Breathe Her In

by Gretchen Tubbs

  All I can manage is a chin lift at this point. I burn through a few cigarettes. The urge to grab a bong off the table and smoke is strong. Weed will bring me back down to Earth, but I have no idea what they’ve laced it with. I need to get the fuck out of here.

  Vega takes a few more bumps from his bullet, so I decide I can get away and he won’t think anything of it.

  “I gotta go, man. We’ll talk soon. Carlos has my info.” None too gracefully, I stand from the table and make my way to the entrance.

  “Stay, Rafe. The night’s still young. I have more entertaining to do.”

  “I would love to, but I have another meeting.”

  He nods. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I grab my phone and wallet off the table by the front door and get out of there as fast as I can.

  The fresh air outside the club does little to calm me down. I can’t tell how long it’s been since I took the hit, but I need to get back to Eleanor. She’s probably worried sick. A quick assessment in my rear view mirror lets me know I’m good to go.

  Eleanor throws the door open and meets me halfway down the driveway when I make it back to Gigi’s house.

  “How’s Della?” she asks. When I step all the way out of my Explorer, her face crumbles. Hand to mouth, she backs up toward the door and tries to step through the house, but she can’t get the knob to cooperate.

  If I wasn’t sober when I left the strip club, the look on Eleanor’s face wipe all traces of the blow out of my system. She holds a hand up, stopping me in my tracks, shaking her head back and forth.

  “Don’t come any closer. You’re a fucking liar.”

  Her request not to move falls on deaf ears. I ease closer, despite the fact that her head is still moving back and forth, her eyes growing bigger with each step I take. “Please, baby, let me explain.” My heart is pounding against my rib cage harder than when I took a hit of that snow. If I was closer, I’m sure she could see it.

  “Don’t you dare, Rafe Matthews. Unless Della started wearing tacky lipstick and body glitter, I don’t want to hear a word that is about to come out of your mouth.”

  “Just give me a minute to tell you what’s going on.”

  She finally gets the door open and attempts to push me away, but I get my foot in the small opening and barrel my way through. “Don’t shut me out. Listen to me, damn it.” My voice is loud and wild, but I need her to hear what I have to say.

  Turning back to me, tears dripping, chest heaving, she pounds her fist into my chest. “Leave. Me. Alone. I can’t do this again.”

  “Do what?”

  “This.” She gestures wildly between our bodies. “Us. Any of it. You’re forcing your way in, and I’m gonna lose you again. I can’t go through it. The first time almost killed me. You gonna leave me again, Rafe? You gonna feed me all your empty promises and disappear?”

  A surge of anger flows through my veins at her false accusations. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about- that’s not how it went down. The lingering effects of the coke blast through me, lighting me up from the inside, pulsing in angry waves through my veins. I pick up the small table next to the door and send it flying through the living room, splintering it against the opposite wall.

  “I didn’t fucking leave you,” I roar in her face. “I had no choice. I was taken from you.” I stop when I see the terror in her eyes, the realization of my actions sinking in.

  Holding my body up is too much at this point. Breathing just got to be too much. I slink down to the floor, using the wall to hold me up before my body melts into the wood. “I was taken from you,” I repeat, the words like poison in my mouth. “Jesus, Eleanor, you were my entire fucking world. You were my reason for getting out of bed each day. How could you think I left without you?”

  She hesitantly slides down the wall beside me, the terror replaced with utter confusion. “Who took you from me? What happened?”

  “I was so close. A few more hours, and we would’ve been free.”

  She takes my face in her hands, forcing eye contact. “Rafe, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. You’re not making sense. Start from the beginning.”

  I scrub my hands up and down my face, which pushes hers out of the way. Missing her touch immediately, I take them back and rub my thumbs back and forth across the insides of her palms. My legs are twitching, and I’m having a hard time sitting still.

  “I had a plan, Eleanor. For months, I had been taking shit from my mother’s stash. Enough to sell and get us away from here, enough to get us set up in an apartment for a few months without having to worry about a job for a while. Mom had me doing her dirty work for years, so I knew exactly who to sell to and how much I could get for it.”

