by KL Hughes
“Because I don’t want to hurt you!” The words rip free. Alex shakes her head, shrugs. Feels uncomfortable in her own house, her own room, her own skin. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” She doesn’t know how to fix this, how to hold them together. Hold herself together. “I didn’t… I don’t.”
Kari’s expression crumples. She crosses back to the bed and drops onto the end of it. “I know that,” she says. “I know. But you are hurting me, Alex.”
Alex reaches across the bed, and this time, Kari doesn’t pull away. She holds Kari’s hand so tightly she imagines it must hurt, but she can’t help herself. “I love you, okay?” The words hiccup across her lips, broken by the sobs trapped in her throat and chest. “I do.”
As she turns her hand in Alex’s, Kari locks their fingers together. The action only makes Alex ache more, thins her out further until she feels herself begin to tear in places. “Not the way I need you to love me,” Kari says, and Alex closes her eyes. Doesn’t deny it.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Be honest,” Kari says, letting go, then she stands. Hovers. “Because I can’t keep doing this, Alex. Making myself sick over all the things you’re not saying.” She crosses to the door and lingers in the open doorway, her back to Alex. “Wondering how often you’re thinking of her when you’re looking at me.”
Alex feels her last bits of resistance shatter, no longer able to hold herself together against the stretching. The truth slices through her insides and through all the parts of her tied to the woman now leaving the room, now leaving her behind. The small spaces between them suddenly feel like miles, and Alex thinks maybe they haven’t been flung apart after all.
Maybe gravity never held them together in the first place.
Chapter 11
The snow falls in sheets across the windshield, making it difficult to see. The wipers can’t keep up, so the car crawls along the street, and Charlee is glad she isn’t the one driving. They left Gabby’s early enough that they are thankfully only a block from the loft now, but it’s been a long, slow holiday drive.
“Cam?”
“Huh?”
“Are you going to answer me?”
“Sorry,” Cam says, never taking her eyes from the road. “It’s just hard to see.”
“Yeah, it’s really coming down.” Charlee shifts in the passenger seat, faces her more fully. “So you think I should tell her, then? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since Vinny came by the other day.”
“No shit. It’s all you’ve talked about.”
“Well, I’m trying to get your opinion.”
Cam scoffs. “No, you’re trying to get a particular opinion.”
“Yeah,” Charlee says. “Yours. What’s wrong with you? Are you mad at me or something?”
“I’m trying not to drive us into a fucking pole, Charlee.”
Charlee shrinks back against the passenger-side door. “Fine,” she says before snapping her mouth closed and crossing her arms over her chest.
They make the rest of the trip in tense silence, but as soon as they are out of the parked car, Charlee starts again. “Why do you keep snapping at me?”
“I’m just in a bad mood. Let it go.”
They stomp their shoes against the mat once inside Charlee’s building, then step into the elevator.
“No, you’ve been like this the last few days, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I did. So why don’t you just tell me so I can apologize and we can move on?”
Cam leans against the wall of the elevator, her eyes ringed with exhaustion and one hand rubbing at her thigh. “If only it were that easy.”
“Oh my God!” Charlee huffs. “Just spit it out, already.”
“Okay.” Cam turns to face her. “I’ll fucking spit it out, then.”
The elevator dings with their arrival before she can utter another word, and Charlee walks out, already pulling her keys from her pocket. Cam follows in silence, but as soon as they’re inside, she picks up where she left off.
“I’m tired of this,” she says, moving past Charlee into the kitchen. She limps a bit as she goes, massaging her thigh with every step. “I’m tired of having to hear about this over and over and over again.”
“Oh, well, sorry for wanting to talk to my best friend about what I’m going through,” Charlee says, and Cam slams her hand down on the countertop.
“Let me finish!”
Charlee jumps at the words. She hasn’t seen Cam this angry in a long time, and it makes her insides squirm.
