Chapter 20
Aiden
“I don’t know, man,” says Ahmed, wiping the back of his hand across his brow. “I wouldn’t have gone to where she works.”
“Oh, you don’t know,” says Charlie. “You’ve asked Betty on a date at her work once a week since October.”
“She’s gonna come around,” Ahmed says, leaning down to roll up another length of carpet. “I think she likes my beard.”
“I think she likes more ironic facial hair. One of her bartenders has a mustache that curls at the ends,” Charlie answers, but she’s teasing. I’m pretty sure Ahmed’s right, actually, and Betty will come around. The guy’s damned charming, after all.
We’re at my place, the three of us and my pop, tearing out the carpet in the living room. Yesterday I’d done the hallway, and over the next couple of days I’ll get after the bedrooms too. My mom’s back in the kitchen, working steadily through the cabinets, a big donation box set on the table, ridding the space of extra small appliances and utensils, all the stuff she left here but that I never really use.
It was my idea, that morning after I’d woken up on the floor in Aaron’s room, cold and stiff jointed, to get to work on this house, cleaning it up, updating it as best I can. Can’t say yet what I’m doing it for—whether I’ll sell it and start over in a place of my own, or make this place into something new. Either way, it’s been a good distraction, and especially good over the last two days, while I’ve done exactly what Ahmed’s doing right now—ruminating over whether I made a mistake, going to Zoe.
“What I’m saying is,” he adds, grabbing for a roll of duct tape and sitting on the roll of carpet he’s just finished with, “you should’ve done something bigger. Skywriting a big ol’ I’m sorry over her place or something.”
Charlie takes the tape from him, picks at the corner until she frees a new length. “Disagree. Big gestures are empty. You’ve got to do the simple things.” She’s smiling as she helps Ahmed tape up the carpet, and I guess that’s got to do with her and Autumn, with the way they’ve been fixing things between them over the last month. These days Charlie carries around a pocket-sized schedule Autumn made for her, one that’s got blocked-out times for video calls, a small box-chart where Charlie can cross off the days until their next visit. It’s not like I’m trying to look closely at it, but there’s a lot of pink hearts on the thing.
I try not to be jealous.
“Doing all right over there, Pop?” I ask, looking to where my father’s stood from his place pulling staples from the hardwood. I can see he’s thinking about making an escape to the kitchen.
“Your friends talk a lot,” he says, as if he thinks he’s being quiet enough that the people less than ten feet away from him won’t hear.
“Rude,” says Charlie, but she laughs as she watches him retreat, and he waves a hand behind him. Despite his complaints, it seems maybe like my pop likes the noise, at least for a little while, or maybe—maybe—he just likes being around me.
Three times since that night he told me, in his own way, to get my shit together, we’ve gone to one of those group meetings my mother told me about. We sit in the back, not much talking from the O’Leary contingent, but no one seems to mind. The first time, I’d barely been able to sit still, shifting in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my arms, rolling my shoulders, restless with listening to others in the room being so open, so raw and tearful and sometimes angry. At one point, during that first meeting, I’d looked over at Pop, eager to commiserate, eager for a shared How are these people doing this look, but he’d been perfectly still. Not comfortable, I guess—I don’t think anyone would be comfortable with grief like this. But he sure as shit wasn’t hiding from it.
So I wasn’t, either.
It was the third meeting that gave me the idea to go to Zoe. I’d been tired, coming off a night shift, only time for a quick shower and change before I’d picked up Pop to go. We’d come in late, and I didn’t mind a bit, skipping the Styrofoam-cup coffee and awkward small talk that preceded the first two I’d attended.
There’d been a woman there, maybe in her forties, tall and calm looking, dressed in a navy pantsuit and heels like the ones I’d seen Zoe wear—thin, sharp like a weapon, almost scarily tall. When she’d raised her hand to share, she’d done it as though she’d been preparing for it, and maybe she had. She’d lost her daughter two years ago—seventeen, a car wreck, one late Friday night. Not even a year later, she and her husband had divorced, like lots of couples who lose kids. That was okay, she’d said, maybe not okay but understandable, because things hadn’t been all that great even before. But the problem was, some guy at her work asked her out last week, and she’d said yes. Then she’d lost it, had spent an hour sobbing in a bathroom stall before finally taking the rest of the day off. “I said yes before I even thought about it,” she’d said. “I forgot that I’m not a woman who goes on dates. I haven’t gone on dates for eighteen years.”
“Are you going to go?” one of the other group members had asked, and without thinking about it I’d sent him a sharp look for his curiosity. Jesus, it was so intrusive. All of this was so intrusive.
