The Space Between Us

by Jessica Martinez

  “Screw it,” he said. “That’s a lie. I was just hoping you’d change your mind.”

  How could I have changed my mind? I’d never stopped wanting him in the first place. I had to say something, but everything was too needy, or too cheesy.

  “Ezra,” I started, then stopped. I couldn’t do it.

  But he didn’t make me. I heard the sleeping bag rustle, the floor creak, and then the fall of bare feet on the carpet, coming toward me. I didn’t have time to feel anything but elation. Cold air rushed in as he lifted the blanket, and then his warm body was alongside me.

  I shifted onto my side to make room, letting his hand rest on my hip and his legs lace with mine. I closed my eyes. This felt perfect, facing each other, his breath on my neck. Like heaven.

  His fingers found my cheek in the dark and traced the line of my jaw. Seconds felt like hours. He had to feel my pulse racing, but he didn’t say a word.

  “You’re hard to read,” he whispered finally.

  “Am I?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You aren’t exactly an open book eith—”

  His lips stopped mine, the kiss slow and gentle, his warm hands suddenly around my waist pulling me closer. It felt good enough that when he pulled away, something inside me collapsed. I could get addicted to that feeling.

  “We should sleep,” he said.

  “Probably.”

  “I’d hate to get in trouble with a pastor’s daughter.”

  “Trust me, it’s my grandma you don’t want to mess with.”

  He laughed. “Should I go back to the floor?”

  “No.” I put my cheek on his chest and listened to his heart pound, breathing in his scent. It smelled like his ski jacket. Pine needles and smoke. The mountains.

  • • •

  We left early, before anyone else was up.

  Neither of us said anything about waking up tangled around each other. We didn’t need to. He reached out and brushed my hair out of my face as we walked out to the car. I let him see me smile about it.

  “Nobody’s on the road,” I commented as we pulled out of the neighborhood.

  “Typical Sunday morning.”

  Typical Sunday morning. I looked at the clock and added two hours. “My dad’s at the pulpit right now.”

  “Do you go to a church in Banff?”

  I shook my head no.

  “There’s a Methodist church just down the street, I think. You’re Methodist, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen it, and I’ve been meaning to go, but . . . ” I shrugged, trying to decide whether to change the subject or just say it. “My dad asks every time we talk on the phone. He wants to know if I’ve called the pastor he knows in Canmore, or attended a service here in Banff. Anyway, that’s why I can’t go.”

  “Because he asks?”

  “Because it’s the only thing he asks.”

  We drove for a little while in silence, then Ezra said, “That’s kind of sad.”

  “Why?”

  “Last time we talked about it you told me how much you loved church before everything with your sister happened. Losing that—it’s sad.”

  “I guess. I’m just too frustrated with him.”

  He didn’t ask why, which was good. I couldn’t explain. I was mad because I wasn’t important enough for my father to really know, not as important as Charly, or his congregants, or his faith. I was mad because he was so unreachably idealistic that his own daughter couldn’t tell him that she’d been raped.

  “I’ll go with you sometime if you want.”

  Was he serious? “That night in the kitchen, you told me organized religion is a joke.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “I think I said it wasn’t for me, but it’s obviously important to you.”

  “It was. But it’s not that easy, separating him from church.”

  He shrugged. “Seems like geography’s already done that for you, though.”

  That was only partially true. Obviously, Dad wouldn’t be at the Banff First Methodist Church next Sunday, but I wasn’t so sure I could sit there and feel what I used to feel—good and happy and peaceful—without him at the pulpit.

  “Sorry,” he said, reaching over and taking my hand. “I’m not trying to upset you.”

  “No, I know.” His hand felt warm and a current went up my arm. The feel of his lips on mine flooded my memory. Ezra would go with me if I wanted him to. That meant something.

  The ride home was smooth, all evidence of the lumber spill gone, the rest of the world still sleeping under the Sunday-morning frost.

  • • •

  “Do you want to come up and grab some breakfast?” I asked.

