Sliding Down the Sky (23 page)

“Is that okay?” he asked, stopping for a moment. “I’m not hurting you?”

“No. It’s good.”

His fingers resumed their kneading and prodding, a bit more firmly this time.

“I used to do this for Ally,” he said. “She used to get a lot of shoulder pain after her accident. Massage helped.”

My heart squeezed. His kindness, his loyalty, his friendship. It was something special. So was he. I remembered what Ally had told Aria at the barbeque, about her accident.

“What happened to her?” I asked, before I could stop myself. I cringed, adding “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

I could feel him weighing up the question.

“No, its okay,” he said. “I don’t think she’d mind.”

The whisky, the massage, the fact that it was just the two of us in the safety of my living room – all of it combined to soothe my ragged soul. Or maybe it was just that I felt safer with Callum than with anyone else.

“It was a car accident. Jack, Ally and I were coming back from a Pearl Jam concert – the same one Gemma and Leo were at. Remember?”

I nodded, visions of my own accident creeping in. I shoved them aside and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

“This guy ploughed into us, head-first, and forced us off the road. The car flipped upside down, and rammed into a tree.”

I shuddered. Impact-related injuries. I knew all about those. My arm tingled as if it remembered, too.

“I was knocked out, and so was she. Luckily Jack wasn’t, though. He woke me up and he pulled her out of the car.”

His hands stopped working, just for a second, then they resumed.

“The impact damaged her spinal cord at the T-12 vertebrae, which means she can’t feel anything below her waist. She had surgery just after the accident, and they inserted metal rods in her back, for stability. She gets pain in her back from the rods, and her shoulders and upper back get tight from using her crutches and her chair. It puts a lot of strain on your upper body, when it suddenly has to take on all the work your lower body used to do. Our bodies just aren’t designed to work like that.”

I wiggled my toes inside my boots, suddenly grateful for being able to do so. I’d been suffering with tightness across my shoulders for a while. My doctor said it was because the prosthesis weighed more than my missing hand, and due to the muscle damage I was compensating by over-using my right hand. He was right. Our bodies aren’t designed to work like that.

“I didn’t realise,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t know she couldn’t feel anything below her waist. I saw her using crutches when she was at the bar on opening night. I guess I just thought… I don’t know.”

His fingers continued to work their magic.

“She wears braces on her legs to keep them straight, and she directs her legs with her hips and the muscles in her back that she can still control. It took a while to get the hang of it, but she splits her time between wheelchair and crutches, which helps with a lot of things, health-wise.”

Once again, a sense of helplessness overcame me.

“Anyway,” Callum continued. “Massage helped loosen up her shoulders, and sometimes it helped loosen up the muscles around the point of injury too. They knot together, and because she can’t stretch out properly, they sometimes freeze like that. She’s pretty good, though – she knows when she’s reached her limit and she needs help, and she’s not afraid to ask for it.”

That seemed very pointed. I bristled.

“Is that your way of saying that I don’t?”

His hands paused again, and he rested them on my shoulders, squeezing gently.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. I hardly know you, but from what I’ve seen you manage pretty well. Besides, you and Ally have completely different injuries, therefore completely different needs.”

“You sound like a doctor.”

It wasn’t a compliment.

“Maybe I do,” he said. “Because I spent four years going through all this with her – rehab, specialist assessments, hospital visits, and everything in between. I saw her struggles first-hand. I was there every time she fell, and I was there every time she got back up and tried again. I watched her do things that the doctors had told her were impossible. I was there. Nothing’s impossible if you have the guts to try and the patience to stick with it.”

I wanted to cry. If he saw Ally do all of that, then what the hell must he think of me?

Four years. I couldn’t even begin to imagine where I would be in four years. It had been just over a year since my accident, and I was still struggling. Tonight was proof of that.

“I don’t,” I whispered.

“What?”

I swallowed back the tears that were blocking my airway.

“I don’t have the guts. I’m not that strong.”

His arms crossed over my stomach and he leaned into me, his chin resting on my shoulder. He didn’t have to say anything. That one simple gesture said it all. He didn’t try to placate me or make me talk about it, he just held me.

I fought the urge to cry, even though it took every single ounce of self-control I had. My instincts screamed at me to get up and get out, but he held me so tenderly, I couldn’t.

I was so confused. Every time he came near me, it was more pronounced. What was it about him that had me simultaneously wanting to run
from
him and
to
him?

“If my eyes could show my soul, everyone

would cry when they saw me smile.”

―
 
Kurt Cobain

Callum

I didn’t tell her that Jack had spent four years trying to outrun the guilt after the accident. I didn’t tell her that when he finally came home, it was for Tom’s funeral. I didn’t tell her that, when he finally did show up, he was the last person I thought Ally needed. I didn’t tell her that despite everything that had happened in that four years, they found each other again, and that opening up about what scared them most was probably the hardest thing either of them had ever had to do.

I didn’t tell her any of that, because it didn’t really matter.

What mattered was that obstacles could be overcome. That was my point. That, and the fact that I wasn’t scared to get involved. Nothing she told me would change the way I felt about her. I wanted her to know that she could tell me anything. I wanted her to know that I could handle it. I wanted her to trust me.

I tried to mentally suffuse all of this information into her when I held her. I could feel her body still trembling, but it was different. It was as if she was trying to hold everything in, not block everything out.

“What happened to your hand?”

Her chest rose and fell beneath my arms as she took a ragged breath.

“Google it,” she murmured finally. “It’s all there online, for anyone to read.”

She pulled away from me, setting her whisky glass down on the coffee table and walking into the kitchen.

I was sitting there, waiting, wondering what to do next, when Leo came back.

