Behind the Strings

by Courtney Giardina

  “I bet you are, you son of a bitch.” Logan swung his fist at Jesse, but missed as Jesse ducked underneath it. “You could’ve had any girl that you wanted. Why her?”

  Jesse turned his head to look at me. “I love her.”

  Logan lunged in Jesse’s direction. They both collided and fell to the ground. All I could see were arms flailing in all directions. Both of them were yelling, but I couldn’t make out any of their words.

  “Logan! Stop!” I screamed.

  I kept yelling, but it wasn’t doing any good. I watched Logan’s fist make contact a couple of times with Jesse’s face before Jesse was able to finally restrict Logan’s arms and pull himself off the ground and away from him. I could see a cut on the side of his lip. His temple was red.

  “Logan, chill!” Jesse shouted. His hands were straight out in front of him in mercy.

  Logan sat up on the porch. His breathing was heavy. Jesse had moved back over next to me. No one said a word until Logan finally stood. He adjusted his shirt and looked over at us.

  “Well it looks like you two deserve each other, because you both sure as hell know how to stab someone in the back.”

  That was the last thing he said before he left. Jesse and I both stood there watching. We listened to the sound of his pickup as it pulled away.

  “Jesse.” My voice cracked. I turned to him. His lip was bleeding. I reached up, but he backed away. My lips trembled and tears streamed down my face. “I’m sorry.”

  He wiped the blood with his sleeve. “I think I should go,” he said.

  I didn’t object. I just let him walk away. Logan was gone. Jesse was gone. There I was, on my front steps in the openness of the Nashville air, alone.

  42

  I tossed and turned for hours, trying to make sense of what had happened. I didn’t know what to do or who to call or if I should call either of them. Logan was the type of person who, when he got mad, you waited for him to come to you. Trying to push before he was ready wasn’t going to do me any good, but it didn’t make me feel any better letting him walk away. It was the longest night of my life: lying in bed alone, waiting for the sun to come up. All I had were questions and no answers. I had lost two of the most important people in the world to me in a matter of minutes, and they had lost each other and it was all my fault.

  I lay in bed as long as I could stand it. I would let Logan cool off, but Jesse…I needed to see him. I wasn’t going to be able to function if I didn’t. If it was going to end, fine, but it wasn’t going to end like this.

  I didn’t stop crying the whole drive to Jesse’s. I saw that same empty parking spot in front of Jesse’s loft where my car had been parked before. I pulled in and wiped the mascara from under my eyes. I walked up the stairs alongside the exposed brick and shivered as I exhaled the coldness of the morning air.

  I took a few deep breaths before I finally leaned my finger into the doorbell. My heart rate quickened as I heard the sound come through the other side of the door. My feet started to back away after a minute and the heavy sigh I let out was one of disappointment when I thought that no one was home. Right before I turned to leave I heard the door unlock. My body tensed up as I waited for it to open.

  On the other side of the glass Jesse stood in a pair of mesh shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt. Even his unshaven face couldn’t hide the swelling on his lip. “Celia?” he asked. The way he said my name, I could tell I wasn’t who he was expecting to see. By the rasp in his voice I knew I must’ve woken him.

  “Hi,” was all that managed to come off my lips.

  “Come in,” he said, holding open the door.

  He led me through the foyer to the kitchen where he poured us both some orange juice and offered me my choice of cereals. My stomach didn’t find either enticing so I politely declined, but I waited until he was settled into his chair with a bowl before I began.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Logan’s feelings for me,” I started. “I wasn’t ready to lose you yet. I was selfish, I know. I’ve spent so much time being sad in my life that I wanted to hold on to happiness for as long as I could. I thought I could make Logan understand. I was gonna sit him down and we would figure it out and it would be okay. I was wrong to keep it from you.”

  “You should’ve said something,” he finally said.

  “I know that now, I do, but I don’t regret my decision. Do you honestly think the last two weeks would’ve happened had I told you how Logan felt?”

