Everything That Follows

by Meg Little Reilly

  “I’m really sorry that you’re in this position,” Sean said.

  “I’m sorry for you too.”

  They sat at the table in the too-bright house and listened to their breath for ten seconds before Sean spoke again.

  “Do you want me to stay here tonight? You seem on edge. I can sleep on the couch.”

  “Yes, would you?”

  And so they moved from the table to the couch. They opened two beers and decided to find a movie on TV. It was a comedy with a bunch of big Hollywood names, not the sort of thing either of them would have normally chosen, but it produced a sense of artificial cheer in the room. They weren’t watching it anyhow. They were just looking at the screen, lost in their own thoughts.

  Twenty minutes in, Sean stretched his legs out across her thighs. It was a gesture not of sex, but of familiarity. Kat liked it.

  She saw the faded old tattoo of an ocean wave on his ankle and moved his pant leg up slightly. “Tell me again when you got that. You were eighteen?”

  “Eighteen, yeah.”

  “And why did you do it?”

  “What?” Sean looked from the TV to her.

  “Get a tattoo. Why’d you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I was an idiot.”

  “That’s a regret I’m glad not to have. A tattoo.”

  Sean’s forehead wrinkled. “Actually, no. I wasn’t an idiot. I did it because I knew I couldn’t take it back.”

  “That’s pretty much the argument against tattoos.”

  “Yeah, but it’s also a good reason. It’s like you’re holding your future self accountable. Because you can’t erase it, a tattoo is a way for your younger self to maintain a hold on your adult life. It’s like, ‘Hey, remember who you used to be.’ It’s kind of brilliant actually, that an eighteen-year-old would anticipate adulthood changing them like that. I’m not saying I’m brilliant... You know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Kat said. “But I would never want that reminder.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess that’s the big risk of a tattoo. It’s not the ink or the dumb picture you choose. It’s whether you want the reminder of your younger self at all.”

  Kat pulled his pant leg back down and Sean returned to watching the movie, which had apparently captured his genuine interest. She knew this was a difference between the two of them and she knew, deep inside, that he thought there was something sad about her quest to live forever in the present, free of any past. But he’d benefited from this arrangement.

  Because Kat left her story behind, they got to live completely in Sean’s story. They didn’t divide holidays among families or travel across the country for her high school reunions. She wasn’t trying to fold her traditions into his or push him to stretch the boundaries of his world at all. He liked it this way, though he’d never admit it. It didn’t seem fair that he should also judge her for the arrangement.

  Sean got off the couch and walked away. At first she thought maybe he was leaving or he was angry about something, but he was just headed to the bathroom.

  “Don’t pause it for me,” he said as the door closed.

  Everything was almost exactly as it had been before—their positions on the couch, their beer, the tattoo on his leg under the same work pants—but there were other things present with them now too. Guilt and blame and fear. And that was the sticking point with this exercise in relationship normalcy. Sean had just gotten up to pee, but Kat thought he might be leaving her. She might have that reaction forever. Because every day from here on out, she would be a person who watched a man die and did nothing, and Sean would be the man who knew. There would never again be a day without all that knowledge between them. So they could arrange all the furniture to look as it did before, but the air in the room would still be harder to breathe.

  Sean came back with a blanket. He turned off the lights, watching Kat as he did it to be sure the darkness wasn’t too much for her fragile psyche, and then he resumed his spot on the couch. He gave her knee a little squeeze and she let go of some of her anxiety. Maybe if they both tried really hard, she thought, they could get through this. Maybe they’d be even better. Relationships could recover. It could be done.

  Kat leaned back into the cushions and felt, for the first time in weeks, a heavy wave of true sleepiness wash over her. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the dreamless dark.

  * * *

  When she woke up hours later, Kat was alone on the couch. She heard a swoosh and then a click—the sound of her door opening and then closing again. Her apartment was dark and the TV was off. She had been sleeping so deeply that only the spring of her locking door could startle her back to consciousness, an adaptation of living alone.

  Sean’s stuff was gone. In the end, he couldn’t make it through the night. Maybe he’d changed his mind about wanting to comfort her. Maybe it hurt too much to be close to her. Or maybe he couldn’t live another day with this secret and he was on his way to the police.

  Kat picked up her phone and looked at the glowing screen. It was just after three in the morning. She would never fall back asleep now. If she woke up at two, she might get a few more hours of sleep, but when she woke up at three, it was all over. Predictable patterns had emerged to her insomnia.

  Goddamn Sean. There was clarity in hearing the door lock behind him. It devastated her, which meant that she needed to fight for him. Kat knew that something irreversible had occurred between them, but she didn’t want it to be over. Those final moments before she slept—and oh, that sweet peaceful sleep—were worth fighting for. She wanted more than anything else the chance to prove to him that they could start something new and different and better in the wake of all this horribleness. She could make him understand that honesty would only upend all of their lives. Self-preservation was justifiable, even moral. She could do that. And indeed, she had to. Hunter was right about that. They really had to change Sean’s mind.

  “Just don’t do anything,” Kat whispered as a sort of telepathic request to Sean, or any listening gods. She desperately needed Sean to do nothing.

