by Dylan Heart
“That’s my freaking point.” I jump to my feet and slide the back of my palm against my head. “You ask me what I am to you, but how am I supposed to answer that?” For wanting something out of me, he remains closed-off and distant. “You called me your fuck buddy in the note you left me this morning. I guess that’s what you are to me. You’re my fuck buddy.”
“I’m sorry.” He shakes his head sheepishly. “It was a stupid question.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for asking questions.” I bend down to my knees in front of him. “You should apologize for other things, like making me wake up in a hotel alone after a great night, not knowing where you were or what you were doing.”
“I told you. I had to take care of a few things.”
“God knows what the fuck that means.”
There’s a long pause where neither of us say anything. He sputters his lips, looks away from me and digs his fingernails into his knee. “I visited my wife and daughter today.”
“Your what?” I’m back on my feet in an instant. “You are just like the rest of them.” My feet kick against the sand as I hurry away from the scene. I could punch him in the fucking jaw. I know it’s ridiculous for me to feel this way, and I couldn’t even explain the logistics of why I do to myself.
“They’re dead,” his voice cracks in half.
I’m frozen—my body running cold—and can’t bring myself to face him. I’m trapped in a vacuum where his words tangle through my being, slicing me open and draining me of feeling. I could cry if I weren’t such a heartless bitch, and yet I’m broken.
“They died years ago,” he continues.
I turn to him in what seems like slow motion. He’s lost in a world that only exists between him and the sea. He stares out into nothing, but for the first time since I’ve known him, I’m able to read him.
His face is buried, haunted in shades of pale colors contrasted against the soon-to-be night sky. His spirit is sunken, pushing his body deep into the sand. I’m looking at a broken-hearted ghost.
I sit back on my towel and stare off into the horizon with him. There’s nothing I can say—nothing I should say. It’s why he’s always lost in silence. Perhaps, he’s dreaming of a life that was torn from him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it? You weren’t supposed to know.”
More silence, and for once, I understand it. Sometimes words aren’t enough. Sometimes, they’re too much. I take refuge in the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. Most everyone has packed up and gone home, but here we are—two lost souls dreaming of a better life against the almighty tides.
“You asked me what you meant to me,” I say quietly, but it still cuts like a knife through the silence. “I didn’t know it then, but I know it now. You mean the world to me. You’re my escape from this fucked up world.”
He nods, taking it in. “I’m terrified of you, Apple.”
“Why do I scare you so much?”
“Because I fall in love too easily.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and exhales through thin lips. “Every fucking time, and it always ends the same—with a broken heart.”
I’ve been there and my understanding of his pain is transcendent. The same suffering he endures is my constant motivation in this war I have been waging. Men come into my life only to break my heart.
“I used to be somebody else,” he continues. “I didn’t used to be this way. I was everything you’d expect a good person to be. I went to church and waited until I was married to have sex. It didn’t do me any good, but neither does this life. I fuck and then I run, so I don’t get attached.” He turns to me with sunken eyes, reminiscent of a sad puppy. “I’m attached to you for some inexplicable reason.”
“You shouldn’t be,” I warn him. “You don’t know me.”
“That’s why you terrify me.” His eyes search over mine, as if they see something. “We don’t know each other as well as we could, but when I look into your eyes, I see something. Something I’ve been missing.”
I dust off my thighs and climb to my feet. “Let’s go for a walk.”
“I drank most of that bottle,” he says and peers over to an almost empty bottle of whiskey, “I don’t know if I’ll make it very far.”
“It’s okay,” I assure him and offer my hand. “If you keel over, I’ll carry you back.”
He chuckles, but reaches for my hand anyway. “Right.”
We walk down the beach, where the water meets the land—the point where dreams are washed upon sand, waiting for the next tide to be carried back out into the eternal sea. For drinking an entire bottle of whiskey, I’m amazed by his ability to stay upright as the wind whips around us.
“Are you from here?” I ask.
“Born and raised.” There’s a short pause before he continues on, “After the accident, I had to get away. I was ready to flee to California, but couldn’t bring myself to leave the state.” He chews into his lip and bows his head.
I place my palm on his sandy back and caress him. I’m not a caregiver by any stretch of the imagination, but it feels right. Still, I couldn’t pretend to know what to say.
“The last time I saw my wife… I was fucking her.”
Everything suddenly makes sense. I’m hit by a freighter train while sitting in an idle car on the tracks. I feel everything as my soul is torn from my body, but I never saw it coming. It’s why he fucks and runs, because he’s consumed with the potent destruction of guilt.
“It was an early summer morning when she left the house with our little girl. The police came a few hours later, pounding on my door. I knew something was wrong.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, but I know it’s not enough. Nothing ever could be.
“I had just graduated with my Masters degree. We spent years together, living paycheck to paycheck, and right when I was about to be someone, my life was stolen from me.”
I hurt for this man I’m supposed to destroy. It’s karma for every fucked up thing I had planned for him.
