Bittersweet Always

by Ella Fields

  Needing to hide the emotions that I was sure were evident on my face, I turned back around and began washing the dishes.

  Limp arms, twitching fingers. Blue lips and screaming sirens.

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  Someone yelling, “Toby.”

  Wake up, wake up, wake up.

  I woke up sweating, panting, and trying desperately to shake the remnants of the nightmare that I swore was real. How could months go by, yet you felt as if every important, damaging piece of your life took place only mere days ago?

  My hands ripped into my hair, and I kicked the covers off, sitting up and trying to catch my breath.

  Dad thumped gently on the door. “Pip? You okay?”

  I’m not your second chance to fix something that can’t be fixed.

  I couldn’t breathe, and the tears choked me almost as much as the panic did.

  I hiccupped. The door creaked open, and then Dad was grabbing my face and swiping the tears away. “Hey, hey. It’s okay. Breathe, just breathe, come on.”

  Breathe with me.

  My heart shook my chest cavity, pounding so hard I could hear it echo through the guest room we were sitting in.

  “One,” my dad said, inhaling.

  I inhaled, my eyes wide on his.

  He exhaled. I exhaled.

  “Good. Two.” He inhaled slowly, and I did the same.

  Not nice, is it? Expecting someone to be there, but they’re nowhere to be found.

  After the third exhale, I collapsed into him. He maneuvered me into his arms, holding my head to his shoulder to rock me gently like he used to when I was a kid.

  “You’ve held yourself together for a long time.” He brushed my hair back from my face, and I burrowed my nose into his shoulder, drenching his t-shirt in my snot and tears. “It’s okay to break now, Pippa.”

  The memories flooded in one after another. The good, the not so good, and the really bad.

  And with each and every one, I allowed myself to feel them. I allowed myself to break.

  Time moved strangely while you were locked away from society.

  Almost as if it was paused or you were trapped, staying behind while everyone else moved forward.

  My eyes skimmed over the words in front of me, my brain absorbing sentences it’d read before like an old friend it hadn’t seen in a while. But it wasn’t the story I wanted to read.

  Sighing, I closed the book and dumped it on the nightstand, sitting up to run my hands through my hair. I felt good—better than I’d ever felt before—so I knew I could probably leave soon.

  Therein lay the problem with anxiety-based fears.

  Change.

  The routines you grew used to settled deep into the marrow of your bones, burrowing, making themselves comfortable, then encouraging your skin to grow over and ignore them. To let them be, for they were content with how things were.

  I didn’t want to live my life in here, and that wasn’t possible anyway. But that fear, that gnawing pest that came knocking was concerned about how long this might last.

  You feel good now, but wait until you’re out there, it warned.

  “You have a visitor,” Jackie, a nurse said, knocking lightly on my door.

  Frowning a little, I thanked her before wondering who it could be.

  My dad was the only one who visited me here. I didn’t know if any others were permitted to come on Sundays, which was when they allowed visitors for a few hours after lunch because no one else had ever come.

  Only one name was down on the list as a definite no.

  Ignoring the guilt over that, I walked out into the visitation room, my eyes roaming over the few families sitting together, some kids playing in the toy corner, and then Quinn.

  I walked over to where he was sitting in the far corner in an armchair, and he stood as I neared.

  Half hugs and back slaps were exchanged, and damn it all to hell, I nearly fucking cried.

  “Man, you’re such an asshole.” He grabbed my shoulders, shaking me before pulling me in for a proper hug.

  “Sit down before I start crying or something,” I said, shoving him to his seat.

  Chuckling, he folded himself back into his chair, and I sat in the opposite one.

  “You need a haircut,” I said, watching him shove his hand through his golden hair.

  “You need to hit the gym,” he said, mirth filling his hazel eyes as they gave me a brief once-over.

  “I have been. But they’re not as big on weight training here.” I knew I’d lost some muscle mass, but I still had a four-pack, so I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

  “You look good,” Quinn said, sobering. “You really do, dude.”

