The Rules of Regret

by Megan Squires

  It didn’t help hearing that. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t. I was already being crushed under the weight of “the impossible responsibility” that Torin spoke of. So what? Paul told Lance to follow me. Maybe he was responsible for that piece. But I was responsible for my own pieces.

  It felt like my pieces were bigger.

  Paul’s fingers were loose in mine. I didn’t like holding them, but I didn’t want to shake them free, either. So we sat there for a few moments, our fingers in this weird stage of almost holding.

  “You can trace responsibility back to every action Lance ever took, and every interaction he ever had. We don’t live in a vacuum. What I do affects you, what you do affects someone else, and so on and so on,” Paul said, looking at me. “This is where people get the notion that God is to blame for things like this, if you trace it all back far enough.”

  “I think he must be.” My foot was asleep, pins and needles.

  “Of course he is.” Paul squeezed my hand tightly within his knotted fingers. “Let him be responsible, Darby.” The squeezing got tighter as he tried to convince me. He had his courtroom lawyer skills playing out in full effect and I tried so hard to believe every word, I really did. “Let him take the blame. He can handle it.”

  “That just feels like a way of deflecting responsibility.” I had to stretch my leg in front of me because it was all prickly and began to twitch, which was sort of embarrassing when it jumped up and down. “To blame something that may or may not exist, just so I don’t have to take ownership. That feels like the easy, cowardly way out. I can’t be a coward about this. I can’t do that to Lance.”

  “It’s not cowardly to lean on something greater than you.”

  “I don’t know how to do that, Paul. I really don’t.” My foot pulsed again and I shook it out with one shallow kick thrust into the air. “Do I just place the blame on this entity that can’t even defend itself, just so I, what? So I don’t have to feel so guilty about my role in it? That’s not fair to Lance. I won’t do that to him.”

  Paul sighed, lighter this time. “Honestly, Darby, you’re already blaming someone that can’t defend herself,” he said. “Because it’s not like you’re going to come to your own defense. You’ve sentenced yourself to this irrational punishment, just like you did with Anna.”

  “This isn’t about Anna.” If I had a penny for every time I’d uttered that phrase...

  I pulled my hand from his, but he’d already sort of let go, so it just left me feeling alone and abandoned. Even though I didn’t like holding his hand, I wanted to curl up in his lap like a little girl did with her daddy. Paul was family to me and I needed that reassuring, everything-will-be-okay hug.

  “This is about Anna.” Paul’s red-rimmed eyes locked with mine. “This is about Lance. This is about any person that ever crosses your path, Darby.” His eyes were the same color as his son’s. I wondered why I never noticed that and I started to cry at the realization that I’d never be able to compare them side by side. “And this is about your life and how you’re going to choose to live it.” I waited for him to blink, but he didn’t. “Because you can think that you played a part in their deaths, or you can think you played a part in their lives.” Pressing his palms to the floor, he pushed up to stand, then he walked toward the door, about to open it, but not before he turned his head my direction and said, “In my opinion, I think you need to focus more on the living, and less on the dying.”

  My phone vibrated on the carpet. I couldn’t look at it. I couldn’t even pry open an eye to sneak at glance at the screen. I pressed a lazy finger into the 'off' button and curled back onto my side.

  A few hours passed. The only way I could really tell was from the increase in pain in the crick in my neck. After sleeping in the middle of the empty family room of my old apartment (which Gustov was kind enough to let me squat in while he looked for a new tenant) for the past three nights—or days, all of it really—my bones felt like they were going to break. And after sleeping several hours straight, they felt like they were about to become unhinged. So that’s how I knew I’d been asleep for a while, because not only did my head and my heart hurt immensely, my bones ached to the core.

  The front door flew open.

  “God, this color sucks.” I rolled onto my back, my joints all popping with the slow movement like a twisted up section of bubble wrap. “Seriously, Darbs. I hate this color.”

  Sonja dropped a bag of Cheetos onto the floor and they landed inches from my head.

  “But it matches,” I said, swallowing. When was the last time I’d brushed my teeth? My mouth felt like cotton.

  “Matches what?” She ripped open the chip bag and tossed an unnaturally orange puff into her mouth. “There is absolutely nothing in here to match.”

  “My mood.”

  Sonja threw another chip in. “Darby. That is so sad.” I could hear her teeth crunching around her words. “This color is awful, and if this is how you feel, then I’m truly sorry. This has to be the worst color in the history of colors. It’s not really even a color.”

  I propped up onto my elbows, my bones locking into place. I prayed they wouldn’t snap beneath the pressure as I stretched my neck out toward her. “It is a color. Just, like you said, an awful one. White is not a color. Or maybe black isn’t. I don’t really know. But beige is. And this one is SW7036.”

  “Let’s repaint.” She held out the bag to me and I dipped my hand in. I hadn’t eaten in—I actually didn’t know when I last ate—but for some reason that I couldn’t explain, Cheetos were exactly what I craved. “Come on. Get in the Jeep. We’re headed to the hardware store.”

  Though I hadn’t left the townhouse in days, it didn’t sound like a bad plan, so I forced myself into a sitting position, readying to stand, not entirely sure the bones in my legs were actually going to do their expected job and support me.

