by J. M. Paul
Not only did I know this because I’d paid attention in school, but my fake tour guide in recorded form told me as I freely wandered around the federal penitentiary.
It was eerie to think that some of the country’s worst criminals had spent time here. I wondered what they had felt like while locked behind the steel bars, what they had seen, heard, and endured. Was their punishment comparable to their crime, or were they favored by the wardens and received rewards, like cigarettes, books, and other items, like I saw in movies? It seemed unfair that inmates would be offered any kind of comfort. They had lied, cheated, stolen, and claimed the lives of the innocent.
Crouching down and pulling off my headphones, I adjusted my zoom and focused to take an angled picture of B Block to include the sign indicating Al Capone’s cell. After this, I wanted to find Sunset Strip where the solitary confinement cells were located and try to sneak or talk my way down into the basement to see the shower area.
“Are you getting some good shots?”
I elevated my head and looked behind me to see Bax watching me from above. There wasn’t a smile on his face, his features clear, so I couldn’t read what he was thinking.
“Yeah. This place is a photographer’s dream, and we haven’t even made it outside yet.”
I started to stand, and he offered me his hand. Grabbing it, he pulled, so I stood before him, but he didn’t release me. I trembled at the contact. It seemed like forever since he had touched me.
We stood, observing the other, without words passing between us until a rowdy family walked by us, breaking our spell. Reluctantly, I broke contact with him and turned off the digital tour I could still hear faintly from the headphones around my neck.
Fidgeting with my camera, I peeked up at Bax through my lashes. “What about you? Get anything good?”
“Yeah. Listen, do you want to go outside and check out the Recreation Yard? I thought we could maybe talk.” He shifted his weight.
“Um…” I scratched my cheek. He wants to talk? This can’t be good. “Yeah, sure, but I wanted to hit a couple of other spots in here, if that’s okay?” And I want to stall the conversation that will most likely break my heart to the point of no repair.
“Sure. Of course.” Stepping back, he let me lead us through the next couple of blocks.
Then, he flirted with the security guard to get us access to the shower room. They let visitors down here but usually only during the evening tours where people were searching for ghost stories and experiences.
It was daylight out and bright enough down here, but it was still spooky. As I snapped pictures of the two rows of showerheads in the middle of the room, I thought about the history I could recall about this place. I remembered hearing Al Capone used to charm the guards to let him play his banjo down here in peace, and it was said that people had claimed they could sometimes hear the faint music drifting through the space.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I yelped. Falling back from my crouched position, I landed on my butt on the cracked cement.
“Libby! Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Bax knelt down in front of me. “Are you okay?”
It had been a while since he asked me his trademark question on this trip. Despite the fact that he had every right to be disgusted with me, he was still concerned that I wasn’t hurt.
The girl who will get to call him hers forever will be one lucky lady.
I stood, and he rose with me.
“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.” I brushed the dirt from my shorts. “It was my fault. I was thinking about the spooky stories I had read about this place, and you happened to pick that exact moment to, well, scare me.” I gave him an easy smile I didn’t feel, but I was trying to make things seem light between us.
“Hearing a banjo?” Bax guessed.
We both chuckled.
After we finished taking pictures, we made our way out to the Recreation Yard, and it was a beautiful day outside. Lifting my face to the sun, I closed my eyes and relished the warmth it brought to my skin.
“Want to sit?” Bax gestured toward the stadium-style seats of concrete that sloped toward the yard below. It was pretty empty out here since most of the crowds were still inside, exploring the cells.
I nodded, and we made our way down a few rows. Looking up, I pulled my camera out, hunched down to eye-level with a row of seats, and snapped a picture of the water tower in the distance. It would be a mysterious shot when I turned it into black and white. Some things were meant to have their vibrancy stripped—me being one of them.
We sat in silence for a long while and watched people filter in and out of the open space. I fidgeted with my ring and necklace, and Bax sat unnervingly still.
He wants to talk, so why doesn’t he talk? Is he trying to torture me?
“Libby—”
“Bax—”
“You go first.” I waved at him.
Everything I needed to say had been said back in Malibu. It was his turn to let me know what he thought or felt about it. This thing between us wouldn’t be resolved until he let his feelings be known. Then and only then could I try to move on. My life would still only be half full, but at least I would know I was capable of opening up to someone and feeling something other than guilt and pain. In the short time I had known Bax, he had taught me to believe in myself again, and that was something I would always be grateful for.
Turning toward me, he took my hand in his and played with my fingers. “I’ve thought a lot about what you told me the other day. And I know my silence has made you think the worst, but I wanted to make sure that what I’m about to say comes out right.” His eyes were on me, serious and unwavering. “And I want you to listen to me, okay? Really listen.”
Here it comes—my heart shattering into fragments.
Nodding, I looked down at my feet and waited for the blow.
“What happened to your family and Jarrod was awful, sad, and unfortunate. I can’t imagine what you must have gone through and felt back then along with what’s happened to you since.”
