Be My Downfall

by Lyla Payne

  My dad heaved a sigh that conveyed enough exhaustion to triple my daily helping of guilt. “As you know, son, Miriam is a very thorough employee. Her summary of her time in Florida made it quite clear that you have some kind of relationship with this Kennedy Gilbert.”

  The way he said her name made me want to throw a blanket around her, one that could shield her from people like my dad, who saw nothing but her issues. It kicked me back into protective mode so fast my head spun. Maybe I was the one who needed meds. I was bi-polar tonight with all these fucking feelings.

  “I’m not sure how to respond to that, honestly. We’re…friends, I guess? Dating? We haven’t really had any kind of status talk.”

  “Well, I would advise you to do so, and to think seriously about whether this is the kind of girl you want to get involved with at all. I have a full dossier on my desk, and Toby…it’s not pretty.”

  My teeth ground together so hard my jaw ached. He’d had her investigated. My dad and his staff probably knew more intimate details about Kennedy’s past than I did at this point.

  “She’s actually beautiful, dad. Maybe I’ll bring her to Bern this summer.”

  He sighed again. “We’ve gotten through twenty years with very little cheek from you, and I suppose I knew it would end at some point. To be honest, I always expected it would be a girl that did it, but this…son, your mother and I were wrong to push such high expectations on you when Trent started to go off the rails. I know we’ve done the therapy and apologized to you for the blame we placed in anger, but I can’t help but think you falling for this girl—an addict—could be some misguided attempt to make up for what you perceive as failings.”

  His words pounded in through my ears and tore apart my brain, raced down my spine and diffused into my blood, eating away all of the protective coating donned during those private family therapy sessions. When I had struggled to hear my father’s broken apology for the way he’d screamed at me, the way he’d blamed me for not bringing Trent home.

  They’d sent me after him. I hadn’t come home for three days because I couldn’t find him. I went everywhere, every haunt I knew about and a bunch I’d had to ask around for, but Trent was gone. It took me a long time to hear them say there was nothing more I could have done.

  Like I’d confessed to Kennedy, sometimes I still didn’t believe that.

  “That girl’s name is Kennedy, and I know she’s not Trent.”

  “Yes, alcohol, not drugs, it appears, except for the occasional joint. Six arrests, over two dozen hospital stays, and on-going psychotherapy—prescription drugs she doesn’t fill, by the way—and that’s just in the last six years. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this, but she’s not exactly the kind of girl who will pass a media vetting with flying colors.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not running for office, then.” I was going to need new teeth after this conversation. “Dad, I know you mean well and you’re trying to help, but I’ve been talking to Senator Wright this whole time. Could you put my father on for a moment?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We never talk about girls, or why I don’t date, or why I’ve never had friends outside other congressional kids or your interns. I don’t want to talk about it now, other than to tell you that I like our life, and I’m proud of you. Being isolated has never mattered all that much to me. But it matters now. Out of nowhere, like a damn punch to the jaw. And I don’t know if it’s because I’m fucked up over Trent or not, I only know it matters. She matters.”

  I held my breath, determined not to speak again until he did. We engaged in a battle of wills from different states, nothing between us but my cell phone, probably the speakerphone in his office, and the ghost of my brother.

  The sound of his fingers drumming on the desk brought a slight smile to my face. He did it when he was considering an argument from one of his staff, or from my mother. Usually the latter.

  “If you have feelings for this…for Miss Gilbert, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Feelings don’t initiate there, and though it’s been a long time for me, I do remember what it’s like at the beginning. With someone new.” He paused. “Please be careful, son. Your mother and I are worried, and we don’t want to see you—or Miss Gilbert—get hurt.”

  “Because it would look bad?”

  “Mostly because we love you. But also because it would look bad.” The smile in his voice came through the receiver.

  It tugged my own lips up in return and we said goodbye, but the smile and the mirth were short-lived. My parents did love me, but my father also worried for his career. It wasn’t a fault, and I’d never considered it one. He loved his constituents, too. If anything were to happen that prevented him from public service, it would make him someone else, someone less than my dad, and we’d come close to losing him over Trent. I couldn’t be the cause of going there again.

  I didn’t want to see Kennedy or my family get hurt, but most of all, I didn’t want to give up and never see where this thing with her went. I wanted to see if she could surprise us all and stay clean, that maybe we could spend more time together and she could meet my family and we could go skiing again next year.

  Giving up on the possibility of all of those things before we ever even touched it seemed like a bigger mistake than staying, but what the fuck did I know? I was probably as messed up as she was, the difference being that my barely healed wounds were safely hidden away in the most confidential of files.

  The more I tried to shake the unsettled melancholy the harder it clung, and by the time I returned to the stands—having forgotten to complete my errand—I didn’t feel like being sociable. Being able to control things let me survive after losing my brother, and right then, with the Kennedy wild card and my parents’ nerves set on edge over the whole thing, my feelings were a jumbled mess.

