Held: A New Adult Romance (23 page)

 The sign says ALL BREAKAGES MUST BE PAID FOR.

 I settle on a cloudy glass vase with veins of red and gold - the same two colors that quarrel in her hair. It's not the best time in the world to get sentimental, but as I move down the aisle I realize I've felt this way before - that same, nervous sense of being around breakable things. She makes me feel that way sometimes.

 I'm halfway home before it occurs to me I should have asked them to gift-wrap the vase. We never did that - Amber and me. Gifts, flowers, love - all the usual things that lovers do. It started with cigarettes, secrets and lust. We have it all the wrong way around.

 That evening I drive to her apartment. It's already dark and the Christmas lights are twinkling - electric stars and snowflakes, plastic light-up snowmen in a city that never sees the snow. When I think of how long I've known her it seems crazy; it's been no time at all, really. Maybe we're not so deep after all, not so connected as we'd like to pretend.

 I'm trying to make this easy on myself.

 When she opens the door I can see she's not going to make this easy. She's improvised a table with a packing crate, and in the middle is a candle burning, scenting the room with cinnamon. "Hey," she says, looking as beautiful as she ever did in black. She's washed her hair and left it to dry - when she kisses me I can smell the shampoo, and when I touch it there are damp strands under my fingers. "You're late," she says, matter-of-factly.

 "Traffic." I hold out the box. "I bought you something."

 "Thank you."

 "You don't know what it is yet."

 She shrugs. "So? No reason to be rude. I'm sure I'll love it." She picks at the tape and glances up at me. "Unless it's a severed head, I guess."

 "It's not that."

 "Oh. Good. Because I think I'd go off you quite quickly if you thought I was a severed head kind of girl."

 Unerringly she's led me right to the point; she needs to go off me. And somehow she knows it too. I can tell. This isn't her - this is some kind of self-conscious clowning she borrowed from elsewhere to cover her nerves. Her eyes are too bright and their expression is too wary, and when she raises her hand to brush her hair from her face the pearls of her bracelet shimmer in the light. She reaches into the box and lifts out the vase.

 "I was gonna buy you flowers," I say. "But I figured you had nowhere to put them yet."

 Her eyes shine even brighter. "It's beautiful."

 "You sure? I can change it if you don't..."

 "I love it, Jaime. Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you."

 Her eyes overflow. Oh God. I can't do this. I can't break her heart any more. "What's the matter?" I ask, like I'm not going to make things a whole lot worse for her.

 She sets the vase down next to the candle and reaches out for me. “Hold me?” she says, so sweetly that I can’t say no. We stand there for a while, half-swaying. I feel her ribs rise and fall under my hands, the press of her breasts against my chest. It would be so easy to just give in right now, to let myself get lost in the smell of her hair and the taste of her skin. But I can’t.

 “I love you,” she says, in an outrush, like she was holding it in until she had to breathe.

 “Amber...”

 Her face is streaming wet, her lips salty. “Say it,” she says, her hands hot on my cheeks. “Please. Just once. I know what we have to do.”

 “You do?”

 “Jaime...” I’ve never heard anyone sound so heartsick. And is she saying what I think she’s saying?

 “I have to break up with you,” I say, and suddenly the whole future looks gray.

 “I know that,” she whispers. Her lips are so soft and wet that I think back to Big Sur, and I’m almost lost – I’ll never taste her again, I’ll never see that look on her face when I’m inside her.

 “Please,” she says. “Just once. Say you love me?”

 “I do,” I say. And I’m crying now too. “I love you, Amber.”

 I can taste the faint trace of smoke on her tongue and it’s all I can do to keep from hiking up the skirt of her little black dress and taking her up on the invitation she’s trying to grind out against me. We love each other – doesn’t that make everything okay?

 Except I know it’s not going to make her better. Nobody can do that but herself.

 “Your dad’s downstairs,” I say, cockblocking myself the most effective way I know how.

 Amber steps back. “What the fuck?” she says, but she doesn’t seem mad. Just tired.

 “He wants to make up with you, Amber. He loves you.”

 She sighs. “This was my Dad’s idea, wasn’t it? You? Breaking up with me.”

