The Falling Between Us

by Ash Parsons

  Grandma sits in the recliner watching her game shows.

  “See?” she says. “I told you it would be good to get out.”

  18

  ACCOMMODATIONS

  The next morning, Ty texts me.

  Hey, thanks for coming over. Sorry I made it weird.

  As if he could make it any weirder than I did, with my kissing him first, with my not letting him kiss me softly in return, with my need to push and pull at him and to lose myself.

  Remembering, I want to sink into the mattress, into the carpet under the bed, through the floorboards, into the dirt under the house.

  I make myself reply instead. The least I can do.

  Are you kidding? I’m the one that made it weird.

  Then I send a picture of a puking smiley face.

  After a moment, Ty replies, Wanna come to the studio?

  I can imagine it, the same studio Joshua went to, maybe even some of the same session musicians. The same decorations, the same furniture.

  The world goes on in repeat.

  No thanks. Don’t feel so hot.

  Pukey face again.

  Ty sends a sad face.

  I should say something else. I can’t think of anything.

  Ty does it for me.

  Can I come get you when we get back?

  A world of hope and a world of what do I want?

  Finally, I reply. Okay.

  Ty sends a wide-open smiley face.

  That night we repeat the one before. Ty comes to get me on his dirt bike. We watch TV and play video games. We make out and then fall asleep on the floor.

  The rest of the week falls into the pattern. Artie sends a car for Ty every morning. Every morning, it drives him into the city and the studio. Every evening, it drives him back.

  Then Ty gets on his dirt bike and comes to get me.

  We spend the nights in Ty’s TV room. We never go past kissing and touching. It becomes this new thread that we’re testing. Seeing if it can be twined into rope, if it will hold us.

  We talk about Joshua a few times, but it’s not long before we decide, without saying so, that we’ll leave the judging to everyone else. Otherwise everything that’s happening just feels so overwhelming. We need each other, need to be okay with it.

  Joshua is always between us, but more like a bridge than like a wall.

  When Ty’s version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” is done, Artie comes by, there’s a bunch of papers to be signed.

  And it’s up to the Internet and the single sales, but by then the YouTube video has quadrupled in views.

  Everyone knows what will happen next. The scope of it.

  A car takes Ty to the airport. He flies out to LA and performs on a few evening talk shows, although he won’t grant interviews.

  The pain is still too new, he says. Artie’s line, like a script she wrote.

  The Birdies eat it up. Ty’s song debuts at number one.

  But Ty comes back home. Artie loves all of it: the tribute to a big brother, the need to heal at home, the devotion of the Birdies and the strength they offer Ty. Everyone a part of the same story, each playing their role.

  Ty keeps coming to get me. Now he has to take a car with a driver, though, for security. An old man with salt-and-pepper hair holds the door for me while Ty waits behind the car’s tinted windows.

  Artie’s edict. Second verse, same as the first. There are to be no pictures of Ty and me together.

  One night, Ty comes in a stretch limo. The tribute album broke records. Ty’s version of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” is still a runaway hit—inescapable. So of course, Artie is arranging songwriters, talking with Ty about an album, and Ty is listening.

  He plays me his own songs sometimes. He can play some really great delta-bluesy rock, the kind of music Joshua always loved. The kind that Artie and the record label told him to ditch because it wasn’t part of the package. “You’re too pretty for the blues,” Artie told him once. But on Ty the style fits somehow. Maybe because everyone knows he lost his brother . . . or because all of the Birdies are still mourning Joshua, and Ty’s undercurrent of sadness speaks to them, makes them feel even more connected to the tragedy and to each other.

  Now the limo door opens, and there’s Ty standing with an armful of roses and that clear-sky smile.

  “Okay?” I say, in my surprise.

  Ty gives me the flowers. He’s dressed in crisp black jeans and a gray T-shirt. Dressy, compared to his usual farm jeans.

  “Thank you—they’re beautiful.” I carry the bouquet out the door with me, feeling like I must have punched out a beauty queen to be holding this many roses.

  Ty takes my hand and tucks it in the crook of his arm. He walks me to the limo, windows tinted blacker than the night.

  “What’s the occasion?” I ask.

  His smile slips, but he puts it back on in an instant. “You’ll see.”

  We climb into the limo. Ty puts up the privacy screen and opens the moonroof. We lean back. The sliver of moon floats over us as the driver cruises on quiet night roads.

  Ty takes my hand in his.

  “Rox, I know we had a deal.”

  The nickname his brother gave me jangles in my ears. Suddenly I’m afraid of the next words out of his mouth. I’m not ready to love him in an openhearted way. And I’m not ready to hear him say he loves me.

  What we’ve had has been nice. Needed, even. But I’m still in love with his dead brother.

  I will always be in love with Joshua Blackbird.

  I freeze, and Ty can feel it.

  “It’s just,” he says, “it’s so easy to be with you.”

  I let out my pent-up breath.

  The limo cruises through the night.

  “Do you know what today is?” Ty asks.

  My mind is blank. It’s not his birthday, it’s not my birthday, it’s not Joshua’s birthday. It’s a Tuesday, I think, but I can’t promise to even know that much.