  The game had ended by the time I made it back, and the Owls had pulled out a victory, thanks in no small part to Finn, who had smacked the dinger I’d seen from the parking lot. Visible relief enveloped Kennedy when she saw me, her shoulders sagging. The smile she gave me lifted a bit of my own weight, but even her face reminded me what an uphill battle we had in front of us. At the moment, the demons of my past dogging my heels, it didn’t feel possible. I felt stupid for thinking it was, for needing a phone call from my father to remind me that I’d failed miserably before and I’d probably fall apart if I did it again.

  I felt like an ass. I hadn’t even planned on getting involved with her—it was true what I’d told Kennedy the day I brought her home from the hospital—that I’d missed her when we stopped talking, even though we barely knew each other. It was true what I’d told my father just now, that she’d hit me out of nowhere, like a sucker punch. She became an odd part of me in St. Moritz, like the way certain places settle over you and even if you’ve only visited once, feel strangely like home. Like maybe you’d lived there in another life, or it had been waiting for you to discover it all that time.

  I had no idea how to change that, or if I wanted to. But I was scared shitless.

  Her smile faltered at whatever she saw in my face, but I shook my head and folded her in a hug. The smell of her salved my concerns and I held on, reminding myself that she was worth it. We were worth it. I’d never felt this way before, and worrying over losing it was not a good reason to push it away.

  Three Weeks Ago

  Toby had not gone away since he brought her to the hospital. She thought at first he would be like Grandmother—make sure she didn’t die, but stay away, perhaps afraid of being infected by devilish spirits.

  But every time Kennedy opened her eyes, she found his soft, brown gaze staring back. It was filled with concern, but not pity. Wariness, but not fear. She liked waking up to his eyes, except for the instinct to run.

  Except for the guilt that came with liking anything.

  Since she was twelve, Kennedy had never woken up with anyone in the room, because she never slept unless she was
alone. Go to sleep alone, wake up alone, and everything was as expected. She could not bear to go to sleep feeling safe with another person only to wake up and find them gone. It couldn’t happen.

  And yet, with Toby it had happened the first day she’d met him. It had been terrifying, but the more she tried to avoid him, the more impossible it became. How could she avoid the person who, after all these years, had crawled so unexpectedly beneath her skin? His understanding heart, so clear in his treatment of her, beat in time with her own. As though they had been one, then split apart and flung into two bodies, but remembered what it was like to be whole.

  She did not know how he understood her, but she knew that he did.

  Kennedy knew many things: that if she got involved with him, they would both receive broken hearts as a reward, that as much as he thought he understood, there were things he could never grasp, and that, in the end, he would ask her to be something she could not bear—happy.

  She had been happy for moments, brief snatches of time, with him already. Those were dangerous. She had not been faced with the challenge—with the desire to let go of her sorrow—since she woke up alone six years ago. She had known then that it wasn’t right. To be happy after losing her parents dishonored them.

  But Toby made her want to look into the future. The idea of being with him, of calling him hers, spoke to her with more strength than anything she could remember.

  Well, anything she would let herself remember.

  He would be her downfall. The only thing that had kept her functioning was the ability to control her emotions, and when she was with Toby, the things he made her feel came without warning.

  Kennedy could try to want to feel okay. But she knew she would fail.

  Chapter 18

  We said goodnight to Audra and Blair, who headed back to the freshman dorm when we followed the path toward Greek Row. The air around Kennedy pulsed with melancholy, along with the edge of something else that infected my stomach with tap-dancing crickets.

  “I like Audra. She doesn’t bullshit,” I commented, groping for a way to break the silence between us. It had grown into a beast, black and threatening.

  “Guys always like Audra. And neither of them are much for bullshit, honestly. I don’t blame Blair for getting sick of me. If I were in her shoes, and had drawn me in a roommate lottery, I’d be over it, too.”

  “Strawberry….”

  “You know what I’m wondering though?” She hadn’t touched me the entire walk, and when I reached for her hand, she shifted a good foot out of reach, getting to the back door of the house before me and letting herself in. “Why didn’t you say anything when Audra asked about treatment?”

  We closed my bedroom door behind us, the sounds of guys coming and going upstairs, probably laughing while they made totally normal plans to go out for drinks or pick up chicks. My chest tightened, then twisted harder, like a wrung dishrag, with each moment that passed while I tried to figure out how to answer her.

  She’d backed me into a corner. I had to lie, or piss her off with the truth. If the choice was between those two things, though, I would always choose to piss her off.

  “First of all, because the three of you were having a conversation, and you don’t need me to answer for you or defend your decisions. Second, because you know I agree with them, strawberry. The more support you have, the easier this will be for you.”

  “The easier what will be, Toby?” Kennedy crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the door. Her posture and the fact that she hadn’t taken off her shoes and flopped on the bed poured anxiety into the room. She was the cornered animal again, skittish and ready to take off at the first sign of trouble. “Admitting I’ve been dependent on alcohol to feel anything since I was thirteen years old? Saying out loud that maybe that’s a bunch of bullshit, that really the majority of the time I’m sober and perfectly fine with the numbness? Or having a casual chat about the fact that my entire family died and left me here to do the rest of my life alone? Which of those things, exactly, would be easier in a room full of people I don’t know?”

