by S. L. Naeole
He carried me through the doorway, the quiet only emphasizing the darkness that filled the house. Once in his room, he closed the door and placed me gently onto the bed. He removed his jacket and proceeded to hang it up slowly, something I had never seen him do.
“Are you stalling?” I asked, the question seeming silly for someone who had all the time in the world.
“To you it seems silly. To me, it helps to keep each moment with you from ending that much sooner.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I always took for granted the fact that as slow as time seemed to travel for me, it went by at a rapid pace for him, and his movements—when they weren’t being scrutinized by those who could discern the difference—were an excellent display of that lack of appreciation for time.
“Grace, before you say anything, before we start arguing again, I want to speak to you about what happened today-”
“At the police station?”
He didn’t turn around, but I saw his head nod, the dark head moving up and down as he spoke. “Yes, at the police station. When you fell asleep, you dreamt…you dreamt about what your life would have been like had I never entered it-”
“Had you never existed,” I corrected.
“I will always exist, Grace, but that is neither here nor there. It was explained to you that when you form a memory, it burns itself into your mind, branding you with the truth of it. Memories differ from other thoughts. They don’t change, even if you think they do. They don’t form independently.”
“I don’t understand.”
Robert raised his arm up against the bedroom door and rested his head against it. “In your dream, we had never met, you had never regained your friendship with Graham, Janice never moved in, and Stacy—Stacy was the one who ended up being killed, right?”
I nodded then looked away, feeling stupid because he wasn’t even facing me.
He sighed and continued, “You began to see things in your dream, remember things that you thought didn’t belong there, right?”
“Yes.
“Grace, those are genuine memories. Those are things that are burned into your mind as though they actually happened to you.”
I sat there with my mouth ajar, the idea sounding far more absurd each time I replayed it in my head. I tried to find something articulate to say, something that would contradict him without leaving any room for doubt. All I could come up with was “You’re real”.
He turned around and looked at me, his eyes a dark, shadowy gray, his mouth a harsh line that hinted at anger and hurt. “Do you not understand what I am telling you, Grace? Memories formed by dreams are tied to those dreams, forever linked to tell you that they are not real, just visions of your subconscious—they are never independent of them. Your memories have no dreams.”
“So what does that mean?”
Robert shook his head and grit his teeth, fighting the answer that struggled to be told. “It means that someone has been toying with your mind, Grace. I just don’t know who, or even when.”
I felt more confused than I was frightened. “How? How does someone just put a memory into my mind without me knowing about it?”
“I’ve told you how, it’s just that I told you how it’s done in reverse-”
Recognition dawned on me and my eyes grew wide in shock and anger. “You mean that what’s happening with Erica…that’s happening to me?”
He nodded slowly, my saying it seeming to finalize it somehow, and neither of us liked that idea.
“This doesn’t make sense though. Why? Who?”
Robert grimaced. “I don’t know. You’re never alone anywhere except in your room, so that rules out any of the conventional methods, which means that whoever is doing this has the ability to get to you when you’re asleep.” He turned around once more and cursed under his breath.
I had never heard him speak like that before, the words sounding so foreign coming out of his mouth. I stood up and slowly walked over to him, my steps unsure, my hand shaky. He was shaking as well, though I could not discern from what until I placed a nervous hand on his shoulder and he spun around to face me.
“You’re afraid,” I said softly, easily recognizing the signs.
“I left you alone. You told me to and like an idiot I listened, and now someone is messing with your mind in a way that I cannot figure out. What if whoever did this had tried to do something else? What if they tried to hurt you?” Robert’s hands grabbed a hold of my arms and gripped them tightly; my body started to shake and I realized that it was because he was trembling, his hands holding onto me because he needed my support.
I didn’t know what to do; this was a situation that I wasn’t familiar with. Robert had never shown fear before. At least, not in a way that would shake him to his very core. He had never looked more vulnerable than he did right then. I had watched him die, watched him writhe around in unimaginable pain, and yet he had always remained iron-willed and steadfast. Now I was the strong one.
