Anything but Broken

by Joelle Knox

  He doesn’t hold back. Gibb never does. “Maybe you didn’t get her pregnant.”

  I hit him again, and it feels good. Not just because I’m mad as hell, but because it’s something I can do. I can lash out like this, and it won’t be the end of the world, another unfixable mistake. Gibb will forgive me. Hell, he’ll understand.

  And he’ll hit me back. I’ve pricked his temper now, and that dangerous glint is in his eyes. His swing catches my jaw, snapping my head to the side.

  Part of me wants to unleash. Any other time, I’d be able to lock it down, focus on something else until I’d managed to rein in my temper. But right now I’m one raw, exposed nerve, and a fucking earthquake couldn’t stop me from driving my fist into his nose.

  Gibb bites off a curse and shoves me away again. He rolls to his knees, his chest heaving and his nose already bleeding. “It wasn’t your fault,” he growls. “You can keep hitting me, but that won’t change the truth. You couldn’t do a damn thing if she didn’t tell you.”

  The truth? That’s the most damning thing of all. “She begged me, Gibb, and I said no. And Hannah—” The flash of pain cuts off my air, and I curl my hands into fists. “Hannah begged me tonight, and I walked away.”

  “Cait might have begged, but she didn’t tell you why.” Gibb wipes at his face with his shirt. “It’s not their fault, man. No one ever taught either of those girls how to tell the damn truth.”

  I climb to my feet and hold out one aching hand. “Got any ice?”

  “I have some frozen vegetables.” Gibb groans his way to his feet and shoots me a dark look. “If you busted my nose, all the ladies will cry.”

  “And fawn over you, so it’s still a win.” I hesitate before stepping onto the porch. “Thanks for letting me unload.”

  “Better you punch me than someone who’s gonna press charges. I’ll just make you do my paperwork for the next week.”

  I sink onto the couch as he retrieves a bag of corn, but wave him away as he offers it to me. He presses the white bag gingerly to his own face, and we sit in silence for so long that it grows loud, pressing in on my eardrums.

  I speak just to break it. “Cait never cheated on me.”

  “Nah.” The bag crinkles as he shifts it. “Cait had a lot of shit going on, but that was never part of it.”

  I don’t know how to feel about it, or what I might have done differently. What choices I would have made, what choices Cait might have made. None of it matters now anyway, and I have time to get straight with it all.

  No, Hannah’s the one who’s been struggling against the current for the past five years. It might have been enough time for her to come to terms with her sister’s suicide—to understand Cait’s problems, if not the way she chose to deal with them—if her family had let her process any of it. But hiding from the truth goes hand in hand with denial, and I doubt they ever let Hannah breathe the word suicide, much less talk openly about it.

  “She needs someone,” I whisper. “I don’t think it can be me right now.”

  Gibb frowns. “You need someone, too.”

  “I’m all right.” It’s a lie. The calm winding through me now is only a break in the storm. Too much has happened, too much that’s over and done, dead and buried—literally. That I never had a chance in hell of controlling anyway but still have to deal with. “I’ve just gotta think.”

  Before he can answer, his phone beeps. He grabs it off the coffee table, checks the screen, and looks at me. “How drunk was she?”

  Guilt scrapes at me. “Drunk.”

  “Okay.” He types out something with his thumb and hits send. “I’ll go over there on one condition. You talk to someone. Sadie or your brothers or your mother, I don’t care who. But someone.”

  “I will.” Once the storm settles a little. Once I know what the hell I’d even say. “I promise.”

  “All right. You wanna stay here?”

  I’m wrung out, exhausted. “Can I?”

  “Sure, man. As long as you need to.” He tosses the bag of veggies at me as he rises. “Put this on your chin. I whacked you good.”

  “Thanks.” My jaw throbs, but it still doesn’t hurt as bad as the rest of me.

  20

  »» hannah ««

  I wake up on the couch with the worst headache of my life, a churning stomach, and the dull certainty that I’ve ruined my life.

  The proof that I’ve ruined Sean’s, too, is staring right at me.

