Here For You

by Denise Muniz

  Just then, I heard steps getting closer. Not even a few seconds later, James was joining me on the dust covered blanket. I didn’t want to call James but I’d needed him here, and knowing that he wasn’t far made me go for it. I’d also needed to thank him so much for what he’d created outside my house. I was hoping that when I called him he would come over, but since he’d left me on the phone for a while I thought it wasn’t going to happen. Sometimes, in the past, I’d call him and just stay silent. He’d automatically know that something was wrong and come over.

  “You didn’t have to come.” I told him, although I wanted him here and was happy that he was.

  “Oh, shut up.” I knew he was joking. “I thought you’d be sleeping by now.”

  Oh sleep, you had been good to me, but no more. “I couldn’t, especially not after I saw what you did.”

  We were quiet for a few minutes. James knew that I loved to sit in silence. But not that much silence. “That’s nothing, it’s okay. Was that the only reason you called?”

  Why couldn’t he ever just wait? Oh yeah, that’s right, because he was James. He needed to get to the point of everything. “What, I can’t call you now?” I snapped, then relaxed. “And I really wanted to say thank you, James.”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Becca.”

  I didn’t know why I called him. I wanted to hear his voice, someone I knew cared about me. “I don’t know, but part of the reason was because of the ramp,” I told him. It was the truth.

  “Bullshit. What’s the other half?”

  I turned my head toward him to find him looking at me. “You can’t call bullshit. It’s the truth.”

  He sat up, leaning on his arms. His muscles were popping out as they held his body up. Even in the state I was in, my mind wandered to his amazing physique.

  “I just did,” he argued. “You don’t talk to me for over a month and now you don’t know why you called me. I believe that part of the reason was because of the ramp, but that’s not all of it. So yeah, I call bullshit.”

  I couldn’t do this right now, but when I tried to get up he grabbed me by the wrist. “You’re not going anywhere, Becca.” He was serious. Like, deadly serious. “Talk to me and stop running for once.”

  So I did nothing but sit back down next to him and crossed my legs. “What do you want me to say?” I asked him.

  “Are you shitting me? Tell me why you called me just now! Tell me why you’re so off with me! Tell me why you haven’t spoken to me in the last fucking month!” He was getting that angry aura that hovered over him whenever he was getting pissed.

  I stood up. “Fine! BECAUSE YOU MAKE IT ALL REAL!”

  He just looked at me, confused. I paced back and forth like a true crazy person, and felt a few drops of water hit my face. Great, it was going to start raining soon. I needed to hurry this up. “James, it would have been hard talking you. I know that sounds stupid, but you are my reality and my dreams altogether.”

  I didn’t bother to look at him because if I did then I would stop talking and I didn’t want to stop. Not now. I had never told James this. Heck, I’d never even mentioned something along the same lines as this to him. These were my feelings about him I was spilling.

  “I took my Dad to the doctors almost a month ago and they said that his diabetes had gotten worse, saying that if he didn’t start taking care of himself then he would end up dead. Soon. What was I supposed to do about that? How was I supposed to talk about that? This is my father. You of all people know how I feel about him. He can’t leave me, he’s not supposed to leave me.” The last part came as a whisper.

  I pointed to my chest as the tears ran down my face but I wasn’t going to stop. The rain was coming down hard now. “Grey didn’t bother to ask questions, maybe because he knew I didn’t want to talk about it, but I appreciated it. So I tried to spend as much time with him as possible. I barely even spoke to my dad because I was furious with him.”

  I couldn’t stop the emotions that were taking over and I didn’t know how to control them. “I couldn’t talk to you because you would have made me face the reality of the situation. I enjoyed being with Grey because he took me away from all of this shit. Everything.” I waved my arm around. “But if I spoke to you, you wouldn’t stop talking about it. You would have told me to try and figure it out, that there’s nothing that can be done, it’s life. That’s not the type of shit I wanted to hear then, or even now. I kept that shit in my head right up until almost a week ago, when he landed in hospital. The same fucking night Grey told me that he was being transferred to another office, moving away. The same fucking night he told me that he’d cheated on me, because of us,” I told him, pointing to him then me. “Do you know what that’s like to have another person that you care for just up and leave? Then to have the doctors tell you that your father is terminally ill, that there’s nothing that can be done for him?”

