Anywhere But Here (21 page)

Kellen

May 8

Present . . .

I didn’t know why she followed me onto the beach, but I wasn’t going to ask, afraid it would ruin this moment we were having, if it could even be called that. There was something familiar and comfortable about just being with her, sitting beside her, not having to say a word. Just being. We used to have some of the craziest conversations; we could sit and talk or debate the most ridiculous topics for hours, or I could just sit and listen to her talk about anything and everything; what she thought, the way she saw the world and people and life. I never got tired of hearing her share her mind, but we’d never felt the need to fill the silence just for the sake of it. Just as easily as we could talk for two hours straight, we could say nothing at all for long stretches of time without it ever growing awkward or stinted.

I was just waiting for her to hook her arm through mine and lean her head on my shoulder, but I knew she wouldn’t. We weren’t those kids anymore. Right here in this place and moment in time, I could almost imagine that we were still two people who cared deeply about each other, not the strangers we’d become.

“So, I saw you and my mom the other day,” she finally spoke after what seemed an eternity. I could hear the question even if she hadn’t asked it. There was only one place she could have seen the two of us.

“I’m not having an affair with your mom if that’s what you think,” I teased, knowing, at least hoping, that wasn’t really where her mind was at.

“Shut up. I know that much, but what, are you two a part of book club or something?”

A soft laugh rolled through me and I dropped my gaze to the sand between my feet. “Book club? No.” I could feel her eyes on my profile and tilted my chin to look over at her. “We both attend once a month NA meetings.” Her bottom lip separated from the top, but no words came out, and her eyebrows shifted just a bit higher. Those long lashes of hers fluttered down and then back up as she blinked.

“Not what you were expecting?”

I could see her brain still trying to process and I let my head swing forward again, bringing the dark lager to my lips.

“When did you start using?” I could barely hear her quiet words over the sound of the breeze and the waves gently crashing at our feet.

“When I figured out you weren’t coming back.” I couldn’t look at her as I made that admission.

She was silent again for a minute and I almost glanced over so I could try to read her face, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. She was never very good at hiding her thoughts.

“How long have you been clean?”

“Five years, plus a few months and some odd days.” Thankfully I hadn’t stayed in the dark pit I let myself fall into long. I had Derek and Trin to pull my ass out and make me see the light again before I destroyed what little I had left. That year though, that I’d fought them, that I’d let myself go down that road and become something I swore I never would, was a bad one. Felt like it had to be another lifetime ago, and yet, if I let myself go back there, relive that time, it was like it was only yesterday that I’d stumbled my way into a hell of my own making.

“Your mom came to her first meeting about two weeks after mine. I don’t know if it was chance or what that she just happened to walk in. At first it was real awkward. She wouldn’t say more than her name at that first meeting, wouldn’t even look at me for the first several weeks, except I’d catch her every once in a while. She’d turn away and she looked so ashamed, but she kept coming back every week and so did I. Eventually we had some stuff out. It wasn’t pretty, but she did apologize to me for a lot. We made peace and after that, I don’t know, she was really supportive of me. She wouldn’t say what made her decide to get clean, still doesn’t, but Shae, I think it was you.” She looked away and I knew she didn’t want to hear it, but she needed to. “I think once you were gone, she finally realized what her life had become and that the pills weren’t helping anymore, that they never really had.”

Shae shook her head and pushed up from the sand. “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t care,” the cracks in her voice and the shimmer in her eyes convinced me that she did.

“I think you do, Shae.” I stood as well. “And whether you want to hear it or not, you need to. I know that you have a lot of years to be angry at her for, and I don’t know what happened between you two after you and me weren’t a part of each other’s lives anymore, but whatever drove this wedge deeper between you two, I know she has regrets. I know she’s sorry, but she’s too damn stubborn to ask for forgiveness. I know she wants to find a way. She’s not the same woman, I mean, hell, she could have checked herself into some fancy ass rehab and tried to hide her problems from the world, but she didn’t. She’s spent the last five years trying to fix her mistakes, Shae, and you two have already lost so much time. You should give her a chance. Your grandmother didn’t, and now look. That chance is gone.”

“Don’t tell me what you know, or what I should do and don’t you dare bring my grandmother into this. You think you know my mother now that she’s turned her life around? Well good for her for finally giving up the pills and booze, and I’m glad she apologized for being a royal bitch to you back then. Forgiving her for how she treated you, that’s your choice, but don’t for one second try to convince me she’s done all this for me, or that I owe her any forgiveness.”

“You don’t. You don’t
owe
her anything. She’s even admitted that she doesn’t expect your forgiveness. She just wants a chance to show you that she’s better now, that she can be better now.” And if I was honest, so did I. I think that’s what this boiled down to. I knew if Shae could find it in her to forgive her mother, there was still hope for me.

“No, she just wants a chance to clear her own conscience and ease her guilt.”

“I don’t think so.” Renee Bradford had spent the last five years tearing herself up for destroying her relationship with her daughter. I knew she just wanted the opportunity to begin to undo some of that damage. I also knew that Shae loved her mom. That love was buried deep under layers of hurt and anger and bitterness, all of which had turned into this giant, gaping wound, and the only way it would begin to heal was if she found a way to let go of some of that anger and the things that were cutting her up from the inside.

“Well you’re wrong,” she spit.

“What makes you so sure? You haven’t really talked to her in years.”

“I still know enough. Like, I bet that first meeting five years ago was in February, wasn’t it?”

My first meeting was January thirty-first, so that was right and clearly it held some significance. “Yeah, it would have been around then.”

She just nodded her head. “Like I said, she’s trying to ease her guilty conscience.”