“Don’t ask me what’s wrong if you don’t want to listen.”
Charlee crosses her arms and holds herself. She feels sufficiently scolded. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” The sigh that shakes through Cam’s lips is heavy and hard, and Charlee shifts back and forth on each foot as she waits for whatever is about to come out of her best friend’s mouth.
“Everything’s been about you and Alex since she came back,” Cam says. “And whatever, you know. It’s a lot. I get that. But I’ve had a lot going on, too, and normally you’d be aware of that. You’d be present for it. But you’re not. You haven’t asked me about the set design I’ve been doing for the winter showcase, even though you know how much it means to me. You didn’t ask how it went with my mom, even though you know I went to visit her the other day. We still can’t stand each other, by the way.”
She hisses a bit as she sits on a barstool and rolls up the leg of her baggy sweatpants, unlocks and then detaches her prosthesis. She leans it against the kitchen bar and slides her prosthetic sock down to reveal reddened skin and a large blister on the side of her thigh.
“You haven’t asked me about this.” She points to her leg. “Even though I told you my leg was starting to pinch and I’d probably have to get a new one soon. You haven’t asked me about any appointments or even offered to go with me like you usually do. All you can fucking talk about lately is Alex. And I feel invisible.”
Tears prick in Charlee’s eyes. Her heart sinks into her stomach and burns. She takes a step forward, eyes fixed on the angry red of Cam’s thigh. “Let me help you.”
“No.” Cam bites out the word. “Stop. I’m trying to say something here.”
The floor squeaks beneath Charlee’s damp boots as she steps back again and drags her gaze up from Cam’s thigh to her eyes.
“For five years, I haven’t known what to say to you about this,” Cam says. “I tried to reassure you in the beginning. Tried to tell you everything would be okay. But you didn’t want to hear that.” She massages the sore skin around her blister. “Then, after a while, you acted like you wanted to move on, so I tried to encourage you to do that. But then you didn’t want to hear that either. I couldn’t win with you. I’ve spent the last five years learning how to read your mood on this just so I could know what to say in case it came up.”
“I—”
“Still talking,” Cam says, shooting her a hard glare.
Charlee snaps her mouth closed again and huffs through her nose.
“And then we just stopped talking about it altogether. About Alex. About entire years of our lives together. And then someone would slip, say something, remember the shit we were supposed to forget, and everything in our lives would have to grind to a halt again, and I’d be left trying to figure out how to fix it. What to say to you. And it was like I didn’t lose anyone at all. Like your mom didn’t lose anyone. Like Alex wasn’t someone we loved too.”
“That’s not fair,” Charlee says, forcing a word in.
“No, you’re right. It’s not.” Cam shrugs a shoulder. “It’s not fair. Nothing is fair. Nothing about the way the world works is fair, Charlee, and neither is the position you’ve put me and everyone else in since you guys broke up.”
“And I’m sorry about that, but—”
“Me and your mom. V
inny. All of us,” Cam says, cutting her off again. “You and Alex have made a mess of things, and that’s something only you and Alex can fix. You can’t just keep dragging the rest of us through the mess and expect us to keep telling you it’s okay. So just figure it out. Do something. Because I’m tired.” Cam swipes a hand over her ponytail and releases a thick sigh. “I’m tired of all this hurting and crying, tired of you being miserable and Alex being miserable. All of us being miserable about this. About this one thing that actually can be fixed. But we can’t make you do it, and we can’t do it for you. You have to do it. You and Alex.”
“Cam.” Charlee takes a step forward again, and when Cam doesn’t call her off, she takes another. And then another. When she’s finally standing next to her, she timidly places a hand on Cam’s shoulder. “I’m…”
“You’re going through shit,” Cam says, nodding. “You’ve been going through shit. And that’s okay. You have every right to go through it, and I’ll be there with you. Every step of the way. I’ve got your back. You know that. But I have shit too, Charlee, and every once in a while, I just need us to take a break from your shit and focus on mine.” She reaches up, wipes through a stray tear, and turns her head away from her. “I just really need to not be invisible right now.”
