The End of All Things Beautiful

by Nikki Young

  I’m on my third breath when I see the road dully illuminated about a mile ahead of me, and suddenly I’m thankful for the obscene dark of these country roads. I hit the gas petal, causing my car to once again slide along the road, but I don’t care. The faster I reach the lights ahead the sooner I’ll know if it’s Benji.

  The closer I get, the more the lights come into focus and I can make out two distinct sets of headlights. Slowing down as I approach, I recognize Benji’s truck and in front of it is Alex’s.

  Without thinking about it, I slam my car in park, barely making it off to the shoulder, but I couldn’t give a shit. I pay attention to nothing as I run across the road. I can hear Benji calling my name and while it should ease my fears, I find myself breaking down at just the sound.

  By the time I reach him, I’m sobbing. Deep wailing cries as I throw myself into his arms, my entire body shaking uncontrollably. I can’t even speak as I wrap my arms around his neck, holding on so tightly I’m sure he’s struggling to breathe.

  “Campbell, baby, settle down,” Benji whispers in my ear, but I hardly hear it over my sobs. His hand is now rubbing circles on my back, trying to soothe me, but right now, I’m inconsolable.

  As if he realizes this isn’t going to be solved with a few simple words, he stops talking and just holds me. My feet are burning, cold and soaked as I stand in the snow with no shoes on. But I don’t care.

  Benji’s okay.

  We’re okay.

  A few minutes pass and my hold on him finally loosens. I’m settling down as I come to grips with the fact that on the surface everything is alright. But obviously underneath it all, I’m still a shit ass mess. My rational side realizes I can’t have this reaction to every minor incident that occurs in our life; yet moving beyond it is proving far more difficult than I thought.

  “I’m okay,” Benji says, before I can say anything. My face is in his hands and he kisses my forehead as I nod my head. My hands are gripping his coat as the cold finally catches up with me and my body begins to shake again.

  Benji slips off his coat, putting it around my shoulders as he kisses me again. His hands running up and down my arms, warming me as much as he can with the winter wind blowing relentlessly across the openness of the road.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this,” Benji eventually says, breaking the silence. “But this kind of thing happens a lot out here. That’s why I called Alex. He’ll pull my truck out and I’ll be on my way.”

  I hate the casualness to his statement. Like we haven’t watched a car accident destroy us in the past. To me, this incident could have easily turned ugly.

  “It doesn’t happen to us!” I yell, and out of the corner of my eye I see Alex step out of his truck.

  “This is why I wanted to tell Alex and Annie,” Benji says, letting out a deep sigh as he steps back from me slightly. “Campbell, you’re standing in the middle of the road in your socks in the winter, crying.”

  “You make me sound unstable,” I quip, feeling myself grow angry at his lack of empathy for my feelings. He’s lived this nightmare right along with me. If anyone should understand, it’s him.

  “I know you’re not, but imagine how this looks to an outside observer.” Benji glances over at Alex as he stands waiting patiently for me to get my shit together. Alex gives us both a sympathetic smile and I feel my face heat up, reminding me that he’s seen all of this.

  Embarrassed by my behavior and by how totally ridiculous I must look, I quietly apologize to Benji. “I’m sorry. I overreacted,” I admit, not sure what more I can say. At this point there’s no sense in defending my behavior.

  “You didn’t really, though,” Benji states. “Given what we’ve been through, this is a natural reaction to hearing I may have been hurt in a car accident. I’m certain I would’ve responded the same way.”

  Leading me back across the street to where my car is parked, he opens the door and waits for me to climb in.

  “Go home,” Benji says firmly, but I can hear a kindness behind it still. “Alex is going to pull my truck out and when I get home, we’re going to sit down and explain all of this to them.” And even though his words are definite, I can’t help but resolve myself to agree with him. He’s right. They need to know what happened.

  “Okay,” I say, smiling up at him as his perfect blue eyes look down at me. “I love you.”

  “I love you more than you’ll ever know, Campbell,” he says back, the words echoing his own all those years ago, yet in this moment, they’re exactly what I need to hear.

  I make it back home in about thirty minutes, but the ride is slow and I keep questioning my reaction to Annie telling me Benji’s truck slid off the road. I can’t live like this, in a perpetual state of paranoia that something horrible is going to happen to us. It’s unrealistic and eventually it will drive me crazy.

  I really thought that just getting it all out in the open would allow me to move on, but clearly there’s more to all of this than I ever realized. Jack was right. Just because I think it’s over doesn’t mean it just disappears. I have a lot more to work on.

  I’m still freezing when I walk in the door. I know Annie has left; her car is no longer in the driveway, so I strip off my clothes, leaving them as I walk upstairs and into the shower.

  The water is so scalding hot against my freezing cold skin that my body goes numb almost instantly. My feet and hands are tingling as they finally catch up and begin to sense the temperature of the water. I adjust the water, but I still don’t move out from under the stream. I let the hot water fall over my body, washing away the awfulness of the day as I try to clear my thoughts.

