by A. L. Woods
It was a fucking internet search.
My mother was right. All I had to do was open my “pretty brown eyes and look”—the truth was always looking me dead in the face, I just never wanted to see it.
Sean edged forward, setting off a wild onslaught of trembles racing through my body that I experienced from my toes to every strand of hair on my head. I pried my feet from the floorboards and shouldered my way through the crowd. Drinks spilled, but no one seemed to care. They were all too far gone, caught up in the impending promise of a new year and a clean slate. But this year wouldn’t be new for me, it would be identical to every year before—maybe worse. This year saw my vitreous mirrored heart shatter, and next year would be the salt in the wounds that scarred it. All caused by the one person who promised he would never hurt me. I thought I was awake, that I was finally seeing things for the first time.
But all I’d done was dream up another nightmare that matched my reality.
My vision blurred as my body carried me up the stairs, my grip tight on the railing in fear that if I didn’t hold on for dear life, I’d fall backward.
Straight back into his arms.
Sean called for me, his voice cutting through the noise like a hot serrated blade on glass, but I didn’t look back. I heard the pound of his hard footsteps closing in on me as I made my ascent, floating weightlessly into an unpacked bedroom. I failed to muster the strength to close the door behind me all the way. It was a feeble attempt at keeping him out, anyway. I staggered near a cardboard box, my legs collapsing as I sunk my leaden body onto the box.
Sean pushed the door open, his chest rising and falling fast and furious. He took one good look at me before quietly closing the door behind him.
His dark eyes were wild, his lips straining. “I can explain.”
I folded over, pressing my forehead against my bare thighs. “Explain how you…” I couldn’t even get the words out. They were battery acid in my throat, burning my stomach. My hands clawed at the waistline of the stupid dress I wore. The one that was making it hard to breathe with its knot around my waist. I’d wanted to look nice today. I’d put in the effort. Now all I wanted was my armor of black skinny jeans and an oversized denim shirt.
I lifted my head to glance at him, regretting it right away. I couldn’t stand the sight of him. His throat bobbed, lips parting to draw in air that shook his chest. “I just wanted to know more about you. I wanted a chance to understand you.”
“And you took that choice away from me by looking me up,” I cried, letting the tears fall. Fuck my dignity. I didn’t give a shit if they marred my cheeks with black from my liner or matted my made-up lashes together in disgusting clumps. It was exhausting pretending to be anything but who I was. I wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t pretty. It didn’t matter how much of a shine I put on, I would still be who I always was—broken.
And I wanted to bury that girl in the ground until the earth claimed her.
Cash may have been the nail in my coffin, but Sean was the hammer.
Sean crossed the distance between us. His scent preceded him. He always smelled good. Spicy and safe. Like heated warm leather seats on cold winter days that you craved to protect you from the chill of the outdoors, or cinnamon hearts that were a slow burn on the tongue.
“Hemingway, please,” Sean breathed, bracing me by the shoulders, looking down at me. I couldn’t help but see the parallel there. He was always looking down, and I was always looking up. Sean possessed the advantage all along. “It was a mistake, okay? I should have shut it down when Maria searched. I shouldn’t have kept looking.”
“You lied to me.” All I could do was stare at him. I felt sedated, my body numb, my limbs boneless. If it weren’t for the steady thrumming of blood that pushed my heart to beat, I would have believed this was the equivalent of death coming to collect its pound of flesh for my family’s sins.
Why would I get the happy ending when my legacy had done so much to make us undeserving of it all?
“I didn’t lie,” he argued. God, the way he said it sounded like he actually believed it. “I didn’t tell you, but I didn’t lie.”
I choked on a laugh barren of any joy. “Right, sorry. Semantics.” I uncurled myself, straightening into a seated position, my hands cupping my knees to cease their clattering. He hadn’t let go of me, so I shrugged his hands off. I needed to not feel him. When he touched me, I detected him everywhere, and that made this so much worse. “What are we calling it, then? A lie of omission?”
Sean’s eyes tapered in my direction. After a sharp inhale, he crouched in front of me, taking my hands in his. Hands that I’d almost convinced myself loved me. He was craving the connection I now resented. A connection built on a fabrication.
“Let’s talk about this in the morning, okay?” He gave my hands a reassuring squeeze, but I didn’t reciprocate. His lips tilted into a frown, but there was still hope in his russet browns. “We’ve both had a bit to drink. Clearer minds prevail.”
“My mind is clear,” I sniffed. The vacancy settled on my expression, the hollowed-out look a film on my vision. I slid my hands free from his. “You and Cash.” I shook my head. “You both—”
“Don’t,” he warned, anger springing to life and ticking in his jaw. A wave of heat that imbued the room came off his body, his shoulders shaking. “Do not go there.”
“You’re not that different, are you? You both take what isn’t yours, and you take and take some more until there’s nothing left.”
He wobbled on his feet and it was hard to know for certain if it was the recoil of my punitive words landing where I had intended them to, or if it was the gravity of what he had done setting in.
Sean had the gall to look at me with the eyes of a wounded animal, as if I’d set up the bear trap and he was the poor thing to activate it. Like I wasn’t the one with her heart trapped in a snare he’d staged. “How the fuck can you say that to me?” he demanded.