  It’s just another day in an endless procession of them.

  I can feel the moment stretch as Ty waits. Can feel the moment in his muscles, when he realizes that I have no idea what he’s talking about. Can feel it pulling a silent tension into his arms.

  The limo, the roses, his clothes.

  Has Ty’s video of “Orpheus’s Last Lyric” hit another ridiculous number?

  “I . . .”

  Ty lets go of my hand.

  “You don’t know.”

  I shake my head. Can’t pretend knowledge I don’t have.

  Ty shifts away from me. The night air is suddenly cool on my side where he had been.

  He pushes a button, and the privacy screen lowers.

  “Take us home,” Ty tells the driver.

  We arrive at Livie’s McMansion. Birdies shout and press at the limo as it slows.

  “Mom says we should post no-loitering signs and hire a security guy for the house. Full-time.” Ty’s voice is carefully pitched. Newscaster voice.

  Flesh presses against the windows as the limo eases forward. The driver honks the horn.

  “Probably a good idea,” I say. “Considering.”

  Behind the house, Ty gets out of the car. He comes to get my door, and I move as fast as I can up the steps and through the door.

  Ty still won’t look at me, a mask of neutrality on his face. The roses feel ridiculous in my arms. Heavy, like an accusation.

  “Ty,” I start, “I’m sorry—I haven’t been very—” A parade of words fills the blank I can’t say.

  Loving.

  Present.

  Attentive.

  Good.

  Careful with you.

  Ty’s shoulders droop, but he smiles at me. It’s not a wide-open sky.

  “Come on.” He leads the way down the hall,
to the TV room.

  “I feel like an idiot now.”

  He opens the door.

  There’s another bunch of flowers on the coffee table. Silver, red, and white balloons on metallic ribbons float above the vase. One of them says Happy Anniversary!

  A satin-edged red blanket is spread picnic-style on the carpet. A redneck wedding reception is laid out on it.

  Anniversary?

  He’s been so calm, so easygoing. So available to me in spite of everything. So wise with his grief, with how he expresses it. So consistent, so mature. I forgot how old he is.

  Or rather, how young. Am I the first girl he’s kissed?

  “Our anniversary,” I say. “Um. One month, right?”

  It runs though me like actual pain. In the center of my chest is a mass of nerves, a ball of razored twine, my heart a red, raw mass of blood and feeling.

  My first flowers were a bouquet of wild daisies Joshua gave me in ninth grade. And a card with a poem he’d written inside. The basis for his first hit.

  “Ty,” I start to say, turning around to face him.

  He startles me, surging forward, stopping whatever I would say with his lips. Grabbing on to me like he means it.

  “Ty,” I try, between kissing and breathing.

  “Stop,” he says. “You don’t have to say it, Roxy.”

  I bite the words back.

  Ty nods. His eyes are shielded, and so is the half smile he gives me. “We can go back to not talking about it.”

  “Okay,” I whisper. But it’s not. I see that.

  The world is spinning fast.

  19

  THE HOLE IN THE NET

  We pretend to go back to the way we were. Time goes by, and I don’t mark it. Neither does Ty. He finishes the album. I keep searching Birdie sites.

  Grandma starts grumbling about me getting a job. About me going out. Getting a GED. Maybe going to community college. About how I need to have a plan for life.

  Ty gets busier. Artie flies him out to LA, to meet people, to record more songs—out there this time. Livie goes with him, for now. Although I wonder how long it will be before she signs guardianship over to Artie or if Ty will emancipate himself just like his brother did. Livie will want control over the money for as long as possible. She’s learned how to hover.

  Ty assures us he knows what he’s doing. Says it’s what he wants. The album, the fame, the everything-that-comes-next.

  Even though he still calls, even though we still get together when he’s around, it’s different.

  I can already feel the distance between us, from the one-month anniversary. Even though he tried to take it back. It showed us that it was untenable, what we had.

  Then one day he’s leaving to go to LA to stay. No more back-and-forth; he has to focus on finishing the album and promotion. Livie’s going with him. He didn’t ask me to come.

  I don’t know what I would have said if he had.

  He comes to say good-bye on his dirt bike. In my grandma’s yard, he says he’ll see me soon. He’ll call all the time. And any time I want to come out, he will be so happy to see me.

  I know it’s over by the closed way he looks at me. Despite his words. He wants more than I can offer.

  “It’s going to be okay, Rox,” he says.

  I want to scream that he’s found a way out of the pain too soon. That this isn’t real, isn’t the way to do it. But life goes on, the world goes on.

  “I love you,” he says. “However it needs to be. I love you. I have since we were kids, you know.”

  I wonder at Ty’s heart, at how he doesn’t close himself off from me, even now. How he’s so capable, so ready to love.

  If I’ll ever experience those feelings again. Or if I want to.

  Lillian Leitzel knew what she wanted. Always. She got it: a private dressing room, a red carpet rolled into the center ring. If it was muddy, an attendant would carry her all the way to her rope.

  She demanded a private railcar with a piano. As the Queen of the Circus she insisted she be assigned a personal maid.

