Chapter Twenty-Three
Hale’s bike is propped up outside the trailer, and when I see it I can’t help but breathe an enormous sigh of relief. He’s here. I guessed right. There’s still some small hope that this can be fixed, that something can be salvaged from the night.
So why doesn’t it feel like that? Why does my heart feel like an engine-block in my chest?
It’s getting on towards dark as I pull up at the Grove. The last sputterings of daylight are smothered in heavy grey clouds on the horizon, thick as smoke; with every passing second they move closer to the threatened downpour, the first real rain Eden will have had in weeks. Anyone who’s lived in Texas for more than a couple of summers comes to recognise that kind of storm eventually. They know the feel of change in the air, the sound of distant thunder as it creeps closer and closer across the plains – and then the break as it arrives, of tension broken in an instant. The flood of life-giving water into the dry earth, before the sky clears and the whole cycle can begin again, over and over. The way it always was. Everything repeats, forever.
Well, I think as I turn my eyes upwards, you sure picked a hell of a time for it.
The door to the trailer pushes open easily, but there’s no sign of life inside. ‘Hale?’ I call out into the darkness. ‘Hale, are you in here? Where are you?’
Silence. My words echo off the walls of the empty tin box. It was never what you could call welcoming, but with every trace of the life of Jim Fischer stripped away, the effect is eerie. It doesn’t look like a home. Hell, it barely looks like a house. The place looks like a prison cell.
‘Hale?’ I yell out again. ‘Hale, where –?’
‘Back here,’ he says. His voice is strained, as though calling out to me requires an unprecedented amount of physical effort – or perhaps the effort Is mental, who knows? Perhaps even now Hale is uncomfortable with the idea of anyone seeing him broken, beaten.
Even me.
There’s a chink of orange light coming out from under one of the trailer doors. When I open it, there he is: stretched out on the dusty floor, his shirt open as he dabs at his wounds with a cloth, lit by a single harsh bulb. The side of his face has swollen up from Scanlon’s punches; his left eye socket heavily bruised. He’s not going to be posing for any album covers any time soon, put it that way.
‘Oh, Hale.’ I wrap my arms around him and squeeze tightly. Never again, I think. No matter what happens, I never want to see Hale like this again. I never want to see him hurt.
He winces. ‘Jesus, Carrie,’ he says, peeling me away from him. ‘Easy. Please. I’m a bit tender.’
‘Sorry. Are you OK?’
‘I’ve felt better,’ he says. ‘But yeah, I’m OK. How did you know I’d be here?’
I shrug. ‘Where else would you be?’ There’s no way Hale would have gone anywhere else but his home territory – at least for as long as it took him to lick his wounds.
‘Your place,’ he says. ‘At first, anyway. Then I realised I didn’t have a key to get in, and I didn’t want to be waiting around in case anyone decided to follow me, so…’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. I don’t know if I should have, but I did.’ He pauses. ‘I’m sorry you got mixed up in all this. What happened out there was between me and Scanlon. Not you.’ He reaches a hand up and touches the scratch on my forehead. The bleeding has stopped, but the flesh around it is still spongy and sore. ‘I can’t believe I got you hurt.’
‘You didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was Scanlon. All of it. You were just trying to protect me.’
He shakes his head. ‘Yeah, and a fine job I did of it, too. I just… I don’t know what happened, Carrie. I knew he was trying to goad me into a fight, just like when we were kids, and I was fine with it. Then I saw you there, bleeding, and I… God, I could have killed him right then. I didn’t care what happened to me, as long as I knew you were safe. That was the only thing that mattered.’
I look down at his torso, seeing the fresh scrapes and cuts mingling with old scars – the product of a lifetime of violence. None of them are bad enough to need stitches, I suspect, although they’re definitely going to need a good clean; there’s a deep scratch on his hip that seems to have picked up most of the dirt that O’Hara’s parking lot had to offer, and I don’t want to imagine what it’s going to look like in a day or so without it. His stomach is dappled with bruises, already a vibrant purple that I know won’t be fading any time soon.
