by Serena Bell
She didn’t think she even had the energy to cry. Not now, not yet. Maybe soon. Maybe when the exhaustion wore off and she remembered the good moments, when Nate was gone from R&R and she began to register his absence. When she began to reckon up what she’d had and lost and had and lost again.
“What are you—what are you doing here? And how did you know where to find me?”
“Someone named—Gabi?—gave me your room number. She’s very friendly.”
Ah, Gabi.
“I can leave—”
Her face must have looked as unwelcoming as she felt, and reflexively she pulled her mouth into a smile, even though she knew it probably wasn’t reaching her eyes. “No. Of course you won’t leave. Come in.”
“I—I had to get out of Seattle. It felt claustrophobic.”
Becca was on the brink of tears. And Alia—with a surge of relief—felt that strange gratitude rising in her, the pleasure of being able to draw her sister to her feet and put both her arms around her. The familiar warmth, the home scent of Becca’s hair, the way hugging family felt different and more comfortable than any other contact.
She led Becca into her room and switched on the electric kettle to make them cups of tea and straightened the bedclothes without letting herself think about why they were so rumpled. And then the two of them curled up on the bed.
“What happened, baby?”
Tears spilled over from Becca’s eyes, and her face crumpled.
“That bad, huh?”
“I called him. I told him I was so sorry and I wanted to talk about it. I asked him if he’d come over.”
“Good for you, hon!”
But she already knew where this was going. The sight of Becca leaning against her door had told her everything she needed to know about the outcome.
Sometimes talking about it only made the fundamental problems more clear. It brought undercurrents to the surface.
“He came over. He was so nice, Li. I think that’s the worst part. He was so nice. He said he totally accepted my apology and we all have those moments when we want to flee. And he listened so patiently to what I was telling him.”
It is worse when they’re nice. When they listen and understand, but tell you, in the end, that they don’t love you. Not enough, anyway.
“I basically told him the whole history. How things were really chaotic when we were kids and no one caught the fact that I was struggling so badly in school. I said I’d always thought of myself as stupid, and that when I saw his books, and he said what he said, I freaked out.”
Becca was still teary, but her voice had gained strength as she talked.
“I’m proud of you, Bex,” Alia said. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Becca shook her head. “It wasn’t some big heroic thing. I just—I just felt like it was my last chance with him, you know? I was laying my cards on the table.”
Yeah, I know, Alia thought. And it hadn’t been any act of heroism for her, either, telling Nate how she felt about it. Just the words that had come out when it was time for truth-telling. I don’t want to stop. Doing this. Being with you.
“He told me he really appreciated my honesty. He said something like what you just said, that it couldn’t have been easy telling him that whole story, and he respected me for doing it. But I could see it. On his face. That there was a big ol’ ‘but’ coming. And sure enough—” She hesitated. “You probably think I’m an idiot. For even caring. It was four dates, right?”
She shot an appealing glance in Alia’s direction.
Alia shook her head. Touched her sister’s soft blond hair. “I think you can tell a lot about someone in a short time.”
“I know, right? I think—”
Becca closed her eyes and put her hands over her face.
“I think I was probably already in love with him.”
Me, too.
She almost said it. But then Becca began to cry, hard, racking sobs that pulled up from the root of her, and Alia knelt up and crawled to her, put her arms around her. “Shh, hon. You’re all right.”
She held her for a long time, until Becca’s sobs subsided. Inside her own chest, her own grief was held back and frozen—still and heavy.
She thought of telling Becca the whole story. It might feel good to let it spill, after all this time. How she and Nate had gotten together, how sex had spun itself into intimacy, into a closeness so deep and thorough that it hurt now to be deprived of it. How she had hoped, how she had given everything she had, how it hadn’t been enough. But Becca felt so good in her arms, a reason to put one foot in front of the other, someone to take care of, to comfort, to pour herself into. Her story could wait until Becca felt better. Until the storm had passed.
“He said things in his life were complicated. And he wanted to be honest with me now so he wouldn’t hurt me later. He said he didn’t have the time or the energy for complicated, and that obviously I was complicated, which wasn’t a bad thing, just not—not his thing, not right now. Right now, he needed simple. And that he was sorry. Really, really sorry. Sorry he hadn’t been honest with me sooner, before we’d—” In an uncharacteristically violent move, she slammed her fist down into the bed. And then again, until Alia took her hand and held it fast in her own, a trembling thing. “I wish I hadn’t. You told me to be careful—”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. You slept with a guy you liked. That’s not a crime. And what happened wasn’t punishment. It was just—it was just two people going in different directions.”
Becca’s hand had stilled. Her shoulders had slowed their shaking, and when she looked up at Alia next, her face was calmer.
“You don’t need him,” Alia said.
She’d said it as much to herself as to Becca, and with far more certainty than she felt. While her chest felt like concrete, faulty with cracks.
Chapter 25
“Grab your balls.”
Alia used that phrase frequently because they all found it so entertaining, because she had learned with time that the dirty jokes and crotch-hoisting that followed her command were as therapeutic as the varied-size bright-colored rubber balls the men used for the next set of exercises.
