by Marni Mann
I see what years of being in this system can do to a man.
You don’t get rehabilitated in prison. You get destroyed and sewn back together with jagged pieces of steel and rusty bolts and scars all over your skin.
Hell is just a word I’ve used in the past.
Now, I truly know what it means.
And part of that is because I no longer have Andi in my life. I made that decision in the motel room when the cop told me to kneel and put my hands behind my back. I wasn’t able to hug her, console her, give her the care she needed after getting kidnapped. That was just the start of the no contact, too. I knew our relationship would have consisted of letters written back and forth and thirty-minute meetings once a week behind a thick pane of glass. That wouldn’t have been fair to her. She deserves someone who can hug her, kiss her, tell her how much she’s loved without the conversation being recorded and a guard telling us to keep it down.
That doesn’t stop her from contacting me.
Every day, I receive a note from her in the mail. And, every day, I toss that letter in the trash—unread.
It fucking kills me.
I want her words. Her comfort. I want to feel her through those pages and hold on to every piece of her that I can get.
But I can’t torture myself that way.
Someday, when she finds a guy who can be with her the way she needs, the letters will stop coming. She’ll forget about me. She’ll smile with so much fucking happiness, and I’ll be less than a memory. More like a blink. Something that happened so quickly, she’ll barely remember me.
That doesn’t mean I’ll stop thinking about her.
She’s the only thing that’s ever on my mind. She’s what gets me through this hell every day. She’s what I see when I close my eyes at night.
My hands clench to hold her.
My mouth craves to graze her skin.
I want her scent. Her warmth.
That goddamn smile that I could feel all the way down in my stomach like I was chugging the hottest bowl of soup.
But I care about Andi more than myself. And what she needs is to be free of me. So, I’ll make sure I don’t give her a reason to hang on.
I move onto my back and place the pillow over my head. Staring at the yard and the fresh air and openness is too much of a tease. Whatever Jackson’s watching on TV doesn’t interest me. All it does is remind me of the things I can’t have. As I take a deep breath into the pillow, my stomach rumbles from hunger. The eggs I ate for breakfast were runnier than they should have been. The oatmeal wiggled when my plate was still.
This place is trying to kill me.
“Dillon,” a guard says from outside our door, “you have a visitor.”
I sit up on the bed and look at the guard through the bare window. “Oh, yeah?”
“Come over here with your hands behind your back, and place them in the slot, so I can cuff you.”
The slot’s an opening in the middle of the door. It’s where the guards place our food trays on the days that the chow hall is closed and where they cuff us when we’re escorted privately.
“I didn’t think I was scheduled for a visitor today,” I say.
“I’m just following the orders I was given. You don’t want to see them, then don’t come.”
I turn my back toward the door and place my hands inside the small opening. Once he clamps the metal around my wrists, he unlocks the door and opens it for me. Then, I walk with him down the four flights of stairs.
“Window number three,” he says when we reach the entrance of the locked hallway that houses all the visitor booths. He takes the cuffs off me and leads me through another door. “Ring the buzzer when you’re done, or I’ll come get you when your time is up.”
I know the routine. This isn’t my first visit.
He shuts the door behind me, and I begin walking past each of the booths. There are twenty-two on this side of the prison, and they start with the highest number. As I pass each window, I see the visitors through the glass. Most are women. Many of them have children with them. They cling to the glass like it’s the leg of their father even though that thick pane will be the closest they’ll get to him.
It hurts me to see that.
To know I’ve become one of them.
That I’ve given up the only person who will ever want to cling to me.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…
The rubber bottoms of my slide-on shoes squeak over the freshly waxed floor. The linoleum is the cleanest part about this prison. It gets bleached the most because of all the fights that take place and all the blood that’s shed. Janitors show up after each fight. More bleach is squirted onto the floors. Mops spread out the liquid. The air dries it.
You’d think bleach is all you smell in here, but the scent leaves as quickly as it came. Instead, the rooms are filled with a stench of sweat and fear.
I’m sure I smell like both.
Eight, seven, six…
I wonder what kind of news my attorney has to tell me. I assume she’s the visitor since my mom was here last week. The only thing is, my attorney usually sends me a letter before she comes, and in it are questions she wants me to answer. I haven’t gotten a letter or any kind of notification that she’ll be here today.
I quickly learn the reason.
Sitting on the other side of the glass, holding the phone in her hand that we’ll have to speak through, is Andi.
Please, she mouths, I need to talk to you.
My eyes take in every detail of her face—every freckle, every piece of hair, even the whiteness of her teeth. I compare them to what I see in my dreams, and they’re all so perfectly accurate.
And, God, I’ve missed her.
But it hurts too much to look at her. So, I glance down and stare at my blue jumpsuit and my maroon slip-on shoes—my outfit now that I belong to the state.
I run my hand through my hair and feel the buzzed short strands. They chopped it all off when I went through processing. My beard’s gone, too, and I’ve lost almost twenty pounds.
Three weeks, and the guy she knew is gone.
Not just Adrian. Clay, too.
I don’t want her to see me like this.
