Sliding Down the Sky

by Amanda Dick

  I looked through into the semi-darkness of the kitchen. She hadn’t even turned the light on in there. Had I pushed her too far? Maybe it was just bad timing. I should just tell her that we could talk about it another time. Then again, if I backed down, she might interpret that as backing away, and I didn’t want her to think that.

  I stood up and ran my palms down the front of my jeans as I psyched myself up. Then I walked through to the kitchen. She stood at the sink, staring out the window into the darkness, her back to me.

  “I never believe anything I read online,” I said tentatively, standing in the doorway, staring at her silhouette against the window.

  She hadn’t turned the light on, so neither did I. Somehow, the semi-darkness made it easier. The shadows gave us camoflauge, somewhere to retreat to if we needed it.

  I walked into the kitchen and leaned back against the kitchen counter just along from her, but not too close – I sensed her need for space. I’d just asked her to tell me about what was probably the worst moment of her life. If the tables were turned, I knew I’d need space. So I sat on my tongue and I waited.

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

  I thought about it for a moment, trying to find the right words.

  “Because I want to understand.”

  She turned to me, and the moonlight picked up the shadows of her face, making her look as if she’d been carved from marble. The strong jaw. The small, perfect nose. The large, liquid eyes, the graceful, long lashes, the elegantly curved eyebrows. The full, rosebud lips, drained of their customary natural pink. The moonlight had sapped the colour from her face, making her skin more translucent than ever, and the effect was striking.

  She was breath-takingly, heart-achingly beautiful, even as she drowned in insecurity and indecision. I could see the pain, the struggle for understanding, the war within herself. It manifested itself in her eyes, in the tautness of her jaw, the set of her shoulders. It leeched into the air around her, drawing me to her and pushing me away from her in the same movement. I was both mesmerised and terrified. One wrong move, one wrong word, and she would be gone, I could feel it.

  “What do you want from me?” she breathed, a lone tear escaping and crawling down her cheek.

  I felt sick, my stomach sinking to subterranean depths as the pressure mounted. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want anything from her, but that wasn’t quite true, and we’d made a promise.

  “I want you to trust me,” I whispered, drawn down to her level, feeling her fear. “I want you to tell me what happened to your hand, so I can try to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  I swallowed the lump of terror that had lodged in my throat.

  “You.”

  “Why?” she asked again, like a child struggling with a foreign concept. “Why me?”

  That threw me, like a blind corner taken at speed. My heart slammed against my ribcage as I searched for a way to explain to her what I barely understood myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly, hypnotised by her. “I don’t know why. I just know that I want to be with you. Isn’t that the whole point, that you can’t explain it? It’s not something you can say, it’s something you have to feel, and I feel it when I’m with you.”

  She never took her eyes off me, as if reading my soul, digging deep down to figure out if I was really telling the truth. My gaze remained steady, because I wanted her to see that I was. Maybe if my words couldn’t convince her, seeing the truth written on my soul would.

  She broke the connection, glancing down, and I desperately wanted to know that she believed me, but I was afraid to ask. She held her left hand in front of her, turning it over and studying the prosthetic fingers that peeked out from beneath the sleeve of my jacket. I followed her gaze, the curved fingers illuminated in the moonlight.

  She let it fall to her side with a shuddering breath, but she didn’t look up. I pushed myself away from the counter and walked over to her, reaching out for her left hand and drawing it up between us. I could almost read her mind, but not quite. That was the problem. She had allowed me to stand at the door, but she was keeping me out of the room.

  “What happened?” I asked again.

  A door had opened, but the light that had escaped was only a glimmer of the truth. A line had been drawn in the sand. Before tonight, I didn’t really care how she lost her hand, I only knew it was gone and she was still coming to terms with that. But that was only part of her story. The reporter had touched on something so raw, so painful, it had stolen the breath right out of her. I could still see her, huddled on the floor behind the bar, shivering. I was sure, if she’d been in control, she would never have wanted me to bear witness to that. Maybe, if she told me what happened, I could help her understand. Maybe, if she told me what happened she could find a way through it.

  In both hearing and telling the truth, maybe we could both move forward, together.

  She looked up at me, her large eyes glowing black in the moonlight. Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded, and the relief nearly lifted me off my feet.

  But it wasn’t over yet. It hadn’t even begun.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you,

  destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.”

  – Dave Grohl

  Sass

  “It was a motorcycle accident.”

  Those five words were just as hard to say as I thought they would be. It felt like every word was being torn out of me, ripping my soul and leaving it bleeding. But that wasn’t the end of it. It was much, much worse. Pain piled on top of regret, and shame at what I had done and the burden I had to carry because of it.

  “We were at a party. I was drunk, and a guy called Jason offered me a ride on his bike. He was drunk too, but I didn’t really care because I was Kia Martin, and Kia Martin was untouchable.”

