Between Everything and Us

by Rebecca Paula

  I spin and sink my back against the counter, clutching my middle. That’s the most I’ve said about it since it’s happened. At least out loud. Beau still won’t talk about it.

  Cole takes the knife from my hand and pulls me in for a hug. I don’t fight it, not even when that ugly voice starts up in my head.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know this is awkward. I shouldn’t be telling you this.” My words are muffled against his shoulder. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you needed. I’m sorry I couldn’t make sure. And I can’t… I hate that I can’t be what he needs either.”

  He draws back, a frown pulling at his mouth. “Those aren’t things you should be sorry about, Matisse. Especially not about us. I think we’re better at being friends, don’t you?”

  I nod, bowing my head. I can’t take the way his eyes keep searching mine, as though I have lost some piece of myself. I did. I left my heart back with Beau, even if he doesn’t want it anymore. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m so lost.” I bury my head in my hands. I don’t want to go home to Maine, but I don’t want to stay here at Sutton. I want to be able to make my own decisions and figure out the consequences. I’m tired of people trying to save me.

  To live means to fail. And I’ve failed spectacularly this year. My plans have crumbled, and I’m left with nothing except a broken heart.

  Sure, it’d be easier with Cole. Dating someone with a chronic illness is never going to easy, and I’m pretty sure it’s never going to be anything less than scary. And now with the threat of cancer, it’s gotten to be too much for a new relationship. For Beau, at least. And since I’m here, maybe for me, too.

  I try to think what it’s like for him, what he’s going through, but I can’t help the selfish thoughts either. What about me? Why is it fair that he gets to push me away when I want to be there for him? And why the hell did I give in so easily?

  I have dinner with Cole. I even manage to laugh when he tells me what his bandmates are trying to get him to do about the summer vacation he prepaid for before his ex ditched him. Apparently they decided to list the vacation online and make it an auction to try to hook Cole up with a new girl.

  And when I’m full and finally warm—even relaxed after watching a movie—Cole puts me in a cab home.

  ***

  It was a million degrees at the coffee shop this morning, and now it feels as if it’s below zero at the floral shop. It probably has something to do with how I haven’t slept in two days, how I caved and did fill my Adderall prescription, how it feels as though my world is spinning on without out me and I’m left whirling out of control on my own.

  Everything is rushing by and I’m trying to catch up, I am, but my thoughts are only tangling up. I can’t straighten them out. I’m sinking. I’m losing the brief upper hand I had on this year.

  “We booked another wedding earlier,” Aria says, “and I keep getting requests for you to work on wedding stationary.”

  I clamp my eyes shut to stop them burning for a moment and nod, my throat too dry to answer. The soft stem of the flame colored peony in my hand snaps in a crisp break.

  “You okay, Matisse?”

  I nod, spinning around to lie to her face. Of course I’m fine.

  I’m not even close.

  Aria leans back again the floral workbench, pieces of someone else’s pretty future scattered across the surface. “Have you heard back about your internship yet?”

  I received an email last week telling me they had to postpone the decision until today.

  “No.” I want to say more, I want to tell her that I’m terrified of hearing back, but I just toss the broken stem in the trash instead. The head of the peony wobbles over the work surface, trying to find its center.

  “Well I did,” Aria says. She walks over and wraps her arms around me in a hug, her patchouli perfume filling up my head until I think I might sneeze. “You look like you might pass out.”

  I shrug, taking a cue from my boyfriend, the one who’s decided to push me out of his life apparently. We haven’t talked since he’s gotten back from the hospital. It’s hard when the conversation is one-sided.

  I don’t know if I’m mad or if I want to cry, not until Aria grips my shoulders and pushes me away, her eyes leveling me with a serious look. Then I know I want to cry.

  “I gave them a glowing recommendation. Told him he’d be an idiot if he didn’t take you on, bragged about all the freelance work you’ve done for the shop’s brides.” She knocks her hand on my chin, shaking her head at me. “You’re going to do great things, Matisse. You already have, and you have so much more ahead of you.”

