He doesn’t apologize and neither do I. He doesn’t offer to absolve me and I don’t request it. He does shake my hand and pulls Mars’s drawing of Sauce Crew from his coat pocket, giving it to me when he drops me off, a few minutes before midnight.
I go in my parents’ room to hug them good night. They must sense something in me. They hold me between them where they lie—warm and sleepy—and I cry like a child in their dark room. The tears are heavy, weighted with what they’re carrying from me. When I finish, I’m quiet inside for the first time in months. Not happy, not free. Like floodwaters that haven’t receded but are finally tranquil, all that was lost and broken drifting just below the surface under a cloudless sky.
I sit on my bed, not ready to sleep in spite of my exhaustion at the end of this seemingly year-long day.
There’s something about the stillness in me that’s too hushed. The way birds don’t sing on a winter night and the frigid air buries every sound.
I need to try to fix one more thing.
I stare at my reflection in the screen of my black, lifeless phone. If you survived this day, you can survive anything. And what do you have to lose?
I pick it up and text Jesmyn, figuring she probably won’t be awake. I’m sorry. Beach in November.
I wait a minute and there’s no response. Why would there be? I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and change into my sleeping shorts. I turn out the light.
Behind my closed eyes, I see a pale white glow illuminate my room. I sit up to see my phone buzz, skittering on my desktop.
My heart pounds what must be my last reserves of adrenaline into my veins. My phone goes dark. I think about not even checking it. If it’s the answer I expect, it’ll leave me lying awake all night, heartache pulling me from my shallow bouts of sleep the way it did for the first month after the Accident.
But I do it. I pick up my phone.
Come tell me to my face.
Now? If the speed of a response to a text is the measure of dignity, I now have approximately zero dignity.
Now.
I dress as though I’m trying to escape a fire.
Around the corner from Jesmyn’s house, I sit and watch the raindrops patter on my windshield and slide down in rivulets, making the streetlights flare orange like squinting at them through tears.
I spot her running in flip-flops, her jacket pulled over her head. I open the passenger door and she jumps in and slams it behind her. My car fills with the scent of honeysuckle. It makes me feverish with nostalgia. She’s dressed for bed in a tank top and leggings, her hair in a messy ponytail.
Neither of us says anything. I start my car so the heater blows on her, but I don’t make to turn on the lights or leave. She stares forward and rubs her arms.
“So.” It must be obvious I’m trying to stall until I have something better.
“So.” She shivers.
“I don’t really know how to do this.” A long (or at least it feels that way) silence.
“I’m glad you’re not going to jail.”
“Me too.” I grip the steering wheel hard. “Look. I’m sorry. I was wrong. What I did. What I said. How I acted.”
She takes a deep breath and releases it. “Carver, I want you to tell me right now. If we become friends again, will things be weird between us?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, will you constantly be comparing yourself to Eli or whoever else? Will you compare what we have to what Eli and I had?”
“No.” This is a lie. I won’t be able to help it. But I do feel strong enough to never let her know it’s happening. And for her purposes, that’s as good as its not happening. I’d rather have the pain of secreting things away than the pain of her absence.
She reaches over and angles the middle vent toward her. “I’m still sorting out my emotions.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not sure I’ll ever feel about you the way you do about me. If that’s not something you can live with, you better tell me now.”
Even though hearing this feels like my heart is being pushed through one of those Play-Doh molds, still I nod and say, “That’s cool,” because it is. It’s better than no Jesmyn.
“No weirdness.”
I nod.
“No drama.”
I nod. A few seconds pass. “Eli was pretty great,” I say quietly.
“Yeah. He was,” she murmurs. She leans over, and we have an awkward car hug. “This sucks,” she says. “Get out.”
We meet at the front of the car and hug for an unreasonable amount of time in the rain, which douses us like an ablution. Now she smells like honeysuckle wet with dew. Green things becoming new and growing again.
We break the embrace and jump back into the car. I turn the heater up full blast and we rub our hands in front of the vents. She lifts her bare feet to the vent on her side. We’re both giddy and giggly. That calms as we slowly warm.
“It felt pretty Beach in November when we weren’t talking or hanging out,” I say.
“It felt Torn-Up Song.”
I cock my head in query.
“While we weren’t talking, I’d go running at the Harpeth River Greenway because it always helps me blow out all my shitty feelings. So one night, after an especially bad day of practicing, I went running, and I saw these little bits of paper scattered on the path. I picked one up and it seemed to have lyrics on it. I kept picking them up and putting them together like a puzzle. It was a song somebody had torn up.”
“Man, that’s some Nashville-ass litter.”
“Right? It way bummed me out to think about this song someone poured their heart into, torn up and abandoned on the ground. So, Torn-Up Song.”
“I might have to steal that.”
“Go for it.”
“Was the song any good?”
Jesmyn starts laughing so hard she can’t talk, and tears roll down her face. “No,” she mouths.
I laugh with her.
When our laughter subsides, she becomes somber again and says, “Remember how everything was snotty green? Everything was black-blue when we were apart. Still not the right color.”
“You’ll get there. We’ll get there.”
“Can we still be Sweat Crew even with the weather getting cold?”
“I think so.”
“Me too.”
We listen to the rain drum on the roof of my car while a silken lull passes between us. It drapes itself over my heart like one of those days when the temperature is so perfect, you can’t feel your own skin when you step outside.
Finally, Jesmyn turns to me, poised to speak, her face illuminated in a gauzy orange halo of dappled streetlight. It looks like the light is coming from inside her.
I know already I’ll say yes to whatever she asks, because there’s nothing I would rather do than tell her yes.
“Want a ride to school tomorrow?” she asks.
Yes.