  She was a tiny, muscular tornado. Four foot nine and weighed ninety-five pounds. She had incredibly small feet, which added to her fairylike impression as she moved through the air.

  I can imagine her, a real person, here now. Watching me with her hands on her hips.

  She would know what to do. What she wanted. She wouldn’t be trapped in an empty expanse.

  I imagine her walking into the center ring, blowing kisses. A roustabout would hold out the rope.

  “Did you get it right this time?” she’d ask from behind the smile for the crowd.

  The roustabout kneeled to let her stand upon his leg. “Yes, Miss Leitzel.”

  She hit him the last time he got her rigging wrong. She had stormed into the men’s tent, screaming and hitting. Shoving men twice her size aside until she reached him.

  And then she’d later apologized to the others. Handed out twenties like they were penny candies.

  Lillian Leitzel knew who she was. She knew what she could do.

  She would never be trapped, suspended in space. Like I am now.

  After Ty leaves for LA, I sink into an endless series of days filled with empty routine. I add a few Ty-centric Birdies to my Tumblr to see him how they see him.

  Ty sends me an advance link to the first single. It’s good, but not great. He probably knows that, but it doesn’t matter. It’ll go platinum, easy.

  And it does. The critics say it’s a good “first effort”—damning the whole thing with faint praise, but being gentle. It’s obvious to everyone that he’s not his brother.

  Grandma and I stay up late to watch one of Ty’s TV appearances. It’s hard to believe it’s him, even though I’ve already seen the transformation that Artie can wring from a skinny kid.

  He looks more cool, more sophisticated than he ever was. Heavy work boots and tight black jeans. New haircut, shaved sides, long in front.

  It makes me tense, watching him perform. Seeing him like that.

  I don’t realize I’m sitting up, fists on my knees, letting out tense sighs until the song is over and Grandma laughs at me.

  “There, safe, on the other side,” she says, muting the commercial that follows the audience applause. “He made it after all.”

  “Made it?” I can’t keep the edge of venom out of my voice. “He just got out there. It’s all just begun for him.”

  Grandma shakes her head as she levers herself out of the recliner. “Ty saw it all. He’ll be more prepared than Joshua.”

  Her eyes mist up anytime she says his name. “Joshua, bless him. He was so feeling. All heart, that child.” She dabs at her eyes with the Kleenex she keeps tucked in her sleeve. “Bless Joshua,” she sighs, tucking the tissue back.

  Grandma grabs the handle of her oxygen tank and pulls it behind her as she shuffles toward the hall.

  “Nearly forgot. Something came for you,” Grandma calls from the hallway. “I put it on your bed.”

  I turn off the TV and the lights, lock the doors, and walk back to my room.

  A large white envelope sits on my bed. The return address is the seal for Bayard University, a private school outside Atlanta.

  Air huffs though my nose.

  “Subtle, Grandma,” I mutter. But I flip it over and tear it open anyway.

  It doesn’t make sense. I stare at the letter, on official letterhead, trying to figure it out.

  My eyes fall to the first line.

  I am writing to inform you that you have been granted provisional admission to the College of Liberal Arts at Bayard University.

  When I saw the envelope, I thought my grandma had written away for it. A typical, general information packet, probably with application materials.

  My eyes flick over the letter. Phrases jump ou
t: upon successful completion and summer and fall enrollment.

  It doesn’t make any sense. My grades were always okay, good but not good enough for me to be wooed for some kind of early acceptance program. What’s more, I haven’t exactly been doing my online coursework since coming back to Georgia.

  And I haven’t applied for any admission to any college anywhere. Provisional or early or regular or any of it.

  Then I see the thing that changes everything else, that shakes my brain loose. On the page where it breaks down the fees owed in the future—tuition, room and board for the dorms and meal plan—on the line labeled Amount Due, it reads Paid in Full.

  Every. Single. Item.

  Anger surges through me. Ty. It had to be him.

  If I want to go to college, I’ll do it myself.

  I pull out my cell and call Ty.

  “Rox?” His voice is muffled. In the background I hear voices of others. He’s probably at an after-party, celebrating his performance on The Late Late Show.

  “I don’t need your charity.” My voice is shaking. The sudden flood of so much emotion after the prolonged numbness makes me feel stronger than I have since Joshua died.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know if I even want to go to college, so your paying for it is making me hate the idea!”

  I’m furious. It’s none of his business if I swim or if I drown in my sorrow.

  Some things you never get over. Never.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ty’s voice is open. Sincere in a way that LA hasn’t trained out of him yet.

  “You didn’t apply to Bayard for me? Didn’t pay the entire tuition?”

  “What? No, Rox. Not that I wouldn’t—you can always call me for help—”

  “I’ll stand or fall on my own, jerkface.”

  “I know that,” Ty says. His voice is trying to soothe an enraged bull. “I know. Hell, you’ve always been like that. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  And he doesn’t. That openness. I would know if he were lying.

  Artie? Did Artie do this? To make sure I stay out of the picture?

  I hang up on Ty. Call Artie before he can tell her I’m raging.