Authors: Mila Gray
my shoulder.
I drop my dad home and then drive to Jessa’s house. Cars
are double-parked the whole way up the street, so I leave
the truck around the corner, parking in exactly the same
place I used to drop Jessa after our make-out sessions.
They seem so long ago now – like they happened decades
and not mere weeks ago.
The front door of her house is shut, but through the
window I can see crowds of people gathered in the living
room holding paper plates of food. I take a deep breath,
forcing myself to remember my dad’s words. He’s right. I
can’t walk away. I owe it to Riley. I owe it to Jessa. I owe it
to Riley and Jo’s unborn child to be there for it. I need to
tell Jessa to her face exactly what happened. I need to beg
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her forgiveness. And then maybe, if she can forgive me,
we can find a way through this together.
Before I make it to the door, though, it swings open
and someone walks out. I stop dead in my tracks. Jessa’s
dad is marching towards me, his face stony yet his eyes
blazing. He stops in front of me, barring my way, and the
first thing I think is,
He knows. He’s read the report.
‘Colonel,’ I say, saluting out of habit, and because I
don’t know what else to do or say. The last time we saw
each other I was yelling at him about what a shitty father
he was. Fuck. I start having second thoughts about com-
ing. What was I thinking?
‘I told you the last time you showed your face to get off
my property and not come back.’
‘I’m just here to pay my respects,’ I say quietly, keeping
my eyes on the ground.
‘I need you to leave,’ he says. ‘And to stay the hell
away from my daughter.’
I look up at him sharply.
‘The last thing she needs is you in her life. She’s just
lost her brother.’
I grit my teeth. Isn’t that exactly why she needs me?
‘I read the report,’ he says next. ‘Abandoning your
post?’
I stare at my shoes, trying to breathe calmly, though my
head is starting to whirl and the crackling of flames is
filling my ears. He knows. Of course he knows.
‘I’m writing you up for insubordination and dereliction
of duty,’ he says. ‘I should have done so a long time ago.’
I stay quiet, letting his words hit me square in the face.
It’s nothing less than I deserve.
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‘Because of you, my son is dead,’ he spits. ‘Are you
going to go in there and explain that to Jessa? That the
reason her brother is dead is because of you?’
I don’t answer, but I do look up at him.
He pulls a face, a sneer of disgust lifting his top lip. ‘I
didn’t think so. The best thing you can do right now is
walk away and stay away. For good, this time.’
He glares at me for several more seconds before finally
shaking his head and walking back inside, his shoulders
slumping. I watch him walk inside and shut the door
behind him. Unable to move, I watch him through the
window winding his way through the crowd.
Briefly, just briefly, I catch sight of Jessa standing with
her back to me, her blonde hair a lighthouse beam amid a
sea of black. The sight of her is enough to snatch the last
of my breath away. I clutch my side, forcing myself to
back away, because he’s right. I’m no good for her. I’m no
good for anyone.
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Jessa
Through the window I catch a flash of blue. Someone – a
friend of my father’s – is talking to me, but I walk away
mid-sentence, leaving them standing there, and cross to
the window to get a better look. My heart thumps hard in
my chest as I see that it’s Kit. He’s come! But then, with a
sinking feeling, I see him turning and walking away back
towards the street and all the parked cars.
I push past crowds of people standing in the doorway
talking in hushed whispers and rush into the hallway.
‘Are you OK?’
I spin around. Didi is standing in front of me.
‘What do you need?’ she asks me.
Didi is about the only person other than Kit’s dad who
I’ve been able to cope with being around since Riley died.
She doesn’t beat about the bush or cry in front of me. She
doesn’t pat my hand and speak in meaningless platitudes
about how it will all be OK and that time will heal all.
‘I just saw Kit,’ I tell her breathlessly.
Didi looks around the hallway.
‘No. Outside,’ I clarify.
Didi takes hold of my hands. ‘Go,’ she says. ‘You need
to talk to him.’
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I shake my head. ‘I can’t just go,’ I say, thinking of my
mom who’s currently sitting in the living room out of
her head on Valium surrounded by women offering her
glasses of water, tissues and pigs in blankets.
‘You guys need to talk,’ Didi says. She’s borne the
brunt of my five days of grief compounded with anguish
over Kit’s silence. Her theory is that he’s suffering from
PTSD, not, she claims, that that fully excuses him from
being an asshole.
When she sees me hesitating, she pushes me towards
the door and thrusts some keys into my hand. ‘Go,’ she
says again. ‘Take my car. I’ll cover for you.’
Kit’s truck is parked in his driveway. My heart is beating
so fast it feels as if it might explode out of my chest as I
walk up the path to the front door. When I pull out the
keys I hesitate for a minute, wondering if I’m doing the
right thing. What if he doesn’t want to see me? I mean,
I know already that he doesn’t want to see me. If he did,
he would have answered my calls. He would have hung
around after the funeral. He would have come to the
wake.
Well, screw him, I decide. It isn’t all about him. It isn’t
just about what he wants. I want to talk to him. I
need
to
talk to him.
It’s anger that propels me through the door, fury that
has started to bubble through my veins. I run up the
stairs and storm straight into the bedroom, words already
bursting on my tongue. But he’s not there. His jacket is
hanging over the back of the chair, though, and his gloves
and hat are laid out neatly on the dresser. I contemplate
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the room, the half-folded camping mat on the floor – he’s
not even sleeping in the bed – but before I can make sense
of it a noise makes me jerk around.
