His stinks of stale beer.
“What’s up?” I hold him by the shoulders and step back, so I can see his eyes. “Did you drive here?”
He scrunches his face, like he isn’t sure how to answer the question. “I—I left my car… somewhere?”
“Okay,” I whisper, leading him into the house, “you gotta be quiet. My parents are asleep.”
“Okay,” he whispers back, but it’s the type of exaggerated whisper that is louder than normal talk would be. “Where are we going?”
Which is a good question, actually. My room is down the hall from my parents’ and the den is right under them. Way too much chance of being heard in either place. Instead, I take his hand and guide him to the basement door. I flip on the light, then mouth, “This way,” leading him down the steps. I figure there’s a couch in the exercise room where he can sleep it off, with any luck undetected by the parentals.
When we get to the bottom of the steps, Charlie pulls me to him, kissing my neck, then ear, then cheek. “Ummm, gorgeous.”
“You’re drunk,” I say.
“A bit.” He gives me a sweet, wolfish grin. “But you’re still gorgeous.”
Smooth. “Are you hungry?” I ask. “There are tons of leftovers—” And he’s busy nibbling my neck again.
“All right, big boy,” I say, “let’s get you somewhere you can sleep it off.” I peel him away from me and, awkward, like I’m dancing with a mannequin, shuffle him past the unused treadmill and stationary bike and over to the couch.
I sit; he lies down, puts his back on my lap, head on the pillowed arm of the couch.
“Hey, you.” He takes my hand and rubs the back of it against his unshaven cheek. It’s prickly, but comforting in a weird way.
“Why are you so far away?” he asks.
“Close your eyes,” I say.
“Hey, I know,” he says, like this incredible idea arrived out of the blue. “We should totally make out. Am I right?”
I laugh, because geez.
“Close your eyes,” I say again, and this time I cover his lids with my free palm. “Are they closed?” I ask.
“Um-hum.”
“Good.” My hand drifts down to his cheek. He starts to reach for me, but I gently shake him off. “Keep your eyes closed,” I say.
“Kinky.” He smiles, eyes shut, hands still roving.
“No one likes Drunk Handsy Dude,” I say. “Be still.”
“Kinky and mean.”
“I gotta be me,” I say.
He laughs, a soft little snort, and lets his hands fall by his side.
I push his hair back from his forehead. There are scratches, I see now, on his face—ones that weren’t there yesterday. Chapped lips. A bruise on his cheekbone. I check his hands, a few gashes there, too. Like he’s been caught in briars. Out who-knows-where.
I bend over and kiss him on his lips, tenderly, like a prince in a fairy tale. Sleeping Beauty probably didn’t have beer breath or five-o’clock shadow, but still. “Now, sleep,” I say, straightening.
“I’m not sleepy,” he says.
“Too bad.” I run my fingers through his hair.
“Tell me a story,” he play-whines.
“About what?”
“Something awesome,” he murmurs. “About a turtle. Turtles are cool.”
“God, aren’t they!” I say, and not just because it’s two AM and my semi-drunk, semi-sweet, semi-homicidal boyfriend is in the basement of my parents’ house. It’s not just middle-of-the-night logic, but an empirical fact: Turtles are the coolest.
“A turtle story. Hmmm… Once upon a time, there was a turtle princess. She moved really slowly, but that just meant she had time to think things through. And she wore this beautiful tiara—”
“A tiara?”
“Hush, yes, she’s a turtle princess, and she wears a tiara that is magic. With magic emeralds and stuff. But then this mean wizard comes and is all, I’m going take your shell. Which is a really sucky thing for him to do. But she zaps him with her magic emerald. And then… Okay, I’m not making sense.” I yawn. “You tell the rest.”
“And the wizard—the turtle tries—” Charlie sighs. “The turtle princess zaps the wizard into another dimension and she lives happily ever after with her hot turtle boyfriend?”
“Hmmm,” I say. “Seems a bit suspicious.”
“The end.” But then his voice shifts. Serious. “Hey, you know what we were talking about yesterday?”
Like him wanting to kill Kyle? “Yeah,” I say. I peer at his face, hoping that he will tell me something, but his eyes are still closed.
“That was… I don’t even know what that was. I guess I was… angry.”
Understatement of the Year.
“I’m—it’s hard to—” he says. “But I didn’t mean it. You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“Yeah?” I say. “Good.”
He sits up, eyes open now, and even through the haze of alcohol and exhaustion, it’s there: a blur of pain.
“I just want—justice, you know.” He takes my hand and holds it. “I want him to pay for what he did.”
“Yeah,” I say, “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s like—” And I’ve never quite gotten my thoughts this close to words before. “I don’t even know if justice is a thing. If it’s possible. Killing Kyle, that doesn’t bring anyone back. When he—last year—I knew, like really knew, someone could take my life, and there was not a thing I could say about it. Sure, I can try to avoid it. I took self-defense. I carry pepper spray. But if someone wants to kill me—well.”