  It came tumbling out after that, the words tripping over each other in their haste. They had been locked up inside me for so long that they craved the spotlight again. Despite that, I couldn’t look at Callum while I relived it. I didn’t want to see his face. I didn’t want to see how disappointed he was going to be.

  “That’s who I was then. Fearless, foolhardy, invincible – or so I thought. I didn’t even give it a second thought, I just climbed on the back of his bike and we took off. Felt like I was strapped to a rocket, and I loved it. I loved the thrill, the speed, the danger – all of it. Right up until he took a corner too fast. The bike skidded and he lost control, and down we went.”

  A shudder ran through me, a full-body tremor. I could remember everything. Every pain, every fear, every thought that had run through my head in the seconds before and after impact.

  “My hand was caught between the bike and the road,” I murmured, staring at the prosthesis that did a poor job of replacing it. “The pain was unlike anything I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I thought my bones were melting, then it just went numb. The paramedics arrived. They pumped me so full of morphine, I don’t even remember arriving at the hospital. I woke up from surgery and it was gone.”

  I went into a kind of trance, reliving the moment as if it were just yesterday.

  “I swore I could still feel it. Despite the drugs I was on, despite everything. I convinced myself they must’ve been able to save it because I could still bend my fingers. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes and looked down that I saw the bandages. Then I realised. Phantom sensation. I still get it sometimes. I can feel my hand as if it’s still there.”

  Callum made a move as if to pull me closer, but I didn’t want that. I pulled away from him, backing up against the counter. I stared at the floor, my knees suddenly weak.

  “I lost everything that night,” I whispered. “I lost my hand, my music, all of it. I threw it away. It was my fault, because I thought nothing could touch me. I thought I was bulletproof. Such bullshit. I was being
punished –“

  “Don’t say that,” he said, making another move towards me.

  I stopped him with just a look.

  “It’s true,” I said coldly. “You don’t understand. How could you? I can’t play. The music was in my head, my heart, my soul – it hummed through my veins all the time, but now it’s gone, because I thought I was above the rules. Jason died that night, giving me a joyride around the city, showing off because I encouraged him to. I’d never met him before that night, I had no idea who he was, but he had a family, he had friends who loved him, he had a life, and somehow, because I thought I was better than him, he’s dead, and that’s my fault, too.”

  “It’s not your fault – it just happened. Shit like that just happens sometimes, it’s no one’s fault.“

  “I ruined both our lives,” I said honestly, the reality of it slamming into my chest. “And now I have to live with this shit, every damn day. This is my penance for killing him.”

  Callum’s eyes burned into mine, or maybe it was the other way around. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. I was balanced right on the edge of the knife, and I had this insane idea that he might be able to save me from falling.

  “You’re not responsible for what happened.”

  I sighed, a deep, bone-weary sigh that sucked all the residual strength right out of me. I couldn’t hold my head up anymore. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I wasn’t strong enough.

  Callum’s hands were on my shoulders.

  “Do you hear me?” he asked.

  Why was he still here? He should’ve made some excuse by now and left. I was expecting that. Some things, some people, can’t be fixed.

  “You don’t have to stay,” I whispered. “It’s late. You should go home.”

  I stared at his chest, too tired to look up at him as his hands gently squeezed my shoulders.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  My heart soared and dipped like a bird in flight. I wanted him to stay more than anything, but I also wanted him to leave me alone. The contradiction was sucking at my stomach, like I was free-falling from a great height.

  “Look at me, Sass.”

  Slowly, I looked up. His eyes were dark blue, almost black in the moonlight that spilled in through the kitchen window. It made each and every whisker on his unshaven jaw stand out as if it had been drawn in pencil. He didn’t look real, and yet the way he was looking at me was very real.

  It stole my breath.

  “Let go,” he said tenderly. “Let it all go. It doesn’t mean you’re ever going to forget what happened. It’s part of you now, there’s no escaping that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get on with your life. You’re still here.”

  Tears burned my eyes and I had no way of stopping them, not this time. I could feel the torrent building, the pain, the heartache, the shame of that night crawling over my skin, demanding more. More of me, more from me. The momentum was building, and I was powerless to stop it.

  Then I was choking, sobbing but trying desperately not to because it felt like giving in, like giving up, and I wanted so much to be stronger than that. Callum pulled me into his arms and suddenly he was all around me, cocooning me from the nightmare that was my reality. The two worlds blended, the lines blurred, and I didn’t know which was which anymore. The very air around us felt like it was changing, and it scared me to death. Change terrified me, because every time it came knocking it took a little more from me, and I was at the stage where I had so little left in the tank.

  I held on to him because I wanted to be rescued, from all of it.

  I wanted him to be the one to rescue me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene.”

  – Ray Charles

  Callum

  I lay on the couch in Tom’s house in the dark, listening. I’d sent Sass off to get some sleep, but I didn’t go with her. It wasn’t the right time and she was exhausted. She needed to sleep, to heal, and I didn’t want her to feel any pressure from me. She was under enough pressure as it was. Besides, she was sleeping in Jack’s old room. It was too weird.

