What You Leave Behind

by Katoff, Jessica

  “I didn’t think I would be—happy, I mean.” Neither Dylan nor Clare tries to buoy the suddenly serious turn their conversation takes. They lean into each other and listen intently as Harper goes on. “I hope they are, too. Is that weird—for me to want them to be okay?”

  “I think it speaks volumes about the person you are, honey,” Clare tells her. “You’re one hell of a human—the good kind.”

  “I miss them as—as friends, you know?” she says after a bit of silence and another half of a beer. “I just miss having them in my life. Especially, Liam. Ten years, I dated that man, spoke to him every single day, and it’s only been a handful of months and I can barely remember what his voice sounds like.” She takes a swig of beer as Dylan pats a hand on her knee and Clare scoots over to drape an arm across her shoulders. “I just wish that, you know, that they were still in my life. Because as happy as I feel and as good as it is now, I feel like something is missing—they’re missing. And I think that as long as they are, as long as this tension exists between us, it’s going to be that way.”

  “They were at the bar a few nights ago—together,” Dylan offers. The look on Harper’s face isn’t entirely readable, so he continues, “Seemed like old times for them. No punches or anything. So, there’s that.” Harper and Clare both look at him, as if waiting for more. He only shrugs and says, “All I’m saying is, maybe they’d go for it.”

  “Look, you’ve come incredibly far, and I thought that before I knew everything,” Clare says, turning to look at Harper straight on, “and if you think that you can form some sort of something with them, without breaking your own heart, if you think it’ll make you happy, then I say go for it. Because, really, I honestly think you’ve already bottomed out and them turning down a round of drinks or a daytrip to the lake doesn’t have nearly the potential to damage you as anything else they’ve done before.” Harper nods, her eyes wide and her lower lip tucked up between her teeth. “I say go for it.”

  “I agree,” Dylan adds, less eloquently. “How’s about the next time they’re at the pub, I give you a call and you two waltz in and casually bump into them?”

  Harper smiles slowly and tells him, “Let’s dance.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The leather sofa groans noisily beneath Liam’s weight as he settles a throw pillow in his lap and readjusts his posture on the overstuffed cushions for the tenth time in fifty minutes. He’s uncomfortable in every sense of the word, even if the office has all the comforts of home, personal touches and soft fabrics. There’s no fooling him, though—this is a psychiatrist’s office.

  That takes the comfort right out of it.

  He distracts himself by staring absently out the window at the signs of spring awash in the bushes that line the property, as he tunes out the lecture he’s being given. He’s heard all about how these things take time and the virtue of patience, and knows Dr. Rosenwald will carry this sermon right through to the end of their hour-long appointment. It isn’t that he doesn’t care, it’s just what happens after ten sessions—they start to lose their mystery.

  He started going back in January, a few days after Austin bashed his face in on Harper’s lawn. He’d already been talked into attending some Narcotics Anonymous meetings by Pete, in lieu of charges following his Christmas Eve burglary of Barnes Drug and Beauty. Dan hoped without the pills, he’d get his head on straight, but one look at his son’s face when he came home from the fight two weeks later—the tears trailing through the blood—he decided it was time for outside help.

  Since then, he’s managed to reconcile with Austin—it remains tense at times, but mostly, things are alright. Neither of them has thrown a punch since that Friday in January. He’s also apologized to his parents and Pete—thanked them for their willingness to help him, instead of punish him for his actions. Most impressively, since starting therapy, he’s talked his way back into his internship at Ashland Community, with the heavy persuasion of his father’s backing and the full release of his medical records, indicating he is continually seeking treatment for a legitimate psychological diagnosis—an anxiety disorder.

  He has a justifiable reason for why he did what he did. There were rapid fire changes in his life—completing medical school, moving home and acclimating to his old life, starting his internship, returning to his job at the drug store, the pressure and expectations that came from his anniversary—and he wasn’t mentally equipped to cope with the stress that came from their culmination. The anxiety manifested as feelings of powerlessness, a sense of confinement, and a need to escape. He was consumed by it.

