Be My Downfall

by Lyla Payne

  The group ended after an hour. Dr. Porter had done most of the talking, but promised that with each session he hoped everyone would get comfortable enough with one another to share more of our personal journeys. The homework was a typical request to start a journal—I’d always gotten out of that particular emo assignment because my writing worked.

  The kids moved but didn’t make for the door, content to wander and talk to one another. A table of snacks at the back of the room attracted them like flies, and I hung back, sneaking a brownie after most of them had slunk off into groups.

  Kennedy appeared at my elbow, the fresh scent of her like crawling into my bed at home after a semester at school. “Of all the support groups in all the halfway houses in all the world…you walk into mine.”

  “Careful. Quoting Casablanca is known to cause spontaneous feelings in movie buffs worldwide.”

  “Mea culpa, Wright. We wouldn’t want that.”

  She grabbed a cookie off the platter, her fingernails dirty as they broke off a chunk and shoved it in her mouth. Kennedy wore a pair of white shorts and a Whitman baseball jersey that appeared to be at least three sizes too big. I had no desire to find out where she’d filched it.

  We drifted into the hallway and toward the front porch as though we’d discussed it beforehand, and when the cool spring air shifted around us, we both stopped. Twilight hung over Florida. The sun had set but the sky hadn’t given up its blues and violets for black just yet. It was too early for most of the flowers to make an appearance, but the trees and bushes pushed buds of green into the world, waiting for April to coax them to life. It was peaceful, and not too hot—the perfect night to sit outside in Florida.

  I realized that I had missed talking to her—the peculiar and random banter, the way her full lips quirked a smile, and most of all, the way I felt when she looked at me. Like it might be possible to be as comfortable with someone else as I was alone.

  “So how did Porter talk you into coming tonight?” She asked, swallowing the last bite of dough and chocolate chips.

  “I don’t know. I like the idea of helping kids, I think.”

  “I think you like the idea of helping people, period.”

  “You’ve got me figured out now, do you? Ever since you stuffed me in that box?”

  Her lips pulled down into a frown. “You have trouble staying put, Wright. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “I’m sure.” I polished off my brownie and brushed the remnants off my hands, sitting down on the crumbling concrete porch. I patted a level spot beside me. Kennedy hesitated for a split second, the way she had when I’d invited her to take on the slopes that last day in St. Moritz, but then plopped down, leaving a few inches between us.

  “How did Porter talk you into coming tonight?”

  She shot me a grin. “He said it would take the place of two private sessions.”

  “You hate them?”

  “I’ve been seeing one shrink or another once a week since I was in ninth grade. I don’t hate it, but it doesn’t do any good. It’s a waste of time.”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that therapy only worked if the patient wanted it to, and that maybe she should give it a chance. In a weird way, this was a chance to correct the mistakes I’d made with Trent, though—being bossy, acting as though I knew the best thing for him—and it might mean keeping my mouth shut to avoid pushing Kennedy away. So I did.

  “You’re thinking that it’s a waste of time because I don’t make the best of it.”

  Surprise made my eyebrows reach for my hairline. Her keen eyes peered into mine, confident in her assessment. “How did you do that?”

  “Practice. And you’re right. I know it’s true.”

  Her frankness surprised me. Not that Kennedy was inclined to lie—if anything, she was overly blunt—but she was a master at avoiding topics she’d rather not discuss.

  “So why keep going?”

  “I guess I could have stopped on my eighteenth birthday, which was just last fall. DFS forced my grandmother to send me after an…incident when I was fourteen. It’s kind of like, comfort in the familiar, maybe.”

  She scooted closer to me so that a couple of kids could get past. We sat in silence, not touching but close enough to share heat, until they disappeared into the deepening dark. The brief statement had revealed more of her to me, and it felt like a gift in my palm—one I still wasn’t sure I wanted to open. Did I want to know what had happened when she was fourteen, or why her grandmother had to be cajoled into sending a child who’d lost her entire family to therapy?