“For what? What the hell happened?” I was growing frustrated with this conversation and I let it leak out. “What is so damn awful that you can’t get past it?”

“February tenth five years ago I followed her example and tried to check out with a bottle of pills, only I was looking for a permanent way out.” Almost as soon as her confession was out, I could see she regretted it, but then something hard came down over her eyes. I was still reeling from the words that smacked me square in the chest, knocking the breath from my lungs. She tried to kill herself?

“What the fuck?’ It slipped accidentally from my mouth before I could stop it.

“You weren’t the only one that had a bad year, Kellen.” Her eyes were withdrawn, she was trying to detach herself, but I could see it was a defense. She finally opened up about something and now she was trying to shut down on me, but I wasn’t having it.

I stepped toward her in the sand, wanting to reach out for her, but knowing that would be too much and she’d bolt. “Just help me understand,” I pleaded.

She sucked in a deep breath and blew it back out with a slight tremble. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s her fault that I tried to take my own life. I know I’m responsible for my choices. There were so many things that led to that moment, and it’s taken me this long to realize that the fault for those events doesn’t fall on any one person, but the things that happened, they shouldn’t have happened Kell. The things that pushed me there, to that point where I just wanted out, could have been stopped.” She was on the verge of tears, and the pain in her voice was like a knife to my insides.

“There was a point when I needed help, God, I really needed help. I had no one and nothing. I’d already burdened Didi with too much after my mother disowned me. Still, when I needed her to be my mom, I went to her and I asked her for help, but she didn’t want to be my mom then.” She turned her head, looking out over the water, hiding her eyes from me while she pulled herself together. They were harder and closed down again when she swung her gaze back to me. “Now she wants to, when it’s convenient for her? So she doesn’t have to feel so bad about abandoning me back then? No. She doesn’t get to do that.” As hard as she was fighting to seem emotionless, the tears were brimming in her eyes again.

Last week, I’d thrown words at her, ones intended to inflict pain, because I was angry and I wanted to see if I could still make her feel something, even if it was hurt. I called her an ice cold bitch, something I knew would sting. It was easier to let myself believe she was cold and detached when she was anything but. The girl in front of me was the same gentle, expressive girl I’d know at seventeen, the same one who felt too much rather than too little. She’d just put up more walls to protect herself.

I didn’t have the words to take her tears away. I wished I did. I’d always hated seeing them. Even worse, I hated when I knew I was the cause, and there was no doubt that some of this pain ripping through her was from me. I knew any second she would bolt before she’d let me see her fall apart. She was on the brink, so I did the only thing I could do, risking that she might bolt anyway. I closed the last little bit of space between us and nervously put my arms around her.

Her body stiffened, but she didn’t pull away instantly. That was a good sign so I pulled her a little closer and rested my chin on top of her head. I could feel her breaths propelling her chest against mine and the tiny tremors rolling through her.

It was so damn awkward, like holding a board. I was about to let go, because it was hard enough to have her in my arms again. Knowing she didn’t want to be there, that she’d probably rather be anywhere else, with anyone else, was too much to take, but she relaxed. Only slightly, but it was enough that it changed everything. Her head leaned forward and rested against my chest and one hand slid up, fingers curling as she clenched my shirt.

I pressed my cheek to her head and dipped my mouth just above her ear. “I’m so sorry, Shae. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t know what happened and I shouldn’t have pressured you about your mom. There are so many things I shouldn’t have done, now and back then. If I could take it back and change things, I would.”

That was apparently the wrong thing to say, because all of the sudden she stiffened again and tore herself from my arms. “But you can’t.” She started wiping furiously at her eyes. “We can’t change anything.”

“I know.” I let her pull away. “And you were right that I don’t understand everything. I hate what you told me. I hate knowing it. I hate that you were alone, and it kills me that there really isn’t a damn thing I can do to make any of that better, because a world without you in it, that’s just not an option. No matter what we are to each other, you need to know that’s just not a fucking option and I’m glad God saw fit to agree with me. Now you’re standing here and whatever hell you were in, you got out, Shae.”

She shook her head. “Some days I’m still right back there.”

“I know it can feel that way. Believe me, I do, but tell me right now, what you did back then, what you attempted,” I swallowed thickly just thinking about it again, “do you still want to?”

My question hung in the air between us. Her eyes darted away, and her arms wrapped around her middle, but eventually she looked at me again, and gave a gentle shake of her head. I felt relief, because I meant what I said. Her not living in this world, making it brighter and better, was not an option.

“The bad shit, it stays with us. It’s always there to try and drag us back, and it can if we let it, or we can just let it be memories. Let it remind us what we’ve come through, what we’ve survived. Own it, use it to find your strength, or let it own you. It’s a choice. One that you have to make every single day, and some days it’s a harder choice than others, but you just keep making it.”

Her eyes blinked a couple times and we just hung there, suspended in that moment. I kept waiting for her to turn and walk away, but she didn’t. She turned to face the ocean and even walked forward. Just a couple steps at first, letting the water brush up over the tops of her feet, but then she kept going until she was in up to her calves.

“How is it?” I called.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “It’s the Atlantic Ocean. What do you think? It’s cold.”

I chuckled and she faced forward again, watching the waves build and then crash into her legs, splashing up to her thighs. I watched some of the tension melt out of her shoulders as she stood in the water, dropping her arms to let them dangle at her sides so she could dip her fingers in the spray as the waves broke against her. She waded out a little farther until the water was at her knees, the waves coming in almost at her hips, soaking the bottom of her yellow sundress, and then she went out a little farther still.