“Do you compete or...?”
“I used to.” I explained that skating on a truly competitive level required a full-time commitment, not just from the skater but from their family too. I found myself telling him aboutStories on Iceand the audition video I no longer feel I can make.
“Because of your brother?”
I hesitate, then decide to tell him the truth as much as I understand it myself. “No, because of everyone he left broken.” And for the first time since Jason went away, I’m beginning to see what that brokenness looks like beyond my own family. I’m not sure I want to see any more. Looking at grass, I say, “If you felt bad for the other day or whatever, you can stop. I didn’t get fired, and I get why you were mad about the money. We can just leave it at that. You don’t have to...to...” My gaze shifts to the scarred part of the tree where Jason’s initials used to be, then back to Heath. His anger from my just mentioning my brother is still right there in front of me, simmering under the surface. “You don’t have to try.”
Suddenly I’m so sad that I feel like I could just fall to the earth and never move again. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t personally do anything to him or that he had nothing to do with breaking down my family. It doesn’t matter what we know; it’s what we can’t help but feel. I’m still who I am, however Heath phrases it out loud, and he’s still who he is. “It’s okay,” I say.
He shakes his head, his movement agitated. “It was easier before.”
I frown. Nothing has been easier. He knows that better than anyone.
“My brother is gone, and the person responsible is in prison. I don’t get to ask for more in this life. It’s the reason I can get out of bed each morning, the thing that keeps me moving each day, the reason I sleep instead of stare at darkness all night and think about his empty room down the hall from mine.” He opens his mouth and then snaps it shut. He doesn’t look at me when he says, “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask, a tremor in my voice.
His voice is calm but his hands are braced on either side of his thighs and his fingers are digging into the bark and turning his knuckles white. “Because I don’t think you slept either. Because I think you have to find a reason to get up every day and another to keep going once you do.” Heath turns his head toward me. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
But I can’t. My fingers curl tight into the fabric of my sundress as his eyes lock with mine.
“I can’t get it back,” he says, and it’s half a whisper, half a plea. “I can’t just feel that one thing anymore.”
I shift my weight, slowly, and then with more purpose until I’m mostly facing him on the branch. It’s not the same for us. I saw my brother a few days ago. I see him every week. I get to talk to him and hear his voice. He’s still here. And one day, my brother will come home. Heath’s won’t.
“No one expects your family to feel sorry for mine.” My throat thickens just saying the words. “I don’t. Be mad and hard. You get that. I don’t want to take that away from you.”
“You’re not your brother,” he says, and my eyes sting so suddenly and sharply that I have to squeeze them shut. “I’m getting that not a lot of people around here see that. I don’t want to be one of them. I think...” He waits until I’m looking at him. “I think you want that too, or you wouldn’t be here.”
How can he know what I want?Idon’t even know what I want, or what I’m allowed to want anymore, what I’m supposed to feel or what I’m supposed to do when none of it seems to matter anymore.
“Your family didn’t hurt my family,” he says. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“No,” I say, “but I’m hurting you now.”
He doesn’t deny it. Instead his gaze shifts to the road where our vehicles are parked, one behind the other. “I started driving Cal’s truck after the funeral. My mom didn’t want to sell it, so I sold mine instead. I used to feel sick just from picking up the keys. But I forced myself to drive it, to think of Cal until I could do it without wanting to run it off a cliff.” I see his Adam’s apple move as he swallows. “I want to be able to think about my brother and not just the fact that he’s gone.” His gaze shifts to me. “It’s not as hard as it used to be, driving his truck. Sometimes it’s even okay. Sometimes I’ll go out and sit behind the wheel and it’s like the only place on earth where it doesn’t hurt.”
I suck in a gulp of air, wanting to break away from his gaze but unable to. He’s trying to equate entirely different things. I’m not a good memory buried beneath bad. I may not be my brother, but time and exposure will never soften the fact that Cal is dead because of Jason. Seeing me means remembering my brother, which means remembering Cal’s murder, which means pain and rage and revulsion all corroded together.
I believe Heath means what he says; he wants to not blame or despise me. And I believe he knows that logically he shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean his heart agrees. I know this because I feel it too.
When I find it, my voice is a whisper. “I’m not a truck.” I wish I were, for my sake as much as his. “When you look at me like that, when I can tell that you have to force yourself to hold my gaze, all I can think is that I deserve it because of my brother. I can’t hold my head up and walk past you like I don’t make your skin crawl. It’s not just you working through your pain and maybe finding something okay on the other side—it’s my pain too. And I can’t even say that to you, because how gross is that? Trying to equate our situations—” bile starts rising in my throat “—is so wrong. I’m not allowed to feel bad in front of you. I’m not allowed to feel bad in front of anyone, butespeciallynot you, and I don’t know how to stop.” I suck in another breath so deep that it makes me dizzy. So dizzy that I think I see him stand and move until he’s right in front of me. Close enough that I could touch him.
Close enough that he could touch me.
I want, for just a moment, to reach for his hand, if only to hold on to someone else’s hurt so I don’t have to feel my own.
His face in front of me isn’t steady. He’s letting me see just how hard this is for him. But he’s not moving away.
“You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
My eyes sting when he sits right next to me. He holds himself very still, and so do I. After a moment he exhales and I feel the tension start to ease from his body.
“You can feel however you want in front of me, okay?” He’s not looking at me when he says it, and I’m not entirely sure he won’t surge to his feet to get away from me the second I answer him. Still watching him from the corner of my eye, I nod. “I’m not saying I’ll be okay all the time, but I promise I’ll try to remember who I’m really angry at, and it’s not you,” he says, sounding like he’s talking to himself as much as me. “It was never you.”
My phone is flashing when I open Daphne’s door and slide behind the wheel. When I check the screen I see a ton of missed calls from Maggie, but no messages. I try her back right away but I go straight to voice mail. Frowning, I pull my door shut and try again.