  In hindsight, he knows it makes sense, but a reason is not an excuse, and all of the reasons in the world won’t change the past.

  Ten sessions in and he still doesn’t know how to explain things to Harper.

  He doesn’t know if he can, or if it will even matter.

  When the secretary rings the bell that indicates their session’s time has expired, Liam’s attention returns to the doctor just as he’s being handed a new prescription for his SSRI.

  “You call me if you need anything—otherwise I’ll see you next Wednesday at four.”

  “Thanks,” he says, shaking the doctor’s hand as he rises from the couch. “See you then.”

  At the receptionist’s desk he hands her his credit card for payment and as they run it, he takes a lollipop from the bowl on the counter and wonders how much she knows.

  “Of all the mental health joints in all the towns in all the world, Liam Barnes walks into mine,” he hears from behind, and he turns to find Clare sitting in the waiting area. He’s clearly caught off guard, his mouth puckered around his lollipop and his eyes wide, and Clare laughs at the sight. “Don’t look at me like that—you can’t be this pretty without being at least a little crazy. But don’t worry, I won’t tell her.”

  Liam pulls the candy from his mouth and shakes his head as he says, “You can tell her—it’s okay.”

  “If it’s really okay, don’t you think you should tell her yourself?”

  “I’m sure you know what went down—she doesn’t want to see me.”

  “Au contraire, darling.” Clare reaches over to brush lint from the shoulder of his crisp button-down. “She misses you—both of you. But you didn’t hear that from me. Just like you should deliver your good tidings of okay-ness, she should really be the one to tell you that.”

  “Sir, your card,” the receptionist chimes in softly.

  Liam takes the card from her blindly as he tells Clare, “If you’re fucking with—”

  “I’m not fucking with you.” She becomes straight-faced and her usual amused tone disappears, just to prove how serious she’s being. “Go to the pub tonight.”

  “What—”

  “Just go. And don’t change—you look good. Seven o’clock sound good?”

  He checks the clock on the wall, then the watch on his wrist—5:03 PM. He takes a breath, then another, and gulps one more as he nods.

  “Alright,” Clare smiles as the doctor appears in the doorway and motions for her to follow him. “I’ll see you then.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “If he doesn’t show, you’re going to let me drink a bunch of Red Deaths on the house and carry me home like the emotional toddler that I am, right?”

  “You really need a new coping mechanism,” Dylan says with a laugh as he approaches.

  “Coping mechanism? Sounds like someone’s been getting schooled by their mental-health-lovin’ lady.”

  Dylan shoos Harper out from behind the bar and takes the cocktail shaker and bottle of Southern Comfort from her hands. Ever since moving into the house, she’s also moved into the pub—more so than before—and, while he adores her, he has to keep up appearances. It’s one thing when it’s ten in the morning and no one’s around, but a handful of guys tried it during Happy Hour and that’s where he had to draw the line with her—not every patron can simply help themselves. He hands her a beer and scurries her to the other sid
e of the bar, the side she belongs on, and plants a wet, sloppy kiss square in the center of her forehead.

  She wipes away the wetness with the back of her hand, takes a pull from the bottle, and shouts at his receding back, “I’m glad we’ve come to this understanding. And you’re disgusting.”

  “I never should’ve introduced you to the mind-erasing joy that is the Red Death,” Clare snorts as she fishes her maraschino cherry out from the bottom of her drink. She pinches it between her teeth and it’s the exact color of her lipstick, her teeth blindingly white in contrast. Harper looks away, but not because of that, and picks at the label on her bottle of beer. “And you best believe we will be having words later regarding the repulsiveness, or lack thereof, of my darling boyfriend.”

  “He’s not—”

  “Heads up, Harp,” Dylan whispers quickly as he moves from one customer to the next, his rag whipping against her hand as he moves. She turns to find the spot that Dylan’s gaze meets in the distance as he moves away, but the spot is coming to her and it’s breathing heavily and it’s shirt is soaked through with sweat—Liam. His eyes are wild and his hair is worse and Harper stops picking at her bottle’s label, her fingers twitching closer, wanting to touch it—he’s always had such soft hair and her hands loved it in kind. Dylan reaches across the bar, though, and covers her hands in his, kisses her cheek and whispers, “Don’t.”