  I spend far longer in the shower than I intend to, but there’s something about the silence and being alone combined with the hot water that allows me to relax. I’m wrapped in a towel and when I walk out of the bathroom I find Benji sitting on the bed waiting for me.

  He looks tired, exhausted actually, but he still gives me a smile and calls me over to where he’s sitting using just one finger. His shirt is unbuttoned and untucked, the bottoms of his jeans soaked and he’s already taken off his boots and socks, but he still looks amazing. There is something about his face, the disheveledness of his appearance, his dark brown hair and his full beard matched with his beautiful blue eyes that will always be a comfort to me. There’s home in his eyes, a love that has been there since we were kids.

  Stepping between his legs, he pulls me closer to him as his hands grip my hips. I can feel the chill of them through the towel and it makes me shudder. Benji leans forward and presses his lips to the bare skin of my arm, his mouth resting there for a long second.

  “You okay?” he finally asks.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, looking down at him.

  Sometimes we give the appearance of normality, which is easy to do. I’ve been doing it for nine years, or at least trying. But each attempt brings failure. Along with it comes my inability to fully understand my reactions, my feelings and my response to events or words. Even something as simple as a song on the radio, a time on a clock, can remind me of everything. This will always be a part of my life, a part of our lives, and we both need to learn to cope with it in ways that won’t outwardly affect everyone around us, including each other.

  Benji has always been the more reserved of the two of us, even before the accident, while I tended to internalize everything and allow the stress to consume me. But as much as he likes to give off this casual aura, he’s shaken by this moment too.

  “I don’t want you to be sorry,” he says, taking me onto his lap. “I want you to be okay. I want us to be okay and I know it’s going to take time, but tonight is exactly why we need to get everything out. We can’t live here with Alex and Annie not knowing.”

  He takes a deep breath and runs his fingers through my wet hair, my body cradled against his.

  “When I saw you…” Benji starts, but stops, his hold on me tightening. “It was too…” He stalls out again and sighs hard.
“Fuck, Campbell,” he mutters. “Your face looked exactly like it did on the night of the accident and it scared the shit out of me.”

  “I was terrified,” I admit. “It’s the first time since we’ve been back together that we’ve had to deal with something similar and I didn’t handle it well.”

  “Honestly, neither did I,” Benji also admits. “I should’ve called you first.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I ask, curious about it. It was something I wondered the entire time I was driving to find him, when I did find him and even now. I guess I assumed he knew how I’d react so he kept it from me.

  “My first instinct, because it happens somewhat frequently in the winter here, was to call Alex. My truck slides off the road and if it’s not damaged and I’m not hurt, I call Alex.”

  My eyes widen slightly at his words and Benji leans back so he can look at my face.

  “Baby, I know what you’re thinking, and no, I’ve never been hurt in an accident out here. Not since…” he starts to say but doesn’t complete his thought. He wets his lips and waits another second before adding, “Not since the accident with you.”

  “Were you scared to call me?” I ask. “Why did you send Annie over?”

  “I called Alex as soon as it happened. It’s just what I naturally would’ve done.” He shrugs his shoulders and I understand that his initial reaction wouldn’t have been to call me, but I still don’t understand why he didn’t after the fact. “It wasn’t like I didn’t think about you. I just knew you wouldn’t be able to help me and by the time I got off the phone with Alex my battery was nearly dead. I tried to call you, but my phone died.”

  His story is plausible. Living out in the middle of nowhere, the phone will constantly search for service, draining the battery, and I can fully understand why Alex would have been his first point of contact. He’s spent nine years without me, without anyone really, and for him to suddenly decide to call me would’ve been out of the ordinary for him.

  “I understand and I guess this is something we both need to work on, huh? Me not reacting like a crazy person every time something goes slightly wrong and you not keeping me in the dark.”

  “Yeah,” Benji says, smiling at me now. “Guess we’ll always be hesitant to upset or worry the other, but you’re right, we still have a lot to work on.”

  He pulls me in and I lean down to meet him, his mouth connecting with mine in a kiss that’s soft and slow. It says everything we haven’t said, how much we need each other, how much we both want this, and how our lives will never be the same again. We’re heading toward happiness.

  “Alex and Annie will be here in an hour. I’m going to take a shower.”

  I stand up and Benji begins to remove his clothes and I once again notice his tattoo.

  “It’s true, you know,” I say, gesturing at the contrasting black ink against his skin.

  “It always has been.”

  An hour later Benji is showered and we’re standing in the kitchen. Benji’s opening a beer while I’m straightening up when a small knock comes at the door and it opens just a second later.

  “Hi,” I say, greeting both of them with a smile and a quick wave. I head over to where they’re standing as they take off their wet boots and hang their coats on the rack by the door.

  With Benji following behind me, he hands Alex a beer and we all move over to sit down on the couch.

  “So, I’m guessing there’s more to this story than ‘we just broke up’,” Annie says, breaking the tension that has filled the room. She looks over at Benji and gives him a quick smile. Up until this point, not much has been said about Benji’s relationship with me. Why it ended or what led up to it ending. I think both of us tried to forget it ever happened and by not talking about it or at least not the details of it, we felt we could brush it off.