  Sure, their relationship would be complicated in the future. They couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened. But maybe they could use this secret to rededicate themselves to each other. It was proof of commitment. Wasn’t there something romantic about that?

  Kat went to the sink and drank a glass of water. She removed her bra from under her shirt and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. As long as she was up, she may as well get back to her Kyle research.

  Kat opened her laptop and clicked on the little folder labeled KB.

  Chapter 14

  The bell on the entrance door of Island Glass jingled and Kat nearly jumped out of her seat. She’d been sitting there, in a chair behind the counter, all afternoon. The clock said it was just after four, which meant that she’d been sleeping for almost an hour. Customers were increasingly rare in those cold weather months.

  “Let me know if I can help you with anything,” Kat said to the woman who entered.

  The lady smiled and walked along the back wall of display items. She was probably Kat’s age—late twenties or early thirties—with a baby strapped to her chest in a designer carrier. A weekend vacationer with a family house on the Vineyard, by Kat’s estimation. She seemed like the type who came in for a few days of gift shopping and cocktails around a stone hearth. Normally Kat was grateful for these people. But normally, Kat had more than three hours of sleep propping her up. She wasn’t normally haunted by the face of a man she’d watched go overboard, or the paranoia that every loud noise was Vineyard police coming to arrest her. Nothing was normal and she wasn’t herself.

  “You make these?” the woman asked from across the room. She was reading a small placard on the wall that described their techniques.

  “Yes, me and the owner, Orla Murphy. I make most of it
in our studio.” Kat pointed to the door over her right shoulder that led to the garage.

  The woman raised her eyebrows. “Cool job.” She pulled a tiny knit cap off her baby’s head and rubbed the fuzzy dome as she spoke. “And this space! It’s amazing. Like floating over the ocean.”

  Kat glanced at the water. “It’s about to fall in, actually.”

  The woman stopped and looked at her. “What?”

  Kat wasn’t sure why she’d said that. The customer was obviously uncomfortable now. She only knew that she couldn’t watch this lady, with her shiny hair and her sleeping baby and her limitless holiday budget, swoon over the false romance of Kat’s precarious life.

  “The bluff is going to fall into the ocean eventually, and it’s going to take this building with it.”

  The woman forced a sympathetic expression as she put the hat back on her child’s head. “I’m so sorry. What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.” Kat had the feeling she was watching herself from above. “Nothing, probably. I’m considering prayer.”

  This was a relief to the woman, who didn’t recognize the irony in Kat’s voice, and certainly didn’t want to talk much about Kat’s tragic existence. She smiled. “It does more good than we know...prayer, I mean. I read a thing in the Times last year about these studies on collective prayer. People with terminal illnesses have been cured. It’s amazing, really.”

  Kat smiled. Fuck you and your collective prayer, she thought. She wished she hadn’t said anything about the cliffs.

  “The erosion is because of climate change,” the woman went on. “Fossil fuels and rising sea levels and everything...we brought this on ourselves, really.”

  This fucking woman. Kat didn’t know her, but she knew her type. And on this day, she was too overwhelmed by the weight of her problems to indulge this woman’s cheap sermon. Lady, Kat thought, we did not create these problems together. The idea that she shared the same level of blame for damages done to the overheated earth as this wealthy woman. The idea that together, with their comparable lifestyles, they were pushing Orla’s glass shop into the sea was fucking outrageous.

  “Anyway, I’ll take this,” the woman said, holding out a whale-shaped paperweight. A guilt purchase to absolve herself of the apparent emotions the episode had stirred in her.

  Kat rang her up and the woman left without another word.

  “What was that?” Orla said from the doorway of the garage. She’d apparently been quietly watching for long enough to get the gist of the awkward interaction.

  Kat turned red. “I, ah, I don’t know what that was, exactly.”

  “Why don’t you take the afternoon off, Kat. You can’t work like this.” Orla’s face was a mix of concern and exasperation. “Just relax for a few hours. You seem tired.”

  “Orla, I know that was inappropriate, but I’m really okay. I won’t do that again. Don’t send me home.”

  She sighed. “Okay, then how about a trip to Hyannis? We need to pick up the new shelving. You can take my car.”

  “I can do that.”

  “The shelves are huge, so you’ll need another hand,” she said. “See if Sean can come along.”

  Kat nodded, but she didn’t say more. More than a week had passed since Sean had slept over—or nearly slept over—and he’d been avoiding her ever since. Kat wasn’t going to call Sean about this.

  “I know things are complicated with you guys right now,” Orla went on. “But he cares about you. He’ll help you.”

  Kat smiled and hoped she was right. She still wasn’t calling Sean.

  Outside, Kat pulled the hood of her coat up over her head and breathed in the cold midday air. Everything was gray: the sky, the water, even the leftover snow seemed to blend into the gray of the concrete beneath it. Kat didn’t mind this sort of weather. It seemed to freeze everything in place, a crisp pause on reality. It reminded her of walking home from the bus stop on those dark winter afternoons in Buffalo. The silence between the chaos of her school and the chaos of her home was a relief. It had been cold as hell, but she had good memories of those walks.

