The Last Time We Were Us

by Leah Konen

  “Smart girl.” He kisses me quick, and I feel so light I could float. “You’re almost as bad as me.”

  He tells me his dad’s gone again, and we walk up to the apartment, go into his room, sit on the bed and talk. I don’t tell him what happened with Innis—that chapter is finally over, and I don’t want Jason to have to think about him at all—but I do tell him about MacKenzie, how she’s forgiven me, how if she can, anyone can. I tell him about what I thought about on the drive over, about the two of us in a big city, where no one knows our past, where no one can judge us.

  He just leans in and kisses me so soft.

  THE SEX LASTS longer this time—I’m starting to see why people rave about this. There is a sense of living, this feeling that I’ve never had before. This possibility, tucked away deep within me, just waiting to be unlocked.

  When we’re done, I take his face in my hands, and I don’t even hesitate, because there’s nothing holding me back.

  “I love you,” I say.

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “I love you, too.”

  I PULL ON my underwear and one of his T-shirts and sneak into the kitchen, feeling scandalous, even though I know Mr. Sullivan isn’t home. I pour myself a glass of water and drink it down in a few gulps, pour another.

  I head back to Jason’s room, and he’s got his hands behind his head, the sheets up to his hips, and he’s leaning back and smiling at me like he’s the king of the world.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  He motions me back to bed, but before I get in, I see the blink of my phone. Two new texts.

  They’re both from MacKenzie.

  One just after midnight.

  you okay? innis left here an hour ago.

  And another around twelve thirty.

  i’m sure it’s no big deal, he just seemed really mad

  I look at the clock on my phone. It’s already one thirty.

  “Who’s that?” Jason asks.

  “Kenzie.”

  He smiles. “I’m glad you guys made up.”

  “Me too.”

  I quickly type a text.

  i’m fine, hope you had a good night xoxo

  And then Jason reaches for my arm, and I give it to him, and he gives a little jerk, and I fall back against him, and he snuggles me against him, and we are one again.

  I WAKE TO the sound of an opening door.

  At first I think it must be Mr. Sullivan, and I freak out, pulling the sheets up around me, but when I look at the clock, it is only after two, too early.

  I curse Mr. Sullivan for growing up in a small town—why in the world don’t they lock their doors?—and listen in terror to the thunk, thunk, thunk of heavy footsteps coming towards us, the sound of doors opening and shutting, the flicker of lights coming on.

  “Jason.” My heart is beating wildly now, the blood rushing through my head so loud it sounds like the whoosh of the ocean. “Jason,” I say again, shaking his shoulder. My voice cracks, and I am so scared and so sad, because we have found each other, finally, and now some psycho killer is here, some armed robber, some someone who is totally not supposed to be here right now is going to take it all away. “Jason, someone is inside the house.”

  “What?” he asks, groggy and dazed, and in the streetlight streaming in through the window, I see the whites around his eyes. If I die now, if the killer gets us, then I will never see him clear and sharp again.

  Jason’s door whips open, slamming against the wall, and then there’s a rush of steps, and it’s only after it’s too late, after the guy has launched himself on top of Jason, that I realize what’s going on.

  “Innis?” I say, my voice shaking. “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

  For an instant, I feel relief. We are not going to die at the hands of a psycho killer. We are going to be okay.

  “What the hell, man?” Jason yells. “Get the hell off of me.” Jason tries to lift his arms but they’re pinned on either side by Innis’s thick, lacrosse-player legs and his sudden proximity, his altogether hugeness.

  “Liz?” he asks. His voice is slurred, and the whole room now smells of whiskey, but he is with it enough to know what he’s doing, to take whatever plan he has into action. He turns to me, his arms now holding Jason down, too. “A little sleepover, huh?”

  “Get off.” Jason squirms beneath him, but Innis slaps him, hard across the face.

  “Shut up,” he says.

  “Why are you here?” I ask, my voice pleading. “What are you doing here?”

  But Innis ignores me. He looks down at Jason. “You hurt my brother,” he says, his words melding together in a boozy haze. “You tried to kill my brother.”

