What You Leave Behind

by Katoff, Jessica

  “Save your fucking proverb-sounding bullshit, Barnes.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you—either of you,” Liam replies, and Austin looks away, hot, angry tears seeping back into his eyes. They fall too quickly, like they’ve been waiting on his lashes for too long. He brushes the tears away hastily, but Liam sees them before he does. It hurts to watch, but Liam takes the pain, because he’s caused it. “This has all just gone so far off the rails and—”

  “You left. You fucking left,” Austin cries and spits and his voice sounds nothing like his own. He gives Liam a shove, then one more, and Liam takes them, hands at his sides, no matter how many more follow with his words. “You left her and you left me and you lost us both, and no amount of bullshit you can spill out of your fucking mouth is going to change that.”

  “I know,” Liam admits quietly. “I know.”

  “Do you? Do you know? She was destroyed. And me—it was always you and me, and then it was just me. We both had our fucking foundation knocked out from under us, and you just didn’t fucking care. Did you even think about what you were leaving behind?”

  “I called—”

  “You called too late.” Austin’s words are steadier, drawn out and laced with a touch of hate. He stares over Liam’s shoulder at the dim lights in the front windows, at the absence of motion portrayed within them, and he closes his eyes and says, “All of this is too late.”

  “How long has it been?”

  Austin scoffs, chokes on his words, then turns his gaze to Liam and slowly tells him, “Since, ‘Her name’s Harper, she’s in my homeroom.’”

  “I had no—” Liam’s eyes are wide, his mouth gaping, and he feels as though Austin has just forcibly removed the air from his lungs, his words clawing deep to dig it out and set it free. He staggers, and it almost seems too dramatic, but it happens, and he palms the side of Austin’s truck to stay upright. His head hanging, he stammers, “Why didn’t you—why did you let me—”

  “Right. Well, none of it matters now. Neither one of us wins here.” Austin’s words are solemn and they’re so full of finality, he thinks he can hear all of his burning bridges crashing down. His feet are on dry land though, and he’s walking away. He has to walk away. With a flick of his wrist, he opens the door of his truck and nods, “I’m done. And you, you fucking piece of shit, you’d better be, too. She deserves better than this.”

  “I was—I left because I was going to propose and—” Liam blurts out the words, rambles them, and they half make sense, half sound themselves out to the world, and Austin half hopes he’s heard their pieces wrong. “I couldn’t—I had to know that I—I loved her so much and I—”

  “Excuse me?” Austin’s hand, still on the handle of his truck, falls to his side and hangs there limply, much like his jaw. “What did you say?”

  “I—I left because I—”

  “You were going to propose?” Austin’s question sounds like an invitation to a fight and Liam nods his RSVP. “And that’s why you left?”

  “I had some kind of meltdown and I—I knew she was the one, I just had to know she was and I—”

  “You are the biggest asshole I have ever met, Barnes.” Liam nods, because he can’t disagree, and Austin shoves him again, his hands still at his sides, taking it. “You destroyed that girl, that fucking amazing girl, and—”

  “I know.”

  “—and that’s why you left her? Because you weren’t sure that years and years and decades with her were what you wanted? You had to test yourself?” Austin keeps pushing, taking Liam halfway up the yard with no intention to stop. He pushes and pushes and Liam falls onto his back, his shoulders digging into the deadened grass below him. It doesn’t take much from there for a fist to fly, to connect with Liam’s face, then his ribs, and Austin is livid and Liam just takes it, doesn’t block his punches or throw any of his own. He stops after a while, after there’s enough blood and his knuckles are raw. As he stands upright, Austin cradles his hand to his chest and watches as Liam writhes in pain below him. He feels no remorse at the sight, or when he says, “That doesn’t even hurt half as bad as what you put her through, and it would do you good to remember that.”

  Liam doesn’t feel much of anything then. He awakens some time later and gingerly carries himself to his car, where he bleeds on the seats and tries to catalog every ounce of the pain. If the pain he feels, the blood he’s lost, is not even half of her broken heart, he knows that he has quite a long way to go to set things right. He doesn’t know where to start, but she wanted him to go, so he does.

