One after the other, George’s sneaker soles slapped the earth and his feet got sweaty inside the shoes. His hair was still wet. He hoped she hadn’t walked inside the building. There was no way to follow her in without being spotted.
The path through the trees led him right to a perfect vantage point, a spot where he could overlook the Business lot from atop a small hill. Tiffany was there still standing by her Toyota. The dress she’d put on blew in the wind with elegant ripples. Her blonde hair was a bright white gold in the sunlight of the late morning. George waited, not making a sound or even taking a moment to move his feet, which were aching.
Tiffany would twist as she looked one way down the road leading to the parking lot and then twist again as she glanced the opposite direction. She was waiting for someone. George’s muscles began to fill up with blood and adrenaline. He could feel the hotness of his own breath panting over his lips. One lone car came moseying down the road and pulled into the lot. Tiffany’s attention immediately went to the vehicle. It was a dusty beat-up old party van.
Patrick
SLOUCHED OVER THE STEERING COLUMN, Patrick straightened to attention when he saw Tiffany planted in the middle of the mostly-empty Business school parking lot, the long white dress hanging off her hips being pulled by the wind so that it outlined her legs.
He slowly pulled into the lot without breaking eye contact with her. Her blue eyes had always been the most striking part about her appearance, and at that moment, they cut across the expanse of parking spots and Patrick felt himself being reeled toward her. He’d never felt tense in her presence until now.
A small part of him suspected meeting like this was a trick she was planning, a ploy for revenge. He killed the engine. As he got out, his eyes couldn’t help but process how much beauty he’d overlooked for the months they’d dated.
While he was dressed in only a simple gray t-shirt and jeans, she looked like an angel in all white, the fabric cascading over itself in little ripples with the air. But it was the way she looked at him, unflinchingly, fearless, that made him question what had changed inside her.
They greeted each other, and Patrick stood facing her with his hands tucked deep in his pockets. Eventually, he came to lean up against her Toyota and with a flip of his head, shook his dark hair aside, revealing all of his wide brown eyes to her.
“What are we doing here?” he asked.
Tiffany’s expression remained strong. She looked aloof almost, without the hint of a smile or a scowl. She didn’t look hurt by what he’d done. Only resolute.
“I wanted you to know that I’m moving home,” she said.
She had moved home every summer, so he didn’t know what to say to that.
“For good, Patrick. I’m not coming back. I’m transferring.”
He stood up off the car. “Why?”
“I can’t,” she answered. “I can’t see you around town. I don’t want to.”
“Look, I—” He stopped and was long in forming an answer. “Don’t move because of me, Tiffany. That’s silly.”
“I have no choice.”
It was unfolding like he’d envisioned months before in his thoughts. She would retreat to Denver to spare herself the pain and humiliation. His imagination had comforted him then. It didn’t anymore. The guilt pressed on the top of his skull, like a pointed weight.
Patrick fidgeted. “Just take some time. Don’t go for good. It’s hard enough as it is. Don’t lay this at my feet, too.”
“It’s hard? For whom, you?” For the first time a hurt rose in her voice over the tenacity. She took an annoyed swipe at her blonde hair that was being played with by the wind.
“You need to know that I’m not going to do anything else to hurt you. I’ll never do that again.”
She flinched and then caught herself. She clasped her hands together and squeezed them tight, like she was trying to crush something in between her palms. “Please don’t make this hard.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
The first tears started in her eyes and Patrick was shocked, since she had stood so determined until then. Tiffany wiped them away, swiftly exhaled, and lifted her chin. She forced herself to laugh. “I told myself I wouldn’t care anymore.” Her eyes leveled on Patrick once more. “As much shit as you’ve put me through, and I’m the one that feels bad. How fucked is that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I needed to see you one last time,” she said, and shook her head. “And here I am, feeling bad about myself for it.”
He moved closer to set his hands on her arms but she drew away. She wiped her eyes again. “I’m saying goodbye, Patrick. This is finally goodbye.”
Patrick looked at her for a long pause, then tugged on his t-shirt. “I would’ve worn something nicer.” He said it sincerely and she laughed, but it also brought on the tears again.
Tiffany again wiped them away. “You were always good at two things. Making me laugh, and making me cry.”
He tilted his head back and sighed.
“Well,” she said shrugging, “that’s all I really wanted to tell you. I needed to get it out of the way.”
He didn’t know how to respond.
“We probably won’t be seeing each other again.”
“If that’s what you want,” he replied.
Her eyes sharpened. “You know that’s not what I want. It’s what I need to move on, you know?”
He gave a slow and heavy nod. Patrick wanted to tell her that he still cared about her, and that she’d meant a lot to him, but he couldn’t tell her that.
She stepped toward him. “Can I have a hug?”
“Yeah, of course.” He put his arms out, feeling his own eyes tingle, and she pressed the warmth of her body into him. They held each other and ever so slightly rocked back and forth. Small dots of dampness fell off her cheeks onto his shoulder.
“I’m going to miss you,” she managed to squeak out.