  My hand snuck over to hers, locking our pinky fingers together, before I could decide. She looked at me, an indecipherable expression on her face. “Acquaintances, Wright. Remember?”

  But she didn’t pull away.

  “Well, friends hold hands. Previous sexual partners who acknowledge each other in public link pinky fingers.”

  “Is that so? How has this escaped my attention all of these years?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m glad to educate you.”

  We were sitting so close that her breath fanned my face, her lips hanging tantalizingly close. I wanted to lean down and kiss her, and the hungry look in her eyes said she wouldn’t mind. Kennedy was sober tonight—I would have bet on it, and Dr. Porter would have insisted. What would it be like to kiss her and know she wanted to?

  She moved back, out of range, before I could go back on the decision to leave her alone. The sad smile on her lips said maybe she regretted it, but I was relieved. Aching, but relieved.

  “Are you going to be journaling your feelings, Wright?”

  I shook my head, both as a negative response and in an attempt to clear it of cobwebs. “No. I’m a writer. I already dump my feelings into words.”

  “A writer? I thought you were into the business and money side of film.”

  “Well, that’s the plan. That’s where the money is.”

  “You said I’m a writer. That’s a big deal.” She paused, watching me. “Not what you want to do. What you are.”

  I shrugged, feeling my cheeks heat with discomfort over her perceptiveness. She was right, and it caught something in my chest. I wanted to write. But I wanted to be successful. To make my dad proud.

  “Life is pretty complicated, huh? Even for people who seem like they have it together?” Her pinky finger tightened around mine. “You know why I’m in therapy. What were you talking about in there?”

  The desire to tell her flowed thick through my blood. It would feel good to unburden myself to someone who not only listened, but could understand what it felt like to lose the person closest to you. I didn’t want to ignore the question, but the secret didn’t belong to me. All of the feelings and intrigue she stirred up aside, Kennedy and I didn’t know each other that well. Not well enough to risk my family.

  “I’d love to give you specifics, but the details are…I guess classified, for lack of a better word. In general, though, you asked about my brother the other night, at the dance? He’s not dead, but we lost him. I lost him.” I clung to her steady gaze and her thin finger. “It took me a long time to feel like it’s not my fault. But sometimes it still seems like it is.”

  Indecision crisscrossed her face. She might be going through the options, trying to figure out what had happened to Trent. Or maybe she couldn’t decide whether to push.

  “Why do you think we want to feel responsible? Or like everything that comes after is a reflection of what came before?” Her voice cracked and her eyes shone in the glow from the porch light. “Like, if we live wrong, it means we didn’t love them.”

  Vulnerable Kennedy broke my heart, but pity was the thing I hated more than anything else. I made sure to keep it out of my expression. It wasn’t what I felt, anyway. Sorrow, sure. That she was hurting. Mostly, I felt camaraderie so strong it was like being drunk.

  “I don’t know, strawberry. We’re the ones left, I think. There isn’t anyone else that can be responsible,
so it makes weird sense. We have to unlearn it.”

  “How are you doing with that?”

  I pulled her closer to me, our linked hands settling in my lap. “Good some days. Not so good on others. I try to be aware of both.”

  “Being aware isn’t my favorite, Wright.”

  “Yeah. I kind of got that. But I think you can do it. You can figure out how to be okay.” Desire—not for her body, but to see that happen, burst in my chest.

  Her eyes filled with doubt. “You don’t know me. You don’t know everything.”

  “I do understand some things, though. Maybe more than you think.”

  My fingers brushed the stray hairs from the side of her face, lingering against her soft cheek. She leaned into my palm, her gaze trained on mine. It felt as though we were the only two people in the world, at least until the door banged open. We sprung apart like we’d been playing tonsil hockey in an eighth-grade hallway, and the older lady who had invited me in earlier clutched her chest.

  “Oh my goodness, you two startled me. I’m sorry.”

  Kennedy stood up, brushing the seat of her shorts clean. “It’s okay. I was just leaving.”

