Here He Comes Again

by Melissa Shirley

  Though she deserved that punch and probably more, my heart sank a little at the thought I’d put my hands on her. Shoe throwing injured only my drywall, and while not my finest historical moment, didn’t blip my moral radar screen when compared to having hit someone. “It is not a good thing, Simon, and you hit Keaton first.”

  “Did he cheat on you or did all of this happen after you got divorced?”

  He switched gears again before I could answer.

  “I never even got a donut.”

  “The baby happened after, I guess, and I’ll get you a cheeseburger when we get done at the doctor.” My hand throbbed and fire burned in the veins of my fingers. “I’ll probably drop you off, then go over and get my hand looked at, okay?”

  He nodded. “Does it bother you that he has a kid?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to think about the presence of the baby. It probably had grassy green eyes and hair the color of night. I wanted to talk about it even less.

  “Life feels strange for me. I know I’m thirty years old, but I feel seventeen. I don’t remember getting here, so it doesn’t seem like I ever did.” He hung his head. “What if it never comes back?”

  I reached out to pat his shoulder with my disfigured, hand then thought better of it and smiled at him instead. “Then you get to be seventeen, eighteen, twenty-one, and all of the other fun stuff all over again.” That didn’t seem to make him feel better. “We’ll keep trying. Every day. No matter what.” This promise I knew I would keep.

  An hour and a half later, a pink cast hugged my hand and reached halfway up my forearm. I broke two knuckles and one of my carpals. Seriously, what were her bones made of? Concrete?

  Simon didn’t try hard to hide his annoying amusement, and Keaton called four times. I ignored the calls on purpose because I’d been in a bit of pain and didn’t feel like yelling at him while doctors and nurses tended my stupidity.

  Thankfully, the doctor gave Simon back his driving privileges as I wanted to take a pain pill right away. All the twisting, pulling, and setting of the bones aggravated the injury and the shot’s effectiveness faded quickly.

  I leaned back against the head rest as Simon cruised through town. “What did your doctor say?” He pulled up to the town’s only stoplight and waited for traffic to cross in front of him.

  “No changes in activity or function in my brain. Keep working on my memory. You know. Same stuff he said last week.” He waved a hand in my general direction, dismissing the importance of the doctor’s instructions. He rolled his eyes at me and resumed driving.

  “Well, at least you aren’t any dumber than you were before the robbery.”

  He looked at me and made a face. “Ha ha.”

  I reclined my seat as the pills kicked in and snoozed until we got back to my apartment. Keaton waited outside on the stoop when we pulled up. Simon chuckled as I tried to get out of the car without unbuckling my seatbelt. He reached over and hit the release, freeing me, and I tumbled out of the car.

  Keaton helped me up. “Easy there, slugger,” he said as I staggered up the stairs, weaving from one side to the other. “Pain pills?” he asked Simon.

  “Yeah. She’s a lightweight.” They enjoyed a laugh, and I raised my good hand, waving my finger from one side to the other, making sure they knew I meant it for both of them. “Hey, man, I’m sorry about that.” He gestured to the slight bruising on Keaton’s jaw.

  “It’s cool.”

  “Do you two lovebirds wanna hug or something?” I asked. “I’ll wait here.” I plopped on the front landing to my building. “Phew. That wore me out.”

  They each placed a hand under one of my arms and raised me to my feet. My strength gone, my feet dragged as they hauled me inside. I flopped down on the couch face first. Simon fetched my pillow, and Keaton covered me with a blanket. After, the world could have imploded around me and I would never have known.

  I drifted off to sleep, deciding it was time to leave the past in the past. My memories were better left alone. I hoped my dreams agreed.

  Chapter 23

  Present September 2009

  “Jocelyn, wake up,” Keaton said, shaking my shoulder. “I need to talk to you.”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It took me a second to hear the quiet. “Where’s Simon?”

  Keaton shook his head. “He took your phone, called Danielle, and left.”

  “Oh.” My heartbeat pulsed through my arm. “What’s so important?” I looked around for a prescription bottle, or some aspirin, something to dull the pain.

