Love Me Broken (16 page)

I hear Adam say something, but I am too far gone to listen. The pain is awful, like being torn in half. I’m crying. I have enough awareness to sense that I’m crying, but that’s about where my awareness stops.

And I cry. I cry with the fresh pain of Conner’s absence. Maybe it’s the cool breeze, the weather reminding me of last year. That last night with him. Maybe it’s feeling something for Adam, feeling something for the first time in a year, and one feeling unlocking another. I don’t know. I can’t help it. The pain comes out flowing and I can’t stop it.

I’m mumbling something, heaved over my knees, and I feel a hand on my back, trying to comfort me. But the touch, because it’s trying to be comforting, only makes me cry harder. “I’m sorry,” I try to say, but the effort of making words is too much.

And so, for a minute, for ten minutes, for an hour—I don’t know—we sit there on the pier, Adam with an arm around my back, and me, leaning over and sobbing uncontrollably.

Eventually, the heaving sobs start to subside. My eyes are still watering, but I can sniffle and I have enough awareness to remember where I am, who I’m with. I wipe my eyes with my hands and take a deep breath. Then I just focus on breathing for a little bit, listening to the sound of air entering and leaving my lungs, and the sound of the water as the waves break on the shore. I swallow. I open my mouth, wait a moment before saying anything, and then say, “I’m sorry.” My voice is hoarse from crying. But it is stronger now. The worst has passed. I sniffle again and say, “I haven’t cried like that in—I don’t remember.” I laugh a little at how silly I must look. “You must think I’m crazy,” I joke, and look over at Adam.

He is staring back at me with a look of absolute solemnity. To my relief, he doesn’t look horrified, or scared off, or freaked out by my crying episode. But the mood has shifted. He’s not going to forget this. Something has shifted between us forever.

He is watching me as I try to salvage my appearance, wiping my cheeks and readjusting my hair. I notice that his hand is no longer on my back. When did he remove it? I find that I miss it a little.

“Erica,” he says, and waits until I meet his eyes before continuing. “What happened to you?”

I look away and roll my eyes, trying to downplay everything. “Nothing,” I say. “I’m fine now.”

He shakes his head. “No, really. Time out from the game. Something’s wrong. Something happened.”

I make a face and rub my shoulders. They feel so sore all of the sudden. “I don’t really want to talk about it this early,” I say. “We just met.”

“There is no early,” Adam insists. Then, surprising me, he reaches over and takes my hand in his. He squeezes, and I squeeze back and look up into his wide eyes. “We don’t have a lot of time, remember?” he says. “And I don’t want to pretend that we do, or that I can fix anything. But there’s something—something major—that you’re not telling me. Something that connects things: the way you hate cars, the way you are with your family, even the way you looked at the party tonight when Nicole’s boyfriend wanted to drive after a few drinks. I know she’s your friend, but your face... you looked like you had seen a ghost.”

My eyes widen a little. He’s closer to the truth than he realizes. I look at the water, considering.

Part of me wants to end the night. To stop here and never see Adam again. But I know this is only because I don’t want to talk about this.

But another part, a stronger part,
wants
to tell Adam. It feels safe here, with just us on the pier. And I know that if I don’t tell him what’s going on, if I don’t explain why I just collapsed into tears just now, it will end us. We might as well never talk again. If I want to keep Adam, I have to tell him.

He squeezes my hand, and I look up at him. He keeps his eyes on mine, and his expression is welcoming but insistent.

“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what happened.”

She takes a few minutes to begin. At first I start to worry that she’s backing out, but then she takes a big sigh and just starts talking.

“I used to be normal,” she says. “I had a normal family, a normal life, normal problems. I used to be bored with it, I remember. Now I’d give anything to have it back.”

She stops talking for a minute, and I say nothing, not wanting to interrupt her. She seems so vulnerable, so broken. I’m still shaken from her crying a few minutes earlier. What the hell happened to this girl? What does she mean she used to be normal?

When she’s ready, she starts talking again.

“I had a brother,” she says. “His name was Conner.”

Had
.
Was
. I feel my stomach drop at the past tense. Her brother is dead.

All at once the pieces start to fall into place. No wonder her family is all fucked up. No wonder she’s lonely. And I’ll bet two-to-one that it happened in a car. Jesus, I want to hold her, to comfort her. But I sense I have to let her talk. That talking is what she needs right now to be strong.

She’s looking at the water, and it’s almost like she’s talking to someone else, to herself or the past. She starts to talk about Conner.

“He was probably the most popular kid in school. Most of the parties and friends I had were just leftovers from him. If he got invited, I usually went along.” I think about Nicole, who didn’t seem like a leftover. This girl is being too hard on herself. But I say nothing and file that away for later.

“He had graduated already. He was going to go to college. He wanted to be a doctor. To help people.”

