by Tracey Ward
“Is this a bad time?” Kellen asked hesitantly.
“No. It’s fine. It’s good.” I smiled consciously at no one, hoping it would lighten my voice. My mood. “It’s never a bad time for you.”
“I couldn’t hear you. I thought I’d lost you there for a second.”
“No, I’m here.”
An awkward silence fell between us. I was scared to fill it and I was unwilling to leave it alone, but luckily Kellen cleared it for us.
“How’s work?” he asked.
“Work is good. I’m tatting a surfer with a Sublime cover.”
“Nice,” he chuckled. “That’s your band. He came to the right girl for that. What cover? The sun?”
“Nope. Badfish. Red koi on the cover of the single. It’s pretty sick.”
“It’s pretty what?”
I closed my eyes, letting my head fall back. “I’ve been talking to a surfer for the last hour. Don’t judge me.”
“No worries, bro,” he teased.
“Stop.”
“You sound like Callum.”
“Now you’re just being mean,” I laughed.
I could hear him laughing quietly, either at me or with me – it didn’t matter. It sounded good. It felt good to hear. It was then that I knew he was back. Back from the dark, from the void, from the weird shit that wedged itself between us and tried so hard to push me away as he did everything he could to keep me close.
“What about you?” I asked. “What are you doing today?”
“Missing you.”
I felt myself blush. Ten years we’d known each other and he could still do that to me. It made me feel silly and sweet inside all at once. I loved it because I knew his words were true. Kellen didn’t put on airs. He didn’t say things to butter you up. What you got was honesty and nothing else. He was intensely private and deeply secretive but what he did allow to the surface was true.
At least it was now. Ever since the accident.
It happened almost a year ago to the day. Just a month after his twenty-fifth birthday, a birthday that went unnoticed and uncelebrated because that’s what Kellen wanted. He’d turned twenty-five and then he almost died. A truck t-boned the taxi he and Laney were riding in, destroying his right hand – his dominant boxing hand – and put him in a coma for three weeks. When he’d woken up he’d been different. He’d been better, actually. More the guy I’d known when we were growing up and so much less the meat puppet he’d become. He was empty all the time back then. He went into the darkness one day and didn’t bother coming out. He was working a job he hated, engaged to a girl he didn’t love, and it gutted me every time I looked at him because I saw it – the nothing. I could feel it when he was close.
Maybe that was why I was so afraid of the times he went empty on me. Some part of me was scared he’d do it again. That he’d go under and he wouldn’t come out and the man I loved would be gone for good.
That I’d finally lose him, once and for all.
Chapter Four
Kellen
Halloween was everywhere. We’d barely turned the page into October and already it was pumpkin everything. Cookies, candles, candies, pancakes. The color orange would be burned into my retinae until Christmas. Or at least until midnight on October 31st when Halloween was shoved roughly aside and red and green exploded on the scene. Thanksgiving, apparently, could piss right off. I didn’t care for Christmas. I didn’t like it or birthdays, really any day that involved giving and receiving gifts. I wasn’t good at that.
I wasn’t good at a lot of things.
But luckily Santa wasn’t here yet. For now we were trapped in a pumpkin flavored hell.
“You love pumpkin,” Jenna accused.
“Since when?”
“Since always I’d assume.”
I looked sideways at her where she stood in line next to me at the coffee shop across the street from North Star Ink. She was on a break – a fifteen that she was dual purposing as lunch, this one break probably the only one she’d take all day.
“Name one pumpkin flavored—“
“Pie,” she answered immediately. “Muffins. Lattes.”
“Bullshit.”
She shook her head, smiling at my denial. “You never remember your food tastes. Fine, if you don’t believe me then try the latte. See if I’m wrong.”
“If I’m right what do I get?”
“A latte you don’t want to drink.”
I smiled. “Not good enough. I need stakes.”
“Anything. You get anything in the whole wide world.”
“Anything, huh?”
“Anything.”
“That’s a bold bet.”
“It’s a safe one because you are absolutely, positively dead ass wrong. You love pumpkin.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
Seven minutes later I saw that she was right.
“This is good,” I murmured into the lid of my cup as we exited the shop.
“Told you so,” Jenna sang.
I licked the sweet liquid from my lips and fell into step next to her. “How do you always remember?”
“Remember what? The stuff you like?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not going to so somebody has to.” She looked over at me suspiciously. “What would you have wanted if you won?”
I grinned, raising my cup for another drink. “Enchiladas.”
She hit me hard on the arm. “What is the matter with you?!”
I laughed, deftly dodging her next hit. “I’m kidding! I was messing with you. I know I hate enchiladas.”
“You’re a pain the ass,” she laughed.
“But you love me.”
“Yes, I do.”
Jenna didn’t ask me if I loved her. She didn’t ask me to say it, both because she already knew it and because she knew me. I had a hard time with emotions, especially with communicating them. Saying ‘I love you’ wasn’t something that came natural to me, but at times like this when I was looking at her and her smile and feeling the lightness she gave me just being close to her, I wished I was better. At everything.
“Burritos then?” she asked, smiling.