He was referring to Joel’s abuse, and at the mention of it, I tensed.
“But here’s the kicker, Libby. Here’s the part where I need you to listen really closely.”
A soft hand cupped my chin and turned my head, so I made eye contact with him.
“I don’t understand why you’re taking the blame for their deaths.” Bax’s eyes bounced back and forth between mine. “It wasn’t your fault.” It was whispered with reverence. “Their being in that house, them being killed by a fluke accident…you’re not the one who’s accountable.”
I rapidly shook my head and tried to pull away. He was strong and held me in place when I wanted to run from him, from the memories, the guilt…everything. Bax was wrong. It was my fault, and I deserved everything I’d gotten and more.
“You can’t run, Libby—not from me and not from this. Someone should have said this to you a long time ago.”
His voice was sure and intense, and for the first time, it didn’t put me at ease but instead made a hurricane of emotions start to build in my chest.
“I can mostly understand why you feel like you’re to blame. It’s human nature for someone as nice as you to feel guilty for just about everything. I’ve watched you struggle with it this entire summer. But, Libby, I’m here to make you understand that, what happened to them and what Joel did to you, it’s not your fault, and I will keep repeating that until you believe me.”
“Bax—” I tried to plead with him to stop talking. His words hurt in a way words had never caused me pain before.
“I’m not finished,” he sternly interrupted me. “You didn’t wish them any harm. You didn’t want or ask for the explosion to happen. It was a freak accident, and there was nothing anyone could have done. If you blame yourself, why don’t you point a finger at the gas company for the faulty line, the company who made the water heater, or the people who built the house?”
His words were starting
to sink in, and it was excruciating. I didn’t want to consider that what he was saying was true. I didn’t want to keep hearing him tell me that I wasn’t the one who had caused the explosion. It was so much easier to blame myself than to think I was innocent. If I believed the worst in myself, then it didn’t hurt quite as bad when other people did as well.
The truth hurt worse than anything else, and that was why I tried to remain blind to it.
My truth was that I felt guilty because I shouldn’t have let time slip away from me back then. My family shouldn’t have been waiting in that house for me, or at the very least, I should have been with them, experiencing the same trauma. I’m not special, I have no superior talents or reasons to be left unharmed, so why was I? It was an answer I would never obtain, and I had to find a way to move on.
However I stepped forward, whatever I did and became, would be for my family. It would be for their love, for their pride, and for their happiness because they deserved at least that from me. And, from here on out, I promised myself that I wouldn’t be outright selfish like I had been when I was sixteen. I would go after my goals and dreams, but when I was able, I would also help other people with theirs along the way.
“It’s not your fault. You’re not to blame,” Bax repeated.
Tears stung my eyes.
When he saw he was breaking through to me, he reached for me, wrapped his arms around my shoulders, and kept repeating those two statements, “It’s not your fault. You’re not to blame.”
When I started to sob against his chest, he changed it to, “Forgive yourself, Libby. It’s time to forgive yourself and live.”
I broke down in a way I had never broken down before, right in the middle of the Alcatraz Recreation Yard for anyone and everyone to see. I wept for my lost family, my lost love, my robbed innocence, and for the carefree nature and happiness that had been such a large part of who I used to be but was stolen along with everything else back then.
When the tears finally started to subside, I wiped at my cheeks and sniffled, wishing I had a tissue. My head hurt, my eyes were irritated and puffy, but none of those compared to my aching heart. The truth had settled into it and was wreaking havoc.
“It’s not your fault.”
As hard as I fought against that truth, now that Bax had laid it out so plainly for me, I realized he was right, as he had been with so many other things this summer.
“You’re right,” I whispered against his T-shirt.
His hands paused their journey up and down my back. “What?”
Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I tilted to look him in the face. “You’re right.”
Bax’s mouth fell open, his eyes widened, and his head jerked back. He sputtered and then went silent as he took in and tried to digest what I had said. “I-I…well, good.”
From his staggered expression, I could tell he hadn’t expected me to accept what he had told me. I hadn’t either, but when the truth stared me in the face, it was hard to walk away.
I still had so much to overcome, but for the first time in a long time, I felt I was moving in the right direction. And, with that, the weight that had been on my chest—the heaviness of my loved ones’ deaths—lifted, and I took my first deep breath in years.
A smile crept on my face, and without warning, Bax launched at me and wrapped me in a tight hug.
After we clung to each other, Bax leaned back to study me. “You’re okay?”
I nodded once and smiled at his trademark question. “I’m so good.” And, for the first time, I thought I meant it.
He briefly closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they were flooded with an emotion I didn’t recognize. Before I had a chance to figure it out, his lips crashed to mine.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he said between kisses.
It had only been a few days since I told him my big secret, but any time I spent without Bax felt like an eternity.
“Me, too.”
We kissed and laughed and smiled for a while longer until we decided we should see the rest of The Rock and find Milo and Carly.
As we walked along the walkway, hand in hand, to the Alcatraz Island Lighthouse, we saw Milo and Carly approaching us from the opposite direction.