  The silence spreads, and it’s excruciating. It’s not just Liam’s heavy exhales or Harper’s shallow breaths pacing back and forth—it’s as if, person by person, everyone is infected by a contagious lack of sound, and mouths stop and gape and eyes stare. Someone waits for a punch to be thrown, but Austin’s not around, another waits for returned love’s embrace, but that’s not what this is about. No one really knows why they’re waiting at all, because no one really knows anything, but there’s tension and it’s so very palpable, and it’s clear as all hell in the spark of Liam’s eyes and the way Harper can’t meet them.

  “Was there some sort of white collar marathon tonight? I hadn’t been informed,” Clare quips, thinking she’s cleverly cutting the burgeoning silence.

  “Can we—we should go elsewhere,” Harper whispers toward her feet, but anyone able to hear the words knows who they’re for. She leaves her beer and takes her coat, weaving through the crowd, aware that Liam follows just behind, trailing her along with the eyes of everyone present. When she breaks through the doorway and into the chilled dusk, she releases all of the air in her lungs and takes in a burning breath. Then she turns and he’s there, a tangible and solid thing that somehow still surprises her after all these years. “You came.”

  “I didn’t think I was going to. That’s how this happened.” He motions to his disheveled appearance, then pulls her by her coat sleeve and, once she’s willing to follow, takes her around the side of the pub. It’s darkening, on the verge of pitch black, the high walls of the bar cutting off nearly all of the ambient light, and he swears that if it weren’t for the magnetic, frenetic feeling he experiences when Harper’s near, he wouldn’t be able to find her. But he does, and he grabs her hand, takes it with him as he leans back against the side of the building. “But I had to come. I have to do whatever it takes to make you happy again.”

  “I’m not unhappy,” Harper sighs, unsure of its origins—whether it’s from his hand or the cold or simply a way to emphasize her words. “I like my life—where I live and my friends, my hobbies and my job. Things are good.”

  “You could’ve said ‘I’m happy.’”

  “That’s what I said. You just paraphrased what—”

  “No, there’s a difference.” He tightens his grip on her hand and is thankful and sickened with himself, feels things he thinks he’s entirely undeserving of when she doesn’t pull away. Greedily, he swipes his thumb along the back of her hand and the feeling deepens. Her skin feels the same as it always has, and he’s sorry he didn’t treasure the feel of her enough, that his hands somehow thought they could carry on without touching her. “A happy person says they’re happy. Saying you’re not unhappy, though, doesn’t mean that, by default, you’re happy. You could be apathetic.” She lets go of his hand then, but only because the wind that gusts around them has made her fingers numb. Liam doesn’t see it that way. “And there I go again—fucking things—”

  “It’s not—this isn’t why I wanted to see you,” Harper interrupts him, because, if his goal is to make her happy, watching him berate himself isn’t going to help. “I just wanted to—I miss you, Lee. I want us to be—I don’t know—friends, or at least in each other’s lives. You weren’t right about much that night, but you were right about the importance of each other. I want you in my life.”

  “How?” It’s such a simple word, but it’s so heavy coming from Liam’s mouth.

  “I don’t know. I thought we could—it was always so easy for us to just… be.”

  “Nothing’s the same, Harper, and I—”

  “You think I don’t know that?” The words are clipped and her voice climbs in volume in knee-jerk reaction. Immediately, she wants to put the words right back into her mouth and further down, back into the mind from which they slipped. “Jesus. This was—maybe it’s too soon for this—for normal.”

  “We don’t have a normal—not apart from what we were.”

  Silence surrounds them, the gravity of their history and the moment weighing hard.

  “I ran here tonight—toward you and not away,” he says a few long minutes later, after Harper begins toeing the dirt beneath their feet, like she tends to do when she’s anxious—he knows it’s now or never, that she’s done waiting and he won’t be granted another chance. He didn’t even anticipate having this one. “I ran here and all the way, every single step, I thought of how this would play out.”