She trails off again, and we listen to the sound of the current. When she talks again, her voice is flat and distant. If someone walked in now, they might think her heartless, talking about this with so little emotion in her voice. But I know it’s the opposite. I’ve seen her cry.

“Last summer, in June, Conner was at a party on the beach with his friends. They had all had too much to drink, so he... he did the
responsible thing
and didn’t drive.” She’s quiet a moment. “It was two in the morning, and rainy. I had only been driving a few months then.”

Oh shit. Oh shit, I see where this is going. Oh fuck this is bad.

“I made it there okay, and... I remember being angry at him. Because when he got in the car, he was dripping wet and happy about it. I remember, I remember the way his face was so full of life.”

She pulls her hand out of mine, and rubs her face.

“The rain was so thick. Everyone says it’s my fault, but that rain—and then the deer. It just appeared in the middle of the road, like a ghost.”

I put my hand on her back. I can’t not touch her when she’s in so much pain.

“I swerved. Conner was drunk. He was standing at the time, out the sunroof.”

She stops talking for so long I think she’s done. Then she adds, “They told me later that he was dead instantly from the shock of the impact. I never saw the body. Not that night, not later, when he was buried. I couldn’t go to the funeral. I guess that makes me a bad sister, or a horrible person, or whatever, but I couldn’t go. I couldn’t... couldn’t move.”

Her blank face turns toward me, and it’s like she had forgotten I was there. She remembers herself, and I see this struggle on her face, between the facade she’s worked up and the part of her that wants to confess. I just stare at her, not knowing what to say.

Then, with certainty, she looks me in the eye and says, “I did it. I killed my brother.”

“Erica,” I object, “you can’t blame yourself. You didn’t mean to.”

“But I did!” she says, leaning away from my hand, and I regret saying anything. “That’s even what it says on the police report. Everybody knows. That’s why everything is all screwed up. That’s why my parents don’t talk anymore, why I have to go away to college as soon as I can.”

“That’s why you don’t drive,” I say, and she flinches a little. “That’s why you don’t like cars.”

Her shoulders are hunched, and her eyes squint as she forces herself to keep talking. I get the sense that she’s made it this far, she might as well go all the way.

“I can’t hear the sound of cars without thinking of that night,” she says. “The sound of tires. Of engines. I hear them, and I—I
feel
when I hit that tree. I
feel
Conner not being there next to me. I’m back in that car, on that night, and it’s all happening again, right now.”

Her shoulders are shaking, and I put my arm around her again and pull her toward me. We sit like that, her leaning against me, and just listen to the sounds of the night. A single tear goes down her face, like a diamond in the moonlight. I wipe it away, and she closes her eyes and rests her head against my chest gratefully. I wrap both arms around her, and just hold her.

“Adam,” she says once she’s got control of herself again.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“Can we go back to the game now?”

“Sure,” I say. “Just answer how you’d like things to be. How things should be.” I think for a moment, trying to come up with a question. “You’re at a restaurant, and they serve your favorite dish. What are you eating?”

“Enchiladas,” she says. “With sour cream and chives. But not from a place around here. From somewhere in the Southwest.” She nuzzles into me. “What did you order?”

“Steak,” I say. “A filet, served rare. With something simple on the side, like a potato or some biscuits.”

“I can make biscuits,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Well, in an ideal world.”

We both laugh, and I hold her a little tighter. Her hair smells like watermelon today. I run my hand on the back of her head, relaxing her.

“You’re not like other people,” she says out of nowhere.

“How do you mean?” I ask.

She thinks about it. “I don’t know. You’re just not. You’re... aloof at times. Like you’re watching things from a distance. Yet at the same time, you’re more
here
than other people. I can’t explain it.” I go on petting the back of her head. She feels really nice against my body. I could hold her all night. “Hmm,” she says, breaking up her thoughts. “Back to the game. In an ideal world, how would people describe you?”

“Healthy, wealthy, and wise,” I say lightly. “You?”

She’s quiet a beat. “Happy.” I feel her body tensing, and then she lifts off me and sits apart from me again. She runs a hand through her hair, smoothing it. “Where would you live?”

“In a small cabin,” I say, “in the middle of nowhere. The woods, by a stream and lost in nature. There’d be animals coming up to the door: deer, squirrels, birds. I’d have built the place myself.”

“With your hands,” she finishes.

“Yeah.” I smile. Or try to, anyway. Then I want to change the subject. “Where would you live?”

“I’d live there too,” she says softly. I look up at her, and she meets my eyes. There’s nothing mocking in her gaze. Her face is still damp with tears, but her strength is back. She’s beautiful.

“In an ideal world,” I ask, “what are you doing right now?”

She looks back at me, her eyes filled with longing and sadness. “This,” she says. “You?”

“This,” I answer, and I lean in and press my lips to hers.