“How can I not?” I swallowed. “I’ve been your puppet all along. This entire time I thought we were equals, that this was real, but you were just pulling my strings.”
“Raquel.” He reached for me, but I ripped my wrist free. Sean’s hand remained suspended, his fingers twitching while trying to reconcile what was happening. “I’m sorry.”
I didn’t want his apology. I didn’t trust it or him anymore.
“No,” I hissed. “You will never touch me again.” I bit on the inside of my cheek until the familiar tang of copper filled my mouth. Blood. Blood was the reminder I was still alive. That this was real.
“Are you serious right now?” He rubbed his mouth with his fingers, a line deepening between his brows, eyes searching mine for some sign that this wasn’t happening. That this was some kind of terrible nightmare we were both going to wake up from. “We just talked about you moving in. I gave you a key.” He ran an open palm over his head, threading his fingers through his mussed hair, disbelief pitching his shoulders to his ears. “We were going to do this thing. Don’t throw it away because of something idiotic that I took part in. That was a mistake.”
“I was going to do this thing with someone who I thought loved and respected me. Your participation,” I spat, “invalidated all of that.”
“I love you, and I respect you. What the fuck are you going off about?”
We both lurched to our feet. He stepped closer to me, but I jerked back. “Hemingway, I know I fucked up, but you’re over—”
I cut him off. I didn’t want to be told I was overreacting. If anything, my entire life had been comprised by a series of underreactions for the people who genuinely deserved them.
I wasn’t his Hemingway. Not even close. “It’s Raquel. I’m Raquel to you. Not Hemingway, not your baby. Raquel.”
Sean’s features collapsed, an acceptance that felt fleeting etching over them. He sniffed, bobbing his head. “You’re pissed. I get it. You have every right to be, but if your intention is to cut me down at the knees to make yourself feel
better, I’m going to tell you now it won’t help.”
“You think I give a shit about cutting you down, Sean? I don’t. Face the facts here.” I swept a hand between us. “We built this relationship on nothing but manipulation and lies.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked, his eyes holding mine. “So, what are you saying, huh?”
My lids dropped. Below us, loud cheers erupted. The haunting first notes of Auld Lang Syne sounded, vibrating through the floorboards and the drywall of the house. But there was no joy in this room. No happiness. No future.
“Look at me when you say it,” he demanded hoarsely. “You owe me that much.” The surface of his dark brown eyes glimmered, his stare unyielding and bitter. I would never forget how they glossed over, how the tears settled in his tear ducts but never fell.
Sean looked broken, but he broke me first.
“I’m saying, I can’t be with someone who would do that to me…so, we’re done.” I threw a hand to my mouth as soon as the words left my mouth, my shoulders quaking with a violence that went right through to my soul.
Sean swallowed visibly, schooling the muscles in his face into submission. He pushed out a breath through pursed lips, his blinks rapid. I was shattering on the inside, my mind struggling to accept that after everything, this was where we ended up. I raced past him for the bedroom door, unable to look at him anymore.
His raw voice stilled me when I found the knob. “So, I just want to be clear. You’re breaking up with me for ‘lying’ to you, when that’s all you’ve ever done, too?”
“That’s rich, Sean,” I choked out on a sob, refusing to face him. “Drag my shit into this because you want to spin the tables on me.” I squeezed the doorknob hard enough to make my fingers cramp. “But it’s fine. If saying that makes you feel better, say what you need to. That’s just why this would never work.” The knob felt like it weighed a hundred pounds under the slow turn of my weak wrist.
“If you walk out that door, I’m not following you, Raquel.”
I struggled to ignore the weight of his stare on my back, of the uttered promise under the thrumming of the alcohol that coursed in my veins.
I wasn’t breaking this time.
“Then for once, you’ll have done something right.” I jerked the bedroom door open, the rush of the rowdy crowd below filling the vacuum of silence that roared between us.
It would never be enough to fill the void in my heart that the immediate loss of him created.
New Year’s Eve was cruel.
But so was love.
CHAPTER FIVE
If I had known that would be the last time I’d kiss her, I would have taken my time with it.
Made it count for something.
I would have made sure it was as magnetic and memorable as the first time my lips brushed hers. I would have guaranteed that it was as intoxicating and all-consuming as I remembered it.
Voltaic and life changing.
I would have kissed her a little harder, bracketed her face in my big palms and told her I loved her again and again. I would have made sure every fucker in the Commonwealth knew just how much she meant to me.
Maybe then the result would have been different.
I’d committed to getting as close to blackout drunk as my body would allow me once Raquel walked out of that guest bedroom door. True to my word, I hadn’t gone after her. That felt like sawing off a limb with a rusted hand blade, but I wanted to call her bluff.
She couldn’t have gotten far; I was sure of it. This wasn’t how I wanted to ring in the new year, but I hoped that if I gave her the space she desired, she would cool off. Maria had offered to go back to my place to make sure Raquel made it back there, but I had, in so few fucking words, told my sisters where to go.
