Last Kiss

by Laurelin Paige

  “You look fantastic,” I said, somewhat awkwardly. Talking to her still wasn’t as easy as it had been once. I supposed that took time. “I’m guessing that you’re feeling better?”

  She eyed me carefully. “Maybe I should be asking that about you?”

  “Oh, because of dinner last night?” I forced a smile that I hoped was just bright enough to be convincing. “I was fine. I was just giving you privacy.”

  “Thank you for that. I wasn’t sure.” Her expression didn’t give away what other reasons she might have thought I’d run. “And, yes, I feel much better.”

  “That makes me so happy!” It felt false, but I meant it. I did want her better. I wanted a lot of things, though, and some of them were not straightforward. Some of them I wanted in degrees with conditions attached and some of the things I wanted were in direct contradiction to other things I wanted just as much.

  But for that moment, I tried to concentrate on wanting her well and was glad that she was.

  Well enough to traipse around with a cowboy, no less, which wasn’t a judgmental thought, but a concerned thought.

  I peered over the railing and saw that the man had disappeared, as eerily as he had the last time I’d seen him. “Who was that guy you were talking to?”

  “Buddy, maybe?” She shrugged, avoiding eye contact. “That’s his nickname, I think. I, uh, just met him. He bummed me smokes.” She dug out a half empty box of cigarettes from her back pocket and held them up for me to see.

  Years had passed in between us but I could still tell when she was keeping something from me. I didn’t have to wonder what she was hiding – she’d shared that beer with the stranger when Reeve had already made it clear that he expected her to refrain from alcohol while she was trying to get over her addiction. While I wanted the best outcome for her recovery, I understood why she’d bristle at his attempt to control her behavior. And knowing Amber, it was only natural that she’d try to undermine him at every turn.

  It was a war that the two would have to battle for themselves, I decided. But I was still concerned about the man – Buddy. “Be careful around him, okay? I saw him last night, and he gave me a creepy vibe.”

  Amber tilted her head. “Creepy how?”

  He’d known my name, but that in itself didn’t make him a criminal. “I don’t know. I just didn’t feel safe alone with him.”

  “You’re a hottie who likes to do bad things,” Amber said with a wink. “I imagine there are a lot of men you’d feel unsafe with.”

  It was an accurate remark – so accurate that I couldn’t decide if it offended me. It was the kind of thing she could have said years ago, and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Now, there was too much distance between us and I couldn’t pinpoint her motivation like I could then.

  But that was the way with reunions – it took a while to settle back into the comfort of the past. At least she felt she could try.

  So I decided I could as well. “Just as I imagine there are a lot of men who would feel unsafe with you.”

  “Touché,” she said, beaming, and the sunlight caught in her hair, illuminating her so brightly she had a glow. Like an angel.

  Angel. Reeve’s name for her.

  I ignored the pinch in my chest and concentrated on what was right in front of me. My friend, looking vibrant and alive, the way I’d remembered her.

  And if she was back to herself then that meant I had no excuse not to tell her all the things I needed to tell her, once and for all.

  I took in a deep breath of mountain air and let it out slowly. “Can we talk a bit? Alone?” I almost hoped she’d say no. I almost hoped it so much that I gave her an easy opportunity to bow out. “If you’re feeling up to it, because if you’re not —”

  She cut me off. “I’d love to spend some time with you. Have you been up to the attic yet?”

  “No.” I hadn’t even known there was an attic.

  “Fabulous. I get to show you. Nobody ever goes up there, and it’s one of my favorite places on the ranch.”

  I followed her into the house and upstairs to the far bedrooms. I’d explored when I’d first arrived at the ranch, but I’d spent barely any time in this area after determining it was comprised of two rarely used guest suites. Between them was what, I’d assumed, was a linen closet. However, when Amber opened it, there was a hidden staircase.

  “I’m warning you,” she said before climbing up, “there might be spiders.”

