Did you notice how I slipped some time? It’s for the better. Honestly. Because if you had been there during my recovery and those days following the surgery when I didn’t know the extent of my injuries and thought my career was over, you would have probably slapped me. And then I would have screamed because that would have hurt, given the whole broken neck thing.
Anyway, I skipped time because today is what matters. Well, later. I’ll get there. I have some explaining to do though.
If you want to be the best in freestyle, you can’t look at the danger of the sport. You have to live in the moment. The reality of it? It’s not a question of if you’re going to get hurt, it’s when and how bad. It comes with the territory.
Freestyle riders know pain. We know injuries and recovery time. We know what it’s like for time to slow down and face the facts that we’re not invincible. We can die and sometimes, it happens.
I’m clearly not because look at me, I’m sitting on a fucking couch. Do I look dead to you?
Take a good look. Arm in a sling, game controller in hand, no shirt, fading bruises and a neck brace holding my head still. Sure, I’m alive, but in other ways, something inside me isn’t.
I’m fucked up. Remember when I thought it’d be a good idea to pull a triple in Madrid?
Oh, wait, I never thought it was a good idea. I just fucking did it because I wasn’t thinking clearly.
And now look at me. Broken neck and collarbone and laid up for the next three months.
With all this time on my hands, I think a lot about what Jaime said to me before the accident. I remember that, but not the accident or the entire day leading up to it.
Why is that? Why did my brain choose that memory to hold onto?
Do you remember the letter she wrote me?
I do. It’s in my hand. Did you think I threw it away?
Couldn’t. Should have but. . . didn’t.
I read it again. You should too.
Do you see it? Do you see the dirt on the edges? That’s when I left it at her grave, hoping to leave that part of my life in the dirt where it belonged.
Do you see the blood? That’s where I put my hand through a wall trying to ease the frustration after reading it for the first time.
So I read it once more and focus on a line. “I’m sick of losing you to the lies I let you believe.”
She could have told me a thousand lies and I believed them, but one matters.
One destroys.
One forgives.
Fuck you, Rhya. I was worth the truth.
Crumbling up the letter, I hand it to Reece who sits next to me, beer in hand. “What’s this?”
“Her excuse.”
He nods, knowing.
I haven’t talked to Reece since the fight with Jaime. Since he found out about Rhya and Jaime. But then again, maybe he already knew.
It’s hard to say.
“I know about Rhya and Jaime. . . .” Reece says, tucking the note into his pocket and then takes a drink of his beer, casually relaxing on the couch. “And it wasn’t right what he did because she was thirteen, regardless.”
“I know,” I mumble, my gaze on the television.
I’ve had a lot of time to think since the accident. Three weeks is plenty of time to process what Jaime said to me, my reaction, Scarlet. . . all of it, and I came to one conclusion. Rhya was a pathological liar, and I think I’m okay with not knowing. She lied so much she didn’t know the truth anymore. Her ability to decipher right from wrong wasn’t there.
Everything she did, it was after the fact that she realized her consequences.
“I’m sorry, man. That’s all I can say because I don’t even know. . . .” He pauses and shakes his head, his words breaking. “It fucking sucks what she did, but it’s you and me and everyone else who tried to save her that I feel bad for. She did what she did, and there’s nothing I, or you can do to change it. She wasn’t stable. She was mentally sick, but I never saw it. I didn’t want to. I was too caught up in my own life. But you. . . ” His words break again. “You loved her like the brother I should have been. You loved her in the way I couldn’t, and I thank you for that. You’re the only reason she lived as long as she did.”
Reece is right on so many levels. You can’t blame yourself when someone takes their own life. I can’t blame myself for what Rhya did any more than I could have forced her to stay clean. It just wasn’t going to happen.
I drop the controller in my hand, taking in a deep breath. “I don’t blame myself for her killing herself anymore. I did. For longer than I needed to, and I almost think I needed to hear Jaime say those things to me. I wasn’t there that night. I’ll never know the truth, and I’m fine with that.”
Bringing the beer to his lips, Reece nods outside to the pool where Scarlet’s outside with Willa, Ricky, Berlin, and a handful of others I don’t know. “You talk to her yet?”
I shake my head, picking up the controller again and unpausing the game.
I’ve been home for a few days now. I still haven’t talked to Scarlet much, it’s formal in a sense. Strictly professional.
I fuckin’ hate it. More than she’ll ever know.
Reece eventually goes back outside, joining the rest of the group. They’re eating dinner and here I am, feeling sorry for myself and refusing to go outside.
It’s not like I can’t walk. I can. The surgery to repair my broken neck worked and the temporary paralysis was relieved. What wasn’t was my head. My confusion. My ability to talk to Scarlet and tell her I’m sorry for reacting the way I did.
You’d think in those three weeks I was recovering from the neck surgery in the hospital in Madrid and she never left my side, I would have. The amount of time you have to think in the hospital and when you’re lying around is almost unbearable. I’ve never wanted out of my head so badly.
So for now, I sit here and watch Scarlet as she sits on the patio outside with my family, still by my side in a sense, waiting for me to talk to her.
She didn’t tell me she knew who I was and that we had a previous connection. Yes, that pissed me off. But here’s the thing, was it really that big of a deal?
No. It wasn’t. Being close to dying kind of puts it all into perspective.
Tiller comes into the house, beer in hand when Reece leaves and nods to Scarlet outside. “You better talk to her today, or I’m going to take that controller from you and hide it.”
I glare. I don’t like being told what to do. “I will talk to her eventually.”
Notice how I said eventually?
He does too. “Don’t be a dick.”
He’s certainly one to talk, isn’t he?
Camden follows him inside. His arm cast-free now and sits next to me, picking up the other remote. We’ve spent hours playing video games together. I’ve confided in a ten-year-old entirely too much. “Is it my turn yet?”
I hand him the other controller. “Yeah.”
You’re probably wondering what happened to the lawsuit his dad filed against us?
Dropped when I broke my neck. Crazy huh? I thought so too. Apparently with the convincing of Camden and the all-out fit he threw the night he broke his arm, his dad realized what having us around was doing for his kid. I wouldn’t go as far to say I’d ever be friends with Jerad, but he’s at least tolerable now.
As Camden and I play video games, our usual nightly routine, my eyes keep drifting back to Scarlet and what I need to say to her. Just like I deserved the truth from Rhya, Scarlet deserves the truth, too.
Camden notices Scarlet when she stands and leaves the table outside, her keys in hand, but she doesn’t come inside. “Do you like her?”
“Yeah,” I tell him truthfully. No sense in lying to a child. “But I fucked up.”
He stares at me, then back to the TV and our game. “Did you steal her gum?”
Now it’s my turn to stare. Her gum? What is he. . . ? Right. “Worse. Her heart.”
He has to think about that one. “How’d you steal her heart? It’s in her chest.”
I laugh and point to the screen. “Dude, focus. I’m kickin’ your ass at this game.”
Truth is, I did steal her heart, but she stole mine too. And I can’t for the life of me decide what’s worse.