  He leaves, and this time, it’s not because he wants to, but because it’s what she needs.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The weekend passes and Monday, too. Then, Tuesday and Wednesday go, and Thursday arrives and leaves. Harper holds it together until then, until Friday evening when it's been exactly one week since she’s seen them. She’s on the floor of Clare’s bedroom, sobbing and babbling nonsense into her plush white carpeting. As her face presses into it, Clare rubs her back and wonders if she’ll have rug burns from the way that her body is wracking with sobs, how her forehead moves against the carpet with each one. She’s seated close enough that Harper could crawl into her lap, if she wanted to or if it hurt that badly, and she strokes her hands through her hair, lets her get it all out. When she’s done, when the tears stem and she sits up and looks at her, at Clare’s visage of empathy, the tears almost come again.

  Almost.

  She tries to cry—a sincere effort—but nothing comes out, just a broken imitation of a sob, and she laughs at the sound, her blotchy cheeks stretching to accommodate her wide smile.

  “Okay,” Clare says with a nervous chuckle, dragging out the a.

  Harper laughs harder and Clare considers calling Hilary—or the psychiatric unit at Rogue Valley in Medford, fearing she’s having some kind of mental schism. She does neither, but sits and watches in quiet disbelief as Harper laughs until she hiccups and then laughs some more. When she’s winded and the muscles of her stomach burn from laughing, she takes gulping breaths to allay her hiccups as she lies back on the floor, her hair fanned out around her like a copper halo.

  Clare just sits there, astounded.

  “You can only get knocked so far down, you know?” Harper says, unprompted.

  Her eyes are closed and her cheeks have almost returned to their normal milky color and she says the words with such an air of normalcy, Clare almost nods and moves right along with the night, as if nothing ever happened. But something has happened, something bizarre, and there’s no glossing over it.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. As the words escape her mouth, she notices how mental health professional they sound, so she throws in a, “Because that was immensely fucking weird,” to level things out.

  “Which—the uncontrollable crying or the raucous laughter?”

  “The laughing,” Clare answers with a finger tapping her chin and her eyes narrowed, as if deep in thought. “Yeah, definitely the laughing.”

  “I just couldn’t—can’t cry anymore,” Harper replies with a shrug. “It just wouldn’t come out. That’s what did.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I think I’m just done.” Harper rolls onto her side and reaches for the bottle of wine beside Clare’s knee and downs a swallow. It’s a red blend and she likes that Clare drinks red wine on a white carpet without glasses and thinks nothing of it. She wants to be that carefree, so she resolves to be. “I’m deciding to be done.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “Well, then I’m deciding that’s a fucking splendid idea,” Clare replies and clinks an imaginary bottle to the one in Harper’s grasp and waits for her to finish her sip and pass her the real thing. When she does, she toasts Harper’s own imaginary bottle and repeats, “Fucking splendid,” before tossing her head back and gulping down some red.

  ***

  Harper enacts a moratorium on all thing
s Austin and Liam during the transitional phase of her doneness—speak no, see no, hear no. She gets into a routine—goes from home to work before the sun rises, from work to home when it seeps down beneath the horizon and paints the sky a creamy black. Her days off are spent stocking the pantry and baking all kinds of pastries, which she eventually begins to sell at Meat and Eat when Clare, Dylan, and Hilary have put on more than their fair share of sympathy weight. Her nights are filled with books she’s always meant to read, jogging roads she knows are safe routes, and stargazing on the roof in the black of night, a glass of wine in her hand.

  She starts to enjoy how solitary she’s become, how independent, and part of her begins to empathize with Liam—part of her even forgives him. And another piece of her, the one that recognizes just how lost she really was, begins to see Austin in a new light, too. He’s been lost for so long and his still not found. She wonders if that was a part of it for him—finding himself in someone else, in her. Slowly, she comes to terms with them, with herself without them—she begins to heal.