As I take a step toward the door to exit the visitor area, Andi bangs on the glass.
Our eyes meet.
They lock.
She’s pleading with me.
It hurts.
It hurts so fucking much.
It drives those jagged pieces of steel through each of my muscles, and those rusty bolts tighten on my joints. Each of my scars burst open.
I look away again, and she bangs once more to regain my attention.
Please, Adrian, she mouths. Please just talk to me.
Andi
For three long weeks, I’ve gone without Adrian’s voice. Three weeks of sleepless nights as I stare out the window of Camille’s guest room, wondering if he’s safe.
She’s spent hours trying to convince me that he did the right thing by calling the police. But how can I believe her when he’s been stripped of his dignity and forced to live with Colorado’s worst? He doesn’t belong there. I know it. She knows it. Anyone who cares about Adrian knows it.
Every meal I eat, I think about the slop they’re serving him on a plastic tray. Every shower I take, I wonder if he has hot water at all. And, every time I leave the apartment, I feel guilty that I can freely walk down the street, and he can’t.
My own freedom has become stifling. The few times I do leave the house, it’s to see Charlie. The rest of my time is spent in a different kind of prison—one that only exists in my mind and holds captive any chance of happiness.
When I woke up yesterday morning, I needed Charlie, as my voice of reason during this never-ending storm. I silenced my mind just so I could bounce from one safety net to another. It took me almost a half hour to walk the short distance, and every step I took, three more pushed me in the opposite direction. Suddenly, it was wrong to feel the sun
shine on my skin. Wrong to breathe fresh air into my lungs. And I hated myself for having so much free will when the man I loved was stripped bare and thrown between cinderblocks to suffer and fade away.
Innocent until proven guilty, yet he sits in a cage, captured in a world he never belonged. The six months until the trial should have been spent with me—in Miami or New York City. Someplace safe where I wouldn’t have to worry if he was hungry or cold, lonely or sad.
I’m angry, so angry.
But, if anyone had the power to get my head on straight, it was Charlie. Though he was surprised to see me, he welcomed me with open arms.
“Andi,” he said with wide eyes as I hid beneath the brim of Adrian’s hat.
“Charlie,” was all I got out before I broke down and shielded the rest of my face with my hands.
Without question, Charlie pulled me between the two buildings, shielding me from the other pedestrians who all had places to go and people to see. Never again would I take those meetings for granted.
Like always, he sat me down in his spot and held my hands in his. He had dirt beneath his jagged nails, and a couple of cuts that needed Band-Aids, yet his firm grip was as soothing as ever.
When you looked beyond Charlie’s rough exterior, there was a world so beautiful, you couldn’t help but feel like it was a privilege to be in his presence. Only the most deserving hearts got a glimpse of this man.
“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he said in his usual soft, soothing tone.
Where should I start? How would I tell him I’d sent two men to jail in a matter of minutes? That the freedom train led straight to hell, and there was no way off. I’d crashed and burned, and I had taken down one of the strongest men in the process—Adrian.
“It’s all so messed up, Charlie. I tried. I tried with everything I had.”
He pulled a worn blanket out of the bag next to his feet and draped it over my lap. “If you tried, then you didn’t mess up at all.”
If he knew the whole story, he would have agreed with me. I’d let Adrian down when I left him with an impossible situation.
“Clay’s in prison, Charlie. He’s waiting for a trial. One he doesn’t deserve because he didn’t do what they think he did.”
“I never thought he did any of those things.”
I stared at Charlie, wondering what he was talking about. I never told him who Clay was. As far as Charlie knew, Clay was just Clay—a guy I’d met on the train who promised to look out for me and keep me safe.
“What do you mean?” I asked him, afraid to say anything else.
“I read the paper, Andi.” He pulled out a couple from last week, and there it was, plain as day in black and white—Adrian’s face plastered beneath ludicrous headlines that painted him as a very colorful criminal. “This is the same person you brought to meet me, isn’t it?”
I nodded because there was no way I’d ever lie to Charlie. “That’s him. But he didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. People are trying to frame him because he’s the easy target.”
Charlie gave me a sad smile, and for a minute, he looked a million miles away. “I know what that feels like. What it’s like to be looked at and written off before you’re given a chance to explain. But I promise you, Andi, if he didn’t do it, the truth will come out. It might not be today or tomorrow, but good people don’t get left behind.”
I looked at how little Charlie had and wondered how he could always be so optimistic. Time and time again, he’d been pushed aside and left behind. There might as well be bars and chains surrounding him; that was how bad it was.
“What do I do? How do I convince him that I’m not going to give up on him?”
Squeezing my hand, he licked his chapped lips. “If you love him the way I think you do, you won’t take no for an answer. Write to him. Tell him your plans. Tell him your thoughts. Make him feel like he’s still a part of your world.”
“What if he doesn’t write back?” That would slice deeper than anything Brooks had ever done to me. Being shut out by Adrian, there’d be no coming back from that kind of pain.
“He won’t write to you—not at first. He’ll fight you because he thinks it’s the only way for you to move forward. Men have a lot of pride, Andi, and it’s not easy to throw that away and admit you can’t do it alone, that you can’t save yourself. But his downfall is going to be your saving grace.”