“I’ll miss you.” His hands caressed her lower back, feeling it one last time, smelling her hair one last time.
Their embrace lasted a full minute, and Tiffany was the one to pull away finally.
“I, uh—” Patrick shook his head, not able to form the words as gracefully as he desperately wished he could. “I’m just so sorry, Tiff. I—”
She held up one hand, signaling him to stop. With the other, she cupped her mouth. She vehemently shook her head from side to side as if each word was a curse put on her. Then Tiffany took one step toward him, glanced into his eyes and lifted her chin to kiss him. Their lips connected, soft and supple, and then parted.
“I just wanted one more,” she said, with a painful laugh. “Will you promise to remember me in a good light?”
Patrick nodded. “Of course I will.”
“I’ll always love you, Patrick,” she said, barely above a whisper, and then turned to get into her car.
Patrick watched her climb in, fumble with her keys, and gaze straight ahead through teary eyes. He felt like his legs were anchored into the concrete. He couldn’t move, couldn’t think clearly.
Tiffany turned on the engine, and before driving off, rolled down her window. Patrick looked up at her and the expression on her face had changed back to one of a distanced, detached stranger.
“You also need to know something.” She hesitated. “Simone’s pregnant. I thought you should know.”
She didn’t wait for a reaction. Tiffany’s window inched up and she drove away.
George
GEORGE PARKED IN HIS SPOT at the apartment and got out. His feet and legs felt numb as he walked to the door, his hand felt equally so as he slid the key into the lock.
Once inside, he tossed the keys toward the counter in the kitchen, but they flew short and banged into the cabinetry. He kicked off his shoes on his way to the couch. His sore feet pressed against the carpet without a purpose. George fell onto the couch face first and wrapped his arms around his head. His sobs
were muffled in the suede fabric.
The image of Tiffany leaning in to hug him, embrace him, kiss him played in his mind over and over. George rolled onto his side and pressed his fingertips into his skull, trying to rip those images out. The pain of his nails digging into his crown didn’t even register. His hands clutched at his thick, dark hair and yanked. Yanked until he screamed and pulled out a tuft of hair in each hand, such large chunks that blood was speckled on the roots. He stared at the hair as it lay in his hands, his chest rising and falling in bursts.
He turned over his hands so that the hair fell off onto the floor and then squeezed his fingers into fists. Slowly, he brought them up in the air and then hurled them down against the coffee table, making magazines, a candle, and a small basket filled with change jump. He banged them again and again, until they were numb.
Aching cries poured out. He slid down the cushion onto his back and stared up at the textured plaster on the ceiling, his vision blurred with wetness. The ceiling seemed to be lowering toward him, the walls on either side of the room slowly encroaching, the couch curling up around him. He was going to be crushed by this lonely fucking place. This bleak apartment that he suddenly felt nothing but contempt for.
He fired up off the couch and went to the kitchen. He rifled through drawers. In one of them he found an old composition notebook. The first thirty or so pages had been filled with notes from the few community college classes he’d taken back home before dropping out. Once he found a blank page, he tore it out. In another drawer he found a chewed ball-point pen.
George sat down at the small circular kitchen table in the corner of the living room, and put the pen to paper in a furious scribble, beginning the letter to her. After writing a single sentence, he pulled up and read it back to himself.
I was never enough.
His face rolled up painfully. He wrote again.
For you or for anyone.
He dropped the pen and it rolled down the table and off onto the floor. He stared at the paper for a moment and then ripped it out, balled it up and tossed it into the trash.
The front door was still unlocked, open for anyone to come in. If Tiffany came in, he didn’t know what he would do to her. So he went to the door, dead-bolted it, and went back to the kitchen.
There was a bottle of vodka in the cabinet. He took it out and began sucking it down in gulps. He waited, fine for a few minutes and then it hit his empty stomach. Half the bottle gone, right into his bloodstream.
He staggered a bit with bottle still in hand, bumped into a wall, and began sobbing again. He glanced at the stairs up to his bedroom. It was dark up those stairs. He ascended while staring down at his feet, scratching at his temple with the fingernails of his freehand. He was swallowing dryly every few seconds, and felt his pulse thrumming.
In his room, he forced the rest of the bottle down. It burned his lips raw. Made him lurch and gag.
Delirious, he took a long belt out of his dresser, then glanced first at the door with completely hazed vision, then the ceiling fan, then finally at the walls. There was a mountain bike rack anchored high up on the far wall. A mountain bike that had cost him almost four grand was sitting on its metal arms, not a trace of dirt on it, used no more than twice. His bed was directly below it and so he stepped up onto the soft mattress and brought the bike down. George stared at the rack for a long time, swaying where he stood, tears in his eyes.
He went back for the belt and looped it on the rack, playing with different configurations. Eventually, he figured out that it would be better to hang his heavy bike lock on the rack first and then loop the belt through that.
He got the whole arrangement set up, turned his back to the wall, and lowered the smooth, cold leather over his face and under his chin. He cinched it snug. Then tested it by leaning forward a few times, letting the weight gag him. Tears were pouring from his eyes, and he remembered all the regrets from his life.
