The Lie

“He’ll be all right,” Brigs says as he takes out his cigar. I promptly toss him the Zippo and he lights it, taking in a long draw. “Sit,” he orders out of the corner of his mouth.

I get down on the plaid blanket he’s laid out and stare out at the sea, Winter now playing in the waves and throwing seaweed up into the air. The sun is low behind us and the breeze is growing cooler, the air smelling like brine and salt. I breathe in deep, trying to get some clarity.

I hate that our past has the ability to almost bring me to my knees and I hate how long it takes for me to shake off the guilt. My therapist used to tell me that I wanted to hang onto the feeling because I felt I deserved it and after a while it just became second nature.

Brigs puffs on the cigar in silence and then passes it to me. I hesitate for a moment before taking it, deciding it would probably help me relax. So will the Shiraz that Brigs is opening and pouring into two plastic cups.

“I can tell you don’t want to talk about it,” Brigs says gently, placing a cup beside me. “But…I just want you to know that you shouldn’t hide anything from me. Don’t think you have to. Don’t think I won’t understand.”

“I know,” I tell him with a sigh before I bring the cigar to my mouth, holding the smoke on my tongue for a moment before letting it drift out of my lips.

“Tell me about your time in France,” he says simply.

I stare at him incredulously, passing the cigar back. “You mean over the last four years.”

He takes off his shades and tucks them into his jacket pocket. “Yeah,” he says, his eyes searching mine. “Before you came here.”

I shake my head and quickly slug back some of the red wine. “You don’t want to know. It’s not a happy story.”

“But it’s your story. I want to know, Natasha. And I’ll tell you mine.”

I swallow down more of the wine, not sure if I want to hear his either. Then again, it’s Brigs and he’s laying his heart bare for me. How can I not take him for everything?

When I don’t say anything, he goes on. “After they died, we had a funeral of course. I saw people I hadn’t seen in years. It was beautiful, really, the ceremony. Obviously it’s something you never appreciate at the time. How can you? But looking back now, it really did Hamish and Miranda justice. It’s taken me years, though, to be able to reflect on it with just sadness and nothing more, mind you.” He sighs deeply. “Anyway, I, uh…well. I lost myself. Completely. And I still don’t know how I’m not down on my kitchen floor, absorbing in the enormity of it all, you know? I really didn’t think I’d get out of it. It still surprises me that I’m here.”

He chews on his lip for a moment, his eyes pained before taking another drag of the cigar. “I tried to kill myself, you know.”

My heart slams against my chest, aching. “What?” I ask in quiet disbelief.

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “I guess I should say it was a half-hearted attempt. The doctors gave me pills to sleep. I took a lot. I knew what I was doing too. I woke up in a pile of vomit, halfway to the bathroom. And you know what I felt? Relief at first, that it didn’t work, that I was alive. But then the fucking pain…it comes at you so hard. And that was the very thing I was trying to escape.” He exhales. “I never tried to do it again but…I often think about it. If I had succeeded.”

“I am so, so sorry,” I cry out softly, putting my hand on his. My soul weeps for him, the guilt overpowering me once again.

He looks at me with hard eyes. “Don’t be sorry, Natasha. They died. And that’s independent of you. It’s independent of us. I’m learning how to separate the two.”

He makes it sound so easy but from his strained brow, I know it’s anything but.

“But,” he goes on, “I couldn’t quite pull myself out of it right away. I lost my job at the university. I lost most of my friends. The suicide didn’t work but in some ways I was still trying to make myself as dead as possible. I barely ate. Barely slept. I was barely anything. You wouldn’t have recognized me. I was just…a ghost.”

I’m staring at him open-mouthed, reeling for him. Reeling for me. The wounds are too fresh and new. “So was I.”

“So tell me,” he says, passing me back the cigar. He looks me over, like a puzzle he’s trying to piece together. “How did you get on after?”

I turn the cigar over in my hands, taking in a deep breath. I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it but if I can’t be ready with Brigs, now, I’ll never be ready. “I think…it’s hard to talk about it. Not because I’m afraid, or it’s too painful, even though it is painful and I am afraid. It’s just that, I had two things competing for my sorrow. I had the guilt of their deaths…”

“I wish I never said those things to you,” he quickly says, voice choked. “There’s not a day I don’t regret it, putting the blame on you. I was…”

“You were in shock and you were in pain.”