Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  And I’ve taken a step toward him before I know it.

  He soaks that up, too, with another deep breath and another expression to match mine; his smile is warm.

  “I can’t believe she’s five,” he adds.

  “Neither can I. Where did the time go?”

  “I don’t have a clue. She’ll be grown in the blink of an eye.”

  Sadness brushes at me both because he’s right and because that fact makes me think about Cliff. About how much he has missed and will miss in the future.

  Then Beckett is taking his own shuffling step in my direction, and my thoughts are helplessly pulled back to him. To this minute we’re in and what we’ve been talking about. To how much of each other we’ve been missing out on lately.

  In a way, I feel guilty about shifting my focus like this. But in many other ways, I….

  We’re two halves of the same whole.

  Ceceli’s words about us leave me more breathless than usual, what with me and Beckett being alone in this room and our feet having inched us closer together after weeks of us forcing distance.

  This room in which we hid away among stormy shadows and kissed each other.

  As we stand quietly, I wonder if he’s thinking about those same things.

  At length, I tell him, “Thank you,” my voice practically a whisper. “For the thing with Cooper’s dad.”

  Beckett rubs at the sides of his jeans, then absently rubs his palms together. “He may still ask you. May not have believed what I said.” Like mine, his voice has dropped more yet.

  Watching him fidget makes me fidget. My fingers tuck my hair back once, twice.

  “I hope he believed it,” I say.

  “I hope so too.”

  The look that stretches out between us is just…it’s so much.

  It’s full of clinging tenderness that I never want to be free of.

  It makes my chest feel funny in a way I never want relief from, because the absence of this feeling couldn’t be a relief, could only be the result of a resounding loss.

  Color is touching his cheeks, I notice.

  He wets his lips. “Maybe I should’ve.…”

  As his sentence trails off, a shadow of a frown crosses his handsome features.

  I wait for him to keep talking.

  I’m so hung on his held-back words and what they’re doing to his expression that I can’t even manage to ask him to go on.

  Shortly, he takes an uneven breath, his frown now earnest, and….

  “Maybe I wasn’t clear enough with him. Maybe I should’ve told him to spend two seconds watching how you look at me before he bothers thinking he has a chance in hell with you.”

  Even after I plant a hand on the counter beside me, I have no idea how I stay standing.

  Those are bolder words than I expected him to say, and they have the fault lines in me rattling badly, further loosening what was once a white-knuckled grip on what I’m supposed to feel for this man—what I’m allowed to feel for him.

  It loosens so much that I hear myself agreeing softly, shakily, “Yeah, maybe.”

  And I know what he just mentioned is happening now: I’m looking at him in a way that no one else on this property, on this planet, could be looked at by me because my affection has ended up being reserved for him right back.

  I know I’m doing a terrible job of hiding how welcome the weight of his presence is and how it has been killing me not to have it all around me, close enough to touch and breathe in and pull strength from and admire from up close.

  Yet I can’t find it in me to be embarrassed. He’s an open book, too, as he stands here and looks me right in the eyes.

  There’s so much more that I want to say, but it’s all tangled up in my head, in my chest. Words from my oldest friend are ricocheting through me, assuring me it’s not wrong to want to rush Beckett for kisses that would match the look on his face. But then again, how would that not be wrong? I can’t just forget about his oldest friend, can’t act like Cliff’s memory means nothing to us and like we don’t still treasure what we shared with him.

  ‘It’s okay to want something with someone who isn’t Cliff even if that someone is—’

  A noise from the other room startles us and precedes the hearty call, “Hey, Beckett?”

  It takes me a disoriented second to realize that’s my dad.

  “When you come outside again, will you bring the trash bag back with you? This piñata is sure to get everywhere!”

  The interruption is so unwelcome and so necessary.

  I work on regaining proper lung function while Beckett works on calling back in a normal tone, “Yeah, I’m on the way!”

  After my dad shuts the back door again and the house goes freshly quiet, we share one more look. It’s shorter than the others were, but it doesn’t do much to ease everything churning in me.

  I don’t think it eases him either. His exhalation is measured as he steps back, shaking out his hands.

  When he turns to the chair he left the bag on, he clears his throat. “Well, this one does have a bunch of trash in it already, but it should work fine, huh?”

  “Yeah, it should.” I turn away from him, too, and grab another few paper towels so I can make extra sure that the floor is clean. “I’ll go look for the blindfold in just a second.”

  I think he murmurs, “All right, Ellie.”

  My lips relive how he laid that name on them after somehow kissing me more powerfully than anyone has ever kissed me before…including….

  I don’t know if that knowledge is painful in the best way or beautiful in the worst.

  In any case, it has me recalling something else: how I once thought I didn’t care to let anyone try to bring back all the good feelings Cliff inspired in me.

  It’s coming clear that that hasn’t applied to Beckett, because he doesn’t have to actively try to reach into me in those ways. He does it just by being himself. It escaped my attention for the longest time since I’ve never had to be on my guard with him—I didn’t know to watch out for him. He crept in without me noticing. Even without him noticing, I think.

