I’m holding the picture, still sitting on the bed, when the bedroom door opens. Holder peers around the door. “What are you doing?” He doesn’t seem angry that I’m in here. He does seem uncomfortable, though, which is probably just a reaction from how I made him feel earlier.
“I was looking for the bathroom,” I say, quietly. “I’m sorry. I just needed a second.”
He leans against the doorway and crosses his arms over his chest while his eyes work their way around the room. He’s taking in everything like I am. Like it’s all new to him.
“Has no one been in here? Since she…”
“No,” he says quickly. “What would be the point of it? She’s gone.”
I nod, then place the picture of Lesslie and Grayson back on the nightstand, facedown like she had left it. “Was she dating him?”
He takes a hesitant step into the bedroom, then walks over to the bed. He sits down beside me and rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands in front of him. He looks around the room slowly, not answering my question right away. He glances at me, then wraps his arm around my shoulders, pulling me to him. The fact that he’s sitting here with me right now, still wanting to hold me, makes me want to burst into tears.
“He broke up with her the night before she did it,” he says quietly.
I try not to gasp, but his words shock me. “Do you think he’s the reason why she did it? Is that why you hate him so much?”
He shakes his head. “I hated him before he broke up with her. He put her through a lot of shit, Sky. And no, I don’t think he’s why she did it. I think maybe it was the deciding factor in a decision she had wanted to make for a long time. She had issues way before Grayson ever came into the picture. So no, I don’t blame him. I never have.” He stands up and takes my hand. “Come on. I don’t want to be in here anymore.”
I take one last glance around the room, then stand up to follow him. I stop before we reach the door, though. He turns around and watches me observe the pictures on her dresser. There’s a framed picture of Holder and Lesslie when they were kids. I pick it up and bring it in closer for inspection. Something about seeing him that young makes me smile. Seeing both of them that young...it’s refreshing. Like there’s innocence about them before the ugly realities of life hit. They’re standing in front of a white-framed house and Holder has his arm around her neck and he’s squeezing her. She’s got her arms wrapped around his waist and they’re smiling at the camera.
My eyes move from their faces to the house behind them in the photo. It’s a white-framed house with yellow trim and if you were to see the inside of the house, the living room is painted two different shades of green.
I immediately close my eyes. How do I know that? How do I know what color the living room is?
My hands start shaking and I try to suck in a breath, but I can’t. How do I know that house? I know that house like I somehow suddenly know the kids in the picture. How do I know there’s a green and white swing set behind that house? And ten feet from the swing set is a dry well that has to stay covered because Lesslie’s cat fell down it once.
“You okay?” Holder says. He tries to take the picture out of my hands, but I snatch it from him and look up at him. His eyes are concerned and he takes a step toward me. I take a step back.
How do I know him?
How do I know Lesslie?
Why do I feel like I miss them? I shake my head, looking down at the picture and back up at Holder, then down to the picture again. This time, Lesslie’s wrist catches my eye. She’s wearing a bracelet. A bracelet identical to mine.
I want to ask him about it but I can’t. I try, but nothing comes out, so I just hold up the picture instead. He shakes his head and his face drops like his heart is breaking. “Sky, no,” he says, pleadingly.
“How?” My voice cracks and is barely audible. I look back down to the picture in my hands. “There’s a swing set. And a well. And…your cat. It got stuck in the well.” I dart my eyes up to his and the thoughts keep pouring out. “Holder, I know that living room. The living room is green and the kitchen had a countertop that was way too tall for us and…your mother. Your mother’s name is Beth.” I pause and try to take a breath, because the memories won’t stop. They won’t stop coming and I can’t breathe. “Holder…is Beth your mother’s name?”
Holder grimaces and runs his hands through his hair. “Sky…” he says. He can’t even look at me. His expression is torn and confused and he’s…he’s been lying to me. He’s holding something back and he’s scared to tell me.
He knows me. How the hell does he know me and why hasn’t he told me?
I suddenly feel sick. I rush past him and open the door across the hall, which happens to be a bathroom, thank God. I lock the door behind me and throw the framed picture on the counter, then fall straight to the floor.
The images and memories start inundating my mind like the floodgates have just been lifted. Memories of him, of her, of the three of us together. Memories of us playing, me eating dinner at their house, me and Les being inseparable. I loved her. I was so young and so small and I don’t even know how I knew them, but I loved them. Both of them. The memory is coupled by the grief of now knowing the Lesslie I knew and loved as a little girl is gone. I suddenly feel sad and depressed that she’s gone, but not for me. Not for Sky. I’m sad for the little girl I used to be and somehow her grief over the loss of Lesslie is emerging through me.
How have I not known? How did I not remember him the first time I saw him?
“Sky, open the door. Please.”
I fall back against the wall. It’s too much. The memories and the emotions and the grief…it’s too much to absorb all at once.
“Baby, please. We need to talk and I can’t do it from out here. Please, open the door.”
He knew. The first time he saw me at the grocery store, he knew. And when he saw my bracelet…he knew I got it from Lesslie. He saw me wearing it and he knew.
