The Fire Between High & Lo

by Brittainy C. Cherry

  He’d always trusted me—even when I wasn’t trustworthy.

  “I’ll meet you out at your car, Erika. I’m just going to grab my guitar.” She nodded and left. The moment she walked away, Kellan leaned in toward Jacob, with the sincerest look in his eyes. “Hey man, I just wanted to let you know. If something happened to me,”—he paused, turned my way and smirked—“which it won’t, because I’m not dying. But if something did happen, I would be okay with you looking after Erika, ya know? I would be fine with that.”

  Jacob leaned forward, resting both of his elbows on the countertop. “And this is the moment I tell you to piss off for even thinking something like that.”

  Kellan chuckled. “No, but really. You’ll take care of her?”

  “We aren’t talking about this,” Jacob replied.

  “Yeah, Kel. Stop being dramatic,” I agreed.

  “Dude. I have cancer.”

  “Don’t you fucking play the cancer card on me,” Jacob snickered, throwing a rag at him. “I don’t give a shit,” he said jokingly.

  “But, promise me you’ll take care of her?” he asked, one last time.

  Jacob sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Even though NOTHING is going to happen to you, if it will make you sleep better at night, Erika will be taken care of. I promise.”

  Kellan looked visibly lighter, his shoulders relaxing, and nodded before heading out to join his fiancée.

  As I tossed on my coat to leave, I called Jacob over to me. Leaning in close to him, I gripped his white T-shirt and locked eyes with him. “If I ever see you looking any kind of way at Erika, I swear to God I will rip your balls off and feed them to you.”

  He snorted laughing, until he saw the stern look on my face. “Dude. Erika’s like a sister to me. That’s disgusting. Now, that Alyssa girl on the other hand...” He smirked and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “You’re a terrible person,” I said dryly.

  He laughed. “I’m kidding! Come on. That’s funny. Trust me, the Walters girls are off limits.”

  “Good. I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.”

  “We are. Besides, Kellan’s not dying.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  Because Kellan wasn’t dying.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Logan

  I stuffed my hands into my pockets and rocked back and forth on Alyssa’s porch. I didn’t know how I found myself standing there. I wasn’t sure if she would even keep the door open once she noticed it was me.

  But I had nowhere else to go. No one to turn to.

  She opened the door, and my eyes danced across her body as she stood in a white tank top and tight blue jeans. When I met her eyes, I almost burst into tears because just being near her reminded me of what it felt like not to be alone.

  Her arms crossed and she cocked a brow. “What do you want, Logan? Are you still looking to yell at me? To make me feel like crap? Because it’s almost one in the morning and I really don’t want to hear it.” The strong stance she held almost made me laugh, but when I opened my mouth to release a chuckle, I choked on the air.

  I saw her eyes soften. She stepped out onto the porch.

  “What is it?” she asked, alert, the concern that was always in her words loud and clear.

  My head shook back and forth. My stomach knotted. “He’s…” I cleared my throat. I stuffed my hands deeper into my pockets. My stare fell down to the worn boards of her porch. “He’s…”

  “Lo. Talk to me.” She placed a comforting hand against my chest, over my heart. And without thought, my heart began to speed up from her touch. “What’s wrong?”

  I opened my mouth, but choked on air. My body started to shake as I forced the words to leave my tongue. “When I was eleven, my dad made me sit in the pouring rain because I looked at him wrong. I was out there for over four hours, sitting on top of a milk carton, and he’d watch me from his window, making sure I wouldn’t move. And um… Kellan came over to drop off some things. He was only fifteen, but he knew Ma was going through one of her low points, so each day he’d stop by to check in on me. Bring me food. Clothes that he outgrew. When he came around the block and saw me sitting there, soaking wet, I saw his face turn red and his right hand formed a fist.

