by Jay McLean
Dad moves around the bed and carefully pries Riley’s fingers from my hand. He grasps her shoulders. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says, guiding her to the door.
She looks over her shoulder at me. “I didn’t mean it, Dylan!”
Holly waits until she’s out of the room and the door is closed before looking back at me. I keep my eyes on hers, because I deserve to see the sadness, the anger, the disappointment. After a while, she leans down and presses her lips to my forehead. When she pulls back, she’s smiling—a sweet, sad, pathetic smile. “I love you, Dylan. I love you for everything you’ve done for my daughter. I love that you loved her when she’d given up on love, and I love that you saw her when I was blind. I gave you my blessing and you broke her heart.” She takes a breath, her tears matching mine. “You created a fine line between honor and betrayal, Dylan. And you walked with a foot on either side. I’ll be taking her home with me. So, I guess, in the end you got what you wanted.”
There are now two sounds I’ll never forget. The gunshot that took Davey’s life, and Riley’s screams at her mother, begging her to let her stay, yelling that she was wrong—that she didn’t mean what she said in the letter. But the worst… the worst is when she cried, long and loud—She loves me. She’ll always love me.
Forty-Nine
Dylan
Dad goes back to work.
Eric shows up less and less.
They assure me it has nothing to do with the DUI.
I don’t believe them.
The guys come by.
So do the girls.
Only Sydney’s a regular and that’s because she works here.
She zips up the bag that Eric brought when he still gave a shit about me. “You ready to get out of here?”
I’ve been stuck in the same room for over two weeks. I’m well and truly ready to get out of here. When I tell her that, she spins me in the wheelchair until I’m facing the door. Two bodies dressed in black appear in the doorway, dropping to the floor as soon as I see them. They both look up, and even though they’re wearing black beanies pulled low on their brows, their faces covered in war paint, I can still tell it’s Logan and Jake.
Logan holds his wrist to his mouth as they slowly army crawl toward me. “All clear for Operation Banks Robbery. Target identified. Do you copy, Juliett Alfa?”
Jake does the same with his wrist as they continue crawling toward me. “Roger that, Lima Mike. Shit!” He looks up at Sydney standing behind me. “Target compromised.”
“Goddammit, Juliett! You had one fucking job!” Logan yells.
I shake my head and ignore how ridiculous they are. “What the fuck are you assholes doing?”
They stand quickly, brushing down their clothes. Then in unison, they grin from ear to ear.
“We’re busting you out,” Jake states.
Logan rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”
“I’ve already been discharged.”
The height of Logan’s repeated eye roll forces his head to roll back. “Obviously,” he says again.
“You know the rules, boys,” Sydney says, moving around me. “He stays in the chair until he’s off hospital property.”
Their cocky smiles drop as they stand straighter, puffing their chests. They salute her, followed by a united, “Sir. Yes, Sir!”
Sydney shakes her head. “Your friends are idiots, Dylan.”
Logan waits until she’s left the room before offering his fist for a bump that I return. He asks, “How you feeling, bro?”
Jake’s behind me now, slowly rolling me forward. I shrug. “Could always be worse, right?”
Logan grabs my bag off the bed and the crutches leaning against the wall. Six more weeks I’ll be using them while the cast is on my leg. “You ready?”
I nod.
Logan walks.
Jakes pushes.
I expect them to drive me straight home. They don’t. Instead, they take me to the garage where my car was towed. “What are we doing here?”
Logan turns to me. “Perspective.”
The physical details of what my truck looks like are irrelevant. But the visions, the memories of what happened that link to the damage—that’s why they brought me here.
“Poor Bessie,” Jake mumbles, standing beside me, hands in his pockets.
On the other side, Logan speaks up. “You’re kind of lucky to be alive.”
I look away from the truck, adjusting the crutches beneath my shoulders and face him. “You mean she’s lucky I didn’t fucking kill her?”
Logan’s gaze drops, his foot kicking the dirt we’re standing on. For a moment, I think about Afghanistan, about the seconds right before we entered the house of hell. The seed that planted the events that brought me to her. “I know it’s not the same,” Logan says. “But I get where you’re coming from. I understand the guilt. Your girl’s hurt, you think it’s your fault.” He removes his beanie, running his hands through his hair before adding, “I’ve been where you were man, sitting in a hospital room, drowning in guilt, the realization of your lack of self-worth eating away at you until you feel like it’s on you to save her from the pain you created.”
I listen to his words, each one meaning more than the last.
“So you feel like you need to run away to save her. You block her and everyone out to save them all from the destruction you’ll cause.” He sniffs once, his eyes lifting and locking with mine. “It doesn’t work though, D. I spent a year running away and the guilt is a thousand times worse when you’re doing it alone.”
“I don’t plan on running away,” I tell him.
“Maybe not physically, but emotionally.”
I stay silent.
Jake says, “Obviously something happened, man. From the time you came back for Riley’s birthday to now. And we’re not here to get you to bare your soul to us so please don’t think that. We’re just here to let you know that no matter what it is, we’re here.” He picks up a few rocks from the ground and starts pitching them at the truck. “I didn’t want to wait until it was too late like I did with Logan.”