“And now, I have an identity crisis. It’s like I don’t know who I am. Am I the smart, educated professor? Am I a sexual deviant? Am I some thirty year old trapped in the body of a twenty year old fratboy?”
“Maybe…” I begin, but take a short pause, trying to make sure I’m saying it right. “Maybe, you’re all of those things, and none of them are so bad.”
He nods as if he agrees, but there’s still a haunted strip of a movie glazed over his eyes. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to you. When I look at you, I see youth. I see a second chance to be with somebody where my past doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe…” I look like a ghost, I’m sure. I’m lost in the moment, reflecting on my own past, wondering to myself if it’s possible to escape it.
“What about you?” He stops walking along the sand and turns to face me. “Anything fucked up ever happen to you?”
I purse my lips and shake my head. “Not so much.” It’s an obvious lie, one I’m not certain I want to continue lying about. I should be able to open up to him, but I can’t. Not when I know what he’s supposed to mean to me—nothing.
“You have to carry some baggage with you.” He forces a smile, but it’s more out of yearning for something, and not so much about being happy in the moment. “Everyone does.”
“There’s not much to say.” I shrug and avert my eyes to the horizon. “I was born to a mother who had better things to do than parent. My dad was a drunk. They’re both still alive. I don’t know anyone who has died.”
“Loss isn’t defined by death.” His hand falls on my shoulder and I find myself gazing into his eyes. “You can lose anything in this world and it can affect you. If a young girl loses her favorite stuffed animal, it hurts. It doesn’t matter if it’s trivial in relation to the rest of the world’s woes. Pain or loss is never relative.”
“I lost sight of who I used to be,” I say somberly. The
admittance almost feels treacherous to myself. I’m not supposed to open up, especially not to a man.
“And who was that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I sink my teeth into my lip, holding back a floodgate of emotions. “She’s gone.”
“Sounds serious.”
“You do what you do because you’re trying to get the old you back.” I dig into him with an intense glare. “I do what I do because I want to make sure the girl I used to be never exists again.” My palm rolls into a fist—the very mention of her angers and saddens me. “She was weak and she was trampled on. I won’t go back to that life."
“Tell me what happened.” He reaches for my hand and pulls me close. “Please. It’ll help me not feel so alone.”
“I really miss the old times, when we were too busy throwing jabs at each other to engage in these deep conversations.” I laugh uncomfortably and drag my palm across my eyes, wiping away any trace of emotion that could be there.”
“You need to open up to someone, Apple. Otherwise your problems will swallow you whole.”
“Some people can’t be saved.”
“I think Jesus would disagree.”
“I think you haven’t opened a Bible in years.”
“You’d be correct, but it doesn’t change the fact that nobody is too far gone.” His lips curl into a comforting smile. “You don’t seem too bad.”
“Nothing is as it ever appears,” I warn him gravely, but he doesn’t look afraid. Not anymore.
“Show me who you really are.” He leans in close, and over my shoulder. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
“I’m a bitch,” I whisper back.
“Sometimes.” He smiles wickedly.
“I use people.”
“It’s okay.” He wraps his arm around the small of my back and pulls me into a tight embrace. “I like being used.”
“See? Doesn’t this feel so much better?” I lean my head on his muscular chest, betraying the idea I had just set forth. “No emotions. Just fun banter…”
“I’m tired of being upset about the things I can’t change.” He inhales, followed by a rough exhale and kisses the top of my head. My eyes fall shut and the world around me goes dark, but I can hear everything.
The freedom of the waves crashing onto the shore.
Birds taking one last flight before night falls.
His beating heart.
We sat along the shores of the ocean until the moon had chased the sun into the next continent. We cuddled under the clear sky, and I counted the stars until I fell asleep in his loving arms. But not long after I had fallen asleep, I woke with a stirring spoon in my gut. I always knew I was doing what had to be done to guard my fragile and easily broken heart. I became somebody else under Brick’s guiding arm.
It’s a terrible conundrum I now face.
I have a bad reputation and I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want to break Jensen’s heart, because in the process I’ll be forced to break my own. Brick said I fall in love too easy, and I was too stubborn to admit he was right.
I’ll break Jensen’s heart because it’s who I am. It’s what I am, but for the first time since I set out on this journey of revenge against the opposite sex, I can feel my heart shattering like glass. Nobody escapes unscathed when two cars meet in a collision course. Screeching tires. Busting glass.
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. I’ve always been prepared to dig my own. I never thought I’d have to dig another for somebody I care about. I never thought I would care again.
I can’t begin to describe it—this feeling inside of me. If it’s not love, it’s the precursor for it. Love is a disease—the worst kind of entropy. It’s always fragile, and never unbreakable. Falling in love is a dangerous game, an escalating spiral of chance formed over the course of parting glances and broken pasts.
Some might say it’s impossible, to love someone you hardly know. I think about who I used to be, back in the days when I was protected under the guiding wings of innocence, I was a dreamer. I look into Jensen’s eyes and I dream.