  “I told him it was okay, but he ignored me. He pulled me up to the apartment and started shouting at my dad, calling him a deadbeat this and a deadbeat that. Which is crazy, right, because you know my dad. People don’t talk back to him; people don’t even look him in the eye. But Kellan did. He puffed out his chest, stared the son-of-a-bitch straight in the eye, and told him if he ever laid a hand on me, or made me do some crazy shit again, like stand in the rain, that he’d kill him. He didn’t mean it, ya know. Kellan wouldn’t hurt a fly. But he stood up to my biggest fear. He fought for me when I couldn’t. And my dad hit him.” I blew out a low breath, remembering. “He hit him hard, too. But Kellan stood up. Over and over again, he stood up. For me. He stood up for me. He’s always looked after me, ya know? He’s my big brother. He’s my…”

  My head shook back and forth. My stomach knotted, pained. “He’s…” I cleared my throat and stuffed my hands deeper into my pockets. My stare fell down to my tattered shoestrings. “He’s… He’s dying.” I nodded my head, realizing that once those words left my lips, they became real. My brother, my hero, my world, was dying. “Kellan’s sick. He’s dying, High. He’s dying.” I shook uncontrollably, trying to fight the burning tears sitting in the back of my eyes. I wanted to shut up, I wanted to stop talking, but I couldn’t stop repeating the scariest words in the world. “He’s dying. He’s dying. Kellan’s dying.”

  “Oh, Logan…”

  “How long did you know? How long did you know he was sick? Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t… He’s dying…” I sobbed. Jesus, I was a mess. I was seconds away from slipping away. But then she reached out to me. She held me. Her arms wrapped around me and she didn’t speak. She just held on tight as I lost myself on her front porch that summer night.

  For a moment we were us again. For a moment she was the fire that kept my cold heart warm at night. For a moment she was my savior. My safe haven. My bright, beautiful High.

  But after the highs, always came the lows.

  “What’s going on?” a deep voice asked from behind Alyssa, coming out of the house. I looked up as he spoke again. “Who’s this?”

  He stood wearing a button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, slacks, and expensive-looking shoes. He stepped onto the porch as I stepped away from Alyssa, confused.

  “Dan this is Logan, my…” She hesitated, because she didn’t know what we were, with good reason. The truth was we weren’t anything. We were the fleeting memories of something that once was. Nothing more, nothing less. “He’s an old friend.”

  An old friend?

  I loved you.

  An old friend?

  You changed me.

  An old friend?

  I miss you so fucking much.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  Dan stepped closer to Alyssa with narrowed eyes. His hand sat on her shoulder in a protective manner, and for a split second I thought about slugging him for touching her. For placing his hand on my girl, but then I remembered.

  She wasn’t mine.

  She hadn’t been in years.

  She shrugged his hand off of her.

  I looked away.

  “I’m gonna get going,” I laughed, but nothing was funny. I snapped the band on my wrist, walked down the steps, and listened to Alyssa call after me.

  I ignored her.

  I ignored the burning inside my soul, too.

  The world never made promises, but I was certain it was always going to screw me over.

  ***

  I sat up at the billboard, looking up at the stars shining in the sky. My eyelids were heavy, but I couldn’t go back to Kellan’s place. I couldn’t see him. I needed sleep, and for a while I’d considered just st
aying up high in the sky and taking a nap until the sun woke me up. But whenever I closed my eyes, I remembered a few hours earlier when TJ reinforced the worst news of my life.

  My heart hurt more than hearts should’ve been allowed to.

  He’s my brother…

  I couldn’t imagine him not being there. And I hated myself in that moment. I hated myself because such a big part of me wanted to run away and find drugs. A big part of me wanted to pull out my cell phone and dial the numbers to the people I never needed to see again, to hook me up with some shit. A big part of me wanted to fall into the rabbit hole, because down that rabbit hole, feelings didn’t exist. Nothing was real when a person was in the rabbit hole, so the pain of reality never surfaced.

  My legs bent, and I wrapped my arms around my knees.