  For the first time since I started blabbing, I peek at her face. I expect disgust, but see sympathy instead. She opens her mouth, but I don’t let her speak. I need to get this out.

  “One of the guys from the neighborhood set me up with a buyer who could handle such a big haul. We were set to meet a few hours before I was supposed to come for you.” My head thumps against the wall. “I was so fucking close.”

  “What happened?” Her voice is thick, laced with emotion that hangs thick in the space between us.

  “He was a goddamn narc. I was set up, with the help of my mom and her boyfriend. They found out I had been stealing from them and they were pissed.” I pick my head up from the wall and blow out a harsh breath. “The judge was brutal. My rap sheet was long, thanks to some stints in juvie from some shit I got into over the years.”

  She’s so quiet. I want her to say something, anything, but I’m terrified to hear it. This could be the end.

  I don’t know if I can survive losing Eleanor a second time.

  “You never came back for me,” she says, so quietly I almost can’t hear it over the pounding in my head.

  Out of everything she could say, that was not something I would have guessed.

  “I’d go to the park when I was released,” I tell her, “wishing you would just appear and everything would go back to how it was before I got busted. But that was only the beginning. It got so much worse.”

  “How much worse could it get?” she asks.

  “Shortly after I got out, I found out about my sister. I had to get her out of there, but there was no way in hell I was ever going to get custody of her. Right around the same time, I was approached by the same cop that arrested me. He was dirty as fuck and wanted me to be an informant because of all my connections. In exchange, he would help me get custody of Dells. I refused, but when it became painfully clear that they were about to stick my sister in foster care, I really didn’t have a choice. Ever since I got out, I’ve been slingin’ dope for him and ratting people out, all so I can keep Dells safe.”

  She sweeps her hand up and down my body, indicating the lipstick and the body glitter that’s decorating my neck and shirt. “Is that what this was about tonight?”

  I give her a small nod. “I’m in deep, and it’s bad. I can’t get out, or I lose my sister. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her, including putting myself in situations like these.”

  Her face dissolves and my heart drops at the sight. She tries to stand up but I grab her wrist and keep her on the floor with me. “Nothing happened, Eleanor. I would never do anything like that to you. You’re my reason for breathing. I never stopped loving you. Not for one second during all the years we were apart. I think I’ve loved you since you came up to me in that cafeteria, all those years ago.”

  “You never answered my question. Why didn’t you come for me?”

  “And say what, exactly? ‘Hey, sorry I disappeared. I was in jail for dealing, and now I’m a rat for a dirty narc. I can’t stop, or I lose custody of my sister who happens to be a mute with severe psychological issues. We’re barely scraping by, and I’m in way over my head. Do you want to start back up where we left off?’”

  She wipes at her damp face, and I take over the job for her, letting my fi
ngers skim over her soft flesh.

  Touching her grounds me.

  “I’m not in any shape to be with you,” I continue, “but one look at you in the shop that day, and I decided I didn’t fucking care. I need you back in my life.”

  “I don’t even know what to say about any of this.”

  “Which is exactly why I didn’t come for you. I was going to, eventually. Once I was out from under all of this- once I was in a position to take care of you. I want to be someone you can be proud of. I have nothing to offer you, Eleanor.” I stand up and head for the door, the need for a cigarette clawing at me. Her arm on my back stops me in my tracks.

  “Don’t you dare, Rafe. You don’t get to decide if you have anything to offer me or if I can be proud of you or not.”

  “Listen to yourself!” It comes out harsher than I intended, so I reel my temper in quickly. “Stop for a minute and think about everything I just told you. I’m forced to deal drugs for a dirty cop and inform for him. I live in a shit hole, barely making ends meet. This isn’t hard, Eleanor.”