  The whole scene was playing in my head now. From my peripheral vision I could see James still rooted to the same spot where I’d left him. “This shit happens to me, James. With everyone. I’m fucking cursed like this.” I stopped pacing. Instead, I gripped the back of my neck with both hands, lacing my fingers together as I looked up. My breathing was controlled as I allowed the raindrops to flow down my face. It was so soothing, just what I needed at that moment.

  “First, my mother left me. Then you left me. Grey left me. And Emma is leaving me. And the one person I thought I was going to be with forever, or close to forever, is leaving me permanently soon. Who knows if it’ll be a couple more days or another month? How can someone take so much loneliness? I’m scared. I don’t want to face it, any of it.” I didn’t want to say it, but I’d held it in for far too long. I might as well let everything out now. “Then, when I saw you and you were with an actual girlfriend, I was shocked and…heartbroken. It shouldn’t have mattered with what I’m facing, but I couldn’t help it. I don’t know how you feel about me, but…”

  No, I couldn’t say it. I peeked up, looking to the universe, but all I could see was the rain as it continued to dance on my face. I closed my eyes fully, wishing for it to cleanse the emotions I was feeling.

  Suddenly, I felt a pair of cold hands on my cheeks. Looking down from the sky, I opened my eyes to see James looking right at me with eyes I knew so well, but this time, they had a different emotion behind them.

  JAMES

  I couldn’t sit any longer, hearing her spill her heart out to the sky. I knew she was scared, but I didn’t realize it was because of everything. Even shit that had happened back then. I had been gone for a few years now, and it still affected her. I wished she‘d told me earlier. Would it have made a difference?

  Standing up from the wet blanket on the grass, I couldn’t help but stand in front of her. I watched as her eyes closed, her head tilted toward the stars. Her long dark lashes were kissing her cheeks, which had turned a light pink from the breeze and rain. Her light green jacket was hugging her body, keeping her as warm as it could. The rain was streaming down her face, dripping from her chin down to her neck and soaking her completely in a matter of seconds. Her anger from earlier was no longer present. My hand reached up to her face and touched it. She started to talk about my current girlfriend but stopped. I wanted her to keep going.

  She looked down from the sky and landed on my eyes. The tears that were visible earlier had mixed with the rain. “Finish what you were saying,” I told her. I wanted to hear it all.

  She just stood quietly, didn’t move, didn’t gesture, just stood there.

  Nothing.

  I skimmed my thumbs across her jaw, up to her bottom lip, and pulled it from her teeth. Her lips were plump, and at that moment I envied all of those that had got to kiss that perfect mouth.

  Shaking my head lightly, I realized that I had a girlfriend.

  Turning over a new leaf.

  I was taking Becca’s advice, but it seemed like I couldn’t follow through. When it was just us two, it was l
ike we were in a different world. I only saw her when she was around. And it was like I could completely be myself around her too. I remembered the kiss at the pool party, and getting to feel her beautiful, plump, delicious lips, and all I wanted to do was feel them again.

  Time stopped as I saw how nervous she was. She truly believed she was lonely. She believed that this world was out to get her. She didn’t see that everyone in her life was still here. We might have been a little far away, but we had never left her. I never left her. In my heart I knew one of the reasons behind the move was to keep my distance. Becca was not just some random chick, she was the chick. But how do you tell your best friend that? How do you know they feel the same way? How do you say that they were one of the reasons you left? I couldn’t do it, so I did other things to take my mind off of her, and they’d worked.

