by Blair Holden
He looks apologetic. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have insinuated…”
“A conversation, a simple, straightforward, honest conversation, Lan, that’s what it takes. And I’m not saying that I have magical speech skills that cured my brother—he’s had to work on himself so much—but the point was for him to start that journey. So no matter how bad you think things are with Cole or how terribly he might react, a week-long binge I can deal with.”
His smile is warm and kind. “I know you can, Tessa, I believe you. So I’ll get out of your hair now, but if you need me, I’ll just be two floors up.” He winks and as he’s about to leave, I ask him the most important question.
“How upset would you be if I tossed every ounce of alcohol in this apartment into the garbage?” I hold up my body bag.
The look on his face is so heartbreaking, I tell him I’ll pay for anything he’ll need to repurchase.
***
My mission starts off in the most important and most infested place. Barging into Cole’s room, my first instinct is to walk back out because of the strong stench of alcohol. But I must persevere, so I pull apart the curtains and open the windows to start getting rid of the smell. As sunshine hits the figure in the bed, he recoils from it and pulls the comforter over his face.
“Hey, Count Dracula, time to get up!”
He groans and I pick up some words, none of them expletives. At least the boy’s still got his manners.
While Cole struggles with the morning sun and with someone noisily going through his belongings, I put the trash bag to good use. Beer cans and half-empty bottles of liquors I probably couldn’t name off the top of my head are tossed into the bag. Once I collect them from the obvious place, it’s time to find his secret stash. I rummage through the closet, finding more loot, and through the chest of drawers in the room, hitting the jackpot there.
Rookie mistake, a toddler could’ve picked better hiding spots.
“What are you doing?” In all his shirtless glory, Cole seems to have woken up.
Leaning against the headboard with disheveled hair, muscles bulging with his movement, and his abs in all their eight-pack glory, it’s not fair that someone so hungover could look this good.
“Good morning to you too, honey, don’t mind me, I’m just doing some cleaning.”
It’s not until I shut a door a little too forcefully that he notices what I’m doing. When he does notice, he scrambles to get out of bed, his movements slow and jerky, showing the aftereffects of another night of bingeing.
“Stop that!”
“I won’t.” He tries to pull the bag away from me but I grit my teeth and keep it close to my body. We tug it between the two of us for a while, until he gives up the fight. Just goes to show how bad alcohol is for you when an absurdly fit football player can’t even win a simple tug-of-war with a girl who has zero upper body strength, or lower body, for that matter.
Fuming, he stands there, hands placed on his hips, and glares at me. I deserve some applause for managing to keep my eyes on his face, given the fact that he’s worn tight boxer briefs to bed.
“Why are you doing this? I don’t need you trying to fix me.”
“Because someone needs to.”
“I thought I told you yesterday, I don’t need an intervention. I’m fine.” If he grinds his teeth any more, he’ll end up permanently damaging his jaw.
“And I’m telling you now that I could probably get alcohol poisoning just by standing in this room. That’s how bad it stinks in here. Or is it you? Do you stink, Stone?”
I go near him and pretend to sniff his chest. “Yeah, definitely you. Go take a shower.” I point my finger toward the bathroom.
“You need to leave.”
“No, what I need is to make sure I still have a living, breathing boyfriend come sophomore year.”
He glares at me some more, looks like he’s about to say something, but I place a hand on my hip and glare him down. Then he stomps off, slamming the bathroom door behind him. The minute he’s out of sight, I grab his wallet, take out his fake ID, and throw it in the bag as well.
***
As Cole showers, I use a delivery service to order some food from a cafe around the corner, thinking that if I ply him with his favorite breakfast foods, he’ll be more compliant. The trash bag has already found its way down the garbage shoot, and I momentarily amuse myself, thinking about anyone who decides to go through it.
