CHAPTER 26
Cory
It isn’t the worst thing I could have imagined. We’ve walked most of the park hand in hand in relative silence. The comfortable kind. The kind that doesn’t require words to break the awkwardness, because nothing has been awkward with Sam. But the best part is that somewhere over the past half hour, the park ceased its relentless taunts and whispers of what might have been if only I’d made better decisions back then.
If only.
Isn’t that what we all ask ourselves at one time or another? Why we couldn’t have been better, smarter, more in control of our reckless emotions or—in my case—more in touch with reality than that awful night had allowed? That question has slithered through my mind more often than not, presenting itself in the form of worst case scenarios and endless regret. It hits onstage. Offstage. In the middle of a grocery market checkout line. While replacing the gas cap after filling up my car. Asleep. Awake. In the heavy fog of the minutes in between. If I had to guess, the question of if only has never left my mind. Ten years is a long time to live without answers.
“So are you ever going to tell me what happened?”
Sam’s voice slashes my wrist, sputtering my pulse down to nothing.
“What happened when?”
She looks over at me and stops walking, but she doesn’t let go of my hand. Her brows push together. “Why do you look so pale? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I was just wondering what happened to make your brother so angry with you.”
She takes a step and I take a breath. She’s asking about my brother, and I’m all sorts of paranoid. I know she can’t read minds, but the accusations feel stamped on my forehead for the whole world to read them. I try a laugh but it comes out tight.
“I don’t mind telling you.” It’s a lie. I do mind telling her the whole story. She’ll run if she knows. So I look up at the sky, at the cotton ball clouds that mark the best of a Southern summer day, and decide which parts are safe. You don’t see clouds like this in Los Angeles. You see smog. Miles and miles of it. The city’s way of one-upping God where nature is concerned. I finally think I have it.
“My brother hasn’t been happy with me in a long time.” No need to bring up specific details.
“Why not?” Sam lowers herself to a picnic table under a large oak tree and sits down. I slide across from her. The weather is beautiful. The conversation has my insides twisting into ugly knots.
“Because of his career, mostly. I did something to embarrass him just as he was entering police academy. Got in a little trouble, and he had to bail me out.” He had to cover for me, actually, but no way I’m telling her why.
“What did you do?”
My stomach drops. I want to tell her, I do. I just…can’t. Sam is the first girl I’ve met who likes me for me. I can’t bring myself to throw that away on something I can’t undo anyway. How is that fair? Everyone deserves some happiness, right? Everyone deserves to be known by someone who really cares.
It occurs to me that by lying, I’m not letting her know me at all.
But still.
“I stole something. He took care of it for me.”
Inwardly I cringe. I stole something alright. Just not in the way she thinks.
“You were a kid. I understand being embarrassed, but he’ll get over it eventually.
“Maybe, but I’m not so sure. There’s also the fact that he hates my career. And that isn’t going away anytime soon.”
“So he’s the jealous type?”
“Jealous. Resentful. A little of both, I suppose. Some people don’t handle the success of others well. My brother has always been one of them. He would never admit it out loud, but I think he was hoping I’d fail.”
Sam stares at me, head tilted, processing everything I’ve just said. A leaf falls onto the table, and she picks it up. “Maybe he’ll come around. Time has a way of working things out.”
I can’t stop the bitter laugh that escapes. “That would take a freaking miracle. And we all know how likely that is to happen.”
She frowns. “You don’t believe in miracles?’
I stare at the leaf in her hand. “They don’t believe in me.”
Reality wraps me in a dark cocoon at the truth of that statement. There was a time I might have believed…a time I desperately wanted to. The clock stopped on faith almost exactly ten years ago. Give it two more weeks, and I’ll be celebrating the darkest kind of anniversary.
Sam peels away one side of the leaf and hasn’t noticed my change in mood. “Seriously, Cory. With the life you’ve lived, you don’t believe in miracles? You’re walking proof to the rest of us that they exist.”
I stand up, needing space between me, Sam, and this conversation. “Hard work and persistence. That’s all it is.”
I remember going to church. I remember that long walk up the aisle at age fifteen, terrified the pastor would laugh at me—a punk kid who walked in with an attitude that he didn’t need God or anyone else. I remember that feeling right after—that blissed-out joy and the attitude that all the crappiness about my life had just been redeemed. I remember the high that followed—the daily prayer and Bible readings and newfound faith that did, in fact, have me fully believing in miracles.
