Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  I pause as our server drops off our beers. We thank him, and then Blaze looks at me attentively, not appearing to be bored by what I’m saying.

  And I recall that much more vividly how attentively Cliff looked at me when we met.

  After I take a savoring sip from my glass, I go on.

  “The second day wasn’t any better. Even more new classes because of the changing block schedule or whatever they called it. I didn’t even have the same lunch hour as the day before. And I remember being so on-edge about the crowd of people at lunchtime, just shaking from nerves and hating having to walk through the cafeteria and feeling like I couldn’t relax—I remember my back actually hurting from me being unable to relax once I found a table to sit at. That might sound crazy, but it was all so overwhelming. Everyone else was talking and laughing, and I worried they were doing that about me for some reason, but I was too scared to look around to check.” I bring my hands back to my lap and crack my knuckles. “I was too scared to even eat. And then….”

  ‘Hey, you’re in my math class. Can I sit with you? I don’t have any friends.’

  I look to the open air at my left, like I did that day from my place at the end of the rectangular lunch table.

  Sixth-grade Cliff isn’t there, but I can still see him like he is.

  Unlike in my car earlier, the sorrow does make my eyes water. It slices through me more mercilessly than it has in some time. For the last few months, maybe, reminiscing has been more bittersweet than outright painful.

  It’s so painful now.

  So different from the reluctant surprise sixth-grade me felt at seeing someone standing there at his side, clearly addressing him on purpose without a hint of cruelty—just loneliness that felt familiar even after five little seconds.

  I sniff hard, clear my throat, turn back to my beer, take a long chug with closed eyes.

  You can do this.

  I set my glass down.

  Count down from ten, nine, eight, seven, six….

  Relax my tense shoulders and inhale through my nose much less forcefully than before.

  “Then,” I finally continue, “someone showed up next to me. Another boy. He asked to sit with me. He didn’t have any friends, but he recognized me from math class.”

  With my eyes still closed, I remember young Cliff sitting across from young me because, nervous though I was to be seen, I didn’t have it in me to turn him away.

  Then I reopen my eyes and gaze at my glass, though I don’t really see it.

  “It was such a shock, especially because I could tell right away that he wasn’t trying to be funny or mean or anything. He didn’t look as uncomfortable as I felt, but he wasn’t cool and collected, either. Was definitely nervous in his own way. I hated that for him ‘cause I got it, you know? So even being the wreck I was, both of us having someone to sit with sounded like a relief all around.”

  I glance up to check Blaze’s mood and find him nodding, his brow furrowed with sympathy.

  Doing fine, Beck.

  My voice tries to go quiet, but I work not to let it.

  “I would say we ended up being best friends, but even that falls short. Cliff wasn’t just the best friend I ever had. It felt like we shared blood. Or like the actual Lord God knew both of us were born to shitty parents and decided to stick us on the same Tuesdays-and-Thursdays lunch block so we could meet and finally stop feeling so alone.”

  “Damn, dude,” I barely hear Blaze murmur beneath the noise of our surroundings.

  Yeah.

  “I can’t describe our friendship better than that in one sitting,” I say. “All I can tell you is he saved my life. He may have been nervous that day, but he turned out to be kind, encouraging, patient, ambitious. He was such a resilient person despite the asshole his dad was especially. You know how I said kids don’t have perspective when it comes to being talked to like they’re nothing? Cliff was an exception somehow. And he never gave up on me even though I had a harder time with the positivity than he did. He taught me how to look forward, too, and to believe in myself, and to learn my worth, and to really look at what kind of person was talking to me before I took their words to heart. I don’t even wanna imagine what would’ve become of me if he hadn’t been such a good friend to me.”

  The idea alone puts a chill in my stomach.

  Then a certain hot summer day comes to my mind and takes that away. Makes me smile.

  “I met my second best friend the day Cliff met his fiancée.”

  Instead of describing how that was the second most life-changing day in my history, I go another way.

  I look at Blaze straight and ask, “You’ve heard me mention my niece, right? Theodora? A few times, at least?”

  He clears his throat and perks up a bit, seeming to have been thinking hard about something. “Yeah! Yeah, you spend a lot of time with her and her mom, don’t you?”

  My pulse skips a beat.

  “Right. Noelle. She’s…” I sigh, “…beyond amazing.”

  “Noelle, right.”

  I nod. “Well, Theo isn’t my actual niece. She’s Cliff’s daughter, and I’ve been Uncle Beck her whole life because Cliff considered me his brother, like I did right back to him.”

  “Ah, gotcha.”

  “They and Noelle have been like my family. My real family.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Drumming my fingers on the table, I look at him and try to figure out how to go on without bringing back those tears I managed to fight away before. I don’t feel like dealing with them.

  It takes me a while to steady myself.

  Half a minute, at least—and ticking.

  He doesn’t press me.

  After a full minute has come and gone, I take another swig of my beer, then sigh at the cold burn of it.

  My words don’t feel any better.

