Incomplete

by Eliza Park

  Me: Broke up with Mav, you free today?

  Gage: WHAT? I will be there in twenty minutes!

  I smiled weakly.

  My phone rang then, and my cousin Janey’s smiling face made me sigh.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, grandma just told me you broke up with Maverick? What did he do? Should I get knives?”

  I coughed out a laugh, “No knives, I think, I appreciate that though.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I stared down into my tea, “No, I don't think I am. But I will be.”

  “I’m coming over. Are you at home?”

  “Oh, Janey you don’t have to--.”

  “It’s like a 30-minute cab ride from Colombia, Celeste. I’m coming over.”

  Gage showed up twenty minutes later on the dot, two bags of groceries in his arms that he set on the counter to come and give me a giant bear hug. “I’m so sorry,” he said softly, “He’s an asshole, a douchebag, a fool, and a son of a bitch. I always knew you could do better.”

  I laughed, halfway to tears, “You didn’t even meet him.”

  Before we had a chance to unload his bags, Janey busted in with her combat boots and fresh face, a recycled cloth bag slung over her shoulder that clanked loudly with the unmistakable sound of beer bottles. “I always knew that handsome bitch was trouble!” She yelled, the door slamming shut behind her. She held out her hand to Gage, who took it with a conceding nod of agreement.

  “Gage, this is my cousin Janey, she goes to Colombia.”

  Gage nodded, looking Janey up and down and pointing with his finger, “I need to know exactly where you got those boots and those earrings.”

  “St. Mary’s,” she said, setting her bag down on the counter.

  “On Amsterdam and 126th?”

  “The one and only. Those nuns know how to merchandise.”

  I slid into the barstool at my kitchen counter, listening to them swap thrift store stories and smiling at what I realized were two of my closest friends- one of them was even family. Tears sprung to my eyes for the 800th time that day and I wiped at my cheeks with my fingers. Janey stopped talking then and Gage whipped around, concern etched across both their features.

  “Oh, honey,” Gage said, reaching out a hand to touch me on the arm.

  I waved him off, “I’m okay, really, I’m just so glad you guys are here.”

  Janey reached into her bag and pulled out two giant bottles of white wine. “Here and loaded with a broken heart remedy that goes back centuries. I know you don’t believe in booze, Celeste, but today and today only you’re getting trashed.”

  Gage unloaded his own bags with several more bottles of wine and two large bottles of vodka. I erupted into laughter at the sight of my two friends gripping the necks of multiple bottles of alcohol. “First,” Gage said, “You need to tell us what happened. Then you need to shower and put on your sluttiest outfit. Then,” he glanced at Janey, “we get over your ex-boyfriend.”

  I took a deep breath, “Okay, but I’m not getting trashed, and I don’t want to go anywhere sketchy.”

  Janey shrugged, “No promises.”

  ——————————

  “Stay still,” the woman whispered.

  I didn’t move for several minutes and then she was moving around me, pushing against the back of my coat. We were going in the other direction now, back to Dad.

  He was on the ice and he looked mad.

  I turned to my mother, grabbing at her pants with my mittens, “I don’t want to go that way,” I whined.

  Her eyes were so pretty and clear but wide and scared. Her cheeks were red.

  Another loud crack and she gasped again, giving me a final push into the arms of angry dad. He grabbed me and didn’t move. I looked behind us. The woman was gone. There was a hole in the ice. It was large and growing, pieces falling into the dark water.

  A pale hand shot up through the water and I tried to slide forward to grab it.

  She needed help. She needed me to save her.

  Dad held me back, but his grip was too tight. It hurt.

  “We have to get her, daddy.”

  He didn’t answer.

  Her head popped out of the water and she was wet all over. Her coat made the snowflakes disappear as she reached for me.

  I held my hand out to her.

  Daddy picked me up, throwing me over his shoulder and walking off the ice.

  I was scared, I kicked at him, I heard myself screaming at the woman.