  “I feel good.” I relaxed back into the chair on a long exhale. “I thought this place might be a waste of time.”

  “It’s not,” Quinn said firmly.

  “No. Though I did wonder if they were trying to poison me for a while there.”

  “New meds?” I nodded, and he winced. “Fun times. You found some that’ve stuck, I take it?”

  “Yeah, and a doctor who seems to be crazier than anyone in here, but he’s good.”

  “When are you getting out?”

  “Soon, I think.”

  “What are you doing after?”

  “I’ll probably spend the rest of summer at home. Take some time to think about what I’m going to do.”

  My teeth wobbled my lip as the temptation to ask about Pippa grew, but I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t fair to find out via secondhand information, and honestly, I didn’t know if I could handle knowing she was doing well. And I most definitely couldn’t handle knowing she wasn’t, either.

  “Right, good. Not gonna lie. You had us worried.” Quinn laughed then but without any humor. “No, fuck that. You had us fucking petrified.”

  He hesitated, looking down at his hands. “You can ask. I’m not suicidal, man. Never was.”

  “Never?” He raised a brow.

  Truth time. “I’d thought about it. Quite a lot.” I cleared my throat, thinking about how to explain something that barely even made sense to me. “I didn’t want to die. But it … it gets pretty fucked up”—I pointed at my head—“in here. OCT, they call it.”

  “OCT? Like OCD?”

  “Yeah, apparently obsessive-compulsive thoughts are the root of all my demons.”

  “Jesus,” Quinn breathed, listening as I explained some of it to him. If I thought he’d balk or get freaked out by anything I said, his next words confirmed just how wrong I’d been. “So you just wanted them to stop? The thoughts, the anxiety they caused?”

  “Exactly. And taking all those pills …” I shook my head. “Spontaneous decision after what happened with Pippa. I lost my reason for being there, or anywhere. I don’t know why I did it, but I can’t remember ever feeling as low as I did at that point. Ever.”

  My eyes shut momentarily as those days, that whole week, steamrolled behind my closed lids. The feeling of being nothing but a constant fuckup, the twitching of my muscles every time I thought about having to wake up and figure out how to get through another day when I didn’t even know what the next hour would bring.

  Pippa, every thought of Pippa. How could I piss her off, how could I get back at her for what I thought she supposedly did to me when, in reality, she’d never done anything but love me and try to live her life. At the time, I knew that. Somewhere deep down, I knew that.

  It didn’t stop me, though. I couldn’t even stop me.

  My eyes opened, blinking wetness away. “Dad said some of the guys came by the hospital?”

  “They did,” Quinn confirmed. “Stayed all night.”

  My ears rang, and I coughed, trying not to let more guilt choke me. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  Quinn simply nodded, then asked if I wanted to talk football.

  The familiar pang hit my chest at hearing the word. But I wanted to know, so I tried to relax again and said, “What kind of question i
s that?”

  Quinn laughed, sitting back and resting his hands over his stomach before diving into the Tomahawks’ epic play-off fail.

  Same routine, different home.

  My dad dropped me off after a week at his place. I’d like to think it was because it was time I go home, but I knew deep down he was struggling with what to do with me.

  The weird thing was, when he dropped me off, Mom smiled at him. Like they were friends. Like they hadn’t struggled to be in each other’s presence over the past five years.

  They disappeared into her room, all hushed voices and barely audible movements as I listened with my ear pressed against the door. When my dad opened the door, strolling out and whistling—freaking whistling—I barely jumped out of the way and ran down the hall in time to avoid detection.

  Drew ignored him, grunting a stiff goodbye that didn’t seem to faze Dad in the slightest as he walked out the door.

  I’d looked at Drew, who shrugged and went back to playing the Xbox.

  And as much as I hounded Mom, she wouldn’t budge. “We’re adults, Pippa,” she constantly repeated. “We can be civil and act like them.”

