He Saved Me

by Whitney Barbetti

  I was intentionally vague, but I didn’t like the way Anita was looking at me. It wasn’t with malice or curiosity. Instead, she looked at me like she wanted to scratch at the words I was saying, to see what layers I was concealing.

  “So,” I said, whirling my finger in the air, “is there a way for me to use the computers here?”

  Anita leaned on the desk that separated us. “Is there something I can help you find?”

  I wanted to say, “Nope” and run the hell out of there, but then I remembered Mira. “I’d like to do some research.”

  Anita couldn’t see right through me, but she was trying her best. I needed to get better at lying to people.

  “I’d like to look at some of the surrounding towns and see if there’s anything for rent.” That should’ve bolstered the story of me wanting to visit this town longer.

  Anita cocked her head to the side as she stared at me. I was getting ready to leave the library entirely when Pearl spoke up. “Anita, she can use my login, right? After all, she’s not a resident, so she won’t have an address.”

  Thank you again, Pearl. My eyes flitted from Pearl and Anita as I waited for an answer. After what felt like minutes, Anita sighed and passed a piece of paper to Pearl. “Write your username and password here.”

  Pearl clutched her collar and looked back at me. “Well now, Anita. You know I never get on the computer here. Can’t you look it up or something?”

  Shit. This was taking longer than I expected. My eyes found Pearl’s gold watch. I’d been gone longer than I thought, over an hour. My leg started twitching in response.

  “You know what?” I started, backing away from the desk. “It’s fine. I’ll just grab a newspaper or something.”

  Anita lifted her eyes from the computer. “If you can wait just a minute, I’ll have that information for you.” One well-groomed eyebrow lifted as she kept her eyes on me.

  I weighed my options. Rush home now and have Julian worry less or stay another ten or twenty minutes, checking on the breadcrumbs I’d left the night before and deal with Julian’s questions about what took so long.

  “Okay,” I finally said.

  Pearl smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. “I have to get home now, Cora, but I hope to run into you again.”

  She did? All I’d been since I’d met her was a liar with shifty eyes and nervous limbs. But I just smiled. “Me too, Pearl.”

  As Pearl left, Anita slid a piece of paper across the counter to me. “We have a twenty minute policy,” she started. “Twenty minutes per person on the computers so that others can get on. If there’s no one else waiting, you can stay longer.”

  “Twenty minutes is great, thanks,” I said, reaching a hand out for the slip of paper.

  Anita’s hand came down and rested on mine as I tried to pull it back. “If you need any help, I’m just a holler away,” she said, eyes locked on mine.

  What was this woman’s deal?

  “Thanks,” I said again, pulling my hand and dropping hers. I turned and walked briskly back to the computers, sliding into a seat and tapping on the spacebar. My legs bounced up and down and I looked around, half expecting Julian to see me through the windows at my back.

  I needed to make this quick.

  I knew Hawthorne was desperate to find me. But I didn’t think it was so he could return me to Michigan. At least, not alive.

  I stood in the way of him inheriting the money in my trust account. If he could prove my death, and stage it so there was no suspicion of him being responsible, he would. I knew it like I knew he murdered my mom for her money.

  I tapped my fingers on the desk, deciding what to do first.

  A minute later, with a newly-acquired email account, I left another breadcrumb, one that would be delivered directly to Hawthorne’s email.

  The email held one sentence, but that one sentence was enough:

  Guess who?

  I sat back and looked at my screen. I knew he’d be able to look up my IP address from this email. What was I going to do, really? I hadn’t thought further than getting Hawthorne to come find me.

  I wavered for just a second, my fingers trembling. I looked around, half-expecting Anita to be looking over my shoulder. The street was empty, the library was quiet, so my fingers stilled. I clicked “send” and then logged out of the account. A minute later, I deleted my browsing history and ran out of the library, down the road towards the beach.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Where the fuck have you been?” The growl from Six took me by surprise as my feet left the sand and climbed up the back porch.

  He looked haggard. His usually-bright green eyes were dull, and the circles under them were black. His clothing was wrinkled and his body held a slouch I didn’t remember seeing before. I needed to play this carefully, with respect to what Six was going through while keeping my plans under wraps.

  I wanted to hug him. Six and I very rarely hugged. But the way he looked made my heart ache. But I could tell he didn’t want anyone to touch him, so I tried changing the subject.

  “How are you?”

  He glared. I was deflecting and he knew it. “Where were you, Andra?”

  I tried to move past Six, but I couldn’t. He took up the entire doorway into the house. “I needed to run, Six.”

  I watched the muscles around his jaw tighten. “You have a treadmill.”

  “I needed air, too.” I chewed on my lip. “Do you know Mira’s doing?”

  Based on the way his eyes darkened, it wasn’t the right question to ask.

  “How fucking hard is it for you to just listen, Andra?”

  I stood my ground, despite his anger. “I heard you, Six. But you should know, more than anyone, that it’s against my nature to obey.” I swallowed hard. “I needed to breathe.”