  It begins with a to-go lunch from the pub and the welcome back kind of grin Dylan gives her. She returns to her old running route, the one that snakes by Liam’s house and the lumberyard. As she fills her gas tank at the station in the middle of a Sunday, she talks to a neighbor and tells her, “Sure, a book club sounds like a lot of fun,” as she programs her number into the woman’s phone. At Safeway, as she picks out pears, an old classmate invites her to a “little get-together” and Harper smiles and nods, asks what time she should be there. When the get-together turns out to be a full-blown party, Harper drinks beer from the keg and laughs along with Clare and a group of girls neither of them know about how the party is so high school. But it isn’t high school and she knows it, because if it were, she’d be on Liam’s arm and Austin would be pouring shots of tequila. Instead, she sips her beer and talks to a guy with curly black hair and at the end of the night, she sleeps in her bed alone and doesn’t want it any other way.

  She lives for herself, on her terms, and loves the feel of it.

  ***

  It’s Clare’s idea, Harper moving in, but Dylan excitedly pitches it to her over drinks at the pub on a Thursday. Clare smiles beside him, her hand on his arm, as he describes the floor plan, as if she hadn’t spent whole days lazing around Clare’s place before he moved in. He talks up the claw-footed tubs, the rectangular sky lights, the tiny, one-person balconies outside each window on the upper floor. The rent is reasonable and Clare promises to never cook, Dylan vows to battle all pieces of technology and bugs that cross her. Harper drinks her beer and basks in the glow of their smiles, in the warmth of a new path unfolding right before her eyes. She doesn’t make it to the end of the bottle before she says yes. Dylan buys them another round—a celebratory round—and tells her more, and she listens as if she’s never seen it before.

  Harper sits Hilary down the next morning to a table set with blueberry waffles and coffee and breaks the news. She talks, tells her of tubs and balconies, but Hilary’s eyes don’t shine in the same way that hers did. She buries her face in a mug of coffee and stares over the rim at the carafe of orange juice, only gives a few nods and says nothing. Harper’s smile dims and she leaves her mother alone at the table and goes to pack her things.

  She tells herself she won’t cry, but she does, and it’s at the sight of her toothbrush leaving the holder beside Hilary’s. Hilary hears Harper from the floor below and the pang in her gut hurts so badly that she can barely stand it. She finds her perched against the sink basin, staring at the toothbrush holder with her chin in her hands, and she understands, hugs her and tells her that it’s okay. “I’m not sad,” she says. “I’m just going to miss you. This is pretty sudden, you know?”

  “I got over-anxious and told Dylan I could move in today, but I can—”

  “You’re ready,” Hilary tells her and plucks her toothbrush from the holder, presses it into the palm of her hand. “You’re ready, even if I’m not.”

  Hilary takes the morning off, leaving Kevin to fend for himself, pilfers boxes from behind the other shops on Main and helps Harper sort through her things. She packs away her mementos, her books, her shoes while Hilary looks on and tells her stories, gives her advice for living on her own. Jokingly, she asks about Dylan and his motives, and Harper tells her she thinks Dylan and Clare are days away from an engagement, from upgrading to a house better suited for a family. She sees her pout at the words, at her long-abandoned wants for similar things, and changes the subject, but it doesn’t last long. They pack the rest of the boxes in relative silence and they carry them one-by-one, until the bed of her truck is filled to the brim.

  “Last one.” Hilary’s mouth pinches into a frown, one that she tries to pass off as a smile, as she holds tight to the box in her arms for just a second longer before setting it with the others. When it’s in, Harper lifts the tailgate, and wipes her palms on the back pockets of her jeans, and leans over to wrap her arms around her mother’s neck. Hilary returns the hug with ferocity, and Harper knows there are tears rolling down her cheeks, falling against her hair where her mother’s chin rests. She could only be strong for so long and Harper is thankful that she didn’t cry sooner—Harper would have instantly followed suit. “I’m going to miss you, Harp.”

