by Ann Garner
He freezes, hands hanging in midair for a moment as he realizes I'm not worried about him getting sick. I'm shaking again, my entire body shivering, and I wrap my arms around myself while I stare at him.
He stares at me for a long moment, and I'm terribly afraid I'm going to get sick again, because the look in his eyes breaks my heart.
Finally he says, “Are you going to get sick again?”
I shake my head, but don't move. He's standing in front of the door, and I would have to touch him to get by him.
“Ok.” He puts his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, watching me the entire time. “Ok. I'm going to wait out here for you.”
My eyes close the minute he steps out of the bathroom, and I sink down into the shower. He can't be here. He needs to go.
But I know he won't, not until he knows I'm okay. So I really need to get my shit together and put on the performance of a fucking lifetime to convince him I'm fine.
But a quick look at my reflection in the mirror and I know it won't matter what I say.
The girl staring back at me is so white she's nearly translucent, except for the red and swollen eyes, and the light scratches along my throat. I wake up, so caught up in the nightmare that I am scratching my throat because in my dreams I am desperately trying to dislodge hands wrapped there before I choke to death.
Cole's sitting at my desk when I step out of the bathroom a few moments later. He's holding the brown prescription bottle of sleeping pills in his hands. I remember dropping them, remember the tiny pings they made as they hit the floor and rolled away. I look down, but they're all gone.
“I picked them up so you wouldn't step on them.” My eyes jerk up to meet his. “Why in the hell do you have a prescription for sleeping pills? Do you take these every night?”
I shake my head no. I move to sit on my bed, pulling my knees up against my chest. If I don't hold myself together I will break into a thousand tiny pieces, completely beyond repair. Cole watches every move I make.
“This is why you didn't want to come home with me.”
I nod my head.
“You knew this was going to happen.”
I nod my head again. He doesn't say anything else and I know he is waiting for me to say something, to offer some sort of explanation. I close my eyes and suck in a deep breath of air. I'm not going to tell him, and the almost argument we had last Friday night will be nothing compared to what I know is about to happen.
“I need you to tell me. Please, Delaney. Please tell me.”
I shake my head, because the words won't come.
“You don't trust me enough.” I know I flinch at his words, but I don't correct him, “You don't trust me enough with your secrets or your heart. You don't trust me enough to let me in, not all the way.”
“Cole,” I choke out his name.
“No.” His voice is sharp. Sharp enough that it cuts right through me and I know what is coming next even before he says it. “If you can't trust me, Delaney, then what are we doing here?”
I watch with wide eyes as he shoves his hand through his hair. “I can't keep going down a path that isn't going to lead anywhere. You either trust me or you don't, Del, but you need to decide right now.” He locks his eyes on mine. “What's it going to be?”
You are stronger, I tell myself. You are not the same person you were before.
“Please don't ask me that, Cole. I choose you. I want you.”
“Delaney, you have to give me something.” His eyes are pleading with me, so dark blue they are almost black.
I didn't get nearly as long with him as I wanted, I think. The days and weeks we had spent together were so short, just a blip in time really. And while I had always known it wouldn't last, I had thought, hoped really, that I would have more than this.
“I told you I was too screwed up for this.” I whisper, my throat so dry that forming the words is painful. Or maybe that's just because my heart is shattering, and the pain is ricocheting up into my throat. “I warned you I couldn't be what you were looking for.”
“Won’t be,” he snaps back. “Not can't. You won't even try to be a part of this relationship.”
“Does it matter?”
His eyes meet mine. “Yes,” he says, tossing the sleeping pills onto my bed. “Yes, because if you were trying then I could work with that. But you won't give me anything, Delaney, nothing more than little snippets of yourself, and that isn't enough.”
“I told..”
“Yeah, I got it, you told me, so this is all my fault.”
“That's not what I said, Cole.”
“You're right. It's not what you said, but then you don't say very much, do you?”
Again the silence stretches between us. Finally I close my eyes. He needs to go. Because the strain of the last couple of days has piled up, and is now mixing with the strain of him standing here telling me it's over, and my restraint against losing control is next to nothing.
