Rewired (The Progress Series) (20 page)

She closed her eyes and began with hesitation. “I was forced to make a decision. I was faced with two possibilities.” She spoke slowly. “The first was staying with you and trying to live a life with the man I…love, but knowing what I had done…to us…” She tried to disguise her quivering chin with her hand. “I couldn’t bear to look at you and see the disappointment. The lack of trust. And I didn’t have a single justification for my actions. At least, none that you would’ve understood. Hell, not even one
I
would’ve understood. But I knew you’d never look at me the same once you found out I had no explanation.” She took a deep breath and continued. “The other option was to leave you and try to finish something I should have a long time ago. To try and make it as right as I possibly could for everyone. You, him…me. All I could do was come up with a plan to right some of my wrongs. All I could do was to hope that you’d forget all about me and kick my ass to the curb, where I belonged.”

“And you, Charlie? How does that make it right for you?”

“
I
don’t matter anymore. I think you and I both know that what I’ve done is unforgivable. Nothing I could say or do can prove otherwise. The only thing I can do now is hope to fix this, so I can give you the entire story someday.”

“Fix? Fix what? Fix
him
?”

No. Don’t say any more.

“Please, stop. Let me say something,” she pleaded.

He exhaled and nodded, looking relieved with her decision to speak rather than to watch his blood boil.

“It doesn’t really matter how hard this is for me, because I’m irrelevant right now. I’m the one who fucked up, and I owe you an apology. But saying sorry isn’t enough. It doesn’t even begin to say all the things I need it to.” Her tears dripped to her blouse and she cleared her cheeks before she continued. “Because I need it to say that I know I’m rotten, I know I’m cruel. I know that I should never be forgiven and that I deserve every ounce of remorse and shame that I carry every day.” She failed to keep her tears from falling but couldn’t stop her words. “I need sorry to say that you need to move on with your life without me.” She shook her head and looked up again. “I wish sorry meant that every day and night that I’m in that apartment kills me; I can’t stand knowing you’re not there. I wish it meant that I understood why I did this to you—to us. I wish it meant that I knew better, but betrayed you anyway. Because if sorry meant all of those things, than I could certainly say that I’m sorry.” Another tear fell as she looked away from Sam’s glossy eyes. “But it doesn’t mean all those things,” she continued. “All I can do now is leave you alone and hope that you find someone better than me.”

“Jesus, Charlie. Who is this guy? What is he doing to you?” He clenched his jaw and wiped his cheek, avoiding eye contact. “Your hair? And you’re losing weight again. You look like—”

“He’s someone I owe a lot to,” she whispered, not wanting him to tell her she looked pitiful.

“You
owe
him? What does that mean?”

She swallowed. “If it weren’t for him, I would have never been the girl you fell in love with. And if I was only able to experience one year of
complete happiness
in my life with you, I’ll spend as much time as I can to repay him for what he showed me.”

“Don’t do this, Charlie.”
Sam’s mouth twitched as he chewed the inside of his cheek, folding his arms over his chest. “Don’t let him run you into the ground.”

She frowned. “He can’t do it alone.” Wiping a tear from her cheek, she sniffed. “I have an obligation to help him if I can.”

“So you’re just going to throw our future away for him? Live an entire life with someone out of pity?”

“I don’t pity him!” she shouted. She looked around, and continuing in a whisper, she said, “It’s not that I pity him, Sam. Jesse is lost without me.”

Sam shook his head. “Then I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. You just don’t give a shit how I feel about you.”

“Please don’t. I can’t hear it. I won’t be able to finish this if I know you want…”

“Stop, Charlie. Just stop. Come home with me. Today. You’re not responsible for his happiness.”

“You’re right, I’m not. But I am the only one that can show him what that word means.”

Sam shook his head and tried to calm his aggravation and his fear.

“Here,” she said, setting the engagement ring on the table. “Next time, don’t set your standards so low.” She stood and gathered her purse. “You can do so much better than me.” She blinked slowly and swallowed. “I love you,” she said, leaning down to kiss his cheek, tasting his tears. “Always,” she whispered, and walked toward the door.

Just as she was reaching for the handle, Sam grabbed her arm and turned her toward him.

“You
love
me. But you don’t
want
me back.” His statement; a simple confession.

She shook her head, suppressed a sob, and walked out the door.

Charlie was more than relieved to get back to work. After spending two weeks with Jesse cooped up in his small apartment, it felt refreshing to find her routine again. And although she missed Sam horribly, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. There were two things that had kept her from going with Sam earlier that afternoon: The first was Jesse, and the second was knowing that she hadn’t forgiven herself for what she’d done, no matter if Sam was convinced
he
had. Knowing how Sam felt fueled her desire to continue with Jesse; after all, she had made Jess a promise—one she had no intentions of breaking. If she gave up and left Jesse now, she still wouldn’t be convinced she deserved the kind of love she knew Sam would give her for a lifetime.

She couldn’t help but think that
maybe,
if she stayed on the current path with Jess, everything would turn out the way she’d initially intended and that her sloppy efforts so far would end up perfectly ironed.

Jesse’s moods continued to subtly shift, but he had leveled out, experiencing more good days than bad since they had returned from the cabin. But there hadn’t been a breakthrough yet. There was still so much Jesse needed from Charlie, but she just wasn’t sure what it was. So she would continue to wait and be the person he needed her to be, while gathering as much information as she could to better arm herself with knowledge of him.

*

Dodging Jesse’s call on Saturday morning, Charlie drove along the countryside. Like the two years earlier, she had a cigarette in her hand, whipping down the freeway with her cropped red hair slapping against the lenses of her sunglasses. Only this time, Jesse wasn’t with her. He was in his apartment, on a single mattress that rested on the floor, trying to sleep. Or stay awake.