I didn’t bother dissembling for the sake of sparing their feelings. They couldn’t seem to keep shit to themselves, so hey, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. May as well let them know how I really felt about their prying, their nosiness, their meddling—all of it was my damn anathema. I didn’t mince words. Not a single one. I wouldn’t spare their feelings for mine anymore. The only one who hadn’t left here in tears was Maria.
No surprise there.
The ice queen lives another fucking day, unbothered in her impenetrable glacier ivory tower.
None of it made me feel better. Not by a long shot. Maria’s taciturn indifference made me snap. I’d charged at her, only to have Dougie peel me away from her with a Herculean force. I didn’t know what I intended to do when I got my hands on her, but all I could think was this had been her doing.
The demise of my relationship was because of her initial orchestration.
Maria planted the seed of the idea; it germinated and then spawned into something vile and poisonous.
But I fed it. That was entirely on me. I had sustained it and given it a life force, practically dumped a shitload of fertilizer all over it.
Engaging Maria in some kind of epic shin-kicking, bicep-punching, choke-out, headlock wouldn’t make me feel any better at thirty than it did at thirteen, when our parents would peel us off each other and my dad chastised me not to hit girls, even if they were my sisters.
’Cause girls deserved to be treated with love and respect.
All the things I violated with a brutality that belonged to a savage.
Dad. God, he would have known what to do. He would say the right thing, he would have told me how to fix this. Hell, he would have stopped Maria in the kitchen that day while he was ahead. That was just who my dad was. He always believed in letting things play out as intended, organically.
“I just can’t believe she walked right out of here without so much as a word,” Penelope lamented on her way out of the living room. The rest of their guests had left hours ago, my sisters included. Now, the three of us sat here in their living room, replaying what happened. Penelope tried to call Raquel, but she didn’t answer.
No surprise there. No one held a grudge like she did.
“I’ll try her again in a couple of hours,” she assured, climbing up the stairs with a mumbled goodnight sent our way, her cellphone clenched tight against her chest. I willed that damn thing to ring to give me the sign I wanted but didn’t deserve. Some sign that Raquel was okay, that she’d made it back to my place angry, but unscathed. I didn’t believe she meant what she said about us being over, but rather that she was just pissed off and needed space. I’d done a shitty thing. I knew how strongly she felt about her past, and after we’d just discussed always being open with one another, this revelation didn’t exactly foster a lot of faith. It was fixable, though, right?
Dougie wordlessly leaned back in the armchair, his gaze fixed on one of the many trees that lined the darkened yard.
As soon as I heard the door to their bedroom close, I tried to stand up only for gravity, and the Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy single malt whiskey reminded me why that was a terrible idea. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Yes, it does. A loud sound at that.
I hit the ground before Dougie even registered that my motor function had hightailed it out of here alongside Raquel. The thump of my body collapsing onto the wood floors—the one I’d installed myself in this stupid fucking house of horrors—ached through every inch of my body. Pain was smarting in spots where I’d never experienced it before. As for Penelope, she never came out of her bedroom to confirm whether that bang was a tree, a dead body, or simply my broken fucking heart.
“Tavares, Christ,” Dougie grumbled. He pushed his body up from the armchair and held out a hand to me. I grabbed hold of it, but my uncooperative limbs weren’t having any of it. I brought him tumbling to the ground alongside me. Dougie, at least, possessed the bodily control to not hit the ground like a twelve-pound bowling ball being thrown by a child. He steadied himself in a crouching position before planting himself next to me.
“I fucked up,” I garbled. My head rolled to the right, glancing at
my best friend from under leaded eyelids. “I fucked up so bad.”
“You’ll make it right.” Lies always sounded better, didn’t they? We said them with such a blithe indifference that our subconscious almost wanted to buy the narrative.
“She’s going to hate me forever.” I hiccupped, acid creeping up my throat. “You didn’t see the way she looked at me.”
Dougie didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to. It was written all over his face. He knew she would never forgive me with as much certainty and confidence as his memory of his mother’s address. My emotions wrenched inside of me, the unbridled surge of sadness sweeping through me once more.
“I fucked up, I fucked up, I fucked up.” It came out in a rushed chant, my fingers hooking around the back of my neck, my knees coming as close to my chest as the girth of my limbs would allow.
I precipitated this before I’d gotten out of the car. I should have known this was what was going to happen. I should have trusted that niggling feeling that I’d chalked up to paranoia. It had been a fucking premonition. I felt Dougie settle against the lip of the couch where I’d sat before going all flippity-flop on the floor like a fish out of water.
Fuck, why didn’t I just tell her when I went to see her on the anniversary of her sister’s death? Right, ’cause I knew she would be pissed.
“You fucked up,” he conceded on a whisper, kicking his legs out in front of him. “You fucked up bad.”
The last time I’d cried in front of Dougie had been at my father’s funeral, and I’d had the fortitude back then to wait until it was just him and me in a situation that was very much reminiscent of this one. Alone. On the floor. Drunk.
I hadn’t cared about scruples tonight, or who saw me. My sisters had shed tears, but so had I. A whole deluge, enough to drown a small city. None of it made me feel better. All it did was goad on the headache that was forming between my eyes.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t fix it, Sean.”