Authors: Riley Jean
Until we are ready to love with all our hearts, all our minds, and all our souls, we are nothing but lonesome people, just looking to use somebody.
* * *
“Wanna sing with me?” Claire said one evening as we lounged about in our room. “I’ve heard you in the shower. Your set of pipes makes mine sound like a dying cat caught in a rain storm.”
I felt my cheeks warm. “I don’t know the words.”
“You’ll catch on.”
I almost felt another excuse coming on. Then I remembered what my counselor said…
the only way to break the cycle is to not merely suppress bad, but also to actively pursue good.
Old habits like alcohol and flings offered a poor excuse for comfort, but they were easy to slip into when life got hard and there was nothing solid to fall back on. I needed to fill that void with good, healthy things. And music was the best thing that came to mind.
Setting aside my hesitancy, I put down the journal and turned to face her. It felt kind of strange at first, singing to each other. I didn’t know where else to look, so I dropped my gaze to the guitar and watched her fingers switch it up.
“Do you play?” she asked between two verses.
“Not really.” Nathan had taught me a little, but that was years ago. I doubted any of it had stuck.
“Come here, I’ll show you,” she offered, removing the guitar strap and patting the bed beside her. “You can get by alright on just a few chords.”
I came to sit on her bed and she passed the instrument over. I handled it delicately, putting the strap over my shoulder and sliding it into my lap with the utmost care. Nathan had been very particular about his guitar. Roxanne was his baby.
“You won’t hurt it,” she laughed. “And if you do, it’s okay. It’s just a thing.” She arranged my fingers on the strings. I held them in place a bit stiffly, memorizing their positions.
“Okay. Strum.”
I used the pick to strum.
The sound hit me like a tidal wave. I could actually feel the music coming from my very own fingertips, reverberating in my ribcage. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. My eyes widened. That wasn’t bad-sounding at all.
“You’re a natural!” she said, mirroring my enthusiasm. “Okay. One more time, then we’ll learn another.”
* * *
[Journal]
I went from trusting everyone to trusting no one. In which case was I more disillusioned?
* * *
It took a whole month of meeting with my counselor before I finally opened up and shared the rest of my story.
Starting with the truth about Gabriel. And what I had done.
I relived the multitude of emotions all over again. Every loss, every heartache. From Gabriel’s betrayal and our final moments in the backseat of my car, to the night I used it all as an excuse to break Vance’s heart.
The diagnosis? Survivor’s guilt, acute paranoia, as well as (drum roll please) post-traumatic stress disorder.
Vance was right. Again.
It seemed so simple, once I stopped trying to stuff it all down. The nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, even the social anxiety was all explained. I was just a lost little girl who defined herself by one night, by one man. Without him, I had a case of identity crisis on my hands.
The goal was cognitive restructuring, which was a fancy term for rewiring the memories in my brain to recall them accurately and realistically. She wanted to focus on alleviating myself of the self-imposed guilt I felt over all the lives lost that night, and unromanticizing the life and death of Gabriel Leighton.
I mean… Gavin Lockwood.
The end goal: Absolution.
Structure. Procedure. Solution. At last, for the first time in a long time, it felt like I was taking a big step in the right direction. Consider me officially moving forward.
* * *
“Claire?”
“Yeah, Scarlett?” she replied, wet hair wrapped up in a towel while she painted a daisy over each bright yellow big toe.
“You and Anthony… He’s not going to sleep over here ever… is he?”
She blushed and giggled a little. “He’s a youth pastor, Scarlett. You won’t have to worry about that.”
“Oh.” My own pedicure was also coming along nicely, my toenails a dusty pink. A couple seconds passed before I spoke again. “Claire?”
“Yeah, Scarlett?”
“You guys are in love, right?”
“Truly, madly, deeply,” she said, singsong.
“How do you know?”
She grinned and twisted the polish cap back on, her work done. “It’s different for everybody, I reckon.”
“But what does it mean to you?”
Her expression softened, her gaze floating to a far off place. “To me… love is like music. Like a new song hummin’ in the back of your head, that’s just beggin’ to be written. There’s no gettin’ around it. You can’t lock it up inside and pretend it’s not there. Eventually it will eat away with you and drive you insane! Sure—the chords’ll need some tweakin’, and it might take awhile to get the words just right. Love is like that, you know? You have to put in the work. Just like it takes work to uncover a new song. But once you find it… it’s a masterpiece.”
I chewed my lip, reflecting on her words. “But what if you’re afraid to play the song?”
Her smile turned a little sad. “Then, sugar, that’s what I’d call a tragedy.”
“But how do you know for sure? Maybe the song just isn’t meant to be? What if playing it after all this time is just selfish and will hurt everyone who hears it?”
“Hypothetically?” she asked, giggling at me knowingly.
I huffed and fell backwards on my bed.
She shuffled over, wet toes spread and pointed up. The thin mattress dipped as she came to sit beside me. “Here’s what I know: God opens door and he closes them. I just keep movin’ forward until I get a clear sign that I’m supposed to stop or turn around. And then—this is the most important part—I listen. Closed doors are answers, too. Sometimes you just need the courage to knock.”
“It just seems like a big risk,” I argued, “Using all that courage to work your way up to the door, only to get it slammed in your face.”
“That’s true, too. But you know what? I think you lose even more from holding back.”
As I laid there, pondering this, she gestured to the picture tacked to my board.
“Is that your friend?”