“You should go.” I croak, terrified of the tears I feel bubbling up inside of me. “You need to go.”
I force my eyes to open. Force them to meet his. His are blank, devoid of the light that I had fallen for, devoid of anything really, as he looks at me. “If I walk out that door, Del, it's over. We're over.”
Swallowing I say, “I know.”
“And you're okay with that?”
No, my mind screams. No, I’m not okay with that. But I'd rather see the anger in his eyes than the pity, or the disgust. Because I’m not a whole person. Not anymore. That was taken from me, and I'll never get it back. No matter how hard I try.
“Yes,” I finally whisper. “Just go.”
Chapter Eighteen
The remaining days of Thanksgiving break blend together after that. I make it through the remainder of Wednesday, swallowing one of the little white sleeping pills Cole had rescued off the floor. Sleep had been my only saving grace.
He didn't call, and he didn't text. Grace called, but I couldn't answer my phone, couldn't put into words what she would want to hear. So I let the phone slide to voicemail. My mother called on Thanksgiving Day. She danced around the question of how I did the previous three days. I know it hurts them, even though they never say anything. I know they feel the pain I do, just maybe not quite to the extent that I do.
So just like she dances around the actual question, I dance around the actual answer.
“Are you getting a lot of studying done?”
I hear the distinct clink of ice against a glass, and wonder if it’s margaritas or something a little stronger today, that sits in the glass I know she's holding.
“I'm going to start that today.”
“Did you get some turkey? Was the food court even open?”
“Yes, it was. I got something this morning.”
There's another pause in the conversation. “And you've been okay, there on your own?”
“Yes,” I say. “I've been fine here on my own.”
We don't talk much longer after that. She fills me in again on what's going on at home. They had Thanksgiving dinner at the country cub they belong to, which is tradition for all major holidays. I don't believe my mother has ever cooked a day in her life.
She talks about the annual charity event my father’s financial firm puts on every year.
I know it doesn't dawn on her that this wouldn't be something I would want to hear. I honestly think she has put the connection between that event and my trauma out of her mind.
But I let her ramble on; telling me about the Morgan’s who have decided to get divorced after thirty-five years of marriage. Rumor around the club is that Mrs. Morgan found Mr. Morgan stretched out over his secretary on his desk. My mother whispers that she found them naked, like I would have somehow not understood what she meant.
She rambles on for a few more moments after that, but I'm hardly paying attention until she asks me about winter break.
“Are you coming home for winter break?”
“Mom, we've
talked about this,” I say, exasperated. “I won't be coming home. You and Dad can come here though.”
“But where are you going to stay?” She sounds confused, and just as I'm getting ready to tell her I'm going to stay on campus she says, “The campus closes for like seven weeks, doesn't it? That's what the newsletter we got in the mail last week says.” I hear her riffle through some papers.
“Here it is. Yup. The campus will be closed starting December 15th and will not reopen until January 19th. So I guess that's only five weeks, but still. Where will you stay if not here?”
How had I missed this? How had I not known that the campus would be closed for five weeks and I would have nowhere to go? I couldn't go home. Wouldn't go home. I had been planning to start looking for a job during the spring semester and then an apartment before summer break began. But what would I do now?
“Delaney? Are you still there?”
“Yes,” I swallow quickly, trying to choke down what little pride I have left before asking, “Is Dad home?”
She sighs heavily. “Of course he is. It’s Thanksgiving.” Like that makes a difference in our family.
“Mom,” I reign in the biting words I would have said. I'm going to ask my father for help, pissing her off isn't the best move. “Can I talk to him please?”
There's more heavy sighing on her part, but I hear the clink of ice and the click of heels as she moves through the house to find him. She covers the earpiece on her cell phone, but I hear her tell my dad that it’s me and I'm insisting on talking to him.
Insisting?
There's more muffled noises that I'm unable to discern and then my dad comes on the phone.
“Hello, Delaney. Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”
“Yes, thanks. Mom just mentioned that the campus is closed for five weeks over winter break.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, and I'll have nowhere to stay out here.” I pause, swallowing again. “I can't come back there, Dad,” I whisper, voice rough with tears. “I have the money from Grandma Baker, but I don't know that it's enough for an apartment until I can find a job.”