I can’t help but wonder how much of tonight will show on his body ten years from now, and whether or not I’ll be around to see it.
‘Do you need a hospital?’ I ask. ‘Anything broken?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve had worse.’ He shifts is position down on the floor, propping himself up with one arm and immediately regretting it, papering over the wince with an attempt at a smile. ‘From my old man, even. Scanlon and his boys are losing their touch.’
‘Wait there, then,’ I say. A minute later and I’ve pulled the first aid kit and a sealed bottle of water from Pete’s truck. There’s not a lot in the little green box, but it’s better than nothing: a bottle of rubbing alcohol, some band-aids, some gauze, some surgical tape.
Even the pain isn’t enough to stop him grinning when he sees it. ‘Nurse Carrie,’ he says as I kneel down beside him. ‘Some things never change, eh?’
Apparently not, I think.
He doesn’t protest as I slip his shirt off his shoulders; instead, he reaches for the cotton pads and the alcohol in the first aid kit. ‘Let me,’ he says. ‘I can do it.’
‘Hold still.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Hale, hold still.’ I pull the fabric clear of the scratch, and he screws up his face as the dried blood comes loose, tacky against his skin. ‘You OK?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘Sure.’
We sit in silence, mostly. My hands are busy with him, tending to him as best I can; it’s been a long time since I’ve had to deal with anything that wasn’t a burn from a hot griddle or an accidental slice from the slip of a vegetable knife, but I think I manage well enough. Hale doesn’t complain more than is strictly necessary, anyway. Every now and then, when the fresh alcohol touches raw flesh, he’ll suck in a sharp breath of air through his teeth, but that’s the worst of it. It’s a strange feeling, to be so close to him and yet so far away – to see his naked torso just inches away from me, knowing that just the other night it was pressed up against me. The fact that we might have been in a similar situation – Hale in a state of semi-undress as my hands caressed his body, but in my bedroom, rather than on the dusty floor of his old home – is crazy to me. It’s funny how things work out.
Except it’s not, of course. When you consider how fragile the lives we build are, and how suddenly that particular house of cards can come crashing down around us, it’s not really funny at all.
‘Carrie,’ he says softly, just as I’m applying the last bit of sticking plaster to the wound on his hip. ‘I’ve got to ask you about something.’
‘Yeah?’
He nods. ‘What Scanlon said. About you two…’
And just like that, time stops. I don’t know what I was hoping – that he’d somehow forgotten about it? That he hadn’t heard what Aaron had said? That maybe he’d been too busy fighting for his life to pay attention? – but somehow I had managed to convince myself that it hadn’t happened, that that shameful, drunken lapse in judgement could have remained just that.
‘Carrie?’
‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Hale.’
‘Is it true?’
‘Does it make a difference?’
He pauses, for a little too long. His silence says everything I need to hear.
I can almost see him replaying Scanlon’s words over and over in his mind. You know I tapped that, right? All those years, while you were out playing your little guitar… guess I might even have beat you to it. Ain’t that a thing?
I know what he’s thinking. I know what he’s picturing in his mind. I want to tell him that it’s not how it seems, that Scanlon made it sound a thousand times worse than it is, but I can tell from the look of disgust on his face that the damage is done.
Ain’t that a thing?
He’s already imagining me and Scanlon, alone – perhaps in my apartment, in the bedroom where he’s spent so much of the last week. He’s imagining Scanlon’s greedy fingers running across my skin – his lips on mine, somehow retroactively ruining what we had together.
Because now, whenever he looks at me, that’s all he’ll be able to see.
I guess I win again. Ain’t that a thing, City Boy? Ain’t that just a thing?
‘Say something, Hale. Please.’
He doesn’t; he can’t. His throat is all stopped up with the betrayal of it all.
‘Anything.’
‘I don’t think I’ve got anything in me to say.’ There’s a clench in his jaw, that old familiar coiled-spring look. Oh, you goddamn liar, I think. You absolute goddamn liar. You’ve got plenty to say. But isn’t that just Hale through and through? When the going gets tough, he’s the man you want in your corner – but when it comes to any sort of vulnerability, he snaps shut tighter than a bear trap, and woe betide anyone who’s too close when it happens.