“Nah, you’re tired. Besides,” I raised my cup full of froth and pumpkin, “I lost.”
She shrugged. “We still gotta eat. I’ll make them tonight when I get off work.”
I knew what that meant. She’d finish out the day, go to close the shop around seven, take one last walk-in, clean the place from top to bottom, count out the till, and she wouldn’t leave the building until after nine. She’d be exhausted and starving by then.
I pulled out my phone and brought up the notepad. “Tell me what we need to make them. I’ll go the store now and pick it up so you don’t have to after work.”
“Kel, I can take care of it.”
I cast her a crooked grin. “What have I got to do today?”
“Farmville?”
“I’m still hooked on Angry Birds.”
“You’re so trendy.”
“I have time,” I insisted. “I’m only part time with the EMTs and the firehouses aren’t calling. I’ve got time to do this.”
“I can’t believe you haven’t been called in yet.”
“We had a calm summer. Not a lot of fires so they didn’t need to tap us volunteers.” I nudged her shoulder playfully. “No fires is a good thing, remember?”
“It’s hard to remember that when you’re gunning to get out there.”
“I’ll get my day. I’ll see action eventually.”
“And that – it’s hard to root for that. I don’t want you rushing into fires.” She took a sip of her drink, her eyes squinting against the afternoon sun. “Dating a firefighter is confusing.”
I snorted. “So is dating a girl. Here. Take my phone. Ingredients. Be specific. If you say ‘pepper’ I’ll bring home the kind in a shaker.”
Jenna laughed as she took my phone from me. “You’re hopeless.”
“That�
��s the truth.”
I watched her type out everything she’d need to make the best burritos I’d ever tasted in my life. “You’ve got dinner with your family tomorrow?”
“Yup,” Jenna answered distractedly. “You wanna come?”
“Not even a little.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t want to take a death stare from Laney for old time’s sake?”
“I got plenty of those over the years. I’m all stocked up.”
“Suit yourself.”
I watched her fingers work slowly over my phone, taking her time. “She still being hard on you about us?”
Jenna paused to look up at me. “A little, yeah. Not as bad as before.”
“I wish she’d lay off you.”
“She has. She will. It’s getting better, I promise. She’s not angry at me anymore. It’s all on you now. She knows you didn’t cheat with me.”
I chuckled. “Considering she used to accuse me of it every other day that’s a miracle in itself.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, returning her eyes and attention to the phone. “I hate that I have to talk around you all the time, though. Like I’m pretending I don’t see you. Like I’m ashamed or something.”
“You’re not, are you?”
“I’m not what? Ashamed?”
I nodded again, silently, but she saw it. She saw my words beginning to fail me. To fail her.
“No, Kel,” she answered softly. “I’m not ashamed of you.”
“Not of me. Of how we got together.”
Jenna lowered my phone and her voice. “I don’t know. Some days yes, some days no. I—it’s hard. I feel guilty because she’s my sister and you guys were together for so long, but at the same time neither of you were in love and you and I have always been… I don’t know. There are no easy answers or fixes for us. There never have been and that’s hard.”
“I’m sorry,” I told her inadequately.
She smiled sadly. “Don’t be sorry. Just be in it with me, okay?”
“Okay.”
She handed back my phone. “Okay.”
I spun the slim black phone in my hand, looking up the street thoughtfully. I wanted to say the right thing to make her feel better. To relieve some of her guilt or doubt or shame – whatever it was that was gnawing at her. I wanted to take the store off her shoulders because it was weighing her down. This had been her dream and it was killing her and I wondered if the same wasn’t true of me too. If Jenna had finally gotten everything she wanted in the world, every dream suddenly realized, and none of us were what she expected us to be. What she needed us to be.
I worried we were more than she could handle.
***
It took me almost forty minutes in lunch hour traffic to make it from North Star Ink to my therapist’s office and by the time I got there I was almost late. I walked through the door with only two minutes to my appointment.
Ben greeted me with a smile from behind the reception desk. “You had me worried.”
“I’m not late yet.”
“You’re usually early.”
“I was having lunch with Jenna.” I gestured to where he sat at the desk next to a pink Post-It notepad and a pen with kittens on it. “What’s this? Have you been demoted?”
“New receptionist.” He stood slowly, smoothing his wild gray hair. It immediately sprang right back out. “She is never early. Her lunch break was over ten minutes ago.”
“Do you want me to sit while we wait for her?”
He waved away my concerns. “No, no. I set the phones to voicemail and I’ll lock the office door. She can wait outside until we’re done with your session.” He jerked his head toward the back hallway. “Shall we?”
The first time I sat down and talked with Dr. Benjamin Phillips I refused to go into his office. It felt too real. Like I was actually going to talk about all of the things I’d buried for so long and the thought stirred the animal, the anger inside me so violently that I thought I’d vibrate out of my own skin. I couldn’t go. He ended up locking the front door to his practice exactly as he was doing today and we had my first session there in the waiting room with old Home and Garden magazines and Beatles songs on piano pumping softly through the speakers.