  He threw me in the car and shut the door. I kept screaming. I pounded at the windows.

  “You have to save her! You have to save her!”

  He glared back at me and pulled out a phone to call someone. Then he walked back down the hill, locking the doors to the car.

  I pulled at the latch again and again.

  She would be okay. It was cold she just needed a blanket.

  Dad showed back up and got in the car. I hit him with my fists as we drove away.

  My mom opened the door to the car with tears running down her cheeks.

  “Celeste, oh my baby!”

  I screamed at her. I screamed about what Dad did to the woman.

  I kept screaming. No one was listening.

  A woman with gray hair in a black dress took me from my mother and set me on the floor. She slapped me hard, once, across the cheek.

  I stopped screaming.

  She led me to my room, put me in bed, handed me a small white pill, and pulled out a thick black book.

  “In the beginning,” she said, “God created the heaven and earth.”

  ——————————

  I sat up in my bed, ears ringing, sweat covering my entire body. Gage was linked across the foot of the great bed and Janey was next to me, both still sound asleep. It was 4AM, I’d only been asleep for a few hours.

  I got out of bed, my hands shaking, and went to the kitchen, ignoring the empty bottles of wine and beer. I pulled a glass out of the cabinet and slowly filled it with water, gulping it down.

  I fell back against the counter, sliding to the floor and letting my head rest against the cold wood.

  I finally knew. Everything that had happened. Everything that had been kept from me.

  Jack Hanson left my mother to die. He destroyed his own family, the family of his mistress, and the life of his daughter with his selfishness.

  He stood at the base of all of my suffering, and he did nothing.

  I closed my eyes.

  I was going to find my mother. I was going to tell her about everything that happened. I’d give her back all of her money. And I’d never speak to my father again for as long as I lived.

  Six Months Later

  Summer

  Chapter 48

  Celeste

  I watched my mom work her way around the room, greeting all of her former fellow patients with a wide smile on her face. She was stunning in a dark green dress, her auburn hair in curls to her shoulders. She still didn’t have any memory of who I was, but every day we were working on a new bond. A bond of friendship that would have to make up for all the years we’d lost. Various members of our family had come to visit her, tears in their eyes at the sight of her doing so well, and even more tears when understanding of her condition finally dawned.

  Myrna and Craig visited the most, always bringing her home baked goods and telling her stories of her past. Maeve always listened with a fascinated ear, asking questions, and writing down things she didn’t want to forget again in a journal. She admitted she wasn’t ready to be thrown back into a family she didn’t recognize, but she might be in the future, and she was willing to meet and listen to anyone who wanted to visit her. Maeve even had a steady boyfriend who lived in Hartford. They saw each other on the weekends, and she’d invited him to the dance today. I was actually excited to meet him, but much more excited at the prospect of carefully vetting the man my mom was dating.

  I’d shared the letters she’d written to me, told he
r about my time in Dublin unsuccessfully trying to find the man she met over there, but she couldn’t remember him or any of the plans she’d made before.

  She was amazing. Her strength, honesty, and brilliance awed me with every visit. I’d told her everything, every detail about her past that I knew, including the horrible details of what my parents had done to her. And eventually I even told her about my own past, crying into her open arms over Eli, my parents, and Maverick. She’d rocked me like I knew a mom should, shushing me and rubbing her hand up and down my back, and she apologized for everything I’d gone through. She asked me lots of questions about my dad, wondering what he looked like and what I remembered of him from when I was a child, disappointed when I didn’t have much of anything positive to give her.

  Mostly, she asked me about Maverick. She encouraged me to speak to him again, to reach out and have a conversation about what we’d been through. I always brushed it off, reminding her that he’d broken my trust and I didn’t want anything to do with someone who would do that to me.

  Maeve was adamant about forgiveness. Forgiving Mav for lying, withholding secrets. “And,” She’d said, “leaving you broken.”

  “I wanted him to leave! I kicked him out.”