  I shuddered dramatically. I’d always been horribly afraid of eight-legged creatures. “I’m guessing there might also be mice.”

  She mirrored my horror. “I’ll take on the arachnids, you take on the rodents.”

  “Deal,” I said with a laugh. Then we went up, one after the other, and we were two young, courageous girls again, out seeking our next adventure, like no time had passed at all. It felt easy, like getting on a bike after not owning one in a decade. It felt like the kiss of an old lover, lips fitting together as if made in the same mold. It felt better than I could have imagined.

  It felt like coming home.

  At the top of the stairs, I discovered the attic wasn’t as dark as I’d expected. Light streamed in through a window on the east wall. It was there Amber led me, carefully stepping over an assortment of paint cans and brushes and worn suitcases and long forgotten Christmas decorations. This had been the house where Reeve had grown up, yet I’d seen nothing to indicate as such in the rooms below. Among the dusty boxes that lined the walls, I felt for the first time that a family had once resided here, and I had a pang of sadness for the parents Reeve had lost when he was only sixteen.

  When she reached the window, Amber turned back to me. “The pane sticks, and I can’t do any lifting yet. Would you mind?”

  “Not at all.” I traded her places, and, after flipping the latch to unlock it, I pushed the frame up as far as it would go. Outside the window, there was a flat section of roof that butted up to the eave behind it. “I’m guessing we’re going out?”

  “You got it.”

  I climbed out first, then turned to help Amber, who groaned as she hoisted herself up.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I said, wincing in sympathy.

  “Nah. It’s totally worth it for the view.” She gestured behind me, and I spun carefully to look.

  “Oh, my God,” I gasped. The landscape was breathtaking. On the ground, there were too many trees surrounding the main house to see the green meadows beyond and the yellow flowers that blanketed the hills. Beyond that, snow-capped Rocky Mountains extended so high that the peaks disappeared into the nearly cloudless sky.

  “It’s why I always liked to come up here. It’s peaceful.” Amber sat down on the eave, and, when I looked at her now, she seemed less familiar than she had a moment before. In so many ways, she was still the woman I’d remembered. But in just as many, she wasn’t. The Amber I remembered hadn’t ever found beauty in nature – she’d preferred shiny jewelry and expensive cars. She’d been happiest in large crowds with her music turned so loud that she could feel it thunder her feet. Peace and quiet and solitude were things that had always made her restless.

  Of course, we weren’t kids now. But we were still young, not even thirty. And Amber suddenly seemed very old for her age.

  She pulled a cigarette from the pack she’d gotten from Buddy and cupped her hand over the end to light it. When it was lit, she took a long puff, then sighed, smoke curling into the air as she did.

  “God, I needed that.” She leaned back against the roof, cradling her head in the crook of her arm.

  “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “Of course I do,” she said, as if it were ridiculous that she wouldn’t be thinking exactly the same thing. “I think about that night a lot.”

  I did too. It had been the first night I’d ever hung out with her. We’d snuck onto the construction site of an apartment building and smoked a pack of cigarettes on one of the balconies while we’d flirted with the me
n in hard hats and shared things we’d never shared with another person before. It had been the birth of our friendship.

  Now, as our relationship was reborn, it seemed fitting that we were in a similar location.

  I crossed to stand by her. “Can I have a drag?”

  She held the cigarette out toward me, but asked, “Do you want one of your own?”

  “I think a drag is enough.” I took a puff and immediately had to stifle a cough. “Damn, I haven’t had one of those in years. How the hell did we smoke so many of them?” I cringed as I handed the cigarette back to her.

  She laughed softly. “We got used to the abuse.”

  Those were loaded words. Words that spoke volumes about so many aspects of our friendship and the men we’d chosen and the lives we’d lived. They were words that could be understanding but also very bitter. And when I looked her in the eye, I knew she meant them in every way they could be meant.

  I had to tell her about Reeve. Now.

