“So I’m a loser? A bum?”
“Jesus, Trev, no,” Sera said. She ripped her hand away. “You didn’t go to college. Your stepbrother was killed in a car accident. You said his father blames you for it. You got kicked out of the memorial party for him. And then you were just… nice to me.”
“So because I’m nice you think you get to take something of mine? Maybe I should do the same thing to you.”
Sera licked her lips. “I wouldn’t tell anyone anything. And I have no idea what the letter means. Who it was even written to.”
I stood up. I walked around the table, my eyes unable to leave her. Was it that big of a deal that she’d read that letter? No. I had nothing to hide. I wasn’t going to openly talk about my life, my past, any of that shit. But I wasn’t hiding it either.
As I stepped behind her, I touched her hair with my right hand. “Forget me for a second. You’re the one with the secrets, Sera.” My fingers playfully stroked her neck. My lips were parched for her taste. I slowly leaned down, gauging her reaction to me moving at her. She didn’t move an inch. With my lips less than an inch from her neck, I spoke again. “You want to know who that letter was for?”
“Trev,” Sera said. “I’m sorry. You don’t understand…”
“Make me understand then.”
My lips brushed her neck and she melted like butter in the microwave.
She sucked in a deep breath.
I took my lips away for a moment, only because I was going to tell her everything about the letter. If that’s what it took to get her to talk to me, then fine. Because I needed to get this woman out of my mind for a second. It made no sense that she’d managed to get inside there and twist herself up.
“Sera… I have lots of those letters,” I whispered. “I’ve never sent a single one…”
My phone beeped. It was a text message and the tone was only used for one person.
I shut my eyes.
Shit.
I stepped away from Sera and felt her eyes burning into me.
“Are you serious right now?” she asked. “You have been picking on me about my phone for how long?”
I stared at the screen. My heart sank a little.
“I have to go,” I said.
“What?” Sera asked.
I moved quickly. I grabbed my keys and a hoodie off the arm of the couch. At the door, I stopped and looked back.
“Trev?” Sera asked.
“I can’t explain it right now. The place is yours if you need to sleep or whatever. If you leave, just shut the door.”
“Trev,” she said. She stood up. The look on her face was probably the same look I had the night she bailed on me out of my truck.
“Everything wrong,” I said. “Okay? We talked about it. Everything wrong.”
“With you?”
“With us,” I said.
“Is it about the letter?”
I didn’t answer the question.
I didn’t have time to waste.
My stepbrother’s fiancée texted to say that she was going to kill herself.
Chapter 10
Serafina
Dear YOU,
Like, I’m not supposed to get angry and stuff here, but I’m getting really angry and stuff here. They keep telling me you’re getting my letters. They promise me that they take the letters to you. They say that if you can’t read the letters, they’ll read them to you. But how do I know that? Nobody says a word to me after that. And you never write back. I mean, okay, fine, I get it. Maybe you can’t write back right now. So I shouldn’t be like that and be mean. But why can’t you tell someone to write something? Huh? I know you can talk… right? Can you talk? If not, why can’t you? And you’re still in the hospital. How long does a person stay in the hospital? They said it was the flu. That’s what I remember. I don’t want to hear anything else but the flu. Because that can be fought. I mean, you’re in a hospital. They have doctors. They have nurses. They have all the medicines you need. So what’s taking so long here?
I can’t even enjoy school right now either. It’s like a million whispers. And all I want is to hear your voice whispering in my ear as we walk down the halls of school, looking at the cute boys. OMG, can you believe that Andrew got his ears pierced? And I heard that Justin got a tattoo. His older brother signed the paperwork and stuff to let it happen. He was showing it off in gym class, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. This is all important stuff and you need to be here for it. It’s not right that you’re not here. We were going to own these hallways. Own every party, every weekend. And then own the world. Together. Arm in arm. Laughing, whispering, never letting go. Remember that promise we made? I know we were twelve. I know we were jumping into that gross and scary lake. But we made a promise… to never let go. I’m not letting go, but what else can I write? What can I do to get you to say something back to me?
Love,
Serafina
* * *
I didn’t know what to do.
I stood at the table and saw a beer on each side of it. Why had I really come here? At three in the morning? To give back ten bucks?
To give him back the letter I took?
I put my hand to the letter and actually half considered reading the rest of it.
Finally, I shook my head and decided to leave.
Trev had said it perfectly - everything was wrong with us. Even though we were both wrapped tightly in our secrets and lives, we both knew it was all wrong.
I left the apartment and stood in the lonely hallway and took my phone out.
I went to Max’s text.
Rolling my eyes, I sighed, already hating myself as my fingers typed a text message back to him.
sorry - busy night - u home?
I walked to my car and never got a reply from Max.
Which meant my only choice was to go home. That was maybe the loneliest feeling in the world. Most people would want to go home. Your own bed. Your own privacy. Your own comfort.
Not me.