But no one else seemed to think so, not even her. She’d only shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Should I?” and then it seemed like everyone had an opinion: It all depends if you’re ready; It’s too soon if it makes you have that response; Sometimes you have to get out there; I’ll bet your ex hasn’t waited to start dating; Do you feel like you’d be betraying your daughter’s memory? And I’d been near enough to shouting at everyone, to asking them what business it was of theirs, before it’d hit me like a brick over the head: she’s making it their business. She was brave—that’s what I realized while I watched her listen back, while I listened to her give tentative answers that she wasn’t sure about. Sometimes she’d say one thing, and then walk it back, a big mess of jumbled thoughts that wasn’t at all like how she looked. She was brave, figuring out how to live her life, in all this shitty aftermath. Figuring out how to see what was still left around her.
And I was such a fucking coward.
Somewhere in the middle of it, I’d stood from my seat, not thinking, and the guy at the front of the room, the one who runs these things, had looked at me and said, “Did you want to share something today?”
“Next time,” I’d said, and looked down at Pop, who was already putting his arms back into his coat. I did want to share something, but only with her, first.
I’d dropped Pop off back at home, had tried to prepare myself, on the way to Legal Aid, for seeing her in the flesh again. I had seen her, once, since that day at the campground, but only by accident. I’d opened the camera app on my phone to snap a photo of the serial number on a box of latex gloves I needed to reorder for the squad inventory, and there she’d been, a freeze-frame of her stern face at the end of that video, the one she’d taken at my house the morning she’d fainted in my driveway. My finger had hovered over the screen, desperate to see her mouth move, to hear her say my name.
But I didn’t do it. I’d closed the app, had torn off the corner of the box of gloves instead and marched it back to the office with me, my phone burning a hole in my pocket. Her face burning a hole in my heart.
So maybe I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. Maybe I should’ve thought it through. Not skywriting, but damn. A little polish wouldn’t have hurt. Fuck, my t-shirt had been inside out, I’d realized, once I’d gotten back into the truck, my hands shaking. I’d probably looked like a hobo.
“Maybe you ought to call her again,” says Ahmed, interrupting my thoughts.
A part of me bristles, an old habit dying hard. But I’m trying to remember that woman, letting everyone weigh in on her possible date. “I told her I don’t expect anything from her,” I say. “I meant it.”
There’s a beat of silence, probably while Charlie and Ahmed exchange one of their looks about me, but it’s an easy silence, and we each go back to our tasks, Ahmed and Charlie starting to work on cutting up a new section, me taking up the staple removal my dad abandoned. I take deep breaths while I work, try to let loose the tension that’s so heavy in my gut. This might be it. This might be the life I have from now on, and I’ve got to get right with that. It’s a good life, building a team with Ahmed and Charlie. Making things right with my family. Figuring out what to do with Aaron’s money, something that I’ve accepted will take some time.
It’ll never be as good as it could have been, if I’d managed to keep her, but I’ve got to live with that. With what I did to her, and with what we did to each other, starting out the way we did.
After a while, my mom wanders in, looking over our progress, her gaze lingering on me longer, faint but obvious concern in her eyes. “How about a break? I could make you guys something.”
I almost laugh as I stand, brushing carpet fibers off my knees. It would have annoyed me a week ago, this caring enthusiasm, but now I take it for what it is. She’s just enjoying this, people in this house, and I expect it’s something she missed long before Aaron died. Once he’d gotten sick, really sick, my parents had stopped socializing much, had stopped opening their door to neighbors and friends who had always, always come around a lot when we were growing up. Right now, she’s acting like it’s snack time during a playdate, and I guess that’s all right for as long as she’s here.
“Oh,” I hear her say, a little confused, and when I look up at her, she’s watching out the open front door, the one we’ve been tossing rolls of carpet out of all morning.
I hear a car door slam, and I think my heart stops for a beat. I look at my mom first, because I’m too chickenshit to look out the door, to get disappointed. Just for a second, I want to live in the reality that it’s her out there.
Mom turns her face to me, gives me a steady look. “Aiden,” she says, her face serious and kind. “There is nothing from me you need to worry about.” It’s her, I’m thinking, and the thought is pounding so loud that I almost don’t hear what she says next. The truth is, it wouldn’t matter even if I didn’t hear her. I’m almost halfway out the door already.
But I’m still glad I catch it. “If you love her,” she says, “I’m sure I’ll love her too.”
* * * *
I almost don’t believe it at first, really seeing her out there.
She’s come from her office, I’d bet, or else she’s just come here to do business. She’s got that coat on, the camel-colored one, from the day I walked her to work. Beneath it, her legs in black tights, long and shapely in her heels.
I do what I did all those weeks ago when I saw her car pull up to my driveway. I step out onto my porch, take the two steps down, and eye her, as cautious as I was that first day. This time, I’m not afraid of what she’s come to start. I’m afraid of what she’s come to finish.