He kicked the mattress away and it slid across the floor of the bedroom, the momentum dragging the frame with it. His weight pulled him down and the belt didn’t give. It strained and whined but held. His feet thrashed and kicked wildly, his toes mere inches off the floor.
Suddenly, with the leather cutting his throat, a fear, more hot and intense than he’d ever felt, shot through his entire body. He flailed even harder. Wait, his panicking mind shouted. No, not yet! Adrenaline rushed into his blood and his arms shot up awkwardly and drunkenly, working his shoulders into a painful angle. George’s fingers brushed and skimmed the leather belt, but he couldn’t grab. There was still time to free himself.
His hands frantically fought, swiping at the belt. Then his vision bled into streaks of red, blues and whites, and then static, like on a television. A tingling sensation ran up into his arms and they fell to his sides, weightless. And there was a moment of deep stillness, where his whole body felt warm.
Patrick
AS HE WENT ABOUT HIS work, Patrick was overcome with a terrible headache, heavier than he’d ever felt, almost excruciating.
He began to sweat and closed his eyes. When he opened them, Teddy passed by in his peripheral vision. Teddy had been watching him all day, encroaching a little closer to Patrick’s desk with each pass in the office.
Intimidation wasn’t going to work. Not with this headache. Not with this pounding.
There was relief for a few minutes when Patrick went back to his emails, as his attention slipped elsewhere. A movie played in his head. He saw Reagan on the river in the black tube, her colorful purple swimsuit soaking in sun, the silver necklace around her neck throwing wild reflections into his eyes and over the ripples. He could hear her laugh, that high, youthful, free-wheeling sound. He could sense the quiet of the river, so much volume and mass moving along so quickly yet so quietly, only giving off noise when their rubber tubes slapped against it, or when it ramped up and roared over the boulders beneath.
The movie gradually blurred away. Patrick looked around the cold office with its bland decorations. Reagan was gone. All that was left of her were the memories in his head, and he was scared that there was nothing to stop them from inevitably blurring away too.
Teddy passed by a fifth time and this time cleared his throat rudely and knocked a box of tissues off the reception counter onto Patrick’s desk. Patrick glared at him and the pounding pain filtered back into his skull.
They held a stare down. Patrick considered plucking his nice signing pen from the cup next to his computer, rising out of his chair, and burying it three inches deep in Teddy’s eye socket.
Teddy made a slow turn from the desk and receded back into the depths of his office, and Patrick was left broiling. For some reason today Patrick had finally taken the bridge over to hating him.
A phone call came in a little later and Patrick answered.
“Patrick?” The voice was soft and spiked slightly, almost like she’d wished someone else had answered. It was Mallory.
“You should’ve called my cell if you wanted to talk.”
“Funny, but I’m trying to reach Teddy. Is he there?”
Patrick had been serious. He didn’t have the energy to be funny. He knew Mallory had Teddy’s direct line. “I can send you to his voicemail.”
“I need to know if he’s there, Patrick.”
“He’s not here.” His voice was lifeless and cold, and even though he was lying—he didn’t know why he was lying—it seemed to wake her to the fact that he wasn’t in a game playing mood.
“Oh,” she replied. “Okay then. Well, that’s all I needed.”
“I need something,” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Patrick, can we not start with the innuendos?”
“I’m serious.”
“What is it?” she asked finally. There was reluctance dripping in her voice.
“I need twenty minutes with you.”
“I called for my fiancé. If he’s not there, then this conversation’s over.”
“Did you tell him?
”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“I don’t think it’s nothing.”
“What’s the point of doing this, Patrick?”
“I want to see you. Just twenty minutes of your time. I’m not giving up just because you’re working through this complex you have of marrying the biggest asshole in the world.”
“Better than dating someone who gets people killed.”
It sucked the wind out of him. He kept listening while the pounding in his ears rose to a full throb. The line was silent, empty. Gently, Patrick eased the phone down and hung up.
Four minutes later the line rang again and he answered.
“I’m sorry,” Mallory said.
“It’s fine,” Patrick said.
“No, it’s not.”
He didn’t say anything and a period of silence extended.
“Listen,” she said, “I’ll give you five minutes, but I can tell you already that it’s not going to change anything. And then I want you to leave us alone, agreed?”
He looked at the time on the computer screen. “I get off in about forty-five minutes. Meet me at my house in an hour. Let me say what I have to say, and if you don’t like it, and you still want to be with him, I won’t stop you.”
A long pause. “I’m serious, Patrick. Only five minutes.”
“That’s all I need.”
“Okay, then.” Her voice softened, almost like relief had swept through her.
He said goodbye and set the phone down. He rubbed his hands together, a slight nervousness holding hostage over his body. The pounding in his head subsided.
Teddy came out of his office again and into the reception area to get some water from the cooler. He hoisted up the jeans which were straining against his belly, and he and Patrick watched each other from across the room while Teddy drank cold water out of a cone paper cup.
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