll be back.”

  Hurrying out of my car, I rushed to the porch. I stared down at the fire and said a small prayer before I started stomping the fire out, including the bag of poop, which unfortunately got all over my shoes.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Matty asked, opening his door and staring at me. The smell of the poop hit him quickly, causing him to cover his nose with his hand. “Is that dog shit?!”

  My mind blanked. I wasn’t sure what to say or how to explain why my shoes were currently covered in my dog’s poop. So, I panicked. “I’m the town assho
le! I randomly leave shit around because I’m the town asshole! So…fuck you!”

  He stared at me.

  I stared at him.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  He threatened to call the cops.

  I kicked off my shoes, ran to my car, and drove away.

  “Holy crap!” Faye said, crying, but this time tears of amusement. “That was amazing. You literally stepped in dog poop to make sure I kept my job.”

  “I know. I’m regretting it.” She laughed and when I pulled up to my house, I put the car into park.

  “He didn’t really love me, did he? I mean, he said he did, but only at times when he wanted sex. And he told me he was over his wife, but only at three in the morning when he was texting me to come over.”

  “He sounds like an asshole, Faye.”

  She nodded. “I have a way of falling for those kinds. I just kind of wonder what it would be like to find someone who loves you the same amount that you love them. You know, that person who you see looking your way and smiling because they are just as wild for you as you are for them.”

  “Why do you sleep with these guys if you know they are jerks?”

  “Because I hope they will someday fall in love with me.”

  “I think you can fall in love with your clothes on.”

  “Dream a little dream with me.” She chuckled nervously, her eyes filled with self-doubt. “But I’m done with this love crap. Throwing in the towel.”

  “It’s worth it, though, Faye.” I stared into her eyes, which were red from crying. “The heartbreak is worth those few moments of happiness, and the pieces of the shattered heart can be put back together. I mean, there will be cracks and scars, and sometimes this burning memory of the past, but that burn? It’s just a reminder that you survived. That burning is your rebirth.”

  “Have you been born again?”

  My eyes moved to Elizabeth’s house before they locked with Faye’s stare. “I’m working on it.”