And I remember the water.
I remember the night that fresh faith dissolved on the waves.
I remember the fear.
I remember the panic.
I remember all of it.
Sam is behind me. Her scent drifts with the breeze, but I don’t turn around. When did I get so perceptive? When did I get so bitter?
“Does that change your opinion of me? That I’m not a believer?”
“No.” She’s so sincere, so honest it hurts in the center of my chest. “You just need a reason to change your mind.”
I stare straight ahead at the tree in front of me, at the bark that curls outward like pineapple leaves wanting to be pulled off. I flick one until it falls to the ground. “And if I don’t want a reason? If this is the way I am forever?”
Her fingers touch the small of my back. Her light touch heats my skin when her palm comes to rest there. “Then you’re the same guy I’ve known since we met. And as it turns out, I really like him.”
I hold my breath.
Take a second to decide.
And exhale.
There comes a time in life when you have two choices: either take a step back and let go a bit, or move forward into the unknown and see where things take you. Stepping back is easy, it’s safe, a cocoon of warm and routine. Hurt can’t overtake you when you raise a white flag of surrender. Conversely, moving forward is scary, everything is a question, you might face rejection. You might lose everything.
I turn to face her. I hate to lose.
But not knowing is worse.
Her hand hasn’t left me. Only now it’s touching my stomach.
All my senses shut off except in that one spot. Acting is much easier when you’re not thinking, so I reach for that hand and pull her toward me until we’re thigh to thigh, waist to waist, chest to chest. My fingertips find the back of her earlobes, and I lean forward and press my mouth lightly to hers. Timid at first, nervous—both foreign sensations, neither of which I’ve been since a seventh grade school dance with a girl whose name escapes me. Then again, right now everything escapes me but Sam. She tastes like honeysuckle and mint, summer and spring, fire and ice and I’m getting burned.
I shiver when her mouth opens. My teeth nip at her bottom lip, her hand fists the back of my hair, and I go for more. Not as soft, not as careful, I guess we’ve both decided that’s a waste of time. My hands find the side of her face, her neck, her hair. Tongues touch, teeth bump gently, breath mingles and neither of us stop. I could do this all day, all night, all year, all forever. So I do. Forever lasts another minute until I feel Sam pull back a fraction. I look at her to ask a question—permission, I think—she smiles, so I take it as a yes and move back in. It’s somehow better this time, a swirl of doubt and certainty and feelings that have my need doubling. I need her. I want her. She’s everything I am and everything I’m not, and I’m finding all my missing pieces in the outline of her mouth. I kiss her harder, longer, faster…until I feel her slow us down. I don’t want to slow down, but I let her take the lead until we’re no longer kissing. I press my forehead against hers, listening to her breathe, wondering if we’re all right, hoping I haven’t crossed a line I had no business approaching.
“Was that okay?”
I’m standing on the corner of a skyscraper, and I’m hoping she doesn’t push me off.
She stays silent, still.
Then her head moves in a silent answer. I feel her lips on my cheek, on my chin, on my mouth again. Her kiss is soft, not as urgent this time, but when I respond it heals a place in my heart I didn’t know was cracked.
Sam gives the best answers.
“What was that for?” I ask when we’re forehead to forehead once again. I count the leaves next to my feet and wait for her to speak.
“For being you. And for taking me with you today. I’m not sure what’s happened in your past, but something tells me your life is not as easy as people think. Thank you for bringing me into part of it.”
My hands tighten around her waist. I don’t say that if I could bring her into all of it, my past and my future, I would.
She seems to sense my struggle and pushes off me to lighten the moment. “Let’s go swing.”
The swing sets are right beside us. “Swing? Like four year olds? Let’s not.” I broke my arm falling off a swing in grade school. I still remember the pop.
“Oh come on. Don’t you ever get the urge to be a kid again?”
“Never.” I don’t. My childhood memories aren’t worth revisiting.
She just looks at me, her wavy hair flowing in ripples over her shoulder. The wind catches a strand and it falls over her eye. “Fine. Then let’s feed the ducks.”
As much as I hate the idea of falling, this is worse.
“Let’s swing.”
She tucks her hair behind an ear starts walking. “Nope, out of the mood. Plus I have quarters and I like the water better anyway. Let’s feed the ducks.”
I would break my arm again if I could. I would break all my fingers and maybe even a foot for the chance to shut my mouth and agree to swing. But it’s too late. And I’m following her to the water with sweat breaking out on the back of my neck and eyesight that’s getting blurry from darting back and forth looking for an escape.