  His hands were gentle when he pulled mine into them. I smiled as his thumbs rubbed back and forth across my skin while he stared blankly into the table. I looked at him intently, trying to understand where he was and how he felt, but I got nothing.

  “You know that you’re the last thing on my mind every night,” he said hoarsely. “Everything about you makes me smile. The way you pull your hair behind your ears and bite your lip when you get nervous, the way your skin feels pressed up against mine, and the cute way your nose twitches when you dream in your sleep

  The way his lips curled up as he said those things made my heart melt. In his eyes I could see the truth and the vulnerability as he kept talking. His hands slowly began to rub up and down my forearms and my body ached to be closer to him. I wanted to pull him into me, to kiss him and make everything alright. It took everything I had in me not to throw myself out of my chair and wrap my arms around him. I so badly wanted to hold him, but those words, the sound of his voice, the smile, it all slowly began to fade as his reality came to light.

  “You’re not the only one who wasn’t honest,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “That day Logan called and asked me to come and write with him. He asked me where those words came from and I told him they were inspired by a girl. He said he knew exactly what that was like. He told me that every song he’d ever written had always been inspired by a girl. The same girl. He didn’t say your name, but I knew. I knew and I didn’t stop it. I wanted you so badly that I pretended I wasn’t hurting anybody, but I knew I was.”

  I tried to steady my chin on my now-shaking hands. We were both guilty of wanting to be happy at someone else’s expense. I wanted to be with Jesse. I didn’t want to walk out of that house today without him.

  “Jesse, I want to be with you. I want this.”

  “And I want nothing more than to be able to give you that, but looking at Logan last night…” His voice trailed off as he leaned back in his chair. “The anger in his eyes was frightening.”

  “I don’t know how I am going to fix this, but I will. I will make him understand,” I said. My voice began to shake “He’ll come around, you’ll see. He needs a little bit of time.”

  “Celia, let me ask you something. Do you think that you will ever love me? Really love me?”

  I didn’t know the answer. I knew I wanted to love him. I had given him so much already that I thought it was possible, but I don’t think that was the answer he was looking for.

  He saw my hesitation and sighed. “I can’t willingly hurt someone who has done nothing to me for someone who might never be ready. I think we all just need a little bit of time, me and Logan, you and Logan…you and me.”

  My eyes blinked profusely to hold back the tears that begged to fall from them. All I could do was nod and stand. When he tried to reach for me I stepped back. I wasn’t angry. His genuine honesty made me understand his point of view and I was actually thankful that he was allowing me to be brave for the first time in my life. I had no regrets, but I couldn’t stand there any longer.

  “Okay then,” I said as I picked my purse up from the counter, “I guess it’s my turn to go.”

  He nodded and reached for me again. This time I let him wrap his arms around my waist and I let myself fall into him. My eyes closed firmly as my head rested against his chest. We both held onto the moment and each other as long as we could. I felt my strength to hold back begin to weaken. I couldn’t let Jesse see me fall apart, so before I began to
sob, I peeled myself away from him. With his hand never leaving the small of back we walked to the door. He pushed it open and with his free hand he reached down once again to grab mine. I let it hold firmly until both our arms extended and with our eyes locked together I took one final step and let go.

  43

  After I returned home from Jesse’s, I curled up in bed and cried myself to sleep. Even with the exhaustion that had fallen over me, I still woke to the banging on the front door. I sprung up and rubbed my eyes. I’d know that pounding anywhere. That was Logan, royally pissed off. I pulled myself out of bed and prepared myself for what was about to happen next.

  I opened the door and moved aside for him to come in. He did, and then there were a few minutes of pacing back and forth before he finally started in on me.

  “Do you know there are over 600,000 people in this city?”

  I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this, but I let him. I was still standing there with the door open while he repeated the number again. And even after the second time, I was still confused.