 “Nope. All mine. So don’t even think about yelling at him for interfering in your life. Actually he was kind of hoping we’d...make a thing of it.”

 Amber blinks at me and dries her eyes. “You have my father’s approval? Wow.”

 “Yeah. I know.”

 She sniffs hard. “So...” she says, slowly. “Why?”

 “This? Us?”

 “Yes.”

 “You know why,” I say. “You need more time. You’ll put me on a pedestal and I’m just so not pedestal material.”

 She turns away and stomps off to the kitchen area. “You’ve been talking to my psychiatrist, haven’t you?”

 “Um, no. That would be wrong.”

 “Kidding,” she says, fishing a pack of cigarettes out of a drawer. “But I know what you mean. I came to the exact same conclusion myself.”

 “You did?”

 Amber nods. The smoke curls up and around her in a Noirish haze. “He’s still here,” she says, tapping the side of her head. “He’s still got a hold of me. And I have to get him out on my own.” The pink rims of her eyes make the green in them shine out all the brighter, and when she looks across the room at me I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look quite so beautiful. “I can’t make you his replacement,” she says. “Because that would be just...grotesque.”

 It’s a weird word to use, but I get it. And right then I feel like crying all over again. I hate him. I hate that dead man I’ve never met. I hate that he poisoned her before she even had the chance to know the kind of love I had with Melissa – yes, it was silly and overwrought and full of hormones, and we both cried when it was over and thought we’d never feel good again, but ultimately it was harmless. It’s what everyone goes through. It’s like my sister said once – if Romeo and Juliet hadn’t come with a bodycount they’d have got over it. It’s how we all learn to love. Only he taught Amber all wrong and she has to learn again from the beginning.

 “I should go,” I say, because I don’t trust myself to stay.

 “You don’t want to get sushi?”

 I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you order some for you and your dad?”

 She sighs. “Is he really downstairs?”

 “He is.”

 She rubs her forehead. “Okay,” she says. “Can you ask him to come up?”

 “Sure.”

 “Thanks.”

 Amber opens the door for me. For a moment we stand there, neither of us wanting to move. “So...um...”

 “Yeah,” she says.

 “I’ll be seeing you.”

 She smiles sadly and shakes her head. “No, Jaime. You won’t. That’s what breaking up with someone means.”

 My throat aches. “I know.”

 “Yeah.”

 She doesn’t reach out. Maybe she’s thinking what I’m thinking – it would be too much like temptation. So I lean forward and kiss her on the forehead – a brother’s kiss. “Bye,” I say.

 I think I’m supposed to say something profound, but it’s all my throat will let me say.  

 Chapter Twenty-Two

Amber

I’m shaking and I wish I knew how to stop. Deep breaths, counting down from ten – none of the usual methods are cutting it.

 Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I’m just about to undo all the work I’ve done over the last year.

 Lauren gives me the signal and my head feels like it could break loose from my shoulders and float off over the audience like a helium balloon. I feel my dry lips furl back over my teeth in what’s probably more a rictus grin than a reassuring smile.

 “Ladies...and gentleman, would you please give a warm welcome to one of the bravest women it has ever been my privilege to know – Amber Gillespie.”

 Brave – hah. That’s a laugh. My legs are shaking and I feel like I might never unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth.

 There’s a glass of water on the lectern. I grab it like a life preserver and take a sip.

 I can’t see so well beyond the lights – a small audience, Lauren said. Only fifty people or so. But I can feel them. The same scrutiny I’m still getting used to. (“...isn’t she?...didn’t she?...but she looks so
normal
...”) only multiplied by fifty or so. For a moment I want to turn and run, but I remind myself why they’re here.

 “Good afternoon,” I say, hoping they can’t hear the tremor in my voice. “My name is Amber Gillespie. You might have heard of me.”

 This nod to my notoriety gets me a ripple of laughter – faint, but enough to reassure me. “I want to first thank Lauren for her kind introduction there.” Great, I’m already going off script, but I can’t let that pass. “Kind of hyperbole on her part – you have no idea how nervous I am right now.”

 Another smothered ripple – polite laughter, murmurs of sympathy. Wow. Is this...working?

