“I—I need to think,” I said. “I really like you, Katie. You’re my best friend.”
“This was always going to happen. We can’t put it off forever. This is just how it is for us. This is what we’re meant to be.”
I kissed her again. This time, softly. “Can we maybe slow down?” I said. “I want to do this. I really do, I promise. I just need a little more time.”
She brushed her fingers over my lips and said, “Sure.”
And for the next two weeks, I had her. We spent our last days of summer at the beach and the bookstore and in bed, pushing our story a little further every night. But we never finished what we’d started. Because on the twenty-fifth of August, somewhere in the Allegheny Mountains, Mikey Caruso checked himself out of rehab and got high on bad dope for the last time.
Forbidden Love
There was Orpheus and Eurydice. There was Romeo and Juliet. There was Allie and Noah. And then there was Henry Cooper and Willa Pearson. In all these cases, the question was never whether the love was real but whether love alone would be enough. Whether, in the real world, that love could rise above those who had forbidden it... and stand the test of time.
75
Katie
Present Day
New York City
It was a quarter past nine in the city, and I was already two hours into what was supposed to be a thirty-minute walk-through. My mother and I were in your typical Midtown Manhattan ballroom. Outdated chandeliers and scuffed-up parquet floors, but a view to die for: towering, iconic stacks of morning-swept glass and stone that gave way to rivers, boats, and gilded shores with skylines of their own.
The catering coordinator, who couldn’t have been any older than I was, had just stumbled through a last-minute review of dietary restrictions and disappeared into her office to search for a decent pen. My mother ran her hand over a tablecloth and frowned.
“I told you these wouldn’t work,” she said. “They look so green.”
I fiddled with a menu, biting down on my tongue. My jaw was heavy, and my head was still pounding from last night. I’d woken up before dawn and had Maurice drive me into the city for only one reason: to tell my mother about Tyler. And still, here I was, playing daughter, making myself small. After all, it was muscle memory, and—yesterday’s outburst aside—the only thing I’d ever known.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “They looked different online.”
My mom frowned again. Behind her, a dozen easels. A dozen humans whose lives had been cut short. I looked each of them in the eye—black and brown and hazel and blue—searching for meaning. Searching for something to make this tolerable, to remind me why I gave so much of myself to a cause that belonged to someone who wouldn’t love me back.
My mother followed my line of sight. “He’d want this to be perfect, you know.”
I laughed at that. Something snapped inside me for the second day in a row, and it just slipped out. I didn’t even bother to glance up and see the look on my mother’s face. I didn’t need to. I could imagine it with my eyes closed: the shock, the disappointment, the disgust.
“Mikey,” I said, “would hate this shit.”
She inhaled. Heat gathered in my face, my heart, my hands. I lifted my eyes and braced for it: That frown of hers. That cold and cruel warping of her lips. “What has gotten into you lately?” she said. “You know how important this event is. All I’m asking is that you help me honor your brother. That you help me save lives. That you—”
“Honor my brother?I didn’t even know my brother! He was an asshole, and then he was an addict, and then he was gone! That’s what I remember, Mom! That’s who I think of when I remember my brother. A fucking jerk who never made me feel safe, who never gave a shit about me, who took everything from me when he was alive, and somehow managed to take even more from me when he was dead!”
My mother had come so close that I could not breathe. The look in her eyes, desperately narrow and demanding I lower my voice.The catering coordinator poked her head out of the kitchen and just as quickly disappeared. My pulse was pounding.
“I spent the summer with Tyler,” I said. “You should know that. We’re together. I would’ve told you sooner, but you’ve never given me a chance. He’s coming tomorrow. He’s...”
My mom’s face had melted into something so flat, so fallen, so frightened, I nearly gasped. Her voice was breaking—and ice cold.
“That boy,” she said, “is the reason we’re standing here.”
I shook my head. My whole body tremored. The whole ballroom closed in. “You’re wrong, Mom. Mikey was an addict. Mikey was—”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand this, Katie. You don’t know what it’s like to raise a child. But I can tell you one thing for sure. If Tyler had stayed away from Michael, he’d still be here. It’s not complicated. He’s—”
“You don’t know him! He’s changed! He—”
“Katie,” she said. “He abandoned you. He drove that car high, and everyone knows it. He ruined Mikey’s life, he got him hooked on those pills, and then he abandoned Mikey. And then, because that wasn’t enough for him, he got bored and found you. And then, when things got hard, he left you too. That’s what the men in that family do. They take, and they take, and they take, and then when they’re done—when the high wears off—they go. They disappear.”