My grief and confusion soon turn to anger and I push myself up off the floor and walk swiftly to the bathroom door. I unlock it and swing it open. His hands are on either side of the doorframe and he’s looking directly at me, but I feel like I don’t even know who he is. I don’t know what’s real between us and what’s fake anymore. I don’t know what feelings of his are from his life with me or the life with that little girl I used to be.
I need to know. I need to know who she was. Who I was. I swallow my fear and release the question that I’m afraid I already know the answer to. “Who’s Hope?”
His hardened expression doesn’t change, so I ask him again, but louder this time.
“Who the hell is Hope?”
He keeps his eyes locked on mine and his hands placed firmly on the doorframe, but he can’t answer me. For some reason he doesn’t want me to know. He doesn’t want me to remember who I was. I take a deep breath and try to fight back the tears. I’m too scared to say it, because I don’t want to know the answer.
“Is it me?” I ask, my voice shaking and full of trepidation. “Holder…am I Hope?”
He lets out a quick breath at the same time he looks up at the ceiling, almost as if he’s struggling not to cry. He closes his eyes and lays his forehead against his arm, then takes a long, deep breath before looking back at me. “Yes.”
The air around me grows thick. Too thick to take in. I stand still, directly in front of him, unable to move. Everything grows quiet except for what’s inside my head. There are so many thoughts and questions and memories and they’re all trying to take over and I don’t know if I need to cry or scream or sleep or run.
I need to go outside. I feel like Holder and the bathroom and the whole damn house are closing in on me and I need to go outside so there’s room to get everything out of my head. I just want it all out.
I shove past him and he tries to grab my arm, but I yank it out of his grasp.
“Sky, wait,” he yells after me. I keep running until I reach the stairs and I desce
nd them as fast as I can, taking two at a time. I can hear him following me, so I speed up and my foot lands further than I intend for it to. I lose my grip on the rail and fall forward, landing on the floor at the base of the stairs.
“Sky!” he yells. I try to pull myself up but he’s on his knees with his arms around me before I even have the chance. I push against him, wanting him to let go of me so I can just go outside. He doesn’t budge.
“Outside,” I say, breathless and weak. “I just need outside. Please, Holder.”
I can feel him struggling from within, not wanting to release me. He reluctantly pulls me away from his chest and looks down at me, searching my eyes. “Don’t run, Sky. Go outside, but please don’t leave. We need to talk.”
I nod and he releases me, then helps me stand up. When I walk out the front door and onto the lawn, I clasp my hands together behind my head and inhale a huge, cold breath of air. I tilt my head back and look up at the stars, wishing more than anything that I was up there and not down here. I don’t want the memories to keep coming, because with each confusing memory comes an even more confusing question. I don’t understand how I know him. I don’t understand why he kept it from me. I don’t understand how my name could have been Hope, when all I’ve ever remembered being called was Sky. I don’t understand why Karen would tell me that Sky was my birth name if it isn’t. Everything I thought I understood after all these years is unraveling, revealing things that I don’t want to know. I’m being lied to, and I’m terrified to know what it is that everyone’s trying to keep from me.
I stand outside for what feels like forever, attempting to sort through this alone when I have no idea what it is I’m even trying to sort through. I need to talk to Holder and I need to know what he knows, but I’m hurt. I don’t want to face him, knowing he’s been hiding this secret all along. It makes everything that I thought was happening between us nothing but a façade.
I’m emotionally spent and have had all the revelations I can take for one night. I just want to go home and go to bed. I need to sleep on this before we go into the fact of why he didn’t just tell me he knew me as a child. I don’t understand why it was something he even thought he should keep from me.
I turn around and walk back toward the house. He’s standing in the doorway, watching me. He steps aside to let me back in and I walk straight to the kitchen and open the refrigerator. I grab a bottle of water and open it, then take several gulps. My mouth is dry and I never did get the water he said he was getting for me earlier.
I set the bottle down on the bar and look at him. “Take me home.”
He doesn’t object. He turns around and grabs his keys off the entryway table, then motions for me to follow him. I leave the water on the bar and silently follow him to the car. When I climb inside, he backs out of the driveway and pulls onto the road without speaking a word.
We pass my turn-off and it’s apparent that he has no intention to take me home. I glance over at him and his eyes are focused hard on the road in front of him. “Take me home,” I say again.
He looks at me with a determined expression. “We need to talk, Sky. You have questions, I know you do.”
I do. I have a million questions I need to ask, but I was hoping he would let me sleep on it so I could sort them out and try to answer as many of them as I could myself. But it’s obvious he doesn’t care what I prefer at this point. I reluctantly take off my seatbelt and turn in my seat, leaning with my back against the door to face him. If he doesn’t want to give me time to let this soak in, I’ll just lay all of my questions on him at once. But I’m making it fast because I want him to take me home.
“Fine,” I say stubbornly. “Let’s get this over with. Why have you been lying to me for two months? Why did my bracelet piss you off so much that you couldn’t speak to me for weeks? Or why you didn’t just say who you really thought I was the day we met at the grocery store? Because you knew, Holder. You knew who I was and for some reason you thought it would be funny to string me along until I figured it all out. Do you even like me? Was this game you’ve been playing worth hurting me more than I’ve ever been hurt in my life? Because that’s what happened,” I say, furious to the point that I’m shaking.