  “There’s a bottle of water on the floor next to you,” Gibb says blandly, not moving from where he’s sprawled out in my mother’s favorite chair. She’d be horrified, no doubt, but I suppose it doesn’t matter now.

  Nothing does.

  I sit up slowly and nearly lose the contents of my stomach. My mouth tastes so bad that I probably did that last night before passing out. Gibb looks on without sympathy or censure as I reach for the bottle and take a cautious sip.

  My throat hurts. My face aches. I have vague memories of crying myself into fitful sleep, and I only wish the memories of what came before were equally blurry.

  Sean, walking away from me. The truth is a wall between us that will never come down, because I used it as a clumsy weapon and couldn’t even do that right. Not a clean cut but jagged stabs. I made him drag it from me, one agonizing word at a time.

  I’m a coward. Selfish. Cruel.

  And now Gibb’s here to judge me. He watches me as I finish the water, his gaze a tangible weight. He might not be glaring, but his presence is its own accusation. So are the bruises on his face. “Is Sean…?”

  “Okay?” He snorts, and I wince at the rough derision in the sound. “No, Hannah. He’s not okay.”

  I shrink in on myself, but perversely, I welcome it. I want Gibb to eviscerate me with words. I want him to strip away all the pretty layers of make-believe and reveal me for what I am, selfish, dark, and monstrous. I want him to punish me for doing exactly what we both knew I would—hurting Sean more than Cait ever did.

  Instead, he runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “You look like shit, Casey. Drag your ass into the shower, and then we’ll talk. And brush your damn teeth. Scotch tastes even worse on day two.”

  I’m too shattered to do anything but obey.

  The pristine bathroom is as lifeless as I remember it. I have to crack the plastic wrap around the unopened shampoo and conditioner. The towels still have price tags hidden between their folds. I imagine my mother leaving them on, knowing she can’t afford not having the option of returning them.

  Everything in this house is a lie. Me, most of all.

  The hot water should feel good. But my head still aches, and I can’t forget that Gibb is downstairs, waiting for me. I rake my fingernails over my scalp, as if I can scrub away the memory of the pain in Sean’s eyes.

  I shiver when I step out of the shower and into the harsh air conditioning. The perfect, unwashed towels are rough on my skin. My shorts and tank top lie in a heap on the bathroom floor, stained by liquor and worse, and I can’t imagine pulling them back on.

  Everything left in my closet belongs to an awkward, flat-chested fifteen-year-old in the midst of a growth spurt. There’s only one other option, and it feels wholly appropriate. Fitting punishment.

  I haven’t been in my mother’s closet in years. It was off-limits, forbidden to us from the time Cait was ten and I was seven and our mother caught us playing dress-up in her silk and pearls and thousand-dollar Prada.

  The dresses, skirts, and slacks are all tailored to my mother’s figure. But in the back of the closet I find a stack of yoga pants and folded T-shirts, as untouched as the yoga mat in what’s left of Cait’s room.

  I take my time pulling them on. I take even longer going back to the bathroom to brush my hair and my teeth. My hands are already shaking, my hangover bumping straight into the need to find another bottle.

  There are plenty of bottles downstairs. And there’s Gibb, who stands at the foot of the stairs, staring at me as if he kn
ows exactly what’s running through my head. He looks at my shaking hands and says nothing, just hands over my shoes. “Come on. We’re going for a ride.”

  »»»«««

  We drive out of Hurricane Creek, toward Atlanta. Gibb has the windows rolled down, and even though it’s warm, the fresh air helps my roiling stomach. He stops at a gas station and buys me another bottle of water, and I sip it as we ride along the back roads.

  “You’re drinking too much,” he says finally. “No one else is going to tell you, because you’re twenty and that’s what college kids do. Party and have fun. But that’s not why you drink.”

  I want to deny it, but maybe this is my penance. Gibb is going to name my sins, and I don’t get to hide from them. “No,” I agree softly. “That’s not why.”

  “So now you’re gonna stop.”