“Shut up,” Logan snaps.
“I’m serious.”
“There’s no way you could’ve known. I didn’t even fucking know,” Logan says.
For a few moments, we stand in silence.
“Is it like…” Jake hesitates. “PTS—”
“No,” I snap. “Don’t fucking say it.”
Logan stands in front of me, his hands on his hips. “There’s nothing wrong with—”
“Shut up!”
I turn swiftly and hobble back to the car. I don’t wait for them to follow me before throwing my crutches in the back seat and getting in. I stare at the clock on the dash, watching the minutes tick by until I can be alone again. So I can drown myself in the guilt and the hate that make it impossibly easy not to see her.
Not to hold her.
Not to tell her that I’m sorry.
So fucking sorry.
But it doesn’t matter that I love her and I miss her and I’d do anything if she would just get in my truck that’s no longer drivable and sit next to me while we drove to the calm of the horizon.
After a few minutes, they both join me. I don’t know what they had to say to each other. I don’t care.
“Take me home,” I tell them.
“All right, man,” Jake says, turning the car over.
It doesn’t take long before they start talking again.
“I used to see my dad,” Logan says. “My real dad. In my nightmares. He’d come and beat the shit out of me and I’d wake up in a pool of sweat and sometimes piss, and I’m not talking when I was a kid, man, I’m talking two fucking years ago. I had a break down when I was with Doctors Without Borders and a psych diagnosed me with PTSD. I was on meds for a long time. And then I came home and Amanda—”
“So you’re saying I go running back to Riley and hope she forgives me?” I ask, my tone flat. It’s not like I don’t appreciate what he’s saying, a
nd there’s a part of me that feels like the biggest asshole in the world that I didn’t know any of this about him considering he’s one of my best friends, but nothing he’s saying is relevant. At least not to me.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“So what then?”
“You know after what happened with me before I left, Amanda changed her major.”
I lean back in my seat and look over at Jake, sitting silent, driving like a fucking grandma. I wonder if he at least knows where the fuck this conversation’s going.
Logan continues, “She changed her major to psychology.”
And there it is.
“She’s actually pretty good,” Jake finally chimes in. “My dad sends some of the kids he works with to her. Not so much for sessions but more as a mentor.”
“So?” I ask. “She’s going to braid my hair and everything’ll be better?”
Logan faces me, a scowl on his face.
I look out the window.
And I stay that way until the car pulls up in front of my house.
They start to get out but I stop them. “I just need some time,” I tell them honestly.
And silence.
Fuck, I need the silence.
Fifty
Dylan
Martin Luther King once said “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” and as I sit on the couch, the TV on mute, and my mind on Riley, I wonder if it’s true.
I wonder if I’ll remember about the recent events in my life and be able to recall The Turning Point. I wonder if I’ll look back on Dave as an enemy, because right now, that’s what he feels like. I wonder if the silence of my friends for the past week was their form of showing me they care.
“I just need some time,” was the last thing I told them. And I meant it.
But now I’m here, surrounded by silence so loud it’s deafening. And I’d give just about anything to feel something else.
The fear is still here.
So is the grief.
But the silence I crave is nowhere to be seen.
I didn’t think coming home would hurt this much. Actually, I didn’t think about it at all. Had I done so, I probably would’ve found somewhere else to stay, just until someone could come in and remove everything so I could sell it and move out. The second I walked in, I was filled with memories of Riley. She’d picked out every single piece of furniture, chosen every paint color, decided on the placement of everything. We even stood in the flooring store for three hours while she debated over the carpet that lay under my feet. I’d give anything to have those three hours back.
I haven’t left the house. I haven’t needed to. Eric and Dad bring me enough food to feed an army. I barely eat. I can’t. I barely sleep. I can’t do that either. I definitely can’t sleep in our bed. I realized that the moment I stepped in there. It got worse when I walked into the bathroom to see the shattered mirror. It seemed like forever ago since I punched that fucking thing while she stood right in front of me, her eyes wide, her body shaking from fear. It was three weeks post Dave. Two weeks since I’d been back. Two nights since I’d been home.
Time.
Time is fucking stupid.
A knock on the door pulls me from my thoughts.
Dad and Eric have a key and let themselves in.
Sydney always calls before she comes.
The knocking starts again and I sigh. Finally, I get off my ass and limp over to the door.
The second I see her, time stops.
So does my heart.
“Hi,” Riley whispers, raising her hand. She’s even more beautiful than I let myself remember.
I inhale deeply. Hold it. And wait for the world to start spinning again.
It doesn’t.
“Hi,” I finally manage to say, my entire body rigid.
Her gaze moves from me to inside the house. “Are you busy?”
I shake my head, my words caught in my throat.
“I just came by to get a few things if that’s okay?”