He doesn't even hesitate. “You find you a place and get me the information. I'll cover your rent while you’re in college.”
My eyes slide closed in relief. I’d thought he’d come through, but at his words I feel the tension actually start to slide out of my body.
“Thank you.”
“Delaney, I want you to be happy.” I hear the heaviness in his voice with his next words. “I know you can’t do that here.”
No, I think. I can't do that there. But will I be able to do it here?
***************
I'm looking at apartments online when Grace comes into the room Sunday night. She drops her suitcase, kicks off her shoes, and pins me with a withering stare.
“You broke him.”
Her tone is accusatory. I'd tried to prep myself for this conversation, but knew I was severely unprepared.
“Grace, I'm sorry, I just think it’s better that we end it now, before we get any more involved.”
Which was total bullshit. I was already involved to the point I was drowning in it, but I had chosen this course of action.
“You told me you wouldn't screw with him.”
“Why do you think I ended it now?” I asked softly. “He’ll be okay, Grace, he’ll have girls hanging off his arm in no time.”
She's shaking her head. “He closed himself off. He won't talk to anyone, not even Mom. He tells her everything.”
She's unpacking her suitcase, tucking all the clean clothes she’d brought back with her away. Her movements are jerky and short, her anger evident.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Her head snaps around, eyes boring into mine. “I don't know, Delaney, will we? You should have stuck to your fucking ‘I'm too screwed up for this’ and left him alone.”
“Grace, please.” Oh, God, oh, God, I'm going to lose her too. Broken, I think, he's broken me in so many more ways than I thought possible. Four years later and I'm still letting him have control, letting him take everything from me.
“Please what, Del? Please forgive you for breaking my brothers heart? Because of some stupid secret you refuse to share?”
My eyes close at her words.
“That's your right, Delaney, to keep your secrets to yourself, but you let them control you. You let them control everyone around you and that's not fair to us.”
I have to take several deep calming breaths before I can say anything else. Not that I know what to say, because she's right.
“My father, he ah, he's going to pay for me to have an apartment off campus.”
“Are you serious?” Her eyes are wide, unbelieving, as she stares at me. “When?”
“I’m going to go look at a few places tomorrow after my last class, and work on finding a car.”
She studies me for several moments, her mouth opening and then quickly slamming closed as if she changed her mind on what she wanted to say.
“Fine.”
She grabs her makeup bag and heads into the bathroom. I close my laptop and crawl into my bed. I bury my face in my pillow to keep the tears quiet as I let them fall.
Chapter Nineteen
Winter break is quiet. I use the time to settle into my apartment, and I find a job at a locally owned bookstore not far from my new apartment. Luckily the job gives me something to occupy my time, and keep me from gong insane in the stillness of my new place.
It's an older couple who own the store and they pretty much let me write my own hours, and when business is slow I have access to an unlimited supply of books.
I had moved out of the dorm the week before finals began. The atmosphere in our room had become strained to say the least. Grace had been incredibly hurt by my moving out so suddenly, and coming so quickly on the heels of breaking up with Cole, it appeared to be the final straw.
The final two weeks of my U.S. History class were torture. Cole and Robby had shifted seats, moving several rows down and several seats over. I had known it was coming, but it still hurt. I found myself watching the back of his head more than the professor.
He never looked in my direction.
Not once.
Robby would smile at me every day, but he never spoke to me either. I wished I could go back, wished I could make a different decision. Either to tell him the truth regardless of how it might change his feelings for me, or to keep him at arm’s length entirely, like I had originally planned.
As my father had mentioned I couldn't be happy at home, but now I was terribly afraid that I had ruined any hope for happiness here.
The day before spring semester was to begin, I flipped through a book on photography while keeping a loose eye on the few customers that milled around the store. I was taken off guard by the sudden appearance of Ally.
“Delaney?”
I glanced up to find her standing in front of me in her soft pink nurse scrubs. Her pretty red hair pulled back away from her freckled face in a loose pony tail.