  I didn’t pray. I didn’t believe in God. But for a split moment, I considered being the hypocrite that began to that night.

  My eyes closed, and I tilted my head up toward the sky.

  The footsteps were quiet at first. Then the metal ladder began to slightly rock back and forth as she made her way to the top.

  She was carrying a plastic bag, those tight jeans and the tank top, and the worry in her eyes remained.

  She shrugged a little, no words needed, but me knowing that she was asking permission to join me. I shrugged back, and she knew it was a yes. As her footsteps grew closer, I felt my eyes stinging and my heart pounding. She sat on the left side of me, bent her legs, and wrapped her arms around her knees, just as I did. Our heads turned toward each other where our eyes met.

  The plastic bag opened, and she pulled out a package of Oreos, a plastic basket of raspberries, a gallon of 2% milk, and two red Solo cups.

  I listened to the crinkling of the package as she pulled back the seal on the cookies, revealing a small part of our past.

  I untwisted the milk top, then poured two cups.

  She untwisted a cookie, placed a raspberry inside, then put it back together, handing it my way.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had a raspberry Oreo.

  Her lips turned into a half smile and she nodded once. I nodded once in reply.

  “You’re okay, Logan Francis Silverstone,” she said.

  “I’m okay, Alyssa Marie Walters,” I replied.

  We turned away from each other, ate two entire sleeves of raspberry cookies, and stared at the fire-lit sky.

  When she felt cold, I gave her my hoodie.

  When my heart broke, she held my hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Alyssa

  “Hey, wake up.” I felt a light poke in my side as I rubbed my hands against my eyes. Slowly opening them, I was flooded with the bright sun in my face, along with Logan standing over me. “Hey, get up.”

  “Geez…what time is it?” I asked, yawning. I had no plans to fall asleep that night. I meant to go home and climb back into my warm bed and pretend that Logan didn’t exist in my world anymore, but he looked so broken last night.

  “It’s time for you to go,” he hissed. I sat up a bit, confused about his attitude. He tossed all of the items I bought back into the plastic bag, and shoved them toward me. “Don’t come back here, all right?”

  “Why are you being so rude?”

  “Because I don’t want you here. And give me my hoodie.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled, standing up and tossing his hoodie at him. My heart was racing as I walked toward the ladder to leave. Yet instead of climbing down, I swung back around at Logan. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You came to me last night. Not the other way around.”

  “I didn’t ask you to come up here. I didn’t tell you to bring cookies and shit, like the old days. Newsflash, we aren’t the same people we were. Jesus. Did your boyfriend even know where you were last night?”

  I snickered, shocked. “So this is about me having a boyfriend? Logan. Dan isn’t—”

  He rolled his eyes. “I could give two shits about you having a boyfriend. But I think it says a lot about you that you’re so fucking comfortable with the idea of spending the night with another man. Does he even know where you are right now? I mean geez, Alyssa. It makes you look like a real slu—”

  I cut him off, stepping in front of him, holding my hand up in front of his mouth before he could say the word. “I get that you’re hurting. I get that you’re scared and you’re taking it out on me because I’m an easy target. That’s fine. I’ll be your target. Toss all of your hate at me. Tell me to never come back here, to the one place that reminds me of you. Tell me to fuck off. But you do not get to talk to me like that, Logan Francis Silverstone. I am not the girl you get to belittle because I tried to be there for you. I am not the girl you call a slut.”

  His face dropped for a moment, slight guilt in his eyes before he huffed in annoyance. “I’m going to be in town for a while, okay? So can we just do our best to avoid each other? It was my fault for ever coming to your house to begin with, but that’s over. There’s no reason for us to communicate, really. Obviously, we have nothing to say to one another anymore.”