  Now it’s her turn to get in my face and yell. “How is that any different than eight years ago? I was willing to give up my whole life and run away with you. You had nothing back then, Rafe. Nothing. Now you’ve got Della, your job, your art, and an entirely different family that loves the two of you.” She lowers her voice, tugging on my shirt. “We can fix this. We’ll figure it out, just like we did before. We’ve got to keep it simple.”

  I need a minute to stop talking and let some of this sink in. I’m so fucking tired. I light the cigarette I so desperately need, letting the nicotine that is coursing through my bloodstream calm me. I’m slowly starting to feel like myself again.

  I can’t believe I just got all of that out. The burden has been lifted, and it’s almost a physical relief. She knows everything. I don’t have to hide anything from her anymore. We sit in silence against the side of her house while I smoke, trying to make sense of all of the shit I just said. As I finish my second cigarette, a thought hits me.

  “Eleanor?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why did you come to look for me at Claire’s? Why that time, and not any of the others?”

  Her whole demeanor changes when I ask those two simple questions. I watch her body transform, stiffen, before small tremors take over her frame, her eyes start to water, and her bottom lip starts to quiver.

  “Eleanor,” I prompt, but she’s folding her arms around her body, getting lost in her head, stuck in a memory that isn’t a good one. She looks like my sister in those few moments right before she loses it. “Let’s go back inside,” I tell her, but she makes no attempt to move. She’s zoned out, about to launch into a full blown panic attack.

  14. Eleanor

  Rafe’s strong arms scoop me up and carry me back inside the house. He’s talking, but my mind can’t make any sense of the words. It’s stuck in the past, playing out my worst nightmare. My scars are throbbing, causing an onslaught of painful memories.

  “You’re scaring me, Eleanor,” he says against the side of my face. “I don’t know what to do for you.” His warm breath feels good against my skin, but it can’t fight this chill. “Breathe, Eleanor,” he whispers along my cheek. “In and out, baby. Breathe.”

  “Turn off the lights. It’s easier in the dark.”

  “Huh?” His steps falter.

  “Turn off the lights,” I demand.

  He does what I ask, but the exterior lights are shining through the open windows. It’s not nearly as dark as I want, so I close my eyes and create my own darkness. Rafe sits on the couch and I push out of his arms and stand with my back to him, my eyes still shut tight, my arms wrapped around me like a protective shield. I don’t want to do this to him. He shouldn’t have to live with the hurt that I have to endure every single day. We both shouldn’t have to be tortured.

  “I waited about three weeks before I went to find you,” I finally say when I manage to find my voice. “Claire didn’t know where you were. She was upset, and I couldn’t get anything out of her.” The words feel like sandpaper against my throat. Maybe if I speak lower they won’t burn so bad. “I went to look for you at your mom’s.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I only knew the general area, so I had to stop and ask which one was your house.” The abrasive words are so rough that they are pulling scalding tears from my eyes. Rafe reaches for me, but I swat him away. If he touches me before I’m done, I’ll never finish. I’ve got to push through this. It’s hard to do, especially when my insides are being ripped out of my body with each word. “The two men I asked were not very helpful.”

  “Please, just stop,” he says. His words sound like sandpaper, too. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “I had to find you, Rafe. We needed to leave right away. I…,” I swallow past the grit. “I was… I was pregnant.”

  My eyes are still closed. He drops to his knees in front of me, his arms coming around my waist. As soon as his head makes contact with my stomach I reach around and yank his arms out from around me.

  “NO,” I plead, whipping my shirt over my head. Feral cries rip through the space and I can’t be sure which one of us they are coming from. The left side of my lower abdomen is an ugly, angry mass of raised welts. He’s back at my waist; his head is pushing against my stomach again, his hot tears are burning my skin, soaking into my scars. My own tears are dripping down my face and falling into his hair.

  “I did this to us, Rafe. I shouldn’t have gone looking for you. They had a knife.”

  “Stop it,” he cries, his words pushing into my flesh.

  “They forced me behind the building, each of them taking a turn with me. I tried to fight them, but the knife didn’t make it very easy. They won in the end. They left me for dead, Rafe.”

