by A. S. Kelly
“Why?” she asks without hesitation. “Why do you want me to stay?”
What should I tell her? I want you to stay because I’m selfish, because I need you to free me, that you’re alive, and that you’ll be happy, to relieve my sense of guilt so that I too may live?
“That’s how it should be,” I tell her, even though I well know that’s not true. It’s all terribly wrong. “I’d like to know you better, Rain O’Donovan.”
She wriggles out of my embrace and takes a few steps back.
“It’s not worth it, believe me.”
Her words hit me like a punch in the chest. I can’t let her think this about herself.
“Oh yeah, it is worth it,” I say, closing the distance between us, resting my forehead against hers. I can feel her breath on my face. “You shouldn’t say those things about yourself.”
“You wouldn’t know. You don’t know me at all,” she says with an uncertain voice. “I—I’m not…” A tear falls unnoticed down her cheek and she doesn’t even try to hide it, because that’s how she is. She’s sincere, and wonderful and there’s no reason she should hide it.
“I want to know all there is to know about you,” I tell her in a firm but sweet voice. I certainly don’t want to scare her.
Then, I break the contact and take her hand. An instinctive gesture that makes us both shake a bit, as if it is the first step towards the precipice, before falling into the void. We both look down at our hands wound together and we feel it, perhaps at the same moment, that we are in too deep, that the fall is near, and that we’ve gone past any possibility of turning back.
“Come.” And gently I persuade her to walk next to me, lightly squeezing her hand.
She lifts her gaze from our hands and directs it towards me. Her eyes are vivid and enormous, still moist from the tears. I dry them with my free hand and smile at her again.
By now, I can’t do any less.
She follows me without asking, without hesitation and I don’t know if I’ll really be able to do it, to fix things, if I can help her get her life back together somehow. But I know I cannot abandon her, not now, not again. It’s my responsibility to put things back in order to give her a chance, to give a chance to me.
To us.
Rain
We’re sitting next to each other on the rocks on the right side of the pier, where the land falls directly into the sea that in this dark, bitter night has drawn back, as if he too was worried about opening this small box of memories that I have hidden under my bed, waiting to give a meaning back to my life. I take my shoes off and dig around in the icy sand thanks to the low tide. We sit in silence looking toward the horizon, waiting for the sea to return. He hasn’t let my hand go for a moment since we started walking and during the whole time we’ve been here. He’s giving me time to make sense of everything so that I feel ready to speak.
I take a breath and begin. I tell him everything, at least what I remember:
“I had an accident, about two years ago, a car accident, but I don’t remember it. They told me I was alone, that I was coming home from a party and that someone hit me. I hadn’t been drinking, I’d never do that if I knew I had to drive. They said it wasn’t my fault. The driver of the other car on the other hand, he was drunk and he died at the scene.”
I stop for a few seconds because I’m becoming emotional. I normally never talk about what happened, and every time I’ve tried to I’ve come out of it destroyed, but this time, I have to do it. I want him to know everything about me.
“I was in a coma for three months and when I came to, I didn’t remember anything. Nothing about the accident, about my past, about myself. Slowly, some little things started coming back to me. I recognized Aaron, I’ve had a few flashes of my life as a child, when my parents were still alive, but I can’t focus on their faces. I remember the music and there are a few other little things that I’m not able to connect. They call it ‘transient amnesia’. There is hope that I might remember my life from before the accident, but after all this time, the doctors think it’s impossible that it would come back.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, moving closer to my ear and brushing me with his shaggy beard.
“I have linguistic difficulty, as you will have noticed, as well as motor problems. I can’t articulate phrases well, especially if they are long and complicated. It’s difficult for me to read and memorize information. Sometimes I forget names and dates. I have continual gaps I’m not able to fill. I have to write everything down in order to remember it. I have tremors in my arms and legs that come and go and I tire easily, which I’m sure you’ve also noticed. I get terrible migraines that knock me out for days and…” I’m not able to finish because all this is too much for me to bear.
Liam lets go of my hand and caresses my face, then he wraps me in his arms and makes me rest my head on his shoulder.
“Everything’s fine, don’t worry.”
“No, everything’s not fine. Nothing’s ever going to go well again. This is my life. I live with my brother and his friends who keep an eye on me constantly. I don’t have my own friends, except for Erin. I’m 25 years old and I haven’t…” I can’t say it. I’m too humiliated at my own thoughts.
“What? What haven’t you had?” he asks, breaking away enough to look at me.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had—a boyfriend. I don’t remember, no one knows or they won’t tell me. I have no one and no one would be interested in someone like me,” I conclude, feeling stupid and inopportune and not completely sincere.
He takes a big breath and pulls me tighter to him, giving me a light kiss on the head.