  “I’m sorry if I made any of this harder for you. I’ll stay out of your way. But if you need me, I’ll be there, too. Okay? Just let me know. And for the record, Dan isn’t my boyfriend. Never has been, never will be. He’s just a friend who’s helping me look into getting a property. He drank a little too much and ended up crashing on my sofa. I’m not in a relationship. I haven’t been in a long time. None of my past relationships have been a good match. And I get it now, why they didn’t work out.” I took a deep inhale, and shut my eyes. “Because I’d been waiting all this time for a boy who I believed once loved me.”

  “God-dammit, Alyssa, I don’t care! I don’t care about the stuff happening in your life. And you need to realize something: You and I are never getting back together. We are not a happy ending.” His words cut deep as he turned his back on me.

  “Do you ever think about us? Do you ever think about me?” I whispered, running my fingers across my neck. “Do you ever think about the baby?”

  He didn’t turn back to stare my way, but his shoulders drooped. He didn’t move another inch. Say something! Say anything!

  “Just go, Alyssa. And don’t come back.”

  I swallowed hard, my throat dry.

  Say anything but that.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Logan

  A few weeks had passed since I’d come home to be with Kellan. He’d been through two rounds of chemotherapy and seemed to be himself, although maybe a bit moody. He tended to grow a little annoyed with how Erika helped him with his medicine and checked in with him every second of every day. She was breathing down his neck, and if I were honest, I’d say that I was thankful for it. I knew it annoyed him, her nonstop nagging, but it made me feel some level of peace, knowing he had such good care.

  The wedding was supposed to happen last weekend, but they put it off until the coming month. I wondered how often it’d be moved and rearranged. I knew Kellan was the one pushing it off, because of his reservations about his illness.

  On Thursday, he gave me money to go buy Ma some groceries. When I went to her house, I brought cleaning supplies with me. The house was trashed. Ma was passed out on the sofa, and I didn’t bother to wake her. If she was sleeping, she wasn’t using.

  It was crazy to me how angelic she looked while she slept. It was as if the demons of her mind went to rest, and her true self came out. I stocked the refrigerator and cabinets with food that wouldn’t spoil quickly. I wasn’t certain how much she’d be eating, but that way she could pick at things without it going bad too fast.

  I also made her a lasagna. One of my favorite memories of her was when she decided she wanted to get clean, and she asked me to make her a celebratory dinner before she checked herself into rehab. We laughed, we ate, and we had a moment of what our lives could’ve been, if we both were clean.

  When she left the house, she ran into my Dad, and rehab became a distant memory
for her.

  I cleaned the apartment from top to bottom, even getting on my knees to scrub the carpet. I walked all of her clothes down to the laundromat, and while they washed, I went back to her apartment and cleaned some more.

  She didn’t wake until I was back at the apartment, folding her clean clothes while sitting on the floor. As she sat up, she yawned. “I thought it was a dream that you were here the other day.”

  I gave her half a smile. She gave me the other half as she rubbed her slim arms.

  “You cleaned the place?”

  “Yeah. I got some food and washed your clothes, too.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she kept smiling. “You look good, boy.” She nodded over and over again, tears falling down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe the tears away, allowing them to fall against her chin. “You look so good.” Guilt took over as she scratched at her skin. “I knew you could do it, Logan. I knew you could get clean. Sometimes I wish…” Her words faded off.

  “It’s not too late, you know, Ma. We can get you into a program. We can get you clean, too.” I didn’t know it still existed in me—that spark of hope I always held for her. I wanted her to get away from all of this world. There was still a small part of my soul that wanted to get us both a house, away from the place that created so much horror for us both.

  For a second, it looked like she was considering it, too. But then she blinked, and started scratching herself again. “I’m old, Logan. I’m old. Come here.” I walked over, and sat on the couch beside her. She took my hands into hers and smiled. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Ma. Are you hungry?”

  “Yeah,” she said. I was somewhat surprised.

  I tossed the lasagna into the oven, and when it finished we sat at the dining room table, eating it straight out of the pan. I wished I could’ve locked this moment into my heart and never let it leave.

  As she ate, tears kept falling down her face.