I could not move, his steel-like arms held me at a safe distance, so I simply waited for him to loosen his hold on me. I looked at him, my eyes never leaving his, reaffirming that no matter how angry, how upset I had become over the words he had spoken, I was where I belonged, where I needed to be.
“Robert,” I said in a soft, soothing voice. “I’m sorry for telling you-”
I was cut off from my apology by the swift pull of him bringing me into the tight circle of his embrace. My arms wrapped around his back with unspeakable and intrinsic need.
“Don’t apologize for something that I made you do,” Robert groaned into my hair. “Don’t.”
I shook my head, unwilling to be let off that easily. “You didn’t make me react the way that I did. It was wrong of me to say what I did to you, regardless of how I felt. I regretted it as soon as I said it, but my stupid, stubborn pride wouldn’t let me admit it.”
“I should have been the one to apologize, Grace, not you. I’m the one who overreacted, who should have known better. My accusations were baseless and wholly reactionary, and it was my stupid, stubborn pride that wouldn’t let me admit to it either. I am sorry, Grace.” Robert’s arms pulled me in tighter, something that I didn’t know was possible, and I, in turn, tried to pull him as close to me as possible, needing to feel his warmth, his strength.
Only when my legs felt like they would give out from standing for so long did Robert finally pick me up and carefully place me on the bed. He sat across from me and pulled my feet into his lap. “You’ve got weird toes,” he commented as he began to massage the soles.
“I do not!” I protested, and tried to pull my feet away, but he held fast. “They’re normal looking toes. Besides, I don’t recall ever seeing your toes.”
Robert bent down to untie the laces to his black shoes, something I had never seen him do before, and watched, fascinated as he proceeded to remove the shoe followed by a long, black sock. Once bare, be brought his foot onto the bed and allowed me to inspect it. I leaned forward and reached for it tentatively.
“What?” Robert asked as he took in my hesitancy.
“It’s just that…well, whenever Graham would shove his foot at me, it was always sweaty and smelly. I just—I assumed that yours would be the same way,” I admitted sheepishly.
He let out a loose, carefree laugh as he wiggled his toes. “I don’t sweat, and I’m fairly certain that you’re aware that I don’t…smell. Not badly, anyway.”
I looked at him with doubt in my eyes, but allowed my hand to take a hold of his pale foot and true to his word, it was neither sweaty or foul smelling. To my surprise, it actually gave off a pleasant odor not dissimilar to the one that you could pick up when he spoke to you.
“How weird,” I murmured as I looked at the smooth skin on the sole of his foot. “Can I see your hands?”
Robert held out his arm and I grabbed his palm, searching for what I knew would be absent when I got to his fingers. “You don’t have any fingerprints!” I exclaim
ed in shock. “Why didn’t I notice that before?”
“Because you just assumed that, aside from the obvious differences, I was just like you.”
“Oh.”
“Grace?”
“Yes?”
Robert removed his hand from mine and brought himself closer to me, his face mere inches from mine. “Are we…okay?”
I nodded in response, too afraid that saying anything would make it anything but. Robert smiled. He was so close, I could feel his warm breath on my face and I greedily inhaled it, the intoxicating scent doing things to me I knew no drug ever could. Robert’s smile grew ever wider as he leaned in closer until finally our lips were just a millimeter apart. I looked down and felt my breath catch in anticipation—it had seemed like forever since I had been this close to him—his lips still parted in that devastatingly handsome smile causing my heart to skip noticeably.
“You’re more excited than usual,” he commented with a slight laugh. “Perhaps this is too soon-”
“No!” I cut him off sharply and pushed myself forward, closing the microscopic distance between us until my lips were pressed firmly against his. It was a defining moment for both of us; the ever running current of electricity that sparked out between us turned into a living, breathing entity that ignited something inside of us; and for an altogether too brief of a moment, we both lost control of ourselves.