“Only an asshole wouldn’t be interested in you, Rain O’Donovan,” he whispers.
And I almost believe him.
11
Liam
I take Rain back to Only4You after having held her in my arms. It was painful, heartbreaking and unbearable listening to her words, but she needed to vent her feelings, to have someone participate in what she was going through.
I know Aaron will most probably beat me for this. He has asked me not to bring up the past, to not dig around in her life, but she needed to do it and I was there, ready to offer my shoulder for her to cry on and offer a bit of understanding.
I should have done it a long time ago.
At the doorway, she stops a moment. She turns towards me and smiles, throwing her arms around me, rising up on her tiptoes to do so.
I remain immobile with my arms tense, held at my sides without knowing what to do, because this gesture is one I wasn’t expecting. But before deciding if I should hug her back, she lets go and goes into the pub, leaving me confused.
“And what was that?” someone says.
I turn quickly, fearing the worst.
“Patrick?” I ask.
“Fuck, so it was true, it’s really you,” Patrick replies. “Liam O’Reilly in person, in front of me.”
I go toward my old friend, asking him to lower his voice.
“Oh please, you’re not so famous here. Who are you afraid is going to recognize you?”
I shake my head and smile: It’s not the first time I’ve heard that since I’ve been back.
“Let’s go, the others are inside. Aaron was going to go find you, but you beat him to it. And it’s a good thing! Imagine what would have happened if he saw you hugging his sister.”
“She’s the one who hugged me,” I justify myself, following the little path that leads to the back entrance.
“Yeah right, save it for someone else.”
Patrick. Always the same. Hasn’t changed a bit. Same old jackass talking shit out the side of his mouth, with a face you’d like to punch and the confidence of someone who’s understood everything about you, but in reality has no idea what he’s doing in his own life.
We go in the back door and he walks with me to the storeroom.
“Look what I found,” he says blatantly.
“Where were you?” Aaron as
ks right away?
“I went out for a walk.”
“Alone?” he asks without hesitating.
I don’t answer, I let my guilt answer for me by letting him see the look on my face.
“Okay, let’s get things clear. Don’t think that because you’ve returned I’ll permit you to do whatever the hell you want, especially with my sister. You can get close to her, you can talk with her but remember what we said the other day. And keep your hands to yourself, got it?”
I nod, cuz I don’t know what else to do.
Jay gives me a pat on the shoulder and hands me a beer that’s already been opened. I accept it and take a few sips even if I shouldn’t. Alcohol is that last thing I need at this moment, but it helps me relax in this surreal situation.
We’re all back together, and even if we’re missing the fundamental element, the thing that held us together for years, we’re still the same. We’re still those kids that had nothing but their music and their friendship. I’ve missed my friends to death.
“I gave everything up,” I shout, deafening the room in the silence that follows.
“What the fuck does that mean?” asks Patrick, Mr. Direct.
“The recording studio, the new album I had coming out, my manager, the musicians. That damned career. I gave it all up.”
“Why? What happened?” Aaron asks, sitting on a case of beer in the corner.
“For her.” Jay says in my place. “You did it to come back for her, isn’t that right?”
I sigh and decide not to lie to them. I have to spill the beans without leaving anything out, because they deserve to know the truth.
“No, it—that life wasn’t for me.”
Patrick bursts out with an incontrollable laugh. “Oh sure, sell that shit to someone else. What was it that wasn’t for you? The success, the money?”
“All of it.”
Silence again.
“I had everything, all that we had wanted for years. All that we thought would make our lives better, that would have helped us forget our pasts, that would have given us a better life, made up for our shitty childhood, everything we could never have. Music, success, money—but I didn’t have…”
Jay gives me a nod encouraging me to go on.
“…You,” I say after a long sigh. “I had everything, but I didn’t have everything I really needed. My friends, our music and…” I can’t say it. I just can’t.
“Let me understand.” Aaron gets up from the case of beer where he was sitting and comes towards me with a threatening air. “You came back here because you wanted the whole package? After having blown over two years without even thinking about the disaster you left behind you? You left us here with our asses on the ground. You took everything that was owed to us, leaving us to make up excuses, to avoid the press, to hide as if we had committed some kind of crime—”
“Aaron,” Jay intervenes, but Aaron doesn’t let him speak.
“—You can’t come back here like nothing happened, as if you hadn’t thrown all of our lives down the pisser in one bad fucking night.”
“No, I can’t.”
“And you can’t come back here and demand that we’ll accept you back with open arms, forgetting you are the one who turned your back on us—”
“I know that.”
“Well then, explain yourself, because I don’t understand what happened in London to make you come back here with your tail between your legs.”
“I couldn’t do it, okay? I fell apart. The contract, the album, the songs that other people were supposed to write for me to make me continue—drugs. I just fell apart. I had everything, but I didn’t have anything worth living for. I—I tried to kill myself.”