  The look she’d given me told me she knew when I was lying.

  She circled back around to me then, cheeks rosy with conversation. “It looks good, don’t you think?”

  I grinned and nodded. Maeve had transformed the community center into a dance hall that would make even the best of New York City’s party planners weep. She’d been released as a patient years before, but still returned to the center for therapy and to work. She organized events for the other patients and made a decent salary doing so. Maeve had gotten an apartment in Manchester where she lived with one orange cat. Even without her memory, she’d established an identity.

  Warm twinkling lights wound around the ceiling, the tables were covered with beautiful white cloth, and beautiful wildflowers she’d handpicked by the very river she’d fallen into rested in individual vases. “If I ever get married, remind me to hire you for the wedding.” I joked.

  She was looking over my head when I glanced up at her, and she offered me a mischievous wink, “Speaking of…” She nodded behind me.

  I turned, confused, and saw Maverick standing at the entrance to the large room, wearing a simple slate suit, his hand covering his matching tie. His hair was longer, but smoothed back from his face in long waves that crested the back of his neck. He’d shaved, and I swallowed, having forgotten just how edible that sharp jaw was. The heat of his sky-blue gaze made my stomach fill with unruly butterflies, sending a few to jump start my heart with an erratic rhythm. I turned to scowl at my mom, but she was halfway across the room, peaking at me over the head of one of the elderly.

  I felt Maverick’s large, unmistakable presence and my side and forced my gaze back to him with a weak smile. “Hi,” He said, his voice making me shiver in the warm room. I’d wiped my memory of that voice, those arms, that stupid rosy feeling he gave me from my mind, and here he was, filling it back up.

  I tried not to look at him for too long, “Hey.”

  “I hope it’s okay, Maeve invited me.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, “I gathered that.” I was nervous, my fingers trembling against my legs, and I brought them together in front of my stomach to make it seem less noticeable.

  “She seems really nice,” he offered in a low voice.

  My toes curled in my heels, that voice doing things to my lower abdomen. “She’s awesome, but apparently very sneaky.”

  He chuckled and shifted uncomfortably next to me. I saw him watch me out of the corner of my eye and heard him let out a breath, “You look incredible,” he said quietly.

  I swallowed, my eyes on the dance floor in front of us, “Thank you.”

  “I’m guessing it wasn’t your idea to have me here?” There was pain in his question, the disappointment from the realization evident.

  I shook my head, “It definitely was not.”

  He nodded and cleared his throat, “I thought that might be the case.” He walked in front of me then, watching me with a smirk on his face, “Good thing I’m not here for you,” he whispered, raising his eyebrows as he sauntered away from me and over to the table where my mother was still chatting happily away.

  I gaped after him, my stupid heart aching with the distance that was suddenly between us. Maverick walked over to my mom and to my complete surprise, she hugged him. I stared, scowling, full of rage, as she introduced him to the elderly woman sitting at the table. Maverick held out his hand to her, the widest of smiles on his extremely stupid and handsome face. She took it and he led her slowly to the dance floor, giving her a gentle spin before leading her into an easy waltz. The woman was giggling like a schoolgirl, joy evident on her wrinkled face. Maeve eased her way back over to me cautiously, a guilty grin on her pretty face.

  “So, you mentioned you and Maverick took ballroom dancing classes together and I just thought he would be such a great addition for the women here today…”

  I crossed my arms over my chest, grumbling, “You could have warned me.”

  She nudged me with her shoulder, and whispered, “You know you wanted to see him.”

  I scowled.

  “He is way better looking than you mentioned, by the way. You might want to act quickly before one of these old cats snaps him up with the promise of a hefty allowance.”

  “Mom!” I hissed, embarrassed.

  She shrugged, “Well if you’re not going to dance with him, you may as well dance with Mr. McCarthur.” She pushed me forward with a bony hand and a smile on her face. I walked over to Mr. McCarthur, my back straight, shoulders pushed back, knowing Mav was watching me with those intense blue eyes.