  “I have to tell you some stuff.” He sat next to me on the couch and faced me.

  “Okay.” But at that moment, I wanted a pain pill more than an explanation.

  “I want to kiss you first, okay?”

  The tone of his voice, the urgency of his words, the words themselves snagged my attention, and I nodded as he leaned in and kissed me tenderly, as though it were the last time. A bad feeling trickled down my spine.

  “You’re going to be mad and I know it, but I can’t keep this from you anymore.” He smiled sadly. “I lied to you.”

  “I’m shocked.” It must have been the pain operating my mouth.

  He ran a hand over his face, then through his hair. “That night in the bar, I knew you were coming to tell me it was over, and I didn’t know how to stop it.”

  “Why would you think that? It was our anniversary.”

  “Seriously? All we did was fight and argue. You never looked at me anymore, never touched me. Work and money always came between us.” He looked at his hands, then shoved them in his pockets. “I loved you so much, and I didn’t know how to deal with losing you. She brought some drugs. I’d never done it before, but she told me it would make me feel better. So I did it.” Tears welled up in his eyes. “It was the only time I swear it.”

  I nodded because his eyes widened and he paused.

  “I honestly don’t remember kissing her, seeing you after, or going to the apartment. I don’t know how I ended up at Simon’s. I do know I hurt you. Of the few things I know about that night, I remember that with such clarity, and I’m so sorry.” He swallowed hard. “When I got served with the papers, I couldn’t breathe or think. It wasn’t fair to Simon to put him in the middle, so I called her. To talk. I promise, only to talk. Anyway, she came over and we got drunk, but I swear Joss. Nothing happened.”

  He buried his head in his hands, then looked up at me with the saddest expression he’d ever worn.

  “Anyway, I spent about six or eight months drunk as hell, and hoping I wouldn’t feel anything anymore. I went to rehab, and for a while then I was sober and doing okay. You know, getting through every day. Then I would think of you and end up right back where I started, finding a big bottle of whatever to get me through. I would head to whatever bar I could find, drink, and get into a fight, so maybe the pain in my body would over shadow the one in my heart.

  “One day I called home way too drunk to be dialing a phone. My mom told Danielle’s mom, and somehow Dani ended up on a plane to Arizona. She told my mom she was going to help me get better, and she would bring me home.

  “I spent all my time messed up. I didn’t eat or sleep. I just kept drinking, trying to make my heart stop hurting. One night, she came home and told me she was pregnant. I didn’t think anything happened between us, but I spent most of the time drunk. I don’t honestly know for sure, and it wasn’t like I could ask her without hurting her.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Let’s not hurt Danielle.”

  “I don’t even know if she would tell me the truth anyway.” He hung his head for a moment before lifting it to look at me once more. “We had separate bedrooms and everything, but she needed someone, and I was there with her. I didn’t know what else to do. I was lost in my head and in my life.”

  I let him go on even though every word he said tore another piece of my heart right out of my chest.

  “She made me get cleaned up. N
o more drinking. I went back to rehab, and I haven’t drunk since then until the other night. Dani saved my life, Jocelyn, because she helped me see I was dying without you.”

  Fury raged in my veins. Maybe because he’d weighted his tale with her presence; the mental cringing caused physical pain, and I worked to defend myself against it. Maybe it was the way he said her name, Dani. It came across so personal, so intimate. My heart ached with jealousy, and I didn’t like it. “Maybe you could just call her sweetheart or honey.” My voice calmed to the deadly kind of peacefulness my mom used on me during my terrible teenage years.

  His eyes, his body, his everything, begged me to believe him. The sad part…I did. The sadder part… I just didn’t have it in me to forgive him for his time with her.

  “Joss, it’s always been you. Whether I was with her, alone or drunk, it was always you.”

  I sat nodding my head. Why hadn’t anyone called Simon? If he was in trouble, Simon would have moved heaven and earth to help, but instead, they called Danielle. She’d helped him, all right. She’d almost destroyed him, and he put her on a pedestal, called her a hero. I imagined Iron Man would not be pleased to be lumped in the same category with her. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” I busied myself with pulling lint from my lint-free couch. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I couldn’t. My heart ached. My head throbbed, and this conversation only made it worse.