“What the fuck?” Jay asks.
“It’s true, Jay. They found me in my hotel room on the floor with my face in my own vomit. I drank and I took stuff—I was in a mess, okay? It was the only way to go ahead, to get on that fucking stage, to get up in the morning. I was a junkie, do you understand? A year spent messing up my life to the point of no return before accepting that I had to live—with myself.
“That night I had gotten back from a concert where I sucked so bad I would have booed at myself, but the people didn’t notice. What matters to them is that there’s a little puppet up there doing his thing, moving around, making the girls scream—they don’t give a shit about my music, about me, about all the rest. I swallowed an entire bottle of pills, half a bottle of sleeping pills and I drank it all down until I fell on the floor, hoping to not wake up again. All I remember is that I woke up in the hospital after a stomach pump. They put me in a rehab program where I dried out for two months. When I was free from all of that shit, I finally understood. I understood that it was all wrong, that I should have said no that damned night, so we would all still be together and she…” I’m not able to continue.
I’m embarrassed, I feel disgusting, I hate myself, for everything I have and haven’t done.
“But you’re clean now though, right?” Jay asks me. “And you don’t think anymore about, err—”
“—Killing myself?” I say the missing words Jay couldn’t utter. “Believe me, Jay. I’m already dead. I died August 29th two years ago. I died in that car with him.”
“There’s always room for you here, friend. We’ve never stopped waiting for your return,” Jay says, patting me on the shoulder.
“Speak for yourself,” Aaron says. “I don’t think this is the right place for him.”
“You’re right, Aaron. It isn’t anymore,” I tell him. “There is no room for me here.”
“Don’t bullshit, Aaron,” Patrick interrupts. “We all know you’re acting like an asshole because of your sister, but it happened, all the mess I mean, and no one can go back in time. Now Liam is here in front of us, he has a problem, a big problem, and we can’t turn our backs on him.”
“Even if he did the same to us?”
“Aaron,” Jay intervenes with a conciliatory tone. “Liam didn’t turn his back on us. He turned his back on himself.”
His words humiliate me so completely that I break down. I bring my hands to my eyes, trying to hide my tears but I can’t do it. They filter through my fingers and run down my cheeks, my neck and down my shirt.
“Aaron!” Jay calls him out.
“Okay, I get it!” Aaron comes close to me bending down on his knees. “We grew up together, we’re like brothers, even if you’re a fine son of a bitch—I won’t turn my back on a friend. Ever. Tell me what we can do for you and we’ll do it.”
I slowly let my hands slide down my face and our eyes meet.
“Oh no—anything, but not that. You can’t really ask that of me!”
I continue to implore him with my eyes because I don’t have the courage to confess what I feel, what I would like, what I need.
Just one thing.
“Not her.”
Rain
“Hey guys, what can I bring you?”
It’s Thursday night and the pub is starting to fill up with people, so much so that even I have to take some orders. I hope I won’t screw anything up.
“Three Guinness for now, Rain. We’re waiting for Liam,” Jay tells me and I miss falling on my feet by a hair.
“L-Liam?” I ask Aaron with my eyes.
“Well, yeah. He’ll be stopping here in Howth for a bit.”
“Oh,” I add immediately, lowering my gaze.
The three guys are quiet for a minute while exchanging glances until Liam makes his way in and heads over to the table.
“Here I am, sorry I’m late, traffic was bloody—oh, excuse me,” he says, noticing me halfway through his phrase.
“No problem.” I give him half a smile. “With these three bad boys I’m used to it. What shall I bring you?”
“Whatever they ordered, but wait, I want to come get it at the counter.”
“That’s not necessary, I can do it—”
“Bullshit,” he interrupts me. “It’s full of people, you
don’t want to waste time on us, do you?”
Not knowing what else to say, I shrug my shoulders and go to the counter, followed by him. I go behind the bar, planning on pouring four pints for the guys. He sits on a barstool on the other side and looks around seeming as if he’s agitated.
“And so,” I start, hesitant, “you’re a musician too?”
He nods distractedly, covering his face with his beret which he apparently never takes off.
“In reality, I’m a singer.”
“Uhm,” I respond. Today I’m monosyllable. “And what did you do before that? I’ve never seen you around—”
He seems to be getting darker in the face. He clenches his fists and swallows hard. So I concentrate on the beer, without waiting for a reply, which comes anyway after a few minutes of silence.
“I was in London for a while.”
“Have you known my brother for very long?”
“Yes—that is, no. We’re old friends, but we lost touch.”
“I understand—here are your beers and thanks for offering to take them.”
He nods, taking the tray and walks away, disappearing through the crowd.