  While I was figuring out how to best stand without snapping in two, there was a knock on the door. Sonja flicked a glance my direction, as if to ask, “Are you expecting someone?” and I shrugged, as if to say, “No.” She crossed the room and tossed open the front door.

  “Is Darby here?” He didn’t have to say it, because we’d actually made eye contact before the words even had a chance to fall out of this mouth. There they were: two wide, green eyes that leveled me with just one glance.

  “And you are?” Sonja gave him a sidelong look, and then tossed one toward me.

  “Torin. Darby’s friend.”

  “Can you paint?” Both of her hands were hooked on her hips. She was practically tapping her toe. “How good are you at painting?”

  Torin’s dimples—how I’d missed those dimples—pulled into his cheeks. “I’m an excellent painter.” He almost sounded like Dustin Hoffman, Rainman-style.

  “Good!” She grabbed him by the wrist and flung around toward the empty room, waving a hand at the wall. “Because today, we paint.”

  We both sat in the back of my Jeep. Sonja drove. She liked being in control, and I liked letting her. That was how our friendship went, and there was comfort in that predictable consistency.

  There was also comfort in the silent way Torin’s fingers twisted with mine.

  We hadn’t talked since Lance, and we still weren’t actually talking with words, but we didn’t need them.

  I’d left Quarry Summit that day—that same day that I heard about the crash. I didn’t look back. I just ran. I ran away from it all, that much I was willing to admit. Because in reality, there was no way I could keep up with my summer duties as a counselor to troubled youth. I was every bit as troubled as their worst-case scenario camper. It would be the blind leading the blind, and any way you sliced it, you always ended up lost.

  Torin had tried calling, but I didn’t have it in me to answer. I worried that somehow the grief I’d felt for Lance would hurt him, and I couldn’t do that. The whole unexpected scenario was so unbelievable, so fresh and raw, and Torin didn’t need to be drug into the
middle of it. Somehow he’d gotten mixed up with me this summer, and I’d bet everything I had that he wished I’d never set foot at Quarry Summit.

  But his presence in my Jeep and his hand tangled with mine hinted otherwise.

  The first week after, I was with Lance’s family mostly. Going through his things. Watching old videos. Talking about him like he was some incredible person that was too young to die. Which probably he was—especially the too young part. That was what everyone always said about Anna: that she was too young to die. I was beginning to believe that was just what people said because it sounded good. Was there really an acceptable cut-off age when it suddenly became okay to die? Like at 42, was that an appropriate time for death? When did death no longer become tragic? When was it finally allowed?

  It struck me that it never was.

  This thing that would eventually happen to every single one of us was never accepted by any of us. I wondered if there were any other things that humanity experienced universally, yet had an impossible time coming to terms with. I didn’t think there was. Death was it. Death was the socially unacceptable experience that we would all, at some point in time, experience.

  All I knew was that if I were to die right then, I didn’t think I’d feel too young for it. If anything, it would make me want to ask the cruel hands of time, “What took you so long?” Maybe that’s what happened when the people you knew and loved died before you. Maybe that’s why everyone always said those words “too young to die.” Because, in reality, they believed—or at least hoped—they were too young to die, also. No one ever felt old enough to stop living.

  I vowed at that moment to never utter that phrase again.

  Sonja angled the Jeep into a parking spot near the sliding door entrance of the store, and we funneled out in one line of three, like we were on some mission and were joined at the hip. I was grateful that Torin had scooped my hand back up after getting out of the car, and our arms swung loosely between us as we walked.

  “Mark, where is your paint section?” Sonja took charge and asked the first guy she could find in a red apron with his name embroidered across it in unraveling white thread.

  “Aisle 23.”

  We all nodded a thank you and then headed that direction.

  “Can I help you?” A boy that was probably close to our age asked from behind a metal counter. He pounded on the lid to a paint can with a rubber mallet and wiped his hand across his brow, streaking it an aqua hue.

  “Yes.” Torin spoke up. “We need paint.”

  The guy gave us a look that should have made us feel stupid, but it didn’t, because we were on a mission, and this was more than just paint.

  “Do you have a swatch?” He pulled another can from some contraption that spun them around furiously which rocked and vibrated like a washing machine.

  “No.” Torin glanced my direction. “What color are you thinking?”

  I thought for a moment. “Black.”

  “No way.” Sonja thrust out a pouty bottom lip and furrowed her brow. “Absolutely not. We’re doing an actual color.”

  The guy behind the counter wasn’t listening to us anymore, but that was okay because it wasn’t like we were anywhere near ready to place an actual order.

  “I think black is a color. I think it’s actually all of colors mixed together,” I suggested, feeling like I’d heard that somewhere once.