Robert’s hands came up to hold my face steady as I struggled to bring his own closer—he could never be close enough, I decided—and with a kind of mad urgency, he began to deliver the kind of hard, biting kisses that I had never known I needed. It wasn’t soft and gentle, sweet and endearing like all of the others were. It wasn’t even scintillatingly arousing like our last kiss had been. This was a desperate, almost message sending kiss that brooked no doubt in how much he needed me.
And I needed him. I needed him more than air or water or light. He was every emotion, every thought I possessed. I felt waves of heat flow to every limb, my fingers tingling from the fierce push of it. The world could have died, the universe imploded in on itself, and nothing would have ever altered my life the way he did when his mouth opened beneath mine and I tasted him. It was all I could do to keep from promising him anything and everything if only he’d never stop.
But he did, his breathing just as ragged, his trembling just as strong as my own. I felt the extreme disappointment replace the heat almost instantly. “Don’t stop,” I panted.
Robert shook his head as he tried to regain his composure—I liked him all rattled up—and held onto my shoulders, though whether it was to support me or himself, I didn’t know. “We cannot, Grace. It’s not right, this is not the right time.”
Frustrated and disappointed, I sighed. “It’s never the right time.”
“Grace, please,” Robert implored. “You won’t have to wait forever. I promise.”
“You keep saying that but I keep finding it harder and harder to believe you.”
We sat up, separated by the things we wanted to say, and the things we wanted to do but couldn’t. We were supposed to be moving forward, we were supposed to be growing as a couple. Instead we were moving backwards, and we both knew what that meant.
Even if we were too afraid to say it aloud.
SPRING BREAK-IN
With less than a week left before Dad and Janice’s wedding, I found myself with absolutely no time to do much of anything. Graham had taken it upon himself to stay as far away from the overly anxious pregnant woman and all of the wedding finalizing as possible. That meant, of course, that I’d seen very little of him these past few days.
When he learned that Robert and I had resolved our problems, he seemed relieved, but refrained from asking me about Lark again from that point on. I felt conflicted because for whatever reason, it seemed that by mending things with Robert, I had effectively barred myself from any conversations with him about Lark and Graham, and that didn’t seem fair to me at all.
The last day of school was also the day before Graham took off for Florida to spend Spring Break with his mom. Knowing that he wouldn’t be attending the wedding, he chose to give Dad and Janice their gift early. He presented it in the morning, its wrapping quite crude and with far too much tape, but once Janice had managed to remove the yards of cellophane, she was awed by what she found.
“Oh Graham, this is wonderful!” she exclaimed as she pulled out a white, leather-bound photo album. It wasn’t the type that you’d find in your photo section of your local big-box stores, of that I was certain. “Where ever did you find something like this?”
Graham smiled proudly. “I ordered them from a shop my friend Donovan’s dad owns. He runs that antique store down by the old coffee shop and he had this catalogue from a company that makes these handmade photo albums. I thought that since Grace got you guys that scrapbook for the baby, why not add something for your wedding?”
“Did he do the embossing, too?” Janice asked as she ran her fingers across hers and Dad’s initials that were gilded in gold leaf across the front, just below an oval shaped external frame.
“Yeah. I didn’t ask Grace what the colors of your wedding were because…well, I’m a guy—we don’t do that kind of stuff, and I’d just forget anyway. So I just chose white, if that’s okay,” Graham admitted sheepishly.
Dad reached over to take a look at the album and marveled at its weight. “How many pictures do you think we’ll be taking at this wedding,” he quipped. As he opened the book, he realized why it was so heavy.
“These pages are thick! And they’ve got actual photo corners, like the old ones we have for some of our old albums in the attic. I think there’s one of your mom’s up there, too Grace. Thanks a lot, Graham. I’ll probably be one of those ‘admire-them-from-a-distance’ kind of husbands when it comes to this sort of stuff, but you chose something that we can hand down to the baby when he’s older. Thank you, very much!”