And the thing was… I wasn’t alone at home. Hailey was there.
I walked through the apartment and went right to Hailey’s bedroom. I opened the door slowly and saw that she was there. Which did give me a small sense of comfort. But I also saw that she wasn’t alone. There was a guy in bed with her. His arm draped over Hailey’s body, both of them naked.
By the time I took a shower and got changed, it was five in the morning.
I sat on the edge of my bed and let everything run through my mind.
Trev had been pretty much right about the way I had acted toward him. But it wasn’t exactly the easiest conversation to have with someone who was still kind of a stranger to me. To just blurt out that I had been having an affair with one of my professor’s. Not to mention everything that came with that… feelings, truths, all that stuff.
I slid off the bed and reached under it. It took me a minute or so to find the box, but I did. I hadn’t looked at the box since I put it under the bed when I moved into the apartment.
There, sitting on the floor, I flipped the lid off it.
It was full of letters.
Letters I had written.
Letters that had never gotten delivered.
All the letters that my best friend was supposed to read, but never got the chance to.
Because I couldn’t save her life.
Chapter 11
Trev
It wasn’t the first time that Becca had done this to me. And it wouldn’t be the last. The problem was that I couldn’t ignore it. Because there was always a chance that she was serious. Even if she wasn’t serious, it was her way of asking for help without actually asking.
I tried calling her but she didn’t answer. Of course she didn’t answer. Why would she? At least by me calling she knew I’d got her text and she knew I was on my way.
When I got to her place, the door was locked, but I had a key. I shut my eyes as I slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. It still didn’
t feel right at all. I tried to tell myself in the beginning that I had no choice, but that was all a lie. Becca and I used each other for comfort and to grieve.
“Becca?” I called out as I rushed through the apartment. “Hey. I’m here. It’s okay.”
“Heath?” a voice said.
I froze and looked right to the bathroom.
The bathroom… where she had razors and chemicals and stuff…
I raced to the door and found it unlocked. I threw the door open and saw Becca sitting in the tub. The shower curtain was ripped down and covering her like a blanket. Her left arm was outstretched out of the tub. Her head to the side and her eyes half open.
“Christ, Becca,” I yelled. “What did you do?”
“I fell,” she said. “Heath. I fell.”
I surveyed the bathroom but nothing was out of place. No pill bottles anywhere. No weapons anywhere. No blood anywhere.
I dropped to my knees and reached for Becca’s face. I gently tapped her cheek.
“Hey, look at me, Becca,” I said. “I’m here.”
“Heath…”
She reached for me and dug her nails into the back of my neck. She pulled herself toward me. I slipped my other hand around her, past the torn down shower curtain. She was naked underneath it. I picked her up, the shower curtain still on her body.
“Becca, tell me what happened here,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”
“I drank too much,” she said. “Alone. But I didn’t drive. I promise, I didn’t drive. I came to take a shower and fell. Then I… I saw it happening.”
I turned and walked out of the bathroom, carrying her in my arms.
“What did you see happening?” I asked her.
“The crash,” she said. “So I wanted to crash too. I want to hit a tree. I want to be gone forever.”
“No you don’t,” I said. “You’re going to be okay. It’s just a bad night, Becca. I have those too.”
I took her to her bedroom. The room felt foreign to me because of the state she was in. It was really fucked up to imagine, but I was uncomfortable there with her. All the times I had touched her, shared that bed with her, but when she was like this, it was different. A different version of Becca.
Gently placing her on the bed, I looked around and realized that I needed to get her dressed. That meant taking the shower curtain off her and seeing her body. Again, I’d seen her so many times before… but this time…
I gritted my teeth and pulled the shower curtain away from her. I averted my eyes to respect her and made a line for her closet. There was nothing that resembled something to wear to bed, so I went for the dresser. There, I found a drawer of t-shirts.
Heath’s t-shirts.
My stomach felt sick.
“Heath? Where are you?” Becca asked from the bed. “I’m cold. I’m so cold without you.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Hold on, Becca.”
In the second drawer I found another shirt. One that wasn’t Heath’s. That was the best I could get for Becca at that moment.
I walked back to the bed and held the shirt out, trying to block her from my view.
“Becca, sit up for me. I need to get you dressed.”
She fought, drunk and swaying, but managed to get into a seated position. She was so wasted and vulnerable.
I crouched a little and rolled up the shirt to the neck and slipped it over her head. It felt like it took an hour to get her arms through the sleeves. Then I helped her to her feet to pull the shirt down to cover the rest of her exposed body.
That’s when she put her hands to my chest. “You’re not Heath.”
“No, I’m not. I’m Trev.”
“I know who you are. I wanted you here.”
“I came,” I said. “I don’t like when you say you’re going to hurt yourself, Becca.”
She looked up at me, her eyes swollen from crying. It hurt me to imagine her sitting around her apartment, alone, drinking and crying. And then thinking those terrible thoughts about hurting herself.