I finally give in to the tears because it’s just one more thing that’s trying to get out and I’m tired of fighting them. I wipe them away from my cheeks with the back of my hand and lower my voice. “You hurt me, Holder. So bad. You promised you would only ever be honest with me.” I’m not raising my voice anymore. In fact, I’m talking so quietly that I’m not even sure he can hear me. He keeps staring at the road like the asshole that he is. I squeeze my eyes shut and fold my arms across my chest, then fall back into my seat. I stare out the passenger window and curse Karma. I curse Karma for bringing this hopeless boy into my life just so he could ruin it.
When he continues to drive without responding to a single word I’ve said, I can do nothing but let out a small, pathetic laugh. “You really are hopeless,” I mutter.
“I need to pee,” she giggles. We’re crouched down under their porch, waiting for Dean to come find us. I like playing hide and seek, but I like to be the one hiding. I don’t want them to know that I can’t do the counting thing yet like they always ask me to do. Dean always tells me to count to twenty when they go hide, but I don’t know how. So I just stand with my eyes closed and pretend I’m counting. Both of them are already in school and I can’t go until next year, so I don’t know how to count as good as they do.
“He’s coming,” she says, crawling backward a few feet. The dirt under the porch is cold, so I’m trying not to touch it with my hands like she is, but my legs are hurting.
“Les!” he yells. He walks closer to the porch and head straight for the steps. We’ve been hiding a long time and he looks like he’s tired of looking for us. He sits down on the steps, which are almost right in front of us. When I tilt my head, I can look right up at his face. “I’m tired of looking!”
I turn around and look at Lesslie to see if she’s ready to run to base. She shakes her head no and holds her finger to her lips.
“Hope!” he yells, still sitting on the steps. “I give up!” He looks around the yard, then sighs quietly. He mumbles and kicks at the gravel under his foot and it makes me laugh. Lesslie punches me on the arm and tells me to be quiet.
He starts laughing, and at first I think it’s because he hears us, but then I realize he’s just talking to himself.
“Hope and Les,” he says, quietly. “Hopeless.” He laughs again and stands up. “You hear that?” he yells, cupping his hands around his mouth. “The two of you are hopeless!”
Hearing him turn our names into a word makes Lesslie laugh and she crawls out from under the porch. I follow her and stand up as soon as Dean turns around and sees her. He smiles and looks at both of us, our knees covered in dirt with cobwebs in our hair. He shakes his head and says it again. “Hopeless.”
The memory is so vivid; I have no idea how it’s just now coming to me. How I could see his tattoo day after day and hear him say Hope and how he talks about Les, yet still not remember? I reach over the seat and grab his arm, then pull his sleeve up. I know it’s there. I know what it says. But this is the first time I’m looking at it, knowing what it actually means.
“Why did you get it?” He’s told me before, but I want to know the real reason now. He pulls his gaze from the road and glances at me.
“I told you. It’s a reminder of the people I’ve let down in my life.”
I close my eyes and fall back into my seat, shaking my head. He said he doesn’t do vague, but I can’t think of an explanation more vague than the one he keeps giving me about his tattoo. How could he have let me down? The fact that he thinks he somehow let me down at that young of an age doesn’t even make sense. And the fact that he feels enough regret about it to turn it into some cryptic tattoo is really beyond any guesses I could fathom at this point. I don’t know what else I can say or do to get him to
take me back home. He didn’t answer any of my questions and now he’s playing his mind games again by giving me cryptic, non-answers. I just want to go home.
He pulls the car over and I’m hoping he’s turning it around. Instead, he kills the ignition and opens his door. I look out the window and recognize that we’re at the airport again. I’m annoyed. I don’t want to come here and watch him stare at the stars again while he thinks. I want answers or I want to go home.
I swing open the door and reluctantly follow him to the fence, hoping if I appease him this one last time that I’ll get a quick explanation from him. He helps me scale the fence again and we both walk back to our spots on the runway and lay down.
I look up in hopes of spotting a shooting star. I could really use a wish or two right now. I would wish I could go back to two months ago and never step foot into the grocery store that day.
“Are you ready for answers?” he says.
I turn my head toward his. “I’m ready if you’re actually planning on being honest this time.”
He faces me, then pulls up on his arm and rolls onto his side, looking down at me. He does his thing again, silently staring at me. It’s darker than it was when we were out here the last time, so it’s hard to make out the expression on his face. I can tell he’s sad, though. His eyes have never been able to hide the sadness. He leans forward and lifts his hand, bringing it to my cheek. “I need to kiss you.”
I almost break out into laughter, but I’m afraid if I do it will be the maniacal kind and that terrifies me, because I already assume I’m going crazy. I shake my head, shocked that he would even think I would let him kiss me right now. Not after finding out he’s been lying to me for two solid months.
“No,” I say forcefully. He keeps his face close to mine and his hand on my cheek. I hate that even though every ounce of anger in me is a result of his deceit, my body still responds to his touch. It’s an odd internal battle when you can’t decide if you want to punch the mouth sitting three inches in front of your face, or taste it.
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