“Why did you come back?” I ask as we stare out at the gleam of moonlight on the lake.
We’re standing in the damp sand, underneath a gnarled, old oak.
“I don’t know,” he says, casting his gaze down for a moment. “Victor found out somehow. Probably, I called him drunk. I guess he called my agent. Roy had no idea about what happened. We’re cool enough, but not bros.” I smile at that. “Roy came over. To my place.” He inhales. Lets the breath out. “I don’t know. I guess he didn’t find me well. Somehow he and Victor hatched this plan for me to come stay with my grandmother.”
Gabe laughs. “One day Victor was just there, like at my door, wearing muddy hunting boots and some old camo hat. He poured out all the liquor, badgered me onto the fucking plane.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I smile. “That doesn’t sound too much like Victor. I think that bossiness sounds more like you.”
He laughs. “Like me, my ass. Victor is a hen pecker. He thinks everybody is his fucking student. ‘Dry out, Gabe. You have to dry out or your grandmother will worry.’” He makes a snicker sound. “When I got here, I ordered a bunch of shit and had it shipped to Fendall, but I didn’t drink it.”
“Really? That’s impressive. No rehab or anything?”
He shrugs. “It was more of a controlled thing.”
What he means, I think, is that he made the choice to drink. “I do that sometimes with pie. It’s my most successful vice,” I smile. “Of course, my vice is less likely to kill me than yours is.”
“I’m calling bullshit on that, doctor.” He smirks down at me. The wind makes strands of moss above us sway. I step a little closer to him, and Gabe wraps his arm around my back.
He holds me close for a few minutes as the wind brushes the water, making tiny squiggles on the moon’s reflection.
“I thought…I should stay away from you, Marley. Outside of the agreement,” he says quietly.
My throat tightens. “Why?”
“I don’t know if I can do something like this.” His voice sounds strangled, low and rough. “You said you can. But…I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not…there like you are. All that glass you saw that night? Those were bottles. I didn’t drink them, but I threw them at the wall.” His eyes on mine look like inky in the darkness. “I’m…not good. I need you too much.”
“I think that’s the point, though, isn’t it? I mean, it has to be. You need me, and I’m here. I hung the swing because I thought about you all day, Gabe. I heard you up last night and thought about you all day, wanting to help.”
“You feel like you need to be my friend.”
I shake my head. “It’s not just that.”
“What, then?”
I shake my head. “You’re scared.” I fold my hands around his, looking up into his tired face. “I think you’re scared to get involved with me again. And I don’t blame you, okay? I don’t blame you. After what happened to you recently…” I bring our hands up to my chest and kiss his wrist. My face is so hot, it’s making my eyes water. I feel like I might cry, but I can’t. I have to show him this could work. Because I want it to, I realize like a crashing wave. I really want it to.
“I’m just being logical,” he says quietly. “We tend to get our wires crossed, Marley. Get in tangles.”
“And that’s bad?” I let go of his hand and feel the sand shift under my shoes.
Gabe rubs at his forehead. “I don’t know.”
And I’m back there again, in Vegas. Gabe’s hurt, but he won’t let me near him. Even at his worst, at his most needy, he won’t let me close. He doesn’t really care about me. Not the way I love him.
I feel breathless as I wobble back. “Okay, then. Take some time.”
His head is bowed as he says, “Sorry.”
I’m sorry, too, but I can’t find the voice to say it. I rush to my bike and flee—my old recourse.
5
Gabe
After Marley leaves, I wander down the beach, which runs for miles under the red clay cliffs. Thick fog is rolling in over the water, cloaking the bluff and seeping between tree trunks. I look up at the old train tracks, and for a second, I want to climb up there and wander back home through the cemetery.
I think about my feet, though. About Marley’s hands bandaging them up. About her urging me to take care of myself. I think about the way she held my hand between hers, pressing it against her heart—and I can’t do something so foolish.
In the end, I walk back to the boardwalk, get my bike (‘the lock code is 1989,’ she texted just after she left), and pedal slowly up the hill, onto the winding sidewalk path, down Main Street, more deserted now at almost ten. I ride and ride, until I’ve pedaled down all the streets downtown. I ride past the spot where Marley fell and I left her my motorcycle pack. I ride up steep Rudolph Hill and look down on the town—as foggy as my mind feels; I can barely see the grain silos. Then back down, past our old high school, where I stop and stare at the brick building.
Fuck, I hated that place. Funny how I didn’t even know it at the time. I had no other benchmark. No comparison. And now I have so many. My hands squeeze the handlebars as I realize the last few weeks have been some of the best I’ve had in years. Since right after we married the first time, maybe.
I remember what I told her—how I’m head fucked right now, and not ready—and I think back on her reply.
“I think that’s the point, though, isn’t it? I mean, it has to be. You need me, and I’m here…”
I’m surprised to find a shimmer in my eyes, blurring the street lights. My throat aches, and my chest does, too. Because she’s right. Goddamn, Marley is right. There is no ready.
And I fucking hate what that means for me. That there’s no barrier to going home and knocking on her door and fucking claiming her. It didn’t work before, but so what? We’re not the same people we were. It might work out now. And if it didn’t, there’s been worse things, many worse things on this earth than trying hard at love and failing.
Fuck. But I won’t fail. I’m not going to fuck this up again.
I laugh, and it’s a choking kind of sound, because my throat is tight, but fucking hell, it’s still a laugh. As I start to pedal again, I see Geneva’s face. I see her biggest grin, the one she only gave for after-bedtime hugs or cookies. That little face that always said, “You’re a hero, Daddy. You’re the best person in the world.”
As I ride back toward Fendall, my eyes are wet because I realize there’s just one person who ever made me feel that way except my little girl, and that person is Marley.