“I need to fix this,” Alex says, face buried in her hands and elbows propped up on her knees. Her head throbs as she sits on Vinny’s couch, stomach sloshing with too much bourbon. They were supposed to be at the Oyster Bar, having dinner. Vinny was supposed to be meeting Kari. This night was supposed to be a beginning, a happy beginning. Instead, Alex is drunk, Vinny’s tipsy, and neither of them has any clue where Kari is.
“You need to listen to her.” The hand on her back is warm, too warm, as Vinny rubs slow circles between Alex’s shoulder blades. “Let her go.”
“I feel like I broke her, Vinny.”
“Well, maybe you did a little,” Vinny says. “Sometimes we hurt people. It doesn’t make you a bad person, Alex.”
“We just need some time, I think. I need some time. Some distance.”
“Distance from who? From Charlee?”
Alex doesn’t say anything but simply stands and paces in front of the couch. She props her hands on her back, just above her hips, and her head pounds with every scuff of her boots against the floor. She can’t look at Vinny when she finally nods in answer.
“Yeah, that’ll work.” Vinny’s indignant snort makes Alex bristle.
“What do you know?”
“I know you had five fucking years of distance, and you’re still in love with her,” Vinny says before downing the last bit of her bourbon. “You think not seeing her for a while will cure you of that? It’s not a disease, Alex. It’s just a fact, and the sooner you and Charlee stop ignoring that fact, the better for everyone, including Kari.”
“You don’t even know her.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t know her, but I know she deserves better than this.”
Alex’s words slur as she glares at her sister. “Better than me, you mean?”
“Better than being second best.”
Vinny lets the words slice through the tension in the air, lets them knock the wind out of Alex, lets them linger. She carries her glass into the kitchen, and Alex can only stare at her back and watch her go. When her lungs begin functioning again, she clomps into the kitchen after her, hands tightened into fists and a storm brewing in her chest. Her temper has always been terribly short with alcohol.
“We’re not going to do this,” Alex says when she enters the kitchen.
Vinny pours herself a new drink. “Seems to me we’re already doing it.”
“Why are you being like this?”
Vinny leans against the counter. “Because I want you to be real about this. I want you to wake up.”
“I’m awake,” Alex says bitterly, wiping at her brow and pulling at the neck of her sweater. Her face feels flushed, her body overheated. She’s on the verge of passing out.
Vinny nudges her toward the back door. “Outside, before you keel over.”
Alex lets herself be shuffled out onto the small slab of concrete that makes up Vinny’s miniature backyard-slash-smoking-pad. The cold bites at her face in the best way, and Alex is relieved to be washed in a wave of winter. She breathes in frigid bursts of air as Vinny lights a cigarette and leans against the brick wall of her apartment building.
“You need to be honest.” She takes a deep drag, and smoke billows out from her nostrils.
“Be honest.” Alex scoffs. “Be honest. Why does everyone keep telling me to be honest?”
When Vinny only stares at her in response, stares as if she can see straight into Alex’s soul, Alex thinks she might explode.
“What?” she shouts. “What do you want me to say? What?” She paces the concrete slab like a caged animal, distraught and desperate for release. Her voice rises with every word. “You want me to stand out here in the freezing fucking cold and what? Wax poetic about what it’s like to love someone and lose them? It’s over. It’s done. She has someone, Vinny. And so do I. It’s done. So what do you want me to say? Why can’t you just let it die?”
Her cigarette sizzles as it hits the snow, and Vinny kicks off the brick wall. Her words shake through her lips in small bursts of white mist. “Because if this dies, Alex, if you let this go and you don’t at least try, a part of you is going to die right along with it. And you won’t ever come back from that.”
Still pacing, Alex shakes her head. She runs trembling fingers through her hair.