  He says it like it’s that easy. Like I have a choice, and this isn’t destiny. The dysfunction baked into the Casey DNA. “I can’t. You don’t know—”

  “Bullshit.” His voice is rough. Not mean, but hard and unyielding. “You’re the one who doesn’t get it. But I can’t explain it, so I’m going to show you. And then you decide.”

  I clutch the water bottle until the plastic bends beneath my nervous grip. “Decide what?”

  “If you’re going to let your parents fuck up your future, too.”

  There’s no reply for that, just a confusion that only deepens when Gibb pulls off into one of the endless little suburbs that sprawl out from Atlanta in all directions. We stop in the parking lot of an unremarkable community center, and Gibb holds the door for me as I slide out of his truck.

  It’s close to noon, but the lot is filling up with cars. The people spilling out of them vary wildly. Businesswomen in suits and men in flannel. A few other people our age, and some who could be our grandfathers. It’s only when we’re in the main room and Gibb’s gesturing for me to take a seat in one of the folding chairs that I start to suspect where we are.

  But I still doubt. Because this is Gibb, who spends half his nights in a rundown bar with a beer in his hand. I’m still mentally scrambling back through the past few weeks to try to figure out if I’ve ever seen him actually drinking when a blonde in a suit rises to address the room.

  “Welcome to the Friday afternoon speaker meeting. Please turn off your cell phones.”

  The crowd rustles as a few people reach into pockets and purses. I dig out my phone and power it down, my stomach lurching at the number of text messages Evie has sent me. It’s another relationship hanging by a thread, but that thought vanishes when the blonde speaks again.

  “Let’s start with a round of introductions. I’m Julie, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  21

  »» hannah ««

  Twenty minutes later, I understand what Gibb wanted to show me.

  The speaker tells my story, my past. The functional but drunk father. The cold, controlling mother. The slamming doors and the secrets and the constant demand to pretend, pretend, pretend. Every shameful memory I have is pulled into the light of day—the details are different, but the substance is the same.

  She tells my present, too. Drinking to coat her nerves, for courage. Drinking because it was the only time she ever caught sight of the fantasy I’ve chased my whole life—the dream of feeling normal.

  And for a jagged, heartbreaking moment, surrounded by people who nod along with her words, I do feel normal. Normal, and relieved, and understood.

  And humbled.

  She’s spilling the darkest secrets of my childhood, all the pain that made me feel so uniquely fractured. And she’s doing it with a wry smile that says she felt that way, too. Tortured and twisted, dark and wrong in a way no one could ever understand.

  A comforting lie to give our pain meaning. And now I have a choice. I can cling to my pride and the conceit that no one will ever understand, or I can let go and admit that I’m average. That other people have not only lived my past but lived beyond it. The bruises on my heart aren’t mysterious and unfathomable. They’re precise and predictable and utterly mundane.

  And they can heal.

  This is what Gibb wants me to know. It’s why he’s sprawled next to me, his gaze fixed politely on the speaker but his focus on me. As soon as I turn my head, he glances at me, one eyebrow raised.

  It’s a question and a challenge. Maybe even a promise. Gibb’s never had much use for me, but if I decide I want to fight, he’ll have my back—and not just for Sean’s sake. He’ll have my back because he gets it.

  I’m only alone with this if I choose to be.

  »»»«««

  I choose hope.

  Gibb drives me back to my parents’ house. He comes inside without waiting for me to ask. Together we perform a silent exorcism, walking through each room, unearthing bottle after bottle.

  The liquor cabinet and my father’s office were obvious. But Gibb doesn’t stop there, and his proficiency at finding the hiding places makes my heart hurt for him.

  The bathroom, the den, the laundry room. My father’s closet. The garage. Some of the bottles are half full, and some have been empty so long the smell of liquor has begun to fade. Each one is a soldier in the battle my parents were waging, a war that was always bigger than me. Her reckless belief that she could control him slamming into his delusional conviction that he didn’t have a problem.

  Honestly, sending me away might have saved my life.

  “How did I not know?” We’ve been silent so long that my voice sounds rusty. “I knew he drank, but this…” I hold up the empty vodka bottle I found tucked behind my father’s tools.