“Gemma’s still awake,” he said, picking up his glass and quickly draining the contents. “I told her about what happened. She wants to talk to Sass, but I told her it’s probably best to leave it till tomorrow.”

He looked around, frowning.

“Where is she?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

God, I hope so.

“Okay,” he said slowly, as if trying to figure out whether or not to step in. “Well, I’m gonna hit the sack then.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, for tonight.”

“No need to thank me.”

He glanced into the kitchen, then back at me.

“Keep an eye on her, okay?”

I nodded.

“Of course.”

“Night.”

“Yeah, g’night.”

He waited a second longer, then he left, and I could hear his footsteps echoing down the hall. The bedroom door opened, then closed, and the house lapsed into silence.

I looked through into the semi-darkness of the kitchen. She hadn’t even turned the light on in there. Had I pushed her too far? Maybe it was just bad timing. I should just tell her that we could talk about it another time. Then again, if I backed down, she might interpret that as backing away, and I didn’t want her to think that.

I stood up and ran my palms down the front of my jeans as I psyched myself up. Then I walked through to the kitchen. She stood at the sink, staring out the window into the darkness, her back to me.

“I never believe anything I read online,” I said tentatively, standing in the doorway, staring at her silhouette against the window.

She hadn’t turned the light on, so neither did I. Somehow, the semi-darkness made it easier. The shadows gave us camoflauge, somewhere to retreat to if we needed it.

I walked into the kitchen and leaned back against the kitchen counter just along from her, but not too close – I sensed her need for space. I’d just asked her to tell me about what was probably the worst moment of her life. If the tables were turned, I knew I’d need space. So I sat on my tongue and I waited.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

I thought about it for a moment, trying to find the right words.

“Because I want to understand.”

She turned to me, and the moonlight picked up the shadows of her face, making her look as if she’d been carved from marble. The strong jaw. The small, perfect nose. The large, liquid eyes, the graceful, long lashes, the elegantly curved eyebrows. The full, rosebud lips, drained of their customary natural pink. The moonlight had sapped the colour from her face, making her skin more translucent than ever, and the effect was striking.

She was breath-takingly, heart-achingly beautiful, even as she drowned in insecurity and indecision. I could see the pain, the struggle for understanding, the war within herself. It manifested itself in her eyes, in the tautness of her jaw, the set of her shoulders. It leeched into the air around her, drawing me to her and pushing me away from her in the same movement. I was both mesmerised and terrified. One wrong move, one wrong word, and she would be gone, I could feel it.

“What do you want from me?” she breathed, a lone tear escaping and crawling down her cheek.

I felt sick, my stomach sinking to subterranean depths as the pressure mounted. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want anything from her, but that wasn’t quite true, and we’d made a promise.

“I want you to trust me,” I whispered, drawn down to her level, feeling her fear. “I want you to tell me what happened to your hand, so I can try to understand.”

“Understand what?”

I swallowed the lump of terror that had lodged in my throat.

“You.”

“Why?” she asked again, like a child struggling with a foreign concept. “Why me?”

That threw me, like a blind corner taken at speed. My heart slammed against my ribcage as I searched for a way to explain to her what I barely understood myself.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, hypnotised by her. “I don’t know why. I just know that I want to be with you. Isn’t that the whole point, that you
can’t
explain it? It’s not something you can say, it’s something you have to feel, and I feel it when I’m with you.”

She never took her eyes off me, as if reading my soul, digging deep down to figure out if I was really telling the truth. My gaze remained steady, because I wanted her to see that I was. Maybe if my words couldn’t convince her, seeing the truth written on my soul would.

She broke the connection, glancing down, and I desperately wanted to know that she believed me, but I was afraid to ask. She held her left hand in front of her, turning it over and studying the prosthetic fingers that peeked out from beneath the sleeve of my jacket. I followed her gaze, the curved fingers illuminated in the moonlight.

She let it fall to her side with a shuddering breath, but she didn’t look up. I pushed myself away from the counter and walked over to her, reaching out for her left hand and drawing it up between us. I could almost read her mind, but not quite. That was the problem. She had allowed me to stand at the door, but she was keeping me out of the room.

“What happened?” I asked again.

A door had opened, but the light that had escaped was only a glimmer of the truth. A line had been drawn in the sand. Before tonight, I didn’t really care how she lost her hand, I only knew it was gone and she was still coming to terms with that. But that was only part of her story. The reporter had touched on something so raw, so painful, it had stolen the breath right out of her. I could still see her, huddled on the floor behind the bar, shivering. I was sure, if she’d been in control, she would never have wanted me to bear witness to that. Maybe, if she told me what happened, I could help her understand. Maybe, if she told me what happened she could find a way through it.

In both hearing and telling the truth, maybe we could both move forward, together.

She looked up at me, her large eyes glowing black in the moonlight. Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded, and the relief nearly lifted me off my feet.

But it wasn’t over yet. It hadn’t even begun.

“Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you,

destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.”

– Dave Grohl

Sass

“It was a motorcycle accident.”

Those five words were just as hard to say as I thought they would be. It felt like every word was being torn out of me, ripping my soul and leaving it bleeding. But that wasn’t the end of it. It was much, much worse. Pain piled on top of regret, and shame at what I had done and the burden I had to carry because of it.

“We were at a party. I was drunk, and a guy called Jason offered me a ride on his bike. He was drunk too, but I didn’t really care because I was Kia Martin, and Kia Martin was untouchable.”

It came tumbling out after that, the words tripping over each other in their haste. They had been locked up inside me for so long that they craved the spotlight again. Despite that, I couldn’t look at Callum while I relived it. I didn’t want to see his face. I didn’t want to see how disappointed he was going to be.