  Six hung his head and sighed. I could tell he was fighting anger and grief with each breath and more than anything, I wanted to give him that hug.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. He didn’t lift his head to look at me, instead he collapsed into the thrift store chair on the porch and held his head in his hands.

  I couldn’t explain what it felt like to watch a man as strong as Six collapse into a chair and seem so small. A man who had never seemed out of control in anything was suddenly stripped bare, his heart seemingly sliding right out of his chest.

  His grief squeezed my heart. Six was the reason I could escape. And now I was the cause for his anguish. I was reminded of when he’d told me he was without words at my mother’s funeral.

  I knew that if my world collapsed, I’d have Six or Julian there to help. But in this moment, Six had lost the person who was there for him. I could try, though. To soothe his soul.

  I walked around the chair and rubbed a hand down his arm, hoping it was comforting in some way. I couldn’t just stand by and watch him fall apart on this rickety porch.

  As I rubbed, his hand reached up and stopped mine. I worried he would push me away, but instead he pulled my hand to his knee and clasped it, wrapping his hands around it. My hand felt so small in his.

  Then he squeezed and any hope I had to not cry was dashed. He was, in many ways, my savior. I owed the world to him.

  And so I was there, holding his hand as he acknowledged that his world was caving in on itself. The tears fell freely from my eyes as I crouched down next to the chair. With his hands holding mine, I rested my head against his bent knee.

  After a while, Six let go of my hand and silently walked away, down the beach. I knew better than to follow him. He wanted to be alone. I understood, because I was the same way. I preferred to walk the darkest part of misery alone.

  Julian came downstairs and hugged me when I walked through the back door. I breathed in his cinnamon scent and closed my eyes.

  “How are you?” he asked against my hair.

  He was holding me so tightly, I couldn’t shrug. “I feel…” I struggled for words. If I told him that I felt responsible, he would tell me I wasn�
�t. And I didn’t want to give him a hint at what I was planning to do. “I feel lost.” At least that was honest.

  Julian pulled back and brushed the hair away from my face. “You’re not lost,” he whispered.

  I felt something tighten in my chest, the feeling I got whenever Julian said something that reached inside of me and gripped me with its truth. “You found me,” I replied with a sad smile.

  He brushed a thumb against my lips. “You’re my North star. As long as you want me, I’ll always find you.”

  Damn him. I was on shaky ground, emotionally, and he had to say things like that to tip me over the edge. I reached a hand up and gripped his jaw, needed the bite of his stubble against my palm. This was real. Julian was my reality.

  “I love you,” I whispered, needing to release the words. Now, more than ever, I wanted Julian to know.

  He leaned in, holding my upper arms, and kissed my forehead. “I love you too.” It was all that needed to be said.

  “Where’d you go today?”

  I loved him. Oh God, did I love this man. But I needed to lie to him.

  “I went down to the shore and searched for seashells.” The lie rolled from my tongue so easily, I nearly believed it myself.

  “You didn’t find any?”

  I wasn’t great at lying. “I got distracted and just stared out at the ocean.”

  Julian let go of my arms and held me out. “Want some tea?”

  I nodded, thankful that for now he believed me. He held my hand as we walked into the kitchen and continued to hold it when he put the kettle on to boil. He only let go of it to grab the mugs and tea bags.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked casually as he pulled down two mugs.

  “You said I was your North Star,” I said.

  “Yeah, I did. Pretty corny.” He winked at me.

  “I was thinking,” I started, running my fingers along the counter. “If I’m your North Star, you’re my anchor.”

  Julian turned around and cocked his head to the side. A smile played at the corners of his lips. “Are you saying I bring you down?”

  A laugh blew from my lips. I shoved against him playfully. “No, you jerk. You ground me.”

  “When your head is up in clouds? Because I have to say, Andra, you’re not really much of a daydreamer.” He dropped a tea bag into a mug and set it down.

  “No.” I grabbed the paper-wrapped tea bag from his hands and tore it open. “If I feel adrift, you bring me back to the here and now. You remind me how,” I fumbled my words, feeling shy all of a sudden. “You remind me how to love.” I rubbed my lips together. I lifted my eyes to him and handed him the freed tea bag. “It’s a good thing, Julian.”

  He grabbed my hand before I released the tea bag and kissed it, his eyes on mine the whole while. “Whoa. This is getting pretty deep,” Julian said with mock seriousness. “Maybe we should give ourselves a hybrid name, like Brangelina.”

  I looked at him with an are you serious face. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Julian grinned. “Juliandra.”

  I paused. “What?” I asked. It wasn’t as much as question as a statement.

  “It’s perfect,” he insisted, pulling the whistling kettle from the burner. “Juliandra. It just rolls off your tongue.”

  I looked at him for a moment longer, in amused disbelief. When I opened my mouth to reply, all that came out was a laugh. “Julian, that was corny.”

  “I don’t know, Andra,” he said, lifting an eyebrow. He held up his hands like he wanted me to agree with him. His earnestness, while fake, was making me laugh harder. “I think I’m going to have to copyright it. Get an email account so no one else steals the idea,” his voice trailed off as he turned around and poured the water. Which was a good thing, because he couldn’t see the panic that flitted across my face at the mention of the word ‘email.’