‘No. Spit it out, Hale.’ Tell me I hurt you. Tell me I fucked up. Tell me anything, Hale – but for God’s sake, don’t shut me out. Not now. Not over this.
He chooses to stay silent, and a little piece of me hates him for that. How dare you? I think. What the hell gives you the right to block me off over this? After I came after you? After I waited all these years? After I…
‘So that’s how it is?’ I say. My fierceness surprises me; it’s a little like something has snapped inside me, something I’m not sure will ever be fixed but damn it, now the floodgates are open. ‘That’s how you want this one to play out, is it? Because I guess you’ve just been a straight-up monk since the last time you were in Eden? No bad decisions on your part – like, I don’t know, maybe banging your publicist? How did that one work out for you, Hale?’
‘What happened with Merry is different,’ he says slowly. ‘Not even in the same league, in fact.’
‘Oh, sure it is. Why, because it was you doing it and not me? That’s bullshit and you know it.’
He shakes his head. ‘No, Carrie. Because Merry is Merry, and because Scanlon is Scanlon. Because one of them was a momentary bad decision, and the other one was you picking sides. It was you finding some way to rationalise everything he ever did to me. It was your way of saying that it was OK. That’s why.’
He’s sitting upright now; he puts one hand on the floor and pushes himself into a standing position. Suddenly he’s looming over me, but there’s no threat to him, neither implied nor explicit. He couldn’t hurt me, not ever.
And yet he looks crushed. I did that to him, and I did it without even trying. So much for him protecting me from Scanlon; as it turned out, he was the one who needed protection.
‘Do you really think that’s what it was?’ I ask. ‘Really?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.’
‘You’d disappeared, Hale. No, it was worse than that. You didn’t disappear. You ran away. You ran off without letting me know where you’d gone, or if you were OK, or anything else, and that just about broke me in half. And then my Dad died, and things at the Diner really turned to shit, and… well, that’s the position I was in. Five years later, I was alone, and I was looking for just about any chance I could find to beat up on myself. Turns out, when you look in the mirror and really, really hate what your life has turned into, a guy like Scanlon starts to seem real useful.’
‘So you fucked him,’ he says. ‘Scanlon. Of all people. I mean, Jesus, Carrie… you knew what he was like. You saw what he did to me. You saw what a complete shit he was back then – and he hasn’t changed. You saw all that, and you decided to fuck him anyway. What the hell am I supposed to make of that?’
His voice is calm and measured, but I can see him clenching and unclenching his fist; every time he does, the raw skin on his knuckles tenses. There’s no way it doesn’t hurt him – but of course, that’s the point. It gives him something to focus on. The pain is a distraction from what’s really going on.
But I don’t have any such distraction.
‘For your information,’ I say, already feeling the hot anger in my cheeks, ‘and not that it’s any of your damn business – no, I didn’t fuck him. He found me at a bar, drunk off my ass, and started hitting on me. I figured, why not? It wasn’t like my evening could get any worse. We got back to his apartment, I realised that no matter how bad I was feeling I wasn’t willing to sink that quite so low, and I left. He all but begged me to stick around, but I didn’t. Not that that stopped him telling everyone we slept together anyway. That’s just the kind of sleaze he is. Don’t think you’re the only one who knows it.’
I take a step forward, so I’m practically pressed against Hale. I want him to hear this. I don’t want to have to say it again.
‘But do you know what the funny thing is?’ I say. My voice is low, practically a whisper. ‘I could have fucked him. I almost did. Because he was here, and you weren’t. Do you get that, Hale? You. Weren’t. Here. And as far as I’m concerned that gives you precisely zero right to judge me for any shitty decisions I made in the last ten years. Christ knows I spend enough time judging them myself. You don’t get to chime in just when it suits you.’
By the time I finish, my jaw is sore from clenching it so tightly and my cheeks are wet with tears. I didn’t want to deal with this tonight, not with the limited time I might have left with Hale. The truth is, I didn’t want to deal with it ever, if I could help it.