  I didn’t move as she stepped off the porch, crossed the lawn, and hopped in a silver BMW convertible. Kennedy left the halfway house, leaving me alone with a hopeless knot of confusion in my gut. The girl tonight made me do something I tried hard to avoid when considering getting involved with Kennedy—she made me hope. Sitting on the porch, almost invisible to each other in the darkness, she’d inched toward admitting that she wished things could be different. That she might want to face the demons that drove her to hurt herself.

  It could still be bad. She could—and probably would—destroy me. But the little glimpses she’d given me the morning we’d met, then on the plane and in my bed, had grown into more tonight. I wanted her. I was pretty sure she wanted me, at least in a purely physical way. Maybe, if she would keep tiptoeing toward sanity, we could make it work.

  Alone in the dark, it was easy to finally admit to myself that I wanted to try.

  Chapter 9

  An upcoming accounting exam kept me in on a Thursday night, the biggest bar night at Whitman. The evening slipped away from me, buried under accounting principles and equations, and when the bass pounded through the ceiling, it took me by surprise.

  It was SEA’s turn to host the after-bars, a rotating party every Thursday that started about a half hour after the campus bars closed. The sororities didn’t participate, since their houses were actually nice and ours were already disgusting. We had plenty of room after we shoved the furniture into the formal dining room we never used, and unlike the girls, we could actually make our pledges do shit like clean booze and vomit and God knew what else off the floor the next morning.

  I managed to ignore the party for about an hour, but around 3:00 a.m. I slammed my textbook shut and headed upstairs to grab a beer. Living in the basement room had its advantages, namely that I didn’t have a roommate or neighbors. It suited the amount of studying I did, along with the fact that partying enticed me less often than the rest of them, and my one or three-night stands could sneak out through the garden, thus avoiding an official walk of shame.

  People packed the main floor of the house—girls and guys, dancing and drinking, making out, shouting over the music. I wound my way to the kegs, smiling and nodding at the people I recognized, then grabbed a plastic cup of cheap brew proffered by a freshman. It tasted good, unknotted my neck and shoulders from hunching over that damn book.

  “Hey, Toby! Where’ve you been hiding? I didn’t see you at The Pub!” Emilie’s sparkling brown eyes smiled up at me. She had a beer in one hand and Quinn’s fingers in the other, and looked happier than anyone I’d ever seen.

  I’d heard the two of them had run into a bit of a rough patch after Quinn hadn’t been able to hold his tongue around her parents, but it looked as though they’d worked it out.

  “Hey, Em. I wasn’t out. Studying for my next accounting exam.”

  She pursed her lips. “You should have more fun, Toby. You only get four years of college—you’re so serious all the time.”

  “She’s right, man. I get that your dad being in the limelight puts pressure on you, but you’ve gotta enjoy life. And, not that I’ve been able to tear my eyes away from my girlfriend, but I’ve heard there are some smoking hot girls at this school who are all willing to, um, experience things.” Quinn threw back a shot of what looked like whiskey, moving closer to Em and wrapping his arm around her waist.

  “I know, I know. People who are all happy and in love and shit want everyone else to be the same way—the thing is, with most couples, I think they just want everyone else to be as miserable as they are. But you two?” I shook my head. “It’s both gross and inspiring.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Emilie grinned. “Quinn, could you get me another drink? I can’t handle this shitty Keystone Light or whatever the fuck it is.”

  “That’s my girl. More whiskey, coming up!” He pressed a kiss to her lips that wasn’t chaste enough for public, and she wrapped her arms around his neck in response.

  I looked away, giving them privacy for my own comfort, and went rigid when I saw Kennedy being lugged up the stairs. There was nothing on the second floor except bedrooms. She looked hot as shit in a pair of short blue shorts and a printed black tank top with skinny straps that set off her creamy skin. The memory of the way it smelled, the way it felt, drained blood away from my head and straight to my crotch.

  Her hand was wrapped up inside Jax’s, but she still stumbled a little. She righted herself fast enough that he didn’t notice, but to me, it said everything I needed to know.