  Then we had that scare on the dark road leading away from my parents’ house, and everything was thrown into chaos.

  Now look at me.

  If I thought I was in over my head three weeks ago, I thought wrong. It’s even worse now, and the way up and out seems to elude me a little more every day.

  I’m not sure of how to catch up to it.

  ‘I don’t think you have to come back from this if you like what this is.’

  No, by now, Ceceli’s words don’t shock me so much as they turn me fizzy with nervousness…and, in my weaker moments, hope.

  Did I mention that I feel like I’m going crazy?

  —

  By the time the day has wrapped up and Theodora is sleeping where she’s tucked into me on the couch, comfy with her new star-shaped pillow and matching fleece blanket, having only made it through about twenty minutes of her new Barbie movie, I’m exhausted.

  From beginning to end, her party was lively and entertaining; she greatly enjoyed her friends, her family, her presents, her festivities. It filled my heart with delight. Just as I did yesterday, I remained quietly prepared for her to shift into tearfulness or an antisocial mood because her dad wasn’t with us, but she never did. Even when she and I settled down here in the living room, just the two of us and the movie she’d been looking forward to watching, she was a happy and cuddly angel.

  Something else I repeated was telling her she’s my biggest and most beautiful blessing and that I love her more than anything.

  When I did it yesterday, she threw a hug around my hips and tried to describe how big she loves me.

  Tonight, though, she snuggled deeper into my side and informed me, “You already told me that!”

  “Yeah, I know,” I replied with a smile, “but it will never stop being true, and I never want you to forget it.”

  She declared, “I pa-romise I
will never forget it!”

  We tittered together. Then she asked me to play with her hair, so I set to braiding it while we started the movie. In no time, she was conked out.

  I’ve turned the TV down since then so I can let my thoughts wander here and there—over today, over recent days, over old memories.

  Today began early for me, as usual, but I still spent a few minutes having a silent conversation with Cliff’s spirit. I reminisced about the day she was born. It watered my eyes to know some part of Theo would miss him regardless of whether she fell into a dark mood about it.

  It also hurt to remember him being here for her first three birthdays. They were full of so much happiness, so much sweetness….

  But even crying, somehow I knew the heartache wouldn’t ruin my day today. This wasn’t the first time he had missed her aging another year, and it wasn’t exactly easier than last year, but…I felt steadier in the face of it, I guess.

  Living without someone you loved doesn’t get easier. There’s never a time when you think about them and feel like it’s okay that they’re gone. What happens is you slowly start figuring out ways to be as okay as the new you can be, and at some point, it brings on appreciation for what you had before and what you still have.

  That’s what happened to me this morning. My heartache was balanced out by gratitude and comforting facts about the beautiful things still going on in my life. My daughter was blessed to have had a father who adored her, even if their time together was unfairly short. She has known pain without him, but she hasn’t been abandoned to it. And on top of having a great official birthday yesterday, her party would make her happy and surround her with even more love; Cliff was missing another milestone, but he could rest easy knowing we were taking good care of it.

  That’s really all you can do, you know? When something special comes along that you wish your lost person could celebrate, you vow to celebrate that thing on their behalf, to keep them somewhere in your thoughts as you go through the day.

  You think, ‘They would’ve loved this,’ whether it’s with a sob or a smile or a sigh.

  You go on living, and you take little pieces of them with you on the journey so they can peek in every now and then.

  Yeah, I knew Cliff would’ve loved to be here today. And we would’ve loved for him to be.

  A second after I think that, the uncomfortable twist of conflict invades my stomach.

  Conflict and guilt.

  How can I talk about missing Cliff today when the top two people in my thoughts have been our daughter and his best friend?

  It doesn’t make sense, yet it’s the state I’m in.

  It shouldn’t be possible for my heart to wish for old times with Cliff but love the times Theo and I are in now with Beckett…yet it’s my life every single day.

  What am I supposed to do about this?

  My resolve to ignore how I feel about Beckett hasn’t turned out to be very strong. Our agreement to get ourselves under control hasn’t felt like something we agreed on at all—the longer it has gone on, the more it has felt like something we were forced into, something we didn’t want.

  Much of me can’t help wondering if it’s supposed to be a hint that this tactic isn’t the real answer. I’m not the only one struggling; I know Beckett better than anyone else does, which means I can tell he has felt as shackled as I have.

  But the rest of me thinks I should shut up and keep trying to do right by Cliff, who was amazing and who deserves our loyalty. And I know I’m not alone in that either.

  Now more of Ceceli’s words are coming back.

  She said that even though Beckett and I never intended to move on together, it isn’t a path we’re forbidden to take.

  I’m not sure which of all these thoughts triggers it, but I find myself thinking about something I learned about those boys years ago, on accident one night while we were hanging out. Something that made me laugh at the time but has my heart skipping beats now.

  They used to flip a coin to decide which of them would approach a girl.

  They had to because they kept being interested in the same ones, and gambling for dibs was the cleanest way to handle it.