Kit is standing in the doorway. He’s yanking off his tie,
and when he sees me he freezes like that, his arm caught
halfway, so it looks as though he’s trying to strangle
himself. His arm drops slowly to his side.
The first thing I notice is that he has dark shadows
under his eyes and hollows beneath his cheekbones. The
word ‘shell-shocked’ comes to mind, those stories of First
World War soldiers who came back from the trenches
with their nerves shot to pieces. The second thing I notice
are that his hands are bloodied, the knuckles bruised and
swollen as if he just tried to punch his way out of a steel
cage. My stomach heaves at the sight. I have to stop my
legs from moving towards him, because seeing him,
being this close to him, seeing him hurt and in pain, is
making all the defences I’ve put up crumple to dust.
It takes Kit a few seconds to recover from the surprise
of seeing me standing in his room. He falters, letting his
guard down for just a moment, and in that moment I see
something flare across his face – a look of total devasta-
tion – and it instantly dissolves my anger and makes me
stumble towards him.
He turns his back on me before I reach him and crosses
to the dresser. I stop short and stare at his back, my throat
closing shut.
‘Kit,’ I say, putting my hands on his arms, ‘please, talk
to me, tell me what’s going on.’
His back muscles lock and his head remains bowed. I
turn him slowly around to face me.
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‘Kit,’ I say, taking his face in my hands, trying to make
him look at me.
He won’t. He stays resolutely staring at the ground.
But I feel the subtle shift in his body. I can read him. He’s
too familiar to me. His breathing has become shallow and
the pulse beats rapidly in his neck; his shoulders slump.
I stroke Kit’s cheek and he closes his eyes, a look of
anguish passing across his face that I want to wipe away.
I want to make it better. I reach up on tiptoe and kiss him.
He’s unresponsive at first, but I press myself against
him and after a few seconds I feel his resistance start to
fade. Slowly he starts to kiss me back, and I wrap my
arms around his neck to stop him from pulling away. His
arms finally come around my waist and he draws me
tight, pulling me close, and a sob catches in my throat
because finally I don’t feel like I’m free-falling into a
bottomless abyss any more. I feel like I’ve been caught.
I open my mouth and our kiss suddenly becomes fran-
tic, desperate. The familiar taste of him, the intoxicating
smell of him, the burning heat of his lips – I can’t get
enough – and as he laces his fingers through my hair and
forces his tongue into my mouth, I realize that we’re both
trying to claw our way back into the light, trying to find
some kind of redemption, or some way of overcoming the
pain.
Kit’s hands start ripping at my dress and my own fin-
gers start tearing at his shirt, and all I can hear is the rasp
of our breathing, the frantic beating of my pulse like a
drum in my ears. All the pain fades, all the memories dis-
appear, the world becomes a faint blur at the edges of my
consciousness. All there is is the here and now and Kit
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and the fire in my body. It’s a feeling I don’t ever want to
stop, that I focus on with all my might, because on the
other side is only grief and darkness.
We fumble with each other’s clothes. I forget the shirt
and tear at his belt and he gives up trying to undo my
dress and instead just lifts the skirt and pulls my under-
wear roughly aside. Without a word exchanged, both of
us breathing hard, Kit lifts me onto the dresser, shoving
all the things on top of it to the side. I wrap my legs
around his waist, desperate to draw him inside me, my
hands tugging at him, and in the next moment he pushes
into me.
I let out a cry that’s half anguish and half ecstasy. Kit
drives into me with a grunt and I grip his shoulders and
throw my head back. He kisses my neck, bites me, sucks
hard enough that I cry out again. He pulls me to him, his
hands gripping my thighs, holding me in place, forcing a
pace that’s taking me quickly to the edge. I’m happily
free-falling again, tumbling down into an abyss, but one
that feels like oblivion, one where pain doesn’t exist.
I open my eyes and see Kit has his eyes screwed shut.
I whisper his name and they flash open and we stare
at each other, both of us panting, sweating, trembling,
and I see, even through the desire dulling his eyes, how
haunted he looks beneath it, how he’s not fully with me
but someplace else, and with a jolt I’m brought right back
to the moment as the memories start to flood in. I
close my eyes and turn my head away from him, not will-
ing to be drawn back there just yet, wanting to hold onto
the feeling of Kit inside me, wanting to recapture the pos-
sibility of oblivion, wanting, above all, to forget.
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She turns her head away, squeezing her eyes shut, and
the action jars me. She can’t even look at me. Driven by
something I don’t have words for, I lift her off the dresser,
turn her around so she has her back to me, and then push
inside her again. This way she doesn’t have to see my
face.
She gasps loudly, a sound I know well, bending for-
wards and bracing herself against the top of the dresser. It
spurs me on and so I put my hands on her back and drive
into her harder – harder than I’ve ever done before – not
wanting to hurt her but because I can’t stop myself, and
because she seems to need it like this as much as I do, and
I’m lost in her, totally fucking lost in her, can’t get enough
of the feel of being inside her after so long. For the first
time in five days my brain empties; the screams and cries
stop echoing, my muscles stop trembling, the pain eases.
Jessa lets out another cry. Her muscles contract tight