There were ten vets, now, in Alia’s class, and even though almost every man arrived at his first class full of certainty that it was a waste of time, almost all of them returned. She’d even gotten an email from a “graduate” who reported taking Pilates classes in the “real” world. It’s all women in the class, but I figure you can’t claim to be much of a soldier if you get intimidated by a roomful of chicks.
She should feel great about what she’d accomplished. She should feel only joy at how much she’d helped these guys.
But there was a bleakness to it all for her. A sense of trudging through routine. In some ways, not so terribly different from the way she’d felt in her old job, as if the buzz of doing the right thing was somehow out of reach.
Even though Jake had made it more than clear how much he valued her. Even though he’d promised her that in a few weeks he’d be able to begin paying her a small salary. He’d even set aside time each day when neither of them had appointments so they could share successes, get each other’s help with issues, and trade techniques and knowledge.
None of that filled the hole Nate had left behind.
With a heavy heart, she led them through the ball routine—small green balls with divots under their feet, medium-size orange balls under their shoulder blades and then under their hips, the big blue ball braced behind them for crunches. And then they draped themselves over the gigantic exercise balls and lay there, contemplating the opening of their vertebrae, and she had a moment to reflect.
The night Becca had arrived, the two of them glommed popcorn and therapeutic milkshakes and mourned, Becca openly and Alia in secret. I’ll tell her tomorrow, she’d thought. Or—in a few days. When she’s feeling better. When I’m feeling better.
Because, right then, she worried that without the pleasure
s of feeding and comforting, without the distraction of bustling around making things okay for Becca, in much the way she always had, she would fly apart into a million pieces.
If she told her secret, if she told her story, she would be the one who needed to be taken care of, and that—
It would be like it had been that night, the night of the instant messages. Her gone all to pieces, Becca doing the taking-care-of.
She couldn’t imagine it. Not right now.
Two days after that, Nate had left.
He’d come to her office beforehand. To thank her, he said, which he did with a strange formality. “You helped me so much. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” Shaking her hand, but not quite meeting her eyes. Even that contact felt good, as good as foreplay, her body declared, but she shushed it.
She hoped—she hoped he’d say something else. I won’t forget you. Or maybe—this was a wild dream, but, maybe—I hope I’ll see you again sometime. But if there were words left between them, he didn’t utter them. Neither did he linger or cast her a longing backward glance. He just said, “Bye, Alia,” and went next door, where she heard him say exactly the same things to Jake in a slightly warmer tone of voice. And then she heard their amiable laughter and chatter, and she was beyond grateful when Griff came into the office and threw himself down on the table with a grunt of pain.
When Griff had gone, she’d watched from the window as Nate loaded the truck, muscles bunching under his shirt across his broad back as he hoisted a bag in. He wrestled playfully with the guys who came down to see him off. He smiled and laughed and punched arms and accepted manly hugs, and if she hadn’t been so sad for herself, she would have been filled with joy for him, because he seemed so whole. So him.
And then he was gone. She thought maybe he’d look once in her direction, betray some wistfulness, but he never did.
“Um, do you want us to go over the ball forward, too?” a deep voice asked.
She’d left them draped on their backs over the ball during that whole reverie. She hoped none of them would suffer irrevocable spinal damage. “Yes, definitely, sorry,” she said, and they all changed position obediently. That was the nice thing about soldiers. Once they’d decided you were indeed ahead of them in the chain of command, they were pretty good about following instructions.
Alia’s phone buzzed. Becca.
Are you coming back here after class?
Y.
She remembered what that single letter had signified to Nate, and her face got hot, her body loosening in habitual anticipation. And then sadness settled over her again, washing away desire.
Good—need to talk.
She cheered a little at the sight of that. It had been such a boon, the ability to bury her own feelings in the experience of taking care of Becca.
“Actually, let’s say we’re done for today,” she told the men. She usually ran the class past its official stop time and up to mere seconds before her first appointment of the day, but she—she didn’t have it in her today. She wanted to slink off somewhere and lick her wounds. Or administer to Becca’s, anyway.
“Feel free to stay there as long as you need to.” She paused for effect. “Put your balls away when you’re done.”
Snickers from the peanut gallery, but even that couldn’t eke a smile out of her.
—
“Jake told me.”
They were the first words out of Becca’s mouth when she opened the door to admit Alia.
“Told you what?”
Alia wasn’t being cagey. She was startled, still in the teaching zone, and vague-brained with grief. For that moment, at least, she had absolutely no idea what her sister could possibly be talking about.
“That you were dating Nate. That he broke up with you. Alia—I don’t understand. I don’t—”
Her voice broke off, one hand in mid-flail.
Oh, shit.
“Bex—”
“Jake didn’t mean to tell me, he figured I’d know, because, yeah, duh, sisters usually tell each other this stuff.” She crossed her arms. “When Jake said it—‘Is she okay? Because I’m pretty sure she’s more upset than she lets on, I think they were pretty serious’—I was like Whaaa? Then he refused to tell me anything, but I kind of figured it out. Or the gist. You didn’t—you didn’t think I’d freak out, did you?” Becca narrowed her eyes.