  “Really, Toby?”

  “What?” I couldn’t tear my eyes from Kennedy and Jax as they neared the top of the staircase. He lived in the house, somewhere on the third floor, I thought.

  “Look at me.” Emilie jerked on my hand until I complied, tearing my eyes from Kennedy and focusing on Emilie’s face.

  She looked concerned.

  “What?”

  “Toby. Kennedy is beautiful, and it would have been hard to miss the sparks between you guys at the spring formal, but…” She trailed off and bit her lip, seeming unable to figure out exactly how she wanted to phrase her argument.

  I thought, not for the first time, that I really should have asked Emilie out when we first met, before the whole fucked-up debacle with Quinn. Part of me realized the two of them were so compatible that they would have hooked up eventually anyway, but the rest of me wondered if I would ever find a girl like her—put together and focused, and able to stand on her own two feet.

  “I know she’s fucked up, Em. Trust me. I don’t have any crazy ideas about being her boyfriend, but I just…I mean…”

  Emilie’s eyes softened, sorrow pooling in the middles. It was like she knew my secret, knew about Trent, but she couldn’t. No one did. “You don’t want her to get hurt.”

  I nodded, avoiding eye contact to keep my emotions under control.

  “You can help her tonight, Toby, but who will be there tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. Blair?”

  “I don’t know a ton about Blair Paddington, but she seems to have at best a fleeting interest in Kennedy’s well-being. Not that we can really blame her.” Emilie’s fingers squeezed mine. “The only one who will be there all the time is Kennedy.”

  I dropped her hand and set my cup on the counter, cutting my eyes at the stairs one more time as Kennedy and Jax disappeared around a corner. “I am here tonight. And I can’t just stand here and watch.”

  She gave me a sad smile and a kiss on the cheek, then tousled my hair. “You’re a good guy, Toby Wright. I always knew it.”

  I snorted. I wouldn’t categorize myself that way. I wasn’t a bad guy, either. As far as the scene at Whitman, I was just a guy.

  Four Years Ago

  The first time the girl had sex, she was fourteen, and he was
nice. It didn’t feel good or bad. It felt like nothing, until he opened her legs and pushed inside. Then, for a moment, there was something. Pain. She felt it. It was the first thing she’d felt—other than guilt—in two years, since she woke up in the hospital alone. An orphan.

  The one left behind by the people who’d said they loved her.

  The next time she climbed in the backseat with a boy from her school, she felt nothing. There was no pain the second or third or fourth time, and nothing rose to take its place. Dead weight on top of her to match the emptiness inside. Going through the motions lying down, the way she did standing up, walking through her days. Treading water. Content to mourn for all of her days, to prove her love. Her loss. Her belief that she didn’t belong here.

  This time was different. The boy was high on something the girl had never tried, something that made him strong, wild, and possibly deaf. At first it scared her, the way he tore her clothes, the way he abused her body with rough hands and hard thrusts.

  The blow that landed across her cheek exploded stars in front of her eyes and she cried out in shock.

  The pain rushed in, poured over her. It throbbed in her face, dripped into her blood, and for those moments, the girl remembered what it was like to feel. The numbness tingled away, replaced by a relief so potent it made her want to weep. She was not broken. There was something left inside that worked, and the pain, the blessed pain, let it loose. If the feelings were bad, it would still be okay. It was not wrong.

  The boy slammed inside her, his eyes snapping and wild, one hand tangled roughly in her hair. The blackness at the edge of her vision receded and she moved with him, suddenly alive.

  “Hit me again,” she tried, knowing how fucked up it sounded, but desperate for more relief from the nothingness. It didn’t matter how she earned it. Now she knew how.

  Chapter 10

  By the time I caught up with Jax, he was opening the door to a room he probably shared. Kennedy leaned against the wall in the hallway, looking pale and like she might be sick—more obviously wasted than she’d been the other night with me, but not incoherent. At least, it didn’t seem like it.