  She inhaled her cigarette, staring up at the sky as I took a seat beside her. “Amber —”

  “You know,” she said, cutting me off, her voice tight as she held her breath. She exhaled before going on. “When I left you that message, it wasn’t because Reeve wouldn’t let me leave the ranch.”

  My neck prickled, and I had that sudden gut-dropping fear that I’d been lied to. “He didn’t keep you here?”

  She twisted her head to look at me. “No, he did.”

  Then Reeve hadn’t lied.

  “Oh. He did,” I confirmed, trying my best to recover from the false alarm. Why was it so hard for me to trust him? I hated that I always assumed the worst where he was concerned. As if proving any of those assumptions true would change how I felt about him.

  She nodded as she took another drag. “Just, that wasn’t really that bad. I mean, it was. I wanted to kick him in the balls for it.” Her eyes narrowed. “In fact, I think I did that too.” She exhaled and smiled, as if enjoying the memory.

  I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them, uncomfortable with how it felt to hear her talk about Reeve. More specifically, her and Reeve.

  She sat up and crushed the butt of her cigarette against a roof tile. “But he wasn’t malicious. He didn’t do it out of cruelty. He did it because he loved me, and he didn’t want to let me go, and, yeah, it pissed me off, but I didn’t feel like I needed to be rescued.” She tossed the butt over the side of the house.

  I swallowed a chiding remark about littering and asked instead, “Then why?”

  She hesitated, her attention elsewhere. My eyes followed her gaze to her shoes – my shoes, rather. Her whole outfit had been borrowed from my closet.

  And while I was marveling at how convenient it was that we’d always worn the same size, she said, “I called that day because I’d been thinking about not living anymore.”

  My breath caught as I realized what she was saying.

  “I’d been thinking about it a lot. And, at the time, I thought you were the only person who’d maybe be able to talk me out of it.” She glanced at me and grinned, as though that could lessen the severity of what she’d just said.

  But it didn’t in the least.

  “Oh, my God, Amber, no.” I had no other words than those. Even with years of acting under my belt, I couldn’t improvise anything better. Because I’d never played this role before. I’d never in a million years imagined that I’d be on this side of a suicide conversation. With Amber, of all people.

  Was this why she loved it up here so much? Had she stood up here, alone, trying to get the courage to step off the edge? Was she still thinking about it now? My mind flooded with worry while my body tensed with panic.

  “Please. Don’t.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t make it melodramatic. It wasn’t like that. I just…” She trailed off, and although she was silent for only a few seconds, the weight of them made it feel three times as long. “I don’t know. Being trapped here gave me a lot of time to think, I guess. A lot of time for introspection. And I started to think what’s the point? I was broaching thirty and had nothing to show for my life. I saw how far you’d come —”

  “Hardly,” I interrupted, mortified that she would have looked to my bland, empty life as a model of comparison.

  But she ignored me, raising her voice to make sure I didn’t speak over her again. “— while I was still living off someone else’s handouts. No friends. No family. No one to miss me if I were gone.”

  “I would have missed you!” My throat was thick and my eyes watery. “I missed you every day.” It was such a relief to finally say that to her. Like it had been a shameful secret that I’d carried for years and now I was at the day of reckoning.

  “And not just me. You had Reeve. He wanted to marry you.” My voice caught, and I hated that it hurt to say that even now, when my sole focus should have been on comforting her. “How could you say you had no one?”

  “He wanted kids.” She said it as if that were an obvious explanation.

  “So? You’d have kids.” And somewhere in the back of my brain I thought, Oh, he wants kids and God, do I want kids too? With him?

  Amber shook her head. “I can’t.”

  I furrowed my brow trying to decipher if she really meant can’t or if instead she meant won’t.

  “I can’t have kids,” she said again. “I’ve been checked out. I did too much damage to my uterus. Too many terminated pregnancies. And I can’t have them.” She gave a weak laugh. “Ironic how I did everything to not get pregnant before and now I’d do anything…”

  She took a deep breath then let it out. “It wasn’t fair to take that from Reeve just because I’d been reckless with my past.”