That worked for me. It brought me back the week after. And the week after that. It kept me coming in until it started to feel normal. Not me, that never felt right, but the routine did. Talking did.
Today when Ben had the outer door locked he joined me in his office. I was already sitting on the couch, ready and waiting. Nervous as always but better each time I came in. It helped that I trusted Ben. I wouldn’t talk about everything with him, but I broke a lot of boundaries in this room. The session with Jenna had been the biggest, one I hadn’t even come close to duplicating since. We avoided the topic of my childhood at my request, but every session Ben would say:
“Let’s have it, Captain. Are you ready to talk about your time in the foster care system?”
“No.”
His glasses slipped down his nose as he made a notation on his pad. When he looked up he pushed them back, the thick lenses magnifying his brown eyes. “Understood. What would you like to talk about?”
“The Bruins.”
“They suck,” Ben deadpanned. “What else?”
I smiled, savoring his reaction. It reminded me of Dan, Jenna and Laney’s dad, and hours spent in his living with him and Jenna, sometimes even Laney, watching college football. Dan was a Stanford fan through and through, just like Ben. I was a huge UCLA fan. It made for a lot of angry arguing. A lot of laughing. A lot of the best days of my life.
“Have you spoken to your family recently?” Ben prodded.
I coughed roughly, smoothing my hands over my pants and pushing my back into the couch hard. “No, not really. Things are still tense between everyone. Jenna goes over and has dinner with them all every week. I got a call from Dan the other day asking how it was going volunteering for the fire department.”
Ben grinned. “That’s not the family I was talking about.”
“Oh.” I frowned, confused for a second before it clicked. “You meant my mom’s family in Ireland.”
“Yes.”
“No, I haven’t talked to them lately. Not since I e-mailed them and told them Jenna and I are coming to meet them in a few months.”
“How did they react to that?”
I shrugged. “The e-mail said they were happy. Excited to meet me.”
“And how do you feel about it?”
“They seem like nice people,” I answered dully.
“That’s an impression, not a feeling.”
“I feel like they’re nice people.”
Ben laughed, letting it go. “It’s good that you’re talking. Both to them and your California family.”
“I probably shouldn’t think of Dan and Karen as my family anymore,” I replied awkwardly, the statement coming across as a question.
“You can think of them however you like. They obviously still care for you. It’s wise that you’re taking it slow and readjusting to the way things are. It can’t be fixed overnight.”
“That’s what I told Jenna.”
“Is she worried about it?”
I scoffed. “Yeah, she’s worried about it. Her sister hates her.”
“I doubt she truly hates her.”
“Maybe not but she isn’t afraid to throw that word around, believe me. And Jenna, she gets cut easily. She’s not as thick skinned as Laney and I are.” I flexed my jaw, trying to release a tension that had begun to build. “I think she’s been hurt the worst out of everyone.”
“And that bothers you.”
“Of course it bothers me. It fucking kills me.”
“Does she feel that way? That she’s taken the worst of the pain?”
“No. She thinks Laney has. Knowing Jenna, she probably thinks I’ve suffered more than she has.”
“Haven’t you?”
“No.”
“Not even i
n life in general?” he pushed. “Not even considering the abuse you told her about?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want her feeling sorry for me.”
“Acknowledging you’re suffering doesn’t equate to pity. Is that why you won’t talk about it? You’re worried it will feel like a pity party?”
I grinned despite myself. “Is that a medical term?”
“My new receptionist would say yes. She’d also advocate that ‘totes’ is a measurement of matter.”
“She sounds fun.”
“She’s adorbs,” he replied dryly. “Answer the question.”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I don’t know. We talked about the… things that happened to me and it’s out there and… I don’t know. I don’t know how to handle people knowing about it. No one has ever known before and now both you and Jenna do and I have no idea how to handle that. It’s like I’ve been carrying a gun with me everywhere, concealed where no one knew about it. Loaded and ready to go off. I’ve kept it hidden, kept everyone safe from it, and then one day you and Jenna found out about and now I don’t know what to do with it. Do I keep hiding it? Do I let anyone else see it? Is Jenna afraid now that she knows about it? Does she see me differently?”
“Have you asked her?”
I laughed, the sound forced and cold. “Have I asked her if she’s afraid of me?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because she might say yes,” I blurted out recklessly.
I was slipping. Changing. I wasn’t hoarding my thoughts as well as I used to. The rules had shifted and my head was still spinning, my filter popped out of place so that suddenly words and thoughts and secrets were spilling out. The doors to the cages in my mind were cracking open and I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep them closed much longer.
I worried more what it would feel like to not have to.
“She just as easily could say no,” Ben reminded me gently.
“Fifty-fifty split. It’s too risky.”
“You not asking doesn’t change how she feels. Not about this, at least.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean if you ignore how she feels, if you never ask her about it, she may stop telling you,” he reasoned. “Do you want her stop telling you when she’s happy? When she’s sad? When she’s nervous? When she needs your help? That she loves you? Do you want another relationship like the ones you’ve had before where no one says anything, no one feels anything? Where nothing is real?”