“I want to hurt myself,” she whispered. “I want to die.”
“You feel that way, but you don’t want that.”
“What do I want, huh? You know everything, don’t you? You knew how to get Heath to drive. You knew how to get out of that car in one piece. Right?”
The words hurt, but they were drunken words. Maybe it was how Becca really felt, but she was drunk. There was no filter and I needed to just ignore it.
“Come on,” I said. “You need to close your eyes. It’s almost daylight already.”
I pushed at Becca and her hands slid up my chest to my face. She tried to freeze and get me against her more tightly. I wrapped my arms around the back of her legs and lifted her up. She let out a yell and I put her back onto her bed.
When I put her down she tried to kiss me. “Now. Right now. Right now, Trev.”
I turned my head and her lips smashed against my cheek.
One of her hands moved down to the middle of my jeans and she tried to grab me. I jumped back and away from the bed.
“Becca,” I said. “No.”
“Come on, I need it. I need you. Make it go away, Trev.”
I growled under my breath. There was no way I was going to touch her like this. She was always a mess, but this was different.
I dropped down to one knee and touched her shoulder. “Becca, we can’t do this right now.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered. “Fuck you, Trev.”
Tears started to fall from her eyes.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said.
“Are you going to leave now?”
I instantly thought of Serafina. Was she still sitting at my dining room table? Was she going to sleep on the couch or something crazy like that?
“I won’t leave,” I said.
Becca grasped my hand and turned her back to me. She pulled at me and I knew what she wanted. It wasn’t quite as extreme as the other thing, so I slowly climbed into the bed next to her. I was fully dressed, shoes and all. Becca wore nothing but the t-shirt I’d put on her. Her nails clawed at my hand as she cried.
All I could do was hold her.
There was nothing to say. I’d learned that a long time ago.
She needed comfort. I needed to shed my guilt.
It was a fucking mess.
And I was just there, in the mostly dark bedroom, thinking about Serafina and the letter she read… and all the other secrets and truths of my life.
* * *
I carried the two coffee mugs into the bedroom a little before ten in the morning. Becca sat up in bed, plenty of covers on her, her hair messy from sleep, her eyes sunken in from crying so much.
“This should help,” I said and put the mug on the nightstand.
Becca reached for it and finally made eye contact with me.
“Morning.”
“Morning, Becca.”
“My shower curtain is on the floor in my bedroom.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Did we… I mean, you know, start in the bathroom…?”
I shook my head. “We didn’t even… at all.”
“Oh.”
She stared down into the mug. “I texted for something else.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I wanted to hurt myself.”
“Yeah. Becca, we need to talk about all of this.”
She looked at me. “All of what?”
“This,” I said. “What we’re doing here. This is a mess. You’re engaged to my stepbrother. You texted me that you wanted to hurt yourself. I keep saying I’m going to call the police next time… and I don’t because I don’t want you to end up in a hospital or something… but…”
“I’m sorry,” Becca said. “I didn’t know how to ask you to come over and not fuck me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Jesus, Becca. Do you have to say it like that? I don’t come over here just expecting…”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t lie to
me or yourself, Trev. You know what we’re doing here. Having comfort and being wrong is what makes it work. Thanks for the coffee. You can leave now.”
“I’m not just going to leave,” I said. “This isn’t going to work…”
She shook her head. “There isn’t anything to work here. When I need you again, I’ll let you know.”
“I’m calling the police next time,” I said. “Medics. Doctors. Whoever.”
“You do whatever you want, Trev. I don’t care.”
“You should care,” I said. “You should, Becca. I don’t know if what we’re doing here should happen again.”
“Oh, change of heart now? What happened? Did you meet someone?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m trying to figure all this out. These parties for Heath are getting to me. I got kicked out of one. My mother is stuck to John’s side.”
Becca put a hand out. “This is the part where I tell you I don’t care. I don’t want to hear about it. That’s your personal life, Trev. You choose to walk into the flames and then complain when you get burned.”
Sometimes I forgot just how evil Becca could be when she wanted to put up her wall.
“Yeah,” I said. “Right. Burned. You do know that you being around would help everyone. Even if you stopped by the house for five minutes.”
“No,” she said.
“You were engaged to him.”
“I still am,” she said and showed me the diamond ring.
“Exactly. So you should do the right thing.”
“You’re one to talk,” she said. “Just because you shut me down one time doesn’t make you a hero.”
“I’m going to get going,” I said. “I think we’re done here.”
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“It’s your coffee. I just made it. Have fun hanging your shower curtain back up. Maybe next time you do something stupid to yourself, you call someone else.”
I turned to leave the room and Becca said my name one more time.
I stood there, telling myself not to look at her. I looked at her though.
“I’m never going to love you,” she said. “You know what this is. I don’t care about right and wrong. What’s wrong is that he was taken from me. That’s wrong.”
EVERYTHING WRONG WITH US_a novel by: Page 7