  “Addicts are great liars.” Gibb tugs the bottle from my hand and tosses it into the garbage can we’ve been dragging around behind us. It clinks against all the other bottles, their sheer number baffling and numbing. “My dad could sell shit to a pig farmer if it meant getting his next drink.”

  “And my mother?” I still don’t know where to place her in this, or how to grieve her. Was she the woman whose denial killed my sister, or was she a victim the way we were all victims, just playing her part in a drama a million other families have acted out?

  Gibb’s expression tightens. “You’ll never know,” he says, and there’s pain in his voice now, too. “You’ll never know who she could have been without him. The booze broke her before you were born, even if she never touched it.”

  It helps, and it hurts. It’s not the simple closure I wanted, because maybe she was both—a victim and a villain. The tragic heroine of her own story and the antagonist in mine.

  If only she’d gotten away from him, there might have been a chance. I could have grown up and gotten to know the parts of her that Marcia knew, the parts that must have been in there, somewhere, buried under her compulsion to hold everything together with lies.

  If only.

  Gibb tosses the final bottle into the garbage can and pulls the bag free. “Evie’s on her way over, by the way.”

  I stare blankly at him, torn between relief that she still wants to see me and the horror of having to face her. “How do you—?”

  “I texted her when we stopped to eat. Told her to give us a couple hours.” He lifts the bag and starts toward the open garage door, carrying it as if it isn’t full of fifty pounds of liquor and glass. “You have to decide how much to tell her, Hannah. It’s your call. But you should tell her everything.”

  Everything. It shouldn’t be this hard—she already knows most of it—but it still feels forbidden. Even thinking about it stirs nerves and anticipation. I’ve lived so much of my life in silence, stuck in shallow friendships with people who don’t care enough to ask me anything real. People who barely notice when I vanish from their lives.

  I have half a dozen missed calls and twice as many text messages as proof that Evie notices. That she cares.

  Her car pulls into the driveway, and Gibb tosses the liquor into the back of his truck with a loud clatter. “You got this, Casey.”

  I no
d, because I believe him. “Thank you. For…”

  I don’t have words, and Gibb clearly doesn’t want them. He waves away my thanks and hauls open his truck door. “That wasn’t my usual meeting. I go up to Douglasville on Sunday nights. If you want to come with me…”

  He leaves the invitation hanging there, and I know it’s a test, too. I don’t know if Sean ever wants to look at me again, but if I go back to drinking and self-destructing, Gibb will make sure he doesn’t. It’s not a threat. It’s a fact.

  It’s oddly soothing. I don’t feel responsible for Sean anymore. “I’d like to go with you.”

  “Good.” Gibb climbs into the truck and rolls down the window to wave at Evie. “She’s all yours.”

  She doesn’t look at him, just reaches out as she passes the truck, and her fingertips graze the back of his hand where it rests on the open window. But her gaze stays on me, even when Gibb pulls down the driveway, bottles rattling in the bed of his truck.

  She stops and bites her lip. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” For one moment, it’s the most awkward thing in the world. Standing there, facing her, knowing I’ve been hollowed out and reformed since the last time I saw her. I barely feel like the same person.

  Then she wraps her arms around me and pulls me into a hug. “Did it help?”

  “Yes,” I answer hoarsely. “Gibb knew what I needed.”

  “I’m glad.” She leans back, searches my face. “Hannah, you know—”

  “You’re here,” I say, before she has to. “I’m sorry I didn’t pick up last night. I’m not…” I swallow a fresh lump of tears, only this time they’re not the painful kind. “I’m not used to people noticing when I’m gone.”

  Evie’s brows draw together in a pained frown, but all she says is, “Come on. Let’s get the rest of your stuff.”

  22

  »» sean ««

  It’s a hot night, muggy and miserable, the kind that makes people lose their tempers and their minds.

  Hannah isn’t in the stands when I climb into my car for qualifying. I’m not surprised—I haven’t called or stopped by to see her, haven’t even texted. Everything is still a jumble in my brain, and two days of brooding hasn’t straightened any of it out.