  “You know I didn’t, man,” Jason says. “You know I didn’t.”

  “You’re not even sorry,” Innis says. “You never were. You ran!”

  Jason shakes his head. “It was an accident,” he says. “I shouldn’t have run, but it was an accident.”

  Innis’s voice is like a dying animal’s, gasping for air. “I don’t give a shit if it was an accident! You still did it! And now you did your time and just get to move on with everything. You even get to fuck my girlfriend.” He nods to me. “And you think I’m just going to let you get away with it?”

  Jason squirms again, but it’s no use. My mind races in a hundred directions, trying to figure out Innis’s next move.

  Innis pushes one hand against Jason’s throat, pressing him back, not enough to choke him, but just enough to make him stop moving. And then with the other hand, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the knife I’ve seen before, the best, as he told Alex that day in Walmart. He flicks it open with one fell swoop. A glint of engraved initials.

  “Get off the bed, Lizzie,” Jason snaps, as soon as the knife is out. “Get off the bed now.”

  I’m still half-naked, and I feel as if Jason and I are unprotected, vulnerable, raw. I have no idea what Innis is doing, but I can’t just stand in the corner and watch this madness happen. I sit up, slowly, eyes never leaving the knife in Innis’s hand. He waves it in the air in front of Jason’s face.

  “You don’t want to do this.” I try to force calmness into my voice. “Whatever you’re thinking about, you don’t want to do it.”

  “Lizzie,” Jason is yelling now. “Get away from me.”

  But I can’t help it, I scoot closer. “Please,” I say. “Don’t hurt him. You’ll regret it.”

  Innis glances to me, his hand still at Jason’s throat. He brings the knife just inches from Jason’s cheek. “Will you still want him if his face is all messed up?” he asks. “Or will you be like your slut of a sister? On to the next one!”

  He brings the knife closer.

  “You’ll get in trouble,” I say. “You’ll miss your whole senior year.”

  “Will I?” Innis presses his hand closer to Jason’s throat, until his breath becomes labored. “I’m not gonna kill him, Liz. Jesus Christ, have a little faith in me! I’m just going to show him what it’s like to have a scar that won’t go away.”

  “They’ll lock you up for that,” I say. “It’ll still ruin everything. And for what?”

  He moves the knife even closer. “Who’s to say it’s not just some guy from juvie, scuffed him up a little? Who’ll even know it was me?”

  “I will,” I say. “I’ll tell everyone.”

  Innis laughs, loud and harsh and scary. “Who the hell is gonna believe you over me? Whoever believes you guys over me?”

  The knife is so close now, I can hear it scratch against Jason’s stubble, and I think he’s actually going to do it, I swear he’s about to do it.

  “Get away, Lizzie,” Jason yells.

  But I can’t. I reach for Innis, touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t look away from the knife in his hand. I squeeze. “Please,” I say. “Please don’t do this.”

  “Lizzie,” Jason yells again.

  And I’m yelling now, pleading, my voice swimming through hot tears. “
Stop it,” I scream. “Just stop it.”

  “Lizzie, get off the bed!” Jason yells.

  Innis’s eyes catch mine for just a second. “Yeah, Liz, get out of my way!”

  His arm comes at me, and I feel a blow to my cheek, hard and heavy and solid, with a sharpness at the end, a searing snake of pain. I land on the floor.

  Both of them keep yelling, and I can’t make out the words, but I pull myself up, head already aching.

  There’s a creaking of bedsprings, movement, but I can only stare, straight ahead, at the mirror in front of me, at the girl in the reflection, so terrifying and strange that I almost doubt it’s me, a line across my cheek, and I scream as the blood trickles, slow and thick and drippy, like red honey, and then I’m out.

  Chapter 29

  WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, THERE IS A WOMAN IN A PALE blue uniform hovering over me and asking my name.