  It tickled me so much. I wasn’t offended since ‘dibs’ wouldn’t have staked a legitimate claim on me; I could’ve turned down either one of them and we’d have gone on with our lives (as happened with plenty of other girls, I was told). And their little game wasn’t awkward to me because by the time I learned of it, Cliff and I were very much in love and Beckett was firmly my friend—and even seeing some other girl, if I recall correctly.

  There had been no signs of him not being okay with the results of the coin flip. None at all. If there had been any, I would’ve kept that knowledge tucked away somewhere and would’ve felt differently about spending so much time with him after we lost Cliff.

  But I can’t control the swooping feeling joining the conflicted guilt in my stomach.

  What if Beckett had won?

  The world of possibility that that idea teases is unnavigable.

  I can’t begin to fathom it—can’t fathom not having loved Cliff or given life to Theo. And it isn’t worth dwelling on because even though my first conversation with Beckett was easy and fun, what didn’t happen didn’t happen, and what did happen did, and I don’t wish I’d gotten the chance to see the other side. Still, it’s a little bit mind-blowing to think about how one random result affected so much of our lives.

  Just like Cliff being taken from us because some random person decided to run a red light at the exact moment that we were crossing their path.

  Now here we are.

  Here I am, feeling the deepest things for the guy who wasn’t supposed to have a chance with me, knowing he feels them for me right back after years of innocent friendship.

  I don’t know how to figure any of it out.

  The last thing I want to do is betray the love I shared with Cliff, but it’s becoming more obvious every day that I can’t keep fighting Beckett.

  Please, God, tell me what I’m supposed to do. This is so hard.

  It’s not the first time I’ve begged for an answer.

  Maybe soon I’ll finally get one.

  A sigh slips out of me. Then I decide to shift my thoughts back to Theo.

  She got some fun gifts and loved them all, but she was most excited about the movie and paintable birdhouse from two of her classmates, the dress-up clothes from me, the bracelet kit from my mom, and the big bag of goodies from her beloved Uncle Beck. Some of the stuff he bought was on her birthday wish list, like two dolls and another kite, but he added in a coloring book and the pillow-and-blanket set (which, of course, she loved so much that I had to wash and dry them before we got comfy here on the couch). All of that plus the toys and things from other people left her with a great haul.

  My parents got lots of pictures of the party, as well as some good videos of the piñata fun. In my opinion, the best ones were those in which I stood back and grinned while Beckett laughingly guided Theo’s blind steps around the unicorn hung from one of my tree branches. She was so small and clumsy, but he was right there with her. After her three birthday swings (all of which missed), it was time to let the other kids take turns; one little girl knocked the crap out of the piñata, but in the end, busting it open was a group effort. The unicorn did not want to give up the candy, it seems, even with the help Beckett gave everyone.

  And Cooper’s dad didn’t want to give up on me.

  Once his son had collected his share of candy, they were ready to leave. On their way out, the dad gave me another wide smile, reintroduced himself, and asked me to dinner despite what Beckett told him.

  It turned into a rather uncomfortable exchange. He looked surprised and kind of displeased when I politely declined, but he still didn’t admit defeat. Instead, he requested that I think about it for a while, then offered his number for if I change my mind.

  “I’m really nice,” he said.

  “It’s nice
that you’re nice,” I said back, “but I’m with someone else. I’m not gonna change my mind.”

  My body temperature rises now, just at me thinking about it.

  I hadn’t meant for those exact words to leave my mouth. Hadn’t even known they were sitting on my tongue.

  And I didn’t know who I….

  The dad left me alone then, but what I said to him didn’t. While it didn’t plant itself at the front of my mind, it wisped back up any time Beckett garnered my attention or something briefly reminded me of Cliff.

  I sigh again and gaze unseeingly at the TV.

  For a while.

  For longer than I care to measure.

  Then my eyes lower to Theodora.

  Now that she’s asleep, I’m supposed to call Beckett for our nightly talk.

  He normally would’ve been the last to leave after the party, but due to our situation, he only stuck around long enough to help clean up and to take Theo up on her offer of shared piñata candy. Then he gave me another look that made me want like hell to be in his arms. I didn’t try for it, and he didn’t come forward to touch any of the places on me that his eyes took their time appreciating. We just preceded our goodbye with promises of cautious traveling from him and a phone call from me.

  Thus, it’s time to relocate my princess to her bed.

  “Five years old,” I whisper before shifting around to get this started. “Still don’t know how it happened. Time is a strange thing, my love.”

  It isn’t as easy for me to carry her around as it is for Beckett, so she stirs quite a bit while I move her. I don’t mind, though. In fact, once she’s tucked into bed with her new blanket draped over her, I decide to sit by her side until I’m sure she has drifted off again.

  I love being near her, thinking about her, looking at her.

  Creating her was the best thing I ever did.

  I can’t imagine how dull my life would be if she weren’t in it. She’s such a little star.

  When I finally stand up, my legs are tingling from how I was sitting, and my muscles are tired from work and the birthday party. But I smile because being her mama is worth every bit of the discomfort that parenthood has brought and will bring.