  I bite down on my lip until the bitter taste of blood seeps into my mouth. Everyone is telling me I have so much potential, that I have this great talent, that I’m going to be okay in the world. What the hell do they know? I get that they’re being nice, but I’m tired of hearing the same thing over and over while still being so goddamn stuck.

  “I dropped out of school,” I confess. I’m not sure why I tell her, only that I had to tell someone. That secret had been burning at the back of my throat for over a week now, aching to be uttered. “Well, not officially until the end of the semester, but I’m not going back to Sutton.”

  Aria’s features turn grim, disapproving maybe. “Why would you do that?”

  I wiggle out of her grip, realizing that perhaps that was TMI for my relatively new employer. Especially when I just discovered she’s my relatively new judgmental employer.

  “I think you just need a break. You’re exhausted. You work too much, always busy.” She sets down her coffee and walks toward the door to the front of the shop. “That would be a stupid move, Matisse. Don’t be stupid.”

  I rip the wrapping away from the bunch of magenta foxgloves. “I’ll think about it.” But that’s a lie, too. I’ve already made up my mind.

  She’s gone when I glance up again. My shoulders relax before another shiver sweeps over my body. I wipe at my face with the back of my hands, struggling to keep my mind, the hours, my life, in order.

  I’m coming apart.

  The decision to leave school wasn’t ceremonious. It was more that I stopped mid-stroke on a painting the other night when I realized I was chasing after something I never wanted. I don’t need a college degree to be successful. I’ve been forced to believe that, but I don’t accept that as a truth anymore. Maybe I’ll come back, but I wanted that decision to be on my time. I wanted the next big life decision to be mine solely. Especially when everything else seemed to be taken away from me and Beau. So much of life is being at the whim of some larger unknown. After twenty-one years, I wanted to reclaim a small piece of myself, exhausted from saying ‘yes’ all of my life.

  I’m glancing over the flower order sheet to start another arrangement when my phone vibrates over the workbench, knocking against the shiny pair of floral shears. The number across the screen stops my heart, fills me up with equal parts dread and excitement. I drag in a deep breath and grab the phone, my hand trembling as I lift it up to my ear, and answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Matisse Evans?” The voice is unmistakably that of Aiden McKenna. It’s hard to ever forget his smugness after he criticizes your new suit and makes you realize how much of a failure you are compared to a giant stack of inanimate objects.

  But still…he wouldn’t call unless…

  “Yes,” I squeak out. “This is she.”

  He laughs at me quietly over the other end. “Well I’m glad you’re she. I’m calling to offer you the internship.”

  “Oh.”

  A stab of disappointment fills me at his words, at my lackluster response. I’ve given so much of myself over to getting this internship. I thought I would feel better, that this moment would be more exciting.

  “You’re accepting, right? I need to know because if you say yes, I’ll want you to start the orientation immediately. I know we never really talked about the timeline, but the other intern quit last week
…”

  He carries on, the words pouring out of my phone speaker, draining into my ear, sinking into my head. And all the while my heart is a steady beat, not racing, no anxiety threatening to snake its way to ruin this moment. Yet, it feels so bittersweet.

  I collapse against the back of the workbench, crossing my feet while I stare at the buckets of flowers waiting to be made into something beautiful.

  “Matisse?”

  “I understood that this would begin next fall. I need time to think about it. The night maybe…” My voice trails off, my confidence slipping when his aggravated sigh punctures the space where my sentence should have ended.

  “This should be an easy answer.”

  I’m learning nothing is ever easy.

  “I don’t have a car yet. Classes are ending soon, so I’ll have finals. I need to find a place…”

  “Those are excuses, Matisse. Shitty ones.”

  His anger needles me, forcing me back into a proverbial corner. I straighten, stamping my feet over the rubber mats on the concrete floor.