“So, even if I don’t hear from him, keep writing? What then?” I needed those letters as much as Adrian did. Even if he didn’t want them.
“What does your heart say?”
I let go of Charlie’s hand and pulled my knees against my chest. It was such a simple question, but my heart was a shattered mess. Three weeks had felt like an eternity, and I was still trying to wake up each morning without feeling like a piece of me had died. I wouldn’t be whole or happy until I had Adrian back.
“I need to see him, Charlie. That’s the only way I’ll feel better.”
Nodding, he smiled. “Colorado is beautiful this time of year.”
I listened to Charlie, and I hopped on the first flight out of JFK. Stuffed like a sardine in the middle seat between two men, I was glad that was the only seat I could get. These days, comfort was the same as guilt. Even more so now that I’m standing in a prison with my hand pressed against bulletproof glass, silently begging Adrian to sit down and talk to me.
Please, I mouth one more time, hoping his tattered shoes will turn him around and guide him back to me.
He’s hurting—I see it in his eyes—but I’m hurting, too. We can be broken together.
Finally, the tide shifts, and Adrian exhales. His shoulders sag in defeat, and slowly, like I’m afraid I’ll scare him if I move too fast, I lower myself into the chair.
Against his better judgment, he pulls the black phone off the wall and presses it against his ear. With his eyes shut, he waits for the sound of my voice.
All those sleepless nights gave me time to think about what I would say to him if given the chance. I’ve gone over my speech a million times, but now that I’m face-to-face with Adrian, words fail me.
When I open my mouth to speak, only three little words escape, the three I’ve been holding on to tighter than all the rest. “I love you.”
Adrian must have expected it because he sets the phone on the counter and rubs his hands over his shaved head. I’ve never seen him like this—without a beard and hair so short, there’s nothing to grab on to. He looks so different, a lot more like the pictures in the paper than the man I remember sharing a bed with.
But I’m learning different is okay. Life doesn’t have to take one direct path toward happiness. This is simply a roadblock that we’ll overcome. Someday, we’ll look back on it and barely remember.
But, when Adrian doesn’t pick the phone back up, I’m worried he’s changed his mind about talking to me. Before he has a chance to get up and leave, I tap on the glass again, hating that it’s between us.
Like it’s too painful to look at me and hear me at the same time, he raises his head and takes his time drinking me in with tired eyes. Even though they’re glassy, they’re still the same pools of comfort I’ve depended on.
A minute, maybe two passes, and I point to the phone. He picks it up and holds it against his ear again.
I’m done wasting precious time. “Talk to me, Adrian.”
“Andi,” he says before pausing. His eyes move to the wall, like he’s either going to hang up the phone or continue talking. He probably had it all figured out until he looked at me. Now, he can’t decide which is the better choice.
“Don’t hang up. Please.”
I can feel it brewing. He wants to tell me so many things, but the pride Charlie warned me about is wrestling with his heart. Despite his pained expression, there’s no doubt in my mind Adrian still has feelings for me. It wouldn’t be this hard for him if he didn’t.
“Why are you here?”
I swallow the lump in my throat because that was one question I d
idn’t prepare for. Isn’t it obvious? I’m here because he’s mine.
“I’ve missed you, Adrian. I’ve been writing you. When you didn’t write back, I figured you weren’t getting the letters, and I knew this was the only way to talk to you.”
“I got the letters.”
“Why didn’t you write me?”
There’s more he’s not saying. I feel it.
A shrug of his shoulders—that’s what we’ve been reduced to. Passion and love have morphed into an insignificant gesture.
“You didn’t read them, did you?”
Tears prick my eyes because, at the end of every letter, I told him to write me back. My one request was nestled beneath an I love you. Words I’ve cherished and held on to until I could say them out loud again.
“Andi, I’m not that guy anymore. I can’t be him.”
My tears threaten to spill over my lashes as I listen to him lie. Digging the corner of my visitor badge into my thigh, I try to redirect my pain to keep the tears from falling. If I can create an even deeper hurt elsewhere, maybe it’ll block the rest of my feelings. But that’s not how this works. Not even a little bit.
“To me, you are the same, Adrian. Maybe you don’t look exactly the way you did when we met, but your eyes are the same ones I fell in love with. I see you, Adrian. Beneath the baggy clothes and regret, I see you.”
“What you see is in the past. This place,” he says as he glances around the room, “these white walls and the fucking bright lights that never go out—this is my new normal. I see the sunshine one hour a day. On days when it rains, I don’t see it at all. I can’t walk down the street for coffee. Hell, I can’t even have coffee until I figure out how to score a mug.”
“I’ll bring you a mug.” It’s a stupid thing to say, but I’d give him the world if it would fit through the front door and not set off the metal detectors.
“It’s not that easy, Andi. I own a handful of things in here. The rest has to be earned, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Nobody can.”
“Adrian, you lost everything, but you still have me.”
I’m desperate to remain his most prized possession. All he has to do is meet me halfway.