Humming to myself, I decide to clean the apartment just a little since it definitely looks like it’s got two guys living in it. Just as I’m about to tastefully hide some tacky magazines, I feel myself being tugged into a warm chest. The magazines fall to the floor and a mostly naked, buxom bleached blonde gives me a sultry look from the floor.
“Tell me they don’t belong to you.”
“Nah, not my shade of blonde, remember? I prefer it when it’s warm and sun kissed, you know, like sunflower blonde.”
“How poetic.” It’s nice to be held by him when he’s sober, and I relish the feeling while I can. He’s not going to like me very much in the extremely near future.
I turn around and look at him carefully, making sure not to miss the details like I did yesterday. He looks awake, wet hair and clean clothes. His eyes are clear and remorseful.
“About yesterday, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to say half the things I did.”
“But you meant the other half?”
He rolls his eyes. “Jesus, woman, you won’t cut me some slack, will you?”
Pushing away, I cross my arms over my chest as if to shield my heart from what’s coming. “All I want to do is talk, you’re the one who’s pushing me away. Why is that so hard for you?”
He makes an exasperated sound and moves away, opening the fridge and searching hard for something that he’s not going to find.
“You threw away Lan’s stuff as well? He’s not going to be happy.”
He shuts the door a little too hard for my liking.
“I told him I’d pay him back, so he wasn’t too worried about it.”
Shaking his head, he lets out a humorless laugh. “You’re really here to bust my balls, aren’t you?”
“Cole, the only reason I’m here is because I love you, and I’m doing for you what you’ve always done for me. You’ve made me face all my problems head-on, even when I wanted nothing more than to hide in my bed and pretend that the only people who existed in the world were you and me. I want to be that person for you now. Why is that so hard for you?”
His hand is shaking as he pours himself a glass of water. I extend the two tablets I’d brought for him to cure the headache he’s obviously experiencing, but he ignores them. Restraining myself from saying anything else that he’s not prepared to hear, I’m glad when I’m alerted that my delivery has arrived.
“Why don’t we eat? I’ve ordered all your favorite things from the cafe you told me about the last time we came here.”
He shrugs but doesn’t say anything, and I realize that there’s hardly ever been this kind of awkwardness between us before. We’ve experienced tension, anger, passion, and a whole range of emotions, but this is entirely new for me, the stifling uncertainty about how to act.
Damn, I hope those scrambled eggs are really good.
But I don’t even get to find out because by the time I’ve come back up, Cole’s nowhere to be found.
I will not give up, I repeat, I will not give up.
***
I spend the day going back and forth between Lan’s place and mine. Near evening, I think I’ve driven both Lan and Cami crazy, so Lan kindly offers to take Cami out for some dinner. They ask me to come along but I can’t. I’m still trying to figure out where Cole’s sneaked off to, and the worst-case scenario is that he may have run off somewhere else where even I can’t find him. The thought gnaws at me, but I reassure myself by thinking about the fact that all his belongings are still here.
In the end I decide to set up camp in Lan’s living
room. Wrapping myself in a comfy blanket, I curl up on his massive couch, which I swear is made up of clouds, and start binge-watching a TV show on Netflix. I start yawning mid first season, but I try to push through the fatigue by attempting to go through all my social media feeds. In actuality, I’m waiting for Cole to text me, but as has happened the past ten thousand and sixty-three times I’ve checked my phone, there’s nothing from him. By the point the second season’s about to start, my eyes are drooping and I give up the fight to stay awake. I bet I’ll have dreams about figuring out who the heroine ended up choosing…
I wake up with the realization that I’m moving, floating in the air. Not having remembered taking anything stronger than Advil for my headache before falling asleep, I can’t for the life of me figure out why I’m hallucinating. But then again, I’m not floating, because I’m supported by a pair of very sturdy arms, familiar arms. My head’s pressed against a familiar chest, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
“Cole,” I mumble sleepily.