  “Those aren’t excuses, those are valid reasons why I can’t start immediately. And I can’t…,” I pause, the ghost of Beau’s still body the other night burning beneath my fingertips. “I can give you two answers, Mr. McKenna.”

  “Aiden,” he interrupts.

  I ignore him, letting out a steadying exhale instead. If I’m going to fail, might as well go all in. “You can have two answers, though if you wait and give me the night to figure things out…”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to wait. I don’t need to wait. You’re forgetting that I have plenty of more people who do want to work with me.”

  Doubtful. For a grown man, he sure could be a bitch. “I’m not forgetting anything. If you can’t give me time to decide for myself, then the answer is no. It’s no for a lot of reasons.”

  He hangs up, never asking why, never saying goodbye or telling me what it was that made me stand out. And oddly, instead of being pissed or hurt, I feel numb.

  I just gave up the last thing I had wanted this year. The other, I was fairly sure, had already been lost to that silence in his room after he was released from the hospital.

  ***

  A week after that shitty phone call and nothing’s changed.

  Beau’s kept his bedroom door closed the past three days. It opens now and again when he shuffles to the bathroom or the kitchen. He hasn’t stopped by to see me. We don’t have a date yet for his surgery and already he’s a ghost.

  If I have to hear his bedroom door shut one more time, I might finally snap. The pressure has been mounting against my chest, building with each minute he keeps me out of his life.

  I let him think I believed he was asleep when he got home from the hospital that night. I wish he had been. It hurts more knowing that he was only pretending. It hurts knowing that the first time I truly said I loved him, I was met with silence and the back of his head.

  And not a short silence or an awkward one. Those are manageable. Those three words of mine were met with the unending kind of silence. The kind that swallows up everything into nothingness. Those feelings I shared simply disappeared, slipping into that impossible distance between us.

  I toss my book across the room, not satisfied with the thud it makes. My entire life has felt like one long claustrophobic day as I try to outrun myself. Lately, I’m not sure I can. Lately, I feel like I want to trash my room, pack a bag, and leave.

  Lately, I have no idea what I want now that I’ve given up the internship, but I’m starting to realize what I need. And that’s to make my own decisions, to figure out what it is that I want for a change.

  It’s why I’ve been dodging phone calls from my parents. I’ve even called in sick to work a few times.

  I don’t know what’s happening. This isn’t me.

  I think this is why I’ve let Beau sulk as long as I have. I don’t want to see the look in his eyes when I tell him about my decision. He’s already so preoccupied. I can’t look him in the face and tell him I’m not sure what I’m doing next year. I might stay in Portland. I might move back to Maine. After drinking a bottle or two of wine with Aubrey on the floor of the laundry room in the dorm two nights ago, I’ve been flirting with the idea of traveling for a while. I can freelance on the side. It would be nice to have the world in front of me and a ton of unknown adventures.

  My parents will hate it, but I don’t really care what they think anymore. I can’t stand wanting out of my own body, feeling as though I’m trapped by skin and bones, by fleeting things that ground me to life every day. I’m exhausted from living other people’s dreams.

  This year has taught me that if I work at something, I can accomplish what I want, and what I thought I wanted, I don’t want at all. It’s funny how that works. Well, not funny. I’m pretty fucking miserable.

  I get up and start chucking clothes from the closet over my shoulder, knocking over my easel. I don’t stop until the rack is emptied, and even then I’m not satisfied. A few of my orchids have fallen off the ledge by my desk, spilling dirt over my floor. I leave them there and jump to my bed, ripping photos off my wall, then the tapestry my parents were sure was a fire hazard.

  It never did start a fire, though I’d argue the rage that’s coursing through me now could be considered the same. I won’t be happy until this room burns, until the memories ebb away. I glance down at my mattress and die a little bit inside, feeling my heart wither in my chest.