 “And honestly,” I continue. “I’m not that brave. Not compared to some of the women I’ve met during my six months volunteering here - with Lauren and Corinne and Rachel and all of you.”

 Good. I can steer this back to my notes.

 “I...um...I used to spend a great deal of time alone. It’s just one of the ways in which abusive partners take control of your life – they make themselves the center of your universe and isolate you from your friends and your family and anyone who might point out that your relationship is dysfunctional. And it worked.

 “I had this friend – we’d known each other since we were thirteen. My...um...my ex – he managed to isolate me from her. She hated him, of course. I can’t go into details, but let’s just say that she was switched on to manipulators. She knew exactly what kind of person he was.

 “You probably all know how my relationship with this man ended. So I won’t go into too much detail. Suffice to say, he’s dead. And you’d think, wouldn’t you, that that would be an end to it?

 “Only it wasn’t. I kept thinking he was going to walk back into the room, like he was still watching my every move. And I couldn’t call my friend. I just couldn’t do it. I don’t know what I thought she’d say – I told you so – or whatever. She called me – left messages with my family – but I didn’t call back. She just wanted to know I was okay, but I couldn’t make myself pick up the phone and call her.”

 I am not going to cry.

 I take another sip of water and continue. “And it’s only now that I realize, I was still in that bubble the whole time, this weird cocoon my abuser had built around me. She was never a person to mince her words, and I knew she wasn’t going to pretend to be sorry about his death. So I couldn’t do it – for the longest time. I felt like I’d be betraying him – that was the strength of the hold he had over me. It was a full nine months before I finally picked up the telephone.”

 The audience stirs. I blink rapidly, trying to dry the surface of my eyes. “And do you know what she said? After nine months of silence from me? She said ‘Babycakes, it’s about fucking time’.”

 They laugh.

 “And that, to me, is the beauty of this Center. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone down the rabbit hole, how deep your abuser has dug that rabbit hole, nobody here is going to judge you or bear a grudge that you took forever to make that call. There is always a hand out, waiting to pull you up, prize you loose. To break that hold on you. It’s a hold that thrives on loneliness and isolation – it can’t survive in the light of empathy and experience, the kind of empathy and experience that’s right here in the hearts of all the survivors in this room.
You know.
You know how hard it can be to make that call, write that e-mail. Which is why you – like my friend – don’t care how long it takes to make it. Just so long as you do.”

 I told myself I wouldn’t cry, but I do anyway, bathed in the warmth of applause. After the speeches there’s cake and coffee, and a stream of women of all ages and colors. I used to think I was the only one; it was both heartening and depressing to discover just how common my experience really was.

 Once upon a time I used to hate this time of year. I used to think of Thanksgiving as the time when it all started to unravel. Now I know that what I had with Justin was doomed to fall apart from the beginning. Now I know how healthy relationships are supposed to work – in theory, anyway. Sometimes I think about Jaime, but I never hear from him. He’s probably found someone a lot more stable. Someone who can dance.

 On my way home I go to the grocery store; this year is going to be the year I get Dad on board with Thanksgiving. I load the pumpkins in the back seat of the car like some modern day fairy godmother, and head back up Laurel.

 The big kitchen is empty, and there’s no sign of Dad. I set the groceries on the side and wander through to his lair, only to stop dead in the doorway when I see who’s looking into the fish tank.

 At first I’m not sure. His hair looks a little longer, revealing a wave I didn’t even know it had, but when he inclines his head I know the line of his jaw. And I know the rest of him – let’s not kid ourselves. I know those skinny, graceful hips. I know the slight, sweet curve of his ass – I dug my bare heels into it enough times.

 I step forward and join him in front of the tank. I’m wearing flats and my steps are so silent that he jumps.

 “Wow. Hi.”

 How long has it been? A year? About that. Oh my God – I think he got better looking. Yes, his hair is definitely longer. And a little stubble now – not quite so clean cut as before. But his eyes are as big and as brown as before, his eyelashes as thick and black.

 “Amber,” he says, with a wide but wary smile. “How are you?”

 “I’m good. Great.”

 “You look terrific,” he says. “Really well.”

 “Thanks. I am. I’m...doing good. Well.”