All that I was washes away, leaving me exposed and new. I’ve been her for so long that I don’t know how to be anyone else. I don’t know if I want to be anyone else. That realization scares me, and I fall to my knees. In trying to understand Faith, I followed the steps she should have taken.
There was only one I got hung up on: trusting a higher power. Religion has always been hard for me to wrap my head around. I guess I believe there’s a God, but I don’t pretend to understand him. We certainly don’t have much of a relationship, but being here, reborn in the cold, wet night, his name is on my lips.
“Why?” The wind catches my question and carries it to Heaven. “Why do you tempt and take? Why do you fragment us with loss?”
I’m not really seeking answers. Now what I want is the solution. I want to understand how to make myself whole, just as I want to understand how I’ll face tomorrow when it finally comes.
I raise my arms to the sky as if I can call the answers down to me. Instead a pair of strong, familiar arms wrap around my waist and lift me off the ground. My body betrays me, feeling comfort when I want to feel hate.
“Let me go!” I scream, kicking against his hold on me.
But Jude doesn’t listen as he carries me back into the house. I spot Amie waiting by the front door. She doesn’t say a word when he carries me to my bedroom.
“Put me down.” I struggle against his hold, smacking and slapping him wildly. Finally, he lowers me to my feet and steps back.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, doing my best to ignore that I’m drenched and half naked.
“Amie called me,” he says in a low voice.
Traitor. I cross my arms to hide the first trembling chills as they quiver through me.
Jude shakes his head as he studies me. “You’re soaking wet.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
But he doesn’t stay to argue with me. He returns a moment later with a towel. I snatch it from him before he has the audacity to try to dry me himself.
“You can go now.” I dismiss him. Amie is worried about me.
“Amie is worried about you, and so am I,” he says, “I saw the bottle.”
“Newsflash,” I sneer at him. “I’m not the one with the addiction. If I want to have a drink, there’s no issue.”
But he’s not buying what I’m selling. “If that’s true, then why haven’t you? It’s not about how much you drink; it’s about how it affects your life.”
“Amie might have invited you here for a lecture, but I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, and I know he’s searching for the same answers that I am. In another life, I might have been stupid enough to hope we could find them together. “I just don’t want to see you wind up...”
“I’m not her,” I cut him off. “Don’t ever insinuate that I’m her.”
It’s a fucked up thing to say considering, but the truth is I never have been her. I carried her sins when she could not, but I chose the difficult path. The one that led straight uphill, and I climbed it. I chose Max. I chose hard instead of easy. I would choose all these things again.
“I know that,” Jude is gentle. “I might have a million questions for you, but I don’t doubt who you are. I know your heart, even if I thought it had a different name.”
“Did you want me to be her?” I spit the question at him. He must have realized early on that I wasn’t, so why had he stuck around? “Why did you stay once you realized?”
“I didn’t,” he admits, “I just couldn’t stay away from you. I kept running into you.”
“You kept going to the meetings,” I remind him.
“I was drawn to them, to you. At first I told myself that I needed to know what happened to her. I debated telling you that I’d known her.”
“Why didn’t you?” I tighten the towel around me like a comfort blanket.
“Because you sang the wrong words to my song, and you love Chinese food, and you’re an amazing mother. Believe me, I know you aren’t her. I would never want you to be. I only want you, Sunshine.”
“You can’t possibly,” I shake my head. “You think you know me, but Max isn’t even my son.” Everything he believes drew him to me is a lie. This perfect man that’s stolen so many pieces of my heart is a lie as well.
There are some things you can never come back from. Our foundation was built on sinking sand, and everything around us is crumbling.
“Don’t,” he says softly, and I know he can see it in my eyes. “We don’t have to give up.”
Don’t we? Maybe it’s what I want to hear. Tomorrow hasn’t come yet. I haven’t had to face what it will bring, or what the truth looks like in the harsh light of day, so tonight I drop the towel. My hand hooks behind me and unfastens my bra. I let it fall away, along with the knowledge that tonight has brought.
Tomorrow, I’ll pick them both up off the floor.
Tonight, I bare myself to Jude. When I press my body against his, he resists, but I tangle my fingers in his hair and draw his lips to mine.
“Show me.” The proposition falls from my lips.