  My head aches like nothing I’ve ever felt before, a hot white pain that reaches from the back around to my temples. And my cheek—instantly, I remember the blood, my banshee of a reflection—I lift my hand to feel it, but the lady shoos it away. “Don’t touch.”

  My heart begins to race, and she glances to a monitor. “Relax.” Her drawl is thick but her voice is kind, calmer than the whir-whir-whir of the siren, the bump and shake of the ambulance. “You’re going to be okay. You’ve lost some blood through the cut on your cheek, and you hit your head pretty bad when you fell, but you’re going to be okay. Can you tell me your name?”

  “Liz Grant.”

  “Very good. Your birthday?”

  I start to say it, but then it hits me. Jason. I have no idea what happened to Jason.

  “Miss?”

  “My friend,” I say, stammering, tears welling up in my eyes. My voice cracks. “Did you see my friend?”

  “I’m sure your friend is fine,” she says. “Now, can you tell me your birthday?”

  My head spins. He has to be fine. Someone had to have called the ambulance. Someone had to get me here. But what if he’s not?

  “Miss, I need you to tell me your birthday.”

  I rattle it off to get her to stop. “But did you see my friend?”

  She’s not listening. She’s shining a flashlight in my eyes and taking my pulse and doing things that seem so inconsequential now.

  The tears pour down my face then and my breathing quickens.

  “Miss,” she says. “You have to please try and stay calm. Like I said, I’m sure your friend is fine. Miss.”

  But it’s no use, the tears won’t stop.

  IT’S STILL DARK out when we get to the hospital. I continue to gasp and cry, and the EMT lady isn’t calm like before. I’m scaring her, I know I am, but I can’t help it.

  The door of the ambulance opens and the warm night air hits me, they roll me over the concrete and through the double doors, and it’s like a movie, but it’s a horrible movie, because I’m not watching it happen, I don’t get to cut to the cute guy speeding down the highway, eager to see his girlfriend, make sure she’s okay.

  The nurses inside are even less helpful than the EMT. They ignore my questions about Jason, they hook me up to an IV and do the same tests the EMT did, and they say the words possible concussion and stitches a lot, between plying me with questions about what medications I take and whether I have any allergies.

  I’m fine! I want to scream. I am not important right now! Just tell me that he’s fine!

  Eventually, a lady in a white coat comes in, sticks her hand out.

  “I’m Dr. Puri,” she says to me. Her voice is warm, her words are soft. I take her hand. “You’ve had quite a night. You’re doing wonderfully.”

  The tears come faster, because I’m not wonderful. I’m the opposite. “I need to know that my friend is okay,” I say.

  “What is your friend’s name?” she asks as she shines the light in my eyes again, as she looks at the chart.

  “Jason,” I say.

  “And your friend was with you?” she asks. “During the attack?”

  I nod weakly.

  “Can you tell me what happened tonight?” she asks.

  And I open my mouth to speak, to tell her, but where do I even start? When did this all start? Tonight, when MacKenzie texted to say Innis was mad? Or yesterday, when I taunted him? Or before that, when I slept with him? Or when Jason came back? Or when Jason left? Or when he hurt Skip? Or when Skip called Mr. Sullivan a fag? Or one of the hundreds of dominos that led me here tonight, bleeding and broken and wanting only one answer, but there are so many questions, infinite questions, before I can get what I want.

  “Just go slowly,” she says, seeing the confusion, the chaos, all over my face. “Start with how you got hurt.”

  “My . . . a boy . . . someone I used to be friends with, he came over . . . he, he had . . .” But it’s no use, because the tears start again. “I need to know about my friend,” I say. “I can’t say anything until I know about him.”

  IT’S UNCLEAR HOW much time passes. Seconds or minutes or hours. Dr. Puri repeats some of the same questions as the nurses before cleaning my wound, numbing my cheek, and giving me stitches—twelve, she says, which I guess is kind of a lot—while I stare at the wall and try to calm down.

  When she’s done, I’m alone again. It’s bright and fluorescent in the hospital, and I don’t know if the sun is up yet, if a new day has come, if it is a day that won’t have Jason in it. With every passing moment, I hate the sound of gurneys even more, the flip of doors and the cacophony of hospital sounds that I must sit through.