I take a deep breath, walk toward where she stands, stock still, by her car, and I think that was her plan all along. We’re doing this, right in this driveway, right where it started, and that doesn’t bode well for me, I guess. But whatever she’s got to say to me, I’ll take it. I’ve earned it.
I tuck my hands in my pockets, take in her face. Two days ago, she was so surprised to see me. She’d barely said anything at all, her skin pale and her eyes tired. Still beautiful, but not quite herself. Today, it’s different—color in her cheeks. Her lips pink, glossy. Her posture ramrod straight. Whatever she’s about to say, she’s thought good and hard about it.
“Your story needs work.”
In my pockets, my hands twitch, knuckles bumping the fabric. I clear my throat, but when I speak, my voice is still rough, thick with the same emotion that had been there in her office. “Should’ve practiced more,” I say. “Got nervous.”
She nods, looks out toward the street, as though she’s cataloging all the houses along the way. I’ll bet she can see more of it on a day like today, everything more visible now that the leaves are almost all fallen from the trees. I try to be grateful for this pause, long enough for me to gaze at her profile. It feels like I’ve loved to watch her for the longest time.
“I know you’re sorry about what happened at the lodge,” she says, bringing those gold eyes back to mine. “And I know it was...a hard day for you. A confusing day. I wish it hadn’t happened like that.”
Her eyes move to my throat, to the heavy swallow that must bob my neck. I’m nervous; I’m so fucking nervous to have her here. She holds my fate in her hands, and I think I must be looking at her the same way she looked at me all those weeks ago, when the day was too hot and she was too overwhelmed, coming to me with something that must have been so hard to say.
Her expression softens, giving me all the sympathy I didn’t give her that day. “But I love you too,” she says. “Obviously.”
Holy shit, I think, my mind stuttering over what she’s said. She’s going to forgive me. She’s not even done speaking before I take a step toward her, my chest flooded with hope. But she holds a hand up, her sharp-edged jaw set, and it stops me in my tracks. My shoulders tense with all that deadlocked feeling. We stand close, maybe an arm’s length between us, but right now it feels like a gulf, and I have to steel myself, tighten up everything in my middle to keep from putting my arms around her, pulling her toward me and keeping her from saying what I’m afraid she’ll say.
“In this story you’re telling,” she says, keeping her eyes on me, “we rescue each other. That day I came here, you rescued me, too, and not just because I damseled-in-distress all over your driveway.” She lifts her chin, looking strong and unflappable, so unlike a damsel in distress that it’d be funny if my heart weren’t in my throat. “It was wrong of me to come here that day—”
“Zo—” I begin, but she shakes her head, purses her lips. I may well break my back teeth from the way I clamp them down, wanting to stop this, but she let me say my piece, and I’ve got to do the same.
“And I knew it was, almost as soon as I pulled up. I knew I was looking for a quick fix for...for the things I’d been feeling about my work and my past and my...myself, really.” She stops, clears her throat. “But even still, you gave me something I didn’t even know I was looking for, and you got me unstuck from the life I’d been living. You don’t know how grateful I’ll always be for that. For helping me see that sometimes you start something for a selfish reason, but you can continue it—you can finish it for another kind of reason. A good, kind, unselfish reason. And for helping me see that…that I have to move on.” That composed expression breaks then, and her eyes track down. She twists the tip of one shoe, just a little, against the driveway’s rocky surface.
When our eyes meet again, I wonder if she can see what’s in mine.
Defeat.
She’s come here for closure, in spite of the feelings between us. She’s ending it. A thank-you and goodbye, good luck, have a nice life, and I can’t even say I blame her.
Forgiveness is never easy, after all.
But then she takes another step toward me, sets a hand on my forearm. Her hand is cold against my warm skin, and goosebumps rise in the wake of the path she takes to my wrist. She tugs, softly, so that I pull my hand from my pocket.
And then she links her fingers with mine.
My eyes close with the feeling of it. It’s relief or fear, hope or anguish. I don’t know which, won’t know until she gives me an answer, something I can hold on to. When I open my eyes again, I’m looking almost right into hers. We’re so matched when she wears those heels. “Remember that night at the bonfire?” she asks, and I nod, a tip of my chin down. I look at our joined hands, unmoving, just like I did that night. I’m trying to make this driveway and that dirt clearing collapse in this moment, to forget about all the shit that happened in between. “You said it couldn’t be about anything but what we want from each other. You and me, Aiden, we’ve got to be done with debts. With what we owe each other.”
I raise my chin and look at her again. Is this what she means? That there’s just too much of that between us for it ever to work?
“Zo,” I say again, after a too-long pause. My voice is almost a whisper, a fact that’d embarrass me if I gave even one single damn about my pride in this moment. “I told you that night, you are smart as fuck. Whatever you’re telling me here, you’re going to have to spell it out. I miss you so much I can’t think straight.”