  “And what did you—”

  “Just let me, okay?” He can see a gleam of moonlight shine in her eyes as she nods, and he’s thankful when a cloud blacks out the light. “I ran and thought and I wished—I wished so fucking hard that I hadn’t been able to run then—that I had stayed.”

  “Liam—” She cuts herself off this time and takes a step toward him. They’re impossibly close—closer than friends or any derivative of such should be. She doesn’t tilt her head up toward his, though, doesn’t offer her lips. It’s only to tentatively cover the hand that he holds flat over his heart with her own—it shakes beneath her touch. “You don’t have to—”

  “No, I do.” Liam swallows thickly as her thumb glides over his knuckles. “I don’t know how much Clare told you about tonight—”

  “Other than that you would be here, what to wear, and when to arrive, she didn’t say much. I think her exact text was, Liam, pub, seven o’clock, no robbery attire.”

  “Dr. Rosenwald—does the name sound familiar?”

  After a moment, she ventures, “Clare’s psychiatrist?”

  “Mine, too.”

  Harper says nothing, but tightens her grip on his hand empathetically. After all she’s been through, she’s not one to judge. If anything, she admires his willingness to seek help.

  “I’ve been seeing him for a couple of months, and he’s—there’s a reason I ran, a reason I did what I did.”

  He takes in a ragged breath, giving himself one final moment to think of how he wants to word things, but not enough time for Harper to ask anything other than a perplexed, “What?”

  “It wasn’t because I needed to find myself. That’s what I thought at the time, what I had convinced myself I was doing, but it wasn’t true. Dr. Rosenwald believes my actions resulted from—he’s diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder. And I know that sounds like such bullshit and it isn’t an excuse but, it’s—I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be with you. I just didn’t want to be with me—couldn’t handle who I was.”

  Slowly, he removes his hand from beneath hers and slips it inside his coat right beneath where her hand rests. As if planned, the moon shows all of itself, and he can
see the realization wash over her as he slips his hand back under hers—palm to palm—and the diamond presses hard against it. He braces himself for her to pull away, but she pushes harder against him, the stone denting her palm, the mirrored side of it doing the same to his. His spine fits rigid against the side of the building from the pressure. He’s frozen. Then, he hears the way that Harper’s always sounded as her tears begin to fall and his mouth opens, closes, opens.

  “The plan was always to propose that night. I was going to get on my knees—both of them, because I was prepared to beg for forever—and ask you to be my wife.” Harper presses out a shaky breath at the admission. “I had the ring for months, and I had it with me that night. I kept it with me all the time, always waiting for the right moment, the right time. And then the right time came and I—” It’s his turn, now, and the tears fall hotly on his cheeks, drip down onto their hands. “I felt like I couldn’t—I couldn’t do it, but for some god awful reason, I felt like I could live without you, but I couldn’t do that either. Now, that’s what it’s ended up. I’ve—it’s all gone.”

  “Liam, I—”

  “Just—I need to finish. Let me just—I need to get this out.” He blubbers out the words and shakes his head and pushes so hard against her palm, trying to push his heart right into it in hopes that she’ll grab hold. “And Austin—god, Austin—he never would’ve done what I did.”

  “This isn’t about Aus—”

  “I didn’t know he loved you. My best goddamn friend and I didn’t know. Looking back, I can now, but he was so good about it—about you and me—us. I don’t know how he could stand to be around us.” Liam lets out a laugh, but it sounds like he’s choking. “What he did—stepping in after I—I can’t blame him. And I can’t blame you. He’s such a good guy—my best friend. You’re both such good people. What Austin did for you and to himself—he was good to you, good for you. It was me that was the problem. I was the only thing standing between you, even if I wasn’t standing here at all.” He moves his hand then, lets it drop down defeated at his side, leaving Harper to hold the ring between her palm and his chest. “And that’s why—that’s why he should have you and you—you should have him. I want you to be with—I want you to be with Austin, if that’s what you want.”