Milo lifted his chin at us and eyed our conjoined hands as we strolled along the cliffs. “Hola, pájaros del amor. Did you two kiss and make up?”
I really need to learn more Spanish if I’m going to stay friends with Milo after this trip.
So much for thinking they haven’t caught on to the distance that has been between me and Bax.
“Yeah.” Bax looked down at me and tapped my nose. I smiled up at him, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “We’ve never been better.”
We had spent the entire day at Yosemite National Park yesterday, and as most national parks we had visited in the United States, it had been breathtaking and somewhere I would like to spend more time when I was allowed.
My favorite part of the Yosemite daytrip had been seeing the giant sequoia trees. To say they were large was an understatement. Trying to capture the mass size of the beauties in my lens had been difficult—not only to try and demonstrate how truly immense they were, but I also hadn’t been able to get the entire tree in the viewfinder. Several sequoias had had holes cut out of the base big enough for us to drive the van through. It had been surreal in the best possible way.
Things between me and Bax had been wonderful. We had hiked everywhere together, laughed, joked, and felt more in sync than I had ever experienced with anyone before. It was wonderful and relaxing, and I had found it easier to breathe, even at the high elevations in the park.
When we had returned to our hotel room after the outing, Carly and Milo had asked Bax if they could have some alone time in the hotel room, so he had come to mine to watch a movie with me. Things had started with good intentions, but before either of us had realized what we were doing, our clothes had been piled on the floor, and we had been wrapped around one another. Bax had been unwilling to take things too far between us, but he had let us go further than we had before. We had touched, kissed, and become familiar with each other’s bodies in new ways. He had known what I looked like when I came apart in his hands, and now, I had the same knowledge. It had made me feel powerful and sensual, and I would never forget how sexy he had been when he lost control.
Bax and I had talked briefly about what would happen between us when we arrived home, and we had both agreed we wanted to continue our relationship. We weren’t playing games with each other, and we knew our bubble wouldn’t burst once it was released into reality. The only problem with our relationship was, he was a graduate teaching assistant in one of the classes I was scheduled for this fall semester. It was for Professor Ericson—my favorite teacher—but we had planned to discuss the development with Ericson and see what he thought. If it were a problem, Bax would drop the assistant job, or I would switch classes. We would work it out when the time came.
Today, the group was spending the entire day in San Francisco and then heading back to the hotel because our flight to Michigan was early tomorrow morning. A deep melancholy hung over all of us, yet we were excited to get home and have a semblance of normalcy back in our lives.
Our adventures took us all over the city today. We saw and photographed the Golden Gate Bridge, Pier 39, the seals in the daylight, and Lombard Street. We took a trolley, climbed up to Coit Tower for a panoramic view of the bay and skyline, visited Ghirardelli Square—mostly for the free pieces of chocolate, not the photos—and did anything else we happened to stumble upon. It was a great day, and we agreed we would have to plan another trip back.
The weather was unseasonably warm and made me feel slightly ill throughout the day, but I tried to keep up with my excited peers as they listed a few more places they wanted to see before the sunset.
“I’m starving,” Milo announced when we made our way to Fisherman’s Wharf.
“Me, too.” Bax tugged the hand he held and
pulled me into him. Kissing the top of my hair, he squeezed me almost a little too tight. “You hungry, Ad Lib?”
The thought of food made my stomach roll in a very bad way. I swallowed the bile that wanted to inch up my throat and shook my head. The motion made me realize I was starting to get a bad headache.
“No?” Bax stopped and searched my eyes. “Are you feeling okay?”
If I wasn’t feeling so ill, I would have laughed at the fact that he immediately thought something was wrong with me if I wasn’t hungry.
“Actually, no, I’m not.” I sagged against him. Once I succumbed to the truth of how I felt, it completely took me over.
“What’s wrong?” Bax’s voice was soft. He tilted his head and brushed the hair back from my sticky neck.
“I think the heat got to me.” Dragging the back of my hand across my forehead, I felt how sweaty I was. My stomach gurgled, and I thought I might pass out. “I think I’m going to head back to the hotel, guys. You go ahead to dinner and watch the sunset without me.”
“What? That sucks. It’s our last night.” Carly pouted.
“I know. I’m really sorry, but I need to lie down. I feel like I might get sick.” I pressed my hand to my rolling stomach.
“Want us to bring you back anything?” Carly asked.
I shook my head and breathed deep, trying to keep myself from fainting.
“I’ll come back with you.” Bax wrapped his arm around my waist for support and started to lead me away.
Stopping with more force than I thought I had in my current condition, I turned toward him. “No, Bax. Go enjoy dinner with them and take more photos. It’s our last night. They might need your help with angles or something.”
He scoffed. “Who are you kidding? None of you have needed my help this entire trip. You’re all too damn talented.” The smile he flashed me didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I want to come back with you to make sure you’re okay and you get anything you need,” he whispered so that Carly and Milo couldn’t hear.