  Kat wanted to see Erika, her oldest friend on the island. Erika was her therapeutic walk from the bus stop to her house, from one job to the next, one obstacle to another. She was the only person Kat could be with on that day. It had been weeks since they’d had a real conversation, something more than a quick call or text. Erika knew something was wrong and it killed Kat not to open up to her. She didn’t want to lie anymore.

  Kat dialed with chilling fingers and it rang three times.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi! Where’ve you been?” Erika yelled through a bad connection.

  “Sorry, I’ve been busy. Do you want to take a little day trip to Hyannis with me?”

  The kitchen sounds of pots clanking, running water and ambient music thronged behind her. “Yeah, when?”

  “Now! I’ll come get you.”

  “I can’t come now, bitch. I’m at work. Just started a six-hour shift at the bar.”

  Right, of course. That would make sense. Kat wasn’t thinking so straight. “Uh, sorry. I don’t know why I forgot that. Maybe later, then?”

  “Definitely. Come by for a drink at the end of my shift.”

  “Great, okay.”

  “Hey,” Erika yelled. “I mean it. I miss you. I don’t know if you’re mad at me or what, but let’s just talk about it, okay?”

  “I’m not mad at you. I swear to God. I miss you too.”

  “Okay, good. Then come by the bar later.”

  “I will.”

  And then she was gone. It was probably a good thing Erika couldn’t come along. Kat wasn’t thinking straight. She’d be tempted to tell Erika everything, and that would be a very bad idea. She couldn’t do that, not ever. Thank God Erika couldn’t come to Hyannis.

  Kat began walking. The problem was that, now that she’d given herself permission to see Erika again, she wanted to see only her. Erika’s presence was—aside from Sean—the most calming, natural and lasting thing that Kat knew on the island.

  They met in her first job, when Kat came on as a cocktail waitress at the bar Erika tended. It was a dumpy place in Oak Bluffs that started handing out Jell-O shots at ten. By midnight, some party girl was always getting pulled off the bar or a venture capitalist jerk had started shit with a moody local. The other cocktail waitresses were young and flirtatious. They fit in better than Kat. The clientele came for the vacationland vibe more than the service, and the cocktail girls had plenty of vibe to go around. Kat made plans to get a different job almost as soon as she began, but she’d kept Erika close ever since.

  Their similarities weren’t immediately apparent to an outside observer. Erika was ten years older, from inland California, and thoroughly decorated with black tattoo ink. But they observed the world through a similar lens of past hardships and a belief in the supremacy of self-reliance. They shared flashes of their childhoods in neat little anecdotes that had been sanitized of their uglier truths. Humor was key. Erika and Kat could drink coffee together in silence or spend hours talking over bottles of wine. They expected only loyalty from one another.

  Kat kept Erika laughing with her observations on the inanity of elite tourism, but it was Erika’s stories that occupied them most of the time. Erika had countless, practiced bits on the adventures of her younger self. There was the time she carried all her boyfriend’s clothes into the middle of the street and lit them on fire. The time she’d been hired to entertain a boat of Saudi billionaires. The time she filled her boss’s car with garbage. And the time she helped another boyfriend hide from the police in the ladies’ room of the Seastreak ferry. They all carried an element of danger, which was also what made them so good. Erika had survived those years and wasn’t interested in elaborating on the specific traumas that made her unstable in the first place. And Kat wasn�
�t going to ask about them. That was their arrangement: friendship without explanation or judgment.

  If anyone could understand what Kat was going through—and what she’d done to Kyle—it would be Erika. But Kat loved Erika too much to lay that on her. Knowing about Kyle was a liability and too many people already knew. It would eat her up to stay quiet, but she could never tell Erika.

  Kat scrolled through her phone for Hunter’s number. She didn’t really want to see him, but she did need help in Hyannis and she was nervous about driving alone with her sleepy brain.

  “Hey,” she said when he picked up.

  “Hey. Long time no talk. Did you neutralize all the threats?”

  “Jesus, Hunter. Don’t say things like that.”

  “Sorry, it was a joke...kind of. Did you get back together with Sean?”

  “No, that’s not why I’m calling. Do you want to go to Hyannis with me?”

  “Oh, so you’re leaving the house now?”

  This was his new persona: coiled for a fight. All his joviality had hardened into sarcasm and acrimony in the previous few weeks. It was a bit of a relief to Kat, actually, just to be around someone who didn’t expect her to behave properly. They bonded over their bitterness.

  “Even vampires need supplies. So are you coming?”

  “I’ll wait outside for you.”

  * * *

  It took fifteen minutes for Kat to walk to Orla’s car in the town lot, rummage through the glove box for a hairbrush and drive back to Hunter’s place. She found an old box of Altoids in the pocket of the door and chewed two while she waited for him. She hadn’t been out much or seen many people in a while, and she was suddenly self-conscious about her presentation.

  Hunter swung the door of Orla’s Outback open quickly and flashed a big smile when she pulled up.

  “Hi.”