The two blue lines, and my stomach rolled again. I sank to my knees on her perfectly white tiled floor, leaning over the toilet. She rubbed my upper back. “Shh,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”
I sat on the floor and watched as she stuffed the test deep inside the box of Skittles already in her trash can. “Don’t worry,” she said, her mouth twisted into half a smile, “my mom had me when she was eighteen, too.”
I shouldn’t have let her talk me into taking the test right then, in her bathroom, with her standing over me. She shouldn’t have been first. Not before Tyler.
“I have to go,” I said. She didn’t stop me as I stumbled out of her room, out of her house, down to the river, where I sat and stared at the rushing water and cried, because I knew no one else could hear me. I called for Tyler to meet me there, and I made myself stop crying before I told him.
Two days later, and I see Tyler from the top of the Ferris wheel, and I think for just a moment that I have everything.
Corinne dared me to climb on the outside of the cart, and I wanted to do it. I wanted to know it was as easy as letting go, and say no. I wanted to feel the rush, the power, the hope—everything my life could be.
But then I felt her breath in my ear: Jump, she said, and in that moment, I was scared of what Corinne might do. How dark she really was, deep inside. My life was just part of the game for her. A piece to move, to see how far I could bend. How much she must’ve hated me, hated every one of us, underneath it all.
I was scared that she would push me, that Bailey would never tell, that everyone would think I wanted to die when I wanted nothing more than to live in that moment. For Tyler below, and for the life we might have, all the possibilities stretching before me, existing all at once.
But then I’m thrown off balance, the world skews sideways, the sting of the fist on my face.
Corinne comes running to bear witness to the destruction.
A girl eating ice cream watches on, a memory that never dies for her.
My arm goes instinctively to my stomach as I fall to the dirt, because I’ve just understood how fragile everything is, how paralyzingly temporary we all are, and that something is beginning for me. Something worth holding on to.
* * *
I SPENT THE REST of the afternoon after Laura’s shower down by the river again, until it turned dark. Until I knew Daniel would be gone. Until the house was empty and the walls were wet and sticky, the paint fumes suffocating.
I ignored Daniel’s calls, instead texting him a brief I’m home.
Coming here? he texted back.
No. Going to sleep, I wrote.
But I didn’t sleep. I didn’t do anything.
I let myself have this one night to feel sorry for myself. Just one night. To mourn for Corinne and my mother, for Daniel and my father, for me and for Tyler and for all the lost things.
Tomorrow I’d pick myself up. Tomorrow there would be no more crying. Tomorrow I’d remember that I had kept going.
The Day Before
DAY 5
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.
I was rocking on the couch with the television on in front of me and a fresh cup of coffee in my hands, wearing yesterday’s clothes, the fabric stiff and accusing against my skin.
The alarm clock sounded in the bedroom, and I could choreograph the next few moments: He’d hit snooze twice, then curse repeatedly as he raced to the shower, throw on some clothes, pull a hat down over his still-wet hair, fill his travel mug with yesterday’s reheated coffee.
I sat on the sofa, legs folded underneath me, sipping my fresh coffee from his ECC mug.
Instead, Tyler came straight out of the bedroom, like he’d heard the television, even though I had it only one notch off silent. He was standing in a pair of black boxers, his blue eyes completely awake. I took in his tanned chest and stomach. He’d put on a little weight since the last time I’d been home, but you didn’t notice in clothes. I was the only person who could map the changes over the span of the decade—my hands tracing over every contour, like muscle memory—just as he could with me.
I made myself focus on the screen, and I gestured my mug toward it. “Just catching up on the news,” I said, watching the reporter’s mouth move. She was standing in front of a poster of Annaleise Carter, outlining the facts once more: last seen by her brother, walking into the woods. Now entering the second day of searching, including helicopters. No sign of her. Nothing ruled out. Nothing new.
“I thought maybe you left,” Tyler said. He was almost at the couch.
I kept my eyes glued to the screen. “I need a ride home. I made coffee,” I said. “Fresh. In the kitchen.”
“Couldn’t sleep?” His voice drifted through the apartment as he opened a cabinet. There wasn’t much to it—this living room, his bedroom, and the kitchen with the island in the middle. His laptop was closed on the coffee table.
“Not really,” I said. Which wasn’t entirely true. I’d fallen into a deep and peaceful sleep almost immediately—the best since I’d been back. It was the noise from people leaving the bar at closing time that jerked me awake, and I couldn’t find the way back to where I’d been, only Tyler could do that, talking me out of my own head, letting me forget myself. I’d spent the last several hours feeling sick to my stomach.
He picked up the blanket crumpled on the seat beside me and hung it over the armrest, where it had been last night. He sat beside me, a little too close—mug in hand, his right arm behind me, his fingers moving absently in my hair. I felt the tension releasing, my body uncoiling itself. I closed my eyes for a second, listening to Tyler sip his coffee.
This. Us. There’s a comfort to it. Something too easy to get lost inside for a weekend.
My phone rang on the table and I grabbed it, expecting Daniel, and felt the blood drain from my face when I saw Everett’s name on the display. I set my mug down and answered. “Let me call you right back,” I said before I could register the sound of his voice. “Ten minutes.”
“I’m on my way in to the office,” he said. “I’ll try you again at lunch.”
“Okay. Later, then.” I hung up and leaned forward on the couch, my head in my hands.
Tyler stood. “I have to get ready for work,” he said. “I’ll drop you on the way.” He headed for the bathroom, paused at the bedroom entrance. “Just do me one favor: Don’t call him the second I step into the shower.”
I narrowed my eyes at his back. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Right.”
“Don’t be like this,” I said. “Don’t—”
He spun around, one hand on the doorjamb, the other gesturing toward me. “You’re asking me not to be like this?”
“I was upset!” I said.
“I know, I was here.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He glared at me from the doorway to his bedroom. I focused on the reporter’s mouth once more. “I don’t want to fight with you,” I said.
“No, I know exactly what you want me for.”
Sharp and cutting, but nothing compared to the look on his face. Everything right about the night before, overexposed in the daylight and undeniably wrong.
“I’m sorry. But what do you want from me?”
His eyes grew wider, if possible. “You’re not serious,” he said. He shook his head, ran a hand down his face. “What exactly are you sorry for, Nic? I’m just curious. For this, right now? For last year? The one before that? Or for leaving the first time without saying a goddamn word?”
I stood, my limbs shaking with adrenaline. “Oh, don’t do this now. Don’t bring this up now.”
This was our unspoken agreement. We didn’t discuss it. Couldn’t look back and couldn’t look forward.