  “Celeste, my love,” Mr. McCarthur said from his seat with the rest of the single elderly gentlemen. “Who is that young man dancing with Bea?”

  I tried not to seem too annoyed by Maverick’s appearance, “I don't know, some random playboy probably.” I leaned forward then, giving him a wink, “You want to make those crappy dancers jealous, Mr. M?”

  He leapt up with surprising grace for a man his age, offering his arm. I took it and we walked by Bea and Maverick with our chins held high, taking our spots on the dance floor, and beginning to move in slow circles around them. I saw Maverick smiling in my peripherals and my annoyance surged.

  I didn’t want him here and I certainly didn’t want him enjoying himself.

  When the song ended, Mr. McCarthur stepped away, his hand over his heart, “Oh, lovely girl I need a break, not sure I can go on without a little refreshment.” He turned away from me and to my surprise, offered his arm to Bea, “Would you care to join me for a drink?”

  Bea’s eyes fluttered with excitement and they walked over to the punch bowl and I was left standing there in the middle of the dance floor, Mav a few feet away from me, as another slow song picked up over the speakers. I was about to walk off the floor when he spoke, his voice low, “Would you dance with me, Celeste?”

  I loved the way he said my name, like it was covered in chocolate. I thought about storming off in a huff, but his warm, calloused hand stretched out to me, and when I met his gaze, my angry resolve melted. I touched his hand with my own, allowing myself to fall into his distanced embrace, and potentially ruin my torn heart. My hand was on his shoulder, the other cradled in his warm, tan hand, and I felt his fingers resting at my lower back. He glided us around the room, always expertly navigating without ever seeming to look up.

  I closed my eyes briefly for a moment, thinking back on the two dances we’d been through before this and marveling at how we’d circled right back to that heartbroken mess. When I lifted my lashes again, he was gazing down at me, desire, longing, and sadness pouring from his expression and right into my heart. I stepped away from him, feeling tears prickling behind my eyes, and turned to leave the room as quickly as I could.

  M
aeve reached out a hand to stop me, but I ignored her, trying not to fault her for bringing him back into my life. I sprinted down the hallway and out through the sliding glass doors of the community center, inhaling the Summer air and letting it wash away the horrible creeping heartbreak.

  “Celeste,” A familiar deep voice said behind me.

  I spun, feeling the tears hot on my cheek. Maverick stood there, a broken expression on his too handsome face. I gulped in another breath, unable to look at him. “Just go away, Maverick, please.”

  “I can’t.” His voice was cracked with emotion. He stepped towards me and I stepped back, a different kind of dance than the one we were just doing. He held his hands up, letting me know he wasn’t going to touch me, “I love you and I’m going to stand here in front of you until you admit that you love me too.”

  “I don’t.” I lied.

  “Look at me,” he growled, “look at me, Celeste, and tell me honestly that you don’t miss us. As fucked up as this is, it’s the endgame and you fucking know it just as well as I do.” He stepped forward and I chanced a glance at him. He was in front of me then, blue eyes gazing down at me with a raging fire. “You came back to me. Across oceans and states, you came back to me. I know I fucked up, and if I could maybe I’d do things differently. But none of that matters because I know you’ve already forgiven me. And I mean it when I promise to never keep another secret from you again. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you haven’t missed me.”

  He was right. I’d forgiven him a long time ago, maybe even the day after he’d left. But I couldn’t agree, I couldn’t let myself be hurt by him again. I opened my mouth to disagree, to tell him to fuck off and go home, that we would never be together, and I’d never forgive him for as long as I lived. But I couldn’t. He’d given me a new life and a new family, a mom I could rely on. Everything I’d accomplished was because of what he had done from the beginning. And I loved him. I’d never stopped, and I knew I never would.

  Looking up at him, those blue eyes searching hopefully for my answer, I weakly whispered, “You’re wrong.”