  “He and Noelle and I were in a bad car accident almost two years ago. He didn’t make it.”

  Sadness fills out Blaze’s expression.

  “Damn it, man,” he says quietly.

  I nod.

  “Honestly, that’s…” he blows out a breath, “…that’s what I heard back when I first started the job. You were so withdrawn, and I had to ask the boss man about it—I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten on your bad side somehow without meaning to. But he told me you were still trying to adjust after…all that.” Frowning deeply, he clears his throat. “After losing your best friend.”

  Oh.

  I didn’t know he knew any of that.

  I also didn’t know my behavior made him feel like I didn’t like him.

  “Hey,” I start, “I’m sor—”

  “No, nah,” he stops me calmly. “There’s no need to apologize. I’m sorry you suffered like that. More than sorry, Beckett, ‘cause I can’t imagine what that was like. And I want you to know I only didn’t mention it to you ‘cause I didn’t wanna upset you with it in any way. As much as I wanted to offer my condolences….”

  Blaze really is a good guy, isn’t he?

  I tell him, “It’s okay. Truly.”

  He regards me with that sharp, sad sympathy for another second. Then he lifts his beer toward me.

  “To your—” he coughs away the weakness in his voice, “—your best friend Cliff. Gone way too soon.”

  My stomach clenches with renewed grief.

  I lift my half of the toast and then chug enough of my drink to keep me from losing my shit over this unanticipated show of respect.

  I miss drinking with Cliff.

  I miss our conversations—the dumbass ones, the important ones, the arguments we got into here and there.

  I miss him.

  ‘Gone way too soon.’

  Yeah.

  Another minute passes before I’m able to keep talking.

  “It’s been just me and Noelle and Theo since then. He wanted us to stick together, and so did I, and of course the girls…. We’ve needed each other. Noelle had become a single mom, and she’s been my other best fr
iend for years, like I said, and Cliff left an enormous hole in our lives. I genuinely don’t know if she and I would’ve made it through some of those hardest times if we hadn’t had each other to lean on. It was a nightmare.”

  Blaze lets out a humorless breath of a laugh. “You’re a couple of champions, man. Christ.”

  My stomach wrenches again.

  I chew on the inside of my cheek.

  One. Two. Three.

  Here we go.

  “We never felt like champions,” I say, “and we feel even less like that now. We feel like we’re disrespecting one of the best people either of us has ever known, ‘cause something kind of traumatic happened to us recently and it, like, jarred us—it jarred us out of the way we’ve always been, and we started noticing we are each also one of the best people we’ve ever known. I mean, we already felt that way in a sense because we were good friends, but it grew to this other level and we don’t know how, so we didn’t see it until we got into that other little accident and started realizing we feel all these…. There are all these serious feelings we didn’t expect to have, but they got set in motion somehow after Cliff died, and now that we’ve noticed them, they won’t stop coming. They won’t go away. They close in on us a little more every day.”

  He holds my stare with slightly widened eyes.

  Anxious, I swallow hard.

  “Oh,” he says.

  Yeah.

  “I…understand.”

  I pick up my glass and finish off my beer.

  “Your friendship has changed into something else.”

  The empty glass thuds on the table more heavily than I mean for it to.

  He sighs. “That’s what you want my thoughts on, huh?”

  Our server stops by and asks if we want another round. I just ask for some water, and Blaze echoes me.

  When we’re alone again, I answer, “Yes, I want your impartial thoughts on how much of an asshole I am for accidentally falling for my best friend’s fiancée after he died, and for wanting to be everything for his daughter that he can’t be anymore.”

  He crosses his arms, tilts his head, sucks on his teeth as he studies me.

  I’m nervous.

  What if he says I’m terrible?

  What if he doesn’t?

  My hands don’t feel steady as I accept my glass of water from our server, but that doesn’t stop me from getting a long drink of it. My throat has gone dry.

  Blaze picks up his water, too, but instead of taking a drink, he gestures at me with it.

  “One hundred percent,” he says, “with all my heart that has just learned a fraction of a huge part of your life but that feels prepared to judge you fairly—”

  I hold my breath.

  “—I assure you I do not think you’re an asshole.”

  The breath rushes out of me.

  A hundred percent?

  “You don’t think it at all?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Not by any stretch of the imagination.”

  While he takes a drink of water, I let his responses settle on me.

  They overwhelm me with…hope.

  They have my lingering guilt and uncertainty stinging, too, but God, the hope.

  “Please tell me why you think that,” I implore him. “I’ve—I’ve been wondering it myself here and there, more and more as time has gone on, but it’s so hard to know if I’m making it up or rationalizing or….”

  My throat is trying to tighten up on me.

  “Blaze, it’s been hurting like hell to think Noelle and I have betrayed him. It’s been hurting me to know this was not what he meant when he asked me to watch out for her and Theo.”

  He takes another drink of his water, and so do I. Then we set our glasses down, and I rub at my temples while he crosses his arms on his edge of the table.