  He hesitated, his fingers holding the key in the ignition.

  “Actually, that would be great.” He turned the car off and slid the key out.

  He followed me up and leaned against the doorframe while I fiddled with my key.

  “I’m guessing sloth-girl is still asleep,” I said softly and pushed the door open.

  I could smell the dirt immediately. No, not dirt. Herbal tea. Bree sat at the island with her fingers wrapped around a mug, staring into a cup of sand-colored water.

  She looked up, eyes even rounder than usual. “Amelia.” Everything about her voice was wrong. Nervous, staged, somber—like my name was the first line in a play, and she’d been sitting here rehearsing for hours.

  “I thought you were staying in Jasper till tonight,” I said.

  “Hey, Bree,” Ezra called from behind me. I moved aside so he could come in and shut the door.

  “Ezra.”

  Why did she sound so irked? She couldn’t possibly be getting parental on me now. I was almost eighteen and she liked Ezra. But the way she was staring at him now said he wasn’t supposed to be here. Whatever she’d been planning was for me alone.

  “Sorry I stole Amelia,” Ezra said. “We got stuck in Calgary last night. There was a semi—”

  “The lumber spill,” she interrupted. “I know.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked, hanging our jackets in the front closet, suddenly impatient with the mysterious act.

  “I need to talk to you about Charly.” She glanced from me to Ezra, then back to me, and my stomach dropped down, down, down. Something was wrong.

  “Oh, I was just leaving,” Ezra said.

  I reached out and grabbed his arm, feeling suddenly like the world was spinning. “Don’t go,” I said, begging him with my eyes.

  He nodded, but I didn’t let go of his arm.

  “Isn’t she here?” I looked up at the loft. “She was here when I left.”

  Bree bit her lip.

  No. Charly had gone into labor. I should never have left her. But she wasn’t far enough along, so was the baby dead? It had to be. Not it. She. And Charly—women died having babies with nobody to help them. Where was she? I’d left her here alone, nobody to drive her to the hospital, nobody to call for help. I didn’t even know if 911 was the same in Canada, which meant she definitely didn’t know. Why hadn’t I bothered to find that out?

  “She’s not here,” Bree said.

  “The hospital?” My voice was strangely calm, considering my screaming thoughts.

  “No. She went home.”

  “They discharged her? So she’s asleep?” My eyes went up to the loft again. The light was out.

  “No, she didn’t go to the hospital. She’s fine. The baby’s fine. She went home.”

  Home.

  Bree sighed, and I noticed for the first time the mascara smudges under both eyes. Her eyelashes were clumped together like crooked spider legs. “Florida.”

  Florida. Charly went home.

  Without me.

  Bree’s voice floated on, and I felt Ezra’s warm hand on my back between my shoulder blades, but the rest of the room seemed to melt, the colors all bleeding into each other.

  She’d gone home without me.

  “She called me from the airport and told me she’d decided to tell your
dad and grandma everything.”

  But she couldn’t do it with me there. She had to go alone.

  “She said to tell you don’t be mad,” Bree was saying. I pulled myself toward the sound of her voice.

  “Mad.”

  Was I? It hadn’t even occurred to me. Mad didn’t hurt this bad. Mad didn’t feel like my lungs were being squeezed. I’d never been so mad I couldn’t breathe. Tears filled my eyes and I didn’t bother blinking them away or wiping them.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with you,” Ezra whispered in my ear.

  But it did. Charly was like an appendage, how could it have nothing to do with me? I took a careful breath. Ezra shifted beside me and I realized I was still gripping his arm. But I couldn’t let go.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Okay?” I asked shakily, and then again in a firmer tone, “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “Don’t be mad,” Bree repeated.

  “I’m not mad,” I said. I didn’t have the energy for mad anymore.

  Bree slipped off her stool and came toward me, then pulled me into a hug.

  “When is she coming back?” I asked.

  “What?” Bree asked.

  I was about to ask again, but stopped. She’d heard me.