But now I’m angry. Angry at him. Angry at myself. Angry at everything that led us to this point tonight. The silence between us dares one of us to make a move, but Hale’s not the only one who can be stubborn.
‘Carrie?’ he says at last, like he’s checking to see I’m still here.
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t, Hale,’ I say. ‘Not now. Just… don’t.’
‘I mean it.’
And then his arms surround me, pulling me close enough to him that I can feel his heartbeat in his chest, squeezing so tight that I think he’ll never let go.
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to –’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I want to. I was an ass. You’re right. Even if you had slept with Scanlon… I wasn’t here. I made my call. That’s why I came back.’
‘What do you mean?’
He smiles, and looks around at the trailer. ‘You really think I came back for this heap of junk?’ he asks. ‘Come on, Carrie. I could have got a lawyer to sort this out. You know it. I know it. Hell, I could have just handed off the keys to anyone else in this park and I wouldn’t have missed the it. It would have been worth it to just be rid of the whole thing.’
‘Then why?’ I ask. ‘Why, after so long?’
‘You mean, was it my dad? No. No, it wasn’t my dad. It wasn’t the tour. It wasn’t Merry. It wasn’t Scanlon or his friends, or me wanting to get one over on everyone who was still here. It wasn’t even Eden. It was you, Carrie. You were the reason I came back. I needed closure. I needed you to not be here, so I could cut ties with this town completely.’
‘But here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ he says. ‘And believe me, leaving you that night was still the hardest decision I ever made. I don’t plan on making it again.’
It should be enough for me – I know it should be – and yet it isn’t. That’s the thing about decisions: sometimes, they’re not just things you make. Sometimes, they’re things that are made to you, and you find yourself stuck in an impossible dilemma and with a decision of your own. You wind up at a fork in a road you didn’t even know you were on, and then what? Pick a side and hope for the best? Or stay in the middle of the highway, too paralysed to choose one or the other?
Hale made his decision, sure enough. I’m not sure I ever got around to make mine.
‘Come with me,’ he says. ‘I mean it. Come with me, back to New York.’
‘You’re going back?’
He nods. ‘I have to.’
‘Right now?’
‘I just got in a fistfight in a parking lot, Carrie. If anyone there had a phone on them, I’ll be on TMZ within the hour. Someone at the label is going to have to run some damage control.’
‘Meredith?’
‘No. I told you, she blew it.’ Is that a flicker of doubt I see in his eyes, though? If it wasn’t for me, would it be Meredith he ran back to – Meredith the bitch, Meredith who was so good at her awful job as to be forgivable no matter what? Then again, I think, if it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Maybe she is the right call now.
I don’t know. All of this… I don’t understand it. It isn’t my world.
He takes my hand in his, his strong fingers ever-so-gentle with me, and I see the deep red grooves the fight has cut into the knuckles. This is what Eden does to him, I think. He was right then, and he’s right now. He can’t stay here. He was made for New York, for the life he carved out for himself. To have him stick around would be like locking a tiger in a cage too small for him – cruel and dangerous.
I can’t ask him to stay… but I could go with him, for a little while. I could do that. This doesn’t have to end now, here. It doesn’t. It can’t.
‘I don’t…’ I say, but I stop myself. ‘I’d have to check with Mom and Pete, see if they could cover the Diner without me for a week or so. I mean, I can probably….’
He’s shaking his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not for a week. A week could never be enough. I want this, Carrie. I want what we should have had ten years ago. We’ve waited too damn long.’
‘Hale…’
‘Come back to New York with me,’ he says. ‘For good. Move in with me. Get out of here at last. Start living your own life.’
‘Hale, please.’
‘The two of us, together. You and me. We could really do this. We could do this, Carrie. What do you say?’
What can I say? How could I possibly even begin to explain to him all the thoughts that are racing through my mind right now? I can barely pull them into order for myself, let alone put them in a way I think he’ll be able to understand.
Because that’s the problem. I know what my answer is – the only answer I could possibly give; the only right answer, no matter how much it hurts.
It’s the same answer I gave ten years ago.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, but no. I can’t.’