  “I understand,” he says again. “And the reason I understand and don’t think you’re rationalizing or doing the wrong thing is that my parents went through something like this too. I’m sitting here talking to you ‘cause they fell in love, got married, and had me after my dad lost his first wife in his twenties. My mom was her friend.”

  Astonished, I blink at him and lower my hands to the table.

  “Are you serious?” I ask.

  “Yep. They weren’t as close as you and Cliff were, but close enough that it was a hurdle my parents had to find their way over.”

  Oh, wow.

  Deep compassion joins my astonishment and has me frowning.

  A quiet, “Wow,” turns out to be all I can say about it.

  “I know.”

  Inhaling deeply through his nose, he looks at me intently.

  “Listen,” he goes on, “I’m really glad you had that friendship with him. What a gift it was, I can tell. You said he saved your life, and I believe you. I also believe what you said about none of you meaning for things to end up this way between you and the woman he loved. It’s important, though—real important, Beckett—that you know a couple things.”

  I can’t even fidget as I sit beneath that even stare. He has my undivided attention.

  He holds up his first finger. “I’m not gonna tell you everything happens for a good reason, ‘cause I don’t think tragedies do. This is what I think happens: life keeps going for those of us who survive the terrible stuff, which means we keep getting chances to experience the amazing stuff, on and on, branching out farther and farther the longer we move forward. It doesn’t mean the tragedies will be justified ‘cause of what comes later, or that we’d be okay with them happening again. It’s not black-and-white like that. We’re just letting life show us what else it can bring, and we appreciate it when it brings things that are good.” He nods toward me. “Sometimes it’s not so gentle a reminder, like you said about whatever scared you and Noelle—another car accident, right? Doesn’t appear to have been a bad one, but it makes sense to me that it was enough to open your eyes about what has been growing between you.”

  I damn near have chill bumps from how much sense he’s making.

  He seems to be waiting on me to respond, so I nod at him. I’m with him so far.

  His second finger goes up alongside the first.

  “Important thing number two is much simpler.”

  I don’t know how his expression could possibly get more earnest, but it manages to.

  “We all deserve to be happy.”

  His tone has grown more earnest too.

  It carries the words, gives them life, sweeps over the spots of worry that have been riddling me for weeks.

  He sounds like Cliff.

  Cliff used to say things like that.

  My eyes shut, and…I swear I can almost hear him saying it now.

  Blaze’s voice cuts through. “Life is short. And I don’t say that lightly, man—only because you know it’s true. Life is as short as it is unpredictable. We gotta treasure it while we have it. All those chances we get to experience the good things? We gotta take them. Otherwise, what are we doing?”

  I’m still nodding. Or nodding again. I’m not sure.

  “We all deserve to be happy,” he repeats. “Including you. Including Noelle. Including the two of you together. Including her daughter. Even after what happened.” He pauses. “Especially after what happened, if you ask me, which you are doing.”

  Yeah, I’m asking.

  And I’m listening.

  And I want to trust him.

  He believes these things he’s been saying, and they match the things I’ve been wondering to myself. I gave him the chance to be frank with me about how badly I’ve screwed up here, but he doesn’t agree with the scared and shame-laden parts of me.

  I reopen my eyes and look at him.

  One question—one bottom-line question—has been weighing heaviest on me. It’s what I’ve been wanting to ask him point-blank.

  My voice isn’t strong or steady, but I make it work. “I’m not stabbing my brother in the back?”

  Blaze says, “Nope,” as if I�
�ve asked the least complicated question in the world.

  It hasn’t felt uncomplicated to me, but….

  “It’s noble of you to care so deeply about the bond you had with him.” He shakes his head. “The thing is, though…well, it really is a bond you had. Please know I’m not being flippant about your loss, ‘cause I’m absolutely not. But you have something amazing in front of you these days, every time you’re with those girls—new bonds with them that are every bit as special in their own ways—and you’re allowed to go where they wanna take you. It’s okay to do that.”

  And this is what really hits home.

  Not just because I ache for it to be true.

  Not just because it makes legitimate sense.

  No, I feel it because from the depths of my memory, I really can hear Cliff saying it to me.

  ‘It’s okay to accept the good things you deserve, Beckett.’

  He said that just before the car accident.

  It wasn’t regarding anything this big or life-changing, but I trusted him just like I’d done about every other piece of advice he shared, every other encouragement he gave.

  I feel like trusting him now too.

  Feel like believing once again that I deserve good things…even if they overlap with the good things he deserved when he was still here.

  Which means I feel like trusting Blaze, who has turned out to be the perfect blend of familiar support and fresh inspiration. He has shown me there’s more room to breathe than my grief and guilt wanted to admit.

  I’m more than grateful for it.

  I’m more than grateful that he was willing to talk about anything at all with me.

  With all the sincerity in the world, I tell him, “I don’t know how to thank you for this.”

  He tips me a smile. “It’s no problem at all, man. That’s what friends are for.”

  My composure nearly breaks.