  We struggled through most of our time together, never more so than when it involved Danielle, but struggled nonetheless. Had it been worth it? Did the nights he held me and loved me make up for the fights and the pain? Did the pretty words and oh-so-soft kisses diminish the heartache? This was bigger than one of those “he forgot to pay the electric bill and I was sitting in the dark” kinds of things. This comprised the leading cause of divorce in America. I’d been a statistic once. Shame on him. Twice? Shame on me. My mind blurred with random, disconnected thoughts.

  “I want you to tell me what you’re thinking.”

  I looked up into his eyes and smiled half-heartedly. “No. Trust me. You don’t.”

  “I know it’s a lot to digest. And I understand if you hate me.”

  “I don’t know what I feel right now.” I got up and began pacing. “I’ll tell ya what. I regret hitting her a lot less now, and I kind of want to hit you.” Maybe I did know what I felt. At least, my mouth knew. “Dani can be your goddamned hero if you want, but to my way of thinking she created that monster and cleaning up the mess was her job. There’s nothing heroic about fixing what she helped break. It’s called being an adult.” I was hurting. So, by whatever means necessary, I was going to make sure he did, too. “And, for the record, I wasn’t coming to tell you I wanted a divorce. I went there to tell you I wanted to have a baby with you. I wanted to make our marriage work.” I turned away, the words finally spoken too much to bear.

  “But then you gave up on us,” he said softly.

  I whirled to face him. “Are we really going there?”

  “No.” He shook his head and held up both hands. “No.”

  “Good because I’m done reliving this, Keaton. It’s time to move on.”

  We sat staring at each other, neither moving nor touching. Finally, he took a step forward. “You wanted to have a baby?” He closed his eyes again.

  “No, Keaton. You open your eyes and look at me.” My voice softened, but my heart grew hard. I’d wanted a baby with him. I’d wanted a life with him. And for whatever reason, he’d thrown it away. For what? For her? “It’s time we stopped hiding from each other.” My blood ran cold in my veins, and I slapped a hand against my thigh, but my voice stayed quiet. “You missed me so damn much you lived with Danielle, screwed her, and made a baby with her? Wow, Keaton. That’s what all the best love songs are made of. Logic like that will get you your own hashtag on Twitter.” I wondered if he found my sarcasm charming now.

  “I don’t know, Joss. I don’t remember ever having sex with her.”

  “And OJ’s glove didn’t fit. She said it to you while I was right there. Congratulations. It’s a boy. He’s yours.” Tears, big fat ones, tiny wet ones, slid down my cheeks. Anger and hurt rolled around my belly, each trying to take the top spot and see which could make me more violently ill. “And what am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to forget that you screwed the only girl…the only girl…I would never be able to forgive you for screwing? I get it. We were apart. But her? How drunk do you have to be, really?” I speed paced now. “And the worst part is I had the same broken heart you did, and I didn’t use it as an excuse to drink myself stupid, or to screw everything with a penis and a pulse. You didn’t care enough to say no.”

  “Joss--”

  “No, Keaton. Go be with Dani and your baby.” I’d lost him all over again. “I can’t do this with you anymore. You’re always going to be the guy who breaks my heart.”

  His big green eyes batted away an ocean of his own tears.

  “I’m sorry.”

  One of his tears fell and I almost gave in. On the verge of speaking the words, I held out a hand, but he spoke again and I lowered it to my side.

  “I love you, Jocelyn. I have for as long as I can remember, and I will for as long as I live.” He opened the door and left. I sank to the couch and cried for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 24

  I spent the next month recuperating from my hand injury, which healed nicely, and from a broken heart, which continued to ache. Keaton still lived with his parents, and still saw Simon who’d moved back to my mother’s. I heard through the grapevine--okay, from Mom--Danielle took her baby and went off in search of the baby’s real father. The DNA test she’d gotten to placate Keaton came back negative. Whiling away the nights at home baking and crying, I suffered in ways I never knew possible. When I'd lost him the first time, the splinters of him in my veins hurt, but this left me shattered.