  Instinct tried to push me forward, to touch her and soothe away the pain, but instead I clenched my hands into fists and stayed put. You didn’t approach the wild filly in the field, not if you wanted her to trust you, and Kennedy’s pain wouldn’t be soothed—at least not today. “I get it. Easy doesn’t describe your life. I understand that, but I want to understand what’s stopping you from trying. We met over a month ago now, but you’ve never told me why you cried the first time I made you feel good. Why you want to be numb or drunk. Trust me, sweetheart. Please.”

  Tears filled her eyes and she refused to look at me, but from three feet away, there was no way to force her. The weight of my begging and her silence writhed between us, shoving us further apart even though neither one of us took a single step.

  “What exactly do you think we’re doing here, Wright?”

  “Trying.”

  “You’re trying to have a relationship. I’m trying to breathe. There’s a difference.”

  “I’m right here, Kennedy. Tell me why.”

  I wanted her to say out loud what she’d mumbled in half-sleep the night she’d come home with me. My gut reaction said there was no way for her to move forward until she could admit the root of her troubles—that she felt like feeling good, or being happy, was wrong. Maybe if she said it aloud she would hear how wrong it sounded.

  When she finally met my eyes again, the anger in her gaze was as bottomless as the ocean. It dragged me under, filled my lungs with a mixture of fear and fury I hadn’t felt in over four years. My heart seized, failing to find a rhythm. My lungs constricted.

  “Do you know what happened to the last people I trusted? They all fucking died and I lived. If I’m happy, what does that say about my love for them? That I can just forget what happened and move on? Have a great boyfriend and a bunch of sorority friends, spend my days at the salon and my nights at slumber parties, be fucking happy? How can I be happy when they can’t be?” A sob tore from her throat, the painful admission of her grief magnified against the backdrop of her rage. Her hands shook as she balled her dress up inside her fists, holding on so tight her knuckles turned white. “What kind of fucking daughter would I be, having a goddamn grand time living it up while they’re all rotting away?”

  There was nothing I could say. Kennedy had surely heard it all—that her parents wouldn’t want her to spend her entire life sad, in mourning. That she would do more to honor their memory by being happy, that of course no one blamed her for living. In years of therapy, she’d had to have heard those things at least once a week. The problem was, she didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t know how to help her now. I hadn’t known how to make Trent believe there was a way out of the shithole that had become his life, and I’d lost him.

  Despite the conversation with my father, despite my own fears of failure, I did not want to lose Kennedy. This was the beginning of something. I couldn’t deny the pull between us, and no matter what anyone thought, it had nothing to do with my desire to save her. I wanted her to get better so we could be happy. I wanted to be happy with her.

  The choking terror of saying the wrong thing smothered every response that tried to surface. I didn’t want to screw this up, because even if she was pissed at me for confronting her about her problems, or making her face the feelings she’d buried all this time, we were talking. Who knew when I’d get another chance?

  “What about me?”

  “What?” Incredulity replaced the snapping ire in her eyes. “What about you?”

  “Well, you and I have this thing going, strawberry, and it’s pretty fucking great. But if you’re determined to be unhappy the rest of your life because you think that’s your penance for surviving, where does that leave me? With a girl I can never make happy? Whose only honest moments are in the middle of an orgasm, when her brain clicks off and her body demands, however briefly, the pleasure it’s being denie
d?”

  “What makes you think I have room inside me to worry about how you feel? There’s nothing there, Wright. No feelings. Not for you, not for me.”

  “Because you’re hanging on to too many things. You’ve got to let it go. You’ve got to try, or you’re going to forget how. It’s going to sink so deep you’ll lose the ability forever, strawberry. And when that happens, drinking yourself into the hospital or letting guys like Sebastian Blair abuse you is going to seem like a walk in the fucking park.” I took advantage of her surprise at my offensive to step closer, reaching out and cupping her face, brushing a thumb over her reddened cheek. “Sweet girl. Don’t you see that I want to make you happy every day? In the morning before breakfast, holding your hand at a football game, taking you out to a fancy election day event, and yeah, in bed. All of it. Everywhere. I don’t ever want you to hurt.”

  “You’re hurting me now.”

  “How?”

  “It hurts so much more when you try to force the good. Like the girl who should have died in that wreck is being peeled away from the girl who lived.”

  “Kennedy, you can’t peel those girls apart. They’re the same. And I’m not the kind of guy who believes in should haves or would haves. Sometimes there aren’t second chances, and sometimes life takes a turn down a road you wish had never been paved, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You’ve taken more than your share of hellish turns, strawberry. No little girl should have to wake up in the hospital and find out her family is dead. But I don’t buy that bullshit that you should have died. You didn’t. There’s no should have about it.”

  “What the fuck do you know about it, anyway? Your life hasn’t taken a single road that hasn’t been paved and manicured and smoothed out for you ahead of time,” she spat the words with less venom than the previous ones, a kind of half-hearted counterpunch.

  I wondered when it had become a battle. Maybe I had been purposely obtuse believing it hadn’t been one the entire time. I was paying for my willingness to pretend.