Graham seemed pleased with the praise he was receiving, and I felt immensely glad that he was here with us, instead of at his home with his father. “You’re welcome, Mr. Shelley. You guys have gone out of your way to help me out, and I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for it, but the least I can do is get you a gift that you’ll actually use.”
Janice laughed as she took the album back from Dad and flipped through the pages herself, touching the raised photo corners and admiring the vellum page separators. “You’re Grace’s best friend, Graham. I think I speak for both of us when I say that you’re a part of this family; we care about you very much and appreciate you being in our lives as well as Grace’s.”
Graham’s cheeked turned red at all of this affection, something he was not used to receiving at home, and he quickly turned his attention back to his breakfast. “Hey Grace, is Robert coming to pick you up this morning?” he asked, trying to change the subject to alleviate his discomfort.
“Yeah, he’ll be here in a few minutes,” I replied as I finished the last bite of my toast and yogurt. “Why?”
Graham pushed his eggs around his plate before answering. “I needed to give him something.”
I stared into my empty yogurt cup and nodded. He wasn’t going to tell me, not wanting to cause any more strife between Robert and I, and I felt both grateful and resentful at the same time. It shouldn’t have to feel this way, but it did and I hated it.
“Do you think he’d mind if I brought you back home? I have to go and grab a whole bunch of clothes from my house, and I thought you could help me out—you know, pick stuff out for me so that I don’t look like a total dork.”
I looked up and smiled, shaking my head. “He’ll be alright with it, but I’m pretty sure he’d rather you take him along because we all know my taste in clothing bites.”
“Well, how about the both of you come then?”
I stared at him in shock. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah—you’re a package deal, and if that means a better sense of style, I guess I’ve got no complaints.”
<
br /> I laughed at that, lightly punching his arm and laughing even more when he pretended it had hurt. “We’ll all just meet back here after school.”
“Sweet.”
Dad coughed and I turned to face him. “Yeah, Dad?”
He glanced between Graham and I and let out a deep sigh. “I was just wondering when you and Robert became a ‘package deal’, and why Graham is suddenly so okay with it. It just reminds me that you’re no longer seven…and I’m going to be starting all over again.”
Janice began to laugh this time and patted his shoulder reassuringly. “It’s alright, James. Boys are supposed to be easier.”
Dad chuckled and pointed to the layered shirt and jeans ensemble I had on. “I didn’t raise a prissy princess—or even a regular princess. Grace has always been independent, self-sufficient, and just plain easy. It’s just-” he seemed to struggle with the words as he looked at me and then quickly away “-watching her grow up has been one of the best experiences in my life. And to see her make her own path in life, rather than follow the ones that others want her to…it would have made her mother very proud—it makes me proud.”
“Aw, Dad,” I groaned and brushed my hand against my eyes, desperately trying to hide the moisture there.
The doorbell ringing alerted us to Robert’s arrival and I jumped up, embarrassed at my obvious glee that he was here, but also anxious to see him and speak to him about Graham’s plan.
“I’ll get it,” Graham said and pushed me back down into my chair.
“Oh,” I huffed and watched him walk off towards the door.
Dad chuckled. “You didn’t actually think that Graham was going to let you speak to Robert first and tell him that he needs help picking out his clothes, did you? Coming from the queen of the fashionably challenged?”
I rolled my eyes and slouched in my seat, knowing that Robert had already heard everything that we had said; and what he didn’t hear voiced, he surely had seen in our thoughts.
Graham and Robert walked into the kitchen together several minutes later and I had to blink a few times to reassure myself that I was seeing the same two individuals who had always seemed at odds with each other, even when there was no reason to be. They were laughing and joking about something that I obviously wasn’t privy to, and I felt…jealous. I closed my eyes and reopened them once more in shock—was I really jealous?