“I’m here,” he assures me, “now go to sleep.” He settles me in his bed, the bed that now has fresh sheets since I’d changed them earlier today. He pulls the duvet over me and turns off the lights. I’m too tired to notice that he doesn’t slip into the bed with me, but I do remember him kissing my forehead before he goes.
“Sweet dreams, Shortcake.”
And then I crash.
The next morning, it takes me a minute to figure out where I am. And just as quickly as it hits me that I’m in Cole’s bed, I push myself out of it and stumble into the living room. Lo and behold, there he is standing in the kitchen, making pancakes.
Pancakes!
“You,” I point an accusatory finger towards him, “you stay right there while I brush my teeth.”
“Right, because you don’t win wars with morning breath.” He rolls his eyes at me.
“Am I going to be facing one? A war?”
He shrugs. “Depends if you really want to make it that difficult for yourself.”
“You’re being so cryptic and unlike yourself, I don’t know whether to strangle you or strangle you some more.”
He shrugs once again; if he dares doing so one more time, I’ll take that frying pan and whack it into his head.
“What if this is me? What if, after all this time, I’m tired of pretending to be a good guy, and now I’m comfortable enough in our relationship to be a jerk?”
“Well, first, this isn’t you at all. No one can pretend to be someone they’re not for that long and be so good at it, so I don’t buy that bullshit at all. And even if this moody jerk is part of you, then I’m ready to accept him, because I know you’ve put up with more than enough of my split personalities. Drunk Tessa, jealous Tessa, insecure Tessa, the works, so I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not running away. Now excuse me while I freshen up.”
I decide to take a quick shower and then somehow channel my inner Cami after I realize that I don’t have any clean clothes here in Lan’s apartment. What I do have is a suitcase full of Cole’s t-shirts, which I choose to wear, just the shirt. Letting my wet hair air dry, I walk back into the kitchen and am rather pleased by Cole’s reaction. His eyes nearly bug out and he burns a pancake.
Score!
“Shit,” he mutters, rushing around trying to open the windows and turn the smoke alarm off. I laugh at his misery and pour myself some coffee. Sitting at the kitchen stool, I realize that it’s been a long time since our roles have been reserved. Usually he’s the one getting me all flustered, but right here, right now, the power is in my hands.
“Sit, eat. Maybe then we can talk.”
He mumbles something under his breath but still sits opposite me. Despite burning that one single pancake, he’s got a decent-size stack, half of which I smother with Nutella.
He watches me with an amused expression. “Would you like some pancake with your jar of diabetes?”
“Would you like some get-a-life with your giant helping of judgment?”
He raises his hands, palms out toward me. “Claws in, Tessie, I’m just joking.”
“Maybe I wouldn’t be so sensitive if you just started being honest with me.”
“I can do that. What would you like to know?”
“Where did you go last night? Why did you sneak out when I went down to get breakfast?”
“You want honesty?”
“Yes.”
“I left because I need a bit more time to pretend that I’m someone else, anyone else but me. The fact that you were here, raiding the apartment and getting rid of hundreds of dollars’ worth of booze, wasn’t helping the case. So I left and drove around for a while before I realized that my fake ID was missing. Of course you’d taken it, by the way, it’ll cost me a small fortune to get one made of the same quality.”
“Boo hoo, get a job then? I hear the lifeguards downtown have to wear red swim trunks with ‘Bae Watch’ written across the butt.”
He snorts, pushing his food around. “If you’re trying to figure out what’s wrong with me then it’s not just one thing. I’m not here because Mommy and Daddy hurt my feelings or that I can’t convince you that we can actually work as a couple.”
“You don’t have to convince me, I already know that.”
“And you only figure that out when I’m out of the picture, not even trying? Great, I should’ve made a run for it a long time ago.”
“There’s so much bitterness here that I don’t understand. What aren’t you telling me?”
“Maybe,” his tone suggests that whatever he says next might just obliterate me and break my resolve, “if you’d spent more time listening to me than being inside your own head, you’d know exactly what was wrong.”