“You,” Vinny says. “The you I know and love. My baby sister. You’ll be gone just like you’ve been gone for years.”
Alex whirls on the spot, arms tossed out, open, as if she expects the weight of the world to fall into them. “I’m right here!”
The words make harsh echoes between and around them, bouncing off bricks hard enough to leave prints behind. Alex winces at the sound. Vinny, though, is unshaken. Her voice is a firm fist around Alex’s heart.
“No, you’re not.”
For several long moments, they stare at each other, both silent and coiled tight with tension. The only sounds are those of the city.
“I’d love to let this go, Alex,” she says. “I’d love to mind my own business and stay the hell out of it, but I can’t. I can’t because staying with Kari is a mistake, and you know it. Because you and Charlee are complete fucking boneheads who can’t get it together.” Vinny closes the gap between them and places her hands on Alex’s shoulders. “Because you’re my sister. My family. My responsibility. And you’re broken. You’ve been broken for a long time now.”
Nausea roars in Alex’s gut. Burns in her throat. She wraps her hands around Vinny’s elbows, uses her sister to brace herself, and collapses just the tiniest bit. The cold doesn’t feel so relieving anymore. She exhales hard, and the scent of bourbon burns her nostrils.
“I feel like I have to fix it,” she says, voice dropping to a whisper. “Kari. I feel like I… Vinny. I don’t know what to do.”
Vinny clears a track of tears from Alex’s cheek, tears Alex hadn’t even realized she was crying. “Kari will be okay,” she says. “She’ll find someone new. You need to let her go.”
“I broke her heart.”
“This isn’t about breaking anyone’s heart. It’s just about the truth, and the truth is that it’s Charlee. It’s always been Charlee. It’s always going to be Charlee.”
Alex sniffles between her sister’s palms, grips her arms like she’ll crumble to dust if she doesn’t. “I never stopped loving her,” she says.
A small, wet laugh slips through Vinny’s lips. “I know, kid.”
“I feel like I’m drowning.” Alex’s voice breaks around the words. “Like someone’s holding my head underwater.” Fresh tears fall as she closes her eyes and leans in, lets Vinny pull
her into an embrace. “Like I’m dying but I never die.” She rests her face against Vinny’s shoulder. “I’m just a kick away from breathing, but I can’t ever get to the air.” She presses in harder, clutches at the back of Vinny’s thermal, and chokes on a hard sob. “I can’t get to the air.”
Vinny runs her hands up and down Alex’s back. The warmth of her touch soothes her. “You will.”
Clouds loom overhead as they step outside of Pappy’s, the sky darkening by the minute. The air is wet and sharp and freezing, but Charlee’s stomach is full, Alex is at her side, and she feels warmer than she has in a long time.
“Was it as good as you remembered?”
Alex smiles. “Better.”
“Were you even able to taste it? You put so much hot sauce on it, your taste buds have probably been burned off.”
“I ate it the right way. You’re the one who missed out.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I’m glad we did this, Charlee.”
Charlee looks over at her. Without allowing time to second-guess herself, she moves closer and loops her arm through Alex’s. “So am I.”
Their early dinner had gone smoothly, familiar banter punctuating easy conversation, but it remained at surface level. Playful. Charlee hadn’t been able to bring herself to punch through the ice and dive in.
A crack of thunder splits the air, drawing their attention to the sky. “Should we call a cab?”
Charlee bites her lip at the question, chews on it. She knows they should, but if they do, then her time with Alex will be over much sooner. “The loft isn’t too far,” she says. “I think we can make it. You can call a cab from there. What do you think?”
Alex agrees without hesitation, and they make their way down the snow-covered sidewalk. They’re only a block from the loft when the storm decides it’s tired of waiting and the sky wrenches open. Sleet pelts down on them, pricking and then melting in, and Charlee lets out a shriek. She takes off running, arms thrown over her head and Alex right beside her.