  She needed room to process. So did I, yet I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. She didn’t seem to mind when I said I was going to sleep on the couch. I think she was relieved. I couldn’t leave her, but I didn’t want to be far from her, either. Going home felt like it would’ve sent the wrong message, like I was backing away. I wanted her to know I was here in case she needed me, even though I had no clue what I was going to do or say if she did.

  I ran my hand through my hair and stared at the ceiling. Guilt, panic attacks, asshole reporters, pain – both physical and mental. It made the loss of her hand seem almost trivial in comparison, one item on a very long list. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how that would affect a person.

  I lay there for what felt like hours, turning things over and over in my head. At some point during the early hours, I must’ve finally fallen asleep.

  When I woke up, it was still dark outside. In that shimmery twilight between asleep and awake, I heard singing. It was clear and true, but it wasn’t loud. I blinked into the darkness and searched for the source. I scanned the room, settling on an outline sitting at the piano.

  It was Sass.

  She was sitting with her back to me, singing. At first I didn’t recognise the song, wrapped as I was in the last vestiges of sleep. All I could hear was her voice, soft and true, hauntingly beautiful as it came at me through the darkness. It was as if it settled on my skin, the words and the melody raising goosebumps in their wake. Like Leo, her voice had an intensity, a clarity, a passion, drawn from somewhere deep within. She was incredible, her voice lilting one moment, strong and even the next.

  Then it came to me. She was singing James Taylor’s Something in the Way She Moves. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

  I lay there and listened for a few minutes, afraid to move in case I disturbed her. The passion in her voice was so deep and intense, I didn’t even know if she had seen me. Had she forgotten I was there?

  “She’s asleep.”

  Leo’s voice came from behind me and I pushed myself up. He was standing in the doorway, a silhouette against the darkness. He walked around the couch and sat down at the other end. He seemed calm, but I was the opposite.

  “What?”

  He looked over at me, a shadow with a head that moved my way.

  “She does this,” he said, just loud enough that I could hear him over her voice. “When she’s stressed. I first noticed it when I stayed with her in her apartment, a few months after the accident. She’s sleep talking – sleep walking, sleep singing… whatever. She’s not awake. She has no idea what she’s doing.”

  I looked over at Sass.

  “She can’t hear us,” he said, reading my mind. “I’ve tried talking to her a hundred times, but she won’t answer when she’s like this. It’s like she’s in another world.”

  Watching her, I could completely believe that. She continued to sing, her back to us.

  “Figures that she’d sing this song,” he said. “We grew up listening to James Taylor, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell. Mom and Dad loved music. My Dad would play guitar, and we would sing. I haven’t heard her sing this in a while, though.”

  My head was spinning, trying desperately to make sense of all of this.

  “Does she know?” I asked. “I mean, when she wakes up, the next morning?”

  “No.”

  “You haven’t told her?”

  He paused, and Sass’s soulful voice filled the void. When he answered, I could barely hear him.

  “I’m too scared to. Maybe, if she knew, she’d stop. And I don’t want her to stop. She needs this.”

  In the dark, the pain in his voice seemed much more obvious.

  “Let’s go outside,” he said, sta
nding up.

  Reluctantly, I stood up and followed his shadow as we made our way out through the kitchen, Sass’s voice following us. He opened the back door and sat down on the step, leaving the door open so we could hear her. I sat down beside him, the cool air settling over my shoulders.

  I ran my hand down my face and sighed.

  “She won’t sing anymore,” Leo said. “Not when she’s awake, anyway. I try to get her to sing with me, like we used to growing up, but she won’t. I keep thinking that if she’s surrounded by music, she’ll find her way back to it somehow. I guess this is her release valve, her way of letting go of all the stuff that’s building up inside her. It’s a start, I guess. I hope. Time will tell.”

  I stared out into the darkness of the backyard. The night was quiet, which given the hour wasn’t surprising. I couldn’t help but wish that Tom was here. He was always so good at this kind of thing. He could always find the sense within the chaos. A few words of wisdom, a well-chosen phrase or two, and it all seemed to be so much more manageable.

  “She told me about the accident,” I said. “Last night, after you went to bed.”

  “I know. I came out to see if she was okay, and I heard you guys talking. I didn’t hear everything that was said, but I’m glad she told you. You should know. It might help.”

  “Help me, or her?”

  “Both,” he said, after a moment.

  “Why do you think she does this?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder into the house.

  It was his turn to sigh.

  “This is gonna sound kinda weird. I don’t even know if it’s gonna make any sense because – and don’t take this the wrong way – but I know this isn’t really your thing. You’re not a musician, you probably won’t get it.”

  “Try me.”

  “It’s the music,” he said hesitantly. “It’s not something you just play, it’s something you feel. It lives inside you, it’s the way you see the world and understand it, make sense of it. It’s like a filter through which every part of your life has to flow through in order to be understood.”