  Right. Civil my left butt cheek.

  Daisy called at least twice a week, filling me in on her sunny days spent on the Burnell farm. I found myself looking forward to her calls and laughed way too much over the story of a rogue bull who’d busted down an old fence and charged after her. She’d explained it all in a rush as if an axe murderer had been after her, and how her life had flashed before her eyes.

  I need a life, I thought to myself, buttering some toast at the kitchen counter, still chuckling over Daisy’s retelling.

  I used to have some semblance of a life. What happened to it?

  He happened to it. As quick as it came, I batted the thought away. It was hard to remain angry with someone when he was putting his needs first. When he was finally doing the right thing for himself.

  When a huge part of you felt overwhelmed with pride for him.

  My heart was proud of him, but my heart was also too hurt to ignore everything he’d done.

  “Pippa, I swear to God. Reorganize my closet one more time, I dare you,” my mom hissed, appearing out of nowhere and waving a shoe at me.

  Whoa. “Jesus.” Dropping my toast, I stepped away from the pointed heel. “Don’t be so ungrateful.”

  “Ungrateful?” she all but wheezed, her face contorting. I tried not to laugh. “I’ve been late for work three times since you’ve been here. Three times.”

  “Your lack of organization skills isn’t my problem,” I said, grabbing the dish towel and snapping it in my hands.

  “How long you home for?” Drew asked, stepping around us to get a spoon for his cereal. “I think I might move out, go camp out in the shed until you leave.”

  I threw my arms out. “Shit on a shish kebab, what is wrong with this family? Have you no appreciation for a little help?”

  “My fucking briefs are my business,” Drew said.

  “So clean out your business! Who the hell leaves an apple core in their top drawer anyway?”

  My mom turned her horrified face to Drew, who shrugged. “It was on the nightstand and probably fell in. Who cares?”

  “You watch your mouth, Drew. I’ve still got a dish scrubber with your tongue’s name on it.”

  Drew guffawed. “What? Pippa can swear like a sailor, and I can’t say fuck?”

  “She’s over eighteen.”

  Drew scoffed. “Like that matters. Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.”

  Mom grabbed the towel from my hand, chasing after him and trying to swat him with it.

  Drew squealed, dropping his cereal and laughing as he ran out of the room and up the stairs. “You can’t discriminate just because I’ve got junk and I’m the youngest!”

  “I’ll show you fuckity fuck,” Mom grumbled, climbing upstairs after him. “Discriminate this!”

  I blew out a humorous sigh before going to clean up the cereal. “Bunch of crazy turds.”

  “Pippa! Time for you to get the hell gone!” Drew hollered.

  “Time for you to shut the hell up!” I hollered back, closing the book I’d been carting everywhere with me. My bags were already packed, so I tucked the book inside one and took a last quick look around at all the posters, books, knickknacks, and my lime green checkered duvet.

  I didn’t want to leave. Being back in the same room I grew up in filled me with memories that might have hurt, but I could tolerate that kind of pain.

  My dad still had the rest of my stuff from school, seeing as he was taking me back to look at new housing before the fall semester began. I didn’t care where I lived. I just wanted a different dorm and to be preferably as far away from the townhouse as possible. Even if I knew it wasn’t exactly possible.

  Daisy and Quinn had said I could stay with them if I didn’t find a new room right away. No thanks, I’d rather sleep in a tent.

  Petty was me, but I wasn’t messing around.

  Outside, Dad was making room in the truck, so I went back inside to grab a soda, steal a pack of mints from the pantry, and say goodbye.

  “Where’s Mom?” I asked Drew when he slung an arm around my shoulder.

  He ruffled my hair, and I punched him in the gut. “Oomph,” he grunted.

  “Hands off the goods then, grub face.”

  I scrambled out of the kitchen before he could retaliate but stopped when I saw Mom in the hall, standing in front of the fancy mirror she’d hung on the wall years ago.