  I swallowed and turned to face the window, trying to settle my features. I breathed out silently, trying to relieve the tension that knotted my muscles. Relax, I told myself. He doesn’t know what you did today.

  That didn’t settle my conscience at all.

  Julian turned and looked out the window with me. I heard the clink of his mug on the counter and his arm came around me.

  Through the bushes and the reeds, I could make out Six’s figure, sitting on the sand a few feet from the ocean. My heart called to him, but I knew he needed to be alone.

  “How’s he doing?” Julian asked from beside me. I sank deeper into his side-hug.

  “His world is falling apart.”

  I felt Julian nod. There was nothing else to say.

  That night I made spaghetti and meatballs. It was the meal I’d made for Six a hundred times and I hoped that it brought comfort to him now. He was still outside, on the beach, so I left a covered bowl on the table next to his bags.

  Hours later, I awoke to noises coming from downstairs. They sounded violent. I looked over at Julian, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, getting dressed.

  “No,” I whispered, reaching a hand to his shoulder. “Go back to sleep. I can help him.” I said it with more confidence than I felt.

  I dressed and walked cautiously down the stairs, the noises growing louder with each step closer. I peeked in the dining room, saw the table flipped over and the chairs overturned. Six’s bags were up against one wall, but the man himself was nowhere to be found.

  I walked around the dining room into the living room. Six was sitting on the ground, a bottle of dark amber liquid nearly empty next to him.

  “Six,” I said softly.

  He lifted his head up and looked at me through eyes that were red and raw with emotion. I halted my steps, not sure how to react around this Six.

  “You should be asleep,” he said quietly. He looked down at his hands and my gaze followed, noticing the short glass with that same amber liquid. I lifted it to his lips and closed his eyes as he tipped it back.

  “You’re drinking.” It sounded stupid the moment it left my lips. Six very rarely drank liquor.

  “Mira hates when I get drunk,” he murmured, lifting up the bottle and shakily pouring another glass. He nearly spilled the bottle setting it back down and I knew he was long past drunk. I watched as he lifted the glass up and woozily stared at it. “She’s half the reason I get drunk.”

  “That’s probably why she hates it,” I said softly, not sure I was loving Six when he was drunk. I looked around the living room, noting that two lamps provided the only light in the room, but one of them was overturned.

  “She’s a lot of work,” Six said, still staring into his glass. “But God, she’s it.” He looked like he was close to passing out.

  I sat next to him, still tentative. I took the glass from his hands with little effort, as his hands were slippery from spilled booze. “You need to go to her,” I said.

  Six’s head fell back and hit the wall behind him with a loud thud. “I can’t.” With his eyes closed, he blew out a breath. His face was red which would have been an improvement from its earlier gray color, but I knew it was an effect of the alcohol and not because he was doing better.

  “Why can’t you go to her? I’m sure she needs you as much as you need her.”

  Rationalizing with a drunk Six was probably futile, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  “She tried to hurt herself again.” Six hiccupped.

  My blood ran cold as I remembered the scars on her wrists. “In the hospital?”

  Six didn’t reply right away and I nearly thought he’d fallen asleep. I started to stand up to clean up the mess when he spoke again.

  “She carries knives on her for protection.”

  I already assumed as much but I stalled in my movements.

  “But who’s gonna protect her from herself?” he asked, his voice a drunken whisper.

  “That’s why you need to go to her,” I said, not even able to process what he was saying. The scars on her wrists made sense, but it wasn’t something I could even th
ink about right now, knowing the trauma she’d just gone through.

  Six stretched out his arm but kept his eyes closed. “She had her arm out like this and a knife in her other hand.” He swallowed and I saw his eyebrows draw together in concentration. “If I didn’t leave her, she was going to hurt herself again.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I wanted to vomit.

  He dropped his arm and blew out another breath. Six was so drunk that I didn’t think he’d remember telling me all of this the next day. “She doesn’t want to need me,” he murmured, shaking his head back and forth against the wall behind him. “She doesn’t want me.”

  I waited for more, but then I heard him breathing deeply, evenly. He was asleep, sitting up, reeking of alcohol.

  Somewhere in the middle of cleaning him up and laying his head on a pillow, I felt my heart break apart. For Six, for Mira, for the life that was taken from them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I laid in bed the following morning and listened as Six left the house. When I knew he was gone, I exhaled a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Julian was still fast asleep, so I crept out of the bed and down the stairs.

  I had picked up the mess shortly after he’d fallen asleep the night before, so the house was back to normal, for the most part. The bottle of bourbon sat on the counter beside the sink, in the same place I’d put it the night before.

  The living room was tidied, the pillow I’d given Six was back on the couch. It was like he’d never been to the house at all.

  Except for the package on the dining table. It was small, no bigger than a shoebox. I walked around the table and picked up the note that was laid on top.

  Andra,

  Mira grabbed these from the apartment.

  -Six

  With great trepidation, I lifted the lid from the box and peeked at its contents. And then I closed the lid a second later, unable to go through what lay in there for me: my mother’s journals.