I drop his hand, because I need both of mine to get this out. “So, I got drunk. I swallowed everything wrong in the world. All the fear and hate, I was full of it. God, I hated him so much.” I stand, walk over to the stationery bike, mindlessly flip its pedal with my foot. “And I hated myself for being afraid. But no matter how much I swallowed, there was more. That crap was eating me up. But you helped. I know that wasn’t the plan or anything—but you did. You and Lindsey. Jared,” I say, then add quickly, “as a friend.”
I turn to face Charlie. “So now, now, yeah, I still don’t get to decide to not be killed today. But I can decide that I’ll do my best to live. And it’s not up to me if Kyle goes to prison or dies on a table. But I can do something. You guys have shown me that. I can fight it. Because I’m, you know, I’m worth—” Just saying it, I feel the blush rise in my cheeks. Sure I can be selfish and mean, but that’s not all I am. There’s someone there worth loving, too, right?
“What?” Charlie stands now, too. “Fight what?” His face is a moon-bleached island. It occurs to me that it’s probably not the best idea to be hashing all this out with him half drunk in the middle of the night. But you don’t always get to choose your moment.
I walk to him, take his hand again. “That hate. I have to let go of it,” I say. “I think it’s the only way I can let go of him, of Kyle. It’s the only way I can get myself free of it.”
He tilts his head like a dog that hears something that can’t be heard by humans. “So how you doing that?”
I know he’s not going to like what I have to say, but I can’t not say it. “I’m going to forgive him. No, I do forgive him. Not for what he did to Jamie—that’s not mine to forgive. But I forgive him for what he tried to do to me.”
“What the fuck?”
“Look, I don’t expect—”
He jerks away his hand. “You don’t expect what?”
“I don’t expect you to understand—”
“UNDERSTAND? That you FORGIVE him! No, I don’t understand!”
“Keep your voice down,” I grumble.
“I came here because I wanted to see my girlfriend—my girlfriend—and this is what I get!”
“Your ‘girlfriend’! Are you serious?” I’m insta-mad now, and I’m yelling, too. It’s not like I didn’t know what he wanted—I mean, I’d have to be blind—but still. “So what I feel doesn’t matter. I just need to keep my mo
uth shut like a good little ‘girlfriend’ while you—”
“Her left ear had been beaten off her head. They still haven’t found it. Did your boyfriend Kyle tell you that?”
“Are you—?”
“Oh, and get this! In the car, when they arrested him, you know what they found? A brand-new crowbar. Just like the one he used on Jamie. He was heading to the beach, and he was going to do it again to some girl there. He had a duffel bag with duct tape and a crowbar, and this is new, a big-ass hunting knife.”
“What?” That hadn’t been in the papers.
“Yeah. So you go ahead and ‘forgive’ him? But what are you going to say to the girl he cuts—”
“He’s in jail. He’s not—”
“You don’t know! You can’t tell the future.”
“I have—”
“What the hell?” We both turn to find my father, naked except for boxers, baseball bat in hand, at the bottom of the basement steps. He glares at us like we’re actual intruders.
“Dad…” I say, not sure what to follow those words with.
“Charlie was just leaving,” my dad growls, pointing his way upstairs.
“Yes, sir,” Charlie says. He takes the steps two at once. And by the time I get upstairs, he’s gone the way he came, in the dark.
Search
forgiving is
forgiving is hard
forgiving is not forgetting
forgiving is forgetting
forgiving is easier than forgetting
forgiveness is about
forgiveness is about freeing yourself
forgiveness is about the forgiver
forgiveness is about you
forgiveness is about not the other person
reasons to forgive
reasons to forgive me
reasons to forgive student loans
reasons to forgive your boyfriend
reasons to forgive yourself
i forgive you because
i forgive you because i love you
i forgive you because god forgives me
i forgive you because nobody’s perfect
i forgive you because i love you poems
to forgive is to
to forgive is to suffer
to forgive is to suffer lyrics
to forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover
to forgive is to be forgiven
Door
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m at Charlie’s front door. Because if I’m making myself forgive Kyle, I can surely make myself forgive Charlie. Charlie, who is not a homicidal sociopath.
“Your friend is here, Charlie,” his mom calls toward the back of the house, and then, while we wait for him to appear, asks me a series of questions that have no answer except “yes, ma’am.”
I didn’t text Charlie in advance, but decided to go with a stealth attack—a decision I question when he finds me in the living room with his mom, inspecting her collection of miniature porcelain shoes as I confirm the fact that I did indeed have a lovely Thanksgiving with my family.
“Hi,” I chirp enthusiastically, as if I don’t see the hell no all over his face.
He gives me the tight-lipped guy-nod.
His mom looks from him to me, back to him.
“I, uh—that thing—I was—hi,” I say, feeling the stupidity of my babbling twice, once as it passes out my mouth and then again after it makes the long journey to my ear holes. Geez. Throw me a bone here, Charlie.
He wipes his hands, which are dark with grease, on a white rag draped over his shoulder. “I’m in the garage,” he says, and turns back the way he came. For a second my breath catches in my throat, but then he calls over his shoulder, “Come on.”
I follow him through the kitchen and into the garage. I haven’t been here before and I’m surprised to find a workshop with car parts everywhere. The half-gutted body of a 1970s hot rod is planted in the center, surrounded by clumps of gears and tools that unfold in each direction, like the petals of a complicated metal flower.