  “Out of all of the 600,000 people in this city you could’ve picked to have a love affair with, it had to be Jesse.”

  “Logan, I’m so sorry, I…”

  He didn’t let me finish. “No, you’re not!” he shouted. A loud grunt escaped him as he waved his hands at me. “You’re not sorry.”

  “I know that we shouldn’t have kept this from you, but I just thought…”

  “Thought what, Celia?”

  “I guess I wasn’t thinking at all,” I said.

  “No, see, that’s the problem Celia, is that you were thinking. Except the only person you were thinking about was you.”

  “That is not fair.” My voice was harsh. I stomped closer to him. “Look, I know that we should’ve been honest with you up front, and I’m sorry that we weren’t, but Jesse and I needed to figure this out on our own before we brought anyone else into it. We did not want to hurt you, if there was no reason to.”

  “Damn it, Celia! Are you serious?” I could see the hurt in his eyes. The betrayal. His voice broke. “I’ve been in this for twenty-four years. I have loved you my entire life. And I have spent every minute waiting for you to love me back. So you tell me, what does he have that I don’t?”

  I grabbed my stomach as it shuddered from those words. I inhaled slowly trying to relieve the tension that had built up in it. “I never meant for it to be like this,” I said. “When those words came out of your mouth, Logan, I wanted so badly to feel the same. I don’t know how it happened, it just did. I tried not to want him, but I do. I’m so sorry.” My chest began to heave and the tears poured down my cheeks, drowning out my final words.

  My deafening sobs numbed Logan’s anger long enough for him to wrap his arms around me until I was able to get ahold of myself. My hair was stuck against my cheeks, soaked in salted tears. My face was hot, my body was trembling and I thought I was going to faint. I walked over to the couch and sat down.

  “If I had called you back all those years ago, do you think it would’ve been different?” he asked.

  I tilted my head at him. I had almost forgotten that phone call. Six months after he moved to Nashville. Six months after complete silence between the two of us, I found the strength to pick up the phone and call him. In the moments that I sat listening to each ring, I wondered what would come out of my mouth. I had nothing planned, I just knew something needed to be said, but he didn’t pick up. After his voicemail greeting trailed off I began to ramble. I told him how it wasn’t the same waking up knowing I couldn’t walk down the road to see him. How without him, Hamden didn’t feel like home. I told him I thought I was ready to make the move, but I needed to know if he still wanted me there. He never returned that voicemail.

  “Oh Logan, I don’t know. So much has happened over the last five years, I don’t know where we would’ve been, but I liked where you and I were going now and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you.”

  There was no reason for either of us to look back. It was too late to undo what had been done, but I hoped it wasn’t too late to mend what had been broken.

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  I hesitated. My eyes stared at the ground. “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked. I don’t know why I was so offended by that comment, but my fingers clenched into my and asked him again what that was supposed to mean. “How would you know how I feel?”

  “You haven’t had a real relationship in the twenty-four years that I’ve known you. You don’t know how to love someone, Celia, because you don’t let yourself.”

  “Stop it, right now,” I demanded. I shot straight up from the couch and stepped in front of him. He followed suit and I knew what was coming.

  “You have always been afraid of not being enough for someone. No matter how hard people try to be there for you, you push them away. You built this suit of armor to protect yourself from pain and heartbreak and threw away the goddamn key. Stop shutting people out, Celia. It’s not gonna get you anywhere.”

  “First of all,” I said through gritted teeth, “you do not get to walk back into my life after all the years and tell me how to live it.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for caring.” He waved his hands over his head. I watched him roll his eyes before he turned away from me.

  “This is not you caring. You’re angry and you are throwing around accusations when you know nothing about the situation.”

  “Do you love him?” he asked.

  “I told you, I don’t know, and even if I did, it’s too late.”