She laughs, breathy and quiet, and there it is again, that rush of hope. “I’m saying I want to be with you. Not because I owe you. Not because you owe me. Just—just because.”
It’s lightning fast, my hand jerking away from hers, the other one coming out of my pocket, and then I’m catching her up, my arms around her waist, her feet off the ground so I can hold her tight and high against me, so I can press my face in the soft curve of her neck, so I can release the gusty sigh of relief and—yeah, fuck it—the quiet, pained sob that says everything about how much I’ve missed her. How much I want her, how much I need her.
When I put her down it’s to cup her face between my hands, to set my mouth against hers, soft and searching, the first kiss we never really had. And it feels so good, so natural, nothing I’ve got to rehearse or practice for. I feel her hands on my sides, stroking my skin through my t-shirt, and my hips pitch forward, just a little, wanting to press her back, into the door of her car if I have to, just so I can get closer. My whole body is electric with relief and gratitude.
She pulls back from me before I’m ready, and I must let out a noise of dissatisfaction, one that makes her mouth curve in a smile, her lips pink and swollen. “Wait,” she says, lifting a hand to my chest, setting her palm over my thudding heart. “The camp?” she asks.
“You know that wasn’t for me, Zo,” I say. “They knew it too.”
She nods, pats me where her hand rests. “I talked to Lorraine, but I didn’t want to ask her. You’re okay, though?”
Okay? Holy hell, I could pick her car up and throw it in the street if she asked me to—I’m that jacked up, that happy. But I know what she means, or at least I think I do, some of the fog in my head clearing now that she’s here. “I’m all right,” I say. “Going to a support group. Getting my shit together. You got me unstuck too.”
She smiles, leans forward and kisses me again, like a quick reward between two people who do this all the time. “Sorry it took me a couple of days. I had to think about it. Talk to my friends.” She shrugs. “That’s how I am, I guess.”
“I would’ve waited longer, Zo. I meant what I said. I would’ve come, whenever. Wherever.”
That earns me another smile, this one shy, not much like the Zoe I know, but that’s the thing about her and me. We’re going to see a lot of different sides to each other now, now that we’re doing this for real.
“I applied for a job too,” she says. “I think I’m going to be good at it.”
“I’m sure you are,” I say, touching my thumb to that smile, loving the feel of her lips against my skin. “I can’t wait to hear.”
Her mouth flattens into something more serious then, those gold-brown eyes meeting mine. “We’ve got so much work to do, you and me.” Then she tips into me, setting her forehead against my jaw, and I hear the deep breath she takes, the way she inhales me. “Your parents. My friends. The money. Everything.”
It won’t be easy, the way we’ve started. Behind me, in that house, are two people Zoe has to get to know in a whole new way. It doesn’t matter what my mom said, before I came out here. It doesn’t matter that she’ll be on her best behavior, will treat her as nice as I didn’t on that first day Zoe came. It’ll still be hard, those memories. It’ll take time.
I pull her close again, my arms wrapping around her now, her hand pressed on my chest between us. “We’ll be all right,” I tell her, and I mean it. I’ll make it all right. I’ve worked so hard, since Aaron, every day a new drudgery, a new challenge to get through while I ran from my grief, but none of it made me feel good. None of it made me feel excited, like I was going toward something. I can’t wait to work that hard for me and Zoe, for our life together. “Turns out, we make a good team.”
She laughs, short puffs of breath against my neck that make the base of my spine tickle. I feel her face shift as she looks over my shoulder, toward the house. “Not so much an island anymore,” she whispers, and I crane my neck to look behind me, to see my mom and pop in the house, looking out the storm door at us, Ahmed’s big body behind them. I don’t see Charlie, not at first, but she’s there too, pushing Ahmed off to the side so she can see past him. No, not so much an island, and it took her to get me to see it.
I turn back toward Zoe, and her cheeks are flushed in embarrassment at our audience. “Come in,” I say, a teasing smile spreading across my face. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”
“In a minute,” she says, and for that minute we’re quiet, holding each other, folding into each other in relief. She feels so good that I feel familiar pressure build in my chest, around my throat, behind my eyes, though it’s not so terrifying now. This’ll be new to her too, this cracked-open version of me, but she won’t mind. She’s the one who’s been trying to get in there, after all, chipping away at that hard shell. I tip my mouth so it’s next to her ear, the same way I know makes her shiver. “I can’t believe I deserve you, Zo,” I tell her, quiet words for her only in this little cocoon of privacy we’ve made out here in the open air. “But I’m going to treat you so good.”
She leans back, one of her cool hands on my neck, the other still over my heart, her smile widening as she looks at me. “Take it from me, Boy Scout,” she says, patting my chest gently again. “Sometimes, we get a lot more than we deserve.”