“My best friend,” I confirmed.
“He has a great smile.”
I nodded. I loved his smile, too. For some reason, it always reminded me of the sun.
“I imagine you must miss him.”
I stared at the picture. “Every day.”
There were times I knew I’d bitten off more than I could chew. But I was still chewing out of sheer stubbornness.
“So what happened?”
“I left,” I admitted with a sad shrug. “Or, as he put it, I ran away. Don’t get me wrong—I wanted to come here. I did this for me. But these last few months… I’m not so sure anymore.” I thought I was putting myself first. But the truth was, I had put my fears first. Fear was what prevented me from telling him how I felt. Fear was what convinced me we were better off apart. Texas had been good for me, but suddenly, it felt like somebody else’s dream.
“It’s like… I didn’t want to let myself be happy, so instead I got consumed by the darkness. Except, no matter how far away I go, I still feel him there, guiding me. Like a light.” I paused, wondering if any of this made sense. “Does that sound totally stupid?”
“It’s not stupid at all! It’s beautiful,” she said. “Your distant light in the darkness… Like the stars.”
I smiled, convinced that rooming with Claire was proof of divine intervention. Vance was right about one more thing after all—with the right people, it’s totally worth it.
“Exactly like the stars.”
* * *
[Journal]
What is the perfect love? Could we know enough to wager?
Is it butterflies and fairy tales, an instant spark with a stranger?
No. The perfect love is patient. It challenges and grows
Derived from song and pancakes, and in the beauty of a rose
The perfect love is laughter. Selflessness. Respect
Anything that makes him smile. A dance with my best friend
The perfect love is passion, intimate and heat
Kindness and trust in his eyes of olive green
The perfect love is intricate. Messy. Real. Raw
Forgiveness and humility. Vulnerable and flawed
The perfect love is hope, faithful and pure
Destined to last, built to endure
* * *
Meeting with my counselor was helping. The more I talked, the uglier it got, but the more I began to find my strength.
It wasn’t easy. At times I clammed up. At times I cried. Some days revealing my skeletons was therapeutic and some days it tore me apart. But she was patient and understanding. She made me look at things in a different light. Slowly we worked to make sense of my past and understand the me beneath the surface. When I depended too strongly on either my heart or my logic, she provided the balance.
“And did Miles attempt to get you back after his infidelity was exposed?”
I shrugged. “He called and texted for awhile, tried to draw it out or pick fights, but I never responded. It was already over for me. Black and white.”
“No temptation to give him another chance?”
“No.”
“Here’s what I find interesting. It seemed all too easy to dismiss your relationship with Miles once you found it to be unhealthy. Why do you think this is harder to do with Gavin?”
I bristled. It was still so strange to hear his name.
“I guess… sometimes I still see them as two different men—Gavin and Gabriel. He made me believe a lot of crap, but at the same time, a lot of the things he told me were true. About his world. And his loneliness. I feel like, on some level, he
was
Gabriel. Or he wanted to be Gabriel.” I fiddled with my own fingers and spoke quietly. “Gavin was the sinister version. But Gabriel… he cared about me.”
Despite everything, something inside me still wanted to believe our connection was real. How could it be completely fabricated when he showed me mercy in the very end? And his life… I’d looked it up once after the investigation was closed and all the dots were connected. I remembered wishing he would tell me all about who he was and where he came from. I remembered falling even harder when he finally did. I remembered hating him when I discovered everything he ever told me was a lie. What I found was more than I’d bargained for… truth.
He grew up in the English countryside. When he was still but a young boy, a fire burnt down their home, killing his mother, and driving his father away. Homeless and abandoned, Gavin and his younger brother, Graham, bounced around all of Europe until they fell off the radar. Years later they resurfaced in America.
Records were picked up over multiple states following the two troubled young men. Gabriel was never apprehended while alive, but Graham had a record miles long. Violence. Theft. Gang related crimes. He did a stint in jail one summer, while Gabriel stayed nearby, working on a ranch.
All was calm for a while. Graham got released, and it looked like they had both settled into their new country life.
That was, until the family that owned the ranch was murdered by members of Graham’s biker gang.
“He used to tell me about all the places in the world he’s traveled to. He told me about his favorite summer working on a ranch near San Antonio. He never lied about that. He never lied about Texas.”
“So what if that’s true?” she pried. “There’s a little truth in every lie, manipulated slightly to fit its purpose. Maybe he did have a hard life, and maybe some part of him did care. That’s still no excuse. When the opportunity presented itself, he made his decision. He chose to be Gavin. He chose to hurt you.”
“I just wish I knew for sure.”
“Tell me how that would make you feel, knowing whether he cared for you or not. Help me understand why that makes a difference.”
I steeled myself to bring it all full circle.
“When Vance first pursued me, I had a hard time trusting his intentions. I’ve never really considered myself
desirable.
I’ve always been the cute, awkward friend. And my less than stellar track record with the three evil ex-boyfriends didn’t exactly help.” I chewed my lip. “So I guess I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that someone like Vance could actually love me.”
“Were you worried he was lying to you? Like Gavin?”
“It’s not that… I figured out that Vance was a good guy. That was never the problem.”
“Then what is the problem?”
I looked down at my open palms. “It’s me,” I whispered. “I have the blood of three men on my hands. I am capable of rashness and terrible violence. What happens when I get into a fight with the next boyfriend? What if that part of my mind takes over again… what will these hands do?