  My brow rose as I watched her finish applying a nude gloss to her lips. She fluffed her hair, turned her face this way and that, then nodded at her reflection.

  “You look beautiful,” I said, making her freeze.

  “Shush you,” she said, swatting me on the arm. Then she whispered, “Does this top show too much of the girls?”

  Laughing, I swatted her back, then gave her a hug. Her hands smoothed over my hair and down my back as she continued to hold me a moment longer than usual. “You’re going to be just fine, my girl. But just in case, I’ve put a gift card for the homeware store in your bag. There’s fifty percent off vacuum cleaners for another week.”

  Wiping away a rogue tear, I gave her a wobbly smile as she patted my cheek.

  “Heard you got yourself a new girlfriend,” Dad said to Drew as Mom and I walked outside.

  “Heard you decided you want to be a dad now,” Drew shot back from where he stood on the porch. “I got myself a girlfriend a while ago, which you’d know had you been here.”

  “Drew,” Mom warned, but her tone lacked conviction, knowing he had some right to say what he did.

  Drew shrugged, then stalked back inside as Dad looked after him for a long, awkward second. “I had that coming, so don’t worry about it.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I remarked, smirking at him as he pulled me into a side hug.

  Popping some mints into my mouth, I watched from the passenger seat as Mom spoke quietly with him, her eyes darting all over his face.

  Love made us all suckers.

  My head rested against the window as road signs, long-stretching fields, and colored blurs of cars fell away faster than my tired eyes could keep up with.

  My dad didn’t talk for a long while, which I was thankful for, as he switched radio stations every five minutes. His taste in music ranged from the eighties until now. You couldn’t say he had a favorite music genre. He simply hit the dial as soon as he was ready for something new.

  “Do you know what you’re majoring in yet?” he asked.

  That question grated on my last nerve. Probably because I still didn’t have a clue and said as much. “What are you interested in? You could always design your own word search books, crosswords, or hey, maybe even an app?”

  “I’m not very creative. I prefer to just enjoy the finished product, thanks.”

  “Okay, no artsy stuff for you. What about animals? You like dogs.”

  “We haven’t had
a dog since I was seven,” I reminded him.

  He frowned at the road. “It’s been that long since Gilbert died?”

  “Yup,” I said, reaching into my bag to grab some more mints. He held his palm out, and I reluctantly gave him two. He scoffed but chucked them into his mouth.

  “I thought about nursing, but I don’t know. Seems a little cliché now.”

  “What do you mean?” He flicked on the turn signal, exiting off the highway.

  My stomach turned over as the sign telling us Gray Springs was five miles away came into view.

  “Cliché? Why?”

  “You know why,” I said quietly.

  “Think on it. Maybe take some time this semester to let your hair down and try new things.”

  “I did that last year and look what happened,” I grumbled, chomping down hard on the peppermint, my eyes watering as my taste buds burned.

  He shot me a look, and I huffed. “Okay. I’m not attending social mixers, though. No way. Not today or any other day.”

  “You don’t need to. Just watch, observe, and ask questions.”

  Chewing on my lip for a minute, I pondered something. “What made you decide to become a builder?”

  He chuckled at that. “I didn’t.” Turning down a backstreet, he continued, “I went to college for hockey. Took some business classes, and when I knocked your mother up and didn’t get drafted, I made good use of my abilities.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Nice.”

  His voice contained both laughter and nostalgia. “I’d like to say I wouldn’t change a thing, but you and I both know that isn’t true. But, well, I wouldn’t change a thing back then, not from those years. I took some carpentry classes and worked on a site just out of town, then I graduated. So did your mom; although she was six months pregnant at the time.”

  “Quitting hockey didn’t faze you?” I found that hard to believe.

  “Oh no, it definitely did. And I didn’t quit. I was good, but I knew I wasn’t quite good enough. Besides, I had your mom, and you were on your way. Those things made me even happier than playing.”

  “And what, you just started your own business, right out of college?”