It feels like he’s slapped me, the sting of his words feels almost physical, and for a good minute or two I’m frozen, unable to move because of the hurt I’ve just experienced.
“If I was such a horrible person to be with, why did you even stay?”
“Because we love who we love and we can’t help it. Cassandra wasn’t right in what she said about the two of us, about you not making me happy. You make me really happy, Tessie, but it always needs to be on your terms and conditions. I always try so hard to make sure I don’t do anything that makes the demons of your past rise back up to the surface, but maybe I’m tired now. Maybe trying to make you happy, trying to stay happy myself, has worn me out.”
He’s right; of course he is. Every word that comes out of his mouth makes sense, but only in retrospect. My first instinct is to lash out, to hurt him as much as he’s hurting me.
“Would you like an all-paid-for vacation, then?” My tone is scathing because I know half the things he’s saying are simply to push me away so that I don’t probe into what’s really going on. “Maybe a nice beach town in the south of France for some R & R. How long will you need exactly to recover from the oh-so-overwhelming burden of being my boyfriend?”
“Tessa…”
“Wait.” I’m trying to find the right words so that I don’t end up saying the worst thing possible right now. It’d be easy to call him a bunch of names and storm out of here, go running back home. But that’s not why I’m here, and much as I’d like to say something just as hurtful as the bomb he’s dropped on me, I try to be as mature about the situation as possible.
“I’m here because, despite everything you’ve just said to me, I still, for some miraculous reason, love you. So I’m staying, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make us work. When you’re ready to stop being a jackass every time I try to talk to you, you’ll know where to find me.”
Or at least I try being mature.
***
When I get back to the apartment I share with Cami, I lock myself in my room with my laptop. I spend the next two hours scouring every form of social media for information related to Cole. My brain tells me that I’ll find something here, something that he isn’t telling me. One article catches my attention and I bookmark the page.
Next, I get on the phone with Jay, demanding that I speak to Cassandra. I don’t know why I didn’t call her directly, maybe because I think she wouldn’t answer my call?
A reluctant Jay asks me if I’m sure about wanting to talk to his mother, because apparently the Stone household isn’t too thrilled about the fact that Cole’s still not answering any of their calls. The only reason the sheriff hasn’t sent out a search party is because I’d told Jay where Cole was the moment I’d gotten the answer myself. I’d spent a few too many nights wondering if Travis was alive on the nights he didn’t come back home to ever do that to anyone’s family. But Sheriff Stone and Cassandra don’t like the fact that I instructed Jay to leave Cole alone for some time. It’s a bit hypocritical of me to warn off his parents when I’ve literally ambushed him, but something tells me that Cole’s desire to be away from his family is by far stronger than his desire to push me away.
“Hello.” Her voice is curt and I’m hit with a pang of loss again. It’s pitiful that I’m mourning the loss of a mother figure given how okay I’d become with the lack of my own mother in my life.
“Cassandra, hey.” There’s an awkward pause before I decide to be the adult in the conversation and bite the bullet. “Jay must have told you that I’m with Cole.”
“Yes, and he also told us how you wished we didn’t try to contact him.” The level of disdain in her voice makes me wince, but since I’m on a roll today, testing just how many of a person’s buttons I can push, I choose to continue this train wreck of a phone call.
“It wasn’t a wish, more like a friendly suggestion. He’s not in a good place right now.”
“And you think you’ll be more helpful in making sure he’s okay?” Again, the hurt and the anger is so obvious.
“I wouldn’t say that, but the fact that he’s somewhat talking to me and absolutely refusing to talk to you or the sheriff makes it difficult for me to suggest that you all drive up here and have a big old family reunion.”
I bite my lip, cursing myself for having gone too far, but to my surprise, Cassandra doesn’t come back at me with an unpleasant retort. She sighs, and it’s a sigh of pain and utter exhaustion.