Arriving at the small house, she saw that the hand-printed
Open
sign still sat in the window. But there was no happy-go-lucky dog there to greet her. Charlie’s head dropped and her shoulders slouched, as she realized that Sadie was already so old when Charlie first met her that she’d probably passed away sometime since then.

Taking each step up the staircase, Charlie pushed aside the thoughts of her excitement when she’d first walked into this place two years earlier. Jesse was so new then. He was full of energy, intelligent, and witty. He wasn’t the broken man she’d experienced in the past month, or the several times she had seen him that way since the last time she walked up those steps.

The door creaked as she opened it, and she heard a small bell jingle. Lily was standing near the entrance to the small kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron when she looked up. Charlie was greeted with Lily’s warm smile.

“Charlie.” Lily sighed and walked to her quickly, putting her arms around Charlie in haste.

“Hey, Lily. It’s so good to see you.”

“What brings you here?” Lily searched around Charlie’s shoulder looking for Jesse, pulling them out of their embrace.

“He didn’t come with me today.” Charlie shook her head. “I’m here to speak with you, alone.”

Lily’s head tilted in sympathy. “Everything okay?”

Charlie tugged at her bottom lip and shook her head. “Not really.”

Lily hesitated. “Here, take a seat. What can I get you to drink?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Can we chat? Is now a bad time?”

Lily smiled and waved her hand around the empty restaurant. “I’m all yours, sweetie. And this is a nice surprise on my birthday!”

“Oh, maybe I should come back another day.”

“Nonsense! I’ve been lonely out here. It’s nice to have a visitor.”

Charlie and Lily sat at the table closest to the window. “It’s Jess, Lil. He’s been up and down for the past few weeks.”

Lily nodded and blinked slowly. “What can I do? How can I help?”

“Well, we’ve been spending a lot of time together recently. And…” Charlie paused, hopeful that her next words wouldn’t sting. “…and I hope to spend much more time with him.”

Lily smiled. “I think it’s obvious how he feels about you too, honey.”

Charlie offered a loose smile. “You know I would never jeopardize the trust that the two of you share. And, I’m not asking you to betray that trust. But I really feel that some insight to his past…might give me some sort of advantage when it comes to knowing how to help him.”

Lily’s curiosity faded to a frown as she looked out the window. “You want to know what all he’s told me. Why he came here that day.”

Charlie sat motionless until a subtle nod forced its way to her head. After seeing the conflict Lily was experiencing, Charlie piped up again. “Lily,
I know
. I know this has got to be a hard thing for you. But if there’s anything you can tell me, anything at all that you think might help me help him, I gotta know. I feel so helpless. I don’t know when his depression is going to come back.”

Lily fumbled with the strings on her apron, which were tied along her tiny waistline. Her mouth shifted and she scratched her head, making her graying bun on top wobble.

“I’ll tell you everything I know. But if you hurt this man,
I will hunt you down
.” Lily stared at Charlie, deathly serious. “He’s been through enough traumas for five lifetimes.”

Charlie nodded. “You don’t need to worry about that. He knows my intentions, and he knows I have no plans to hurt him.”

Lily smiled without meeting Charlie’s eyes.

“It was warm that spring.” Lily began. “Warmer than I could ever remember it being for March. I had just finished up my lunch rush and went out back to check on the chickens. There was a small coop back there and a red house for them. I was a little scared at first when I saw a bit of dried blood stuck to one of the chicken’s feathers. But I just wrote it off as a pecking fight and got back to dropping their feed. And that’s when I saw him.” Lily swallowed and Charlie’s brow was set in strife. “The smallest movement caught my eye inside that tiny house. The sun was in my eyes, but I could see a stained white tennis shoe sticking out from the opening. It scared me to death. I didn’t know what I was going to find if I got any closer. It could have been anybody—dead, alive, drunk, psycho, I had no idea. When I peeked in, there he was. Jesse was only fourteen years old, but he looked forty, and his body lay motionless. His eyes were wide open and blood covered his T-shirt and hands.” Lily shuddered and blinked herself from her memory. “I thought for sure he was dead.”

Charlie nodded and wiped a lone tear from her cheek. “Go on.”

“So, I shook him a little and he blinked twice. It scared me so much that I fell backward out of the house and the chickens squawked and jumped. I ran inside and grabbed a glass of water and brought it out to him. I crept back in—god it was so hot in there—and sat with him. I offered him the water but he didn’t move. It wasn’t until I said the words ‘I’m not going to hurt you’ that he finally turned his head toward mine. I still don’t know if I imagined it, but I think I saw his chest rise and fall in relief.”

“Did he ever tell you?”

“You mean, what happened that day?”

Charlie nodded.

“Bits and pieces. I don’t think anyone has the full story, and you know Jess’s memory.”

Charlie turned and looked out at the blooming sunflowers, wanting more of the story and
not
wanting it.

“I didn’t know who Jesse was, and he didn’t speak to me for weeks. I took him in, not knowing where to begin my search of who he was, if he was wanted by the police, or if someone wanted to hurt him. He never said a word to anyone. On occasion I’d hear him shout names in his sleep, but even that was rare. I knew that whatever he had gone through, the last thing he needed was more strangers. So I left it alone and waited. It was almost two months after that day that he said his first word to me. He was helping me out, bussing a five-top table that just left. I went to help him and we both reached for the bus tub at the same time. When my hand accidentally touched his, he jerked back and sent the tub of dirty dishes crashing to the floor.” Lily snapped back into the present and almost bored a hole through Charlie’s head with her eyes. “Charlie, he looked mortified, like I would hurt him. Me!” Lily shook her head. “He just muttered ‘sorry’ and jogged back to the kitchen.