“What’s all this?” I ask, gesturing in the general direction of the car.
“My dad likes to tinker,” he says. He picks up a greasy piece of machinery about the size of a rabbit and starts fiddling with it.
“You, too, huh?”
“Yeah. Good for thinking.”
“You’ve been thinking?”
“Let’s cut to the chase.” He puts the oily robo-rabbit on a counter. “What’re you doing here?”
“Maybe I’ve come to do my duty as your ‘girlfriend.’” It’s not my intention to snark, I swear. It just spikes out.
“Yeah.” He sighs, shakes his head. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me, the other night. And wrong. I don’t think of you that way.”
“Hmm,” I say. “How do you think of me, then?”
He wipes his hands, comes close. “You’re—”… beautiful?… smart?… amazing? “—fierce.”
“Wha—”
“You are the one,” he says, his voice packed, “you’re the one I want to be trapped with in an avalanche because I know you’d just keep digging.”
Which means what? I’m a three-legged terrier with the efficiency of a backhoe? Um, thank you?
“You’re—you’re—” He rolls his hand in the words-won’t-come gesture. “Hell, I’d want to be trapped with you, avalanche or not.”
Kind of creepy, but his eyes soften as he says it in a way that makes me go soft, too.
“You know how I feel about you,” he says, tucking back a stray strand of my hair.
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe not.”
His fingertips linger at my ear. I smell the grease on them, and it’s like some kind of irresistible pheromone. I press my cheek against his palm, catlike.
“Is your dad still mad at me?” he whispers.
“Probably. But he’ll get over it,” I say. “Are you still mad at me?”
“I’ll get over it, too,” he says, then pulls his hand away. I feel its absence on my cheek like a physical thing. “You are wrong, though. That guy’s a monster. And forgiving him. That’s a little easy, don’t you think? That’s the kind of stupidity that got Jamie killed in the first place.”
“Ow.” Because what do you say to that?
“You know you can’t just forgive him,” he says.
“No,” I say, “I don’t know it. And it’s not easy, it’s—”
“We shouldn’t be fighting about this,” he says.
“So I should just agree with you, instead? Problem solved?”
“I’m right.” He shrugs, like it’s the end of the story.
“I’m not saying you’re not right, but being right isn’t always—the right thing,” I say, painfully aware of how stupid that sounds.
“I don’t forgive him. And I don’t, I won’t forgive myself.”
“Well, that’s a plan,” I say. “I’ll make sure to visit you in the asylum. Mark my calendar for this time next year?”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious,” I say. “If you can’t forgive yourself, you’re not going to—”
“I don’t want to,” he says. “I already—I already—I’m not going to forget her.”
“Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.” When in doubt, quote Google. “It just means you let go of the hate.”
“But I do hate him. I will always hate him.”
I feel like picking up the rubber mallet on the counter and throwing it at the wall. Hard. I’ll show you forgiveness, damn it!
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Repeat after me: I am not the feelings police. I am not the feelings police.
Because seriously, who am I to tell Charlie he doesn’t get to loathe the guy who murdered his girlfriend? It’s not like I didn’t spend a year of my life with a little bag of hatred in my gut.
The question for me now, I guess, is, Can I live with that in him? Do I have the strength to be with Charlie—to do what I need to forgive—when I know he never will?
Short Answer
I don’t know.
Long Answer
I really, really don’t.
Box
How do you know you’ve forgiven someone? Is saying it to yourself enough? Do you have to tell the person you forgive them? Are there rules?
Because on the outside, forgiving Kyle is not so different from not forgiving him. I’m not planning a trip to the county jail where I’ll murmur into a black phone wired to the wall as we peer at each other through two-inch Plexiglas. There won’t be any handwritten letters stuffed in small blue envelopes. No visiting-day cake. To be honest, I have no intention of ever speaking to him.
The only difference between me now and me then is I said I forgive him. Both to myself and out loud in the world. I committed to it.
Maybe later it will become important to track him down for some deathbed confession. But for now, just me knowing is enough.
Does that mean I’m okay with what he did?
No.
Does it mean I want to be his best friend?
No.
Does it mean I got rid of my little sack of hate?
Kind of.
I tied it up, tossed it down, and set the thing on fire.
That’s how I feel inside, too—like something that’s been through a fire. All the same molecules are there, but they’re altered versions of themselves.
It’s Sunday morning, and the house is quiet. The light in my room is delicate—an eggshell of light. I go to my closet, stand on my tiptoes, and slip a box down from the top shelf. I place it on my bed and open it, knowing what I will find.
And yes, there it is—the soft blue sweater from the tree house. Jamie’s sweater. A few weeks ago, I cleaned it by hand in my bathroom sink, laid it out to dry, folded it neatly in a shirt box I had left from last Christmas, and tucked it away in my closet.
Because what else was I supposed to do with it?
I knew I couldn’t give it to Charlie. Not after it messed him up so much. That would just be mean.
It’s not mine to keep, though, either. So it just stayed there, in the limbo of my closet space.
How She Died, How I Lived Page 24