  I was shocked to see her move a few steps back. My hand fell from her face to my side. “What are you doing?” she asked me, hugging herself. The wind had picked up a little more, making the rain sway to the side. It was smacking us, hard, and with the cold breeze it was freezing out.

  But I wasn’t letting that stop us. “Finish what you were saying.”

  She was facing me, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. She was looking past me. “It doesn’t matter right now. I already told you everything.”

  Fucking keeping her emotions inside, that’s why I never did anything. Whenever I felt like I saw some sort of feeling toward me she backed up and played the friend role. But not this time. She needed to be a fucking woman about it. So I took those two to three steps toward her as the rain continued to soak my body.

  “Yes, it does fucking matter.” Since she wouldn’t say it, I’d ask. “Does it bother you that I have a girlfriend?” I didn’t know why it would matter anyway. She’d always had boyfriends around me, but somehow I felt like this was way different.

  She stood quietly, then, in a blink of an eye, she passed by me, bending down to get her drenched blanket from behind us. After grabbing it from the ground, she rolled it up, draped it over her arm, and then walked past me again toward her house. She couldn’t be fucking serious.

  “Becca!” I yelled, but she didn’t stop, continuing up the steps. “Rebecca!”

  She paused with her hands on the doorknob at the mention of her full name. I knew she hated her name but I had no choice. Too bad it did nothing, because she dropped the blanket, swung open the door and went inside.

  Standing on the front yard, I debated what to do. Did I walk home? Or did I go inside and get to the bottom of this? Why was it at moments like this I always wanted to take the easy way out? I knew I fucking wanted to. I wanted to say, “Fuck you, Becca. I’ll be here for you and your dad but after that we go back to friends.” But it would never be the same after tonight. It’d be too fucking awkward.

  Shit with Juliana was going pretty good, but then if I had to consciously remind myself of her then what did that mean? How long would we last? As I stood there with the stars above my head, I looked to my left toward my mom’s house, and to my right at Becca’s house.

  My feet just walked.

  I could hear the wet grass under my sneakers as the rain continued to come down. All of those other decisions in my life didn’t really compare to the one I had just made.

  BECCA

  What did he want me to say? Did he think I would just shout at the top of my voice that, yes, I had gotten upset when I saw his girlfriend? Who was I to say that? After all the time that I’d had a boyfriend, how the fuck could I get upset with that shit? He wasn’t mine, nor had he ever been my boyfriend. He’d never made it known that he wanted me. He made it seem like he wanted a sister, a fucking sister he’d never had. If I told him how I actually felt then things would never be the same again.

  After taking off my jacket I opened the fridge and pulled out a Corona before making my way to the sink. I was soaking wet from the surprising attack of rain. Puddles were forming on the floor wherever I stepped. I peeked out the window to see if he was still there and he was. He was just standing there in front of my house, getting wet. The light gray shirt he had on was now dark gray, pressed to his rock hard body outlining his muscles, and his hair was pressed against his forehead.

  What the fuck was he waiting for?

  Leave, go to your girlfriend. Go home.

  I could handle everything that was going on with my father. I mean, I had been for the past week and I could continue to do so. I’d come to the idea that this was how my life would always be. I was truly grateful and happy that James had built the ramp for my father, but that was it. People leaving and me learning how to deal with it, alone; I should’ve been a fucking pro at this point in my life. But this with my father, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. When my mother left I didn’t know her, I wasn’t old enough, but my dad…he was my heart and soul. How could I do this?

  I held onto the sink, gripping it enough to make my knuckles white. Fuck, I was going to end up a cat lady.

  I’d better start collecting them now. I would be lying to myself if I said I didn’t want things to work out with Grey. I wanted to be with him, there was something there. Maybe not that crazy fucking spark you have with someone, but there was something, and it could’ve been built on. Now there was nothing. He had texted me from time to time, but I knew he was fucking around.

  Ugh. Men fucking sucked. And they say we’re complicated? They make us fucking complicated.