  “That is very left brain thinker of you, Darby.” Torin squeezed my fingers, but I just gave him a confused look. “To an artist, black is all the colors. To a physicist, it’s the absence of color.” Again, the blank look of confusion cloaked my face. “In terms of light, black is not a color. No light equals darkness, which equals black.” I wondered how Torin had learned of such things up on that mountaintop of his. “White is the blending of all the colors together. Like light from the sun. All colors on the spectrum composed together equal bright white.” He paused, waiting for us to catch up, but my brain was working hard to process and lagged behind. The look on Sonja’s face proved hers was working at an even slower rate. It was obvious Torin really wanted to be understood, so he continued, “But from an artist’s perspective, you can’t combine colors together to make white, so white is the absence of color.”

  “How does this at all help us decide on paint?” Sonja wasn’t going to get it, but I was close.

  “We have a choice to make.” Torin cocked his head and thumbed his chin. He looked absolutely adorable, and I nearly felt guilty for thinking it because being with him really did bring me joy. A joy I wasn’t sure I was supposed to deserve just yet. “Today, are we going to be scientists, or are we going to be artists?”

  Sonja shrugged, not caring. But I did. I cared.

  “Logic and reason, or emotion and feeling?” Concrete and structure, or trees and flowers?

  I dropped his hand and walked toward the vast wall of paint chip samples. They were organized into a rainbow of colors, all blending from one shade to the next like their own work of art. I didn’t want to pull one out to look at it, for fear that I’d disturb this beautiful cohesion of so many different hues all existing in one space, all playing their small, but significant part.

  I felt Torin’s body come up behind me before his chest touched my shoulder blade. “Lots to choose from,” he murmured. Sonja was a few feet away comparing paint rollers, holding them up and mock painting in the air.

  “I know, right?” I fingered the corner of one strip, but left it in its holder on the wall. “I don’t want to take any of them out. They look so perfect like this.”

  “I doubt anyone would notice,” Torin said, and that statement pulled all of the wind out of my sails.

  “That stinks, Torin.” I shut my eyes and swallowed hard, breathing in. “That completely stinks that you could remove one of these very integral pieces to the puzzle and no one would notice.”

  “This a metaphor, right?” He wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. “We’re not actually concerned about paint, are we?”

  “We are concerned about paint. Someone needs to be concerned about this wall and someone needs to be responsible for keeping it like this. It’s beautiful!” I tossed my hands toward the thousands of paint chips in front of us.

  “Stunning, really.”

  “I know, right?” I nodded my head quickly, encouraging his agreement. “They need to devise a new system so people don’t have to remove these cards in order to choose their paint.”

  “We should write a note and put it in their suggestion box.” He was right there with me and my crazy. It might have just been humoring, but it felt like love.

  “We need to. We can’t just have people haphazardly removing such important players in this artistry of color. It’s an injustice.”

  “A complete injustice.”

  Sonja waltzed up to us and reached her hand into the display that was our hardware store masterpiece.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped, swatting her hand away.

  “Ouch!” she grimaced, and shot me the look that she often reserved for her boyfriend when he’d done something to royally piss her off. “I’m picking out a color since all you two seem to be doing is staring.”

  “We’re not staring, we’re appreciating,” Torin said.

  “Appreciating what?” Her hands were on her hips again.

  “We’re appreciating the very important role that each one of these little paint chips is playing in creating this gorgeous myriad of color and substance.” I looked at Torin and he smiled down at me. I loved the wavelength we were riding together.

  Sonja didn’t have that same smile when she said, “Have you been drinking? Because it sounds like you’ve been drinking.”

  “No, we haven’t been drinking.”

  “Alright,” she resigned. “If I’m not allowed to take it out, then let’s write it down. Here,” she paused, scanning the rows of samples before landing on one. “This one.” She thrust a finger into an off-white sample that was only slightly l
ess depressing than the one already coating our walls. “Gimme that pen.”

  Torin handed her the pen that rested on a five-gallon can of paint near his feet. Sonja scribbled the code onto the palm of her hand. “I’ll tell him to mix it up. Enjoy your masterpiece, weirdos.”

  “We will,” I replied, slinking my arms over Torin’s, which were still held around my waist. “I know it’s stupid and I know it makes me crazy, but it really is beautiful. Even if it’s not actual art. Even if it’s just a display some minimum-wage earning sixteen-year-old put together.”

  “It’s not stupid, you’re not crazy, and it is beautiful.” His mouth drew closer to my ear, and the way he breathed against it was chilling, in a good way. “You’re beautiful,” he said quietly, but I heard him clearly, even over the intercom speakers than announced a clean up on aisle four. “And you may not realize it, but you are a beautiful, bright piece in my world’s masterpiece.” The chills intensified. “You are this one.” His finger fell on a stark white chip. “To me, you are all of the colors combined. You are light, Darby, like that beloved lighthouse of yours.”

  “I feel really, really dark.”

  “I know.” He didn’t say anything for a few moments, and just let me feel the way I did without reprimanding me and telling me it wasn’t my fault or that I wasn’t responsible for it or whatever it was that people had always been saying to me and continued to say to me.

  “My fear is that my world will never be a beautiful masterpiece with Anna and Lance gone.”

  “Right,” was all he said, giving me the silence and the space I needed to continue.

  “My fear is that somehow it was my job to keep their paint chips in place and now they’re missing and it’s all messed up.” I inhaled through my nose, out through my mouth. “My fear is that I’ve messed it all up.”