  “Please, baby, stop.” His hands are clawing into my sides, digging and kneading, while his face is plowing deeper into my stomach. I can feel the bruises forming under his touch. He’s burrowing deeper, harder, trying to worm his way inside and fill the space our child once occupied. “Eleanor, please.” I can barely hear his voice when he whispers, “I can’t take this,” into my mangled flesh.

  “They could barely save me when I finally got to the hospital. There was no way they could save our baby.” I almost choke on the words.

  Our baby.

  I’ve never strung those two words together, either in my mind or out loud. It’s too much. I sink to the ground with Rafe. He wraps me in his arms, and we sob into each other’s necks, mourning the lost life of our child, grieving for what could have been. Not only did we lose each other, but we lost out on the chance to be a family.

  “They took so much from us.”

  “Shhh,” he tells me, rocking me back and forth.

  “I can’t have any more kids, Rafe. Those men butchered my insides. They ruined me.”

  “It’s okay, baby. You’re still perfect. You’re not ruined.”

  For the first time since Rafe carried me inside, I open my eyes and look at him. The look on his face, the pained mixture of loss, love, and grief is like a vice grip around my heart…pulling it from my chest while still beating would probably hurt less. I’m helpless to stop the trail of tears flowing down my face and dripping off the edge of my chin.

  “I’m sorry I did this to us.”

  He shakes his head. “None of this is your fault. If I wouldn’t have gotten arrested, this wouldn’t have happened to you. We wouldn’t have lost our baby,” he says, his voice breaking as he utters the last two words.

  A completely inappropriate laugh escapes me. “We are a disaster, Rafe Matthews.” I shake my head and swallow back a lump in my throat. “I don’t even know where we go from here.”

  His dark eyes meet mine with so much love and hope it makes it hard to breathe. “There’s only one place to go, my sweet Eleanor. Forward.”

  I don’t know how long Rafe and I sit on my living room floor, holding each other, crying,
talking, laughing, but mostly crying. When the sun’s rays peek through the living room windows, I take Rafe’s hand and lead him to my bedroom, where we slip wordlessly into bed.

  Instead of whispers of goodnight, Rafe’s gentle fingers trace over each and every scar, his lips following in their wake. I don’t dare move, not even to wipe my tears away. I let them flow freely as Rafe bids his child a silent farewell. He falls asleep with his head nestled against my stomach, his arms wrapped tightly around my waist, my fingers threaded through his hair.

  I wake a few hours later to the sound of Rafe’s quiet whispers on the phone. After several seconds, it becomes clear that he’s checking on Della. From the sound of it, she had a good night. A smile forms on my lips at the thought. Rafe does such a good job taking care of her.

  He would have been such a good dad.

  My smile quickly turns into a shaky frown. I can feel the burning start in the back of my eyes. I don’t want to cry anymore. I cried all night. I’ve been crying for years. The tears have to stop at some point, right? Rafe hangs up the phone and pulls me into his arms.

  “We’ve never slept in a bed before.”

  “How was it?” I ask, the burning slowly disappearing.

  “Perfection.”

  “Della had a good night?”

  He smiles. “Yeah. Finn and Maggie want her for the whole day. I figured we needed this time for ourselves.” His smile fades. “We had a huge night, Eleanor. I think we still have some talking to do.”

  I take him in, from his rumpled hair to the beautiful ink adorning his skin.

  “I want you to do something for me today.”

  “I’ll do anything for you.”

  Sitting up, I raise my shirt just enough to expose the hideous mass of scars. “I want you to hide the ugly. Cover it with something beautiful. Can you do that for me?”

  He swallows hard and nods. “I can do that for you.” His fingers trace the scars with a gentle reverence. “Have you thought about what you want?”

  I reach over to my night stand and pull out a piece of paper that I never had the heart to get rid of, even in those rare moments after he left, and I thought I hated him. God, how could I ever have entertained the thought?