  Bree bit her lip, and suddenly I knew Charly wasn’t coming back.

  I let go of Ezra and sank into the sofa. Deliverance. I was getting exactly what I’d spent my whole life wishing for. The choking duty of making sure Charly didn’t kill herself or screw up her life had been lifted, and by her of all people. She didn’t need me anymore. The shock of it felt like an explosion—all blinding light and shrapnel and confusion. We’d been shackled to each other since birth, and she’d been the one to finally turn and snap the chain?

  Even stranger, I wasn’t floating to the surface now. I was sinking—sinking and realizing that all this time I’d had it backward. She wasn’t the anchor. I was.

  Chapter 21

  The airport was busy. All around us people flowed, but we stood frozen in front of the arrival/departure screen. Ezra was behind me, his hands in my belt loops, chin resting on my shoulder. No jackets. It was a good ten degrees above freezing—good weather for May, according to Ezra—so the natives were wearing halter tops and drinking frappuccinos. I’d opted for short sleeves myself.

  “Nervous?” Ezra asked.

  “No. Are you?”

  “No.”

  “You should be,” I said.

  “Then yes.”

  I turned my head and looked up at him. He was staring earnestly at the screen with that look of concentration I loved. “She’s kind of a force to reckon with,” I said.

  “I handle you all right, don’t I?”

  “Barely.”

  He pointed to the screen, the concentration holding his face still. If he’d let me, I would sit and watch him read his math textbooks for hours, but I was a focus killer, or so he claimed. He was months from the start of fall classes, but Professor Matthis already had him reading ahead. Or catching up. I wasn’t sure.

  “It’s just arrived,” he said. “It’ll take her at least twenty minutes to get her luggage and get through customs.”

  “Let’s go wait by the gate,” I said, pulling him by the hand. “I don’t want her to have to wonder if we’ve forgotten her, like you did to us when we flew in.”

  He smirked. “That’s the handling I’m talking about.”

  “Trust me. My grandma’s way harder to win over than I am.”

  A crowd had gathered around the glass doors where international arrivals came through, so we waited side by side at the edge, in front of the metal cowboy statue.

  “I can’t believe how much has happened since the last time I was here,” I said, more to myself than Ezra. “I remember staring at this statue thinking two things: One, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, and two, my life was over.”

  “And now?”

  I shook my head. “It’s just the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The backs of Ezra’s fingers grazed the backs of mine.

  “And just so we’re clear,” I added, “all touching must cease and desist the minute she walks through those doors.”

  He laughed. “I thought you said you weren’t scared of her.”

  “I said I wasn’t nervous, and I’m not nervous because I know not to do anything stupid, like make out, for example, in front of my grandma.”

  “My fingers touching your fingers is making out?”

  “Trust me. This woman kills chickens with her bare hands.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No, we aren’t that rural. But she totally could if she had to.”

  “Okay. No fingers accidentally touching until she leaves.”

  “Good.”

  “When does she leave again?” He’d taken my hand now and was drawing me into him.

  I pulled back but let him keep holding it. “One week. Maybe we should go over appropriate topics of conversation.”

  “Right, because otherwise I might bring up my career as a porn star or those years I spent in juvie.”

  “I’m serious,” I said and tugged my hand away from his. “Don’t mention Mount Royal University.”

  The smile faded. “You haven’t told her yet?”

  “I will. I just thought it would be easier in person.” That was not even close to being true. Insubordination was not something Grandma appreciated, over the phone, by email, in my thoughts, or to her face. Telling her I’d chosen a Canadian school wasn’t going to be received well.

  “Wait, so she still thinks you’re coming back after graduation?”

  “Probably.”

  He sighed and folded his arms. “Okay, so I don’t mention Mount Royal. What else?”

  I thought for a second. “That’s it, actually. Unless you would consider hiding your tattoo?”

  He looked down at his bare arm, then back at me in disbelief.

  “Just kidding?”