We’re at the food machine.
She’s feeding it quarters.
She’s unloading a pile of kibble into a hand that I don’t remember cupping in front of her.
And she turns.
And we’re at the water.
And there’s no escape.
Why would I expect anything else?
There’s never an escape for me.
* * *
The earth is damp underneath us from overspray shooting from the center fountain. Fading sunlight paints an orange stripe across the glistening surface of the water, giving it an almost ethereal glow. We’re sitting side by side on the bank, and I glance over at Sam. Her face is washed with fading sunlight, her hair shining in the late-afternoon tug of war between the sun and moon. For the hundredth time today, my breath catches at the sight of her. She’s gorgeous. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. How I didn’t fully realize it the very first day is something I’ll never understand.
“Take your shoes off. I want to show you something.” She removes her sandals, first the right foot and then the left. Her pink toenails dot the army green grass like tiny sapphires. Still, I’m no longer a big nature lover.
“No, it’s muddy. I’m not taking my shoes off.”
She slaps my leg with a sandal. “There’s like, one spot of mud way over there.” She points to a patch eight feet away. “Come on, city boy, take your shoes off. Or have you already forgotten what’s it’s like to live in the south?”
I roll my eyes and pull at a black lace. It slips away easily, and one shoe comes off. The other follows, and I’m sitting here hugging my knees afraid of what she wants me to see.
“There. That didn’t hurt, did it?” Her voice is as patronizing as a kindergarten teacher. I glare down at her and decide to push back. Maybe she’ll punish me later.
“Yeah, it hurt. It hurt and now my feet are naked and what do you want?”
“I want you to drop them in the water. Don’t worry, it isn’t cold.” She lowers her own feet to demonstrate. Her toes barely graze the surface, which mean mine will go under the water. All my worst fears are two seconds away from catching up to me, but I fight not to show it. Swallowing hard, I copy her movements without commenting on all the times I’ve done this before. Memories assault the front, back, and sides of my brain, but I do my best to smile. I’ve never worked so hard to maintain a nonchalant front.
“Wow, the water’s almost hot.” Memories assault me so much I have to remember to breathe. In and out, in and out, count to three, count to three.
Five minutes. I’ll give it five minutes, and then we’re leaving.
“Now watch this,” she says, tossing out a few crumbs of food. As they settle on the surface, she reaches for my hand and pulls it to her lap. I hold on tight, a life preserver, a security blanket. Two dozen Mallards slowly float toward us. It’s all too familiar, and I need to leave. I need to leave now. But if I run, she’ll start to ask questions. If she starts to ask questions, I’ll give her answers. And then she’ll know. I’m an entertainer, but no performance has ever required such a false display of confidence as this one.
“What are they doing?” The water. The waves. The ducks. The girl. If we don’t leave, I might not make it.
“They always do this. Most ducks keep their distance for the most part, but not these. They never have. At this pond, they almost act like pets.” She nudges my arm, and I toss out a few crumbs. I don’t want to. God, I don’t want to. But I don’t have a choice. Six ducks surround me. My heart is a sledgehammer chipping away at the calm I’m trying to fake. My hands are newspaper shaking in the wind.
Sam’s eyes are on me. I feel her stare, but I stay focused on the ducks.
“Cory, they won’t bite.”
“Don’t be so sure.” I pull my feet away, not wanting them to touch me.
“Trust me, I’ve been doing this for years.” She throws out more food, twirling her toes in the water as ducks peck for another piece. Dusting off her hands, she reaches for my hand again, then stares for a long moment as though lost in thought.
“When I was in high school, a girl drowned in this pond. I didn’t know her very well—she was in the class above me, was a bit of a loner, and kept to herself—but we were in P.E. together and I talked to her a few times. We held a vigil for her after she died; built a bit of a shrine right here on the bank. Flowers, cards, pictures. For a while after, it was a hard place to visit. Now, though, it’s one of my favorite places in the world.
Oh god.
“They never discovered what happened to her.” She says this as an afterthought. She can’t know that my own personal thoughts have just body slammed into each other and are currently tumbling in an ugly, bloody mash-up.
I stare at my hands, at the invisible fragments of my life that just turned to powder all around me.
“Cory, what’s wrong? You look like you’re going to faint.”
But I barely hear her. I’m underwater where words are a hollow mass of nothingness and no longer make sense.