I open the door wider for her, my stomach flipping as she steps inside, her bare arm skimming mine. There’s a weight on my chest, about as heavy as the one on my shoulders. My mouth’s dry, my mind’s spinning. My heart—I don’t know… I don’t have possession of it. I did. And then she showed up, reached inside, and stole it without me even realizing.
“My mom came by, as you know,” she says over her shoulder as she makes her way to the living room. She starts to pick up a few of Bacon’s toys. Bacon. I haven’t even thought about Bacon. She adds, “She got some of my things, but not everything I needed so…” She turns around, her eyes on mine while I just stand there, crutches under my arm, wondering how it is she’s functioning the way she is when I feel like death.
What a stupid saying.
No one feels death.
It just happens. One second you’re breathing, the next you’re not.
Dying, yes. You can feel like you’re dying, but the actual death part—no. Or, at least I choose to believe that.
Because I’d hate to think otherwise.
What a morbid fucking thought.
“Anyway, I guess that’s why I’m here,” she continues. “I’ll be quick. Just ignore me.”
Right. That should be easy enough.
I sit on the couch and continue to stare up at the ceiling like I was doing before she decided to ruin me.
I ignore her familiar scent as she walks past me. I ignore the sounds of her footsteps as she moves around the house. And I ignore the fact that I can’t fucking ignore her at all. Her steps, her sounds, her moves, her very presence is everything. Everything.
Something scrapes against the tiles of the kitchen and before I know it, I’m choosing not to ignore her. My steps are rushed, or as rushed as they can be when I’m on crutches. She’s dragging a chair across the room. “What are you doing?” I ask, finally finding my voice.
She smiles at me.
She.
Smiles.
At.
Me!
Hate me, Riley. Why don’t you hate me?
“I couldn’t reach something in the bedroom.”
I hobble over to the bedroom, hesitating for a second to prepare my heart for the onslaught my next move will create. I step into the room, stopping just inside and I inhale deeply. It was supposed to be calming. It’s not. The room smells like her. Like us. Like us together.
I stay still as she walks around me, her side grazing mine when she steps in front of me. She faces the wall opposite the bed and points up. “Dylan?”
I shut my eyes, my stomach dropping, my mind fearing my body’s reaction to the way she says my name.
It’s not just the memories that cause the fear.
It’s the longing.
It’s her.
“I just wanted to take these frames with me if you don’t want them…”
My eyes snap open, my gaze on her first, before I follow the length of her arm, her finger pointed to two black and white photographs hanging on the wall.
I’d never seen them before. Never even knew they were there.
I reach up, grab the first frame and hand it to her, then I grab the other. I don’t give her this one. I can’t. Not yet. Instead, I stare at it. And that’s all I do.
My emotions keep me anchored to my spot, my heart heavy, my breaths heavier.
I skim my thumb across the glass. Behind it, there’s a black and white image of her smiling face, a familiar one I’d only seen through the screen of the computer. There’s an inset of me in the corner from when I was deployed, staring back, smiling right along with her.
“I took a screen shot when we spoke once,” she says.
I tear my gaze away from the image and look at her. She’s looking down at the picture she’s holding—identical to mine, only I take up the frame and she’s the inset.
She releases a breath as she sits on the edge of the bed, her fingers stroking the gl
ass. “I kind of just wanted to remind myself that even though we were oceans apart, we were still together, you know?” She looks up at me, her eyes no longer clear but glassy, filling with tears.
I sit down next to her, ignoring the voices in my head that tell me not to—that it’ll just make it worse, but I’m drained—of will and of sense—and I can’t find the strength to stay upright.
“I hung them a few days before you got back. I figured you didn’t see them because you never mentioned it.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my focus back on the frame I’m gripping so tight my knuckles are white.
“It’s okay,” she says quietly. “You had a lot on your mind.”
The room fills with the sounds of our heavy breaths and the silence of our incredible heartbreak.
“Is it true? What you said to my mom in the hospital?”
I inhale deeply, the sound echoing off the walls.
“That you wanted me to hate you?”
I nod once.
“Why?” she whispers. She’s fighting to contain her cry but I feel it. I feel every ounce of pain she’s trying so hard to hide. “Why not just tell me to leave?”
“Because I’m a fucking coward, Riley.” I sit up, my hands stretched behind me as I look up at the ceiling. “I wanted to plant the seed in your head—the seed of loathing. So you were convinced it’s something you wanted. Because I know you, Riley. I know if I’d say that you’d come back. You’ll beg and you’ll plead and I’ll give in because I love you. I love you more than anything. And it’s not enough. It never will be.”
“That’s a fucking lie, Dylan.”
My eyes snap to her, but she’s still looking at the frame. “You know I love you. You know I’d always put you first. Always. If you didn’t want me anymore, I would’ve left. If you were suffering and you wanted to do it alone, you could’ve said that. If you needed time, I would’ve given it to you. You didn’t come to me, Dylan.” She stands up and faces me. Then takes the frame from me. “You didn’t let me be the glue that held you together, and that’s all I wanted to be for you. I’m sorry if that wasn’t enough.”