  “I don’t get you, Celia, I really don’t.” His voice was calm yet detached. “You knew being with Jesse would hurt me, but you did it anyway because it was what you wanted, and now you’re going to throw it away without a fight.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “How about you stop running? You’ve said so many times that you’ve never known real love because you’ve never seen it, but it’s right here staring you in the face. Your mom loves you, I love you, Jesse loves you…for God’s sake, Celia, stop hiding behind your excuses!”

  “I am not running.”

  “The girl who used to lay her head on my shoulder on the docks, the one who would run through the open fields with her mason jar trying to catch fireflies? That girl was such an inspiration to me. She could tell me anything, no matter how much she thought it might hurt me. And she loved everyone and everything.” He cupped his hands around my face. His lower lip trembled. “I want her back.”

  I pulled his hands from my face and pushed past him. “You seem to forget, Logan.” My voice was firm. “That little girl didn’t live a perfect life like you did. She didn’t have a mommy and a daddy and a happily ever after.” The anger in my voice grew. An anger that wasn’t necessarily directed at Logan, but resurfaced with the memories. “You were there; you know what I went through. That little girl has carried a lot on her shoulders over these years.”

  “Because you won’t let it go,” he shouted. “You have spent your entire life shutting people out so you don’t get hurt. You keep every emotion bottled up inside because you know the moment you become vulnerable and let someone in, you give them the power, and you will never let that happen because you see it as a sign of weakness. The kind of weakness that walks out on their child and leaves a mother to raise them all on their own. Don’t you see it, Celia? You keep yourself at a distance from people because you think they’ll all end up like him, but by doing that, you’ve turned into him.”

  Before I could even think, I felt my hand land hard against Logan’s face.

  He rubbed his cheek and let out a bitter laugh. He looked at me as my hand covered my mouth and he shook his head. “See?” he said. “You hurt the people who love you and leave the people who want you, and I’m tired of sitting here watching it.”

  That was the last thing he said
before I watched the door close behind him. There’s not really a feeling to describe the way my body ached when I heard the click of the handle. I replayed in my mind those moments before he left. The disappointment in his voice, the emptiness in his eyes. It was like I was eighteen all over again, watching him walk off that porch and never look back. Just like back then, his leaving ignited something inside of me. But this time it wasn’t because I knew I was doing what was best for him, it was because I knew he was right.

  I watched the mascara run down my face in the reflection of the glass window. Hollow eyes stared back at me as my lips trembled. I looked hard, but that girl on the docks, who ran through the fields and threw rocks at bedroom windows, she was nowhere to be found. I could hide behind the happiness. I could smile and laugh from here to eternity, but Logan was right. It was clear the moment those words came out of Jesse’s mouth, that it all came back again. For the first time in my life, I saw what everyone else saw when they looked at me. The empty, broken person afraid of letting anyone near her for fear that she would shatter.

  44

  Once Logan was gone, I drowned the rest of my tears in the shower and stood under the hot stream of water for much longer than normal. My hands were starting to wrinkle as I turned the knob and stepped out and even through the steam-filled room I could see the mascara that still sat underneath my eyes. I’m not sure that morning had really sunk in yet. It sort of still felt like a dream. Like I was floating above, watching someone else’s story unfold. Logan’s words were still pounding through me. “You’ve turned into him.” With only a towel wrapped around me, I lay down on my bed. My body shivered as the dampness from my hair fell cold upon my skin.

  Was I really that broken? Did my completely nonexistent relationship with my dad affect me that much? All these years I had told myself I didn’t care. That I was over it, he didn’t matter and that I had everything I needed without him, but maybe I was wrong. I tried to sabotage people for my own well-being. I let the most loyal person I knew walk out on me once again and didn’t even attempt to chase after him. I met a guy who for the first time in what feels like forever made me feel things I didn’t even know existed inside of me, and I let him too walk away without a fight. That is what I had become accustomed to. I’d watched my dad walk away time and time again only to return out of some type of guilt or obligation.