“No. No!”
“I would have thought, with the whole history, with me knowing what happened in the past, you would have been dying to tell me. It’s not like you can say, ‘Oh, it was so complicated, I didn’t want to get into it.’ So why? Why?” Becca’s face sagged, and Alia realized that all her anger up to that point had been bravado. Her sister was near tears. Hurt.
She’d hurt Becca.
And that was it. There was nothing left but the whole damn story, and it was time. It was long past time.
Alia took a deep breath. Squared her shoulders. Maybe she could do this. Just tell the story, one word after another:
“In the beginning, I kept trying to deny that it was happening at all—”
“Because he was a client.” Becca lifted her chin. Just a little, but it eased Alia’s heartache.
“Yeah. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to him. So at first I didn’t tell you because I hoped there was nothing to tell.”
“And the other day on the phone, I blabbed too much and didn’t even ask you how you were. I didn’t leave you any time to talk.”
“No!” That was Becca all over, eager to make this about her own failings, and Alia couldn’t let her. “It wasn’t that. I knew you would have listened if you knew I needed you to. I did. I just—I didn’t tell you because I knew if I did, I’d—”
To Alia’s horror, her voice cracked then, and the tears she’d been holding in threatened to spill. She swiped them away.
“I knew I’d start crying,” she finished. “And then you’d feel like you needed to comfort me.”
“What’s so terrible about that? I cry all the time to you. I was crying the other night. We could have cried together. We could have drowned our sorrows jointly in alcoholic peppermint milkshakes. Which, by the way, need a name.”
“But that’s not how it is with us,” Alia protested.
“I know.” Becca’s voice was suddenly quiet. Her face sad. “I know that’s not how it is. You don’t tell me things. You don’t cry with me.”
The accusation twisted in Alia’s chest, more painful because she knew it was true.
“That one time you did—then you wouldn’t ever talk about it again, and I never wanted to bring it up. If I even hinted around it, you’d get all…stiff—”
They both knew what one time Becca was talking about. And Alia didn’t even try to deny what her sister was saying, because it was painfully true. She’d felt stiff, rigid, and miserable, every time the conversation had wandered back there, to that epic meltdown.
“But what I don’t understand is why.”
Because when you were the one who always took care of someone, it was hard to let them take care of you. Because she had been watching out for Becca for so long that she didn’t remember how not to, which meant she didn’t remember how to ask her for help. Because the one time she’d needed help she’d felt like she was breaking into a thousand tiny pieces, like if she let that happen she would never put herself back together again.
“I guess it’s—bad habit.”
Alia sat down heavily on the bed. Becca pulled the desk chair out and sat down across from her. Waiting, listening, so intently it made Alia uncomfortable. She had to look away. “I’ve always—I’ve always taken care of you.”
“Because you think of me as the baby.”
“No!”
“Because of my disability.”
“Becca, no.”
“Then I don’t understand. Because it’s fine for me to need you, right, but you can’t need me. God forbid you ever need taking care of. God forbid you ever let anyone help you with anyt
hing. It’s so damn frustrating. You’re my sister. I love you. And I want us to be friends. I don’t want you to mother me or take care of me, I just want you to be my friend.”
“Of course I’m your friend!”
“But I’m not yours. I’m not your friend, because if I was your friend, you would have told me what was going on in your life.”
The truth hung in the air between them.
And then Becca bowed her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “This is the last thing you need, me yelling at you. This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I just—Li, you can’t give and give and give until you have nothing left to give. At some point you have to take what you need for yourself. Otherwise, you end up with nothing to give. Otherwise, you end up with nothing.”
Alia thought of the last night she and Nate had been together. How he’d made her ask for what she needed. How hard it had been at first, a skill she’d never possessed, and how it had grown easier, until the words had poured from her, all that want finally unleashed. And how there had been one more thing she had wanted that she hadn’t been able to tell him.
Maybe if she had been able to—maybe things would have gone differently.
“I’m not very good at—”
He’d said it himself, hadn’t he? You’re not very good at saying what you want, are you?
“I’m not very good at needing things.” The words came easily, as if the confession had been waiting to emerge all this time, and then more easily, faster now: “I’m not good at needing people. I’m not very good at letting people love me. And I’m sorry, Bex,” she said, starting to cry. “I’m so, so sorry I didn’t let you be my friend.”
She cried for a long time, while Becca held her.
When Alia’s sobs had turned to hiccups and her hiccups to ragged breaths, Becca said, “I’m so lucky.”
“What—”
“I always had you,” Becca said very softly. “You saved me. You took care of me. You made everything okay. You didn’t have that.”
Alia shook her head. “No. I didn’t.”
“Dad was gone. Mom wasn’t—there.”
They were both quiet for a moment, remembering those years—the drawn shades, chores undone, but, worst of all, the silences.