  Is it possible that this is it, that life is, in the end, just a collection of effed-up circumstances, just a stupid silly game where you find love, find the greatest love, the greatest of all loves, find more than you’d ever thought possible with another person, find a way that it finally all makes sense, and then you lose it? And I know that nothing ever will heal that loss.

  And I am about ready to scream at all of it, at the pointlessness of it, when I see Mom’s face through the window.

  She rushes in, her cheeks wet with steady tears.

  “Mom,” I say, and the tears are coming hard on mine, too. “Mom.”

  She reaches through the equipment somehow, gives me a hug, and over her shoulder, I see him, standing there behind Dad, standing there next to, of all people, my sister.

  “Oh my God, Liz, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t believe I encouraged you to be with him. I’m such a horrible mother.”

  Dad and Lyla are in now, too, hugging me. Jason hangs back, looking in through the window, giving us our space. My bones ache at how much I want to see him.

  “It’s okay, Mom.”

  “Are you in pain?” she asks. “The doctor says it’s probably not a concussion, but oh God, your face . . .” The tears start up again. “Your face. I just, I can’t believe it.”

  “She’s going to be okay,” Dad says. “You’re going to be just fine, Liz.”

  My sister stares at the right side of my face, and I realize I can lift my hand. I do, and it meets a swath of gauze. “Don’t, Liz.” Her lip quivers. “Don’t.”

  I look at her. “It’s going to be bad, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice betrays her, and she leans into Mom for support.

  “Did the hospital call you?” I ask.

  They look at each other then, all three of them, like they’ve got some kind of terrible secret. At the window, I see that Jason has stepped away.

  Dad finally talks. “Jason drove to our house,” he says. “Scared the hell out of us, standing there, sweating and out of breath on our front porch, in the middle of the night. He told us everything, that he’d made sure you were breathing, taken your pulse as he waited for the ambulance. He wanted to get in the ambulance with you, but they wouldn’t let him. We rode over here together.” Dad looks back to the empty window. Then he looks back to me. “We told them he was family, Liz. He wanted to see you so badly.”

  My sister looks down at
her feet—Ashamed? Forgiving? More confused than ever? Mom, she just stares at me. In fact, she won’t take her eyes off me.

  “He got you to safety,” Dad says. “We owe him for that.”

  I see Jason’s face at the door again and I smile, open my eyes wide, begging him to come in. Dad takes Mom’s arm, leads her reluctantly away, Lyla following.

  Jason crosses the room in two quick steps, and then he’s at my bed, right here in front of me. And he is okay.

  “I was so worried about you,” I say, my breath already coming in gasps. “I was all alone and no one would tell me about you, and I thought—I don’t know—I thought he did something to you, and what if, what if—”

  “I’m here.” He leans in. “And I’m fine.”

  I reach my hand to his, and I hold it, and all I can think is that I don’t want to live a single day on earth where I don’t have the chance to hold his hand.

  He leans down and kisses me, right there with my whole family watching through the window. “I love you so much,” he says.

  “I love you, too.”

  He pulls back, brushes the tears from underneath my eyes with his thumb.

  When my breathing calms, when I feel my heart beat normally again—or almost normally—I ask him: “What happened?”

  “I don’t want to upset you,” he says.

  “Too late.”

  Jason cocks his head to the side. “What do you remember?”

  I shake my head. “I remember seeing my face with blood on it. Then nothing.”

  He nods. “Innis let me go as soon as he saw what he’d done. He freaked out, and then he was just gone—out the door—and I wanted to go after him. I wanted to kill him, Lizzie.”

  “But you didn’t go after him?” I ask, because if I know one thing, I know this. The violence has to stop. It will just snowball and snowball, getting bigger and bigger each time, until there’s no turning back, until every last one of us is broken.

  Jason hesitates. “God, I wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  He shakes his head. “Turns out I love you more than I hate him.”

  Chapter 30