  “I’ll be right down the road.” Harper presses her fingers harder into her mother’s back, before releasing her and holding her at arm’s length. She looks at her sternly and says, “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I know, I just—” She clears her throat and scuffs a boot against the pavement, and Harper hates the sight of her mother—her strong and beautiful mother—crumbling before her. She has to live for herself, though—she promised herself that she would. Harper wraps her arms around her once more. “Okay,” Hilary murmurs, nodding. “Okay.”

  As she drives away, she can’t bring herself to look in the rearview mirror. She knows Hilary’s crying in the middle of the street, and she knows she’ll see her in the morning at work, that she’ll invite her over for dinner in the coming days. She isn’t leaving her, just leaving her childhood home, leaving what it stands for and who she used to be within its walls. It’s hard to keep her heart so hardened, but she has to—the few shards she’s strung together in the last few months are all she has left.

  Her mother loves her and will understand.

  Clare’s house—her house—isn’t too far, just a handful of stop signs and turns, and she parks behind Dylan’s SUV in the narrow driveway. He hears the grumble of her truck’s engine and comes out to greet her with a smile and open arms. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or hug him or push him away. The varying degrees of emotion, with nothing more than a few minutes and a few blocks in between them, make her stomach turn. He watches as her face contorts into some kind of half-happiness, half-agony, and decides for her, crushes his arms around her.

  “Oh lord, Harper.” Dylan half-sighs, half-laughs, and squeezes her harder. “Buyer’s remorse?”

  “She cried,” she says with an exaggerated whimper, pulling away and turning back to her truck. She knocks open the tailgate and climbs onto it, grabs the first box and tosses it down to Dylan. He catches it with ease and sets it on the ground, sits at her feet on the creaking tailgate. “Get up—these boxes aren’t going to carry themselves.”

  “Talk to me, first.” Dylan tugs on the leg of Harper’s jeans and she toes his side with her shoe to scoot him over before sitting down next to him. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

  “You know, with all I’ve been through, it’s getting a little easier to break hearts.” She says the words with an air of sarcasm and a needless batting of her eyelashes. Dylan doesn’t laugh as she hoped he would, doesn’t break the tension, and she sighs, leans her head against his shoulder. “Fine, it fucking broke my heart, but I have to do this. I have to do things for me, now.”

  “You have to give it to her, though. This was all pretty sudden. Can’t blame the gal for
getting teary when her only little girl packs up and moves out. Especially, after the wild ride this year has been. For both of you. She just got you back.” Harper nods and lets her legs kick over the side of the gate. She stares at the concrete beneath her, notes how it’s not the brick and oil-or-something-like-it stains she’s used to, and she nearly cries. Dylan sees it and, before her tears can sting her eyes, he says, “If Mama Reed didn’t know better, I’d be afraid she thought we were some kinky threesome kind of couple—triple? That would be a triple.” Harper laughs dryly and Dylan pokes fingers into her sides until it’s real and roaring laughter. When she’s gasping for air, he relents and gets her to her feet in the bed of the truck. “Come on. These boxes won’t carry themselves.”

  ***

  Harper settles into life with Dylan and Clare quickly. She and Dylan share the cooking duties, and Clare—oven and stove inept—always does the dishes, despite her manicure, the they’re continuously chatting and smiling and comfortable. They watch movies in the living room late into the night and drink beers in the back yard, all bundled in blankets and coats on top of an air mattress lain on the frozen grass. Hilary comes over every now and again and Dylan takes to teaching her how to grill the meat she carves so nicely—Clare even learns a thing or two at Hilary’s urging. Harper feels happy and it doesn’t feel forced, doesn’t feel like it’s what’s expected of her, but what is natural and right.

  Her life feels whole again—without anyone but herself needed to make it so.

  “It’s nice to see you smile so much,” Dylan tells her in the yard one night.

  She simply smiles in return, further accentuating his point, and murmurs, “I’m happy.”

  Clare laughs and leans over to clink the neck of her beer against Harper’s. “Living proof that you don’t need a man to be happy,” she chimes, and Harper counters, “I’ll drink to that,” while Dylan playfully pouts.