  “Full disclosure,” Benji says, giving me a look that says forgive me. “I filled Alex in after you left and I’m sure, because he can’t keep anything from Annie, he told her too.”

  Alex laughs out loud and it makes me smile. Benji knows Alex well enough to know he’d have told Annie and in a way I’m grateful. It takes some of the pressure off of both of us. He was able to tell Alex in an environment that was natural to them, when they were alone and things were settled.

  Annie shakes her head, rolling her eyes a little. “They’re hopeless,” she says, looking over at me as if I should know exactly what she means and I do. When you’re in love with someone, you keep nothing from them. Benji and I watched it ruin our relationship, but it’s funny that the truth is what ultimately brought us back together.

  We spend the next hour filling Alex and Annie in on what happened. But this time there are no tears. I don’t know if it’s because we’ve told this same story so many times, or if we’ve finally come to terms with what we’ve done or possibly the fact that Alex and Annie have no direct connection to the accident. Maybe it’s a combination of all these things, either way; this time is easier.

  Annie asks a few questions, but nothing prying or uncomfortable and when all is done, we sit around sharing stories and laughing. It’s still funny to me every time they call him Ben, but I figure eventually I’ll get used to it. But I do know there will never come a time that I call him that. He’ll always be Benji to me.

  I hated that I doubted Benji’s judgment about telling them, but that fear will always remain. One day there will come a time when someone doesn’t respond this favorably, not that I imagine there will be many more instances where we’ll need to discuss any of this. For our sake I hope this is the end.

  When we climb into bed, I slide over until I’m pressed against Benji’s bare chest. I can smell him and feel him, warm and comforting.

  “You ready for this?” he asks, as he kisses the top of my head and I can feel the smile on his face.

  “I’ve been ready my whole life.”

  Epilogue

  We’ve had a hard year, but we’ve also had some of the best times we’ve ever had in our lives. It’s funny because while Benji and I still struggle with the weight of it all, it hits each of us at different times. We have different triggers, different times of the year when it’s harder, and moments when one of us falls apart, but the other doesn’t. Maybe that’s a good thing, because one of us is always there to pick up the pieces.

  We found ourselves in therapy shortly after telling Alex and Annie, because we realized that although we’ve shared everything with our family and friends, there were internal battles that kept us from moving forward. It’s helped tremendously.

  But I also think we’ve been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and with each day that passes, we find ourselves falling into patterns of normalcy; almost a correction of all the things that have gone wrong. Sometimes I think it was fate that created the accident and now fate is righting what was made wrong. Or at least correcting it.

  While Samantha and I will never have the kind of relationship that would ever be considered close, she doesn’t keep Thomas from Benji or me. She doesn’t have to allow us to be a part of his life, but she does, and I’ve never been more grateful to someone in my life. Having Thomas be involved in the things we do and being involved in his life has allowed me to forgive myself for giving up on Tommy. Maybe that’s what Tommy always wanted; Benji and me to be a stable figure in Thomas’ life.

  We spent his fifth birthday with him, a party thrown by Samantha that she invited us to. Later on, Samantha and Thomas came to visit. It isn’t that she doesn’t like me; I still get the sense that she blames me for Tommy’s death and maybe I am partially to blame. I could’ve done more, I know that, but that’s the reason I’m making a conscious effort to be in Thomas’ life.

  We have Thomas, and I hope it’s something that lasts. He’s fate’s replacement for losing Tommy.

  My relationship with Jack changed far more than I could’ve ever imagined and since moving in with Benji, we talk on a regular basis and not just about work. It’s funny to th
ink that I had to move nine hours away for us to form a friendship when we spent so much time together before. I actually enjoy him now. Shortly after I left he met a girl who he has fallen madly in love with. I just adore her. She’s sassy and sarcastic and she keeps Jack in line. She’s perfect for him. I often wonder if my happiness has something to do with his. Either way, I’m glad we’ve both found what we needed.

  It was only a few weeks after I moved in with Benji that I found out I was pregnant. It didn’t really come as a surprise, but what did was the fact that I was pregnant with twins. Finding out around the twenty-week mark when I had my first ultrasound, both of us sat there staring at the screen, utterly silent.

  I was the first to cry, and it was after the ultrasound tech told us we were having a boy and a girl. It wasn’t the fact that the babies were twins; it was that they were a boy and a girl.

  While fraternal twins are the most common, especially a boy and girl, to me, it felt like fate once again set things right. Like it was replacing what we lost all those years ago. What was once five was now whole again with Thomas and now our babies.

  The day they were born was bittersweet. With Benji by my side, we both held them and cried, naming them Kaya and Andre, meaning forgiveness and strength. But never forgetting how we got here, their middle names hold far more significance and sentimental attachment.

  Kelly and Samuel.

  This is our life now and it may never be perfect, but it’s our life.

  And sometimes out of a tragedy comes something beautiful.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I need to thank my readers. My sincerest thank you goes out to everyone who purchases my books and reads them. Whether you love them or not, all your reviews, comments and messages are deeply appreciated. They make this all worthwhile.