  I scrubbed my hands over my face not sure if I wanted to cry or scream. Or laugh. Knowing that whatever I did, this wasn’t going to end well. It was one thing to claim Reeve as mine when she’d left him because they were wrong for each other, and quite another when she’d left him because she loved him.

  It was unfair. And, irrationally, it felt somewhat spiteful.

  Or maybe I was the one full of spite.

  Steepling my fingers, I pressed them against my lower lip. “Did you talk to him about this?”

  “No. I would have rather died.” Her eyes met mine. “So I called you.”

  “Amber…” A thousand words died on my tongue before I managed, “I wish I’d been there for you.” But, selfishly, I didn’t really wish that at all. If she had reached me when she’d called, I wouldn’t have had to go looking for her. I wouldn’t have found Reeve. And while knowing him – loving him – might be the death of both Amber and myself, it was an end I would walk toward with my head held high.

  “It all worked out okay,” she said in a halfheartedly reassuring tone. “He let me go, and then I ran to Micha. Which was just as cowardly, and, in many ways, just as suicidal. Especially if he decides he isn’t done with me.”

  My stomach lurched as Amber voiced the very thing I’d been concerned about. “Do you think he’ll come after you?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m sure I’m just being melodramatic.”

  She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as me. “I’m just lucky Reeve is still willing to take me back in after I went to Micha just to piss him off.”

  Lucky, yes. Not loved, as I feared. Just lucky. “How did you even know that would make him mad?”

  “It’s a long story.” She glanced at me and must have realized I wouldn’t accept that for an answer, so she went on. “He’d been at a social event Reeve had taken me to. Reeve hadn’t known Micha would be there, and they saw each other. There was a confrontation. Micha cornered me and said, ‘If you’re ever tired of him…’ Blah, blah, blah. He was just another dirty, rich old man, you know? I blew him off. But then when I left Kaya, he was there. I mean he was right there, in town. Like he was waiting for an opportunity to, I don’t know, get at Reeve. I made a snap decision. And I regretted it.�
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  “He was waiting for you? That should have been a sign that he was not a good guy right there.” I didn’t hide my frustration.

  “I had nowhere else to go, Em.”

  I shifted my whole body toward her. “You could have come to me.” If she’d thought of me long enough to call, then she could have thought about running to me instead.

  “I couldn’t,” she said emphatically. “Not after I sent you away like I did. I’d been horrible to you, and I didn’t deserve your forgiveness or your pity hospitality, which was what you would have given me.” She pointed a stern finger in my direction. “Don’t try to deny it.”

  “I sure as hell will deny it. I would have helped you and it wouldn’t have been out of pity.”

  “Yes. It would have. Then you would have been right where you’d been when I’d last seen you. Like you are now.” She stood up and faced me. “You’re so much better than this kind of life, Emily. I knew it, and that’s why I pushed you away, and then you went and proved that it was the right thing to do. I never meant to drag you back here.”

  One phrase caught in my head: “that’s why I pushed you away.”

  But she’d sent me away because of Bridge. Because she’d thought I’d stolen her boyfriend. Hadn’t she?

  The question that I’d buried for so long came to surface, demanding to be asked, even though I already knew the answer. Even though I knew asking it now would change everything I’d held on to for these past six years. “You believed me when I told you Bridge raped me, didn’t you?”

  Her face screwed up, as if the truth were as painful for her as it was for me. “Yes,” she said, her voice raw. “Of course, I believed you. He was a psychopath, and I left him ten minutes after you were gone.”

  And just like that, the fable I’d held on to for all those years crumbled in front of me. It was a truth I’d known somewhere deep inside but hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. It had been easier to walk away when she and I had been at odds. If I’d let myself believe that she’d been on my side the whole time, I’d have never left.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but she guessed my question and cut me off. “And don’t ask me why. You know why.”