  I closed the curtain and turned to sit at the table, holding my beer, and watched as the condensation slipped to the bottom of the bottle. Why was this life so complicated? Fuck, I didn’t want to be an adult anymore. I didn’t want to go through life. How were people just fine with the bad things that happened to them? Were they fine with death?

  Someone once told me that this life is precious and to live each day like it’s your last. You don’t even know when it’s your last day. And let me just say, if I had the fucking money I would have lived like it was my last day and brought my father along with me for the ride. Life was not fucking lemons and love. It was fucking heartache and death. That was it. We were just waiting to die. We didn’t know when it would happen but it was coming. We got closer every single day. We were born to die. So the big question was, how do you live your last?

  I was the first person to admit that I was scared. I knew that it was okay to be scared, but I didn’t want to be. This was not something that one could easily accept. I was here for a reason. I might not have known what it was, but I was here. This was the catastrophic moment in my life that I needed to overcome. I was too young to experience the leaving of a parent, but this wasn’t the same as my mom leaving. No, my dad wouldn’t be walking around this world somewhere, laughing and talking. He’d be under the fucking ground while the person I had always loved would have his hands around someone else.

  Fuck life.

  Fuck this.

  Why couldn’t I just tell him that I wanted him? That I wanted him to stay and leave his girlfriend? That I’d always loved him. How fucking ironic that when I didn’t have a boyfriend, he had a girlfriend. Shit, I shouldn’t have even been thinking about this. My dad was in the hospital; he could die any minute. But somehow James was always on my mind. Didn’t I tell myself that I wasn’t going to be this stupid, obsessive chick? That I was supposed to leave my feelings way back in July, back at that stupid party? I couldn’t do this.

  I slammed my head onto the table, making my bottle tip over. Thank goodness I’d finished that already. I should’ve just told him. Who knew what would happen tomorrow.

  Just then, the front door opened. I lifted my head quickly. There he stood, with his hands in his pockets, looking vulnerable. He hadn’t left? Why hadn’t he left?

  I felt like there was a ton of bricks on my shoulders, because I couldn’t move. Or is it that I didn’t want to move? Fuck, I couldn’t do this. I should, but I didn’t want to. And because I didn’t move, he took it to mean that he should move. He w
as coming toward me. I lowered my head to the floor.

  “Look, James, toni…” I wasn’t even done talking when he cut me off completely.

  “Just shut up, Becca.” I went to open my mouth again, but closed it soon after. I didn’t know what to say to that.

  Nothing.

  So I kept my eyes closed even though I was looking toward the floor. Just then I felt his hands on my arms lifting me off the chair so I could stand up. “Open your eyes and look at me,” he commanded.

  I really didn’t want to. There were so many emotions running through my head, and if I opened my eyes I might have started to cry. I was so fucking sick of crying. I didn’t think there were any more tears in me to cry. But I did as he commanded because he was not in the mood to be argued with, and I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire that I’d already started.

  I had seen just about every expression he’d ever made and yet I’d never seen this one. It was almost like he was looking at me in a different light, in a different way. Like he wanted to tell me something but he couldn’t. Like he wanted me to figure something out, but I didn’t know what. Like he was trying to memorize how I looked right now, although I looked like shit. It would have been so much easier if he’d just come out and said it. What was he thinking? I felt sick, you know, that sick when you’re nervous? Like something bad or good was about to happen but you didn’t know which one? But you can only guess that it’s bad and nothing happens, so it’s killing you. That’s the worst, when you don’t know what the person is going to say. You just have to wait and wait until they talk.

  I felt my palms getting sweaty and I wasn’t even hot. I felt my heartbeat quicken. I was fucking nervous as hell. I thought I was going to pass out. If he didn’t talk soon I was going to run to the bathroom and puke, although I was pretty sure I’d dry heave because I hadn’t eat anything. I should’ve eaten the food James had made for me earlier.