  Beau was in this bed with me. He kissed me until I couldn’t remember my name in this bed. He touched me and reassured me, and we broke each other with a terrible goodbye and then made up again in this bed. We were a tangle of tangible things in this bed—of sweat and bones, of flesh and tongues. We were the simplest forms of each other here, and I’m stuck sleeping on this mattress while he stays behind his door. While he shuts me out.

  I jump down and claw at the sheets until I’ve stripped them off. I don’t want to sleep in these sheets that smell like him. I don’t want this room or the black dress from our first night as a couple. I yank open my door, ready to march to his room and tell him exactly how much I don’t want him in my life when I’m met with Beau.

  Beau.

  His name hits me like a concrete wall, before I barrel forward into his chest. His hands brace my shoulder.

  We look at each other, quiet. So, so quiet. It eats us up, swallows us down until my mind is a blank space, except for all the memories of us. We can’t speak words to fix us anymore because I’m not sure we can be fixed. Even if something good happens in this world, it seems there’s a way to wreck it.

  I back out of his grip, ignoring his burning handprints over my shoulders. I don’t fall back, not like he wants me to, not like he’s begging me to do with those dark eyes of his. Those lovely, lovely eyes that I so wholly love.

  I step forward, crowding him until he falls back one step, then another, until we’re a few feet from my doorway. Like I wanted.

  I meet his challenging stare with my own, not hesitating. At least not outwardly. Inside I imagine this is what it feels like to die. It must be because it hurts so fucking much that my chest cracks with each breath I suck in. I’m not sure the air ever reaches my lungs.

  I step back into my room, study him, praying he’ll say something. Anything.

  Beau stays quiet, though, because that’s what he’s best at, I guess. I grip one hand over my middle, then the door firmly in the other, and slam it closed in his face.

  Beau

  I deserve the door shut in my face. I deserve the way she rips the heart out of my chest by not saying a word, for keeping her smile from me, for the way she so obviously hates me.

  I’m sorry, I want to say. God, I want the words to pass over my lips more than anything, except I’m stuck, still hung up on the sight of her trashed room, the fury lighting up her eyes, the way she sucked in a breath when I touched her.

  I shouldn’t have touched her.

&nbs
p; I slam my fist against the wall, pissed that we’re here already. We had a few months and that was all. A few months of sleeping together, of opening up to one another, of learning what she likes and what she doesn’t. And that won’t matter anymore.

  I thought I was ready for it not to matter anymore, but now…

  I open her door, stumbling in on unsteady feet. Everything is blurred, the room moving around as though I’m stranded out on rough seas. It’s a little bit of everything, everything that’s slowly killing me. Still, I search until my eyes land on her—my horizon.

  “Get out,” she says. I hate that those six letters are each disconnected from the preceding one.

  I shut her out the other night, and it wasn’t easy. But she’s pushing me away now and it’s three times worse.

  “Hear me out.” I hold out my hands. It’d be a lie to say I’m not disappointed that she doesn’t find her way into my arms. I get distracted again, not remembering what it is I wanted her to listen to. It’s hard to focus when I see how much she trashed her room.

  I’ve been an idiot to ever believe I could control her storm. She’s unstoppable, and I’ve been forced to stay behind. I’m only going to drag you down with me, I want to say. I’m sorry. I need her to hear these words, but I’m too scared.

  I pull her in my arms and kiss her so hard. I’ve never taken her like this—so possessive, so final. If I have to let her go, then I want her to remember me. I want to be that guy she never erases from her brain and her heart. The one she’ll dream about and wake up, having to relive the pain of our goodbye for the rest of the day. My lips are selfish. My heart is selfish. I’m selfish for not letting her go.

  This is growing up, I want to yell. Instead I nip her lips, maybe a bit too hard. She doesn’t flinch back—she’s just as rough. Her fingertips dig into my shoulders until my muscles ache and I think she’ll leave a bruise. I can’t taste her, and I want so desperately to taste her. Instead I’m floating in the sensation of her tongue against mine and the metallic taste of my medicine.