  He took a box of Milk Duds out of his pocket, poured himself a few and handed it to me. I took some too. “And don’t feel bad if she lectures you about your candy habit. In fact, maybe you should try to cut down for just this week.”

  “I can try.”

  “And don’t feel bad if she lectures you about anything, or starts ranting about socialist healthcare. She can’t help it.”

  “I’ve got thick skin. And I’m guessing I’m not supposed to tell her what I think about your dad canceling his flight last week.”

  “Definitely don’t do that.” I sucked on my Milk Dud. I was over it. “Besides, it’s better that he stays with Charly now, right?”

  Ezra didn’t answer, but his silence was full of judgment. I knew him well enough to hear the unsaid, and I couldn’t blame him for being annoyed at Dad. For weeks he’d listened to me plan all the places I was going to take them and things they had to see. And then he’d been there to see me suck back tears when Bree had delivered the news that Dad wasn’t coming.

  “No, it really is better,” I said. “I was upset, but the fact that he’s staying with Charly means something, you know? For her. I know it does.”

  His eyes rested on my face, waiting for me to admit I was trying too hard.

  “She needs him right now,” I said. Whatever disappointment I felt, that at least was true.

  According to Savannah’s last email, Charly had become Wonder Woman on a suicide mission. She was walking around Tremonton like she’d never left, massive belly and all. Everyone knew that she’d marched into the police station with Dad and Grandma in tow and filed a sexual assault report. She did it, and I was so proud of her it hurt. She did it like there was a chance in hell of charges actually being made, which we all knew there wasn’t.

  Without actually saying it, Savannah’s email hinted around what I’d known: People didn’t believe her. Maybe not everyone, but enough of them. They were talking, shaking their heads, raising their eyebrows. I could practically hear them—cryin
g rape is awfully convenient, don’t you think? What pregnant pastor’s daughter wouldn’t?

  Also according to Savannah, Charly was even sitting in our pew every Sunday beside Grandma, pretending she actually enjoyed listening to Dad preach. I almost wished I could see it.

  “How’s Charly doing?” Ezra asked, bringing me out of my thoughts.

  “Good.” I thought about our last phone conversation. She’d been happy, full of complaints about Grandma’s bridge party cheese tray stinking up the house, and willing to describe the phenomenal hotness of Matt Kilner’s cousin who was staying with the Kilners for the semester. She’d been herself. “She misses things—Canadian chocolate and Bree and that repulsive fries-cheese-gravy concoction she always got at A&W.”

  “Poutine.”

  “Yeah, poutine.”

  “And you,” Ezra added. “She misses you.”

  “You read her mind?”

  “I just know.”

  I knew it too.

  The glass doors slid open and the first couple of bedraggled passengers emerged.

  “One more of these,” Ezra said, taking one last Milk Dud and pocketing the half-empty box, “and one more of these.” He leaned down and kissed the side of my neck.

  I closed my eyes. The bliss of being wanted trickled through me, and inexplicably, amidst all things foreign, I made sense.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My favorite delinquents: Dave Low, thank you for being stupid enough to hit flaming golf balls, and, Jen Low, thank you for being insane enough to take a bite out of a formaldehyde-soaked frog. Your stories made Charly perfectly crazy. I can’t believe you people have never served jail time. I hope your own Charlotte is just as fun, but more law-abiding.

  My favorite professionals: Anica Rissi, you are a brilliant editor, and you’re turning me into a spoiled writer. Mandy Hubbard, there’s nobody else I’d rather have in my corner. Thanks for the hand-holding, cheerleading, and wise words. I sometimes feel like I stumbled onto the publishing gold mine with you two. I’m lucky to call you both friends.

  Family shout-outs:

  Josh, thank you for your ski knowledge. Don’t kill yourself doing backflips off cliffs. Amanda, thanks for listening to me hash out the plot while we ran together. I love you, even if you have always made me look like the mean sister. And of course, Mom and Dad, thanks for loving me more than your other kids. Come on, you know you do. Okay, maybe just Dad.