  After work, I sat at home drinking a beer and watching the Cardinals play when a knock broke me out of my trance. Setting the can on the table, I walked to the door, then swung it open without asking who dared interrupt my pity party. A mistake I would never make again.

  “Jocelyn, may I come in?”

  Sarah Shaw hadn’t changed in years. She still wore her hair in a tight bun, still preferred brown shoes with her black suit, and still hated me.

  I thought about shutting the door and hiding in my bathroom until she went away, but I opened it wider. Take-out boxes and beer cans cluttered every table and chair, and my skin still glowed with lime green icing from my day at work. “What can I do for you?”

  I took a pizza box off the chair and motioned with my cast for her to sit.

  “I need to speak with you about Keaton.” She didn’t seem to be in a gloating kind of mood.

  “Well, Sarah.” I plopped down on my couch. “I don’t have anything to say to you about Keaton.” I didn’t have anything to say to anyone about Keaton. Wallowing in my self-pity suited me fine and I didn’t need any help. So what if my apartment looked like it had been taken over by a teenager whose parents were out of town for the weekend? And maybe I’d resorted to buying new clothes rather than doing laundry, but my heart broke and crying came as normally as brushing my teeth. It didn’t mean I wanted to chat about it with anyone. Especially her.

  “Please.”

  Her voice sounded soft but the pleading rang through like the bells of Notre Dame. I could see Keaton in the espresso color of her hair and the crisp green of her eyes. “Jocelyn, he isn’t living anymore. He goes to work every day, and then he comes home and locks himself in his room. His heart is broken and only you can fix it.” When I sat unmoving, she said, “He doesn’t smile without you.”

  I knew how hard those words must have been for her to say, but I remained unaffected. On the outside anyway. “Sarah, we aren’t good together. He knows it. And I know it.” I resented like hell that she forced me to say the words.

  “He doesn’t know it
, and I don’t know it.” She scooted to the edge of the chair. “It is no secret I never liked you when you were in high school, and when you agreed to marry my baby I cried for days. I knew you would be the ruination of all the good in my boy.”

  Oh, flattery. Yay.

  She swallowed hard and smiled sheepishly. “But I was wrong. When you and Keaton were together, you made him happy, he had life in him. Now, he’s a shell.”

  That crow couldn’t have been very tasty.

  “I want my boy back.”

  “I can’t fix all the wrongs between us.” Honestly. How many tears could two eyes produce? “I don’t even know if I want to try.”

  “I understand.”

  I nodded.

  “For what it is worth, Jocelyn, I believe he loves you, and I believe you love him. When two people who love each other throw it away, you have to know sometimes it doesn’t come back. He came back for you. It would be a shame if you threw him away.” She smiled and patted my hands clasped in my lap. “Please think about it.” She stood. “I’ll see myself out.”

  When the door shut behind her, I grabbed the phone to call him. A second later I threw the phone onto the floor. The two sides of my brain battled it out for an easy ten minutes as I repeatedly picked up the phone, then tossed it back down in indecision. Finally, I set the phone on the table and began straightening up my apartment. It took a while, but the boxes all disappeared, the clothes landed in the washer, and I hopped in the shower.

  As I scrubbed the dye and a couple layers of skin off my good hand, I formulated a plan. Sarah, my mother, and my brother all saw the truth. Only I’d been too blind to recognize it. I’d been happy once because of Keaton, and more than anything I wanted to be happy again. I wanted to dance with him in the middle of the night in the kitchen, to feel his hand in mine as we walked down the street, and to hear the words I love you before I drifted off to sleep at night. We could work it out. I could trust him. Right?

  He’d always been mine, even when he wasn’t. If he slept with her, I knew in my heart he’d thought of me. Of course, my feelings were subject to change if the baby she brought back had belonged to him. I loved Keaton, he loved me, and maybe Sarah and Alex knew more than I thought. Keaton Shaw was the person I would risk my life and my love to keep.