My mother used to say nobody could change you, only change how you see yourself. I oftentimes wished someone would have changed her, but maybe she was right about one thing. Underneath all the bullshit and pain, maybe that dreaming, innocent girl still exists.
I’d love to see her again, to meet her at a crossroads where she’d guide me to make the right decision. If I play it safe to avoid a broken heart in the future, and to defeat Brick, Jensen and I will still lose. If I turn my back on who I’ve become, and Jensen isn’t who he appears, I lose. I’m tired of losing, and the look on Brick’s face should I win… Priceless.
Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t. I think I read about this once, something in philosophy called the prisoners dilemma. Like so many other things you learn in a lecture hall, I thought to myself, when the fuck will I ever use this in real life?
Chapter 22
I’m awoken for the second time in as many hours by the screams of sea gulls. I raise my hands to clear my eyes of debris with my knuckles and lodge a grain of sand against my pupil. That shit burns. I blink my eyes in rapid succession, trying to dislodge the miniscule grain.
When I look over at Jensen, I see peace and tranquility. He lies on his back with his arms folded across his chest. It’s not the ideal position to sleep in, and it’s certainly one I could never pull off. Hence waking up with my face planted in the sand.
Every part of his body is strong.
Every part of his soul is fragile.
It’s a dichotomy fit for tragedy.
A sea gull lands beside his foot and starts screeching. I’m not much of an animal lover, but still I hesitate blasting it in the mouth. I want nothing more than to sit here and watch Jensen while he sleeps, like he watched me yesterday evening.
I want him to continue dreaming, while I try to sort shit out in my head. I shoo away the sea gull, forcing him to take flight to the sky, screeching as his wings clip over the ocean. Jensen stirs, kicking his legs out and stretching them.
I press my palm to my eye, trying to ward off the pain of my scratched retina. This is when Jensen chooses to awake and asks me groggily, “Are you crying?”
“Maybe.”
He sits up and stretches his arms over his head. “What’s wrong, babe?”
“Fucking sand in my eye.”
“Oh…” He seems disappointed that I’m not having a breakdown of my own. It’d probably level the playing field in his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Hours past sunrise,” I say, referencing his own response when I asked him the time last night. I have slept, at least, twenty hours out of the last thirty. I should have enough energy to spend the next three days in damage control mode—I’m going to need at least that much time to dig myself out of this mess I’ve created.
“When you say, hours past sunrise, how many hours are you referring to?”
“It has to be noon, at least,” I say. “Shit!”
“Yeah, shit,” he agrees as he jumps to his feet, grabs his towel and charges toward the motel. Checkout was at eight, and I can’t help but feel a little responsible for the extra night that’s about to be tacked onto his bill.
“For real,” I say. “That’s some bullshit.”
“Do you know what she said to me?” He’s hungover and has both hands planted firm against the steering wheel. He takes his eyes off the road and looks over to me with dark shades over his burnt face. “She said, it was in your contract,” he drops his voice an octave, mimicking the motel attendant. “I told her nobody reads those damn things.”
I can’t help but laugh at his imitation. “I’ll pay you back for half the bill.”
“No.’ He shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that.” With his left hand on the wheel, his right travels to meet mine above the shifter. His fingers pool with my fingers, and it’s an unfamiliar but welcome touch—the last time I held a guys hand, I was on my way to seni
or prom. “I had a great weekend.”
The very idea of holding hands seems juvenile, but I don’t mind it. For however long it lasts, I’m transported back to a time when it was okay to be vulnerable and connected to someone else.
“Me too.”
“Look at that view,” he says quietly, taking in the breathless sight of the mountains beside us. We’re crossing a long bridge that passes over a deep gorge. Trees form an insurmountable collage of beauty pasted along the contours of rolling hills. The car slows down and we pull to the slim shoulder on the side of the bridge.
“You can’t pull over on the middle of a bridge,” I shriek, nervous we could be hit by the busy church-going traffic.
“I can if it’s an emergency.” He peers into the driver side mirror and waits for the perfect opportunity to hop over the door.
“It’s not an emergency.” I glance nervously behind us as a car merges into the passing lane to avoid hitting Jensen as he runs around to the rail of the bridge.
“That’s a relative judgment.” He curls his hand and waves me down. “Come look at this shit.”
I flip my fingers through my hair and push the car door open, slamming it into the railing. “Fuck.”
His attention snaps toward me. “When you graduate, because of me, and get a real job, I’m going to make you pay for that.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say and slide my way through the thin opening between the door and the railing. “Although, I question how you intended for me to get out.”
He points to the door of the convertible and wags his finger in an arch-shaped motion. “Jump out.”
“I am so hungover, there’s a good chance I would have underestimated my jump.” I point to the bottom of the ravine. “And ended up down there.”
“Nah.” He shakes his head. “I would’ve caught you before you hit the bottom.”
“Really?” I question, slightly annoyed.
“Don’t you remember?” He throws his arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. “I’m Batman.”
“How could I forget?”
“Don’t worry about the car.”